The Man With No Face

by Peter May

  Mascoulin might have been talking about bacteria observed through a microscope for all the empathy he showed, and Bannerman found his apparent disinterest irritating. And yet it was easily possible that this clinical detachment was simply a manifestation of professionalism born of compassion. It was too easy to judge people too quickly.

  ‘As you can see, Tania has not adapted well to her new envir­onment. To an extent this is to be expected. She has been traumatized, and there is a language barrier. We do not know how much French, if any, she understands. Naturally, for the other children and the staff . . . well, French or perhaps Flemish is the native tongue. We cannot upset the routine for one child, though several of our nurses do speak English and have spent some time with her. Individual attention. But I’m afraid there are limits to what we can do for her here.’

  Bannerman was looking at Sally, who seemed intent on the children. He wondered again at her interest in Tania. It had not occurred to him that her feelings for the child might have gone beyond that of an occasional carer. Had she visited more than once? It was odd, he thought, how the child had affected them both.

  ‘The sooner she can be taken back to Scotland the better,’ Mascoulin was saying. ‘I understand your paper is trying to get her a place at the Brook Clinic in Edinburgh.’

  ‘Yes,’ Bannerman said. It was the first he’d heard of it.

  ‘Doctor Brook has some interesting, if rather unusual, approaches to treatment across the autistic spectrum. Of course, there is no general agreement on any one approach . . .’

  Bannerman had returned his gaze to Tania. She had not moved. Nor, it seemed, had she so much as blinked. Her eyes were dark, mysterious pools that gave no hint of what might be going on behind them. Bannerman remembered the touch of her cold fingers on his cheek and he was disturbed by the affection that stirred in him. ‘What kind of future does a child like that have?’ he heard himself asking. And he turned to look at Mascoulin’s square, ugly face.

  ‘It is difficult to say. Only time will tell. But there is a great danger in such cases that lack of responsiveness to treatment will lead eventually to confinement in a mental institution. There they tend to resort to drugs to maintain some kind of equilibrium, in some cases leading to schizophrenia.’ He scratched his head thoughtfully. ‘You see, autistic children grow up to become autistic adults. In bad cases, and where there is no one else to look after them, they are unable to look after themselves. They are unpredictable and sometimes violent. There is little else that can be done.’ He saw the alarm in Bannerman’s face and added quickly, ‘That is only in extreme cases, of course.’

  The session in the playroom came to a close. Another nurse led the children away, but Tania was the last to go. The nurse who had spoken to her earlier took her hand and the little girl followed with that same passive serenity that Bannerman had seen in her before.

  ‘She has a room of her own,’ Mascoulin said. ‘She likes to be left to her own devices. Sometimes she draws, but never in the playroom. Athough we always provide pencil and paper there. She regards our attentions as . . . well, as an intrusion, I suppose.’

  ‘Can we see her?’ Bannerman said.

  ‘She might react.’

  ‘I know, I’ve seen it.’

  Mascoulin shrugged. ‘Just one of you, then.’

  Sally said, ‘On you go. I’ll see her next time.’

  *

  Tania’s head snapped around abruptly when the door opened. She was sitting at a small desk pushed against the wall. It was covered with sheets of paper. She clutched a small pencil in her hand. The weary, pained face of Christ looked down from a crucifix fixed to the bare white wall above her. Her bedsheets were a mess, as if she had spent a tortured night in them. A dark wooden dresser stood against the far wall. A threadbare square of carpet covered black-painted floorboards. It was an austere, functional room, like a cell.

  The first thing that Bannerman noticed was the bars on the window that looked out from the first floor on to the driveway below. Beyond, the lights of the city twinkled in a snowy distance.

  Then he was drawn by her eyes.

  In the first moment, before she recognized Bannerman, her eyebrows puckered towards the bridge of her nose, eyes flaring with anger. Then, just as quickly, her forehead unfurrowed and her eyes became once more those dark, placid pools. Mascoulin satisfied himself that there would be no tantrums. ‘I’ll leave you for a moment.’ He closed the door softly and Bannerman stood awkwardly, looking at the child. In the silence he could hear his own breathing, like the scraping of chalk on a blackboard.

  The child remained motionless, half-turned in her chair, staring back at him. The seconds dragged interminably. ‘Hello,’ Bannerman said at last, and his voice sounded feeble. Still she made no movement, and he took two or three steps towards her and looked at the drawings spread on the table. Even though he had seen her drawing of the man in the house, he was startled by their brilliance. Seldom had he seen so much expression conveyed in such simple lines. Movement and perspective accurately observed by the merest stroke of her pencil. There were horses and riders, a dog, a bird in flight. ‘They’re beautiful,’ he said, and thought how inadequate that was to express their genius.

  She had turned her head around so that she could watch him. What was she thinking? He crouched down suddenly, on an impulse, so that his eyes were on a level with hers, and took one of her hands. For a moment there was something on the tip of his tongue, something he had been going to say. But it vanished as quickly and he lost his grasp of what it was. Everything he felt about her, all the strange emotions she awakened in him, were hopelessly elusive, impossible to define. He was at a loss, foundering in a sea of confusion, and he felt a sudden urge to take her into the protection of his arms. But scared of the reaction it might provoke, he let the moment pass.

  He was embarrassed without knowing why, and lowered his head. He sighed and felt the soft warmth of her small fingers in his. How could he explain it to her when he could not explain it to himself? He wanted to protect her, to keep her safe from harm, the way a father would a daughter. An instinct foreign to him, and yet completely natural.

  He raised his eyes and saw that she was smiling. A gentle smile that showed in her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. There was a great serenity in her face that made its plainness almost beautiful. He squeezed her hand and stood up, still touched by his embarrassment, but a little easier within himself. ‘I’ll come and see you again.’ But her hand clung obstinately to his and he felt her distress. ‘I must go.’

  Still the hand held his. And then suddenly she seemed resigned to his leaving and her hand fell away. He wanted to go, but his feet would not take him. Her face was still turned upwards, looking at him with sadness now. That hint of a smile long gone. He bent over and kissed her gently on the forehead, catching a glimpse of his pale, bruised face in a mirror on the wall opposite. He looked tired, and he turned his eyes away from the reflection. The kiss was a simple thing that seemed to come without thinking. But still it surprised him. ‘I’ll come back,’ he heard himself saying. And then felt the cold of the metal door handle in his hand as he stepped out in the corridor, shutting the door behind him.

  Mascoulin emerged from the room next door and looked at him strangely. ‘She has a marvellous talent,’ he said.

  Bannerman nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

  They walked the length of the corridor together, and on the stairs Mascoulin said, ‘Children have an almost unlimited capacity for love, Monsieur Bannerman. Most autistic children find that kind of connection with others very difficult. It frustrates them, almost as much as it frustrates their loved ones. It’s hard to keep loving someone who cannot love you back.’

  Bannerman nodded.

  The doctor went on, ‘Every child needs a love to return. Just a little goes such a long way and is returned manyfold. Perhaps little Tania has
missed out in that respect.’

  Bannerman didn’t doubt it. He looked at the doctor. It was almost as though he had been witness to the events in Tania’s room. Then he remembered the mirror on the wall. He felt momentarily annoyed, spied on. But the anger passed quickly.

  ‘You were watching,’ he said.

  Mascoulin nodded. ‘We like to be able to keep an eye on the children.’ He paused. ‘I must admit that the way she responded to you was quite exceptional. She’s been like an automaton since she arrived. Even with Mademoiselle Robertson.’ He hesitated. ‘How long have you known the child?’

  Bannerman shook his head. ‘I hardly know her at all.’

  Sally was waiting in the hall. She looked up as she heard them on the stairs. ‘I do hope you will come again,’ Mascoulin said. He shook both their hands and watched them pass through the swing doors, out into the snow. And wondered at the curious scene he had witnessed in the child’s room.

  Outside, Bannerman stopped at the foot of the steps, breathing in the cold night air, and turned his face slightly upwards so that the snowflakes cooled the heat of his skin. He felt Sally’s arm slip through his and she guided him slowly towards the car, her feet scuffing in the soft snow. ‘Why did you really come?’ she asked.

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’ He searched absently in his pocket for the car keys. ‘The first night I stayed at the apartment I woke in the small hours to find her in my room. She was just standing watching me, and then she put her fingers on my face. Stood there a while, just gazing at me, then left. It touched me. Touched my soul, Sally. I don’t know how else to explain it.’ He glanced at her, self-conscious. Then away again. The keys were cold in his hand and he unlocked the passenger door. ‘Would you like to go somewhere?’

  ‘You could take me home,’ she said. ‘I’m very tired.’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Kale told the driver to go on past. The brass plaque flashed briefly in the headlights of the taxi, a flicker of information caught in a moment of light and time that told him he need look no further for the child.

  Beyond where Bannerman’s car had turned into the hospital, the taxi made virgin tracks in the snow and its gears whined as the tyres fought for grip. The vehicle pulled slowly towards the top of the hill. Here there were a few trees where the ground levelled off and the road swung away to wind itself down around the other side. Kale stopped the driver and counted out a thick wad of notes. He was not sure how much it would be in English money. Perhaps two hundred pounds. It seemed extravagant, but then it hardly mattered any more.

  The driver took the money and felt its thickness in his hand. He dared not count it then, but he knew it was a lot. Many times more than the fare he had clocked up. He stuffed it hastily in his pocket and half-turned, a stiff smile on his face, and muttered words of thanks. The cold eyes of his passenger flickered briefly over him, each eye reflecting a pinhead of light from its darkness. The mouth, pinched and pale, said nothing. Only the eyes spoke, a silent warning, before their owner turned to open the door and slip quietly out.

  The driver wasted no time in pushing into first gear. He turned the car out from the kerb to head down the hill and glanced in the rearview mirror. But already his passenger was only a shadow, barely visible among the trees. He let out a deep breath, one that he seemed to have been holding in his lungs all day, and allowed himself a smile of satisfaction as he fingered the wad of notes in his jacket pocket. All his fears and doubts of earlier melted as quickly as the snowflakes that landed on his windscreen. The thoughts he had entertained only a few hours before, of going to the police, seemed ridicu­lous now. Who cared why this sullen foreigner had wanted him to follow the blue Volkswagen? He pulled the flap over his pocket. Perhaps he could take a few days off.

  Kale watched the red tail lights of the taxi vanish from view where the road turned down through the trees. He stood for some minutes. At first he felt nothing. Not even the cold. In a few hours it would all be over and then nothing would matter any more. Back the way they had come he could see the lights of the hospital through the branches of trees. He barely noticed the view of the city below him to his right.

  He turned and walked back down the hill until he reached the first of the villas standing darkly behind its high stone walls. There a solitary streetlamp rose above its own pool of feeble yellow light, and he stopped to light a cigarette and turn up the collar of his coat. His every movement seemed remote to him, mechanical, as though he had stepped outside of his body and was simply an onlooker. He had surrendered himself completely to the job in hand.

  He smoked only half of his cigarette before throwing it away and carried on down the road to the gates of the clinic. Already the tyre tracks of Bannerman’s car where it had turned into the hospital were covered by fresh snowfall, leaving only the merest of impressions. Kale hesitated for just a moment in the gateway, then moved silently from the drive into the trees. Here the snow lay in patches, the thick layer of dead leaves spongy under his feet. There was a smell of decay, damp and cold, among the evergreen foliage. He scrambled up the slope, his sleeves and trousers snagging on bushes, and then waited, breathless, at the top, crouched below the cover of the wall that bounded the terrace. A fine cold sweat beaded his forehead.

  For several minutes he remained there before pulling himself up so that he could see beyond the wall, across the terrace to the house itself. A number of cars, including the one he had been following all day, stood in its shadow, the light of the lamp above the main door streaming out across the terrace towards him. More lights shone in windows on all floors, casting reflections in the snow. He crouched down again and made his way below the wall to where it cut away at the end of the terrace. From here he had an oblique view across the front of the house beyond where the light fell in long yellow slabs. He eased himself in against a short flight of broken stone steps to watch and wait, silent and unseen, with an infinite and chilling patience.

  He could not tell how much time had passed before the man and the girl came out. They came down the steps and crossed to their car, damp snow creaking beneath their feet. Their voices drifted with the snow and he registered only a little surprise to hear them speaking English.

  ‘Would you like to go somewhere?’

  ‘You can take me home. I’m very tired . . .’

  When the car had gone the silence returned and Kale stretched his stiffening legs. He glanced up and saw a small face pressed against one of the lit windows on the first floor, watching through bars as the lights of the vehicle travelled back down the hill towards the housing estate below.

  Suddenly he felt the cold, the pain in his legs and the numbness of his fingers. He no longer stood apart from himself. The face at the window was just a shadow, a small head silhouetted against the light behind it. A tiny hand came up and pressed against the pane before sliding slowly, hopelessly, down to the sill. Kale knew with a frightening certainty that this was the child who had seen him in the house at the Rue de Pavie.

  Still he did not move. Another figure appeared in the room. A nurse who came to the window. The child turned and they both moved out of vision. Several more minutes passed before the nurse reappeared at the window and drew the blind so that the light behind it showed only around its edges. Then the light went out.

  *

  It was after midnight when the last lights went out around the house and its grounds lay in darkness. For the last hour Kale’s attention had been focused on the child’s window. He had been surprised, sometime after the light was extinguished, to see the blind slowly rise and reveal the paleness of her face in the light reflected by the snow. And there she remained, staring into the dark, head pressed against the glass.

  He had found himself thinking about her. Alone in the world without parents, without love, separated from others by something in her head, something that set her apart, condemned to exist in the loneliness of her own mind. Ther
e was an affinity between them. Her life was no more, no less, than his had been then, or than it was now. How much pain might he have been spared if some stranger with a gun had ended his life thirty years ago? No loss to anyone. No one to miss him. But, he knew, he was only seeking virtue in evil. Self-justification. Such a bitter irony. It was something he had never needed before.

  Now, with all the lights out, he could no longer see her at the window. But she was still there, he knew. He eased himself painfully to his feet and felt for the gun in his pocket. The cold of the barrel burned his fingers. With a heavy heart he began up the steps to the terrace. It was time.

  *

  Her skin was burning as though with a fever. Occasionally she moved her forehead on the glass so that it was cold again. She did not feel sleepy. She would wait at the window, she had decided, until Bannerman’s car returned. Maybe tomorrow, or the day after. She wanted to see the car come up the driveway. She wanted to see him standing in the snow. Perhaps he would glance up and see her at the window and wave. And perhaps she would smile and wave back. It might be difficult, but she wanted to do it. She wanted him to know all the things she couldn’t tell him. Why was she so drawn to those startling blue eyes? Maybe it was what she saw behind them.

  The lights of the city twinkled and shone in the valley below in seemingly random patterns. He was out there somewhere. Doing what? Did he think about her as she thought about him? Of course not. Her reasoning was clear and sound. She constituted only a tiny fraction of his life, of his thoughts. It was only in the great void of her own existence that he was so important to her, filling the emptiness, bringing light into darkness. There was no reason that he should think of her at all. And yet he had come here, hadn’t he? And so clearly felt something for her, something that he too was unable to express. He would come again. He had told her he would.