She thought of the extraordinary young person who waited not very far from where she stood. He respected her. He had fought for her.
She began to dry her skin carefully. There was bad and there was good. She had experienced the bad. She wasn’t going to be a prisoner to it any longer. Her heart was healing.
She would be leaving tomorrow morning, provided she showed no further ill effects of her ordeal. When David asked if she wanted to contact any of her family, she said ‘no’ so quickly that she saw his sharp flicker of surprise.
“No point in worrying anybody,” she explained.
“Worrying me’s OK, of course?”
She grinned and wrinkled her nose in mischief. “Of course.”
He made a grab for her foot which dangled over the side of the bed near him as he sat in the chair. As he held it, all the fun left his eyes. He ran his hands along her foot, examining it intently. His thumbs traced the little veins deep under the skin of her instep. His fingers moved to cup the curve of her heel. His other hand folded over her toes, warm and gentle.
Mesmerised, her breath catching in her throat, she watched the top of his dark head bent in total absorption.
“Stop, David,” she whispered.
He paused and looked up like a man coming out of a trance. His eyes had darkened, his emotions free on his face. He looked around and at last seemed to realise where he was. One last time he ran his hands slowly along the sides of her foot, from her ankle to her toes. Then he relinquished it carefully. Robyn felt her foot become cold as the heat of his touch left it.
He sat with his head bowed, hands loosely grasped between his knees. Tentatively, Robyn reached out and touched his hair. A memory stirred. When David felt her touch, he reached up and pulled her hand down between his own. He held it for a moment and then looked up at her. Holding her eyes he lifted the back of her hand and gently kissed it.
Memory flared again. “It wasn’t a dream, was it? Last night?” she asked, her voice unsteady,
Still watching her, he turned his mouth into her palm. “No,” he said. “It wasn’t a dream.”
David took a deep breath in the silence that followed. He was still holding her hand. Then his mouth crooked in a lopsided smile.
“Maybe I should go back and get your stuff. Another night without shower gel and you might start chopping off fingers.”
Robyn retrieved her hand. “You need to sleep for a few hours. You can recharge yourself and your phone at the same time. And bring me any news,” she added.
He looked puzzled. “For someone who’s been through what you have, you’re remarkably perky. You’re better than I dared hope you’d be.”
She touched his cheek. “You’ve no idea, have you? No idea that it’s all about you. You change things. You make a difference.” She dropped her voice. “Penny knew that. And your father knew that. Deep down he must have known that. And if he didn’t,” she went on, “he does now.”
Pain filled his eyes as he propped his elbows on his knees and covered his face. His voice was muffled. “I hope so.”
He was still haunted, hurting, the pain in easy reach. Gently she pulled his hands aside. “You must tell me about him some time. I’d like to get to know him.”
He sat without speaking, and she waited out his thinking, as she had become so accustomed to doing. A doctor and the nursing sister swung into the ward on their morning rounds. David gathered himself and stood up.
“Right. I’d better go and sort out a few things.” He rubbed his jaw. “The stubble’s growing.”
She touched her hand to the side of her head. “I hope mine will. I must be a phrenologist’s dream.”
One of his eyebrows shot up. “Phrenologist?”
She waited a moment, grinning. Then she pointed a triumphant finger at him. “Ha! You don’t know it!”
“But I will by tonight!”
“You will come back tonight?”
He backed away. “I’ll be here.”
“And David?”
“What?”
She felt almost shy. “Maybe I know a lot of words. But I haven’t the words to thank you.”
He looked at his feet as a slow smile spread across his face. He looked up at her from under his brows, his eyes twinkling. “You’ll have to think of something else then.”
The mid morning traffic was heavy as David headed out of the city. He stopped for petrol, propping himself against the car to watch the gauge spinning round. Out of the corner of his vision, an ambulance sped by on its way to the hospital. Beside him as he waited to pay at the counter was a tray of beanie toys, little felt rabbits, bears, and monkeys filled with beans that moved under his fingers as he picked through them. He decided on a rabbit.
As the road rose up the hillside towards the laneway to the hostel, David slowed round a long bend. On the other side of the road, just beside a gap that had been torn in the hedge, a police car was pulled in as far as it could onto the narrow verge.
He drove past carefully. He hadn’t gone far before a thought bloomed in his head and the hairs started to prickle on the back of his neck.
Only the warden, Jane, was there when he pushed open the door of the kitchen. She was anxious for news, distressed at what had happened. There was no news of Fraser, although the police had called early, wanting to take statements. They would probably call at the hospital later. Duncan Maguire had made a full report to the school and two other teachers had arrived to enable the field trip to continue.
“I tidied the room,” Jane said. “It’s all here. Mr Maguire said he’d take it to her tonight.” She pointed to a corner next to an old sofa where she had put Robyn’s holdall and shoulder bag. Her red coat was thrown over them. Jane paused, then she opened a drawer and pulled out a small, flat parcel of kitchen foil. She held it up uncertainly.
“I wasn’t sure what to do with this.” Silently, David took it from her. She went on: “The room had to be ready for the new chap who came. They’re fixing the glass some time today.”
David eyed the little pile in the corner. “Sorry about that.”
“What else could you do?”
David lifted Robyn’s belongings.
“I’m going back later. I’ll take these to her.”
“But Mr Maguire …”
David opened the back door. “Tell him I’ve got them.”
He opened the boot and set the bags and coat in carefully. He turned the foil parcel over in his hand. Then he unwrapped one end and glanced at the contents. He closed it again and tucked it inside his shirt. There were still traces of dried blood across his chest.
A ginger cat appeared from the front of the house and stopped when she saw him. She sat and licked her paw. The air was damp but it had not yet rained. How could everything look the same? Not even a day had passed since he had almost committed murder.
He slammed the boot shut and walked to the front of the house. After a quick glance at the tree and the broken window, he jumped over the stile and pushed his way along the path to the lake. Here were a few broken twigs. There, the score of her heel furrowing through the grass.
Down by the lake, he walked round looking for signs, markers in the light of day to confirm what had happened in the dark. It occurred to him that the police had probably been here already.
At the edge of the water, he looked at the stones where he had held Fraser’s head down with his foot, jamming it with all his strength onto the gravel bed. He walked further along until he came to a clear stretch of grass extending from a stand of mountain ash. He crouched and sat, arm resting on one bent knee. A gentle breeze rippled the water. A moorhen paddled by, busy and oblivious.
He needed to process all this. At last, he allowed the pictures to scroll in his head. Robyn on the ground, Angus on top of her. Robyn curled in a tight ball in the bottom of the wardrobe. Robyn flashing a pair of scissors at him. Robyn flying into his arms. On and on they came in a reel that would join the others stored in his brain for ever. When he
came to the picture of Robyn that morning, stepping barefoot into the corridor as he came through the door of the ward, he paused the film.
Above her bare feet and legs, she wore a pink nightdress that was too big for her. Over that was a hospital dressing gown, a towelling creation of blue and white stripes. The sleeves came down over her hands and the long belt trailed on the ground behind her. Her face was white, sculpted, stark. A large gauze bandage was taped over her right cheek. Her head was an untidy jumble of tufts and strands, hacked and chopped in a frenzy.
She had looked like a scarecrow on a bad day. And he had never loved her more.
He threw a twig into the water and watched it bob in a circle of ripples. He had always been slow to catch fire. Tim used to tease him about it. He got to his feet restlessly. At the water’s edge he kicked a pebble far across the surface and heard the moorhen clatter away in fright. From the first days of knowing Robyn, really knowing her, curiosity had become delight. Delight had become need. He had now reached a desire that he had never experienced before, a conflagration that, far from destroying the curiosity, the delight and the need, seemed only to enrich and inflame their colours.
He didn’t know how to deal with it.
A powerful longing to see his father again hit him like a dagger. His head went back, a gasp escaping him as the raw sense of loss punched him once again. Robyn had talked about his father in the present tense, talked about getting to know him. He could love her for that alone.
He might have tried to talk to his father about this. His adolescence had been overshadowed by the edge between them, but recently he thought they might have come to understand each other better. Except he knew what his father would say. He could hear him, see him. “It’s lust, lad. Pure and simple,” he would admonish. “Have a cold shower.”
No, he couldn’t have talked to his father about this. It would have started another argument. Dad, he said in his head, it’s not lust, it’s not simple – his mouth curved – and it’s certainly not pure.
And Robyn? The foil parcel of her hair was warm against his skin. He loved a woman who had just been assaulted, and who, he was now sure, had been cruelly damaged in childhood. The thought hurt him more than he could bear. She might still run away as she had before, graceful and cold. But today? Today he had sensed a change in her, sensed that the ice was almost gone.
He wished Tim were here. He slipped his phone from his pocket. Even if he could get a signal, the battery was totally flat. With a tight smile, David looked up at the sky. “I suppose that just leaves you,” he said aloud. “I hope you’re being particularly understanding today.”
He settled his feet apart on the shingle, pushed his fingers into his pockets and closed his eyes. His mind and body still, he emptied his heart to the sky.
31
JANE FED HIM. David hadn’t thought about food until a double helping of shepherd’s pie steamed in front of him. He was briefly alone in the kitchen while he polished the plate clean. He prowled to the fridge and, head thrown back, drank a pint of milk straight from the carton. Before Jane returned, he hid the empty carton deep in the rubbish bin.
Sleep was attacking him and he had his foot on the stairs when he heard a car pull into the yard. A policeman snagged the latch and entered. The officer pulled out a chair.
“We think we’ve found him. Sit down.” He drew a driving licence out of his pocket and opened it, pushing it across to David. “That him?”
David glanced at the photograph. “Yes.”
The police officer took it back and returned it to his pocket. “He’s dead.”
David stared at him.
“His car went off the road. We found it – and him – at the bottom of a hill about a mile away. Lot of rocks about. He didn’t have a chance.”
David pictured the gap torn in the hedge. The thought he had as he drove back this morning had been right. He also remembered seeing it last night as he drove Robyn to hospital.
“Did he die instantly?”
“The ambulance men thought he hadn’t. He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt so he was thrown out of the car, but it looks as if he’d crawled off a bit. He was really bashed up.”
“Did they say how long he’d lived for?”
“No, they didn’t. Why?”
“No reason.”
“There’s more. Our men entered his house in Belfast. They found enough. You don’t want to know. He was a sick guy.”
David stood up. “You haven’t told Robyn this yet, have you?”
“No, but…”
“I’ll tell her.”
“I have to speak to the teacher in charge.”
“He’ll be back later.” David had turned to the door, but he swung round again. “I’ll tell her,” he repeated firmly.
He plugged in his phone, setting the alarm on it for two hours time. He lay on his bed. Angus Fraser was dead. And he might still have been alive when he had driven past the spot last night. If he had known, he could have called for help.
Would he? He held the question up and looked at it. Then he put it down again and turned onto his side. His last thought before he fell asleep was of the warm foil which still nestled against his skin.
Two hours later he stood under a refreshing shower. He held his head to the water to let the foam run out of his hair and stream down his body. His right hand ached and the knuckles stung in the soapy water. He looked at it, flexing the fingers, recalling the splintering disintegration of flesh and bone as his rage had powered into the man’s face. Now he was dead. David’s only emotion was relief.
Robyn had given her statement to two police officers. They were sympathetic, but she felt restless afterwards. Surging through her was a desire to celebrate being a survivor, to shrug off victimhood, to find out what it was like to take wings and fly.
A nurse had trimmed the tufts on her head into something that passed for neatness. The afternoon dragged. She tried to read a magazine. She talked to some of the other patients. But her mind and heart were full and restless and she couldn’t settle. Near teatime, the door of the dayroom opened and a nurse put her head round it. “Robyn? You’ve a visitor up in the ward.”
He was back already! Eyes bright, she spun round the corner. It was Neil who rose slowly from the chair, his jaw dropping when he saw her.
Robyn stopped dead, her pleasure draining away.
“What are you doing here?’
“Rob! What on earth happened? Who could do that to you?”
“The hair? Oh, I did that to myself.”
Neil slumped back into the chair. “They told Gemma you’d been attacked.”
Robyn sat on the far side of the bed. “Who’s ‘they’?”
“The school. Gemma rang looking for you and someone told her you’d been attacked and were in hospital. She rang me. And I came straight up.”
“You haven’t told my mother?”
“Not yet, but…”
“Don’t tell her, Neil. She’s not to know.”
“Were you attacked? I mean, they said… were you…?”
Robyn interrupted impatiently. “I wasn’t. Someone rescued me.”
Neil brushed his hair off his face. Robyn looked away. “Why did you cut your hair off? You look like a skinhead. How could you do that to yourself?”
“With scissors.”
“But why?”
Robyn was tiring of this, and irritated to see him sitting in the chair which had been filled by David. She didn’t like the person she became when Neil was near.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” she said. “Now, I’m afraid I’m expecting another visitor.”
“I’ve only just got here!”
“I’m going to be fine, Neil. In fact I’m going to be just great.”
“Well, I suppose your hair will grow again.” He spread his hands wide, incredulity overcoming him. “How could you do that?”
“By the way,” Robyn said, “the cut on my face was caused by being hurled o
n the ground. The grazes on my shoulders were caused by being dragged over stones and pine needles. And I’ve other bruises, caused after my clothes were torn and ripped off me. And they haven’t caught him yet. But, yes, I’m sure my hair will grow again.”
Neil stood up. “I can see I’m not welcome.”
He regarded her for a moment longer and then turned on his heel and left the ward. Robyn pulled her pillow onto her lap and punched it. Then she stood and walked rapidly after him. She caught up with him just as he went through the swing doors to the foyer.
“Neil!” He turned, looking almost sulky. “I was never the one for you. Never. But I do want you to be happy.”
Robyn heard a lift door opening, saw Neil’s eyes dart away and fix on someone behind her, felt an arm come round her waist.
David and Neil locked eyes, then Neil turned away. “Good luck to you,” he said as he stepped into the lift. The doors closed slowly, obliterating him inch by inch.
Robyn looked up at David. “I wonder did he mean it?”
He swung her towards the ward, her bags in his other hand. “I’ve something to tell you.”
She curled up against her pillows, her knees pulled up sideways to make room for him to sit facing her on the edge of the bed. He looked wonderful; fresh and crisp, his hair shining. He reached for her hand.
“They found Fraser.”
She stiffened. “Where?”
“His car went off the road not far from the hostel. He was found near the wreckage. Robyn, he’s dead.”
Her hand flew to her mouth, her eyes wide. “Dead?”
He sat without speaking, letting her take this in.
“Angus Fraser is dead?” she repeated.
“Yes.”
A feeling washed through her so strongly that she gasped.
“I’m glad. I feel glad,” she said, her eyes wide.
“So do I.” After a moment he added, “Let’s leave him behind. He’s gone.”
Robyn was puzzled again by the sense of a deep well of wisdom in him, a young man just starting on his adult journey yet with a maturity beyond his years. What was it Edith had said way back before the summer? He knows who he is and he’s comfortable with that. To be with him was to be accepted, tranquil, superbly human. And yet he knew deep hurt and great anger. She was utterly fascinated.
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