Space Race

by Sylvia Waugh

In the next bed, the infamous Jamie was sitting up nursing a portable electronic keyboard, a “poorly present” from his mam and dad. He had set it on auto and it kept on playing “When the Saints Go Marching In” over and over again.

  “Give it a rest, James,” said the male nurse. “The saints must be tired of marching by now!”

  “You'll not hear it after tomorrow, Ernie,” said Jamie with a friendly smile that might or might not have been cheeky. Blond children always look so innocent! “I'm taking it home with me.”

  “I know,” said the nurse. “And I'm going to do a dance on the roof when it's gone! But for now, we've brought you a new pal. His name's Sammy.”

  “Through there?” said Jamie, nodding toward the curtain.

  “Yes,” said the nurse quietly. “Talk to him, Jamie, there's a good lad. He's had a bit of a fright.”

  “Is that why he's here?” said Jamie, puzzled. Surely people didn't go to the hospital because they'd had a fright.

  “Let him tell you himself,” said the nurse. “Talk to him, but don't ask him any questions. Wait till he talks back to you. That way you'll be helping him. You'll even be helping me—and Dr. Ramsay! In fact, he specially asked for you to do it. So remember, plenty of talk, no questions.”

  Jamie was visibly flattered.

  The nurse had been sitting close to Jamie's bed, talking in a low voice. Now he stood up and drew aside the curtain to reveal the boy in question propped up on pillows in the next bed.

  “This is Sammy,” he said. “Sammy, this is Jamie. Make the most of him today—he's off home tomorrow. I'll leave you to get to know one another.”

  Jamie leaned over toward Thomas's bed. The hospital was boring and Jamie was eager to talk to anybody. And it did sound as if Sammy might be interesting to know. Fancy being in the hospital because you got a fright! It would be worth hearing about.

  “Hello, Sammy,” he said enthusiastically. “They call me Jamie Martin.”

  The boy in the next bed looked straight ahead and ignored this friendly overture.

  “I've had me 'pendix out,” said Jamie, thinking that might be interesting, and hoping for another story in exchange for his own. “It's been trying to get out for ages. I used to have a grumbling 'pendix. Me dad said he didn't know what a 'pendix should have to grumble about, but we're glad it's gone.”

  Jamie paused to allow the other boy to chip in. But Thomas did not even look his way.

  “I'm going home tomorrow,” said Jamie, “but I've got to come back for a checkup after Christmas. I had a really bad 'pendix, far worse than the ordnerry sort.”

  That information produced no response. “I'm getting a bike for Christmas,” said Jamie, deciding that maybe his appendix operation was not interesting enough, “and some computer games—don't know what they are, it's supposed to be a surprise.”

  Thomas went on staring straight in front of him and said nothing.

  Jamie tried another tack, thinking the boy in the next bed might be miserable at being in the hospital. “They'll let you out for Christmas, you know,” he said. “They try to let everybody out for Christmas. And at least you're not on a drip. I was on a drip. They stuck a needle right in me arm and it was fixed to a tube goin' up a to a bottle on a frame. It was really awkward when I had to go to the you-know-where. Me and me frame with the bottle gettin' along the ward and into the bathroom! It was on wheels but it wasn't easy to steer.”

  The boy in the next bed still did not look his way. The expression on his face remained wooden. “Awkward when I had to go to the you-know-where” should at least have raised a smile!

  “Me drip came out once,” said Jamie, trying harder to make a joke of it, “and the nurse—he's called Ernie—was hopping mad and really jumping up and down, but he was just kidding. I think.”

  Jamie paused and then said anxiously, “You haven't got a rucktured 'pendix. You won't be on a drip.”

  This last remark was added for comfort. It wouldn't do to frighten the boy even more, especially if he was a nervous type. Jamie was beginning to be worried at his neighbor's lack of attention.

  “You can hear me, can't you?” he said.

  Thomas could have been deaf. He showed no sign of having heard anything.

  “I once had an elephant called Sammy,” said Jamie in desperation. “It was made of gray velvet and had red ears—red on the inside, gray on the out. It's still in my cupboard. They wanted to give it to me little brother, but he would only have chewed it. He chews everything.”

  Even this met with stony silence. There is only so much a boy can take. Jamie was peeved. It occurred to him that Sammy was playing dumb on purpose.

  “All right,” he said, pulling his sheets up to his chin. “Be like that! I didn't ask you to come here. Nurse! Nurse!”

  A nurse's aide who was passing came hurrying over. She had just come onto the ward for the evening shift, had not even had time to see the head nurse yet, and here was her “favorite” patient already demanding attention.

  “What is it, Jamie?” she said. “What is it this time?”

  “I don't like him,” said Jamie glowering at Thomas. “He won't even look at me. And I haven't asked him any questions. I did just what Ernie said I should do. I want to move to that bed over there.”

  He pointed to an empty bed in the corner of the ward furthest away from his own. In high-sided cots to one side of it, two young children were already sleeping.

  “Sammy's not doing you any harm,” said the aide, glancing down at the name on the clipboard at the foot of the new patient's bed. “I can't move you without permission, Jamie, and I probably wouldn't get it anyway. You're going home tomorrow. Why don't you just ignore him if he's ignoring you? That would seem to be the best plan.”

  “Well, put the telly on,” said the boy sulkily. “I want to watch the telly. Anything's better than looking at that dummy.”

  “All right, Jamie,” said the aide. “You can both watch telly. That mightn't be a bad idea.”

  She turned to the other bed.

  “You'd like to watch telly, wouldn't you, Sammy? I think there's a comedy program coming on.”

  Thomas did not flicker an eyelid. The young nurse was worried. She raised his wrist and took his pulse. Then she adjusted the television for Jamie and went back to report what she thought an alarming condition in the new patient.

  “His pulse is normal,” she said, “but he is totally unresponsive. When I let go of his wrist, it just dropped like a dead weight.”

  “We know that, Cornelia,” said the head nurse. “We've been told just to monitor, not to do anything else for the moment. Let me or Ernie know straightaway if you see any sign of change.”

  Jamie set his keyboard going again, in competition with the television. Then he lay back on his pillows and fell asleep, as if lulled by all the noise.

  The young nurse's aide crept up quietly, removed the keyboard, and restored the peace. When Jamie's mother and aunt came in to see him half an hour later he was lying there like a cherub, and they both looked at him lovingly and forgot what a terror he would be when they took him home.

  “I think we'll just go,” they whispered to the aide after they had both sat in silence for ten minutes. “It seems a shame to disturb him. He looks so peaceful. And he'll be home in his own bed tomorrow.”

  From time to time they had glanced across at the other bed. The little boy lying there with his dark eyes wide open, staring in front of him, was disconcerting. Neither of the visitors spoke to him, but each felt relieved to move away.

  “Is the boy in the bed next to our Jamie all right ?” said Jamie's mother as they passed the desk on their way out. She was clearly worried that her son might have been placed alongside some juvenile psychopath.

  The male nurse at the desk looked up at her and smiled.

  “He's had a shock, that's all,” he said. “We're keeping an eye on him. A good night's sleep should make all the difference. He 'll probably be going out tomorrow as well.”
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  The women looked back at the boy quite kindly now. They would have stayed to hear more about the shock. But Ernie deliberately looked down at the papers on the desk and did not raise his head till they had left.

  After they had gone, he went over to Thomas's bed and drew the curtain round it. It was a shame, he thought, that no one had thought of doing that before the visitors arrived. Ernie settled the patient down, removing the extra pillows to make him more comfortable. He smiled at Thomas as he did so and said a very quiet goodnight. But there was no acknowledgment.

  “Suit yourself, young Sam,” said Ernie. “See you in the morning.”

  In the middle of the night, when the lights in the ward were dimmed, Thomas muttered into his pillow his first words since the crash: “Vateelin, Vateelin mesht …” and began very quietly to weep.

  “We have carried out a thorough autopsy on the visible remains of your deceased specimen of Ovis aries. Our findings would indicate that it is of considerable age, for the species, but in a state of preservation suggesting that care and attention and tanning have gone into the process,” said Bill from the lab with a perfectly straight face and his customary plethora of circumlocutions.

  He returned the plastic bag containing the strip of sheepskin to Sergeant Morland, whose job it was to collate and pass on all information.

  “What is more,” Bill continued, “there is nothing to suggest that any drop of human blood or fragment of human bone is embedded in the fiber. What made your inspector think there might be? We didn't even find a flea. To put it succinctly, it's just a bit of old coat.”

  “How did it get to be ‘a bit'?” said the sergeant. “Was it ripped, cut, or torn? How do you think it happened?”

  “Now there,” said Bill, “we can help you. The tear was recent and had probably been caused by sudden, violent friction against a piece of red-painted metal. The paint exactly matches the paint on the post office van. There is also some rust matching that on the inner rims of the tanker's mudguards. This would suggest that the coat from which the piece comes had somehow been nipped between the tanker and the van at the moment of collision. The torn piece then adhered to the tanker's front wheel and was spun round with it.”

  “Very good,” said Sergeant Morland dryly. “Spectacular. But where then is the rest of the coat?”

  “That's not our worry,” said Bill. “That's a problem for the police! Anyway, the written report will be with you in the morning. But Inspector Galway wanted to know quickly what it would contain. I reckon what we have done is pretty spectacular. We got this material at five o'clock and here I am with the answers and it's just turned nine. My job's done, and so will yours be once you've passed the buck!”

  The whole business was becoming more and more complicated by the minute. It should have been simple: a runaway vehicle, a crash, people in the hospital, vehicles towed away for inspection, faults found, cause confirmed, and then it would be up to the law to sort out blame and award compensation. But no, not this one. The crash, at the most inconvenient time of the year, just before the holiday, had to be different. Two men in hospital were swearing blind they'd run someone over. And a boy, struck dumb by the event, was in the same hospital, unclaimed and not very clearly identified.

  “Now, Canty,” said Sergeant Morland when he had tracked down the vagrant to an alleyway between Walgate Hill and Mercer Street, “I'd like you to come to the station with me. There'll be a nice cup of tea for you there, and we might even have some chocolate tea cakes.” This was inducement enough on a cold winter's night, not to mention the importance of being driven there in a police car.

  “Take your time,” said the sergeant when he had his guest sitting comfortably in the “better class” interview room. “Who is Mr. Bentley? What do you know about him?”

  “He's well-off,” said Canty, “but not posh, at least not stuck-up.”

  “What does he do?” said the sergeant. “What's his job?”

  “I wouldn't know that !” said Canty impatiently. “How d'ye think I'd know that ? He nivver wears a uniform.”

  “Is there anything, any single thing, you can tell us about him? We'd be very pleased you know. It would make our job a lot easier. Do you know his first name?”

  Canty brightened. His little coaly eyes gleamed and he smiled his gap-toothed smile.

  “Ye shud've asked us afore!” he said. “His first name's Todd. I'm sure it is. Todd Bentley.”

  The sergeant was not totally convinced.

  “It has a ring to it,” he said. “Todd Bentley. Yes. But how do you know?”

  “I know,” said Canty. “I can't rightly remember how I know. But I do. I suppose he might be some relation to the old fella in the bike shop. I've seen him near there a few times.”

  The shop was closed, of course. It was turned ten o'clock at night. Sergeant Morland was still on duty, still collating information and asking questions on the telephone. He found out where the shop owner lived and was glad of an excuse to get away from his desk. A squad car gave him a lift to Parkfield Road. It was at the other end of town, the good end with the semidetached houses and the neat front gardens.

  “Mr. Bentley?” said Sergeant Morland to the grayhaired man who answered the door. The dog by the man's side growled quietly.

  “Yes?” said the man, looking wary.

  “Police,” said Sergeant Morland. “We are trying to trace a Mr. Todd Bentley and we wondered if you could help us in any way.”

  The man opened the door wider; the dog relaxed. Somewhere in the background a voice was calling, “Who is it? Is that our Jill?”

  “No, Pamela,” said the man over his shoulder. “It's nothing. Just a policeman looking for somebody called Todd Bentley.”

  The shop owner turned to the sergeant again and said, “I'm afraid you've got the wrong Bentley. Never heard of anybody called Todd.”

  “It was a long shot,” said Sergeant Morland. “I thought Canty might be mistaken.”

  “Canty!” said the real Mr. Bentley with a laugh. “You can't take Canty's word for anything! He's harmless enough, but he makes it all up as he goes along. Who's this fella you're looking for?”

  Sergeant Morland explained briefly that a boy had been picked up in a state of shock after the accident (no need to tell about the accident—everyone who had been on Walgate Hill at the time knew what had happened, more or less).

  “His name might be Sammy Bentley,” said the sergeant, “but we do have only Canty's word for it. What is true is that there is a child in the hospital who's in some sort of shock and refusing to speak.”

  “It's a wonder nobody's looking for him,” said Gerald Bentley.

  Sergeant Morland smiled wearily.

  “I just wish somebody would!” he said.

  “So,” said Inspector Galway as he looked down quite lovingly at the piece of sheepskin, “what have we got?”

  “Do you really want to know, sir?” said the sergeant, stifling a yawn. It was after midnight. Morland knew that if it hadn't been for the confounded piece of sheepskin, both he and his inspector would have been home by now. There was something about this business that appealed to Inspector Galway. He just loved a mystery, and there weren't enough of them to go round. The crimes he met with, even the nastiest, were mostly anything but mysterious. Now he looked sharply at his sergeant, irritated at being stopped in his tracks.

  “Well?” he said.

  “We've got precisely nothing,” said Morland doggedly. “If those two men in the hospital would stop hallucinating and if that boy would open his mouth and talk, we would be a lot better off. As it is, we might as well go home and sleep on it. And, by the way, your wife rang up an hour ago saying that the cats enjoyed your supper.”

  Inspector Galway smiled. He got on well with Morland. It was not the first time such a message had been passed on. It would not be the last.

  Galway looked down thoughtfully at the tantalizing piece of sheepskin.

  “You do realize, Morland,”
he said, “that this is quite a remarkable mystery? It could almost be an encounter with the supernatural!”

  Cornelia heard the sobbing, low though it was. She went quietly to the bed in the corner and leaned over Thomas's pillow, stroking his head gently.

  “There, there, Sammy,” she said. “Try to sleep, love. You'll feel better in the morning.”

  Thomas ceased his sobbing and listened carefully to the soft voice.

  “If you want anything, I won't be far away,” said the nurse, cautious of saying more because of the business of “monitoring.” Recalling the thing that most embarrassed a child in hospital, she added, “There's slippers in your locker and the bathroom's just at the end of the ward if you need it. Or I can bring you a bottle if you'd rather.”

  Thomas shrugged to show he had heard this vital bit of information. He had already been taken to the bathroom, but he had been wondering a bit anxiously whether he could just get up and go there in what seemed like the middle of the night.

  “I think Sammy's coming out of it,” Cornelia said to the head nurse when she went over to the desk. “There's a definite change. He's having a bit of a weep, but he didn't seem to want anything.”

  At that moment, a little boy in hospital foam slippers padded to the end of the ward, in the direction of the bathroom. Cornelia looked round, startled, and saw it was Sammy. The head nurse put a finger to her lips but indicated that Cornelia should follow him discreetly. He went in. He came out. And he returned to his bed like a sleepwalker.

  “It's a start,” said the head nurse. “We should be able to get him talking tomorrow.”

  In bed once more, Thomas lay on his back gazing up at the ceiling. But he was not in a state of shock any longer. His faculties had fully returned to him. He was silently, furiously thinking.

  First of all, he took in fully his present situation. This is a hospital bed. That is a curtain. Beyond that curtain is another bed. In that bed there is … He struggled. There is a boy called Jamie who talks. That was as much of the present and of the near past as Thomas could gather into his fuddled brain.