A Cry from the Dark Read online

  Over cold ham and cold meat pies and custard tarts (which didn’t taste any different from custard tarts made the Australian way, but Betty said it was very nice of Mrs. Naismyth to go to so much trouble for the invalid), Betty thanked the Naismyths for inviting her out and letting her listen to their wonderful gramophone records.

  “I’m passionate about music,” said Hughie’s mother. “With Eugene it’s more art, but I’m passionate about music.”

  “I did like the pictures on the wall,” said Betty.

  “They’re by my Auntie Frances,” said Mrs. Naismyth. “She had a wonderful eye for a good watercolor subject. About Mr. Sutherland’s ugly landscape, the less said the better. But Eugene says it’s good, and Paul’s father, who bought it for him, says it’s good, so who am I to have an opinion? They’re the experts.”

  “He bought it for me because he knew I’d appreciate it,” said Hughie, and they looked at each other again. The censored version for family consumption, Betty thought. She found it difficult to come to terms with the fact that Hughie’s father was distrusted by his own father, who in his turn had made this clear to Hughie himself. Betty herself was not overburdened with relatives and had always rather idealized the large family unit. She was invariably loyal to her own father and mother when speaking of them to the outside world. But then, she had never had any grounds for being anything else.

  On the way home Betty and Hughie talked nonstop, except when Betty begged Hughie to sing her the tunes from Beethoven’s Seventh so they stayed in her mind. Sometimes Mr. Naismyth joined in these, but mostly he kept quiet. Betty’s father was outside the house when they pulled up, but Mr. Naismyth just raised his hand and said, “You’ve got a really bright kid there.”

  “I know.” Betty’s father tried to keep his voice neutral, but Betty knew that there was an unspoken “without being told it by a condescending Pommie bastard.”

  “Got to get the car back to Bill,” said Mr. Naismyth, and drove off.

  Sunday should have been an anticlimax—and was, but not so much as Betty expected. They all went to church, and Betty, as always, met up with lots of schoolfriends there. The Naismyths were there as well, and Mr. Naismyth, whose first time at the church this was, made no attempt to hide his boredom. Not many of his schoolmates spoke to Hughie. He had had a brief period of acceptance when he had taught a group of boys the rules of what they called soccer. By now they had reverted to their own game, which Hughie called rugby and they called football. Hughie was neither popular nor unpopular in the school, merely disregarded. He gave every appearance of not minding, but Betty thought it probably was an appearance. Hughie, she divined, was an actor. Actors needed audiences.

  After the service, the Reverend Potter-Clowes singled out Betty in his greetings and farewells to his congregation at the door.

  “Betty! I wondered if you’d like to come round when you’ve finished your Sunday dinner. I shall be off to Corunna to take a service about three, so you can have the place to yourself. I thought you ought to do a bit more prospecting into my old Bulletin s—see the sort of thing they like.”

  “May I, Mum?”

  “Of course, Betty.”

  “Then I’d like to, please. But you wouldn’t disturb me if you were there.”

  “Oh, I do bumble in and out if I need things, as you know. And Corunna only gets a service once a month. I can’t let them down, can I?”

  Betty thought he probably could, but she just thanked him and said she’d be there by three.

  When she got to the little weatherboard vicarage, the Reverend Potter-Clowes bumbled—as he called it—through to the study with her—a room, Betty always noticed, where the works of theology and spiritual speculation were outnumbered by volumes of the Bulletin and Punch (both, Betty suspected, sources for the jokes the vicar regularly injected into his sermons). He brought her tea, with a plate of biscuits and a slab of gingerbread, and pointed out, as he always did, the volumes of the Bulletin for the past fifteen years, and the pile of more recent editions loose in the corner.

  “You really should dip into some of the old and some of the recent ones. Research your market. I once met a real writer—in the trenches—and he said that was what would-be writers always needed to do, but very seldom did.”

  “Did you fight in the trenches?” asked Betty. This was new to her.

  “Eventually. I tried to be an objector, but as time went on I couldn’t believe anymore that keeping out of the war was any sort of answer…We shall be celebrating Armistice Day soon. ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for a friend.’ So true.”

  “But wouldn’t it be even greater if he laid down his life for an enemy? Or for someone or something he didn’t really care about one way or another?”

  The Reverend Potter-Clowes seemed perplexed. “What have you in mind, Betty?”

  “Well, Czechoslovakia, for instance. Or England. No one really seems to like England or the English very much, but the men go off to fight for her.”

  “Ah, our conversation the other night. I don’t think you’ll find your father’s friend is right about Czechoslovakia. In the end and even if you don’t know much about a country, you find you can’t just shut your eyes to what is being done to its people…Ah, there’s my lift to Corunna. Do put on the light if you need it, but I don’t suppose you will.”

  Betty smiled as he left the house. Electricity was Michael’s little meanness. He used it as little as possible. She called him Michael to herself, getting it from her father, but she had to be careful not to use the name aloud. She settled down with a ten-year-old volume of the Bulletin, then changed to more recent issues when she got bored, enjoying the controversies about living issues which she had heard about on the wireless. She was digesting the information about the competition for young journalists when Potter-Clowes returned.

  “I’m just finishing,” she said, getting up. “There’s a limit to what I can take in in one go.”

  “Of course there is—but don’t go on my account. Did you find it interesting reading?”

  “Oh yes—I always do. But some of the people who write in say some very strange things.”

  “I expect that’s true of people who write to all newspapers and magazines.”

  “One man wrote in saying the dole was utterly wrong because birds don’t have any such thing. It’s a bit hard if we’re never to have anything the kookaburras don’t have, isn’t it?”

  The vicar laughed.

  “The Bulletin’s got itself a very sharp reader in you…You know, it’s wonderful to think that Bundaroo has thrown up such a keen brain and a creative intelligence such as yours is.”

  “Oh…I don’t know—” Betty squirmed a little.

  “Dear girl, don’t be embarrassed. It’s very clear to me that you have it in you to be something exceptional. Whether you do become that special being is in the Lord’s hands—and your own, of course. But I feel very blessed that in my little parish there is someone who can think—think through matters that other people just accept. It’s a great joy for me.”

  As she started on her way, Betty felt burdened by the vicar’s high expectations for her. She felt they were something she could never live up to. By the time she reached home, however, she had squared her shoulders and lifted her head. Oh yes, she could!

  Turning the OFF button on her tape recorder three days before her two visitors were due to arrive, Bettina fell into a reverie. She knew what had happened to Michael Potter-Clowes. He had got another parish at the beginning of the war, but one hardly more impressive than Bundaroo and the surrounding townships. His time as a conscientious objector probably didn’t help. But what about the others from her childhood in Bundaroo? Her friend Alice Carey, for example? Or Steve Drayton? Or Mr. Copley and Miss Dampier? Had the latter got married and concentrated on home and children, or had she stayed with a job she had a real talent for? Bettina had an idea that at that date you were forced to give up your job as a teach
er if you had children.

  Another age! But she wished she knew something about those people. She was cut off by what happened at the Leavers’ Ball, 1938. That was when her life had changed entirely.

  Chapter 5

  The Here and Now

  The next day, with only forty-eight hours to go before Oliver arrived, Bettina received a letter with Australian stamps on it, and in an unknown handwriting. Tearing it open and going straight to the signature, she confirmed what she had already suspected. It was from Sylvia Easton. She put down the pages, conscious that her heart was beating faster, and took two swigs from her breakfast mug of tea. This was a situation that seemed more fictional than real: she had last seen Sylvia when she was two months old. Now she must be in her late fifties. This was the first time Bettina had seen Sylvia’s handwriting. She had never received, and never wanted to receive, a photograph or any other memento of her. She chewed slowly through a piece of toast and apricot jam. Then she felt strong enough to read the letter.

  Dear Mrs. Cockburn,

  Oliver tells me that he’s discussed with you our plans to visit London. I am glad these are not upsetting for you, and that you agree it would be best if we stay at Mark’s flat, though we both look forward to your company at plays and concerts and whenever else you can spare the time.

  May I suggest that we meet as strangers, since that is what we in fact are? I am a friend of Oliver and Judy, and I’m coming because Judy felt she couldn’t face the long flights again at her age. All this is true, and reason enough for you to receive me politely but with no special warmth. I genuinely feel excited at meeting one of Australia’s foremost novelists, but nothing more than that.

  I think it is for the best if it is on those terms that we meet—as well-disposed strangers.

  With best wishes,

  Sylvia Easton

  Over the rest of the morning, which was mainly spent making notes for her next chapter, Bettina thought about the letter. She decided she approved of it. This was probably because the proposal suited her down to the ground. Emotionally and practically it had every advantage. One thing there had been no question of was showing emotion at her reunion with Sylvia. If she had felt no love for her at her birth, had felt no impulse to get in touch with her during her now quite long life, it would have been rampant hypocrisy to pretend any pleasure at the prospect of meeting now.

  The tone of the letter, too, suited her. Matching the proposal itself, it was distant. No, that wasn’t quite the word—matter-of-fact was more like it. Or businesslike. They would meet, they would talk about plays and operas, about present-day Australia. The tone of the letter was exactly right for such a prospect.

  She wondered why her daughter had addressed her by her married name. Hardly anyone used it these days—hardly anyone knew of her marriage, for a start. She had used the name Cockburn during the year or so of her marriage to the inadequate Cecil. In those days every married woman used her married name. But she had not published anything at that point, so she had not been burdened, as Agatha Christie in her heyday had been, with the name of a man from whom she had long been parted.

  Perhaps that is how they refer to me in Ollie’s household, she thought. She could imagine that Judy, whom she had met only once, was quite hot on respectability. A married name was a badge of respectability, particularly for a woman who had a child. Or was Sylvia Easton trying to register some kind of claim? She dismissed the thought. Hughie’s notion that she was surrounded by leeches and potential leeches should not be allowed to gain a foothold in her brain. That would poison whatever relationship they might manage to achieve.

  Nevertheless the notion came up again the next day, when her agent, Clare Tuckett, paid her one of her occasional breezy visits. She steamed in, waving little envelopes.

  “Tickets, darling. And in particular tickets for Covent Garden—and for the Golden Pair singing in Tosca. I can tell you I had to use every ounce of nous, influence, skullduggery—you name it, I’ve had to use it. Officially you’ll—or rather we’ll—be part of a corporate booking from British Gas, so we’ll be surrounded by people who are either asleep or talking. I felt I had to go along, after all the strings I’d pulled.”

  “I’ll pay of—”

  “Of course. Have you got a cigarette, darling? Thanks. Light? Oh yes, now I got tickets for Colin Davis and the LSO, for the Royal Shakespeare in Julius Caesar, South Pacific at the National—can’t think what’s national about South Pacific, can you?—and a big, vulgar concert of lollipops at the Albert Hall. So that takes care of five evenings. Anything else is up to you.”

  Bettina was, as usual, flabbergasted but grateful at having her responsibilities and choices preempted for her by her agent.

  “Clare, I didn’t expect you to do anything other than the Covent Garden—”

  “All part of the service, darling. These cigarettes are vile—why do you smoke them?” She stubbed hers out and absentmindedly took another from the packet. “Apart from Covent Garden I got three tickets for everything. I didn’t think your nephew Mark would be trailing along, from your account of him.”

  “Oh no, Mark won’t be with us. Quite apart from anything else, he’s a would-be actor, and taking him to the National or the Royal Shakespeare might suggest reasons why he’s not getting any work.”

  “Bitch,” said Clare approvingly. “He sounds wonderfully stupid. If he’s in some general plan to murder you I can’t see him staying out of police hands for long.”

  “That is a comfort. Anyway it’s not a plan to murder me, just to get my money.”

  “Since you’re much too sharp to be swindled out of it, the one thing suggests the other. Have you got your will all in order and as you’d like it to be?”

  “Well, not really. It’s years old, and some have died—”

  Clare cast her a piercing glance tinged with contempt, then marched over to the phone, dialed, and arranged a meeting with her solicitor for that afternoon.

  “We’ll want it finalized, and signed and witnessed on the spot. It probably won’t be a final one, but it’s urgent that it’s done, and is valid.”

  She banged down the phone.

  “Clare, it really isn’t that urgent.”

  “Of course it’s urgent. Leaving aside Hughie’s scare-mongering, you’re eighty.” A thought struck her. “Oh, by the way, I can’t get any rumors that Hughie is in financial low waters. It’s probably just senile suspiciousness. Now, Bettina, you’ve got till three o’clock to decide what you’re going to do with what you have. Write it down if you can, so we can just tear through it. Oh—that reminds me: you’re dictating things these days, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. I bought myself a tape recorder.”

  “Hmmm. Not the safest of records.”

  “Why not? You hear of people who’ve lost thousands of words from their computers.”

  “That was long ago, darling. Everyone has backup discs nowadays. Have you had what you’ve done already transcribed?”

  “Oh, I don’t know that it’s really ready for that yet, but I have got the name of a very good person who—”

  “So the answer is no. Give me all the tapes so far, and I’ll have them duplicated.”

  “Clare, I’m sure there’s a studio nearby that—”

  “Darling, it’s all part of the service. We have a lot of old crocks like you who dictate their books. We know what needs to be done—we have a standard drill. Anyway, we’ll charge you the earth. Now, when we’ve done that, your very good little woman—bound to be a woman, I presume? And cheap as dirt—can collect them and begin the work of transcribing. And when you have a new tape ready—no, a new chapter ready—she can bring it in, then collect it when it’s been duplicated.”

  “You’re going to an awful lot of trouble, Clare.”

  “Darling, you haven’t written a book in seven years, and you’ve only been with Tuckett and Mancini for ten. We can’t live off little pieces you write about your first book for the Author or ce
lebrity paragraphs on your favorite city for the New York Times. You’ve got to throw us a bit of meat now and then.”

  “Don’t pull the line that you only keep me on out of charity, Clare. You’ll do very nicely out of reprints and film rights.”

  “After a great deal of spadework and a lot of hard bargaining. Anyway, all I’m saying is a real book to sell and promote will be a nice change. I have no intention of letting you be murdered.”

  “That’s comforting to hear. Though I’ve no intention of letting myself be murdered either. You don’t just give up because your eightieth year is just around the corner. I’m not going to lie down and die.”

  “I’m sure you’re not, darling. Knowing you you’ve got a Kalashnikov stored behind your front door. Now, get me those tapes and I’ll be on my way.”

  When Clare was on her way, with the tapes stuffed into her handbag, Bettina luxuriated in the pleasant feeling of being looked after. Of course Clare was protecting her investment, but she felt sure that real liking was involved too. If the memoirs she was not writing proved to be a good commercial proposition then Clare would be well rewarded for years of support, tender loving care, and sheer cheering up. It was nonsense to see Clare as a person who was battening on her except in the obvious and accepted professional way. Meanwhile there was the wearisome and worrisome matter of the will. Bettina made some coffee and prepared to come to some decisions.

  Clare turned out to have some unexpected business that afternoon, so she sent a secretary from the agency whom she knew Bettina was fond of to take her to the solicitors’. She arrived at a quarter to three, and by then Bettina had made up her mind. Twenty minutes later she was spelling out the terms of her very simple new will to the agency’s lawyer: equal legacies of £5,000 to her brother, Oliver, to Sylvia Easton, Hughie Naismyth, Peter Seddon, and Katie Jackson. The rest, and all future royalties from her books, she left to the National Portrait Gallery. It was the place in London where she felt happiest.