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’d 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.’
‘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 women 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 Brudin, 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
