Children's Ward

by Claire Rayner

  ‘So that’s why no one came forward –’ Harriet said slowly.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘His picture was put in the papers, and on television, but no one seemed to recognise it. If she never let him go out, no one but you really knew him well enough to recognise him –’

  ’In the papers, was it? Well, there! If only I’d ‘a’ known! But I don’t take a paper – can’t be bothered to read much, like – not at my age, and people like me, we can’t afford no television sets –’ and she leered up at Harriet greedily.

  Harriet ignored the hint, and asked, ‘What – happened when she died?’

  ‘Well!’ Mrs Ross settled herself more comfortably in her chair, and began to talk, taking a morbid delight in her story, a delight that made Harriet’s flesh creep.

  Late one afternoon, Mrs Ross had gone panting upstairs to get something from the back room she used as a general junk room – she rarely climbed the stairs otherwise – and had seen Susan Brooks’s door open. The other door – their bedroom door – was closed, and Mrs Ross had looked into the room they used as a living room ‘to say hello, like. I’m friendly, always was –’ and seen the girl in a heap on the floor. In a great flurry of excitement, she had shrieked from the window to call a neighbour, and an ambulance had been called. Susan Brooks had been taken off to hospital – not the Royal, but the smaller hospital on the other side of this particular part of London, but she had been dead when she arrived there.

  ‘Just collapsed, they said,’ Mrs Ross said ghoulishly, ‘Just up and died, the doctor reckoned. Didn’t feed herself properly, he said, and then went and got this virus pneumonia. I daresay you’ll understand better’n I would –’

  Harriet nodded. A girl in a poor state of health could well die quite suddenly from a virus pneumonia, even after a very short illness.

  ‘But what about Davey?’. Harriet was puzzled, ‘Why didn’t you tell anyone about him?’

  Mrs Ross looked a little furtive, and glanced sideways at Harriet with hooded eyes. ‘Well, I never thought to, like. I mean, I wasn’t to know was I? I thought as how she’d maybe sent him off to visit someone or something – I wasn’t to know.’

  ‘You said she had no friends,’ Harriet said, cold with anger.

  ‘Well, I wasn’t to know! He wasn’t here, that’s all I knew. And it wasn’t none of my concern. I had enough to put up with, what with her dying here like that – I wasn’t going running around after a kid that’s got nothing to do with me –’

  ‘He must have found her,’ Harriet said, remembering the pinched little face, the way he had said, ‘Mummy – won’t wake up –’ and she felt sick. ‘He must have found her, and tried to rouse her, and when he couldn’t, just ran out of the house in fright. No wonder he got into such a state – he must have been hurt in a traffic accident as well, and in the state of mind he was in, I’m not surprised – How could you just do nothing – not tell someone – the police – anyone, about him?’

  ‘I don’t go tangling with no police,’ the old woman said belligerently. ‘I told you, it was none of my concern. He wasn’t my kid, was he?’

  And Harriet was forced to leave it at that. How anyone could be so indolent as to do nothing in such a situation, she could not for the life of her understand. But so it had been and she had to accept it.

  ‘They gave me the death certificate,’ Mrs Ross seemed herself to understand Harriet’s anger, and began to offer more information without waiting for questions. ‘I couldn’t do nothing about a funeral, of course – cost money, they do – but the hospital said they’d take care of that, as there was no relatives or nothing, so there you are! But I kept all her bits – well, all except for those I had to sell to get my rent – entitled to that, I was, in law –’

  Harriet didn’t argue, and in a cold angry silence, took the paper carrier bag the woman pulled out of a cluttered cupboard and turned to go.

  ‘I hope you got enough rent money,’ she said bitterly. ‘It would never do if you lost money, would it?’

  ‘Don’t you be so high and mighty, you!’ Mrs Ross flared in sudden rage. ‘What do you know about it? You with your taxis and your tenshillingses? You never went without in your life, did you? Well, I did, and I ain’t going to again, not if I can help it. I had to clear those rooms, had to get another lodger for them – and I had every right to sell those bits. She had no one, had she? And I reckoned if the boy had run off, it’d be best for him. If I’d have gone and told, they’d just have copped him and shoved him in a home somewhere – some rotten home. I reckoned he’d be better running off if that was what he’d done – better running the streets than locked up in some lousy home, poor little bastard –’

  And for a moment, Harriet could understand, feel with this woman, see the reality of her dingy existence and what it had done to her. And in all fairness, her silence about Davey could have been rooted in a misguided kindness of heart. When this woman had been a child, orphans had a pretty tough time of it, she reminded herself, looking down on the dirty face peering bitterly up at her in the dull hallway. Perhaps she really meant well.

  Impulsively, she put her hand out, and took Mrs Ross’s gnarled one.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I think I understand. I was – upset. I’ve become fond of the boy, you see. Thank you for your help.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ the woman mumbled, suddenly shy. ‘You wasn’t to know. But like I said, when you’re old, and on your own, like me, you got to take care of yourself – look after number one. No one else won’t will they? I did my best for that poor cow and her bastard – and I like him too. He’ll be all right now, won’t he? You’ll see after him, won’t you?’

  ‘I will,’ Harriet said, and left Mrs Ross standing in the door of her dirty little house, watching her as she hurried down the street towards the main road and the hospital.

  Harriet turned and looked back once more, before she finally turned the corner, at the ugly little house that had been Davey’s home as long as he could remember, probably, at the narrow street that had been the only place he had known. Then, with a brief wave of her hand at the distant shape of Mrs Ross, she hurried away, clutching under her arm a paper carrier bag, a bag which held all that Davey owned in the world, his inheritance from the girl who had been his mother.

  Chapter Twelve

  She took the paper carrier bag on duty with her, hiding it under her cape, for she had no time when she got back to the hospital to do more than put on her cap and apron and hurry on duty. And she felt that she couldn’t wait till the end of the evening to look at the contents of the bag.

  Tod – Davey, she reminded herself again – was sleeping the exhausted sleep of the very young when she got to the ward, and a note from Sally was waiting on her desk.

  ‘I had to get back on duty,’ she had scribbled, ‘ran out in the middle of a list when that ghastly old woman ’phoned, so I daren’t hang about. He didn’t need the nepenthe, poor little scrap – he was flat out before we got back. I’ll try to come to the ward as soon as I’m straight in theatre to find out what happened and apologise. I never thought it would work! If I can’t get to the ward I’ll see you over in the Home –’

  Mechanically, Harriet worked through the evening, and when the last baby had been fed, the last visitor had left and the children were settled for the night, she almost fell into the chair at her desk.

  Her staff nurse, a quiet girl for whom Harriet was grateful at this moment, silently brought a tray of tea and toast, and insisted she finished all of it before consenting to go off duty.

  ‘You look bushed, Sister,’ she said with some severity, ‘and you’ll be ill if you don’t eat something – you’ve missed your lunch every day this week,’ and Harriet didn’t argue, drinking the tea with thirsty gratitude under the staff nurse’s watchful eye.

  She went eventually, leaving a junior to move quietly round the ward finishing off odd jobs before the night staff came on duty, and Harriet at last could examine
the carrier bag and its contents.

  She sat and looked at it for a moment, and her mind dredged up a memory of something she had read somewhere, about the death of a woman. ‘And all those things she didn’t want seen, and all those things she didn’t want touched, they were seen and touched by strangers –’ and the infinite tragedy of these inanimate objects in their shabby torn container washed over her almost unbearably. And then she looked through the glass partition down the ward to where she could see bed seven with its crumpled pillow hiding Davey’s fair head, and reminded herself that this was his, this bag of oddments, and that she must investigate them for him. With shaking fingers, she pulled the bag towards her, and began to pull the things out.

  There were pitifully few. A cardboard box with a few pieces of cheap costume jewellery, too cheap even to have been worth Mrs Ross’s attention, a needle book, a box of pins, several reels of sewing thread, a tape measure, a thimble. A writing pad and a ball point pen, a child’s picture book, and a pile of photographs in an envelope completed the collection.

  Harriet slowly picked up the envelope, a big brown one, and shook its contents out on to the desk. Most of them were snapshots, fuzzy blurred pictures of a fair haired girl, some taken in a garden, some on a long forgotten seaside holiday. There were a few of a child, a solemn fair baby, and peering at them, Harriet could recognise Davey’s face as it had been in his infancy; even then he must have been an unhappy child, for none of the pictures showed him smiling, just staring at the camera.

  And at the bottom of the pile, there was one other picture in a cheap plastic frame. Harriet turned it over, and stared at the face that looked up at her from behind the distorted clear plastic covering. It was Gregory’s face, a younger Gregory, with his dark hair free of any hint of white, his face less lined than she knew it, but Gregory just the same.

  She stared at it for a long time, her mind numb. So this was how Davey had recognised Gregory. This picture. The corners of the frame were scuffed with long standing on a hard surface, and Harriet thought dimly – it must have been kept where he could see it, on a table perhaps – fantasy took over again.

  ‘Who is that, Mummy?’ she seemed to hear the child’s high voice asking. ‘That? Gregory, Davey, That’s Greg.’ but she couldn’t imagine the voice that made the answer, couldn’t really visualise the girl in the photograph alive and talking to her child.

  She put the picture down, and as she did, the pile of photographs slid to the floor. She bent to pick them up, and a piece of paper she had not noticed before fell out of the pile. Carefully she smoothed its grimy folds.

  It was a birth certificate. David Weston Brooks, the firm handwriting in the section marked ‘Name’ read. Born in the Borough of Marylebone, date of birth August seventh. Mother Susan Weston, Dressmaker. Father Timothy Brooks, Medical practitioner.

  Harriet stared at it, her thoughts whirling. He’s nearly six then, she thought vaguely. Too small for his age – much too small. Timothy Brooks? Who was he? And then suddenly, the full implication of the child’s name hit her. David Weston Brooks. Weston. And her heart lurched sickeningly.

  There was a movement behind her, and she raised eyes blurred with sudden tears to see the night nurses at the door, looking at her with faint surprise on their faces, the newly awakened look that is a night nurse’s badge at the end of everyone else’s day making her suddenly aware of her own deep fatigue.

  With cold fingers she thrust the certificate and the photographs back into their bag, and stumbling a little over her words, gave the night nurses the report, before taking her cape and, hugging the bag close to her, slipped silently from the sleeping ward.

  She stopped outside the double doors, to look stupidly at the lift waiting to take her down to the ground floor, at the porter with the pile of drums to be sterilised waiting to close the gates after her.

  ‘I’m going down with this lot, Sister,’ he said cheerfully. ‘But there’s still room for you –’

  But almost without thinking, she shook her head at him, and he clashed the gates shut and rattled the lift away. Her feet seemed to move of their own volition, carrying her down one flight of stairs, along a quiet corridor, towards the doctors’ quarters.

  The door to the common room was half open, and she could hear a burst of laughter from the men who were sitting there over their after dinner coffee, smell the tobacco smoke that came curling through the door out into the dimly lit corridor. A maid came out of the common room, balancing a tray on one hip as she closed the door. She peered up at Harriet with some surprise, and Harriet said unevenly, ‘I – I was looking for Mr Weston. Is he in the common room?’

  The maid looked knowingly at her, and grinned. ‘No, Sister. He’s in his room. Always has his coffee on his own, he does. Down the end,’ with a jerk of her head she indicated a row of doors that ran into the shadows along the corridor, and grinned again as Harriet thanked her, and began to walk down the corridor towards the end room. Harriet could feel the girl’s eyes on her back, could almost hear the unpleasant thoughts she was obviously relishing, wanted to turn and shout at her – I’m not what you think – I’m not – but she ignored her, and with a resolution she hardly knew she had, raised her hand and tapped on the wooden panels.

  There was silence for a second, then his voice, a little surprised, called ‘Yes?’

  Slowly, she turned the knob, and pushed the door open. He was sitting in an armchair, a book on his lap, the light from the small table lamp beside him throwing deep shadows on to his face. He stared at her for a long moment, then got to his feet, letting the book fall to the floor to lie ignored in a tangle of flopping pages at his feet. Slowly, she closed the door behind her, and leaned against it, her heart thumping thickly under her ribs.

  ‘Gregory –’ her voice sounded harsh, croaking, and she swallowed in an effort to clear it. ‘Gregory –’ she said again, and then went dumb, standing there, swaying a little, her eyes on his face.

  He seemed to Harriet to be standing in a nimbus of light, as the lamp behind him threw his body into sharp silhouette, and when he moved sharply towards her, the whole room seemed to blur, the light suddenly shimmering redly before her eyes. It had not occurred to her that she looked anything but her usual self to Gregory, and the sudden look of anxiety that she saw on his face startled her. But to Gregory, she looked dreadful, her face devoid of any colour, her cheeks muddy, her eyes looking huge in her pinched face.

  Swiftly, he pulled her forwards, leading her to the chair, taking her cape from her, and she sat still for a moment trying to push away the sudden sensation of giddiness that was making her head swim. Then, her vision cleared, and she looked at him where he sat on the edge of his bed, his hands lying loosely clasped between his knees.

  ‘I’m – I’m sorry to come here like this,’ she began huskily. ‘I had to show you something.’

  She dropped her head before his steady gaze, and began to fumble in the bag she was still clutching. The big brown envelope with its pictures and Davey’s birth certificate stuck for a moment almost as though it had a will of its own and didn’t want to be brought out, but she managed to extricate it, and wordlessly, held it out to Gregory.

  There was a shadow of a frown on his face as he put out a hand to take it from her.

  ‘Open it,’ she said. ‘Open it. It – I think it concerns you.’

  Slowly, he turned the envelope upside down, letting the contents fall onto the counterpane beside him, and with steady fingers, picked up the pictures one by one. She couldn’t watch him, couldn’t bear to see how he would react, and she closed her eyes sharply, leaning back against her chair, listening to the faint rustle of paper as he picked up the birth certificate.

  The silence seemed to stretch into eternity. Slowly, she opened her eyes, blinking a little against the sharp onslaught of light.

  He was sitting quite still, staring ahead of him, Davey’s birth certificate in one lax hand. And then, to her sick horror, she saw the glint of tea
rs on his lined cheeks, saw the empty misery in his dark eyes, and without thinking, she threw herself from her chair, came to crouch on the floor at his feet. He looked down at her, making no attempt to hide his tears from her, and his face crumpled at the sight of her own anxious face so close to his.

  Gently, she put her arms round him, pulled his head down to rest on her breast, held him as she would a child, and he shook in her arms, trembling like a frightened baby.

  How long they sat like that she didn’t know. All she could think was that she had done something quite dreadful, and hurt this man she loved as no one had ever hurt him before. And then he moved, pulled himself away from her, and walked across the room to the window to stand staring out of it into the darkness.

  Then his voice, thick, shaking a little with an effort to control it, came quietly across the silence.

  ‘You had to do it, didn’t you, Harriet? Had to know?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said gently, suddenly feeling strong again, the weariness and misery that had beset her for so long seeming to change into a strength and a compassion she must give him. ‘I had to know. Not for my own sake, Gregory – not entirely. But he’s so small, so lost. I have to know for him – whatever it did to you.’

  ‘Seven years ago I married Susan. Susan.’ His voice seemed remote, as though he were talking of someone else’s marriage, not his own.

  ‘She was twenty – eleven years younger than me. And I loved her. I’d never loved anyone before. Not till I saw her. But she – she was young, and a little spoiled, and I thought she needed me. So I married her.’