Lacey's House

by Joanne Graham

  Chapter 65

  I fell asleep and the first emotion I had on waking was guilt. How could I sleep here? How could I have been relaxed enough to drift off only feet away from where they worked on Lacey? When I looked up I realised that a doctor stood in front of me, his hand resting gently on my shoulder.

  “Miss Moore?”

  I nodded and rubbed at my eyes.

  “My name is Dr Madison, I’m Ms Carmichael’s doctor. I wanted to talk to you a little bit about what is happening right now.”

  I nodded again and tried to brace myself against his words. I felt the dread pressing down on my shoulders and his words surrounded it and held it there, adding to the weight of it. He took a seat near to me on the sofa, leaving one cushion width between us so that he could turn to me without invading my personal body space.

  “We suspect that Ms Carmichael has suffered an intracerebral haemorrhage. That diagnosis will be confirmed later following the outcome of tests. I’m afraid that until we get those results, I cannot offer any kind of prognosis.” His words were spoken softly, comforting and gentle and I wondered how they could hurt so much when they were said so delicately.

  “How is she now though?” I asked and the pause before he answered left me cold. He took a deep breath, expelling it in a rush from his nose.

  “At the present moment, Ms Carmichael is unconscious and has been since she arrived at the hospital. Would you like to come through and see her?”

  I wanted to say no, I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to see the shell of her lying there, but I nodded anyway and he stood to lead me through to a room that was dimly lit. She lay on the bed, her shoulders bare, the blanket pulled up modestly over her chest. Her face was so still it looked plastic and I wanted to touch the skin there, poke it, pull it, give it some life and reassure myself that there was still movement, that it was still possible.

  I sat next to her and held her hand. It stayed limp and soft in mine and I watched as her chest rose and fell. I thought to myself that it was a good sign that she was breathing by herself. I held on to that thought tightly.

  Throughout the rest of that night I talked to her. I told her everything I had never had the chance to share. I told her about the other children in the home, how they had bullied me until each morning brought a wave of sickness and anxiety. I told her that I was afraid now that I would never be able to have a baby, that my insides might be damaged. I told her all of the things that filled a space inside me, suddenly feeling this desperate urge to divulge the real me while there was still time. The night passed slowly and I filled it with my voice and kept hold of her hand.

  By the time the doctor returned I think I already knew what he was going to say. It was a different doctor but he wore the same expression and I saw the words in his eyes. He ushered me out of the room and back to the relative comfort of the waiting room, as if Lacey was not entitled to hear the truth about her condition though I was. He put his hand on my forearm. Perhaps it was meant to be comforting but I wanted to pull away from him, to have space around me as he stole my breath away.

  “I’m afraid the tests confirm that Ms Carmichael has suffered a significant intracerebral haemorrhage. The bleed has caused fairly catastrophic damage to the brain tissue near her brainstem.” He paused as if expecting questions and I complied because the silence grew uncomfortable and difficult to bear.

  “Is she going to recover?” I meant to say die, is she going to die? But the word felt alien in my mouth and I couldn’t force it past my tongue. He looked genuinely regretful as he shook his head slightly.

  “I’m sorry. I think that with the amount of damage to the brain it would be unlikely that Ms Carmichael can survive this event.”

  “Do you know how long she has?”

  He shook his head again. “Anything I say at this point would be purely conjecture. It would be impossible for me to answer that with any degree of accuracy.”

  I thanked him and thought how obscene that is, that we thank someone when they have told us the very worst. That there is no hope, that all is lost. I watched his retreating figure and for a fleeting moment I hated him for what he had told me, as if it were his fault that Lacey was dying, as if he could change it if he wanted to. I watched the door close behind him and then followed. I went back to her room and sat with her.

  I tried to think of everything that needed to be done, I thought of Peachy and the chickens and realised they would need to be fed. I was reluctant to leave her alone, hesitant about going, but I knew that she would want me to look after her beloved cat. I told the nurse that I would be back as soon as possible and rushed outside to the car park where I took a deep breath of frigid air.

  Chapter 66

  Several days passed and even this, even waiting for death, became routine and ordinary. Early in the morning, when it was still dark and the roads were quiet I would head back to feed Peachy. I would stroke him for a few minutes, feed him, change his water and leave him enough biscuits to last till the following day. Then I would do the same for the chickens, go home, wash and change and then head back to the hospital where I would sit for hours and try to think of new things to say, leaving the room only when the nurses needed to wash her or when the doctors came. I took books and magazines with me and when I felt silent and lacking in words I would read to her. I grew sick of the sound of my own voice.

  I had brought her own nightclothes in with me so at least she was wearing those and I would periodically wipe her face and dab a little of her perfume on her wrists; it seemed a little silly yet somehow important. I brushed her hair and cared for her but after a while I felt like little more than a window-dresser. There was no response and I wanted to beg her to open her eyes, to smile at me and tell me it was all okay.

  One morning as I was telling her that the cat and the chickens seemed fine, Doctor Madison came in.

  “Could I have a little chat with you, Rachel?”

  I had been here long enough to be elevated to first name terms it seemed. I was curious rather than worried, there seemed no news that could be any worse than the prognosis I had already been given. I was a little surprised, however, when he lead me into his office rather than the waiting room.

  “Please take a seat.” He gestured towards one of two that faced his desk and I took the nearest one as he moved around the large, paper-strewn surface and sat down. He clasped his hands in front of him and looked down at them. I saw the top of his head, the salt and pepper hair that swirled around his crown.

  “What I wanted to discuss with you is that Lacey, Ms Carmichael, has apparently endured some rather traumatic surgery at some point. I was wondering if perhaps you could shed any light on that.”

  I thought about the day that she had told me about her lobotomy, about how appalled I had been, how sickened. I wondered for a moment if it was the brain damage caused by the lobotomy that had in turn caused the stroke and thought that maybe I should have said something before now. I mentally berated myself for my stupidity.

  “Lacey was lobotomised in the sixties,” I explained. “I don’t know if it helps in any way but she told me that they went into her brain through the back of her eye sockets.” I found myself wincing at my own words.

  Dr Madison looked at me for a moment, his gaze level and direct, then he cleared his throat and looked down at the notes in front of him.

  “We actually do have the notes of that particular event, it’s recorded in her medical records, along with the Electric Shock Treatment she underwent.” He looked uncomfortable. “The surgery I’m referring to is the more... er intimate surgery that Ms Carmichael has been through.”

  I looked at him, at the way he shifted in his chair, at the way his eyes skimmed the room and I thought about all that Lacey and I had talked about. I came up blank, empty and shook my head. “I’m sorry, I have no idea what you are referring to.”

  He cleared his throat again; the truth an uncomfortable mass that lodged in there and appeared to make his words m
ore difficult. Once again his voice took on a gentle tone and I realised it was the same voice that he used on the night that Lacey was brought in, the one he must keep in reserve for difficult news.

  “The nurses who are taking care of Lacey reported something unusual following some routine intimate care. They brought it to my attention and an examination took place, conducted by myself and, latterly, by a gynaecologist here at the hospital. It appears that Lacey has suffered female circumcision or rather, female genital mutilation as it is more commonly known.” He paused and into the silence I thought ‘more commonly known’, as if this happened as frequently as a trip to the supermarket or a dental filling. My mind was reeling. The reasons, the possibilities churned in my head. How could this have been? She had been through so much, so very much. How could this have been done to her on top of everything else?

  I remembered her telling me about the lobotomy, that her father wasn’t a very nice man and I wanted to cry at her understatement, because surely it had been he that was responsible for this horrific attack. The cruel doctor who had beat her severely, who had sent her away and wreaked a path of destruction through her brain. It occurred to me then how it may have come to pass.

  “Her father was a doctor, a cruel man by all accounts. It’s possible that this was how he punished her for getting pregnant, for the baby. That’s purely speculative though because she never talked to me about it. I’m sorry.” I spread my hands in a helpless gesture and wished I knew more.

  The lines between the doctor’s eyes deepened, he looked quizzical, as puzzled as I was.

  “Baby?” He asked and I explained as briefly as I could about Charlie, about the baby, about loss. He shifted in his seat again and looked at the space above my head before averting his eyes and staring a hole through the notes in his hands.

  “I’m afraid that is quite impossible,” he said and his voice was an unbending thing, rigid and uncompromising. I felt an answering churning in my stomach as his eyes slid around the room, everywhere but at me. Here was another doctor who couldn’t meet my eyes. He looked back at his notes, gestured with them towards me.

  “The intimate examination showed that not only was Ms Carmichael subjected to the mutilation – which judging by the extent of the healing was done many years ago – it also showed that her hymen was intact.” He finally raised his eyes to meet mine. “She was a virgin.”

  I looked back at him and felt the world crumble around me.

  It was all lies. It went around and around in my head, a constant litany, it was all lies. I didn’t know how to react. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. There was no room for any thought other than that one repeating line. I stood outside the main doors watching the yellow circles of freezing rain around car headlights and I wondered why. I had felt such grief, such sorrow for her and for a child that never existed. And what of Charlie senior, had he been real? Did he ever exist or was he just another creation? I couldn’t reconcile that moment with everything I knew about Lacey, it seemed unfathomable. I felt powerless and the sheer reaction to a truth I had never even guessed at, had never even suspected, grew tight around my throat. I felt so angry, so betrayed and I walked away from the hospital without looking back.

  Chapter 67

  I went back home and mindlessly took care of the chores that had been overlooked. I washed my clothes, cleaned the house. I took a scrubbing brush to the front step not caring that the chances were the water would freeze and I could break a leg on it. Everything I did was abrupt and angry. I took my ire out on the inanimate because there was no-one I could punish for her deceit. I felt that our friendship was one lie piled on top of another. That I had not been to her what she had been to me. I forced myself to ignore the nagging thread of pity that brushed the surface of my thoughts.

  I went to feed her animals and stood in the silence of her home trying not to think of how life had been for her, I tried to hold on to the anger at the lies she told and the frustration that I couldn’t ask her, that she was beyond my reach and I would never know the truth. I left the house and went back home. I was exhausted and almost beyond thought as I went upstairs and lay down fully clothed on the bed and drifted away.

  When I woke up it was with a start. I was disorientated; I didn’t know the time or where I was for a few moments. Then it came back to me and I waited for the anger to return but it didn’t, I just felt heartbroken that I had got things so very wrong. I felt foolish.

  I looked at the clock and saw that it was six in the morning, I had slept for more than twelve hours. Listening to the wind howling outside I got out of bed, slid my icy cold feet into slippers and made my way downstairs. As I reached for the kettle I knocked the phone I had left there and it nudged a memory forwards. Lacey telling me that she had left a letter in her telephone table. I felt my chest jolt, perhaps there would be an explanation after all. Leaving the kettle to boil I went to fetch the letter. It sat in the drawer in an envelope, my name scrawled across the front in big, looping writing. I took it back home and opened it as I drank my tea.

  Dearest Rachel,

  I can’t begin to imagine that I will outlive you. I certainly hope I don’t anyway, that would just be plain wrong. So assuming that I go before you, I have to ask you this. Please, please don’t let them bury me in the same ground as him, as my father. Please don’t let that happen. Let them cremate me and scatter my ashes somewhere beautiful or let them put me in a pauper’s grave somewhere in the middle of nowhere, I don’t mind which. That’s all I ask.

  And I want to say thank you, Rachel, for everything. I don’t know what I would have done without you.

  With love, as always,

  Your friend,

  Lacey

  There was nothing more and my heart sank, I had so hoped that it would contain the answers. But as I sat there and thought about her words I felt something nagging at me, I read it again and again and eventually it nudged awake another memory.

  I remembered her saying to me, ‘what would my life be without them?’ and I see it, I see for myself what it would have been, a life so lonely, so isolated that it wouldn’t even bear thinking about.

  I got dressed and walked into the heart of the village. It was still dark and the graveyard looked bleak and bare but the doors to the church were open as they often were. I stepped through and pushed them closed behind me. I walked down the aisle and sat in one of the pews looking at my gloved hands and the kneeling pad that hung in front of my knees. I could feel the prayers of others surrounding me and I thought that even if I didn’t believe, even if none of it was real, surely the hope that had absorbed into these walls over the centuries counted for something.

  I didn’t realise I was crying until I felt a hand, gentle and warm on my shoulder. I looked up into the kind face of Father Thomas who held a handkerchief out for me. I took it and wiped the tears from my face. I realised it was the first time I had let myself cry since New Year’s Eve. He sat down next to me and stayed silent as I was overwhelmed by the flood of emotion I had been keeping under wraps since Lacey’s stroke.

  When I had calmed and there was nothing left of my tears but hitching breath and red eyes, I began to talk. I told him about Lacey, about Charlie and the baby that never was. I told him of the lies and what the doctors had discovered. I told him everything that I could, condensing Lacey’s life and her stories into little more than bullet points fired with anger. When I was done he looked at me with sympathy and took hold of my hand.

  “Is she going to make it?”

  I closed my eyes and shook my head, biting my lips together as I passed on the information I had hated to hear. Father Thomas nodded to himself, looking up the aisle of the church at the crucifix that hung above the altar. He was silent a moment before nodding again, as though he had come to some kind of conclusion.

  “When I first joined this parish, I spent a year or two working alongside the previous vicar, Alan. He had been here since the beginning of time and looked as old as t
he church itself.” He smiled a little at the memory and I thought we all have these full stops in our lives, these moments where we have to go on without something that has been a part of us.

  “He told me about the village and the villagers, everything he thought I needed to know to successfully minister to them. He was preparing me to take over and he did it awfully well, I don’t think he left a single stone unturned. He once said to me, ‘Thomas, do you know the difference between a doctor and God? God doesn’t think he is a doctor!’” Father Thomas paused for my reaction and when none was forthcoming he smiled, a sad awkward smile. “He was talking about Doctor Carmichael, Lacey’s father. Oh, he was well-respected and highly thought of in the village. He saw so many of the locals in at the beginning and signed so many of them off when they died that it’s doubtful there was a single life here that he didn’t touch in some way. But it is fair to say that he was a fearsome man, no-one dared to question him and he ruled his house with a rod of iron.

  “His wife, she was a timid mouse of a thing by all accounts, and when Lacey came along she was subject to the same rules. No fraternising with the locals, no talking in the street, no right to have a life at all. I think the only time she really saw anyone else was when she had to go with her father to help him out, and even then she rarely, if ever, spoke.” He fidgeted on the seat trying to get comfortable.

  “When Father Alan told me about Lacey Carmichael he described her in such an odd way. He said that she was little more than a ghost who carried her life in her eyes. She was like a princess in a tower who rarely set foot outside, but he said she was a dreamer and she never seemed to notice the world around her anyway. Maybe that was just how she coped with such an awful life at home. She just drifted on through it and dreamed of better.