Silent Song

by Lucilla Andrews

  ‘Don’t open your eyes yet. Let’s have a look.’

  He took my hands and guided them to his chest. ‘Hang on. This is the kind of day when the next thing that happens is you step backwards out of the hatch.’ He dusted my face carefully. ‘I’m afraid you’ve a lot in your hair.’

  ‘It’ll brush out.’ I smiled with closed eyes. ‘Haven’t played blind-man’s-buff in years.’

  ‘It wasn’t on today’s schedule. I really am very sorry ‒’

  ‘It wasn’t you who insisted on coming here and you did warn me.’

  He answered that with a grunt. Then, ‘Open slowly, Anne.’ My eyes streamed as I did so. ‘Yes. Some in the right. Look up and hold still.’ He tilted my chin and with the corner of a handkerchief shifted a speck that felt like a rock. ‘And another. I did a great job, just now,’ he muttered to himself irately and a little breathlessly. His heart rate had risen. I could feel it under my right hand and from sheer force of habit mentally assessed it at around one hundred and twenty. Academically, I was interested that a man who habitually looked so controlled had such a quick temper underneath. Having one myself I suddenly felt much more at ease with him.

  ‘That the lot, George?’

  ‘I think so. I’ll just check under both upper lids ‒’ he inverted my eyelids deftly, gently, with one hand. ‘All clear. Just look up once more.’

  His face was bent over mine so I stared at the gap. It was then I glimpsed a boy’s face peering down before it vanished.

  ‘George,’ I said very quietly, ‘we’re not alone. Boy above. I didn’t call to him in case he fell.’

  He kept his head bent. ‘The only escape route up there’s the tunnel. How old?’

  ‘About eight. Could he’ve got up from here?’

  ‘Easily, if he’s not alone and they’ve got a bit of rope. One stands on the other’s shoulders, then flings down the rope.’ He straightened. ‘All gone from your eyes,’ he said more clearly, jerked a thumb upwards, took his jacket off and waved me aside. He leapt with impressive neatness for the exposed beams, jack-knifed his arms and got his head and shoulders through the gap. Another cascade of plaster and dust came down, but expecting it I took it on my back. I heard more than one child’s squawk of surprise, and then George’s ‘Hallo! Having a picnic? Don’t I know you? Yes, I do ‒ you’re Mrs Potter’s grandchildren. Do you know me? I’m the doctor who owns Old Farm Cottage.’ He hauled himself right up and vanished.

  ‘George! Anne! You up there?’

  I went to the hatch. Ruth was at the foot of the ladder. ‘Mrs Potter’s just rung to ask if we’ve seen anything of her three grandchildren. They’ve vanished.’

  ‘George seems to have found them above. She holding on?’

  ‘No. I said we’d ring back, but as that’s her cottage I’ll go over ‒’

  I heard George calling. ‘Just a minute, Ruth.’ George’s face was in the gap. ‘Are those the Potter kids?’

  ‘Yes, but we’re coming down. Can you be on the receiving end? Ready? One Mary Potter coming down. Yes, dearie,’ he said to the child above, ‘I know you’re twenty minutes older than your twin, but you first.’ A chubby, tousled little girl in sweater and jeans thick with dust, hay and grime was lowered into my arms. ‘Ready for the next, Anne? Herewith, Michael Potter.’

  He was the boy I had seen, as grubby as his twin but much thinner and slightly shorter. ‘Please,’ he said politely as I stood him on his feet, ‘please I’m not Michael Potter, I’m Anthony Potter.’

  George had lowered himself down. ‘Sorry, Anthony. You’ve grown so much since I last saw you I thought you were your elder brother. Where’s Michael? Over with Nana and Grandpa?’ I had touched his arm. ‘Yes, Anne?’

  ‘Gran’s just rung. Ruth’s below. Three sought.’

  ‘Uh-huh? Only two above.’

  ‘It was Anthony I saw.’

  We exchanged identical glances. He turned to the children now sitting on a bale of trussed hay. ‘Michael in the other roundy house, kids?’

  Anthony said, ‘Oh no, he’s in ‒’ and Mary kicked him hard. ‘That hurt!’

  ‘I jolly well meant to, so there! You’re not to tell! You promised you wouldn’t tell or we wouldn’t let you come. It’s our secret!’ Mary was puce with fury. ‘Silly baby! You always have to tell!’

  ‘Break it up, kids.’ George held them apart as Ruth called from half-way up the ladder. ‘Sorry, Ruth ‒ what was that?’

  She appeared at the hatch. ‘Should there be smoke coming from the cowl of the other oast?’

  ‘No,’ he said calmly. ‘Get down, Ruth. Come on kids. After the two ladies, Mary, so if you fall you fall on them.’ He tucked Anthony under one arm and followed us down before either child had time to protest. On the ground he crouched to their level. ‘Tell me at once,’ he said as if they were adults ‘is Michael in that other oast? I’m not angry. None of you will get into trouble, but I have to know. Had he gone ahead through the tunnel before I found you?’ They gasped and nodded in unison. ‘Right.’ He grabbed the ladder. ‘Ruth, look after the kids. Anne, ring the fire brigade.’

  ‘Already?’ I queried. ‘It’s only a little smoke. The chimney’s not on fire.’

  ‘It will be. Move, girl!’

  I ran to the house without looking back. Alistair was in the kitchen. ‘Where’s everyone ‒’ he stooped to look through the open door. ‘God Almighty! An oast’s belching.’

  I swung round in appalled surprise. Thick, black smoke was now streaming from the right cowl. ‘George has gone in after a kid ‒’ but he had charged off. I charged on to the phone.

  It took inside of five minutes to contact the emergency services and race back. The roar of the fire in the right cone sounded exactly like a steam train going full out. There was smoke pouring from both cowls, every crack in the roof metal, and wisps were appearing from the lower brickwork. The heat was growing intolerable from the cinder track; chunks of over-heated metal were beginning to shoot off and from the new crackle, the beams and floor boards were catching. Both middle hatches were open. The ladder was against the right one. There was no sign of George, Alistair, or the boy.

  Mrs Potter and her daughter, each huddling a child, stood on the lane bank staring in stunned horror. The children’s father was somewhere on the marsh having gone down to search for them before the others smelt the smoke. Old Mr Potter was shouting at Ruth. ‘Get you away and let me by, gal! Get you away from that ladder or I’ll fetch you one! He’s my grandson!’

  ‘Far too dangerous at your age, man!’ Ruth spread-eagled herself on the lower rungs. ‘Go up into that and it could kill you! I’m a doctor ‒ I know ‒ and I’ve promised no-one else gets up!’

  He was a sturdy old man and tall as George. I leapt for his upraised fist as a beam crashed inside. ‘Take it easy ‒ here they are!’

  George was at the hatch. ‘Not hurt!’ he yelled and came down with the boy over his shoulder. Their faces were blackened, their hair and clothes singed and engrimed with twigs, hay and dirt. George’s shirt was split right across the back.

  Mr Potter grabbed the boy. ‘I got him, lad ‒ I got him.’

  ‘Where’s Alistair?’ Ruth’s voice was agonized.

  ‘Following us ‒ get off that bloody tiling, Anne!’ George hauled me off with one hand, pulled off the remains of his shirt with the other. ‘Can’t be far ‒ right behind.’ He wound the torn shirt round his nose and mouth and went up the ladder fast as a monkey.

  Ruth said mechanically, ‘You’d be useless, Anne. Don’t know your way around in there and couldn’t carry him.’

  ‘I know. Better see if the kid’s all right.’

  She came with me. ‘Put him on the grass, Mr Potter, and I would advise you to sit down, yourself.’

  ‘Mebbe you’re right, gal.’ He did as she said.

  Michael was unharmed, unshocked, and very pleased with himself. The old man was seventy-seven and for those few moments looked his age. Ruth looked nearly as old.
I put a hand on her shoulder as she knelt between them.

  She gripped my hand so hard instantly it went numb. I was too frightened for both men for conscious thought.

  My subconscious pushed one up. Dear God, not again. Michael bounced up. ‘He’s got him!’

  The women on the bank were as silent as Ruth, Mr Potter and myself whilst George came slowly down with Alistair in a fireman’s lift. We had him on the grass when the fire reached the first ground floor. A great sheet of flame turned the right oast into a blazing torch.

  George, gasping painfully, pulled off his mask. ‘Beam ‒ not smoke. Stairs. Kid ‒ jammed ‒ tunnel.’

  ‘Sit down, George, and breathe!’ I pushed him down by the shoulders then knelt with Ruth by Alistair. ‘Got his pulse?’

  ‘Can’t ‒’ her voice shook as badly as her hand on Alistair’s temple.

  I grabbed his wrist and breathed out. ‘You’re slipping on the dirt. His radial’s fine and he’s surfacing.’ She sank back on her heels and put her head on her knees. I mopped Alistair’s eyes clear of grime and he blinked, coherently. ‘All safe, Alistair. All out and safe.’

  ‘All? Where’s Ruth?’

  ‘I’m here, my darling.’ She was pale green, but she lunged forward, shoved me aside, took his face in her hands and kissed his lips.

  ‘Please.’ Mary Potter had bustled up, importantly. ‘Mum and Nana are making tea and Nana says do you want some blankets?’ She studied Alistair with unafraid curiosity. ‘Is he dead? Is that why the lady doctor’s giving him the kiss-of-life? The police sergeant said that’s what doctors do at school.’

  ‘No, love, he’s not dead.’ I stood up. ‘Can you ask Nana for two blankets? And bring them to the lady doctor? Round this way, remember. Not nearer to the fire. Good girl. How ‒ where’s Michael?’

  I needn’t have asked. The boys were dancing for joy on the opposite bank having spotted the first fire engine.

  ‘One ‒ two! Super!’

  I suddenly noticed Alistair’s discarded sheepskin coat in the nettles. I took it over to George. He was still breathing with difficulty, but no longer as if drowning. Alistair had Ruth in his arms and was kissing her.

  I slipped the coat round George’s shoulders. ‘Blankets are on their way to help Alistair’s adrenalin with the job. You use this.’

  His bloodshot eyes smiled up from his filthy face. ‘But I’ve got my oasts to keep me warm.’

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Baked potatoes?’ echoed Sister Cardiac.

  ‘Yes. They cooked them in the top loft of the oast with stairs, but got in and out via the ladder, hole in the floor and tunnel, as both ground doors were locked; the left middle hatch was easiest to open with a penknife and the ladder was always there. They said they’d built a fireplace against the kiln wall and stopped any smoke from showing by bunging up the cowl and tunnel end with old sacks. After the cooking sessions, they normally stamped out the ash, hid the fireplace behind odd bricks and the sacks. They said they’d done this often. But yesterday, seeing through a chink in the top hatch their father and the Alsatian going down to the marsh to look for them, they beat it into the next oast in too much of a hurry to be sure the ashes were cold. When they heard us below, Michael, the elder boy, loaded himself with all the uneaten spuds, belted into the tunnel to hide them next door and with the extra girth, got stuck. Earlier, as they’d divided them amongst them, they all got through.’

  ‘Kids! The things they will do! What did the farmer say?’

  ‘Not much. Young Mrs Potter’s his sister. She and her husband were fearfully upset having warned the children for years about matches and fires.’

  ‘I can sympathize. We warned our boys from toddling stage, and then only discovered they were using lighted candles to read in bed when Martin set his bedclothes alight.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Martin was her third and favourite son. ‘Badly hurt? How old?’

  ‘Nine. Difficult age. Old enough to think up bright ideas, but not to foresee the consequences. Luckily, he was only shocked as my husband smelt burning from his bath, leapt up, doused boy and bedding in the water. He was far the more shocked. Dear me ‒ but this won’t get me done in time for L.B.’s teaching round. I asked you in as I’m seeing Miss Evans this afternoon and want your views on our Nurse Carter. I think we should keep her, but as you’ll bear the brunt when you take over from me ‒ agree?’

  ‘Yes. She’s good.’

  ‘That’s settled.’ She ticked off a note, glanced up, quizzically. ‘Decided to take over?’

  ‘I ‒ I haven’t told Miss Evans. I expect I will.’

  ‘So do I, my dear. You’re cut out for it. Now ‒ we’ve dealt with the transfers ‒ you’re going to try and hold on to Messrs Hill and Dixon until after the round and keep C.5 empty for this nineteen-year-old tomorrow. What’s the child’s name? Here we are! Mrs Marlene Dawn Eccles’s advance notes.’ She handed me a thick file. ‘In and out of cardiac wards, poor child, since that illness as a toddler. Parents consistently refused consent for surgery, and in her case, who can blame them?’

  ‘Changed their minds ‒ of course, she’s married. Husband persuaded her?’

  ‘L.B. says fifty-fifty. The boy’s her age, they married last year after only knowing each other a few weeks, despite violent opposition from both sets of parents. Still not speaking, though I expect they’ll come round. The kiddiwinks went together to demand a second opinion and reached L.B. last week. Pair of babes who should be at school, he said. But did we listen when we were young?’ She sounded as if we were the same age. I knew that was unintentional and that it was absurd to let it annoy me. It just did. ‘Holocaust aside, pleasant week-end?’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’

  She said thoughtfully, ‘Nasty things, fires. You’re bound to feel the reaction today.’

  The main corridor was crowded with students waiting for the teaching round. Andy Norris in a spotless white coat glanced at his watch then followed me into Coronary Care. ‘Sanctuary,’ he muttered, ‘sanctuary from the hairy hordes! L.B. won’t be down for another ten minutes. He’s chatting up Roseburn about this Eccles girl, but he’ll have to leave then as Roseburn’s replacing a valve at nine-thirty.’

  Dr Jones in an equally pristine coat was discussing last night’s television play with Shirley at the desk. ‘Right load of codswollop,’ she said.

  ‘Personally, one found it moving, fraught with significance and very well acted. What did you think, Anne?’

  Friday was years away. I couldn’t even think why he was using my Christian name. ‘Missed it. I was out.’

  Mrs Oliver was suddenly weeping. ‘What ails her? I’ll go.’

  I went in. ‘My dear, what’s wrong?’

  ‘Beth’s just died.’

  ‘Beth ‒?’ Then I saw the book on the stand fixed to her bed-table was Good Wives.

  ‘I always read it when I’m ill ‒ soothes me ‒’ she wailed ‒ ‘but I always weep.’

  I said there, there, produced tissues, turned her top pillow, suggested she skipped to Amy, Laurie and Mr Lawrence’s return from Europe, but as her bedside monitor was satisfactory didn’t press it.

  Joe had come into the corridor. ‘Depression hitting her?’

  ‘No. Beth’s just died.’

  ‘Who?’

  When I explained, Joe said if there was one thing medicine had taught him to understand about women it was that he would never understand them. ‘My wife nearly gave me pneumonia at Dr Zhivago. Soaked me to me string vest, then threatened to belt me one because I suggested leaving.’

  Andy’s girl friend had insisted he take her three times to Gone With the Wind. ‘Four-hour deluge each time.’

  Tom Jones regretted his life had lacked the richer experiences. ‘Of course, pre-chemotherapy scarlet must have presented a major problem.’

  Shirley gaped. I hadn’t mentioned Beth’s scarlet fever. ‘And when did you read Good Wives, Doctor?’

  Tom gazed languidly at the monitors. ‘
One never fails to curl up with it on one’s free Saturday nights. What else, one asks oneself, is one to do?’

  That produced his first chummy laugh from the staff in Coronary Care. Mrs Oliver smiled gallantly through her tears, Mr Taylor grinned, and Mr Renner, the only other patient with an unscreened door just then, looked up from the Financial Times on his book-rest and glowered amicably. He was the only person I knew who could do that. The patients couldn’t hear us when their doors were closed, but as patients everywhere, once sufficiently conscious, they kept us under much the same constant surveillance we kept them. ‘Kind of a two-way goldfish bowl,’ observed Mr Renner.

  In the canteen that afternoon Shirley said she was worried about Dr Jones. ‘The creep’s turning couth. Is it true he wanted to date you on Saturday night?’

  I nodded. ‘He tell you?’

  ‘No. He told Dick Francis who told Paul. Did you really have another date?’

  That shouldn’t have annoyed me, either. ‘Yes, of course.’

  She shot me the look of a bright girl who had suddenly discovered the ice is thin. ‘If that yobo Paul doesn’t show up soon, I’ll kill him!’

  ‘Probably still in the theatre.’ I looked the canteen over with more interest than I cared to show, or feel. ‘Don’t recognize any Heart-Lung faces ‒ here’s the lad!’ Paul Villiers had catapulted through the entrance. ‘He can have my chair ‒’

  ‘Let him stand!’

  ‘Don’t be bitchy, Shirley ‒’

  ‘He won’t mind. He likes it. Men do.’ She was definite. ‘I used to be fearfully sweet to ’em and got nowhere. Then I turned bitchy and started turning them on.’

  ‘How’d you set about it? Draw up a schedule?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘How? Like ‒ a bitchy deed a day brings the lads out to play? Let not the sun go down on right unwronged?’

  Her yelp of laughter turned heads all round. Paul, whom she had been ignoring pointedly, beamed with pride in the counter queue. ‘Just like that! Never fails! Take Tom Jones today ‒ greasing all over you because you told him to get stuffed.’