The Partridge and the Pelican

by Rachel Crowther

  “Now.” She smiled. “Let’s look again at that tricky bit, shall we?”

  Olivia dreamed that night about the man she and Eve had seen at Torhousekie, and perhaps at McCaig’s folly; whom Eve thought she’d seen a third time near Drumnadrochit. In the dream his malign intent was beyond doubt. They were running down a mountain, she and Eve in flowing white nightgowns like something out of a Victorian melodrama, and the man just behind them, closing in with every breath. Olivia thought she recognised Loch Ness far below, dark and menacing in the moonlight. She stumbled over a rock and fell to the ground, but the man didn’t stop. He was after Eve, she realised, with a swell of relief. All that time, it was Eve he’d been chasing, not her.

  In the dream the man was clearly recognisable, but it wasn’t until she woke up that Olivia realised it was the face of Eve’s father that she had conjured.

  She lay in the dark, her heart pounding. It was a dream, she told herself, just a dream. She reached for a glass of water from the bedside table. The sheets were sticky with sweat, her skin goose-pimpled. Something stirred in her mind: a voice, an outline. It hadn’t been the same man even the second time, she was sure of that now. A passing likeness, a coincidence exaggerated by the shadows and bright sunlight at Oban. A bogey man Eve had invoked for reasons of her own.

  Olivia could picture Eve telling the story to James, her eyes wide, intent on the mystery of it. She’d seen her at the time as a little girl used to having an audience: Eve the idolised daughter, the perfect schoolgirl, demanding attention. But Eve hadn’t laughed off the story of the stalker. Seeing it now with a mother’s eyes, Olivia realised that Eve had believed in it. Like her sons’ recurring nightmares, it had represented some truth for her, as though she’d already learned to expect the worst from men before James had disclaimed responsibility for her baby, before her two marriages had ended in divorce.

  Olivia pushed back the covers and climbed out of bed. She’d considered Eve from all angles in the last few days, conducting in her head the debate she couldn’t have with anyone else. Not Robert, it seemed. Not Sarah, either. Sarah might like the idea of being in touch with Eve again, but she had no reason to take a particular interest in her.

  It was hard now to see what had distinguished the two of them, Olivia thought, as she fumbled in the dark for her dressing gown. She moved slowly, carefully, to avoid disturbing Robert, even though she knew it would take more than a chance noise to wake him at this hour. Eve and Sarah had both been confident and outgoing at school, she thought, but they’d been chalk and cheese: Eve the most popular girl in the year, the one whose lead everyone followed, and Sarah the butt of her jokes. Her nickname was a case in point, and Scabs had stuck fast, long after nicknames had gone out of fashion.

  There was that unavoidable fact: that Eve was capable of cruelty.

  The landing was dark; not even a sliver of light from under a door or a trickle of sound from the floors above. Nothing except the faint ticking of Alastair’s clock on the other side of his bedroom door. She’d been awake often enough at night lately, Olivia thought, to feed her own imagination, conjure her own stalkers. She hadn’t seen Lucy again since the night of the whisky, either alone or among the trickle of Tom’s friends passing through the house. But when she found herself listening for Lucy’s voice, turning her head in expectation of a glimpse of long hair flicking out of sight, Olivia considered the possibility of a mirage appearing in her kitchen, in her sleep-dulled mind.

  She went into the bathroom, refilled her water glass, stared at her dark reflection in the mirror. It wasn’t the face of a woman descending into madness, or drawn to an illusion. She splashed water on her forehead, pressed a towel over her eyes, turned back towards the bedroom. It was only half past two; plenty of time to get back to sleep.

  Then on her way across the landing she thought she heard something down below. Something too faint to be certain of, but even so she left her glass on the chest on the landing and crept downstairs. Lucy, she thought. It must have been Lucy she heard; a murmur or a movement; the sound of a baby stirring.

  But the kitchen was empty, utterly still: not a whistle from the radiators nor a whisper from the windows to break the silence. Olivia could feel her heart beating, her breath sighing out into the darkness. She stood for a moment in the doorway, then she moved slowly around the room touching familiar things: the vase of Honesty pods, the wooden knife block, the wicker fruit bowl. The garden was silvered by the moon, an uneven oval, almost full. No squirrels now, no birds; not even a hedgehog or a fox.

  As the adrenaline subsided, Olivia felt flat and listless, dissatisfied by something. Lucy’s absence, perhaps. The silence, which made her thoughts seem loud and brash. She got the bottle of whisky out of the cupboard, but she didn’t feel like drinking alone. Instead, she sank down onto the little sofa and drew her legs up, curling into a ball. Her head felt too full to allow sleep in, but she must have drifted off because the voice came out of a dream at first.

  “Olivia?”

  She looked up with a shock.

  Not Lucy: Robert.

  “Are you all right?” he said. “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”

  He looked tousled, ruffled. The sight of him like that, his night-time self, made Olivia’s eyes fill with tears.

  Robert sat down beside her. “What is it?” he asked. “Couldn’t you sleep?”

  “I think I have seen a ghost,” Olivia said.

  “Whose ghost?”

  Olivia hesitated. It wasn’t too late to make a joke of it.

  “A girl called Lucy,” she heard herself say. “I found her in the kitchen one night.”

  Robert frowned. “A friend of Tom’s? He’s always got friends here, hanging round ‘til all hours.”

  “That’s what I thought.” Olivia leaned against Robert’s shoulder; so warm and solid, she thought. He smelled of clean sheets and sleep. “But I didn’t recognise her. Maybe I dreamed her.”

  Robert put an arm around her shoulders. “Why would you be seeing ghosts?”

  “I’ve had things on my mind.” Olivia felt the sting of tears again. “Eve. That baby we found, years ago. And Georgie, the old lady at the day centre I told you about. The one whose baby was taken away.”

  Robert said nothing.

  “All those baby girls,” Olivia said. There was a tremor in her voice, a shifting of the ground beneath her. “All dead.”

  “Not your fault,” he said, and Olivia had the feeling that this was what he’d said for ever and ever. Ever since he first met her: it’s not your fault. As though he knew she needed absolution.

  “I can’t get them out of my mind,” she said. “This girl – this ghost – I thought she might be one of them.” Had she thought this, or had the idea come into her mind just now? Olivia wasn’t sure: it seemed so obvious, now she’d said it aloud. So obvious and so absurd. “She’s about the age the phone box baby would be now,” she said. “About the age Georgie’s daughter was when she died.”

  Robert sighed very gently. Not a sigh of impatience or disbelief, but of concentration. Olivia nestled her head closer against his chest. Poor Robert, who had so much on his plate; who had to go to work in the morning.

  “But they’re not connected, the two of them?”

  Here was another thing Olivia didn’t realise she’d considered before. “They could be, if Georgie’s daughter had a child. Her daughter could have been the right age to give birth in 1983. Georgie’s grand-daughter.” Absurd, of course it was absurd, but Olivia’s mind wouldn’t give up the trail. “They came from East Anglia, Georgie’s family, not so far from Aldeburgh. And Lucy – her grandparents lived in Norfolk, she told me.”

  Olivia could feel something throbbing inside her chest that was surely too painful, too fast to be her heart. Something fragile, resilient, damageable, pressing its way out, wanting to be heard. In the silence she took a deep breath, began to couch the words that would prepare its way, but Robert spoke first.


  “That’s something you could find out.”

  “What?”

  “Whether Georgie’s daughter had a child of her own. Couldn’t you?”

  Olivia twisted her head to look up at him. She felt dazed, now, by what she had almost said; by the possibility of saying it. Giddy with the reprieve he had offered her. She shut her eyes, and when she opened them the world looked different, no longer the domain of ghosts and dreams.

  “Georgie’s social worker rang me yesterday,” she said, and her voice sounded different too. Strangely normal, like the dead flat sound when you come out of an echo chamber. “She wants me to look up Georgie’s family on one of those genealogy websites.”

  “Georgie does?”

  “No.” Olivia shook her head slowly. “Georgie doesn’t, but the social worker thinks it’s a good idea.”

  “Well, then.” Robert stroked her hair. “Maybe you should. Maybe that would be a good plan.”

  “I’m a useless wife,” she said, letting the tears spill over onto her cheeks. “That’s the truth.”

  “Rubbish,” said Robert. “Think what a boring life I’d have had without you. I’d have married some dull Scottish farmer’s daughter.”

  Olivia gave a little sniffle of laughter. “Robert Burns thought rather highly of Scottish farmer’s daughters.”

  “Rabbie Burns had a poet’s imagination,” said Robert, squeezing her shoulders. “Speaking of which, I might have a dram of this whisky, seeing as how you’ve got it out for me.”

  So that was it, Olivia thought, as she watched him pour whisky into two shot glasses. That was the closest she would come, was it, to telling him? Like an immunisation, a near miss that protects you for the rest of your life. A good thing, she supposed, but the relief was mixed, now, with a sort of dread, as she faced the prospect of carrying this particular burden alone forever. It had been shut away inside her for a long time, but there was a difference, all the difference in the world, between not now and not ever. Between twenty-five years and infinity.

  But she had reckoned without Robert.

  “There was something you were going to tell me,” he said. Olivia didn’t move. Like someone watching the final act of a play she knew, deep down, that she’d expected this reversal. Robert shifted slightly so that he could see her face. “When we went out for dinner the other night. There was something you were going to tell me about Eve, wasn’t there?”

  Chapter 33

  1983

  “We’re running out of petrol,” Eve said.

  It was the first time either of them had spoken for some time. They had turned off the A12 and were approaching Ipswich now, following signs for the city centre and the hospital along a road with fields on one side and big suburban houses on the other. Now that it was too late to stop and ask for help, Olivia thought, they were back in civilisation. Clutching the baby in her lap, she felt like a tribeswoman coming out of the bush to search for a doctor. Would they understand, at the hospital, why she and Eve had acted as they had? How it was that they’d come all this way alone?

  “Did you hear?” Eve said.

  “Yes.”

  The noise of the car was something they had learned to deal with over the summer; the need to shout, if they were going above thirty miles an hour. The petrol gauge was another: as a warning system it was approximate, at best. They had ground to a halt on a B road in North Wales, late one evening, after a few puttering protests from the little engine. Nothing in sight but sheep and the shape of the mountains. If it hadn’t been for the lorry driver who picked them up, Olivia thought now, sparing them a twenty mile walk to the nearest garage, that might have been enough to kill off the whole adventure.

  “We’ll have to stop,” Eve said. She turned to Olivia, her face unexpectedly drawn. “Unless you want to risk it.”

  “No.” Olivia lifted the baby gently, and the little eyes opened. “Oh,” she said, “look.”

  But Eve had turned back to the road. “I haven’t seen a garage,” she said, “but there must be one along here. This is one of the main roads into Ipswich; there’s got to be a garage somewhere.”

  “There!” Olivia pointed. On the far side of the road, a hundred yards or so ahead, was the red and yellow sign of a Shell petrol station. She smiled: it seemed a good omen. They were nearly there, the baby was alive, they weren’t going to run out of petrol. “What a day,” she said. “I can’t believe we’ve almost made it.”

  They were level with the garage now, and Eve veered across the road with a sudden sharp turn of the wheel.

  “Hey!” shouted Olivia, as a van coming the other way swerved to avoid them with a resonant blast on its horn. “For God’s sake, Eve, are you trying to kill us all?”

  Eve slammed the brakes on, narrowly missing the concrete pillar that housed the pumps.

  “You can do the petrol,” Eve said. “The smell makes me feel sick.”

  “There’s probably an attendant,” said Olivia. She held the baby protectively, conscious now of additional perils: petrol fumes as well as unexpected noises and sudden jolts. “There, there,” she murmured.

  “Shut up,” said Eve. “Just shut up with your bloody crooning.”

  “Eve,” said Olivia. “For goodness sake.” She didn’t mean her voice to sound reproving, mother-like, but it did.

  “Give me the baby,” Eve said. “Give me the baby and deal with the petrol.”

  “I’ll go and look for someone.” Olivia pulled the door handle open, began to swing her legs round to climb out. Eve had parked close in to the pumps; Olivia eased the door open with her foot, trying to avoid crashing it against the concrete. Eve’s sudden movement took her by surprise.

  “Eve!” Olivia shouted, clasping the bundle of wool tight as Eve grabbed at it. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Give me the baby, I said. Just give me the bloody baby.”

  “I’m going to look for an attendant.” Olivia twisted her body towards the narrow gap between the door and the pump, keeping the baby close to her chest. A primitive protective instinct had taken over, like a mother cat whose litter is threatened. It seemed suddenly important to get the baby out of the car, and not just so she could get help with the petrol. She didn’t want to be alone with Eve any more.

  Eve yanked at the fringe of the blanket as Olivia made a final determined effort to escape. She couldn’t track their movements in that small space, her limbs and Eve’s, the action and reaction of forces. She couldn’t say whether it was her pulling or Eve’s sudden letting go that launched the baby out of the door, sent it smack into the concrete pillar and then down, sickeningly down out of sight, onto the grimy floor.

  Out of the shouting, the tussle, there was silence and stillness. Nothing but Olivia’s whimpering, and then the clunk and slam of the driver’s door as Eve got out and went round the back to fill the car with petrol.

  “Oh God,” Olivia whispered, as she gathered the baby into her arms again. “Oh God, I’m sorry. Poor little thing. Poor little baby; are you all right?”

  But she knew already that it wasn’t. She didn’t feel again for the heartbeat, just wrapped the tiny body tightly in the shawl and held it against her as though her heart might work for both of them. As though sheer will might be enough to sustain its tenuous life for a little longer. She could feel herself shaking, trembling with shock and fear and anger. At least there was no one around; at least the car door had blocked them from sight. But with that thought came culpability. She heard her mother’s voice: it takes two to make an argument. Why hadn’t she handed the baby over when Eve asked? She knew Eve well enough to read the signals.

  By the time Eve returned Olivia was weeping quietly.

  “Stop it,” Eve said. “For God’s sake stop snivelling. The hospital’s only a mile down the road, okay? Five minutes. Pull yourself together.”

  “We needn’t have stopped,” Olivia said. The enormity of that fact filled her mind as Eve pulled back out into the early evening traffic. The chasm
between stopping and not stopping. If they had filled the car with petrol earlier in the week; if they had known how close the hospital was. If they hadn’t stopped at the phone box at all, the baby would still be alive.

  “I think the baby’s dead,” she said. Had Eve realised? Was that why she’d capitulated over dealing with the petrol? Was she hurrying on to the hospital because she thought there was still hope, or because she wanted to get the whole thing over with, get rid of the baby as fast as possible?

  Olivia couldn’t ask her. Neither of them could speak any more, about what to do or what to say or what had happened. They passed a golf course, crossed a roundabout, and there was the hospital on the left, a low-slung, sprawling building like an organism that has grown and spread haphazardly. The Accident and Emergency department was clearly signed just inside the entrance. You weren’t supposed to park there, but Eve stopped at the edge of the ambulance bay and they both got out. Olivia felt sick, overwhelmed suddenly by guilt and grief. She knew what it meant, their silence: it spelled complicity, the willing withholding of information. As they passed through the glass doors, the weight of the baby felt like an immense nothingness in her arms.

  Eve held back, letting Olivia’s agitation speak for both of them as she made for the reception desk, called out to a nurse who had her back to them, busy with a pile of forms.

  “We’ve got a baby,” Olivia said. “We’ve found a baby, abandoned in a phone box.”

  Chapter 34

  2008

  Robert said nothing for a long while when Olivia had finished speaking. No absolution this time, she thought; but she was grateful for his forbearance. Grateful for the silence that spread around her like a lake around an island, the water stretching dead calm to the distant shore.

  She had always thought she knew what the effect of disclosure would be: despite the years of care and sacrifice, she would know herself to be an unfit mother, and Robert would know it too. But all she felt now was emptiness. Like the loss of a tumour, she thought, that had grown inside her for years and years, pressing for space, shifting everything out of alignment. Like the loss of a baby.