by Lissa Evans
‘Miss Simpkin—’
‘Let me just see if I can—’
‘Miss Simpkin—’
She had meant to sound urgent, but the words came out as a panicky yelp. Mattie looked round enquiringly from the cupboard in which she’d been searching.
‘What’s the matter, Ida?’
‘I’ve got to …’ She realized that she was actually wringing her hands. ‘I don’t know how to start,’ she said. She looked at the kitchen clock and it had been far more than five minutes – what was she thinking? – and she said, ‘Just a moment,’ and went into the passage and back outside again, and round the corner of the house to where a bench was tucked beneath the drawing-room window, facing west to catch the evening sun. He stood up when he saw her.
‘Come along, then,’ she said, taking his hand.
‘Who’s this?’ asked Mattie. Ida was accompanied by a small boy in a mackintosh too large for him, and with a peculiar gait, his right leg hitched up at every stride.
‘He’s called Noel,’ said Ida. Her heart was beating so fast that she could feel the pulse in the palms of her hands. ‘But I can’t talk in front of him,’ she said. ‘Can I put him in the drawing room?’
‘Of course,’ said Mattie. ‘Would you believe, though, that I haven’t a single toy in the house? You might give him that ammonite on the windowsill.’
She made the tea, trying not to advance along the path of speculation, and heard the mismatched footsteps retreating and then Ida’s smartly returning. The kitchen door closed.
‘He’s four and a half,’ said Ida, standing beside the table, looking down at her short, square-cut fingernails digging into the grain. ‘Today’s the first time I’ve seen him since the day after he was born. He caught poliomyelitis – infantile paralysis – when he was one, and he’s been in a home in Barnet ever since, but I didn’t know that till yesterday. I’ve just stolen him.’
She had worn her uniform to the Barnet Hospital for Incurables, found an orderly pushing a basketful of sheets, and had lied, with all the authority she could muster: she was a visiting nurse with especial credentials and she was here to see a particular child.
‘He’s the one at the back, with the ears,’ the orderly had said, pointing through the window towards a crocodile of children progressing through the damp garden, all lurch and hop and shuffle, leg-irons and splints, crutches and straps, limbs like asparagus stalks. Ida had met them at the door. ‘I’m collecting Noel Cellini – his parents have arranged for him to move to another hospital,’ she’d said to the man in pince-nez who was leading the little parade, his arms full of schoolbooks, and she’d walked straight past him towards the child. No one had turned to watch her go as she’d led him away. He limped, but no worse than children she’d seen playing in the street outside the flats, no worse than the night sister on Male Surgical.
Once outside the hospital gates, she’d picked him up and walked fast, stopping in an alley between two shops in order to remove her cloak and starched hat, and taking her coat out of her bag and buttoning it over her uniform.
‘We’re going on a lovely outing,’ she said to the child.
‘Where?’
‘You’ll see.’
He said nothing on the bus, but placed his hands on the window and stared between them, his nose dabbing the glass whenever they went round a corner.
He looked completely unfamiliar.
‘He’s mine,’ she said to Mattie. ‘I fell pregnant that summer, after the Sports Day, and then I fainted on parade at the League and Mrs Cellini took me home, and she guessed what was the matter, and she offered to adopt the baby because she thought she couldn’t have any of her own. She thought.’
‘The child’s father …?’
Ida shook her head. ‘It wasn’t … It wasn’t like that. He didn’t ever know.’
‘So that day when I called at Wilson Road …’
‘I was four or five months gone. I stayed indoors. No one round there knew anything about it.’
She had spent the last few weeks in a nursing home in the countryside – a motor-car had called to take her, she’d worn a big old coat and carried a bag in front of her, and she had ridden like a lady out of London, through lanes of cherry blossom, past fields of horses, cottages like the ones in fairy tales – thatched roofs, gardens nodding with roses – so that none of it seemed real, not even the pain, not even the slippery skinned rabbit that had flexed and screamed. Afterwards she’d been able to pretend that it had happened to someone else, only a faint few silvery streaks on her stomach remaining as evidence, like a letter in invisible ink.
‘You can start again now,’ her auntie had said. They’d had the letter from Mr Pomeroy by then. Nothing from Simeon, ever; he’d gone off to Cambridge, though it might as well have been Timbuctoo.
‘So let me see if I have this correctly,’ said Miss Simpkin, her expression not shocked, but that of someone working her way through a tricky examination question. ‘You wish to take him back, although, legally, he’s the Cellinis’ child?’
‘No, no, you don’t understand. It’s not about that, I didn’t ever want a baby’ – she thought of her mother’s house, small hands always snagging you, everywhere sticky, crowded, roaring, everything broken, surrendered, shared ten ways – ‘I thought everything was solved, I thought he was being looked after properly, in a family, I would never have tried to see him, and then yesterday—’
Only yesterday! She felt as if a year had passed. She’d been in the Italian haberdasher on the Euston Road, buying webbing for her cabin-trunk. A large young woman holding an infant had said, ‘Ida! Long time no see!’ and it had taken her a moment to recognize Olive Hickman, from the Empire League, and then she’d had to stand for a polite ten minutes while Olive described, in detail, the christening gown for which she was buying two yards of crewel-work, the baby in question champing quietly on a bone teething-ring, its cheeks aflame.
‘And what about you?’ Olive had asked, at last.
Ida had allowed herself a tiny, pleasurable pause. ‘I’m going to Gibraltar.’
‘You never! When?’
‘The day after tomorrow. I’m going to be working on the Queen Mary surgical ward at the Colonial Hospital.’
The head of the nursing school had recommended her; she’d had to take an extra examination, and had been interviewed by a woman so grand it might as well have been Queen Mary herself, and then the letter had come, on thick cream paper. ‘Oh, Ida …’ her auntie had said, running a finger across the embossed coat of arms.
‘You know who else I heard had gone to Australia this year?’ asked Olive.
‘Gibraltar’s not in—’
‘The Cellinis! Because Mr Cellini is going to stand for Parliament there. My husband – do you remember, he’s got his own cleaning business, three people under him now – he used to do their windows. He said they were always good payers. You all right, Ida? You look a bit …’
‘Gone back to Australia?’ said Ida, her voice sounding falsely bright; she felt as if someone had smashed a hole in the wall next to her and stuck their head through it. ‘The whole family? They’ve got a … a son, is it?’
‘And two little girls, twins – Mrs Cellini had a terrible time having them, they had to be cut out of her – but they’re not taking the boy, because he’s had polio and he’s in a home – seems a shame, doesn’t it, but they say the heat’s bad for cripples.’
Ida couldn’t remember what she’d said during the rest of the conversation, but when she arrived back at the flat, she realized that she still had a rigid smile pinned to her face, like a forgotten mask.
‘Infamous,’ said Mattie.
‘The twins were Mrs Cellini’s. I mean, by birth. They’re only a year younger than him. I suppose once she’d got babies of her own …’
‘It’s just as Florrie always said: all those deemed weak or imperfect, all those who cannot or will not march in step, are pushed aside. As ever, your instincts do you cred
it, Ida. How did you find out where the boy was?’
‘I went to the library at St Thomas’s, they’ve a directory of homes, and telephone numbers, but what it is – why I’m here – I can’t keep him, Miss Simpkin, I’m not keeping him, I didn’t ever want to keep him, and we’re going on Friday, we’re all packed, it’s been planned for months, I paid for the tickets weeks ago, we can’t change everything—’
‘We?’ asked Mattie, grasping at a single word, amidst the torrent.
‘Me and my auntie, of course. She’s coming with me, she’s earned it. She can put her feet up now and sit in the sun, and she still can’t believe it, she keeps checking the tickets, and I’m not – I’m not smashing all that to bits.’
‘But does your aunt know you’ve taken the child?’
‘She doesn’t know anything – I didn’t even tell her about meeting Olive. What good would that have done? I didn’t even know I’d take him before I took him. It wasn’t a – a plan.’
‘And yet you brought him straight here?’
‘Yes.’
There was a muddy footprint near the hem of Ida’s coat – she must have carried the child up the lane, thought Mattie.
‘But what do you want me to do with him?’ she asked.
Ida made an impatient gesture; how many times did you have to explain to people who had everything that they had everything? ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘but you know who to talk to, it’s easier for you, people listen to you, you can find a way for him to be looked after the way he ought to be looked after.’
‘But—’
‘You have money!’ Her voice was close to a shout, and for a moment she couldn’t believe that she was speaking to Miss Simpkin in that way, but the words seemed borne on a hot breeze, as if coming back here had opened a door on to that scorching day five years ago and on the far side of the door stood another Ida. That Ida might have gone even further. That Ida might one day, just possibly, have written ‘Dr’ in front of her own name.
‘After you came to my aunt’s flat, you sent me a letter,’ she said, looking past Mattie and towards the wide view beyond the garden wall. ‘You said in it you were sorry. You said you wouldn’t ever let me down again. You said that this time you’d stick by me through thick and thin. Do you remember?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, now I don’t need help – not any more – but he does, Miss Simpkin. I need you to stick by him.’
Outside, the sky was darkening.
‘Please,’ said Ida.
She left through the back door, so she wouldn’t have to pass by the drawing room. Zygotes, she told herself, picking her way between the ruts, rain beginning to fall; zygotes and cell division, nuclei and cilia, an embryo like a comma, bone marrow blooming, erythrocytes and lymphocytes, smooth and striated muscle, keratin for hair and cartilage for ears, and he is just another human being, no more miraculous than any life is miraculous, no more her own than any child on the ward. She felt the tarmacadam of East Heath Road beneath her feet, and scraped her shoes on the kerb edge until barely a trace of the lane remained. There; gone; forgotten. Clumsily tucking a few stray hairs into her hat, she walked towards the Tube station.
Mattie stood in the kitchen. The house felt peculiar, as if it had changed shape, had been expanded or else tunnelled into, an unfamiliar wind blowing through the passages. And yet there was only silence from the drawing room.
He was sitting in the chair by the window, the ammonite on his lap, one finger tracing the curve. The movement halted when she entered.
‘Good afternoon,’ she said, sitting down on the sofa a few feet away. ‘My name is Mattie.’
‘Good afternoon,’ he said, formally, and resumed drawing a finger along the spiral.
‘What you’re holding is a fossil called an ammonite,’ she said. ‘Millions upon millions of years ago, it was a living creature, rather like a snail. It lived in the same world as the dinosaurs.’
He looked at her impassively. His hair was unprepossessingly short, his ears large, and his face had the flour-and-water plainness of a child in a Bruegel painting.
‘When am I going home?’ he asked.
‘By “home” …’ She paused, wondering how to phrase it. ‘You mean, where you were this morning? With all the other children?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you like it there?’
His eyes shifted, examining her face. Possibly, she thought, the question had no meaning for him; the word ‘like’ implied comparison, and how could there be a comparison if he remembered nothing else?
‘Have you ever had a holiday?’ she asked.
‘Tiger Tim did.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Tiger Tim went on holiday.’
His accent was odd – a burr of Scottish, a sawn-off edge of London. Absorbed, perhaps, from the nurses who looked after him.
‘Is Tiger Tim in a storybook?’
He nodded.
‘And where did he go to on holiday?’
‘Under the sea.’
There was a pause. His gaze slid past her and began to poke around the room: the cushions on the window seat, the bookshelves, the vase of dried teazels, the log-pile, the Klee print, the jade horse, the framed photograph of The Flea at her desk, the carillon that played the ‘1812 Overture’ on a row of tinkling bells when you lifted the lid, the giant clam shell sent back from South Africa by Stephen.
‘Would you like to explore? I don’t mind at all if you touch things.’
Was there doubt in his expression? He looked at the table beside him, where the chess set was laid out for a Hungarian opening. ‘Do you know what that game is?’ she asked.
A head shake. He reached out a hand and carefully pressed a fingertip on to the crenellations of the white castle.
‘That piece is called a castle, or rook.’
His hand moved towards the large edition of Roget’s Thesaurus, next to the board, and rested on the front cover.
‘That’s not a storybook and it has no pictures, but it is, in its own way, full of wonders.’
He sat back and looked at her; a sober, watchful presence, lacking the restless speed of childhood, the inconsequent chatter. Mattie glanced around the room herself and caught The Flea’s sharp gaze: What on earth are you waiting for, Mattie? It’s perfectly obvious what you should do.
‘Would you like to stay and have a holiday here? It’ll probably be drier than the one Tiger Tim went on, but if we go to the ponds, we might find some sticklebacks to catch.’
He shifted slightly in the chair, but his eyes remained fixed on her.
‘Would I have things to eat?’
‘Are you hungry now?’
He nodded.
‘Come along, then. Let’s see what we can find.’
He creaked as he moved; a corset of some kind, she supposed, supporting his back. Halfway down the passage, he stopped and looked in the mirror. The bottom of the frame was at the same level as the bridge of his nose, and he looked first at himself – eyeball to eyeball for a good five seconds – and then upwards at Mattie’s reflection.
‘Are you a nurse?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘Are you a doctor?’
‘No.’ She paused. ‘Well, I shall be soon, but a doctor of words rather than medicine. Did anyone ever read you Alice through the Looking-Glass?’
He shook his head.
‘If you stay, we could make a start on it tonight. Now, what would you like to eat? Bread and butter and jam? A glass of milk?’
‘Yes, please.’
She made herself a pot of tea, and sat opposite him as he ate. ‘Do you remember ever living in a house?’ she asked. He appeared to think about the question, before shaking his head.
‘Do people come to visit you at the home?’
This time, the shake of the head was immediate. He finished his bread and jam, picked up all the crumbs on the plate with a damp finger and then folded his hands, waiting for what might ha
ppen next.
‘So what would you like to do now?’
He said nothing, but his pupils widened. Perhaps, she thought, he was unused to the idea of choice.
‘On an ordinary weekday, what might you do in the afternoon?’
‘We go for a nap.’
‘Would you like a nap now?’
Cautiously, eyes on hers, he mouthed the word ‘no’.
‘Good decision; neither would I. Napping in the afternoon is for infants and those in their dotage. What else might you do?’
‘We walk in the garden.’
‘That sounds like an excellent idea. It’s stopped raining for the time being.’
And if there happened to be a neighbour nosing over the fence, she could always claim the child as a young relative, or perhaps a godson come to stay.
There was a snapping wind. Only odd leaves were left on the fruit trees, and the grass was lumpy with windfalls.
‘I like to leave a few for the birds,’ said Mattie. ‘Do you have a favourite fruit? Pears? Plums? Goosegogs?’
‘Pineapple.’
‘Ah, one that I have so far singularly failed to grow. Look, here’s someone come for his dinner. A rook.’
It tilted on the wall, waiting for them to leave. The boy said something inaudible.
‘What was that?’ asked Mattie.
‘Or castle,’ he said, more loudly.
It took Mattie a second to grasp his meaning. ‘I say, well done!’ she said. ‘What a memory!’ She broke into applause and the rook – or castle – flapped off again.
They walked slowly around the beds. ‘Nothing’s in bloom,’ said Mattie, ‘but if you shake one of these for me’ – she snapped off a poppy head on a long stem – ‘you can spread some seeds for next year.’
He waved the stem slowly, watching the breeze catch the fine black specks, pulling them like a thread of smoke across the garden.
‘There’s a little house,’ he said.
‘Yes, it’s called a summer house, and it harbours a surprise – one can use it to follow the sun. Here, come and stand on it.’
She waited until he’d stepped up on to the strip of porch and then she leaned against the rail on one side, and pushed. The summer house rotated very slowly through a quarter of a turn and then stopped with a jerk. The boy sat down, hard.