The Cuckoo's Child (22 page)

Her logic eluded me, but there was a force to everything Miss Hoar said, probably a hangover from her days as a teacher in that golden time when parents and students looked on teachers as superior beings, like doctors, almost godlike in their knowledge. Personally, I've never experienced this reverence, but I've heard of it. Even little Miss Penfold sometimes hints at a different world, hidden now in the mists of time, when she wasn't harassed by lumpen boys and tittering girls, and her teeth were her own and never a source of humiliation and ridicule.

Whatever the source of Miss Hoar's authority, it had its effect on me. I felt encouraged by her discovery and judgement. Neil caught it too, when I called him later.

“You sound very chipper,” he commented when I had brought him up to date. “I guess the uncle's next?”

You'd think I'd feel peculiar sitting here talking to you like this, Stephen, but believe me, I felt a lot stranger talking to Neil. We had shared so much, and he had encouraged me to start my search, yet his interest in the outcome was inevitably an outsider's. Over there I was literally another person; I had seen things, been to places, met people he had no knowledge of beyond my descriptions. They were
my
experience, quite disconnected from the Livvy he knew, and his only way into them was through my narrative, which could be as closed or revealing as I chose. There was a tiny, shameful delight in that.

I tried to make up for it by pressing him for details about home. He told me about his work; he'd just been reading Bruce Chatwin, so his latest country was something like Patagonia. And there was another project under way, but he was tightlipped and awkward about that, hedging and taking refuge in artistic uncertainty, or so he claimed. “I'll tell you more when it's clear in my mind,” he said, “or when it's finished, if I ever get that far.” A few minutes of that and we were like two acquaintances trying to prolong a conversation out of politeness.

“How's Maisie?” I asked desperately.

“She's fine. Missing you, of course.”

Of course? Did that mean he missed me too?

“She's taken to haunting the studio, but I'm a poor second best.” There was a pause. “She'll be glad to see you again.” Another pause. “We all will.”

It was as close as Neil would come to saying he was lonely. I knew what he wanted to hear, but a mulish voice in my head muttered,
Not yet, not yet
.

“I know,” I said, “but I've got to see this through now, haven't I?”

I could almost feel him giving himself a shake, injecting enthusiasm into his voice.

“Of course! Everyone's dying to know how it all turns out. Stephen was asking me just the other day if there was any news.”

Another pang of guilt. When had I last thought of you? It was a shock to find that my other self could let you drift away to the edges as well. Hastily, I asked how you were getting on.

“Not too bad. He's back at work, says he's feeling better, says the thing's in remission. Just have to wait and see now. Maybe he'll be lucky.”

“He's due for some of that.”

“We both know luck has nothing to do with what you deserve, Liv.”

Daniel's presence hummed on the line.

“True. I've been telling myself that these last few weeks. It's all fallen together so easily, I know it can't last, I'll hit a roadblock and that'll be that. I'll be a jigsaw with missing pieces forever.”

Neil's snort of derision exploded in my ear, the first unstudied thing in our conversation.

“That just makes you more of a challenge, not impossible!”

I know when I'm over the top. I tried to match his mood.

“Okay, you can put me in my box and stuff me in the attic when my mystery wears thin. You go and paint a masterpiece—I've got a past to dig up. Give my love to everyone. Maybe I'll have an uncle next time I call!”

I went to the funeral. For the occasion, I dragged out my black leather jacket, shabby from overuse, a black skirt creased from being crushed in the wardrobe, black tights, and a black turtleneck sweater that had pilled under the arms and definitely seen better days. The number of shades of black was a revelation. The overall effect was sombre enough but amazingly scruffy. I looked like a cross between a Dickensian mute and a shabby Goth. Common sense reasserted itself, and abandoning deep mourning and its attendant feelings of hypocrisy, I set out for Brighton again in comfortable beige pants and a blue sweater, with the black jacket on top because it was windproof.

A taxi deposited me at the funeral chapel. There were no vehicles in the parking lot except for a hearse. Obviously Deirdre had been right; there were few mourners for her mother.

I was still hopeful there would be an elderly man among the few; Deirdre had seemed to expect her uncle to come by train if he came at all. Inside, though, I found Deirdre sitting on her own in a front pew. Three old ladies whispering with their heads together occupied a pew several rows back. An invisible organ was funnelling
Ave Maria
into the chapel much as Barry Manilow tunes flood into elevators.

Deirdre brightened as she looked up at me.

“Oh you came,” she said. “That's nice. You didn't have to, really, but I'm glad.” Her voice dropped as she looked over her shoulder. “Not much of a turnout, is it? Those three used to play bridge with Mum down at the Golden Agers. They seemed more annoyed than anything. I suppose they'll have to find another partner now Mum's gone.”

“Uncle Magnus not here?”

“He phoned and said he couldn't make it. Said the old lady's poorly and can't be left. Probably threw a fit just so's he couldn't come, miserable old cow.”

“Did you tell him anything about me?”

The organ had segued into “Amazing Grace” without a pause. Despite the sound the silence was oppressive and Deirdre mumbled self-consciously from behind her chapped hand as if to shield the occupant of the coffin, sitting spare and unadorned save for a single sheaf of white carnations just in front of us, from the evidence of our continuing vitality.

“Well, yes. I told him you'd been to see me and that. Was that all right? I didn't mess up, did I?”

Before I could answer, the organ ground out the finale of the hymn and extinguished itself abruptly. At the same time a lanky man in a black gown materialized at Deirdre's side and touched her elbow, making her jump and clutch at her bosom reproachfully.

“If you're ready, we'll begin,” said the man, then inclining his head graciously to her stammering, glided to the front of the chapel and took his place beside the coffin.

“We are gathered together,” he intoned mellifluously, “to remember our sister in Christ, Sarah Faith Murphy . . .”

He'd had a lot of practice. His voice was consciously beautiful, like John Gielgud playing Hamlet, and soporific. Sarah Faith Murphy meant nothing to him, and there was not the least suggestion of emotion or involvement, simply a dispassionate recitation of the appropriate words, to everything there is a season, sparks flying upwards from the dried grass, dust, and ashes, resurrection and life eternal. We were enjoined to sing a hymn, and the old ladies behind us perked up and launched their quavery sopranos into “Abide with Me” with little regard for its lugubrious tempo, racing the minister and the organ to each line, and embarking on the rallentando of the last three notes well before the rest of us, so that our finale came as a kind of echo and was unexpectedly moving.

I felt a pricking at my eyes and hoped my nose wouldn't turn bright red as it usually does when I cry. Emotion was short-lived, though, as the undertaker slid forward to remove the carnations and press some hidden switch. With a slight jolt, the coffin rolled forward rather like a large suitcase on an airport carousel and nosed its way through a discreet opening. Deirdre squeezed her hands together and gave a muffled squeak. The curtains flapped together behind the coffin and that was that. I wanted to yell, “Stop! Let's do it all again, properly!” but the minister was advancing on Deirdre, and the undertaker was whisking away the flowers. I had the strangest feeling that they would have looked quite blank if I'd mentioned Sarah's name.

“Well, that was very nice, dear,” said one of the old ladies, holding Deirdre's limp hand in both of hers. “It was a lovely send-off. I do like the old hymns.”

“We'll miss her down the centre,” said another, whose black felt hat was skewered to her head with a large silver pin.

“Yes,” agreed the third, “I don't know where we'll find a fourth to replace her, I'm sure.”

“Deirdre isn't interested in our little problem, Mabel,” reproved the first lady. “What are you going to do now, dear?”

“I'm just going home,” said Deirdre. “There's the cats to feed.”

“Oh yes, the cats. Sarah was so fond of them, wasn't she? I'm allergic myself. Not having refreshments, then? Well, it's probably better for you just to go home and be quiet. I always think having everyone back after a funeral is horrible.”

She looked disappointed, though, and it gave Deirdre another reason to feel inadequate.

“I should have invited them, shouldn't I? But I don't have anything in the house. I don't think I've even got a loaf of bread. Tins of cat food, plenty of that, but that's not much use, is it? And what would I give them to drink? Aren't you supposed to have sherry and stuff like that?”

I stemmed her agonizing and led her to a café up the road. I couldn't just wring out the information I wanted and leave her to trail drearily away to the cats. Nor was another immersion in that special feline smell inviting. Isn't there a planet with an atmosphere of ammonia? Venus? Imagine being a creature that could only exist in air that reeked of cats or untended public lavatories.

Over tea and scones I steered Deirdre back to her conversation with her uncle.

“So what did Uncle Magnus say when you told him about me?”

Deirdre looked thoughtful.

“Well, he didn't say much really,” she ventured at last. “I said we thought we might be cousins and he said, ‘How d'you reckon that, then?' so I told him about the things you had with you, and how you were found and that, but he still said no, couldn't be, there had to be some mistake.”

“Did he say why he thought it was impossible?”

Deirdre licked her finger and foraged about her plate for crumbs. There was a smear of jam at the corner of her mouth.

“He just said there's a grave and that's an end of it. ‘Tombstones don't lie,' he said. I don't know what he was talking about there.”

“But that's like saying cameras never lie,” I retorted. “We all know they can. Just because we hardly ever want to check doesn't mean that every grave actually contains what it says on the headstone.”

“Oh yes,” she breathed, “I saw a film like that on the tele. They dug up this grave, and the coffin was full of bricks. The person who was supposed to be in it had faked his own death to get away with all the money after a bank robbery, but the others had their suspicions, and so did . . .”

“Yes, well, that's a story, but it's possible, isn't it?”

Deirdre nodded her head but continued to look puzzled.

“What I don't get is if he's talking about your mother's tombstone, how does that make it impossible for
you
to exist?”

It was my turn to look uncomfortable. If, as I suspected, the headstone mentioned both my mother and me, I could understand Uncle Magnus's conviction very well. And how did I explain the presence of a child in the grave without revealing Mum and Dad's peculiar role? It dawned on me that I was reluctant to expose that element of the story, and my hesitation had nothing to do with the difficulties I would face trying to tell such a wildly improbable tale. I felt the need to protect the two people who had brought me up; after all, they must have committed more than one crime, and I had no idea how vindictive my new family might feel. I might see some mitigation, but would they? In the meantime, there was Deirdre's awkward question, left hanging in the air between us, to answer. I had to think fast.

“Sometimes gravestones are used as memorials,” I said. “The child disappeared and they had to assume she was dead too. Maybe they just included her on the stone when they buried her mother. You've seen those family graves that say, ‘Here lies so-and-so, and his beloved wife such-and-such, and what's his name, dearly beloved son of so-and-so, lost at sea in the sinking of the
Lusitania
, blah, blah, blah.'”

Deirdre brightened.

“Right,” she said, “you
are
clever. Why didn't I think of that? That's what it'll be. You'll have to tell him that. He won't be quite so sure, then.”

Maybe, I thought. And maybe Uncle Magnus will be a tougher nut to crack than Deirdre. And what about the Holy Terror, implacable in her rejection of everything? If it had been easy so far, I sensed the tide was now running against me. There were, after all, two sides to this situation and no guarantee that the people I claimed as my family would have any desire to take up that role.

To defend myself against thought while on the train, I bought a copy of
The Times
at the station. At least the crossword would distract me, I hoped. I was partly right. The crossword drove me to distraction, and I abandoned it angrily for the Letters to the Editor. There I discovered that the readers of
The Times
, those strange superior people who could actually solve the crossword, were concerned about public money wasted on the education of morons and thugs whose only ambition was to destroy everything that decent people hold dear, about unrestricted parking, busking in the Underground, gazumping and squats, the negative effects of the Common Market on the English sausage industry, the proliferation of regional accents on the
BBC
, and the tricky qualities of Margaret Thatcher's face, which could be seen in all its deceptive femininity smiling reproachfully at a deputation of union spokesmen on the front page.