The Touch of Innocents

  By contrast he saw a handsome woman of above average height who, although still frail, moved with grace across the room and who even in her anonymous hospital cotton was unquestionably feminine. The skin was clear, fresh, the hair brushed lustrous and her green eyes bright, active, questioning, eyes that were not made up but which scarcely needed artificial highlights, eyes he had seen many times on reports from the danger zones of the world where make-up would have looked faintly ludicrous. Green eyes, his favourite. Eyes that had danced in the midst of a room crowded with grizzled correspondents and that had helped him pick her out for the benefit of an exclusive interview.

  It was the first time a man had stared at her like that since she came to hospital, and he made no attempt to hide his appreciation; self-consciously her mind brushed over the tiny root-like veins on her leg which had erupted during pregnancy and which she had resolved to have cosmetically removed. When she had the time.

  Suddenly her thoughts struck her as strange. She had been faithful to her husband throughout their marriage yet here she was already worrying about what other men might think of her, and she of them. Such sensations were smudged with sadness, yet she could not deny the kernel of excitement that was also there. At least she was starting to feel something again.

  ‘And technically I have trouble in proving I exist. All my identification was lost in the crash.’

  ‘No problem. If you’ll allow me I’ll kick some backsides at the US Embassy. Get someone down to see you.’

  ‘You’re very kind. Should have done that myself but, before today, I hadn’t really given it a thought. Such things seem irrelevant when you’re lying in hospital with your memory rattled to pieces. I suppose I’d better get hold of my bank and find some means of living and dressing; social services are finding a boarding house in the town for Benjy and me to stay while I sort things out.’

  She was thinking out loud, not beseeching help, but he responded without hesitation.

  ‘Look, you’re trying to get well, not bury yourself in problems. Allow me to cut through all this for you. Please. Not often a politician can do anything about real problems, we’re always too busy pretending we’re saving the world.’

  She was amused by his modesty.

  ‘I have a house in Bowminster, about fifteen miles from here. Stacks of room, empty during the week while I’m in London. You and your son would be very comfortable, and very welcome. There’s thatch and plenty of land and a gardener who can be your chauffeur and run any errands. Give you the time and freedom to sort everything out.’

  ‘That’s far too generous …’

  ‘Don’t make me out to be something I’m not, Miss Dean.’

  God, how incredibly modest and English he was, she thought. For a brief moment she looked into his moist eyes, flecked with the strange upper-class confection of authority and inbred decay, and wondered if all those stories were true and he was an archetypal English fag, before she realized she was being revoltingly cynical. Still, if he were, it meant she had nothing to worry about by staying in his house …

  ‘Since I have no family living with me any longer …’

  OK, a closet fag. Christ, Izzy, the guy’s trying to help you!

  ‘… I hate the thought of the house standing empty for so much of the time. I’d be very happy. Telephone bill’s already enormous so don’t worry about that. And as for clothing and the rest, that’s easy.’ He plunged into his jacket pocket for his wallet. ‘You have to be a good credit risk. Here’s two hundred pounds to get you going. Give it back when you’re on your feet.’

  ‘But I can’t accept money from …’ – she was about to say a strange man but it sounded too pathetic – ‘… from a politician. The Secretary of State for Health.’

  ‘Oh, but I’m not!’ He clapped his hands, delighted to be able to overwhelm her argument. Unlike last time. ‘You missed it. The reshuffle. I’m now Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State for Defence. And you, Miss Dean, are a foreign correspondent. If my attempt to help bothers you, simply treat it as a bribe.’

  They both laughed; she felt desperately vulnerable, it was time to stop fighting. She thanked him, and he arranged for his gardener to pick her up at two that afternoon.

  Only later did the realization dawn that this was the man in whose hands were now held the future of the Duster and with it her vengeful husband’s fortunes.

  A sense of well-being began to build inside Izzy as she collected Benjy and began to gather up the few items of clothing and second-hand soft toys that had appeared from the various streams of helpers and benefactors which trickle through any hospital. She had her son, whatever his father planned, and at last she was making a start on piecing her life back together again. She was no longer alone; things couldn’t get any worse, she told herself.

  The Devereux driver would be arriving soon and it was time to bid her goodbyes. She made the round between ITU and the neurology department and up to the toddlers’ ward, all the places which had been her world for the last few weeks, shaking hands, receiving wishes, congratulations and gratuitous advice, offering her thanks.

  It was in the toddlers’ ward amidst the muddle of bright colours and overstuffed animals, at the cot next to Benjy’s, that she came across preparations for another departure.

  ‘Time for us to go, sweetheart,’ a young black woman was instructing a small and very white child. The child, a girl, was scarcely a year old and protesting vigorously; the woman was of West African origin by her heavy accent.

  Izzy felt a tug towards the girl, vigorously red-haired like Bella had been and not much larger, and her gaze wandered back and forth between woman and child.

  The woman, noting Izzy’s interest and confusion, let forth an amused whoop. ‘No, I’m not her mother,’ she beamed.

  Izzy returned the good humour. ‘Somehow I didn’t think so …’

  ‘I take her to meet new parents,’ she explained, before realizing this was scarcely an explanation at all. ‘I am from the social services. My name is Katti. This little thing is being adopted.’

  ‘Poor thing,’ was Izzy’s instinctive response, but she was immediately contradicted.

  ‘No, no, dear. She is lucky. Nice new home. Two cars. Loving parents.’ Katti lowered her voice to offer a confidence. ‘See, the natural mother is a single lady, only fifteen, from some place around Birmingham. Come here to have her baby. Lot of these girls come here, it’s quiet, by the sea, away from friends and parents, you know. Very private. First she says she wants to give the child for adoption, then the silly thing changes her mind. But her parents won’t let her back, see?’

  ‘I see. But I find it difficult to understand.’

  ‘Right. So the girl gets scared, thinking the baby be taken from her. Runs off and lives for months in squats, hiding, caring for the baby all by herself.’ Katti’s eyes, huge and encircled with dramatic dark rings, rolled in pain. ‘And she starts thieving and doing God knows what else for food and baby clothing. By the time we find her, the little baby is like a scrap of paper, so underweight, sleeping in a cardboard box.’

  ‘So you have taken the baby away from its mother?’

  ‘Goodness, no. We talk with the girl, and talk and talk. No rush. We never do anything in rush down here.’ She laughed at what was obviously a standard Dorset line. ‘In the end she agrees it’s best for her and for baby that she stick to the first plan and let the little one be adopted. No way she can cope. We don’t blame her, poor thing, she tries so hard.’

  At this point the baby, indignant at having ceased to be the centre of her minder’s attention, threw up over the clothes in which only moments before she had been dressed. Izzy smiled and the black woman scowled in mock offence, but Benjamin pointed at the baby and gave a whoop of laughter.

  ‘Baby thdick, baby thdick,’ he gurgled. His eyes shone with impish joy. It was the first time he had laughed since the accident.

  Still a month short of his third birthday, Benjy’s speech had be
en in any event rudimentary and the trauma of the accident had initially destroyed his willingness to persevere, yet since Izzy’s reawakening she had spent much of every day teaching him once again the basic lessons which fear had forced from his mind. For Benjy, and even more so for Izzy, every lisping phrase represented a major victory.

  Now he was laughing, too. Fighting back. Growing again. Izzy’s eyes brimmed with pride.

  ‘Baby’s leaving hospital, Benjy,’ Izzy told him, straightening his collar. ‘You and I are going to leave hospital, too.’

  ‘Dake baby wid us.’

  ‘No, Benjy, this little baby’s going to go to a new mummy and daddy,’ she started explaining, but Benjy’s humour had instantly turned to petulance and childish frustration. Since the accident and her traumatic albeit temporary ‘desertion’ his emotions had become fragile, more clinging, impatient.

  ‘Not dat baby. Dake our baby wid us. Baby Bella.’

  She gathered him in her arms and smothered him in kisses, clutching him possessively as though someone were about to snatch him from her, hiding within the curls of his hair the tears that were beginning to form.

  ‘Baby Bella can’t come with us, darling.’ The words hung bittersweet on her breath. ‘Baby’s dead and gone to Heaven.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Benjy …’

  ‘No, no, Mummy. Bella nod dead,’ he responded indignantly.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Lady came an took Bella away.’

  THREE

  With great tenderness Izzy sat Benjamin down, smoothed his hair, hugged him again, and gave herself time to recover. Patiently, with difficulty, she tried to explain to her son that he was mistaken. That he must have imagined things.

  The boy would have none of it, sticking firmly to his claim. He had some concept of death, it was one of the first lessons that children picked up when seeing the scenes of suffering on which Izzy reported. Death was a child who went to sleep. Never to wake up.

  ‘Lady dake baby Bella. An Bella cry.’

  ‘Which lady? A lady like this, Benjamin?’ she asked, indicating Katti, the black social worker who had begun to take an interest in the plight of mother and child.

  ‘No, no. Different.’

  ‘A lady like me, then?’

  Benjamin studied his mother as if for the first time, concentrating. ‘No.’

  In an instant the image had returned to Izzy and, with it, dread. Fear burned a pathway up her spine, searing along the back of her neck and beneath the skin of her scalp until it had set her mind ablaze. In the flickering light cast by the flames she saw the same lurid mask as in her nightmare.

  The girl. Eyes now full of terror. Melting away.

  And taking Bella with her.

  She grabbed a crayon and piece of paper on which Benjy had been scribbling. She drew a face, thin. Long straggles of hair.

  ‘Like that, Benjy? Hair like that?’ she enquired, haltingly.

  He nodded.

  ‘An old lady, Benjamin? Was she an old lady?’

  ‘No, Mummy,’ he answered impatiently, shaking his head in disagreement.

  ‘And eyes?’

  She drew two circles, but he looked blankly at her work. Then she began drawing around the circles, roughly, unevenly, until the eyes had grown small and the surrounding shadows distended and dark.

  ‘Yes. Dat her!’

  And now Izzy fell silent, appalled, frozen in torment. It couldn’t be true. Could it?

  ‘Can I help?’

  It was Katti. Izzy turned slowly, waking from a dream, part nightmare, part fantasy, but which nevertheless she felt certain was a dream.

  ‘My baby died. Here in this hospital. A few weeks ago.’

  Katti’s eyes widened in sympathy.

  ‘I know very little, really, haven’t wanted to. Until now. Few details, no death certificate. But it’s time to sort everything out. How do I do that, Katti? Do you know?’

  ‘Your baby dies here in this hospital? Sad. But no problem. I tell you, I can sort all this out for you. Here, my card.’ She thrust a flimsy card with her details into Izzy’s hand. ‘You don’t worry. I find out everything, you call in a couple of days. OK?’

  Weakly Izzy smiled her thanks and the torment began to recede. But, as hard as she tried, it would not disappear, for glowing in the embers of her torment was also hope. Pathetic, pointless, desperate new hope.

  An idea struck her. A foolish one, she knew, but one which could do no harm, might banish the illusions and end the agony. Help make her certain. She left Benjamin on the ward, explaining she still had one more person to thank.

  It was not difficult to find, though badly signposted. Those who needed it knew where it was. As she had regained her strength and begun to move about the hospital she had noticed the steady trickle of vans with no rear windows or apparent identification disappearing in the direction of the far corner of the car park.

  It consisted of scarcely more than a prefabricated cabin. Above a set of large double doors was hung a small, unembellished sign, the only relief to its otherwise total anonymity.

  ‘MORTUARY.’

  She stepped inside.

  She was in a room which acted as a corridor. Down the centre of the corridor ran a grille covering a drainage gully. In one corner stood a mop and bucket, in another a tubular metal trolley and behind that a large wall chart on which, in numbers from one to sixteen, were charted names and measurements. The wall opposite was dominated by grey metal doors some three feet high, stacked in double rows, with corresponding numbers. One set of doors had a hand-written placard taped to it.

  ‘LONG TERM. DO NOT LEAVE UNLOCKED.’

  The room was cool. From somewhere further within she heard a clattering sound, a metal tray being dropped, perhaps, and she followed the noise. She passed an open door through which could be seen a small wood-panelled chapel of rest, outside of which was arranged a row of cheap stacking chairs on which someone had left a pair of freshly washed wellington boots. As she turned the corner, the floor colour changed from grey to green; before she knew it she was through another set of double doors.

  The room was considerably larger than the previous one, set out like a hotel kitchen with sinks and counters and plastic dustbins and scales and scrubbing brushes and spotlessly clean utensils of all sorts. Hanging from a hook on the far wall was a circular saw.

  In the centre of the room stood two stainless-steel benches, each with a surface consisting of a shiny metal grille. On one lay a clutter of scalpels, hammers, saws, chisels, scissors, shears and other tools which would have made her late father, an enthusiastic woodworker, envious. On the other, under a spotlight which made the damp table gleam, was a small mound of material which was being attended and sorted by a small man in green overalls, apron, latex gloves and rubber boots. The floor around where he stood was damp. The strains of a Mozart symphony were being broadcast from a radio on a nearby counter and, as he leaned over the table, back towards Izzy, he clenched his buttocks in time with the music.

  Pom. Pom-Pom. Pom-Pom-Pom-Pom-Pom-Pom.

  While his lower body rose and fell with the rhythm, the rest of him remained utterly still, fixed upon his work. It was some time before he realized he was not alone.

  ‘Hello, doctor,’ he greeted from beneath his mask. ‘Be with you in a minute.’

  Her eyes shifted to her right where, along the wall, she found the identical grey metal doors with corresponding numbers, the other side of the refrigerator. In front was another trolley on which, covered in a sheet, lay stretched the unmistakable outline of a body. Now she knew what materials the man, a mortuary technician, was sorting through.

  She was used to death, but not like this, antiseptic and neatly numbered. And the stench was missing; there was no putrefaction, no singed flesh, only a slight tang in the air of – what? Formaldehyde, she guessed.

  The technician finished his sorting and placed various items into small plastic jars. As he turn
ed, she could see he had left on the table top a bright, pink, oozing slab of liver.

  ‘Excuse me if I don’t shake hands, doctor,’ he chuckled, advancing towards her with soiled and gloved hands held high. He reminded her of her gynaecologist. ‘How can I help?’

  ‘I am not a doctor.’ She found her mouth was painfully dry. ‘I am the mother of a baby girl who … passed through here a few weeks ago.’

  The technician was transformed into a bundle of agitation. His bushy moustache twitched and he began hopping from leg to leg. A flush began beneath his chin that stretched up to and then over his balding head.

  ‘Oh, my! I am so sorry. But you really shouldn’t be here. Please. Please! Wait outside.’

  In ungainly fashion, with hands still held in the air, he ushered her out of the room and indicated she should sit on one of the stacking chairs. He then disappeared, closing the double doors firmly behind him. She heard the sound of latex gloves being ripped off, the clattering of metal trays, the gushing of water. And the sound of a grey metal door banging shut.

  His face still glowed with embarrassment when he reappeared. ‘I do apologize. I thought you must be a visiting doctor. I had no idea.’ He sat down on the chair beside her. ‘You really, really shouldn’t be here, you know, it’s most terribly irregular.’

  ‘But I am here.’

  ‘Yes, well, I suppose you are.’ A tentative, ungloved hand shot from beneath his cuff. ‘Russell. My name’s Mr Russell. Tell me, how can I help you, Mrs …?’

  ‘Izzy Dean. My name is Izzy Dean. And my daughter was six months old. A car crash. Her name was Isabella, but at the time you didn’t know her name.’

  ‘Yes, I think I remember her. You’d like to know a few details?’ he enquired hesitantly. His moustache twitched once more.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Look, you go and wait in the chapel, while I go and fetch the register.’

  The chapel was rudimentary. Veneered walls, plastic flowers, garish electronic candles. Part of the design specs for a facility to which the architect had forgotten to add soul. Not a place to find comfort, or anything else, come to that.