“You poor darling,” Robert said eventually, and although Olivia didn’t want or expect his sympathy, she began to weep with a violence she’d rarely known before. Twenty-five years of tears, she thought; enough to fill the lake, to flood the island.
“I should go to the police,” she said at last.
“No.” Robert sat beside her, holding her hand.
“It was manslaughter, at least that. You’re sheltering a criminal.”
“My love, it was an accident.”
“There must be some sort of penalty. There would have been, if we’d told the truth back then. If they’d found out.”
“I don’t know,” Robert said. “You might have been charged with something, but I can’t imagine it would have merited more than a reprimand.”
“Even so, we escaped that. There ought to be some redress.” “To whom?” Robert took her other hand, drawing her in closer. “What on earth would it achieve, raking it all up now? Who is there to make amends to, if the mother was never identified?”
Olivia closed her eyes for a moment, trying to staunch her tears. “The baby,” she said. “She was a person. She had a life ahead of her, just like one of our babies.”
“The baby would probably have died anyway. Didn’t they say so? Hadn’t she lost a lot of blood?”
Olivia remembered the little eyes opening, those dark grey newborn eyes. “She was alive when we arrived at the petrol station.”
“I think you’ve paid your penalty, Olivia.” Robert’s voice was very gentle. “Years of living with this awful secret. Don’t you think you’ve grieved for that little baby more than the mother who left her to die?”
“These days there’d be CCTV.” Olivia had often thought about this; filling her car with petrol, she’d looked up at the cameras, imagined the grainy images. She and Eve fighting over that helpless bundle, and then the brief lunge and drop. “They’d have checked our movements, found us out.”
“Think about Eve,” Robert said. “If you broadcast this now, she won’t be adopting that baby. Does it make her an unfit mother, this thing that happened so long ago?”
Hearing those words, exactly the words she had expected to hear applied to herself, made Olivia shiver.
“That’s what it’s about with Eve, isn’t it? All this time, neither of you could talk to the only other person who knew what had happened.”
Olivia nodded. But they couldn’t have forgiven each other, she was thinking. They could only have made it worse by discussing it, agreeing to keep the secret. That would have been a greater conspiracy.
“We blamed each other,” she said. “Eve thought I was being sentimental, possessive, overbearing, I don’t know what. I thought she was being a selfish cow.”
“And do you still?”
“No.”
“Then write to her. Tell her. She needs your blessing, whatever she said to you. If you need to do something to make amends, do that. You have me to share it with now; you can be generous with her.”
“I don’t think Eve wants my generosity,” Olivia said. “She blames me even more because of the boys. She thinks having my own children has cleared the slate for me.”
This was the irony, she thought: neither of them believed they were fit to be mothers. All these years she had felt guilty because she was fertile; and she was suddenly sure that, for all her medical training, Eve believed she was infertile because of her guilt.
“Sometimes being generous means offering something that might be rejected,” Robert said. “It’s hardly generosity if you expect gratitude in return.”
He squeezed her hand, then he got up to fill the kettle. Olivia stared out of the window, where dawn was edging into the sky, and the kitchen filled with the heavy silence of the night. Was it a question of generosity, she wondered? Was it within her power to absolve Eve?
“Do you know about the pelican?” she asked. “The myth about the pelican piercing her breast to feed her babies with her own blood? That’s how Eve described me. She said I was the pelican and she was the partridge, stealing eggs from another bird’s nest. She sneered at the pelican’s self-sacrifice.”
Robert didn’t say anything; he didn’t need to, Olivia thought. She could see it through his eyes if she tried, even through Eve’s. Perhaps he was right that making a formal confession would only gratify some perverse desire for self-flagellation, while saying nothing – telling Eve she had nothing to fear from Olivia – could do some good. She was old enough to know that morality was more complicated than it looked. And she understood the healing power of babies, too: surely Eve had a right to that, at long last. Eve had suffered enough, and not just with guilt at those two deaths, those two babies. Olivia remembered her dream, and the suspicion it had awoken. Was that why Eve had run away to Australia, leaving even her mother behind?
Later, when they had drunk their tea and Robert had led her back to bed, Olivia whispered through the milky darkness that he was more than she deserved, and he denied it by stroking her hair, murmuring words she couldn’t hear into the hollow of her neck.
Olivia felt fragile the next morning, but also reinvigorated; a strange mixture. Like a seedling removed from the security of its tray and planted out where it could grow and flourish, she thought, conscious of being fanciful but too light-headed, this morning, to care. As the metaphor took hold she could almost feel her cramped roots probing their way out into the soil, the peculiar, destabilising effect of removing something that had kept her in check, altered the pattern of her growth, for so long.
She had resolved before she reached the Wednesday Club to get on with tracing Georgie’s family. She felt the need to sustain herself with good deeds, to be approved of by the likes of Mary Bennett. She should not, after all this time, get off scot free, whatever Robert said: she could find her own ways to atone. And if she needed a final spur to embark on her genealogical research, it was provided by Georgie’s absence from the club that morning. Just a cold, Shirley said, but even so Mary Bennett’s words seemed prescient. Who knew (who ever knew?) how much time was left? Kenneth wasn’t coming back; he’d moved into a nursing home, his mental state deteriorating fast. Poor Kenneth. Whenever Olivia thought of him now she heard the words of The Silver Swan in her head, and imagined him singing them in that poignant, cracking tenor that still contained the echoes of its heyday: Farewell, all joys; O Death, come close mine eyes; More geese than swans now live, more fools than wise.
That wasn’t one for the Wednesday Club, Olivia thought. Pathos wasn’t quite their style, though Shirley would no doubt have found something soothing to say about it.
As she cycled home along the canal she was conscious of the after-effects of the night before: a tight little headache pressed between her eyes, and a bilious swirl of emotion boiled up at the least provocation. At the thought of Georgie or Kenneth, of Eve or James or Lucy. At the thought of her sons, riding their own course through the world, oblivious to its perils and pitfalls.
She was tempted to retreat to bed when she got home, but she knew that would only prevent her from sleeping later. Better to stay awake, to keep busy. She made herself a sandwich, then sat down at the computer in the little study next to her bedroom and typed family history into Google.
She couldn’t believe how fast the process was. Within half an hour, having supplied her credit card details to buy a month’s subscription to an ancestry website, she had found Georgie’s birth certificate. Georgiana Christina Quickshall, born 17th March 1917, in the Lexden district of Essex, to Thomas Quickshall, clerk, and Ann Quickshall, née Walters. The sight of the names and dates in black and white gave Olivia a thrill of satisfaction. A link on the screen would allow her to order a facsimile copy of the document, but she was eager to press on. For now she clicked the button to print off the details from the screen.
After another half hour she’d found the records of Thomas and Ann’s marriage, in May 1905, in St Mary’s Church, Dedham, and of the births of two other children: Henry Tho
mas in 1908 and Eliza Frances in 1910. Both a good deal older than Georgie, Olivia thought. She had been the baby of the family.
And then – right there – the birth of Georgie’s daughter. Jane Quickshall (not named by her mother, presumably?) had been born in another part of Essex in March 1935; father unknown. Known still to Georgie, Olivia thought, with a pricking qualm at the consciousness of what she was doing. This wasn’t a story, but real life, the proof of Georgie’s tragedy. She let the thought rest for a moment, then nudged it gently aside. She wasn’t committing herself to anything beyond this. Beyond finding out for herself, and for Mary.
Adoption records, Olivia discovered, could be searched in a microfiche at the General Register Office, but not online. But some of the other details could be filled in; the ones she was most interested in. She was so absorbed that she didn’t hear the doorbell the first time it rang. An insistent, sustained ring roused her: her Wednesday afternoon pupils, of course.
On the doorstep, the earnest mother and her dutiful offspring waited. With an effort, Olivia rallied her mind to teaching. She’d taken some trouble over these two, lately. Since the day of the bog. She’d felt they deserved better from her.
It was five o’clock before Olivia could continue her search. For once she stood impatiently while Benjy told her about his supply teacher and Angus related a hilarious incident from his biology lesson. Today she was as eager to get back to her screen as they were to theirs: how ironic that today, of all days, her sons should choose to be so chatty.
“Really?” she said, half-listening, “and what did he say to that?”
At last they drifted off to homework and television and Facebook, and Olivia scuttled back upstairs. The search pages were open, stacked one in front of each other on the screen just as she had left them; a growing pile of printouts lay in the tray at the side of her desk. The cat was curled in her chair – every member of the family wanting her attention today, she thought. Olivia lifted him carefully, and when she sat down he draped himself across her knee like a cushion.
Olivia typed and clicked and waited for the website to respond, her mind drifting back to the story of this unknown family who could have had no inkling that a stranger would one day uncover the details of their lives and deaths from a computer screen in Oxford.
No death certificate was listed for Jane Quickshall any time between 1945 and 1965, but Olivia wasn’t surprised. Her name would surely have been changed when she was adopted. Olivia moved on through the family tree: Thomas Quickshall had died in London in 1940, she learned, aged fifty-eight, and Ann Quickshall in Colchester in 1954, aged seventy. Georgie’s parents had both been dead for more than half a century. Neither of them, she guessed, would have lived to see the death of their ill-fated grand-daughter – assuming that Mary was right about Georgie’s baby being adopted within the family, and that the Quickshalls had stayed in contact with their other children after Georgie’s disgrace.
Henry Quickshall, Georgie’s older brother, would have been a hundred this year if he’d survived, but he hadn’t proved as long-lived as his sister. He’d died in 1983, in Ipswich. A frisson passed through Olivia: there, she thought, was a trace of a connection between the Quickshalls and the baby in the phone box. Perhaps Henry’s family had sat, that same year, in the same relatives’ room where she and Eve had waited for the nurse to come and talk to them about their tiny foundling. Though there might not have been many grieving relatives for Henry, who hadn’t married, as far as Olivia could discover, nor fathered any children.
Georgie’s sister Eliza was the next link in the chain. It didn’t take long to find the record of her marriage: Mary Bennett was right, the rare surname was a godsend. Eliza Quickshall had married a man called Edwin Charles Shotter in October 1930. Another unusual name, thought Olivia with satisfaction. Although there were more Shotters than Quickshalls on record, it wasn’t hard to home in on the details of their family. Eliza and Edwin hadn’t had children until 1938, when Eliza had borne two sons in quick succession: Clive Thomas Edwin, followed by Philip Henry Andrew a year later. Was Mary right about this, too, the childless couple whose fertility had been unleashed by an adoptive child, after a long wait? Two precious sons, given three Christian names each.
The door opened silently behind Olivia: she jumped when Benjy spoke.
“Mum,” he said, “are we having supper tonight?”
Olivia cast a guilty glance at the clock: half past seven. Not so late, she thought; could they tell she was absorbed by something that had nothing to do with them?
“Yes,” she said. “Of course. What do you fancy?”
Benjy’s eyes narrowed slightly, as they did when he sensed a possible advantage. As they had since he was a tiny boy. Oh, she could deny him nothing, this last child, Olivia thought. This golden-haired cherub. Did he really have to grow up so fast?
“Chinese?” Benjy ventured.
Olivia smiled. “Okay. The menu’s on the board in the kitchen. Ask the others what they want. Maybe Tom or Al would go with you to pick it up.”
Olivia turned back to the screen. Nearly there, she thought. Just in time for a celebratory take away.
“What do you want?” Benjy called back, already half way across the landing.
“Anything,” said Olivia. “Dad likes chow mein, remember.”
She heard Benjy going from room to room, his excited treble met by his brothers’ laconic baritones; a minor fracas with Angus as Benjy let his role as catering co-ordinator tip over into dictatorship. A door slammed, and there were Benjy’s footsteps heading back downstairs.
Olivia’s attention had returned to the Shotter clan. Two sons, she thought, three and four years younger than the adopted daughter. If there had been an adopted daughter in that family, as she had begun to assume. Had they called her Jane, plain Jane, or had she too been given a string of euphonic Christian names to mark her welcome into the family? A picture began to form in Olivia’s mind of a little girl who could never quite throw off the taint of her birth, her association with the outcast mother who would spend nearly fifty years shut away for the sin of her conception.
Perhaps at first her aunt and uncle, childless for five years, had been glad to have her; had done their best to see the good in her. She had Eliza’s blood in her veins, after all. But when those boys were born, just before the war – a time when masculinity was important, when bearing sons was something to be especially proud of – they must surely have eclipsed little Jane in their parents’ affections. And she would have been just at the age, Olivia knew from experience, when sibling jealousy was at its worst. Her animosity couldn’t have been easy for the ecstatic new mother to bear, holding her own, her very own babies in her arms at last. Small wonder if Jane’s place in the family had dwindled further as the vicious circle played itself out. Small wonder if she had grown up to fulfil her adoptive parents’ worst fears by turning into a rebellious adolescent. Small wonder, perhaps, that she had died young, in a car crash. Poor Jane Quickshall, doomed, after all, by her scandalous origins.
Olivia stared at the screen as if the names and dates staring back at her could answer this question as well as the rest. The cat stirred on her knee, rearranging his warm bulk. Olivia stroked him absently, the softness of his fur a surprise after the flat keyboard. Then she shook her head, to dispel her doubts and dislodge the vestiges of the headache that was gathering again at the base of her skull. The facts could only carry her so far, but she hadn’t finished with them yet.
She didn’t expect either Eliza or Edwin to be alive still, and indeed they were both long dead. Dead long before Georgie had been liberated from St Catherine’s, even: in the late sixties, within months of each other. There was another story, Olivia thought, that she couldn’t tease out of names and dates alone. Another avenue for speculation. Had they been a devoted couple who couldn’t live without each other, or was the explanation more prosaic; more sinister, even?
There was no Clive Shotter in the death reco
rds, but Philip Shotter’s name found a match: yes, that was him, Philip Henry Andrew, born July 1939, died December 2005. So, one surviving nephew, Olivia thought. Possibly. One surviving nephew who might be on the other side of the world, for all she knew. Here was the next challenge: to trace a living person by his name and date of birth.
Olivia heard the front door click open, and Robert’s voice in the hall. Time to stop, she thought. Time to return to her own family. But the lure of all that information waiting for her, humming out there in cyberspace, was too much. She typed find UK address into Google, and a moment later she was on the British Telecom address search webpage. All she needed was a surname and an area. Essex, she wondered? They hadn’t moved far, this family. London? Somewhere else in the Home Counties?
Her fingers darted over the keys – quick pianist’s fingers, more used to Couperin than to computers but agile, nonetheless. Before Robert had reached the top of the stairs she had found him. Clive T. E. Shotter, obligingly listed with his full initials, as if he was still aware of how much he had meant to his parents. Clive T. E. Shotter, living at an address in NW1.
“Hello.” Robert sounded amused, peering over her shoulder. “Have I driven you to the Lonely Hearts? What does Mr Shotter have that I don’t, may I ask? GSOH? Well-honed biceps?”
“He’s Georgie’s nephew,” Olivia said. “I’ve found him.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that,” Olivia agreed. She pressed print, and closed the last window on her screen with a signing-off flourish. “A few hours on Google, and Bob’s your uncle.”
“Georgie’s your aunt,” said Robert. “Congratulations. I suppose this means the kitchen’s closed tonight?”
“Benjy’s gone for Chinese.” Olivia stood up, dislodging the cat at last, and stretched her arms above her head. “Goodness, I’m stiff.”
Robert bent to kiss her forehead.
The Partridge and the Pelican Page 24
