“Poor man,” Olivia said.
“But the worst thing – the worst thing is that it’s also the most extraordinary relief. I know it’s terrible to be glad that it was someone else who made my mother so unhappy, but it’s the truth. I only wish …”
For a moment she couldn’t go on. Olivia stroked her arm and waited.
“The awful thing is, I was going to talk to my father about her this Christmas. Guy and I discussed it on the way down in the car. I can’t bear the idea that he felt guilty too, all these years. That he might have thought I blamed him.”
“If he thought that, wouldn’t he have told you about the affair?”
Sarah pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket – one of her father’s, Olivia guessed – and blew her nose. “I don’t know. We were no good at talking. Maybe he thought he was protecting me.”
An elderly couple were hovering a little way off, waiting for Sarah’s attention. She glanced at them, then turned back to Olivia with a tiny smile.
“At least it doesn’t look strange to cry at a funeral,” she said. “It doesn’t even look that strange to cry for one parent rather than another. I hardly know why I’m crying, in fact. Partly because I’ve realised how lucky I am, having Guy. And you, Olivia. I wanted you to know how much it’s meant to me, having you to talk to these last few months. Even if I haven’t told you everything.”
Olivia remembered her fickleness, in Eve’s presence, and her lingering guilt about their schoolgirl mockery. She cast about for the right words, ones that would make Sarah feel better rather than worse, but before she found them Sarah had squeezed her hand one last time and turned to the couple behind her.
“Cyril, Beverley,” Olivia heard her say. “How nice of you to come.”
Olivia was on the edge of tears herself when Robert approached. She stood very still while he put an arm around her shoulder.
“Come on,” he said. “I expect there’s a cup of tea somewhere.”
By December 30th Robert was back at work. The weather forecast mentioned freezing fog, and Olivia’s resolve wavered.
“Go on with you,” her mother-in-law said, over breakfast. “We’ll be fine here.”
And because it was impossible to explain her qualms, Olivia went.
It was a strange experience, travelling all that way alone. She sat in the corner of an empty carriage, staring out of the window as the train rattled through the outskirts of London and on into the broad stretch of East Anglia on the last leg of the journey. As they passed through Chelmsford she remembered a friend from university who’d got a job as organist in the Cathedral there, and at Colchester she thought, inevitably, of Georgie, born in its outskirts more than nine decades ago.
The train pulled into Ipswich two minutes behind schedule, and Olivia stepped down onto the platform with a queasy feeling that reminded her of going back to boarding school.
“To the hospital, please,” she said to the taxi driver.
Chapter 45
St Luke’s Hospital had changed considerably in twenty-five years, but it still sprawled; it still looked less like one institution than several stuck incongruously together. Olivia stood for a moment where the taxi had dropped her, looking at the signs, the arrows directing her to every corner of the site.
She hadn’t been sure how to begin, when she’d first thought of contacting the hospital for information. She was sure the records in the Accident and Emergency department wouldn’t go back twenty-five years. The Special Care Baby Unit was more likely to keep information about babies who’d died, she’d thought, but she didn’t even know if the SCBU had existed in 1983, and if it had, the phone box baby had never been near it. In the end she’d dialled the main hospital number and braced herself to explain her mission.
After a long wait for the switchboard, she was referred first to the Patient Advice and Liaison Service, then to a glum woman whose job seemed to be connected with the disposal of patients’ effects and the processing of death certificates, and finally to the Medical Records Department, where a data clerk was dumbfounded by the notion of searching for a former patient without a name. Eventually, when she called back and asked, with what might by then have been a desperate edge to her voice, if there was anyone she could speak to about a baby who’d died at the hospital years before, she was passed to the hospital chaplain.
And then at last she’d struck lucky. Father Timothy had been connected with the hospital for thirty years. He thought he remembered – he couldn’t be sure, but he had records, he could look back – but in any case he would be happy to see Olivia, to talk to her about the baby. And so here she was, walking back through the main doors, following the trail of her nineteen-year-old self with that little woollen bundle in her arms.
Father Timothy was enormous. That was Olivia’s first impression: a man like an Old Testament prophet, above average height and immensely wide, with a beard that bloomed from his face in every direction. He was crammed into an office so small Olivia wasn’t sure she could fit into it too, but that was clearly what was expected.
“Come in, come in, close the door, give all that a good shove, that’s the way. There’s a chair under there that’s comfy enough. I’ve some filing to do, as you see.”
He didn’t smile – or if he did it wasn’t easy to see, through the beard – but his voice was as bountiful as his body, a rich bass that made every phrase sound, Olivia thought, like a piece of recitative. Britten opera, after all.
“Olivia,” he said. “You are Olivia? In search of a baby.”
“A particular one, yes.”
“Twenty-sixth of August, 1983. Date of birth, presumed.” Father Timothy raised his eyes and looked straight at Olivia. “Date of death.”
Olivia nodded.
“I do remember. My notes are very descriptive. It was a highly unusual situation, a sad mystery that was never solved.”
“I don’t have the solution,” Olivia said, her heartbeat swooping. “I’m afraid I’m seeking information, not offering it.”
Father Timothy nodded slowly. “I understand that. Seeking information.” He cocked his head to one side, considering this idea, then lifted two pairs of fingers in quotation marks. “Seeking closure.”
“I suppose so.”
There was silence for a moment, then Father Timothy moved abruptly into action, excavating under the heap of books and documents on his desk, risking a small avalanche, and emerging with a bound leather volume and a battered hardback notebook.
“You can read these,” he said. “I can copy them for you, if you like. I don’t know whether they will give you what you want, but they confirm what happened.” He fixed his eyes on Olivia again. “They attest to the child’s existence.”
“Thank you.”
“The Book of Remembrance – “ he waved the leather volume “ – belongs in the Hospital Chapel, which is shared these days with our brothers and sisters of other faiths, or of none, but it has no formal status except in the eyes of God. There is also, of course, the Coroner’s ledger, to which you could request access, and which contains the official record of her life and death. Her hospital notes I regret I have been unable to locate, but I took the trouble to copy the entries into my own notebook at the time.” The other book was lifted in the air. “Apart from the events you yourself were party to, my notes record the efforts made to locate the child’s mother, and the rites I undertook on behalf of her soul.”
“Thank you,” said Olivia again.
Father Timothy gave her a more severe look.
“I baptised her,” he said. “I gave her a Christian funeral, before her body was cremated. It is what I felt called to do. I am answerable to God: I have found that is the only way to look at things, sometimes.”
Father Timothy leaned back in his chair, then leaned abruptly forwards again as though he had collided with something behind him.
“You are not the child’s mother?” he asked. “That isn’t what you’ve come here to tell me?”
>
“No.” Despite the bizarre nature of the meeting, the distinct strain of comedy, Olivia felt close to tears. “I felt very attached to her, but I wasn’t her mother. The story is exactly as we told the staff on duty that night.”
Except for one small detail.
Father Timothy nodded again. If he scented the missing detail, he didn’t pursue it. He was the kind of man, Olivia thought, the kind of priest, who believed guilt was between you and God; whose role was to be God’s agent, not man’s. This thought brought both relief and something a little like disappointment. Father Timothy didn’t speak again, and in the cramped silence it struck Olivia that almost everything known about the phone box baby was here between them, in this tiny room. She felt more and more certain that the chaplain knew, had known for twenty-five years, that something was missing from the account in his notebook. He wouldn’t insist on the truth, but if she told him, if she asked him, perhaps he could absolve her. He could at least hear her confession on God’s behalf: was that what she wanted?
“I dropped her,” she said, before she had time to think again. “We stopped to buy petrol, we were flustered and arguing, and I dropped her out of the car door. I think that’s what killed her.”
Father Timothy said nothing.
“We should have told the nurses, I know that. We should have faced the consequences. God knows it’s been on my conscience all these years, the death of a baby.”
Her voice quavered into silence, and Father Timothy leaned forwards across his chaotic desk and laid one huge hand on hers. With the other hand he flipped open the notebook and laid it in front of her. Olivia read the lines he indicated.
Marked hypothermia, hypovolaemia, hypoglycaemia (glucostix <2)
Head injury probable cause of death – ? timing
Olivia upset + +
Discussed with Dr Carr – has spoken to both girls – no further action
Chaplain informed
Signed: FS (Sister F. Sawyer) 6:40 pm, 26/8/83
Father Timothy started to speak again while Olivia stared at the page. “It would be different now,” he said. “Structured questionnaires, batteries of tests, no stone left unturned. Better or worse, I don’t know.”
Olivia looked up at him, dry-eyed, astonished.
“I prayed for you,” Father Timothy said. “I asked for God’s blessing on you. It was a liberty, another liberty, but I inferred repentance for any sins of omission or commission.”
“My friend was pregnant,” Olivia said. “I didn’t know. She couldn’t stand the smell of the petrol because she was pregnant, but I wouldn’t give her the baby and fill the car myself.”
“I prayed for you both,” Father Timothy said. “I baptised the child for you both.”
Now he laid the other book in front of her, the leather-bound Book of Remembrance, and indicated more words in the same curving hand, the same thick black ink.
Baby Olivia Eve, 26th August 1983
Chapter 46
There was frost on the ground for Sarah’s epiphany wedding. The gardens of St Saviour’s looked magical, laced with icy spiders’ webs and the silvered skeletons of specimen trees. For those who ventured as far as the river, carrying a stray bottle of wine or escaping the hubbub of the reception, there were skeins of ice in the backwaters and disconsolate ducks perched on floes in the shadow of overhanging branches. The rose gardens, crisp and flawless underfoot, were populated by arches and arbours hung with frosted tinsel and thorns edged in platinum.
Inside, the bride’s meticulous attention to detail had yielded an equally spectacular setting. White lilies and trailing ivy were offset by starched linen and the College’s mellowed silver cutlery; small children frolicked decorously, as though aware of their part in the mise-en-scène, and a string of bridesmaids of different ages and sizes were flattered by ice blue. The domestic bursar, despite his moustache and his air of disapproval, proved entirely competent, and the bridegroom’s choice of champagne proved entirely satisfactory to him.
“Moet,” he murmured, to anyone who cared to listen, “always pours like a dream.”
The bride looked perfect too, her homespun wedding dress a triumph. Fifty pearl buttons flowed down the length of her spine, and the lace of her veil, thrown back over her head as she emerged from the College Chapel, crowned her in a cloud of gossamer.
It wasn’t until the gong had been rung, the canapés had been gathered in, the guests had been seated and Faith’s Functions had begun serving the main course that anything untoward occurred.
“Salmon en croute or Beef Wellington, madam?” enquired the dark-haired waiter, leaning down to catch the reply over the ambient noise of wedding-guest chatter.
“Salmon, plea – my God, it can’t be James?” The lady guest, tilting her head back to get a good view of his face beneath the ample brim of her hat, gawped at him. “It IS James, isn’t it? James Young? You don’t recognise me.” She laughed, equal parts incredulity and delight and mockery. “Eve de Perreville. I haven’t seen you for – oh, I hate to think. What the hell are you doing as a waiter?”
“Helping out.” James smiled. There was nothing to do but smile: it was, after all, a stock-in-trade of his usual profession as well as the one he was impersonating. “I’m a friend of the caterer.”
“Well, good Lord. I wouldn’t have been surprised if you’d chucked in medicine for cookery, actually; you always did like faffing around in the kitchen. Samphire: do you remember the samphire at Aldeburgh?”
“Samphire, yes.” James smiled again. “It’s good to see you, Eve.” This was a risk, but he had the perfect excuse to move on; he had twenty-five portions of salmon en croute to serve before it got cold.
“You’re not to run away.” Eve grabbed at his cuff, discreet but insistent. “I don’t mean now: you’re not to run away later without coming back to speak to me, okay? I can find you, anyway. I can find you through the caterer, can’t I? I really can’t believe it’s you!”
“Nor can I,” said James. “I shall look forward to the pleasure of speaking to you later.” He gave a little bow, the essence of the well-trained waiter, and moved gracefully to Eve’s left.
“Gracious Heavens,” he heard Eve say to her neighbour. “I’d forgotten what a small country this is.”
James’s progress around the room wasn’t destined to be a smooth one, however. Having rounded the end of the long table below the dais, he was accosted by another lady guest a little way down the opposite side.
“James! How extraordinary! Are you bride or groom?”
“Neither.” James’s smile was tighter, this time. “Serving staff, in fact. You could call it moonlighting.” He laughed, not entirely successfully.
“Well, well.” This guest, clad in an unflattering shade of primrose, was too well-mannered to grab at cuffs or insist on an explanation, but her expression eloquently revealed her perplexity. “How’s Amelia?” she asked brightly. “And the girls?”
“Skiing with her parents. Would you like salmon or beef, Barbara?”
“Oh: beef, I think. One shouldn’t, I know. Is it good?”
“It’s excellent.” James slid gratefully away. “My colleague is following with the beef.”
He was about halfway down the table when he heard her voice again, its timbre carrying effortlessly over the thrum of conversation.
“How funny that you should know James,” he heard her trill, as Faith reached her. “I’m an awfully good friend of his wife’s.”
Faith said nothing at first when she came back into the servery. She laid down her empty platter and slid another out from the warming trolley. Then she looked up at James.
“The salmon’s under there,” she said. “Chop chop.”
“Faith,” said James.
“Not now. We have a function to service. This is my livelihood, remember. Ruin this wedding and you’ll regret it for the rest of your bloody life.”
“I’m going to regret it anyway, Faith.” James moved towards her.
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“Fuck off,” she said. “Take the fucking salmon and serve it to the fucking guests, and don’t speak to anyone, do you hear?”
She banged out of the door and nearly collided with a woman hovering in the passage outside.
“I’m sorry, madam.”
“My fault, I’m in the wrong place. Do you know where the loo is?”
“Down there and first left.” Faith swivelled to apply her shoulder to the swing doors into the hall.
“The food’s terrific, by the way,” the woman called after her. She hesitated a moment longer, and so was still standing in the corridor when James emerged, a full plate of salmon en croute balanced on his left arm.
“Heavens,” she said. “James.”
His expression was so horrified that she laughed.
“Is it that bad? We’ve met before, that’s all. I’m Olivia. Olivia Conafray. I stayed at Shearwater House, years ago. I thought – actually, we ran into each other a few months ago. I thought you’d recognised me then.”
“Yes,” James said. “I couldn’t place you.”
“On the bridge?” Olivia asked. “After that boy hit me?”
James glanced towards the hall.
“I’m so sorry; you’ve got a job to do. We must catch up later. Eve’s here, you know. We were at school with the bride.”
“Of course.” James raised his eyebrows. “Small world.”
“The most extraordinary thing,” Olivia said, as she slid back into her seat at the end of the bride’s table.
“What is?”
Robert was enjoying himself: the champagne was excellent, and it continued to flow very freely, at least on the bride’s table.
“That waiter over there: that’s James Young. As in Aldeburgh.”
“I thought he was a doctor?”
“So did I. To tell the truth, I don’t think he’s usually a waiter. He’s making rather heavy weather of the silver service. But it was definitely him I saw on the bridge that day.”
“Well, that’s one mystery solved. Have you spoken to Eve?”
The Partridge and the Pelican Page 32
