by Nina Bawden
At last the doctor came; he was a young, clean-shaven boy in a white coat. He had a stethoscope hanging round his neck and he fingered it all the time he was talking as though it gave him confidence.
He said that they had made Rose as comfortable as they could and that she was in a small room off a main ward and that a police officer was with her. He tried not to show that he was curious about it all and I liked him for that. He was cautious about her; he said that she had had a miscarriage and that she had a deep pneumonia. In the ordinary way, of course, there would have been nothing to worry about. People didn’t die of pneumonia now because of penicillin but her case was more complicated because of the miscarriage and because she had been too long without proper care.
I said, “Do you think she will die?” knowing that it was the only thing I cared about and he looked slightly shocked as though I had asked an improper question.
He said that of course he couldn’t say, that there was no certain answer to the question but that she was young and would have every attention. He seemed bothered and embarrassed.
Then he said, “Has she any relatives? Should we get in touch with them? Of course we usually do that sort of thing ourselves when casualties are brought in but as this is a police case I don’t know what will have been done.”
I told him that I would find out and do what was necessary. I thanked him for his trouble and gave him the telephone number of my club. I wanted to stay at the hospital but I told myself that it was foolish and I should be a nuisance.
I went back to my club and shut myself into a telephone booth. It was a smart little box with a shiny leather seat along one wall. I rang Scotland Yard; I hadn’t really expected that Jennings would be there so that it was a surprise when his voice came along the line. It sounded thin and unexpectedly refined, a civil servant’s voice.
I said, “Rose has been found. She’s safe.” I think that I probably sounded absurdly jubilant.
He said, “Yes, I know,” in a patient way that took the wind out of my sails. He went on, “We have just heard. Her mother is being informed.” He sounded very cold and unmoved about the whole thing and although I knew that it was unreasonable to expect anything else I felt childishly angry.
I said, hoping I suppose to excite some feeling in him, “She is very ill.”
He sounded almost amused. “We hope she will recover. For our sake if not for her own, poor girl.”
The compassion was perfunctory. I might have asked him what he meant if I had not thought, suddenly, about Humphrey and what Rose’s testimony might mean to him. I said good-bye to Jennings and sat for a long time in the bright box, staring at the telephone. There began to grow, in my mind, a small and terrifying doubt.
Chapter Twelve
Rose did not die. It was three days before they were sure she would live and for three days I thought of no one else. I spent as much time as I could at my club drinking whisky in the bar and waiting for a telephone call to say that she was dead. I slept very little and I barely spoke to anyone. I behaved, I suppose, like a middle-aged fool.
Mrs. Blacker came to London. I found her a quiet hotel in a back street and met her at the station and took her there. She was wearing her brown hat and coat and shiny, pointed shoes. She cried a great deal, although whether she cried for herself or for Rose, I did not know. She sat by Rose’s bed in the hospital for a large part of each day and the nurses brought her cups of tea. I don’t think she realised why the policeman stayed with Rose. She did not mention his presence to me and the nurses in the ward said that she behaved, all the time, as if he were not there.
On the fourth day Rose made a statement to the police. We were quite a social gathering round her bed—Jennings, a police sergeant, a nurse and a doctor.
Rose sat up in the hard high bed and she looked very fragile and pretty. Pallor suited her; it threw into relief the astonishing dark beauty of her eyes and the curves of her mouth. The nurse had tied a bright ribbon round her hair and she looked pleased and excited like a child at a treat. I thought that she did not quite realise what was going on and it made me feel tender and protective.
At first Jennings was very gentle with her. He sat on the end of the bed and talked to her in a kindly, unofficial way. He called her “my dear” and said that she mustn’t worry. He asked her about Jasmine Castle and she said that she had known her since they had been at school together. After Jasmine had left they had written, to one another. Then, when she had gone to London they had gone out together. They had gone quite often to The Odd Flamingo. Jasmine knew some boys who went there and the boys had taken them out and given them a good time.
She said anxiously, “There wasn’t anything wrong in that, was there? I never went out with boys at home. Mummy thought I was too young. She didn’t understand that I wanted some fun. It’s only natural, isn’t it? I mean, for a girl to want some fun?”
Her eyes were fixed on the policeman who was taking down notes in shorthand. He gave her a quick look and went on writing and the back of his neck was scarlet. He was a very young policeman and impressionable. She smiled as though she were innocently pleased at the effect she had made.
She went on, “I didn’t tell Mummy about Jasmine because I thought she’d be angry if she knew we’d been to a club and had some drinks. She’s teetotal, you see.”
Jennings said, “Were you friendly with any particular boy?” He wasn’t looking at Rose. He had taken a paper knife out of his pocket and was playing with it in an absent-minded way. It was a pretty thing with a carved ivory handle.
She said, “Oh, yes. But we were just friends. I mean—Jimmie was in love with me but I thought of him as just a friend. Then when I got ill that evening, he took me down to the river in a car and let me stay in, his boat. It was ever so nice of him and I hope he won’t get into trouble. He won’t, will he?”
Jennings said, “Why didn’t you let your mother know you were ill?”
She seemed, suddenly, unsure of herself; she began to cough and held her side as though it hurt her. Then she said, “I was so terribly ill. I wanted to die. I thought Jimmie would let her know. Didn’t he tell her?”
Jennings said, “Do you know that Jasmine Castle is dead?” He was still speaking quietly but there was no longer any gentleness in his voice. He looked at Rose with an air of bright enquiry, his good ear bent towards her.
She didn’t look like a child at a party now. She shrank back into the pillows, her mouth quivering as if she were going to cry.
She said, “No. No.” And then she cried out, ill fear, “I don’t remember anything. Anything at all. Why is she dead? What happened to her?”
The doctor went to the head of the bed and took her wrist in a professional way. He held it for a moment and then replaced it gently on the cover.
Jennings said, “Jasmine Castle was murdered.” His voice was completely unemotional. He went on, “Will you tell us what happened on the evening of the ninth of August? You were with her, weren’t you?”
She stared at him. Then she said, “It’s all like some horrible dream. I can’t bear to think about it.”
“Try to tell us, won’t you?” Jennings said. The young policeman was gazing fixedly at his notebook as if he wasn’t liking his job very much. I couldn’t look at Rose any longer so I stared at the shadows on the white wall behind her bed. The shadow of Jennings’s head was long and narrow, little spiky tufts stuck out from the back of his head where the hair would not lie down.
Her voice was stumbling and soft. She said, “My head is so muddled. I’ll try not to get it wrong. I was going to meet a gentleman friend that evening but I didn’t want to. So Jasmine said that we’d see him together and tell him that we were going somewhere else. I didn’t want to see him at all but she said that we ought to.”
“Was this man, the one you were going to see, Mr. Humphrey Stone?”
She said, “Yes, it was Mr. Stone.”
“Did your friend know him?”
“I
think so. He used to go to the Flamingo.”
“Had you talked to Jasmine Castle about your own relationship with Mr. Stone?”
She said, “I don’t know. I think I did. Oh, my head does hurt so. Why are you asking me all these questions?” She began to whimper quietly; she looked very forlorn. I felt righteously and ridiculously angry. She was sick and frightened; it was wrong that she should be tormented like this.
Jennings said stolidly, “Please tell me what happened that evening, Miss Blacker.”
She stopped crying and looked at him with wide, blank eyes. Her words were stilted. “We met Mr. Stone in the street. He took us to a pub. I didn’t really want anything to drink but he made me have one and I didn’t want to make a fuss and say no. Then we all talked for a bit. He was ever so upset because I couldn’t have dinner with him and he said couldn’t he meet us later when we had finished with our date? I didn’t want to. Jasmine did. She kept on at me to say I’d go, but I wouldn’t. So he didn’t fix anything up, not while I was there, anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well—really—I wasn’t there all the time. I had to go to the toilet.”
“Did they say any more about meeting after you got back?”
“Not exactly. After Mr. Stone had gone, Jasmine said that I was mean and spoiled all her fun. I said she knew why I didn’t want to see Mr. Stone any more. Anyway we were going to see the boys. She said of course we were going to see the boys but we didn’t have to stay with them for the rest of the evening.”
Jennings said, “Why didn’t you want to see Mr. Stone, Miss Blacker?”
She put her hands up to her face and then she took them away and looked straight at Jennings and said, “I was going to have a baby. You know that, don’t you? It’s why I was so ill. It was Mr. Stone’s baby.”
He said, “Are you quite sure about that?”
Her eyes were very bright and there was the brittle smile on her mouth that I remembered from our first meeting. There was a soft, shy tremor in her voice. She said, “I’m quite sure about it. He was in love with me. I know it was wrong, doing what I did, but he was ever so much in love with me. Just like on the films. At least, he said he was in love with me and I thought he meant it. Afterwards I wasn’t sure.”
Her voice shook a little but she went on almost defiantly, “That was when I told him about the baby. He said it wasn’t his baby. I couldn’t understand what had happened. He was quite different—sort of cold and hard. It broke my heart, really it did.”
Jennings said, “And what about the man Callaghan?”
“I told you, he was just a friend. He wanted me to marry him but I couldn’t do that. It wouldn’t have been right, would it? He was ever so angry when I told him about the baby and ever so upset. It was natural with him being in love with me like he was.” She sounded pathetically proud that Jimmie had been in love with her.
Jennings asked her what had happened after they had left Humphrey on the ninth of August.
She said, “We went to the Flamingo but only Jimmie was there. It was ever so hot and noisy at the club so we thought we’d go for a drive. Jimmie had a smashing new car with an open top and it was lovely and cool. I sat in the front with Jimmie and Jasmine sat in the back. I think she felt a bit out of it with Jimmie feeling about me the way he did. She used to go with him, you see. After a bit she got cross and said it wasn’t any fun and couldn’t we go somewhere exciting? I had an awful pain in my inside and I felt awfully sick so I said I thought I’d rather just sit in the car as it was so hot. So she told Jimmie to stop the car and she got out in an awful temper and went away.”
“Did she say where she was going?”
She shook her head. She seemed, suddenly to be completely without confidence. There was something almost desperate in her face and manner.
“What happened then, Miss Blacker?”
She said, “The pain got worse. It was awful. Jimmie was ever so nice to me and he said he’d take me home but I didn’t want to go. My auntie doesn’t like me. I thought the pain might be something to do with the baby and I was afraid of her knowing about it. So Jimmie said he’d take me to his boat and I could be quiet there and lie down and perhaps the pain would go. But it didn’t go. When I got to the boat it was so awful that I wanted to die. I made Jimmie stay with me for a little while but he got frightened and said he would get someone else. He asked a woman he knew to come and see me and she said that I ought to go to hospital but I cried and cried and in the end she said that perhaps it would be all right and I could stay in the boat. Then it got worse and my head ached and it hurt when I breathed. I don’t remember anything after that. Don’t ask me any more, please don’t ask me any more.”
The tears were running down her face. She looked pitiable. The young sergeant was bright pink and he muttered under his breath.
Jennings said, “Miss Blacker, did you know that your friend, Jasmine Castle, was blackmailing Mr. Stone?”
She looked at him with wide, shocked eyes. Then she moaned and fell back against the supporting pillows with her eyes closed. The doctor and the nurse went up to her and bent over the bed. Then the doctor turned round to us and said, “I think she‘s had enough.”
She came round quite quickly and by the time we left she was crying quietly and drearily with the nurse’s arm round her shoulders.
We left the hospital together, Jennings walking neatly beside me, his police sergeant a few steps behind.
As we reached the street he said, in a tired way, “She was lying, of course. They all lie.” He stopped and looked pensively at the pavement. “In my job you see so many of these girls. Some of them are bad, most of them are silly. And most of them lie.”
I said, angry with him and ashamed because I was showing it, “I thought she was telling the truth.”
He said, “Maybe she was,” and shrugged his shoulders. “But she went with a nasty crowd. It’s hard to believe she didn’t know about them. You can’t touch pitch and not be defiled.”
He spoke complacently as if he had thought of the phrase himself.
I said, uncomfortably because it was a difficult thing to say, “I think it would be possible—for real innocence.”
He turned and looked at me and his eyes had no expression in them at all. They were like pieces of opaque glass. He said, “She’s badly scared, isn’t she?” And then, looking away from me, “You know, if she’s telling the truth, it looks bad for Mr. Stone.”
Mrs. Blacker was waiting for me in the lounge of her hotel. She had ordered tea and we sat in immense and stuffy armchairs and ate refined sandwiches made of shrimp-and-salmon paste. I told her what Rose had said.
She put her cup back in its saucer and placed it carefully on the table. Her colourless eyes were hard and she spoke with satisfied anger.
“She’s made it sound as if it wasn’t really her fault, hasn’t she? It’s just like her. She can wriggle out of anything, or thinks she can. She’s been like that ever since she was a little girl. When she was naughty she always managed to make it look as if she hadn’t been. She’d look at you with those big black eyes and say, `But Mummy, I didn’t mean to be naughty.’ I suppose she thinks that now she isn’t going to have a baby it will all be forgotten and forgiven. Well, it won’t be. I know all about her now. I won’t be taken in by her baby face and fancy ways. She’s a bad, wicked girl and I’m not going to let her forget it.”
I said, “Mrs. Blacker, she’s been very ill. You mustn’t be too hard on her.”
She licked her lips with her tongue in a nervous, excited way. She said, “And how about me, Mr. Hunt? It’s not going to be easy for me with all the neighbours knowing she’s been mixed up with the police and whispering about it behind my back. It’s not nice, you know, to go down to the shops and find people talking when you come near them and looking at you in a funny sort of way so that you know they’ve been talking about you. I go cold all over when I think of it; I wake up in the night thinking of it and I
can’t go to sleep again. I suppose I thought too much of her, more than I ought to have done, and God has punished me for it.”
I said clumsily, “You mustn’t feel like that.” She said, “I don’t know, I’m sure,” and the empty little phrase carried a burden of desolation so that I felt anger die away in a kind of useless pity for this shabby, skinny woman for whom the summit of shame and horror was her neighbours’gossiping.
As I came away I knew that what she and Jennings thought about Rose was what everyone would think about her. I wished, desperately, that I could stand between her and the world’s easy judgment. And I knew that there was nothing that I could do.
It was early evening and it was beginning to be cold. I went back to my club and had dinner. By the time. I came out into the streets again it was almost dark. I went to the hospital to ask about Rose. The night staff had come on duty and the sister did not know me. At first she refused to let me see Rose; after I had argued for a bit she said, reluctantly, that she would telephone Matron and went into the office to do so leaving me outside in the entrance to the ward. I waited there for a little time, staring at the bare walls and feeling stifled by the scent of the flowers that had been brought out of the ward for the night and stood on the floor in neat rows outside the sluice.
The night sister came back angry and ruffled. She said, crossly, that I could see Rose and speak to her if she was awake. But I was not to wake her up and that I was to remember that she had been ill.
I felt like a tiresome small boy. She escorted me to the door of Rose’s room and left me there.
There was a light burning above the bed. Rose was propped against the pillows but her head had fallen sideways and she was asleep. Her mouth was a little open and the skin of her forehead glistened with a faint, damp sheen. With her eyes closed her prettiness was rather ordinary and she looked extremely vulnerable. She twitched in her sleep and moaned. I stood at the end of the bed and watched her.