by Jenni Mills
And there’s another flash, which finally splits me open, and I’m back in the hospital but the lights have all gone out and Cabbage is laughing with his hands plunged up to the elbow in a woman’s guts and the nurse is screaming and holding a bucket out for all the blood that’s coming–
And then I’m back on the bed in my room on Drove Road, head twisted into the pillow half suffocated, and all the blood comes out of me in a gurt gush, and something else with it, slippery like a lump of greasy rubber–
I washed him in the basin but I knew it weren’t no good. When the blood and the sticky stuff came off him, he was no more’n a drowned animal, water making ripples in the fine straggly hair that was all over him like a little monkey. The Germans had hit something nearby and there was an orange glow lighting up the black afternoon, shining through the bathroom window to show me what I had in my hands. Ugly but not ugly: not a monster, after all, but a rubbery doll with a squashed blue face. No telling what colour his eyes would have been. My own eyes were leaking; it wasn’t his fault who his father was, poor little dab. Charlie. I’d have called him Charlie.
All the while the sky was splitting, the air-raid siren still howling, thunder in the air and the ground shaking. Ambulance bells drilled into my head, setting off a ringing. Then the water from the tap dried to a trickle and stopped. Bomb must’ve hit a water main. I stood in the bathroom with blood all down my legs and this lifeless thing lying on the cracked porcelain with Twyfords Sanitary Ware writ above him like a religious text, crying because I couldn’t finish the job, he was still not washed clean.
Charlie.
I picked him up out of the basin, held him against me, feeling his slithery wetness on my chest and the cold of him between my fingers. Charlie. I lifted his crumpled face, smaller than my own fist, to my mouth, and tried puffing into his nostrils like I’d seen Mr Peak-Garland’s shepherd do when the sickly lambs didn’t breathe on their own.
Next second the walls shook and tossed us on the floor because the house two doors down had been hit.
CHAPTER 48
Before the ambulance arrives, John says, ‘I shouldn’t have wasted time phoning. I should have driven straight here.’
‘You couldn’t possibly have known,’ I say, then wonder if somehow he did.
The paramedic’s staring at his bit of paper, trying to pretend he’s not listening. He told us he’s almost certain she hasn’t had a stroke, not a proper one anyway, though she might have had one of those little ones, a TIA…
If it wasn’t for the bruising on her face. Red purple, already, eye puffed up and almost closed, a black crusty split in the swollen skin, like a mean mouth.
How long’s she been on the floor?
She’s still there, in the middle of the hallway, her eyes wide and frightened, drifting in and out, the lids drooping now and then. The grip of her hand on mine loosens. Still with us, though, and no intention of going away, I hope, said the paramedic, cheerily, when he first arrived. Her eyes were closed when we found her, and her breathing seemed dreadfully ragged, but what do I know? John was completely calm, called 999 on the landline, then sat cross-legged by her with his hand on her forehead, willing her to hang on. It seemed to take for ever for the paramedic on the motorbike to arrive, though apparently he made it in less than ten minutes. There’s a proper ambulance on its way, too, to take her to the Great Western at Swindon.
Amazing, the gear they carry about with them. The paramedic has already shown us the ECG printout with the extra spike, the blip that says Frannie’s heartbeat’s doing something peculiar, like a drum out of rhythm. Where everybody else’s heart usually goes b’dum, b’dum, b’dum, Frannie’s is going b’dm’dum, b’dm’dum. He said the proper name for it, but I’ve forgotten already. It might be natural, or a side effect of the blood-pressure tablets she takes–or it might be something much worse. She came to while he was sticking the electrodes on her chest and said, What in buggeration you doing, boy? Perfectly all right, just fell, din’ I?
The paramedic smiled, and said, We’ve a feisty one here, then. What’s your name, my love?
Frances Robinson, she said. The end came out like a sigh.
Well, Frances…
I think she might prefer not to be called by her first name, I said, remembering over-friendly Bob from the day centre.
Sorry, Mrs Robinson.
Mi…Hard to hear her.
What was that, my love? He bent forward.
Miss.
Oh.
But you can call me Fran, if you like.
Contrary old bat, I thought. But she’s OK, isn’t she? She’s winning. Took a tumble, they’ll keep her in a couple of days for tests, then…
If it wasn’t for the bruising. Across her chest, as well, when he loosened her blouse to attach the electrodes. He narrowed his eyes, pursed his lips, felt carefully down her side. She closed her eyes and her face went tight and she made a little puffing sound.
That hurt, my love?
Just a bit.
He fiddled about some more, said something into his radio to Mission Control, then stood up and said: Ambulance’ll be here any minute. Can we have a bit of a word, like, in the kitchen?
I’ll stay with her, I said. You go with him, John. Sick inside, terrified what the paramedic wanted to say. Maybe she’d had a stroke after all. What if she’d broken her hip falling? Old people die from that, don’t they? I clung onto Frannie’s hand. She smiled up at me, then closed her eyes. She’ll be OK. She’s tough. She bounces.
If it weren’t for the trace of blood at the corner of her mouth. The yellow-white fragment on the floor I put my hand on, hard like a piece of grit. When I held it up to the light, it turned out to be a broken tooth.
‘Oh, no,’ I hear John say in the kitchen. ‘No, really. She wouldn’t. She was at work most of the day, then…’
I can’t hear what the paramedic mutters next, but then John says, with utter incredulity in his voice, ‘Where I was? You can’t seriously think…’
I let go Fran’s hand and stand up. ‘What the hell’s going on?’
In the kitchen, the paramedic has his radio in his hand.
‘Look, she must have hit her head on the hall table…’ But he’s shaking his head. Shit. Shit. He couldn’t really be saying that, could he?
Panic chokes off my voice as I stand there staring at them.
And at what they’d both missed, behind them, the glitter on the floor, the back door ajar an inch, and a small ragged circle in the glass next to the handle.
The two police officers, when they finally arrive, fifteen minutes after the ambulance has taken Fran to hospital, are less than thorough. They don’t even bother to fingerprint the back door. John’s steaming by now.
‘Fucksake man, she’s in her eighties. We found her on the floor. Could be a flicking murder inquiry, and you’re acting like it was kids scrumping apples.’ Then he catches sight of my face, and sends me an apologetic look, trying to make out he doesn’t really think she’s in any danger of dying, he’s laying it on thick to get some action out of these two turnips.
‘No need for that sort of language, sir,’ says the one who’s poking his nose round the house. The other one, a woman, is outside, in the police car, talking on the radio. ‘The scene-of-crime officers will be along later to fingerprint, if it turns out to be necessary. Any idea if there’s anything missing?’
‘I’ll take a look,’ I say. ‘He doesn’t live here, he wouldn’t know.’
I can see the wheels turning, the policeman thinking: What kind of a set-up have we here, then? Bit old to be your boyfriend, isn’t he? He gets out a notebook. ‘If you wouldn’t mind checking, Miss…? You do live here, then?’
‘Robinson,’ I say. ‘India Robinson. I’m her granddaughter.’
‘And she is?’
‘Frances Robinson. I haven’t seen her handbag.’
But there it is, on the bed, in Frannie’s downstairs bedroom. Zipped closed. Inside, purse,
pension book, building-society passbook, credit cards. I open the purse. Last week’s pension and, by the look of it, the one from the week before too, hardly touched, a fat wad of folded notes.
‘Maybe the intruder was interrupted before he found it,’ says the policeman, following me in from the hallway.
By what, exactly? Wouldn’t a caller have seen her, through the glazed front door, lying in the hallway, and called an ambulance? The policeman is coming to the same conclusion: his mouth pursing, he writes something in his notebook.
‘Drugs,’ I say. ‘Solstice. Lot of strange people wandering about–that’ll be what they were after.’
‘And where did the old lady keep her…drugs?’
‘Frannie,’ I say. ‘Please call her by her name.’ The blood-pressure pills and the gastric reflux medicine, the sum total of Fran’s pharmacopia, are kept in the kitchen cupboard by the kettle. Broken glass from the back door crunches underfoot. The cupboard contains serried ranks of pill packets, neatly lined up, all full.
‘Bathroom?’ asks the policeman, still on my heels. Of course, I recognize him now: he’s Corey’s husband. Only met him once, at the National Trust staff Christmas party, and can’t remember his name. Doubt it would do me any good if I could.
Upstairs, the mirrored door of the bathroom cabinet swings open to reveal a bottle of TCP, some out-of-date aspirins, an unopened box of codeine tablets the dentist gave Frannie when she had a root canal filled, and my contraceptive pills.
The policeman peers over my shoulder. Anything missing?’ I shake my head.
My iPod and stereo are still in my room, as well as my laptop, on the 1940s dressing-table that doubles as a desk. Through the window, I can see the woman police officer getting out of the car, stretching, hitching a bra strap back into place, and starting up the path towards the front door. Another car, a dusty blue Astra, slides round the corner into the cul-de-sac and parks behind the patrol car.
Downstairs John is on the phone. My stomach’s full of snakes.
‘The hospital?’ I mouth.
The paramedic said it would be better not to go in the ambulance, that we should wait for the police and come on later, but now that seems crazy and I wish I’d been more assertive. Fran’s scared eyes sought mine when the ambulance men carried her out of the house on a stretcher.
‘Where are they taking me?’ she said plaintively. ‘I’m all right, Ind, I don’t want to go to hospital. People die in hospital’
‘You won’t die,’ I said. ‘They’re only going to check you over. I’ll be along in a bit–look, if I was worried I’d be holding your hand in the back of the ambulance, wouldn’t I?’
‘Don’t need anyone to hold my hand.’ She struggled with the blanket wrapped round her and a feeble paw appeared. ‘See? I’m waving you bye-bye. Be sure you make them bring me back. I’d ruther be in me own bed.’ There was a smile on her lips but her eyes were pleading.
‘We’ll look after her,’ said the first paramedic, handing me a slip of paper with a phone number on it. ‘Soon as the police have been, you give the hospital a ring. They’ll tell you which ward she’s on.’ He mounted his bike, and the other paramedics lifted the stretcher into the back of the ambulance. One jumped down, and started to pull the doors closed.
‘Hang on,’ came Fran’s voice from inside. ‘Where’s the baby? He’s all right, isn’t he? Is he already at the hospital?’
‘She’s still in A and E,’ says John, putting the phone down.
‘Still?’
He shrugs his shoulders helplessly. ‘It’s Solstice. Not the best day to be carted off to Casualty. Place jammed with kids who celebrated too enthusiastically’
There’s a knock on the front door. Without waiting for a reply, a man in a dull red anorak steps inside, the policewoman a deferential two paces behind him. Under the anorak he’s wearing a navy blue suit, the lapels shiny with aeons of dry-cleaning. His face matches the anorak, and his eyebrows are two thick furry tassels set at an angle of perpetual surprise.
‘DI Andy Jennings,’ he says. ‘Hello.’
CHAPTER 49
29 August 1942
I was outside the house on Drove Road and there was glass in my hair and something in my arms, wrapped in a bloody towel. More flashes–lightning or bombs, couldn’t tell which, I’d gone deaf when all the windows blew out. The first fat drops of rain were beginning to fall and it was still dark as the Day of Judgment. How did them German pilots see to aim their bombs?
The house next door was a ruined tooth, half shorn away. But where the house beyond it had been–the house where the little girls lived: the hopscotch chalk marks were still on the pavement, blurring in the rain–there was nothing but a hole. Bricks were scattered in the road, dust hung in the air, and a man in a filthy ARP uniform was standing by it shouting. At least, I guessed he was shouting: his mouth was open and he was waving his arms at me, but it was like I was under water, couldn’t hear a thing, my arms and legs moving with a current that was pushing me along past him, away from the far end of Drove Road that was all on fire. Up there was the aircraft factory, the Germans would have been aiming for that, but most of the bombs had fallen short and hit houses instead. I kept looking back, wondering if the factory girls had got to the shelters in time, wondering if my landlady was all right, wondering why I was holding a wet, bloody bundle. Another ARP man was clambering over the rubble with something limp and bloody in his arms, too, and there were tears cutting tracks through the dust on his face.
Wouldn’t be safe to go west, towards the railway yards, because they was likely being bombed too, and so I began walking down Drove Road as fast as I could, which wasn’t very fast at all, my body one big ache and my knees like jelly. I thought of Pee at the hospital, waiting for the Bristol casualties, now finding he had to sew arms and legs back on Swindon factory girls too. As I came to the end of the road, an ambulance tore past me and stopped by the house that was gone, but anyone who’d seen that hole would’ve known it was far too late.
I tottered in a daze through the Old Town. My hearing started to come back and I heard a clock strike. Four bongs, that was all. Four o’clock in the afternoon. I’d lost all track of time and it was so dark I thought for a second it must be four in the morning, but the light in the sky was to the west, not the east. The All Clear hadn’t sounded and the side streets were empty. The rain started to come down in sheets. When I reached a junction I saw more ambulances clipping along the main road but they couldn’t have seen me. I limped on with my bloodied bundle towards the countryside.
A car stopped for me before I’d gone as far as Wroughton village. I was drenched by then, hair in rats’ tails, and the bundle in my arms was so small and soaked that the airman behind the wheel could’ve had no idea what I carried. The rain had washed us clean, Charlie and me.
The airman wound down the window, his face a white blur intersected by the line of a neat blond moustache, and told me to hop in, the buses weren’t running because of the raid, he was on his way to Yatesbury and where was I headed? I told him, voice still muffled in my ears, that he could drop me on the main road between Avebury and Winterbourne Monkton. Not if it’s raining, he said, what do you take me for, an army oik? I’ll deliver you to the door, my darling.
I asked him if I could lie down on the back seat, I was sorry I was so wet, but I was wicked tired with walking in the rain. He turned off the engine and went out into the downpour to find a blanket from the boot for me to lie on, and a coat to put over me, and he held the car door open with the rain turning his blue-grey uniform black on the shoulders.
I fell asleep in the car, Charlie in his towelling shroud on my lap under the RAF greatcoat.
In the end, I persuaded the airman to drop me on the main road after all: told him my mam didn’t like me taking lifts, she’d give me what for if she saw me climb out of a strange car. Only a short step home, I said, look, the rain’s stopped. But after the airman had driven away, as I struggled up the chalk
track to Windmill Hill, Charlie in my arms, the rain started coming down heavy again, the trees tossing. It was one of those storms that prowl round the horizon like a bad-tempered dog, still growling and baring its teeth when you hoped it had backed off. Lightning snapped every now and then, but far away. Couldn’t have been later than six, but the clouds pressed down and drowned the light. Rivers of chalky water flooded the path.
By the time I reached the flattened crest of the hill, I was soaked to the skin again, face burning up, a sickly ache in my back and legs, and terrible tired. There were never ceremonies for a stillborn at the hospital. Scraps of flesh like him counted for nothing, waste; they were burned in the incinerator. But I could do something for him, like the first Charlie’s mam had done for her child. He’d been laid in the earth with his face turned for the sunrise in the ditch at the top of Windmill Hill. It was near fifteen years since the hill had been excavated, and the archaeologists had hidden the scars of the digging under a skin of turf. The humps of the round barrows pushed out of it like gurt pimples. Charlie and me, we weren’t anyone special. We didn’t belong in a chieftain’s grave. I’d scrabble out a little bed for him in the ditch, if I could find the ditch in the driving rain.
A lightning flash lit the sky, and I wasn’t anywhere near it. I’d wandered right off the crown of the hill to the edge of the wood. A yellow seam joined the clouds to the hills in the west, and I knew this, after all, was my Charlie’s place, quiet and safe under the trees. I slipped and slithered down the slope a way, knowing I’d find the right spot, and there it was at the foot of a bank under the tree roots, a deep hole like it had been made for us, an entrance to the Lower World that faced not the rising but the setting sun.
I unwrapped him from the towel, a little dark animal with his damp coat of fine hair. I’d thought he’d be cold but he was warm from me holding him, and not stiff yet. I kissed his closed eyes and laid him under the tree roots, well back in the hole but with his tiny face turned to catch the rays of the sinking sun, and scraped soil from the crumbling bank to make it more of a cradle for him. There was old dead bracken mixed in with the chalky earth, but I didn’t think this place belonged to any other creature now. They had left it for Charlie.