Peter Corris - The Marvellous Boy

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 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 and 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’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.

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?’