by Abbie Taylor
But the man was shaking his head, returning his attention to Boris’s long ears.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m wrong, then. I was at school in Cumbria.’
‘Cumbria?’ Dawn sat up. ‘But – I did live there. Until I was ten. You don’t mean the Red Barrow School near Buttermere?’
The man looked up at her again, the skin around his eyes crinkling in a sudden smile that altered his whole appearance, making the square, sombre face look almost merry.
‘That’s the one,’ he said.
That’s the woon. His accent! How had she missed it? The measured Northern speech, the long vowels. A vivid memory assailed her: the slate schoolhouse on Sheepclose Lane with its pointed roofs and gables. The sloping wooden desks, the bottles of milk with their bright red straws at break time.
‘Were you in my class?’ she asked.
‘I think you might have been a couple of years behind me.’ The man poked his glasses back up his nose. ‘Your name’s Torridge, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. Dawn Torridge.’
He nodded. ‘The reason I remember is because your family had that farm – on Crummock, wasn’t it?’
‘That’s it.’ Dawn was staring at him. ‘That was us.’
‘Ours was a few miles away,’ he said. ‘In the hills.’
Now she knew him! There’d been a couple of farms on Crummock. The highest and most isolated had been about six miles from theirs, right up on its own. There’d been a child there, a boy – she hadn’t known him well. A tall, solitary, fair-haired boy, always out in the fields. He’d been a couple of years older than she was, which when you were nine or ten was the equivalent of a vast social gulf.
‘Will …’ she remembered.
‘That’s right!’
It was him! She couldn’t believe it. She’d been in his kitchen! She’d gone there once at Christmas with her father. There’d been a stone floor and pots hanging from the ceiling. The range had smelled of bacon and hot fruit. Will’s mother had given Dawn a slice of cake. She had talked about her son. ‘We never see him. Gone from morning to night he is, always out with his dog.’ She’d been a nice woman. Mrs … Mrs … She couldn’t think of the name.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I can’t remember your surname.’
‘It’s Coombs.’ The tall man stood up. ‘Will Coombs.’ He shook her hand. His was the huge, rough-edged hand of a farmer.
‘Sit. Sit down.’ Dawn pushed a chair out. This was so strange! Will Coombs, from Sparrowhawk Farm. Here in Tooting, of all places, sitting across the table from her in this damp, blue café. The fair hair had darkened to light brown, but the height was the same, and the solitary air she remembered. The squareness of his face was emphasized by his fringe which was cut very straight across his forehead, as if he’d done it himself. In the nicest possible way he looked like Lurch from The Addams Family.
‘It was lovely up there.’ Dawn pictured the sloping fields, the grey cottages with their tiny windows. ‘Really lovely. I haven’t been there for years but I often think about it.’
‘Not bad, is it?’ Now that he was seated, Will seemed uncomfortable again, sitting too upright, jammed into the space between the chair and the table. He looked awkward and out of place here, too large for this small café, this tiny table. ‘Shambling’ was the word that came to mind. A big, shambling man.
‘What are you doing in London?’ Dawn asked.
Will shrugged. ‘More jobs in the city in my field.’
‘As a farmer?’
‘No. I’m in IT.’
‘Oh.’ She didn’t know why she should find that so surprising. Why shouldn’t he be in IT? It was just that somehow, if she’d ever thought about him, the boy he’d been, she would have seen him as always being there, out in the fields with his dog, tramping up a muddy track, the acid-green, sheep-dotted hillside rising behind him through the drizzle.
‘My parents sold the farm,’ Will explained. ‘They moved to Cockermouth years ago, before they died.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He shrugged again. ‘They weren’t the only ones. Not much money in it any more.’
It was true. Dawn recalled Dora’s dismay on her behalf at how little had been left over when her own parents’ farm had been sold. The café had brightened now. A silver light came streaming through the window.
‘My father,’ she said, ‘thought the Lake District was the most beautiful place he’d ever seen. The summer he left school he went up there on a hiking trip. He got lost and put his tent up on my mother’s family’s farm. She came out in her wellies and told him off. Said she’d set the dogs on him if he came round there again. They were married eight months later.’
A loud clatter from the next table. Boris leaped back in a feathery fluster. Milk from the overturned jug came dripping over the edge of the tablecloth.
‘Boris.’ Will squeezed up out of his seat. ‘What are you up to now?’
The silver light had disappeared. Will’s big shoulders were blocking the window. He tried to clean up the mess but his general air of being too large and clumsy for everything led to the tiny napkin promptly soaking through and disintegrating, dripping milk all over his trousers. Boris sank on to his front paws, a series of tiny groans escaping from his throat.
‘He wants to get going,’ Will said, abandoning the napkin. ‘We’d just got started when the rain came.’ He glanced at the window. ‘Stopped now, though.’
So it had. The splattering from the street had ceased. Patches of blue splotched the lifting sky. The soaking pavements glittered.
‘I’d best take him on,’ Will said. The awkwardness was back. ‘Will you be all right here if we leave?’
‘Of course. I’ll be fine.’
But she felt a pang. Not in a thousand years after that sad, bleak little ceremony at Bixworth Park Crematorium would she have thought that this would be how she would spend her afternoon, reminiscing about the mountains and muddy lanes of her childhood. Will’s slow, deep speech had opened a window in her mind that would close again when he left, leaving her isolated in her gloom. Should she suggest that they meet again? But what would they talk about? Will was a nice man but he was no conversationalist. Despite the fact that it was he who had approached her, Dawn had ended up doing most of the talking. Will had sat there and stared at the tomato ketchup, failing to ask her anything about herself or her family. Probably it had been the adrenaline that had made him so sociable at first. She’d felt the effects of it herself. But once the shock had worn off, Will’s conversational skills had quickly dried up. One of those shy, eccentric men, Dawn guessed, who were ill at ease with other people and most comfortable on their own. Their meeting each other like this had been a pleasant surprise but it was probably best to leave it at that.
Will clipped Boris’s lead to his bright blue collar. Under the table, Milly clambered to her feet, her claws scrabbling on the damp boards. Dawn said, ‘Oh, no, Mill, we’re not leaving just yet,’ at the same time as Will said, ‘I think Boris has made a friend.’
Dawn laughed, stroking Milly’s bitten ear.
‘She likes the company,’ she said. ‘She’s on her own all day while I’m at work. She’s used to having people around. It’s not ideal, but at the moment I don’t know what else I can do.’
Will was hovering again, appearing preoccupied with something under his thumbnail.
‘Do you live near here?’ he asked.
‘Just outside Croydon. Why?’
‘I’m in Streatham.’ He hesitated. ‘Look … if you’d like … I could walk her for you sometime.’
‘Walk Milly?’
‘I don’t mean to pressure you,’ he said quickly. ‘I just mean the same way I walk Boris. It’s hard to have a dog in a city flat. I like having a dog to walk; your dog could do with the company. Simple as that.’ His square face had flushed, or perhaps it was just the reflection of his maroon T-shirt on his skin.
‘No, of course,’ Dawn reassured him. ‘I know what
you meant.’ Milly and Boris were sniffing at each other under the table. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘why don’t you give me your phone number? I don’t know what my plans are yet, but at least that way I’ll know how to reach you.’
Will fumbled about in his pockets for a pen. Dawn took one from her bag and handed it to him, along with a clean napkin from the dispenser. Will scribbled something on the napkin. From a series of squiggles Dawn deciphered the words ‘Will Coombs’ and a phone number.
She smiled at him as he slid the napkin towards her. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘It’s a kind offer. I’ll definitely bear it in mind.’
Will nodded, as if relieved.
He was at the door with Boris, his hand on the glass, when he stopped again and turned back.
‘What you did …’ he said, not quite looking at Dawn. ‘You saved that boy’s life. You should be very proud.’
Abruptly, they were gone. The door slammed with its tinny ching. The café, without Will and Boris in it, seemed to expand to twice its size. Through the window, the shiny pavements reflected the red and white shop fronts, the colourful vegetable stalls, the hard, yellow gleam of sun. Will and Boris were sharp silhouettes on the dazzling road. Boris hauled on the lead to reach a bin. Patiently, Will stepped over a puddle to let him have a sniff. His gait was slightly uneven; the gait of a person with a limp or an injury of some kind. Or just the clumsiness sometimes seen in large, shy men.
You saved that boy’s life. You should be very proud.
The gleam from the window moved over the table, the silver milk jug, the blue and white squares on the cloth.
She had saved his life. There had been nothing at her disposal. Just a frantic father and a rag-doll child, thrust in her arms. But she had coped. What she had done was basic first aid. Not rocket science, not even advanced nursing of any kind. But in the moment of crisis, when she needed it most, her training and experience had not let her down.
She was a good nurse. But that was all she was. She was not God.
Milly’s dark head bumped at her knee. She said quietly, ‘No more killing, Milly, eh?’
The window in her mind was still open. She saw a white, bright day, a waterfall foaming down to a brown, frothy river. She was on her father’s shoulders and Jock, her grandfather’s sheepdog, was scrambling up the bank. Her mother stood at the kissing-gate, smiling up at them, the wind blowing her long blonde hair over her face.
Chapter Seven
Monday was Theatre Day, the busiest day of the week. As well as all the day-to-day tasks of running a ward – dressings, feeding, giving medications – there was the stream of pre-ops to wash, shave, fast and consent and send off to theatre in the right order with their lab results and X-rays securely attached and the correct limb or kidney marked with indelible ink. On a Monday, Dawn didn’t have a minute to herself and for now that suited her just fine. Over the weekend she had done her best to distract herself with various activities – walking Milly, hoovering the house, writing up a staff appraisal – but time and again, just as she was in the middle of something, Mrs Walker would rise up into her thoughts, forcing her to stop what she was doing, leaving her stranded uneasily in a vacuum. It was a relief to be back at work, to be too busy to sit and think. She occupied herself with arranging an ITU bed for a post-op, flushing a blocked chest drain, showing Elspeth how to set up a haemodialysis circuit – and the more her attention was taken up by the frantic, familiar routine of her ward, the less room there was in her head for anything else.
At one point, her arms full of linen, she found herself walking past the side room. An admission was expected later in the afternoon – a teenager who had fractured his leg in a forklift accident – but for now the room was unoccupied. Automatically, as she passed, Dawn looked away. Then she caught herself. This was ridiculous. Sooner or later the new patient would be in there and she’d have to go in and see to him. It’s an empty room, she told herself. Nothing more.
She made herself stop and look through the door. And in fact, once she did, the room didn’t look half as desolate as it had on Friday. The bed was made up in a welcoming way, the green mattress covered with a clean sheet, the corner of the blanket turned down, two fresh towels folded on the end of the bed. The locker was scrubbed and clean, the ECG leads folded and ready on the monitor. The weather had picked up since the weekend. Through the window came a shaft of sunshine, lighting up the empty bed opposite. By some odd effect, a knot or flaw in the glass had focused a vivid yellow circle on to the pillow. The creases and shadows of the fabric formed the shape of a nose, a downturned mouth. A face, pale and still, with closed, peaceful eyes.
‘Nurse.’
Dawn almost dropped the pile of sheets.
‘Nurse!’ A man in a cream striped dressing gown was waving at her from a nearby bed. ‘I need the commode.’
‘Just a moment, Mr Price.’ Matrons didn’t normally deal with commodes but the other staff were rushed off their feet. She wouldn’t keep the elderly man waiting. Before she left, she glanced back for a final time. The shaft of sunlight had faded. The face on the pillow had dimmed to a pale, ghostly blob.
Walking down the ward to the linen room, Dawn delivered herself a firm lecture. This had to stop. Ghostly faces on pillows indeed! If she went on like this she would cause herself harm. What was done now was done; obsessing about it would not change anything. What she had done – she had thought it was the right thing to do. Not the correct thing maybe, but the right thing. But she had got it very wrong. Still, no matter how much she might wish it, the clock could not be turned back. You’ve got to move on, she told herself. Push Mrs Walker from your mind, concentrate on what you’re supposed to be doing. There were other patients here who needed her. She had to focus on them now.
And there was another reason she needed to pull herself together. There was another serious matter weighing on her mind today, one that, unlike Mrs Walker, she knew she could not put off dealing with any longer.
Clive.
All morning she had been wondering how to approach him. As the Matron, she could not ignore the way he had treated Mrs Walker. Swearing at her like that and banging her head on the bars. It had been appalling to see. Every time she thought about it she felt angry all over again. How many other patients had he done that to? To let it go would be to put other elderly people at risk.
In the warm, detergent-scented linen room she stacked the sheets on the shelves. The most obvious way to deal with Clive would be to organize a disciplinary meeting and have him dismissed. And why not? She had never been happy with his work or his attitude. And the way he had openly defied her the other day and been rude to her, in front of the entire ward … No. She couldn’t deny it, she’d be very glad to see the back of him. There was something she just didn’t like about him and that was that.
When the last sheet was stacked, she went to the sluice room to fetch the commode.
‘Good morning, Mr Price.’ She parked the commode by his bed, flipping the brake on to steady it. ‘How’s your hip today?’
‘Still very stiff, Sister. But improving.’
‘That’s good.’ She helped Mr Price out of bed and got him settled on the seat. Afterwards, still thinking about Clive, she wheeled the commode back down the ward.
Sacking a nurse. It would be the first time she had ever done anything like that. It was an enormous step to take. What if there’d been a reason for Clive to behave the way he had? Perhaps he had been under stress that morning. He might have problems in his private life he hadn’t told anyone about. Everyone was entitled to a bad day.
Dawn shook her head, rinsing the commode pan in the long steel sink. People did get stressed; of course they did. But not everyone consistently despised the patients, and certainly not everyone frankly abused them. And if your personality meant that you were the sort of person who took your stress out on vulnerable, ill people, then you shouldn’t be working with them. It was as simple as that.
She placed the commode p
an in the washer and turned it on. The giant machine hummed and juddered. Dawn sighed. She knew what the real problem was. She was reluctant to go back over the details of that day. She pictured the disciplinary meeting: the HR people, Clive and his union rep, all sitting around the table in the HR conference room, dressed in suits, sipping from glasses of water. ‘Now, Matron, if we could just run through the story again. What exactly was Mrs Walker’s condition at the time? Did she seem upset by Mr Geen’s actions? When you spoke with her afterwards, what did she have to say?’
No. She wasn’t ready to go through that all over again.
Clive was clearly worried as well. Today was his first shift since the incident and he had been keeping a low profile all morning, staying well out of Dawn’s way and spending far more time with the patients than usual. Now that the theatre rush had calmed down a little she realized she hadn’t spoken to him since the handover round.
‘Seen Clive anywhere?’ she asked Mandy, rattling past with the BP trolley.
Mandy stopped.
‘He was somewhere about a minute ago,’ she said. She glanced over her shoulder. Then she sank her voice to a whisper. ‘Very quiet today, isn’t he? Guilty conscience if you ask me.’
‘Because of Thursday, you mean?’
‘Well, yes. Wouldn’t you? I mean … that old lady. Found dead like that only a couple of hours after he’d left her. How hard do you think he did bash her head off those bars?’
Mandy tapped the side of her nose with her finger. Then she rattled on down the ward with her trolley, leaving Dawn rigid, face to face with a row of bedpans.
Clive blamed for Mrs Walker’s death! The idea had simply never occurred to her. The disciplinary meeting rose again in her mind, only now with a far more menacing aspect to it. ‘You are saying, Matron, that you witnessed Mr Geen abusing this patient. Committing a physical assault. And a short time later she was found unexpectedly dead in her bed.’ The conclusion they’d come to was as obvious as a brick in the face. Before Clive knew where he was, the police would be involved. He might find himself facing a charge of manslaughter.