The Marvellous Boy

by Peter Corris

  “True.” He drummed his fingers on the top of the box. “The woman was not bearing her husband’s child, I take it?”

  It hit me then for the first time that she might not have been. But it didn’t matter either way. It was the Chatterton blood that was important.

  “I’m told that it was her husband’s child. It doesn’t affect the enquiry. It’s the mother who’s important.”

  “I see.” He dipped into the box and started riffling the cards, plucking them up and stuffing them back. I wanted a cigarette but I didn’t want to disturb our uneasy detente. He looked up at me. “A young woman you said?”

  “Yes, very young—late teens.”

  He nodded and kept digging. Eventually he held up a batch of cards. “I terminated the pregnancies of twenty-three such women in those years.” He handed me half the cards. I glanced at them. They were covered with neat, spidery handwriting. I flicked a thumbnail against the cards.

  “I don’t think the pregnancy was terminated.”

  “You mean you hope it wasn’t. Can you be sure?”

  “I think so,” I said slowly. I was conscious of the thinness of my information, and my ignorance of childbearing. “The photograph I saw showed a woman who looked pregnant. Wouldn’t that suggest she was too far advanced to be terminated?”

  “Not necessarily. Cases differ.”

  “The nurse,” I said desperately. “The nurse was in the photograph. They were acquainted. The nurse must have treated her as something special.”

  He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “That is an ignorant remark, Mr. Hardy,” he said. “Gertrude Callaghan was the most warm and loving woman I have ever known. Everyone was special to her.”

  I accepted the rout. “You’re right. I’m hoping a child was born. May I see the other cards?”

  He passed them over, seven in all. I looked at them carefully. At the top of each a name was written, surname first, in capitals. There were dates then statistics. The data didn’t mean much to me—medical stuff, drugs used, tests, various readings. Each card contained a few lines describing the birth of a child giving time, weight, other measurements, instruments used and so on. I read through this and handed three cards back to Osborn. He took them in at a glance.

  “Females. Only a son will do?”

  I nodded.

  “I wanted a son myself but it wasn’t to be. Do you have any children, Mr. Hardy?”

  I shook my head, still looking at the cards.

  “It’s a paradox, parenthood. Children enslave you, but they bring you great joy. My own daughter . . .” He stopped himself. “What are you doing?”

  I had a pen out and was scribbling on the back of an envelope. “I’m trying out some of these names, trying to see an anagram or something. Most people who assume false names don’t just pluck them out of the air.”

  He leaned forward. “I’m good at that, a crossword fiend. What are the names?”

  I handed the cards and the envelope over. I hadn’t got anywhere.

  He examined the cards and wrote the names down vertically on a blank card. Then he wrote Brain and Chatterton opposite the list. He doodled on the card, making scrolls and stick figures and blocking in the letters. I was getting impatient, felt let down, and could sense the tobacco craving sneaking up on me. I shifted in my chair and held out my hand.

  “I’ll have to do it the hard way, Doctor,” I said. “Check on each one in turn. I just hope they aren’t too scattered.” I was edgy and almost snapped my figures for the cards.

  “You won’t, you know.” He separated out one card and handed it to me. “I’ll wager this is the one.”

  I looked at it. Nothing. “Why?”

  “You were on the right track, just a bit off course. It’s not an anagram though.”

  “What then?”

  “Association. The poet Chatterton imitated the works of Sir Thomas Malory. That’s the name on the card. You didn’t know that, about Chatterton?”

  “No. I knew he was a fraud of some sort.”

  He sighed. “You’re not as big a cynic as you make out. Malory, Morte d’Arthur. That’s a great work, written when English was a real language and not a grab bag of this and that.”

  “It was all like French as I recall,” I grunted. He said something else which I didn’t catch. I was reminded of Henry Brain’s quoting habit but my attention had shifted to the card.

  The delicate writing had faded as if such a pack of untruths could not survive the passage of time. Barbara Malory’s age was given as 17 years and there was a brief account of her physical condition which was excellent. Doubts were expressed as to her mental stability. On Saturday 3 December at 1:34 p.m. she had given birth to an 8 pound 12 ounce male child. The birth was uncomplicated, the child was without defect. There was no address for Barbara on admission or discharge—she came from nowhere and went nowhere. She had stayed at the clinic for 11 days and paid £5 per day; she had paid £38 for the doctor’s services. Okay, that was fine, congratulations all round, now what about the kid? The child had stayed a few days longer than his mother and had been declared ‘exceptionally strong and healthy.’ This information was followed by a simple one-line entry: Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert Baudin, 116 Red Oak Road, Forrest, ACT.

  I held the card out to Osborn with my thumbnail under the address. The nail was split and full of dirt. I must have clawed the ground when I went down in the night. I suddenly felt weary and in very bad shape but the adrenalin was running. The card was a shower and a shave and a bottle of champagne.

  “They took the baby?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not a formal adoption?”

  “No.”

  “How were the details arranged, registration and so on?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s hard to believe, Doctor.”

  “It’s true, nevertheless. These people who took the children were determined folk. They’d been rejected by the official agencies, usually for ridiculous reasons like not being Christians.” He looked as if he would have liked to spit. “They were prepared to do anything to get a healthy child and they made all the arrangements you speak of themselves.” He read the name aloud. “Baudin, Baudin, no, I don’t recall them. But some of these people had influence, they were all intelligent and responsible, I saw to that.”

  “You said you kept a check on the children.”

  “In some cases, yes.” He turned the card over. “Not in this one.”

  I wrote down the name and address and returned the card. He balanced the box on his bony knees and deliberately put each card back in place. I stood up and held out my hand.

  “Thanks for your co-operation, Doctor.”

  We shook hands. He didn’t stand.

  “You got what you wanted. You’re good at your trade, Mr. Hardy.”

  “Sometimes,” I said.

  He put the box on the floor and eased himself up. One leg protested and buckled and he dropped back into the chair. He breathed heavily.

  “I believe I’ll do as you suggest with the records. I won’t write it up myself, too old.”

  “You’ve got a bit of fight left in you.”

  I had the feeling that he didn’t want to let me go. It was as if we had some unfinished business. But I didn’t know what it might be or what else I could say to him. I moved towards the verandah opening. He looked shrunken and deflated in the cane chair.

  “There’s not much fight in me. Do you think I’m in danger?”

  “From whom?”

  “You said Gertrude was murdered . . . something to do with my work.”

  “I was theorising a bit,” I said. “I don’t know for certain that she was murdered. There were signs that the house had been searched but she might have died naturally. She was an old woman, and frail I suppose?”

  “Yes, and getting more so.”

  “Well . . .” I thought of Henry Brain again who certainly hadn’t beaten himself to death in the W.C. But whoever had cooled
me had been content to leave it at that. Perhaps Brain’s death was a sort of accident. In any case I didn’t feel that a mindless killer was on the loose and I told Osborn so.

  “I won’t mention you when the police come to tell me about Gertrude.”

  “They might not be involved. She must have friends, someone will find her soon?”

  “Yes.”

  I said I was sorry and realised that I was repeating myself. I wanted to say more, to indicate that I knew what he was feeling, but I didn’t. He was a secrets man. The stain around his eyes was almost black now and spreading. He seemed to be looking through me and down a long, dark tunnel.

  “Those records . . .”

  “Yes?”

  It crossed my mind that this case was mostly records so far, cards and files, plus a few deaths. In my mind I was already on the way to Canberra, a whole city of cards and files.

  “Those records are honest in a way that most medical records are not. Doctors cover their mistakes, they use hindsight. I’ve done it myself. But not there.” He looked down at the box. “That’s my real medical career.”

  “Then you have something to be proud of.”

  “No. I was selfish. My wife . . . I did nothing for her. My daughter died in childbirth.” He was in the grip of it now, wandering painfully in the garden of his memories. “And Gertrude, Gertrude lost three children. There was nothing I could do. The people I loved and should have loved, my work did nothing for them.”

  His voice broke. Tears were running down his worn-out old face. I lifted my hand in a sort of salute and left. I’d hardly been further inside his house than the verandah but I’d been deep, deep inside his life.

  13

  It was nearly noon. I hadn’t slept, I hadn’t eaten, I hadn’t shaved. I was tired, hungry, dirty, and I stank. The day was cloudy but hot and I sweltered inside my sweat-stained clothes. I drove down to the foreshore, dug out a towel, and walked over some grassy dunes to the beach. The tide was out and the sand stretched clean and white in front of me. I walked as far from the other people on the beach as I could; they were a couple necking under an umbrella and two sagging mothers with about ten kids between them. A mile away the bridge looked like a spider’s web thrown across the estuary; a collection of small boats tossed up and down in the deep blue water out beyond a line of gentle breakers.

  I stripped to my underpants and went into the water. It was cold; I went down under a wave and swam hard for the boats with short, choppy strokes. I got past the breakers but was still a long way short of the boats when my breath ran out. I floated on my back for a while looking up at the sky which was cleaner and closer than in the city. Then a plane ripped across it leaving a thin white streak behind it. I flipped over and swam back. The waves were no good for body surfing but I couldn’t have caught them anyway—the speed just wasn’t there.

  After a walk along the beach and a cold shower in the toilet block I felt revived enough to contemplate the drive to Canberra. I got petrol and some salad rolls in Blackman’s Bay. It was still a nice town but my memories of it would never be quite the same. I bought a couple of cans of beer for company; I still looked rough but I felt fine.

  From the coast to Canberra isn’t the worst drive in the world. The road is good for most of the way, a bit narrow in parts and some of the bends are hairy. I’ve never done it in a good car; for me, if I make it over the mountain without the radiator boiling, it’s a good trip. I made it and pushed on through the flat farming country at a steady fifty-five. The academics and public servants have moved into the cottages in the small towns and the main streets now have restaurants and shops full of pottery and raw wool.

  The traffic thickened near Queanbeyan and held me down to a crawl. The city seemed to have its own patch of blue sky resting neatly above it. After the freshness of the hills and farms the air tasted of exhaust fumes and tyre rubber. I found a medium-price motel on the south side and checked in. I washed my shirt in the handbasin, took a swim in the pool and had a nap after asking to be called at 7 p.m. I came out of the sleep fairly fresh and shaved with an old blade and the motel soap. It hurt. I washed my hair with the same soap and thought of Ailsa, my ex-woman, my rich ex-woman, who’d bought me soaps and shampoos and shaving creams and kept me smelling nice. Then I thought of Cyn, my ex-wife who didn’t give a damn after a while how I smelt or what I did or thought or said. Funny thing was, I missed them both.

  At eight o’clock I was wearing a freshened up shirt and a clean face and was ready to go calling. I got directions to Red Oak Road from the motel office and negotiated the circles and crescents they have in those parts to take the cockiness out of strangers. The neighbourhood looked like Professor and fat-cat territory; the gardens were wide and deep in front and the houses featured a lot of timber and glass and weren’t short on stone walls and terraces. The Baudin place didn’t let the street down. It had half an acre of garden out front and the trees seemed to have been specially chosen for their cumulative effect of taste and order. I could see a big garage at the end of the drive which held a brace of European cars. A few more of the same were standing out in the street.

  I parked and went through the open gates towards the house. It was a well set-up affair in white brick with ivy or something growing on it. Splashing and the strains of jollity from behind the house took my attention and I kept on the drive towards the back. A gate in a white trellis fence gave on to a flag-stoned patio with a low wall around it. Beyond the wall was a swimming pool and a lot of smooth lawn. There was still some light and enough warmth in the air for fun, fun, fun; water splashed up from the pool and glittered like quicksilver. There were about ten people in the pool and three times that many out of it. The dry people were wearing casual clothes and drinking drinks. The sexes seemed to be about equally represented. I took a few steps across the patio and a big man in a dark suit came quickly out of the house and barred my way.

  “Private party, sir,” he said quietly.

  “This is the Baudin residence?”

  “A private party,” he repeated. “By invitation.”

  “The night is young. I hope they enjoy it. I’m not here for a party, I want to see Mr. and Mrs. Baudin.”

  “What’s your business?”

  I handed him a card. He read it and then looked me over carefully; he was poker-faced but his eyes told me he was wondering how anyone could sink so low. I felt resentment.

  “Who’re you by the way—the caterer?”

  “I’m Mr. Baudin’s personal secretary.”

  “And bouncer?”

  “If necessary. There’s been no call for it so far.”

  If it was an invitation I was prepared to pass it up. He had a couple of inches and many pounds on me and none of it looked soft. He held himself well and he’d put the card out of sight so fast I hadn’t followed the movement. His hands were free again.

  “I don’t want any trouble, just a minute or two with the host and I’ll be on my way—I won’t even dirty a glass.”

  Our encounter must have looked intense because it had attracted the attention of some of the drinkers. A couple of them ambled across towards us. The secretary made a motion of his arm that suggested my dismissal, possibly by force, when one of the onlookers spoke up.

  “Hey, Cliff Hardy, Cliff.” He lifted his glass. I recognised him as a reporter I’d known in Sydney. I’d heard he’d joined the staff of a cabinet minister. I raised my hand and my mind searched for his name. We shook hands.

  “How’s tricks Cliff?”

  “All right.”

  “Do you know Mr. . . . Hardy, Mr. Rose?”

  Tom Rose.

  “Yeah sure, from my Sydney days. Still enquiring privately Cliff?”

  “Right. Still a fiercely independent voice?”

  He laughed. Rose is a short, broad man and his laugh sounds like someone pounding on an oil drum. The laugh did for the secretary. I was in. He leaned forward and dropped a few discreet words between us.

 
; “Mr. Baudin has been indisposed. I’ll take your card in and mention that you are acquainted with Mr. Rose. He might see you.”

  “Thanks Jeeves,” I said. He went off athletically into the house and I turned my attention to Rose. “You carry a little weight in this town, Tom?”

  “Just a little. Come and have a drink. Look, Cliff, I’d like you to meet Richard . . .” He swung around to where his companion had been but the man had drifted away. “Shit, he’s gone. Never mind, come and have a drink, there’s gallons of it—the best.” His voice was a bit sloppy. It wasn’t his fault there were still gallons. I fell in beside him as he moved towards the throng.

  “Who’s this Baudin anyway?”

  He almost did a skip. “Captain of industry, mate, captain of industry. Least that’s what he is now. He was a public servant once, just like me.”

  “What was it? Land, rate of the dollar?”

  “I wouldn’t like to say Cliff. He’s big in mining now. Here we are, what’ll you have?”

  We’d reached a trestle table covered with bottles, ice buckets, siphons, and chopped-up lemons.

  “Gin and tonic,” I said.

  A thin blonde in a pink pantsuit detached herself from a clutch of drinkers by the pool and came over to the table.

  “Let me do your bidding,” she said throatily.” ‘Lo Tom. And who do you write for?” She got busy with the Gordons Dry gin and the Schweppes tonic and ice as if she knew what she was doing.

  “The New York Times” I said.

  “Stringer or staff? Do introduce us, Tom.”

  Rose sighed. “Cliff Hardy, Billie Harris.”

  She smiled and handed me the drink. One of her front teeth was a little yellow but the drink was blue and cold as a good gin and tonic must be. “You don’t sound American, Cliff, spent much time there?” Her hands were busy building another drink but her glittering eyes never left me. “Are you on politics with the NYT, features?” She started to move out and around the table towards me.

  “I’m sort of freelance,” I said desperately.

  Someone large fell or was pushed into the pool. The displaced water flew up, women shrieked, men swore and Billie Harris turned to look. I moved fast to the right, lurked for a few minutes, and came out on a landscaped higher level. Tom Rose was pouring beer into a schooner glass from a king-sized can.