The Marvellous Boy

by Peter Corris

“Aye, and with good reason.” He ran a hand over his head and plucked at the dewlaps on his face. “This is hard for me. I’m not sure I’m doing the right thing. I know nothing about you.” He groaned. “Tell me about Gertrude, was she . . . hurt?”

  “She was in bed. I didn’t see any signs of violence but someone had searched her house, probably the same person that hit me. Something happened up there.”

  He suddenly looked every day of his age. Gertrude Callaghan was woven into his past and he wanted to talk about it, but secrecy had become a habit.

  “You seem to be having some trouble starting your story, Doctor,” I said. “Let me help a little. There was an establishment of some sort down here thirty years ago, a place where women came to have babies. Or not to have them. I assume it was a well-regulated place. I’m not a moralist.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. Myself, I’m a radical, a reformer and a radical. I am a moralist you might say.” His eyes, which had been focused on my face, drifted away. It looked like he was going into the mind-cranking stage again. I was impatient but judged it better to let him set the pace. I leaned forward to get some more coffee. He didn’t notice.

  “I love this place, Mr. Hardy, these people, I’ve been here nearly fifty years. Did you know that?”

  I nodded, took milk.

  “I went back to Edinburgh once, detested it! I found the Scots ungenerous and narrow. Well, that’s by the way. Do you know what used to be the single greatest cause of human misery in a place like this?”

  I said “No,” which was true.

  He leaned forward and tapped me on the knee. “Unwanted children. Forced marriages and unwanted children. It was behind most of the crime, nearly all the drunkenness, most of the trouble.”

  “A problem,” I agreed. “Still is, I suppose.”

  “It’s different now, more information, better methods. And there’s some support for the girls bringing up the babies.”

  “Come down to cases, Doctor,” I said gently.

  “Aye. I ran a clinic here for twenty years, abortions and births, adoptions. Proud of it.”

  “It was a secret though.”

  “It was. A secret entrusted to a few.”

  “Nurse Callaghan?”

  “Helped me, the whole time. Wonderful woman, she believed in the work.”

  It was more than that and I tried to keep the knowledge out of my response. Unsuccessfully.

  “I was unhappily married,” he said simply. “A daughter died in childbirth with no one to help her.”

  It explained a lot but I wasn’t happy with the drift of his account. Too much flavour of abortion in it; abortion wasn’t what I needed.

  “How many abortions did you perform, Doctor?”

  “Hundreds.”

  “How many births and . . . adoptions?”

  “Fewer.”

  “It’s the adoptions I’m interested in.”

  “Both things were illegal.”

  “I don’t imagine anyone cares now.”

  He misinterpreted me and flared. “But I must explain what went wrong, how my ideals were perverted.”

  The craving overtook the tact; I pulled out my tobacco and made a cigarette. I said “Go ahead” more roughly than I’d intended.

  He glanced at me sharply, annoyed, as though I wasn’t worthy to be his confessor. But he was too far into confession to stop. “I did this community a great service for twenty years. A law-abiding community. Blackman’s Bay, very low incidence of violence, disruption. But they wouldn’t let me be.”

  “They? The locals?”

  “No, the others, from Canberra and Sydney. Men and lasses, some terrible stories I can tell you.”

  We seemed to be moving into the right area. I blew smoke away from him and juggled the ash.

  “What did they do, blackmail you?”

  “Aye, and worse. Terrible place Sydney, full of the lowest people.” He looked hard at me and I felt I had the harbour bridge growing out of my head and Kings Cross painted on my face. I knew I had a day’s beard and a very dirty shirt.

  “How do I know I can trust you?” he said harshly. Some of the power he must have had when younger suddenly seemed to flow back into him. “You’re a man for hire.”

  “Aren’t we all,” I said, then I corrected quickly. “I’m only partly for hire. There are things I won’t do. I don’t cause unnecessary pain.”

  “A fine speech,” he sneered. “Who judges what is necessary, you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Aye. I thought so. That won’t do. What are your standards? What would you know of a lifetime’s dedication to an ideal?”

  Not much, I thought, and thank God for it. Ideals should change like everything else. But he felt he had got some sort of moral and ethical drop on me and in a funny way I felt it too. Perhaps it was the lack of sleep.

  “You come down here out of nowhere,” he went on, “telling about my oldest friend. You could be lying.”

  He was pacing up and down the verandah now; his slippers flapped on the floor and his pyjamas swished around his white, bony shanks. His voice became more vehement as he moved as if the pacing was giving him strength and purpose.

  “Nurse Callaghan is dead,” I said dully. “You’ll get news of that soon enough.” I fingered my cut head. “This is real.”

  He snorted, still pacing. “You could have done it yourself.”

  “You’re going in circles, Doctor, a minute ago you accepted that she was dead . . .”

  Don’t you dare criticise my logic. I’ll thank you to know that I’m in full possession of my senses.”

  I doubted it. He was getting more excited by the second and trying to construct defences against me. I’d lost him, just like that, in a sentence or two.

  “I’ll say no more, Mr. Hardy, and I’ll be obliged if you’d go. I have nothing to say to you.”

  I spoke quietly, trying to calm him down. “That’s not true, Doctor. I must know more. I know a good deal already. It’s vital to my investigation . . .”

  “You’re threatening me!” His voice rose and cracked. “I won’t stand for it. You come here and threaten me.” He whipped across the floor and through the door into the house. I stood up wondering what my next move should be. He came back and he wasn’t alone—he had a double-barrelled shotgun for company and he levelled it at my chest.

  “Go, Mr. Hardy.” He jerked the gun at the door. “And don’t come back.”

  I make a point of not arguing with old men waving shotguns. I went.

  11

  There was a telephone booth on the street three houses along from Osborn’s place. I called his number and when he answered I dropped the phone, ran back down the street and jumped over his fence. I sprinted up to the side of the house and then bent low to keep under the windows. Osborn was still holding the phone when I got to the back part of the house. I risked a peep up and saw him put it down, dial, listen and hang up. He moved around for a few minutes and I was wondering how to handle it if I heard paper being torn or smelled it being burned when I heard drawers opening and closing in the room nearest me. I heard him grunt the way men do when they bend over to put on their shoes. Then he left the room and I heard a door at the back of the house slam. I sneaked down and hung an eye around the corner: Dr. Osborn, minus his shotgun, was heading for his garage.

  I went back the way I’d come. I’d left my car around the nearest corner from the doctor’s house out of old habit. I drove back to a point where I could see his gate and watched a green Cortina roll down the drive and head south for the hills. I tailed him from as far back as the traffic would allow. Osborn drove sedately, like a man used to motoring in a more leisurely age. I hung back on the highway which wasn’t easy because most cars were passing him. We followed the coast for a few miles and then swung inland. The Cortina toddled along off the bitumen and up an unmade road into the hills. I stopped and let him get well ahead, then I crawled up after him. The road climbed steeply but straight so he couldn�
��t wind round on top of me. I hung back behind the drift of his dust cloud. Suddenly the road got rougher and another track ran into it on the left. I stopped and examined the ground; it looked as if nothing had gone straight on for a while and as if the Cortina had turned left. Hardy of the 5th Maroubra Scout Troop.

  I pulled the car off the track, got the gun out of the glove box and started to follow the tyre marks in the dust. The track was steep and I had to stop for breath twice. I stumbled once, jarred my leg, and sent waves of pain curling and dumping inside my skull. The morning was warm, I sweated and the handgrip of the .38 became wet and slippery. Each time the track took a turn I went into the rough at the side and worked through so as to get a look at the road ahead, but each time it was quiet and still except for the noise and movement of the forest birds. After about ten minutes walking the trees thinned out and the ground levelled. I used the cover of the trees to approach a clearing extending over an acre or so on a stretch of flat ground.

  In the middle of the clearing, spaced about forty feet apart, were two crumbling brick pillars that would once have been chimneys. Some blackened timber was piled off to one side I watched from behind a tree as Osborn came into the clearing carrying a pile of branches. He threw them down near the old chimney closest to me, squatted, and began working on the bricks of the old fireplace. He pulled them out and piled them up beside him. Then he reached into the cavity and hauled out a box about the size of a beer carton. He stood up and slapped his pockets. I stepped out and levelled the pistol at him.

  “Keep your hands still, Doctor. Move towards me slowly.”

  He started and stopped the slapping movement. Then he looked down at the box and bent over.

  “Don’t!”

  He was on his knees now by the box. “It would be hard for you to explain, Mr. Hardy, killing an old man. And not a bad solution for me. I think I’ll keep on.”

  I was almost close enough to kick him. “I wouldn’t kill you Doctor, just hurt you a bit. It’d solve nothing. Now get away from that bloody box!”

  He straightened up and stood there rock still. I looked over the blackened earth. A couple of the building’s stumps still stuck up stubbornly through the weeds. I glanced about for the shotgun but couldn’t see it. The branches by the bricks were light with feathery leaves, tinder dry. I nudged the box with my toe.

  “Your records, Doctor?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m surprised. Was it discreet to keep them?”

  His old face turned up and he looked affectionately around at the ruin and the overgrown land.

  “It was my life’s work,” he said softly. “I thought that someday I could write it up, publish it. Opinion has changed, it could be done soon.”

  “Maybe so,” I said. “I’m not going to stop you. I just need some information from those records myself. You can do what you like with it after that.”

  “You don’t understand.” His voice was thin and strained. Pleading was foreign to him and he was having trouble getting the sound right. “That would be a violation of my trust. I can’t allow it.”

  “You can’t stop me. I’m the one with the gun now. Move aside, Doctor, I don’t want to hurt you.” I bent down and examined the box; it was metal, heavy, but unlocked. The lid came up stiffly and revealed rows of file cards, neatly packed.

  “This was the place? The clinic?” I tried to let a little kindness into my voice and I let the pistol drop a bit, not too far.

  “Yes, this is it. This where I did my life’s work. Later the vandals had their fun. All my memories are here . . . Gertrude . . . my daughter . . .” He pointed. “You can see the ocean from over there. I’ll show you.”

  He set off for the far edge of the clearing and I followed. We pushed through some undergrowth and went up a steep track which led to a broad, flat rock washed pale and pitted by the weather. I lost sight of him for a second as I moved forward to step up onto the rock. I stopped, peering ahead, and that saved me—a branch of the tree beside the rock came slashing towards my face like a stockwhip. I ducked under it, side-stepped up and moved along the edge of the rock away from the tree. He saw me and threw something. It missed and he stumbled towards the edge of the rock like a sleepwalker. I dropped the box and went after him fast; he was tensed for the jump when I locked my hand around his upper arm and jerked him back and down hard.

  I was off balance and fell and he came down half on top of me. I rolled away and he flopped on the rock winded and gasping like a landed fish. I lifted him and carried him across to the tree where I propped him up. Then I recovered the metal box and sat down on it. We looked east: the water was a fair way off but that made it more impressive. The tree tops flowed out towards the band of blue; a light wind was coming off the water and it moved the upper branches about and reached us with a tang of salt water and eucalyptus. He gazed out over the scene possessively—I felt like an intruder at a shrine.

  “My daughter’s ashes are scattered out there. She loved this place dearly.”

  “We have to talk, Doctor.”

  “What is there to talk about? You have the records, took them by force. You’ll use them for your own corrupt ends. I’m old and this trouble will kill me. But that’s fitting, that my life’s work should finish me off. I’m sorry about the branch and the shotgun. I’ve never harmed anyone.”

  He seemed to be raving, losing his grip under the spell of the place and the pressure of events. I wanted him in control, as an ally if possible.

  “There are those who would think,” I said softly, “that you’ve killed many times.”

  He glared at me, his tired old eyes shining out of the beaten flesh around them. “Fools,” he said coldly. “Fools and hypocrites. I have evidence that lives are wrecked by unwanted children, and saved by abortion.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I followed them through do you see? I kept notes on what people did—those who were forced into marriages they didn’t want and those who were free to develop. You’d be surprised, Mr. Hardy, if you knew who were some of the fathers of children born and aborted. I know.”

  “Jesus. You mean you got all that stuff from the mothers? You’ve got names and dates?”

  “Yes indeed.”

  The enormity of it washed over me slowly. The box was a powder keg of secrets. He’d mentioned post-war Canberra and Sydney and hinted at big names. The thought flickered in the back of my mind that the cards would be better burnt but I let that go. I had a job to do and I was very, very curious.

  “You appear to be struck dumb, Mr. Hardy.”

  I was suddenly aware of the gun and stuck it in my belt. It seemed like a ridiculous toy; I wanted the box in my hands.

  “Come on, Doctor, we have to find a way out of this mess.”

  He followed me off the rock. “Mess? What do you mean?”

  “You can’t be that innocent. Those records are dynamite.”

  “Why?”

  “Men like to father their own children for one thing. It’s a quirk I’ve noticed. They don’t like having it done for them.”

  “Yes, well, I know of many . . .”

  “Don’t tell me.”

  “I knew it was . . . sensitive, but that’s why I kept it out here, partly why. I used to drive out and do some work on the cards, add things. But I always thought of it as scientific data.”

  “I think of blackmail and other things.”

  “But it’s so long ago, twenty years and more.”

  “Memories are longer, suspicion doesn’t age.”

  “You’re a philosopher, Mr. Hardy.”

  We went down the rutty rabbit track to the clearing. The air was warm and pungent with forest scents. It would be a fine place for a picnic with nice food and cold wine and a good spot for making love on some trodden down bracken. We got clear of the trees and the sight of the stark, lonely chimneys brought me back to the business which had nothing to do with picnics and not much with lovemaking in the bushes. I talked to him an
d he listened. He did some talking himself and I tried to respond to his descriptions of the clinic, as he called it, and how he and Gertrude Callaghan had handled the work. There was a touch too much of “moral rehabilitation” in it for my taste, but he was talking of other times, when illegitimacy could be a life-long curse and divorce court judges were like priests of the Inquisition.

  He leaned against the Cortina and looked at me through narrowed, sceptical eyes.

  “And now?”

  “Now you drive me back to my car and we both go back to your house. You help me find what I’m looking for in these cards, if it’s here. I make some notes and hand the whole box of tricks back to you, with some advice.”

  “And that is?”

  “Make up your mind to write up your findings soon or turn the whole lot over to a library or an archive. You can do that, Doctor. And you can put a time bar on it, say twenty-five years. You leave a key to it all if that’s needed and it’s off your hands. When the time comes some student will dig into it. Your work will get its due although you’ll be dead and gone.” A shiver went through me as I spoke and I wondered whether I’ve invoked some god of ill-luck and I might be dead and gone myself in that time, or sooner.

  We got in the car. “I’m inclined to believe that you’ll do as you say,” he said.

  “Right,” I said. It was time to stop monkeying around. All the talk of by-gone days had distracted me. I’m a sucker for it. But I might have a solid lead to the last of the Chattertons under my arm and I felt a keen professional urge to get on with it.

  “Right,” I repeated.

  He started the car and trundled down the track just as he’d done many, many times before.

  12

  Back at his house we settled down into the verandah chairs and I lifted the box. I jiggled it up and down for a minute and then passed it across to him.

  “Let’s try to keep this on the square, Doctor,” I said. “I’m interested in your records for a period approximately thirty years ago. My information is that a child was born to a young woman at that time. I don’t know what name she gave but I do know her married and maiden names—it’s unlikely to be one of those.”