No Birds Sang

by John Buxton Hilton

  ‘Why not? No one can stop you sick-visiting on your annual leave. She’s only of peripheral interest, anyway.’

  ‘Think so? As far as I’m concerned, it’s pure romantic interest.’

  ‘Go to it, then.’

  And Sally Hammond was as warm in her welcome of strangers as she would have been of old friends. Sitting up spry amidst a veritable armchair of pillows, they came upon her in the act of lobbing a boiled sweet across the ward. It missed the bed of the patient for whom it was intended, and slid away on the highly polished floor.

  ‘Go and get it for her, will you, Emily? And you’d better give another one to Claire, since she so nearly received that one.’

  ‘Distinguished company for you, Sally.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  Her bed was a litter of immobilised activity: a badly folded newspaper, a couple of letters, out of their envelopes, a square of handbag mirror, the strewn contents of a make-up compact. She must be Matron’s despair: or perhaps that was the sort of hospital this was.

  ‘Strictly off duty, he assures me.’

  ‘You disappoint me, Superintendent. I was hoping I was going to hit the headlines.’

  She looked at Kenworthy and Elspeth with a sort of capricious impudence. And Kenworthy wondered: last night’s murder had not made the morning’s headlines. It was only likely to be reported on regional radio. Here they were not on the East Anglian net. Yet she was not surprised by their visit.

  ‘I remember reading about that case of yours in Norfolk. The one in the marshes. It was better than the Archers.’

  ‘Glad you think so.’

  ‘But I’m sorry you haven’t come striding in with your note-book at the ready. Bed-ridden Sally provides vital clue. Hammond woman to the rescue.’

  ‘Well, of course, if you like, we’ll see what we can do.’

  She looked round the ward. ‘I know enough about this lot to get them all put away.’

  Patients sick with concern for themselves; others already institutionalised and indifferent; a nursing auxiliary helping a bed-case with a crossword anagram; a wheel-chair conference round the corner of a table. The ward had a palpable ambience about it: desperate cases cajoled into living for the minute. And Sally Hammond doing much of the cajoling.

  ‘Nurse Jackson over there, for example, she lets her boyfriend in by the wicket-gate in Sadler Street when she’s on nights. I’m sure that comes under the Excessive Liberty of the Subject Act.’

  ‘We would need an unbiased witness.’

  ‘And we strongly suspect that Sue Burden pocketed the ward stakes on the 3.30 at Haydock Park last Thursday.’

  ‘I went down on that one, too.’

  Two porters came for a patient with a theatre trolley. There were waves and quips of encouragement from both rows of beds.

  ‘Seriously, though, I suppose you want a statement. Anything you say will be taken down in writing, altered and used in evidence against you.’

  ‘That’s how I always put it.’

  ‘I mean, I’m the corner-stone of the whole case, aren’t I?’

  ‘I’m sure you hold the keys to many a case that’s been troubling us for years.’

  She leaned back her head against the pillows and closed her eyes, as if become freshly aware of some pain or discomfort that was never ending.

  ‘Enough is enough, Chief Superintendent. I have to go to Physio at half-past. Do you think we can get the business side over by then?’

  ‘We’re not here on business, honestly.’

  ‘No? Edward told me I could be expecting you.’

  She picked up one of the letters that was lying in front of her, unfolded the sheets, it ran to five double pages. Kenworthy noticed that she only really used her left hand, the other served only for steadying and weight-making.

  ‘And what’s this you’re doing to him? I must say, my heart was in my mouth when I saw a Norfolk postmark on the envelope. You haven’t really had him put away, have you?’

  She read aloud Milner’s opening lines.

  ‘Dearest Sally. Don’t be alarmed when you read this address. I’m not really immolated in a Mental Hospital. They’re just letting me use the place as a hotel, to quote their own phrase. I hope to be rallying round the old bedside at the weekend as usual, and I’ll tell you the whole story then.’

  ‘And he goes on to say that you’ll want confirmation from me—’

  ‘His visits to Yarrow Cross don’t seem to work out well for him, do they?’

  She did not answer the point, but sat looking at Kenworthy through half screwed-up eyes: assessing, worried, inconclusive. Then suddenly she broke out into a sort of laughter. It was no longer the ebullience of her previous banter. She was trying to be frivolous but it was bitterness that prevailed.

  ‘All right. I’m the girl who waved. A precious three seconds, enough to dominate the lives of how many people? I waved to a passing rear-gunner. I wasn’t trying to thumb a lift, or anything like that. I wasn’t hoping that he’d jump out of his turret and open his parachute and flutter daintily down into my bed. We just happened to be two people in touch tangentially because we both happened to be awake and looking at each other at an unlikely hour on an evocative May morning.’

  Soon, very soon, she was going to know that he was being charged with murder. It wasn’t fair to keep it from her a second longer than was necessary.

  ‘I’ve got to be honest with you, Mrs Hammond.’

  I’ll bet our prison cells are full of men who’d say that’s the most sinister phrase in your repertoire.’

  ‘I was merely going to say, and it is honest, that we know next to nothing about either you or Edward Milner.’

  ‘We are nothing, Mr Kenworthy. As Shelley said, a mere stain against the white radiance of eternity.’

  ‘And star-crossed?’

  Sally Hammond pouted, finding some semblance to her earlier aplomb.

  ‘I don’t know, and this is candid, whether it would be fair to call us that or not.’

  Elspeth spoke for the first time since she had come to the woman’s bed. ‘We’re not on duty, Sally. If this were duty, I wouldn’t be here. But duty isn’t very far round the next corner. It seldom is. In this case, it happens to be imminent. But if we can anticipate misunderstandings before they arise …’

  ‘You’re Mrs Kenworthy, aren’t you? Edward said in his letter that he liked you very much.’

  ‘In that case, tell him when you write back,’ Kenworthy said, ‘that I applaud his choice in females twice over.’

  But at that point there was an interruption. A young house doctor, the plastic and chrome of a stethoscope prominent in the pocket of his white coat, came and opened the door of Sally’s bed-side locker.

  ‘No, don’t go away, I shan’t be two ticks.’

  But they had to scrape their chairs away to make room for him.

  ‘Dr Caley, meet the Murder Squad.’

  She was not to know how near the Murder Squad was. The houseman grinned, not taking much in.

  ‘Hullo to you. I’m the Heavy Duty Rummage Squad. Can’t trust these people.’

  He began to turn the contents of the locker out on to the bed: boxes of tissues, bottles of Slim-Line Cordial, toilet water, books, cards, magazines and soap.

  ‘My locker was searched yesterday afternoon, Doctor.’

  ‘Since when both canteen and trolley have been reporting extremely good business.’

  He set aside a box of chocolate, a packet of biscuits and a bag of cheese-flavoured potato crisps.

  ‘Hey! You can leave me the Weeny-bicks. They’re low calorie.’

  ‘Not low calorie, in your case, Mrs Hammond, no calorie, between dietitian’s meals.’

  ‘But Doctor, I wake hungry in the night.’

  ‘In that case, I suggest you chew the tapes of your bed-cap. You’re a naughty patient, Mrs Hammond.’

  ‘And you have a cruel streak in you, Dr Caley.’

  ‘I know, that’s why I chose medi
cine.’

  Elspeth bent forward.

  ‘All right, Doctor, I’ll put the things back.’

  The houseman collected his contraband. ‘I take it you’re donating this to the Junior Medical Staff Common Room. Or it can go to the Welfare Pool, in which case you can be credited with it. Though, as you know, Dr Clements does occasionally cast an eye down the list.’

  ‘Life in here,’ Sally Hammond said, ‘is a perpetual challenge.’

  She laughed again: the dividing line between gaiety and bitterness was a very delicate one.

  ‘How long have you actually known Edward Milner?’

  She continued to smile. ‘You know nothing, do you, Mr Kenworthy?’

  ‘My mind is a virgin page.’

  ‘And you want me to deflower it for you? All right. It will help to while away the morning. Give me a cigarette.’

  ‘You are allowed those?’

  ‘Now whose side are you on?’

  And when she was settled ready to talk, she did talk, fluently and amiably.

  ‘I’ve known him three years—known him, that is. After the war he came looking for me, round the villages, in the post offices and pubs. If I’d been free, and if I’d given him the slightest encouragement, he was clearly all set to sweep me off my feet. But even if I’d been unattached and studying the field, I think I’d have warned him off. It’s only when you’ve reached my age and the state I’m in that you appreciate the likes of Edward Milner.

  ‘However: when he found that I was married, and home-bound, he didn’t press himself. Edward Milner wouldn’t. I don’t know how disappointed he was, he must surely have more than half expected it. And perhaps you’ll think I was rather a fast young lady when I say what I’m going to say, and perhaps you’ve already come across evidence enough to support that idea. Actually, I was rather a prim young matron, very proper indeed, with a highly romantic notion of my own faithfulness. But I would have liked Edward just a little bit more if he’d made some sort of pass at me; or, at least, if he’d shown that he’d have liked to. But, Edward, he’s just too correct to live. I haven’t ever seen that bachelor kitchen of his, but I can imagine what it’s like.

  ‘Funny, isn’t it, talking like this about the man you’re in love with? Oh, yes, I am in love with him. I’ll sign that statement at the bottom of every page. How could I not be?

  ‘But as soon as he saw that I was married, and had a growing son, Edward very properly withdrew—with dignity. He wrote at Christmas, sent little presents for Julian—that’s my boy—sent me a card on my birthday, he knew the date, very often he’s unexpectedly on the ball, is Edward. But he didn’t actually ever come over to see me again, not for over twenty years, not till I wrote and told him I was in here, after the accident.’

  She blew cigarette-ash off her sheet.

  ‘I’m supposed to sit out in my chair to smoke. But they do their best in here not to notice an awful lot.

  ‘Edward came to see me. Brought me a bunch of flowers so enormous it embarrassed everybody. And the best I could do in gratitude was burst out laughing. Luckily he saw the funny side of it, too. And it would be an exaggeration to say that he’s been here ever since, but that’s not far off the truth. You see, for the first few weeks, Brian, that’s my husband, was over in Ward 9. They used to bring him over in a wheelchair, and pretty soon he was walking about the hospital under his own steam. Shaken up and scratched, that’s all that happened to him. Whereas I, for the first month or two, well, I didn’t want to know very much. When I was getting a little bit better, there was something I had to say to him. And if I had my time over, I’d say it again. Well, no; there are one or two things I wouldn’t be quite so raw about. But I would say it.’

  Cryptic; but now was not the time to stem the flow with questions.

  ‘That was on Brian’s first visit after he’d been home. He came the next week, too, I was almost surprised that he did. But then it went a fortnight, then a month. I heard on the vine that he’s found somebody else. I hope he has, for his sake. He’s a good man. He was a very …’

  She searched for an adjective.

  ‘He was a very understanding father to a boy he knew was not his. One way or another, we’d made a go of it. We weren’t on fire, but now and then one or the other of us would try to strike a match. There were a lot of things we both missed, because the other wasn’t interested. But for the accident, I don’t think we’d ever have gone our separate ways: we’d ended up by standing still as of habit. We’d never really quarrelled even, because we were both too polite and too politic.

  ‘Then Edward came along, and I let him know that the Do not touch notices were gone for good. I don’t think he was much at ease, at first: a married woman. But he got used to the idea, before long. Perhaps he talked himself into it on some of the long drives back home. Since he saw the green light, he’s been here every minute that he can. Of course, there can never be anything between us, but I think he almost prefers it that way. He doesn’t take his annual leave, you know, he splits it up into little parcels of a few days each, especially in the cricket season.

  ‘We go places together, you know. He pushes me in my chair round the rose-gardens, and we watch television in the day-room. This will be the third season that I shan’t have missed a single over in a test-match. God, the game used to bore me to tears, but I think I’m keener on it now than he is. I look on it as a sort of ritual folk-dance. I know all the grounds: Trent Bridge, Old Trafford, Edgbaston. I even notice odd little differences in the individual score-boards, I try to kid myself I recognise the faces of the men behind the little peep-holes. It doesn’t hurt me, you know, to see people prancing about in the pink of health. You’d think it would, wouldn’t you? But we’re nearly all the same, in this ward: show-jumping, athletics, swimming, the sight of other people using their bodies doesn’t frustrate us. It liberates us.

  ‘I can’t explain to you what Edward has done for me. He’s given me an identity, but it can’t be for myself that he loves me, because he can’t possibly know me, can he? I’m still to him something he thought he saw through a gap in the clouds and trees. And that’s what I want to be. And, when I’m with him, that’s what I am.’

  ‘But he’s getting to know you too, isn’t he?’ Elspeth said. ‘And is still in love with what he has discovered.’

  Kenworthy gently took the passion out of the dialogue.

  ‘And you’re with him, are you, in this obsession to get back among the stones of Yarrow Cross?’

  ‘Not with him, no. I wish to God he’d leave it alone. But who am I to try to dictate to Edward Milner?’

  ‘What’s it all about? Do you know?’

  ‘Something to do with the Prudhoes and those bloody Pascoes.’

  ‘So Edward knows the Pascoes?’

  ‘Of all the people from the village that he could come across, it had to be the Pascoes. But that’s not surprising, really. Without doubt they’re the noisiest.’

  ‘When they’re in circulation.’

  ‘It’s only Darkie who gets himself in gaol these days. Sammy and Tommy have been leading blameless lives for years.’

  ‘So what is this tale that they’ve told Edward?’

  ‘I don’t know. It isn’t even a tale. Edward says it’s the key to something that would affect us all. I know this sounds unconvincing, Mr Kenworthy, but that’s all I can get him to say. But whatever it is, he believes it. Which means that I have to treat it with respect, because Edward is a man who always minds what he is saying.’

  ‘And he had this story from Darkie Pascoe?’

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘And Edward isn’t the sort of man whom Darkie would lightly take in.’

  ‘That’s what puzzles me. He’s under no illusions about Darkie. Who could be?’

  ‘So what’s your theory? Hasn’t Edward ever dropped the broadest hint? Theft? Blackmail? Someone else’s crime? Someone else’s family history—your family history?’

  ‘Hardly.
Edward knows my secret. If you can call a secret something that they knew in Yarrow Cross almost before I did—they did, you know. There were people there who knew I was pregnant before I did myself. Edward didn’t have to go crawling under barbed wire to find out who was Julian’s father.’

  A tiny pause.

  ‘Do you want to tell us?’ Kenworthy asked.

  ‘You mean you don’t know?’

  ‘Honest Injun.’

  ‘Have people stopped talking, then?’

  ‘No. We’ve barely started asking.’

  ‘Mervyn Prudhoe. It never was a secret.’

  ‘I see. So …’

  ‘So what Darkie Pascoe has told Edward can have nothing to do with that. In fact, I think it’s just a load of nonsense. The Pascoes stole things. They always have stolen things. They’re like magpies. They imagine tremendous fortunes in places where there’s nothing.’

  ‘You mean Edward’s treasure-hunting? Surely he has more sense. Tell me, how come you were out of bed, the night Edward Milner flew over, Sally?’

  ‘I’d been wondering when you’d get round to that.’

  ‘Edward must have asked you.’

  ‘He did. And only when he did, did I realise that it must have been the Pascoes. I didn’t see them until later on, not when Edward did. They were at the side of my house—my parents’house. There used to be a little yard there, a paved space, where there was a well that served half a dozen cottages, including ours. The Pascoes were up to something there. Oh, I know you’re bound to say that he could not possibly have known it was the Pascoes. Well, of course, he didn’t. Edward didn’t have time to recognise anyone, even if he’d known them in those days. He saw a pattern, with people in it: me at my window, men doing something over a well, with ropes, tools and tackle.

  ‘And after his plane had bumbled away—I thought it was going to hit the church tower—I stayed at my window, day-dreaming. Sad: thinking, believe it or not, that I’d never see again the figure that had waved. And he was a tragic figure, because only a few minutes later I heard the crash, ten, twelve, fifteen miles away.

  ‘And I went rushing downstairs, shouting, trying to wake my parents, wanting the whole village to rush out to the rescue.