Peter Corris: The Other Side of Sorrow

I ran when the lane was clear and saw her well ahead, moving quickly through the crowd, her dark head bobbing. I was fifty metres behind her and gaining when she opened the passenger door of a Kombi van that looked as if it had been painted by John Lennon on acid. I sprinted. No hope of stopping the van but maybe I could get close enough to read the number. I stopped, squinted and read the letters and digits aloud, repeating them several times before scribbling them on my palm with a ballpoint. I was uncertain about one of the numbers. It could have been a five, but perhaps it was a three. Not a bad result under the circumstances. People in the street looked at me and edged away. I didn’t blame them. You can’t be too careful about out-of-breath men talking to themselves and writing things on their skin.

I walked back the way I came and found Cyn waiting for me outside the newsagency.

‘You ran off. You saw her, didn’t you?’ she said.

‘I saw someone.’

‘Oh, God.’

She swayed and I had to grab her to stop her falling. I was shocked at how thin her arms were and she weighed next to nothing. She was a fully-grown woman but she felt like a child as I helped her walk slowly back to my car. She said nothing until we reached her building, then she turned to me. Her blue German eyes were a washed out pale grey and there were two hectic spots in her cheeks.

‘You lost her, didn’t you?’

‘Not exactly. She got into a van and I got its number.’ I showed her the writing on my hand; it had run a bit from perspiration. ‘I can trace it. Maybe.’

‘What d’you mean, maybe?’

‘Cyn, she wasn’t driving. I can trace the owner, but who’s to say the owner was even driving. Young people borrow and lend cars all the time.’

‘It’s something though. I know you’ll be able to find her. Thanks, Cliff.’

‘Don’t thank me yet. Wait a bit.’

‘She was looking at me, wasn’t she?’

‘Right.’ I wondered whether to tell her in detail what had happened. How would she take it? I decided that she wanted everything she could get, needed it. ‘She saw you buy the ticket and scratch it. I have to tell you she wasn’t impressed.’

‘Wasn’t she? Well, that’s too bad. You know I had a feeling that she was close. More than a feeling – I knew she was there, and I wanted to stand still and do something to give you a chance to look around properly. I guess it worked.’

‘I guess it did. How much did you win?’

‘Oh, a hundred dollars. I’ll give it to Geoffrey. You saw him the other day.’

‘Yes. Seemed like a good kid.’

‘He is. Cliff – you saw her. You must have been fairly close at one point…’

‘She had her back to me most of the time.’

‘Cliff.’

I gave in. ‘OK – you’re right. She bears a remarkable resemblance to Eve. Moved like her as well’

‘Moved?’

‘Eve was a champion schoolgirl sprinter. She could lick me over a hundred yards. She had this long stride. Quite different from the way they run now. This girl moved the same way.’

‘Thank you. You’ll follow this up and keep me informed?’

‘Of course. Can you manage? D’you want me to call someone. Your son?’

‘No, I’ll be all right after a rest.’

‘I’ll see you up there.’

‘No. I couldn’t bear you to see how I live. The place is awash with pills and things to throw-up into. If you want to help me, just find her. Please.’

‘How will your kids cope with this, if it turns out to be true?’

‘How will you?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well I don’t know about them either. It’s not the sort of situation you can cite precedents for. We’ll all in the shit together, as you might say.’

I wondered whether I should tell her about the freak wagon – it had sported a Nimbin Mardi Grass sticker and an old one with Porky Pig in a police uniform – and what that might imply about the sort of company the woman was keeping. I decided against. Cyn eased herself out of the car and managed to give the door a healthy slam. She crossed the road with her backbone ramrod straight and I watched her use her security card on the gate and disappear into her own world – what was left of it.

I used the mobile to call my contact in the Roads and Traffic Authority and negotiate a fee – all done in a long-established encrypted fashion. Corruption has its place in the scheme of things. She said she’d get on it immediately. I gave her my mobile number and the numbers at home and the office.

‘Important, huh? Xerox.’ This was a signal that she knew the call wasn’t being monitored. How they can be sure I don’t know, but they do.

‘Very.’

‘I should’ve gone higher.’

‘Remember ICAC…’

‘Fuck ICAC. Be back to you soon.’

I drove home thinking that of all the strayed, absent, missing, absconding person quests I’d ever been on, this was the strangest. The day turned foul. The rain bucketed down and the traffic became sluggish apart from the odd cowboy confident of his vision and his radials. I drifted back into Glebe and had lunch at the cafe at the corner of Glebe Point Road and Broadway where a string quartet plays on Friday and Saturday nights. Glebe has changed since Cyn lived here.

I drove home and picked up the slightly damp mail from the slightly leaky letterbox. Although I hadn’t seen it for so long I recognised Cyn’s handwriting on one of the letters. There was no mistaking that precise backhand. I ripped it open and swore when I saw that as well as a note it contained a cheque for $3000. The cheque fell to the floor as I read the note:

Dear Cliff Don’t be offended. I know this business won’t be easy for you, but I want you to treat it as a job as much as you can. I know you’re good at your job and that you love it. I hated it as you know, but that’s ancient history. Please do your very best. You never know, we might have done something right after all.

My first impulse was to tear up the cheque but I resisted it. A private enquiry agent needs a client to validate his activities and there’s no better validation than money. The rules state that there should be a signed contract as well, but who ever heard of a game where everyone played by the rules? I put the cheque away in my wallet. When I got to the office I’d open a file labelled ‘Samuels’ and put the cheque and the note and a copy of the photograph of Eve in it.

Waiting for the call from the RTA, I made coffee and sat looking out at the rain and trying to find other explanations for the woman who was watching Cyn, or other identities for her. Both my parents were only children so there were no first cousins resembling Eve or myself to consider. I was as sure as any man who’d led a reasonably active sex life can be that I’d fathered no children. The question was – had Eve ever had an illegitimate child? I thought it highly unlikely. As a teenager Eve entered a god-bothering phase that lasted until she went to university at the age of twenty-two. She was evangelical and puritanical until she plunged into left-wing politics in her first year. She married Luke, a fellow radical, in her second year and they had the first of their two sons within a year of that. I’d found Eve the Christian pretty hard to take, but I’d kept in touch with her. I saw more of her after she swapped the Bible for Gramsci. I didn’t take Gramsci on board any more than I had the Bible, but it made her easier to make fun of. I couldn’t see where Eve could’ve squeezed in a kid.

A doppelganger? Sure, they exist, but why would my sister’s doppelganger be watching my ex-wife? The world is crazy, but not that crazy.

The call came through as I was contemplating making a second pot of coffee as a way of heading off the impulse to have a drink. Like many people in this suspicious age, I tend to use the answering machine to screen calls, but this time I picked up.