The Partridge and the Pelican

by Rachel Crowther

  “Eighteen, sixteen, thirteen, ten.”

  “Eighteen! A grown up son, my goodness. You certainly don’t look old enough for that. Did Sarah tell you I’m planning to adopt?”

  “Yes.” Olivia met Eve’s eyes, taking care over her response. “From China, she said.”

  “It’s a hell of a process,” said Eve. “Years, literally. Forms and interviews and references and more forms. And I’ve had to go back a stage since I came home.”

  Home, Olivia thought. After twenty-five years on the other side of the world, this was still home. She felt sorry for Eve at that moment, for the thought of her being in exile all that time.

  “How much longer now?” she asked.

  “It’s in the lap of the gods, or at least the Chinese authorities. All the preliminaries are done. I’m waiting to hear when there’s a baby available.”

  Eve’s face quivered, with pleasure or anxiety or perhaps a mixture of the two.

  “How exciting!” Olivia said brightly, though she felt her own quiver too, a queasy foreboding at those words. A baby available. How time changed things. And how strange, how awful, for motherhood to be regulated by forms and foreign officials. Political nuances. Would she have wanted a baby that much? Even she, the uber mother?

  When the waiter arrived with their food, Olivia realised they’d ordered the same thing. Salade niçoise, brought up to the minute with a twist of pancetta on top, thin as a leaf.

  “Cheers,” she said, lifting her water glass.

  “You know what?” said Eve. “I think I do need a glass of wine. I was horribly nervous about this. God knows why.”

  She laughed, slightly brittle, and Olivia thought: that I recognise. She grinned. That I remember.

  To Olivia’s surprise Eve ordered pudding, a crème brulée with stem ginger sliced on top, as thin as the pancetta.

  “It must be the wine,” she said. “I don’t usually eat anything at lunchtime.”

  She did look thin, Olivia thought, though she had some reassuring colour in her cheeks now. She felt strangely gratified by Eve’s appetite, as if she were watching one of her boys tucking into a large plate of something comfortingly bland.

  “Good?” she asked.

  Eve nodded. “Want a bite?”

  Olivia shook her head. She’d never had a sweet tooth; Eve would know that.

  Eve lifted her spoon to her mouth, licked it with an elegant deliberation that reminded Olivia of her insouciant cat, then laid it on the edge of the dish.

  “If we’re going to do this,” she said, “this reunion business, then I think we have to talk about things, don’t you?”

  She looked straight at Olivia then, her eyes the eyes of the old Eve, and Olivia felt as if something had hit her in the stomach. Something she ought to have seen coming. No: something she’d anticipated but had foolishly hoped to avoid.

  “Haven’t we been talking?” she said, although she knew her disingenuousness would irritate Eve. We’ve managed some treacherous ground, she meant, some things that matter. Haven’t we acknowledged the past, between the lines?

  Eve made a brief, dismissive gesture.

  “I was pregnant that summer,” she said. “I found out while we were in Aldeburgh. It was James’s, naturally. James’s child.”

  The words came in a surge; like the way a baby’s head is born, Olivia couldn’t help thinking. All that time waiting, and suddenly the shock of it.

  “Bloody hell,” she said. The revelation trickled through her, cold as melt water. And you never told me. She couldn’t say the words, but surely Eve could hear them. Surely Eve must have anticipated them.

  “I’d slept with him a couple of times, earlier that summer,” Eve said. “End of term parties, you know. You probably guessed that.”

  Olivia shook her head.

  “I suppose I presumed too much. When he arrived at Shearwater I acted as though we were together, even thought we weren’t.”

  “I don’t remember it like that.”

  Olivia thought, with a twist of her guts, about James; about her encounter with someone she believed to be him, just a few days ago. But most of her mind was filled with Eve, and the secret Eve had kept from her until now. Her trump card, Olivia thought. Her pièce de résistance, saved up for this occasion. As she stared at Eve across the table, the events of 1983 loomed and blurred in her mind like a sudden blare of sound. She remembered swimming in the sea, Eve’s face as she looked up at James, her mermaid hair floating in the bath. Everything else was too much distorted by this information.

  “So,” Eve said. “That’s why no babies, you see.”

  Olivia waited.

  “Actually,” Eve went on, in a tone that seemed to be aiming for jauntiness and falling dismayingly short, “it probably wasn’t the abortion. Probably chlamydia, in fact. A double whammy from dear James.”

  “Infertility,” said Olivia.

  “Pelvic inflammatory disease,” said Eve. “Tests, waiting, IVF. Divorce, more IVF, another divorce. A bit like Henry the Eighth – d’you remember? Divorced, beheaded, died … “

  “Bloody hell,” said Olivia again. Though she was thinking, this time, that they were too much, all these words. Eve had always liked words, liked taking refuge in them.

  “Anyway,” said Eve. “There’ll be a baby now, I hope. One that has nothing to do with all …” She swept her hand in a grand gesture.

  Did you tell James, Olivia wanted to ask? When did you tell him?

  She reached a hand across the table. Imagine Eve, waiting all this time for a baby. Imagine her tiny embryo bumping along in the front seat of the Fiat that day, while Olivia held someone else’s baby in her lap. Imagine another loss.

  “I’m glad it’s all worked out,” she said, conscious that it wasn’t enough. “I’m glad there’s a happy ending.”

  “Not yet,” said Eve.

  No surprise, really, that her face should be set hard.

  Olivia was exhausted as she drove back up Marlow High Street. There was no knowing how things would go with Eve, she thought. That had been true twenty-five years ago and it was still true now. They had avoided what Olivia dreaded most, but in its place there had been enough shock, enough upset to dislodge her hold on the past. There was another baby to take account of now, another slant on history.

  But the darts of venom and flashes of adrenaline that had punctuated the lunch had come as a relief, in a strange sort of way. She’d been afraid of finding Eve softened, subdued, sedate, after all she’d been through. Or worse, so dried up by disappointment that she no longer cared much about anything. Instead, she’d seen enough to know that Eve hadn’t altered so much. That essential core, sharp and selfish and clear-thinking, was still there. The part of her that expected, commanded, attention; that knew she was more highly-coloured than the great mass of humanity. Whatever else had changed, Eve still had you sitting on the edge of your seat, watching your words, hoping against hope for a smile.

  As she followed the motorway home, Olivia’s mind floated back over the years of their separation. It was as if, when she thought of some particular time or place, she could feel Eve looking over her shoulder, recalling her own part in it. Visiting when Tom was born and Olivia was radiant with maternity, or approving the new house, the stripping of floorboards and reinstatement of fireplaces. Sitting at Olivia’s table when they entertained friends, noticing the omission of some subtle flavouring from a dish she knew well. These flashes of false memory made Olivia’s heart race with agitation as well as pleasure, but remembering that Eve hadn’t been there after all, hadn’t seen any of it, she felt an unaccountable sense of loss. It was almost as if she had lived her life without the person whose observation and validation would have made sense of it for her. This was regret, surely. The omission of a subtle flavouring that would have made all the difference: the dash of puffer fish poison that supplied a vital piquancy Olivia couldn’t do without, once she’d acquired the taste for it.

  Chapter 25


  Since the day of The Rose of Tralee, a gentle gloom had settled over the Wednesday Club. Kenneth had become more withdrawn – fading fast, Shirley said, with her peculiar combination of compassion and gossipy curiosity.

  “Funny, isn’t it,” she said one morning, when the trees were almost bare and the leaves were spread thickly over the forecourt where Olivia parked her bike. “He’s never been the same since that day he sang with you. Like it was – you know, his last gasp.”

  “His swansong,” said Olivia.

  “His swansong.” Shirley nodded. “That’s a beautiful way to put it.”

  He had been a singer, Olivia had discovered. Kenneth had told her himself, after his gala performance. He’d studied in Italy as a young man, at the conservatory in Florence. But he’d always been destined for doctoring, and after a year he’d come home to finish his medical training, consigning the singing to amateur performances. He named oratorios, a handful of operatic roles, his face animated, and Olivia wondered whose decision the return to medicine had been. A father whose parental licence had been stretched as far as it would go? A fiancée waiting for a steady doctor’s salary? He might have made it as an operatic tenor, Olivia thought. It was hard to be sure, after all this time, but he might have been a big name, if he’d devoted himself to music. Though she was a fine one to talk about compromises. Sacrifices to domestic felicity.

  Georgie had remained subdued too, slow to recover from her stay in hospital. But this morning when Olivia smiled at her she looked back with a clear, sharp gaze.

  “She’s perked up,” Shirley said – Shirley who never missed a glance or a nuance. “On good form today.”

  Olivia felt the same pang as on that first morning of Georgie’s return, the same combination of guilt and intimacy and diffidence that comes from knowing someone else’s secrets. She’d persuaded herself that she ought to wait until she had some concrete information before talking to Georgie about her family. Better, she’d thought, to know first whether there was anything to find out, any relatives left to offer her. But was that really the right way to go about it? To go poking around in someone else’s life, finding their long-lost relations, without their permission?

  All the time she was playing the piano – no Rose of Tralee today; none of them looked up to that kind of excitement – Olivia pondered. Had she taken an absurd liberty, going to see Georgie’s social worker? She’d been frank about her position: a volunteer in the day centre, she’d called herself. But Mary might have assumed a closer connection than actually existed. True, Olivia had known Georgie for several years, but she knew precious little about her beyond the formality of her bearing and the secret history Shirley had disclosed. Not enough to predict her response to what Olivia was contemplating.

  Perhaps if Georgie was alert today, capable of conversation, she should take the opportunity to broach the subject.

  Rex was helping Shirley in the kitchen when Olivia reached the end of her appointed slot. Sing-a-long Time over for another week, she thought. She felt she’d short-changed them all today, for some reason. Because her mind had been on something else? But there was no sign of disappointment or dissatisfaction in the faces around her. No sign of much at all in some of them, but that couldn’t all be laid at her feet.

  Olivia gathered her books together and moved casually across the room towards Georgie. She was wearing the same kind of outfit as usual, a dark pinafore dress and a white blouse.

  Olivia slipped into the chair next to her as if it was a spur of the moment impulse. Her heart was beating fast now the moment had come. Phrases turned in her head, offering themselves one after another.

  “How are you today, Georgie?” she asked.

  “Very well, thank you.” A schoolgirl’s polite response. “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?”

  Olivia glanced up at the window, the grey-blue sky and the skeletons of trees patterned against the leaded panes. A stark sort of beauty, she thought. The voices of the playgroup children drifted over from the little yard at the back of the building; there was a sudden flurry of noise that might indicate the discovery of a beetle or a disagreement over the slide.

  “My children used to go to that playgroup,” she said. “Yesterday, it seems. Amazing how fast time passes.”

  She blushed, appalled by her clumsiness. But Georgie gave a little nod of acknowledgment, and she stumbled on. There was no easy way, after all. No point looking for a connection between their lives that wouldn’t seem impossibly awkward.

  “Do you have family, Georgie?” she asked. “Nieces or nephews?”

  Georgie looked at her with the extraordinary directness of the very old. Olivia had a sense, in that moment, that Georgie could see straight into her mind; that she was wise to all the deceptions people played on her.

  “I lost touch with my family long ago,” she said.

  Olivia nodded slowly. “Perhaps you could find them again. It’s easy to trace people, these days.”

  Georgie’s face moved slightly; nothing that could really be called a smile. I’m too old for all that, Olivia read in her expression.

  “I could help you,” she went on, seizing her courage. “If you’d like to find out, I could help you.”

  There was a long silence. Georgie stared straight ahead, and Olivia wondered whether her concentration had drifted, or whether she hoped Olivia would go away and stop pestering her. This is my only chance, Olivia thought: I can’t bring it up again if I don’t get an answer now. But it seemed wrong to press Georgie, to sit and wait for a response.

  She looked round, in search of assistance or distraction, and caught sight of Shirley, struggling to move a table.

  “Excuse me a moment,” she said. “Shirley needs a hand.”

  She left her books on the chair beside Georgie, proof of her intention to return, smiled at Elsie and William as she passed.

  “We need another table for lunch,” Shirley said, as she approached. “Full house today.”

  The choreography of the Wednesday Club was a labour Olivia didn’t usually involve herself in, the moving of furniture and people to accommodate its different activities in the limited space of the hall.

  “Having a chat to Georgie, were you?” Shirley asked, as they arranged chairs round the heavy formica-topped tables.

  “I’ve been wondering if she has any family left,” Olivia said. “Anyone we could trace for her.”

  Shirley raised her eyebrows. “Does she want to find them?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Olivia looked back at Georgie, at the expression that seemed, at this distance, full of an unguarded intelligence. There was no doubt, she thought, that Georgie was capable of understanding today, of making a judgment. That, at least, was reassuring. Her mind hadn’t slipped so far into the shadows.

  Even so, it was a shock when Georgie’s first words, on Olivia’s return, picked up their conversation exactly where it had been left.

  “No,” she said. “No, I don’t think so. Let bygones be bygones.”

  The look she turned on Olivia then was unmistakable. Through her faded eyes the spirit that had kept her alive for so long was clearly visible: a defiance and a self-reliance that made Olivia shrivel. She remembered the expression she’d seen once in a photograph of a concentration camp veteran – the necessary arrogance of the survivor.

  Chapter 26

  Faith felt rather sorry for herself on the journey back from Aldeburgh. It had been a lovely weekend, she thought, but – what? Was it just the usual down-in-the-dumps feeling you got at the end of a break, or had there been something missing, something she’d been expecting?

  Something about James, perhaps. Not feeling as sure of him as she’d hoped after two days together. But that was stupid: how could she doubt anything after that last half hour? She slid her hand around his shoulder.

  “Thank you for taking me.”

  He glanced sideways at her. “I thought you’d like it. Everyone loves it there. Shame we didn’t g
et into the sea, though. Have to do that next time.”

  James had found a place near Chelmsford that served food all day, according to its website, and they were both surprisingly hungry by the time they arrived. It looked promising from the outside, a pretty village pub with hanging baskets planted up for winter colour, but when they got inside there were no other customers, just a sour atmosphere you couldn’t mistake. The barman glowered at them as though they’d walked in on a private argument, and perhaps they had. They could hear dogs barking furiously out the back somewhere.

  “Yes?” he demanded.

  James and Faith exchanged glances. They ordered a drink each, drank it down in a hurry and walked out again, leaving a tenner on the bar. For damages, James said later, though Faith wasn’t quite sure what he meant by that.

  “What the hell was going on there?” he asked, as they pulled out of the drive. “I reckon there was a body involved somewhere.”

  Faith laughed, fighting off disappointment.

  “What my Dad would call a domestic,” she said.

  “But all those dogs howling.” James raised his eyebrows, playacting. “Spooky, eh? Perhaps they’re on the menu? When he’s finished cooking up his wife, that is.”

  “Don’t.”

  They drove through the outskirts of the village, between rows of identical grey houses strung along the main road that led to the dual carriageway. Certainly no other pubs in sight. James sighed, and Faith had the fleeting impression that it was her he was fed up with. There it was again, that sense of something she couldn’t put her finger on, hanging over their weekend. Malevolent, that was the word. A malevolent spirit, somewhere. Definitely in that pub. And she wanted lunch, too, now she’d worked herself up to it.

  “What shall we do?” asked James. “Try somewhere else?”

  But it was almost half past three by then, too late for even a late lunch. They stopped for petrol on the M25 and James bought sandwiches and crisps. He grinned when he saw Faith’s expression.

  “Oh dear,” he said. “I’ve let you down. What can I do to make it up to you? Shall I take you out for dinner when we get back to Oxford?”