The Last Anniversary

The normal practice in those days for unmarried Catholic girls was that you were sent off, all very hush-hush, to a home in the country, where you had your baby and it was quickly whisked away for adoption. Well, Connie wasn’t having any of that. She was determined that we would keep it. She was more interested in the baby than I was, to be honest. She was grieving for Mum too of course, and I think the baby gave her something to focus on. She was also determined to save my reputation, which seems funny these days, but she didn’t want word getting around Glass Bay that I was ‘used goods’. She thought I’d still meet a nice young man and settle down and get married. I remember she walked up and down the beach jabbing with her stick for ages until she finally marched back, looking very triumphant, and said, ‘Alice and Jack Munro are going to have a baby.’

I said, ‘Fine, Alice and Jack have a baby and then what? What happens to them?’

She said, ‘They vanish! Poof! We’re not even going to try to come up with an explanation. They’re going to vanish into thin air, just like the people aboard the Mary Celeste. It’s perfect. It’s absolutely perfect.’

She had a fondness for unsolved mysteries, you see, and the Mary Celeste was one of her favourites. She thought this would solve everything. We could keep the baby, save my reputation, and people would hear about Scribbly Gum Island. ‘Once people get a whiff of scandal they’ll want to come here for a sticky-beak,’ she said. ‘We’ll be ready and waiting with scones and tea. Light, fluffy scones! We’ll put Banksia Island right out of business.’

Well, I thought she was joking, or temporarily insane, but that very day she told Dad that Alice Munro was expecting. He said, ‘Well, as long as they keep paying their rent, that’s all we care about.’ Connie said, ‘I think they’re doing it tough, Dad. We’ll have to keep an eye on them.’ One day she said, ‘I promised that if anything ever happened to the Munros that we’d look after their baby,’ and Dad snapped, ‘What the bloody hell did you say that for?’ and Connie said, ‘I was being a Good Samaritan, Dad, just like in the bible,’ and that shut him up.

I didn’t see how we would hide my pregnancy from Dad, but Connie said he wouldn’t notice. She said he didn’t look at us. I didn’t see how it would be possible not to notice your daughter was nine months pregnant, but Connie was right. I just wore loose clothing and I never got very big anyway. Looking back, I think the poor man was close to being legally blind. That’s why he hardly left the house.

Or maybe he did notice and he just didn’t want to know. Maybe he saw through the whole thing. Who knows?

I had to give up work, of course, when I got to three months. The ladies at the department store had beady eyes. Luckily, Connie got a job doing office cleaning and she spent the next six months turning Grandpop’s house into Alice and Jack’s house. She put a couple of Mum’s old dresses in the cupboard. She managed to get a free crib from the Salvation Army. It was like a project for her. I think she enjoyed it. I remember the day she came up with the idea of the half-finished crossword, she was tickled pink. Well, I didn’t take much notice of it all, really. I was in a funny state at that time. The experience with Mr Egg Head had quite, well, shaken me up, I suppose. I spent hours fishing and trying not to think. I honestly didn’t think we’d get away with it. I thought we’d both end up in jail.

Of course, there was the problem of who would deliver the baby, when it came. We could hardly go to a hospital because what would we do about the birth certificate? Connie was thinking about confiding in a friend who was a midwife, but she really didn’t trust anybody with the secret. Well, in the end we didn’t have a choice. I started getting contractions three weeks early. It was one of those stormy, dramatic days. Connie took me around in the boat to Grandpop’s house. The water was all choppy and I was out of my mind with fear. We got up to the house and I had Enigma on the kitchen floor in about half an hour. Connie delivered her. She cut the cord with our grandmother’s old kitchen scissors. Her hands were all slippery and she was shaking so much she cut herself. So that’s her blood on the kitchen floor, and probably some of mine too. I remember Connie kneeling there with tears streaming down her face, blood dripping from her hand, holding Enigma. She loved Enigma instantly. It took me much longer. Actually, to be honest, Sophie darling, I could hardly bear the sight of her for quite a few months. I was worried she had an egg-shaped head. Don’t ever tell her that, will you? I still think it has a slightly eggy shape to it, at times. Connie was crying with joy, while I cried for my mother.

Well, we cleaned the baby and wrapped her up and took her home to Dad and we told him the story about going around to have a cup of tea with Alice and Jack and finding the baby. It was a test to see if he swallowed it–but he did, hook, line and sinker. At first he said we’d just have to take the baby to the hospital in Glass Bay and have it put in care, but Connie kept saying, ‘We made a promise, Dad,’ and then the funniest thing happened. Connie gave him the baby to hold and his face melted, went soft and smooth. He said, ‘Well, as long as she doesn’t wake me up at night,’ and handed her back.

The next morning Connie said to me, ‘This is your last chance to change your mind’, as if any of it was my idea! And she went off to the police station and told them we’d found an abandoned baby. Then the newspapers sent around Jimmy to do a story, and funnily enough I think Connie and I both really started to believe in it. Alice and Jack seemed more real to me than Mr Egg Head whispering vile things in my ear. Connie was right. The very day after the story appeared a boatload of sticky-beaks turned up at the island and we were ready with a tray of freshly baked scones: tuppence and ha’penny with a cup of tea.

Connie didn’t tell Jimmy the truth until after he came back from the war, and he was furious. The Munro Baby Mystery had been the story that started his career and he was horrified that it was a hoax. He took a long time to forgive Connie. That was when Connie came up with the idea of not telling Enigma until she was forty. I think it threw her when she realised she’d hurt Jimmy’s feelings. People don’t like to feel they’ve been conned, do they? Especially men. Men take themselves so seriously. Connie had this idea that by the time Enigma got to the age of forty she’d be mature enough to handle it. Actually, I think Enigma was mostly worried about whether she’d stay famous.