A Cry from the Dark

by Robert Barnard

  “Thank you,” said Murchison. “That makes it clear. What period in your life is this novel going to cover?”

  “Oh! I’m not sure I’ve decided that yet. But in the back of my mind there’s always been a feeling that it shouldn’t be one of those loose baggy monsters that just meander on and on until they splutter and die like an old car. That would be awful. So it will be about my young life, like Sons and Lovers. In a way that means my relationships not just with people—parents, schoolfriends, and so on—but also with my own country, my real home. It began to wear thin when I became assistant to a war correspondent in Italy in 1942. That’s going to be very difficult to write, because in the nature of things records get lost in wartime, or don’t get written at all. I may postpone doing that until last. I suppose the real end of my childhood and adolescence was in Trieste, in 1945 and 6, when I’d joined up with the British Army, got married, and somehow committed myself to Europe.”

  “I see.” Murchison pondered for a moment or two. “And was Sylvia Easton a product of that marriage?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you never went back to Australia?”

  “Twice, briefly, when my parents died. I think I’ll have to include those deaths somehow, as flash forwards. That was when my last real links with Australia were cut.”

  “And your brother—”

  “My brother was so much younger than me that I never really saw him growing up.”

  “I see. But you said earlier that people think you are writing your memoirs.”

  “That’s what people keep telling me.”

  “Which would mean a much wider picture of your life—up to the present day, or near it.”

  Bettina pondered.

  “I suppose people could have that idea. But people writing their memoirs often choose to cut the story short, because of the difficulty of dealing with people still alive. Or they just deal with one section, like the war, for example, or growing up.”

  “So people could be interested in what you’re writing who weren’t known to you in your early years. People who think they won’t like what you might write?”

  “In theory, possibly. But mine hasn’t been an exciting, controversial, headline-grabbing life. I’m no Germaine Greer. Or even a Graham Greene. I don’t quite see why you’re so interested in my novel.”

  “You said yourself someone has been into the flat—before the current break-in or entry—and has been at your desk.”

  “Ye-es. Yes, of course. But my desk is the center of my professional life. Not just what I’m writing, but what I’m earning, what I’m spending, what I’m paying the tax man, what I’m worth—it’s all there. People who live in flats, with adequate but limited space, have to be a bit methodical, and for most people like that their desk is in a way the business center of their lives.”

  “Agreed.”

  “So it’s a logical place for a thief to go.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’m not quite sure, you see, that you should be concentrating on my book. There are other things: you could be looking at what I’m worth, for example.”

  “All right—let’s do that. Let me guess roughly. The highly lucrative lease on the flat. A very well-chosen collection of twentieth-century Australian art. The proceeds of a life of novel writing, probably wisely invested. Any royalties or film or TV rights in the future. A nice little fortune. Anything inherited from your parents or other relatives?”

  “Dear me, no,” said Bettina, shaking her head humorously. “We were always poor, and the drought of the early forties was my father’s deathblow as a farmer. Anything there was left to Ollie. I asked my dad to do that when I went back to be with my mother when she died. Even then I preferred to rely on myself.”

  “Anyway, a nice little fortune. A million or more.”

  “More like two, I suspect. I sometimes react if people call me rich, but my dad would have gaped at how much I’ve got.”

  “Who gets it?”

  “At the moment the National Portrait Gallery.”

  It was Murchison’s turn to gape.

  “I can’t see the National Portrait Gallery organizing a murder, or even a break-in.”

  “Not in this country. Some of the sums given to cultural institutions in America are so vast that I sometimes wonder whether some public-spirited individual might organize an early voyage to the shades for the Midas figure concerned. Anyway, you can rule out the Portrait Gallery for other reasons than unlikelihood. They don’t know. And it’s probably only a temporary, emergency will. It leaves token amounts to friends and relatives, and the rest to the gallery because it’s one of the London places where I feel happiest.”

  “But you may change your will?”

  “If I can think of anything better. Nothing occurs to me at the moment, but something may emerge from all this…”

  “Just one more question: Suppose that you were to die intestate—who would inherit then?”

  This rather threw Bettina.

  “I suppose…she’s my legitimate daughter.”

  “Mrs. Easton?”

  “Miss. She’s never married. And was never legally adopted, because I would have had to be consulted, wouldn’t I?”

  “I imagine so, but I know nothing about Australian law. Did you never make inquiries as to whether the foster parents wanted to give a legal basis to their custodianship?”

  “No. That was up to them, wasn’t it? I wouldn’t have put any barriers in their way, however.” She saw that she was making a deplorable impression on the policeman and felt she had to elaborate a little. “I didn’t feel ashamed about that then—I mean about just getting rid of her and forgetting her. So it seems a bit hypocritical to start feeling shame now.”

  “I’m not here to judge you,” said Murchison, but Bettina was pretty sure he already had. “The point is that if there was no will, Miss Easton would probably be your legal heir.”

  Bettina got impatient.

  “Yes, but there is a will.”

  “And before this one, this temporary one, was there an earlier one?”

  “Yes! Some of the people named had died, but yes, there was. And Sylvia wasn’t named in it. There’s no way you can start suspecting Sylvia. It’s nonsense!”

  It occurred to her to wonder by what process of emotional change or development she had become so protective of her daughter. But then she had been protective of Mark, if much less passionately.

  “On the day before the attack on Miss Jackson, you and your brother and your daughter had gone your separate ways in Scotland, hadn’t you?” asked Murchison.

  The five days she spent in Sydney in February 1939 had been the most exciting in Betty’s life so far, though in her later memories they were destined to fade in comparison with the experiences of war. Her parents came down by bus and train from Bundaroo, and she enjoyed the last period happily together of their long companionship. They went to the theater, wandered through the seedy glamour of King’s Cross, saw the most beautiful natural area Betty could imagine—the harbor. It all passed like a dream. She wanted to pay for their hotel out of her winnings, but her father wouldn’t allow it, and when they went to settle the bill they found that it had been paid for by the Bulletin.

  The presentation of the prize was in the journal’s offices on George Street. Reporters from Sydney newspapers had been invited, and those in tune with the Bulletin’s political views had accepted. They were polite rather than genuinely interested, but when Betty talked to such elevated beings she felt like a star.

  “Shall we call you Betty or Bettina?” one of them asked.

  “Bettina,” said Betty firmly, beginning the process of transition.

  Cameras clicked as the prize was handed over. In addition to the check there was a little silver cup. Betty prized the check infinitely more than the cup, and her father said, “Quite right!” When she was told that the competition was to become an annual event she felt pleased, because writing her entry had given her so much
satisfaction that she enjoyed the thought of others following in her footsteps. She also felt something of a pioneer.

  Lunch in a Sydney restaurant with her parents, the editor, and some of his senior staff was an ordeal to be got through. She had seen her father, before the presentation, deep in conversation with the editor, and she knew that her recent horrific experience must have been the subject for the hushed encounter. That depressed her. She tried to sparkle, but knowing that they knew dampened her spirits.

  “Are you reconciled to losing your daughter to the wider scene?” the editor asked Jack Whitelaw over coffee.

  “It’s what we’ve always wanted for her,” he said simply. “She’s good. She’s better than just talented. What could she find to do in Bundaroo?”

  Later that day, when her mother had taken a Bex APC tablet for a nervous headache, Betty and her father sat alone in the lounge of the hotel, and he took one further step in the process of loosening the ties on her.

  “You go for it, little lady,” he said, taking her hands. “There’s nothing for you in Bundaroo. Even if you’d been a boy, I’d tell you to get out. We’re at the mercy of everything—the elements, insects, the rains or lack of them, disease, the bastard earth of the place. We’re just camped out on soil not fit to crap on—pardon my language. You get out, darl; make your way to something different. We’ll be watching you, your mother and I, and we’ll be so proud!”

  Why, remembering those words in later life, did Bettina have an aching sense of loss?

  The war changed everything. In the spring and summer of 1939, while she was again ostensibly studying for the Leaving, Betty had two articles published in the Bulletin—one was on Armidale, one was a think piece on the overdependence of Australian radio on British material. Then came September: Britain declared war and—almost without thinking, it seemed—Australia declared it as well. Radio brought the war into Australian homes; the cinema intermingled it with Jeanette MacDonald and Clark Gable. Men volunteered. The Brighthouse boy, with whom Betty had been mildly flirting, spent much of the war on the Burma railway, and wrote to Betty in the 1950s, when her aunt died. War altered the fortunes of politicians. Robert Menzies, who had been keen to ship iron ore to Japan in the months leading up to the war, found himself newly christened Pig Iron Bob when the iron ore came back in the form of bullets, putting his political fortunes on hold for a decade. Soon there was talk of a Japanese invasion, or submarines in Sydney Harbour. Men volunteered in still greater numbers. Men in the Bulletin offices volunteered or talked of doing so.

  The offer of a job in the journal’s Sydney office came to Betty in mid-October. The letter made no bones about the fact that she would be a glorified office girl, but stressed that they had faith in her and that she would be given every chance to make her contribution (judged on merit alone, of course) to the periodical. Bettina went straight down to Cummings’s and phoned them from there. She felt she was owed this, since her private affairs had been spread around town from the switchboard. The Bulletin’s managing editor already had in mind a good home near the office where Bettina would be made part of the family. Betty’s parents, after all, had to be given peace of mind, especially after what had happened in Bundaroo.

  The Leaving Certificate was forgotten. Betty never committed the (to her) great irrelevancy of going to university. Within a week she had a job, a new home, a new destiny. For over two years she worked on matters trivial and matters vital, in her spare time writing special articles and—more important—her first short stories. Then in early 1942 she joined the staff as an Australian war correspondent, first in Cairo, then in Italy. Thus she edged her way into the theater of war, and into Europe.

  Sylvia arrived at the hotel in midafternoon. She and Oliver had got an early train from Edinburgh, and she had learned where Bettina was staying from Clare Tuckett.

  “Mark had her number,” she said, sitting on the bed without being asked. “He knew Clare was selling your film rights and he thought she must be a theatrical agent as well. When he rang her to push himself she was very kind to him, and I think he’s still under that impression.”

  “Kind? Doesn’t sound like Clare,” muttered Bettina.

  “Feeling grumpy, are you?” Sylvia asked, rather daring. From anyone else the question might have brought a put-down, but in fact it brought an uprush of feeling from Bettina.

  “Yes! Yes, I am. And it’s all my own fault. I don’t know what to do, Sylvia. The police have finished with the flat.”

  “And you don’t know whether to move back in?”

  “Yes. Half of me says I can’t bear to. The other half says if I don’t do it now it will only get harder and harder, especially if Katie dies, so I should pull myself together and get it done. It’s the only place in the world I really feel at home in. I only need to throw a few things into the suitcase I brought with me and call a taxi.”

  “Then let’s do it, shall we?” Sylvia said briskly, getting up from the bed. “When we get there I’ll either stay the night, or two nights at most, or I’ll make myself scarce if you feel happy and safe.”

  “One night, Sylvia. I’m sure I’d like you to stay for one night. After that I’ll have to bite the bullet and get back to normal. I’m going to sleep in the little bed in the guest room…Oh! Where will you sleep?”

  “On the sofa, on the floor—maybe even in your bed. Now come along. Is this the suitcase? Just the one then. Let’s get it done and be on our way. Shoes first, then all the bathroom things, clothes on top.”

  Any impulse she might have felt to protest or call for more time was suppressed by Bettina. She let herself be chivied along, went down to pay the (remarkably cheap) bill, had Harry call her a taxi, and half an hour later she let Sylvia help her out of the taxi onto Holland Park Crescent. She looked up at her destination.

  “I’ve always liked these flats,” she said glumly. Then she stomped up the steps, opened the main door, and made her way heavily up to the first floor. She felt a strong temptation to behave badly: to be the elderly curmudgeon, to quarrel with every little decision made for her. The only thing that held her back was that she was with her daughter. Sylvia had known enough bad behavior from her—even if she was too young at the time to register it.

  Sylvia made tea, found biscuits and some fruitcake that was still moist and fresh, acting on the idea that old people seemed to need pampering more than most, and usually had a sweeter tooth than most. And it seemed to work. By five o’clock Bettina was sitting back, asking about her and Ollie’s last days in Edinburgh, and generally trying to put behind her the fact that they were in the room where Katie had been so horribly attacked. But comfortable though she was, that attack now and then obtruded itself on her mind. Once she had hoped that serving in the army all the length of Italy as the Germans reluctantly and violently retreated had calmed her fear of sudden attacks by acquainting her with worse things, but she had long realized that that had been a vain hope.

  “So what has been going on since you came back as far as the investigation is concerned?” Sylvia asked eventually.

  “I don’t really know much. Murchison was round this morning asking me questions about my will. He seems to have his eye on Mark, which I pooh-poohed, though I don’t imagine he’ll be taking much notice of my views.”

  “I just dropped into the flat briefly with Ollie, but I gathered Mark had been grilled.”

  “How has he taken it?”

  “With his usual breeziness. Apparent breeziness. He did say he thought they were turning their attention to Peter Seddon, but he had no idea why. He said he thought Peter and Katie were old friends.”

  “They are.”

  “I suppose Murchison has decided it’s a man’s crime.”

  “Hah! Clare is worth two of Mark or Peter.”

  “You don’t think—?”

  “No, of course not. I only mean that if I was in some hairy situation in wartime—as I sometimes was in Italy—I’d much rather have Clare with me than eithe
r of those two men. Mind you, it won’t worry me at all if the police give Mark a bad time for a few days if it makes him think. But I don’t think it will.”

  Sylvia’s sharp eyes gleamed.

  “It’s Peter, not Mark we were really talking about.”

  Hah! thought Bettina. She thinks I still hold a torch for Peter. As if!

  “Hmmm,” she said. “Peter’s a bit more capable of thinking than Mark. But perhaps I am biased. I suppose I came as near to loving Peter as I’ve ever come with a man. But that was long ago. And he’s another one who tries to shrug off any unpleasantness or any threat to his peace and quiet—he’ll turn away from anything nasty as if that cancels it out…You’ve been awfully good to me, Sylvia. I’m conscious I’ve not deserved it, and that this was not how we said things would be when you came over.”

  “No, it’s not. I thought the letter I wrote was sensible at the time.”

  “It was.”

  “But it’s rather been overtaken by events, hasn’t it? And it wasn’t entirely honest. The truth is that since I’ve known I had a birth mother who was rather famous I’ve collected anything I came across about you, piled up little bits of information in scrapbooks, and looked at them from time to time. I’ve not done it obsessively, I don’t think, but just tried to build up a picture for myself. Ollie was one of my sources, of course. Occasionally I met someone who’d known you: at Bundaroo, or Armidale, or Sydney. We have an amateur music festival every year in Bairnsdale, and I met someone years ago with the Chamber Orchestra of Northern New South Wales—someone who’d known you at Bundaroo. Played the flute. Drayton, the name was. Would it be Steve?”

  “Steve Drayton would never play in an orchestra! Not in a million years!”

  “I’m sure that was the name. Said he was in your year at school. Said he’d known you quite well at one time, but only talked to you once after the rape, when he’d walked you down the main street past Sam Battersby.”