Ten Steps to Happiness

by Daisy Waugh

  The Social Services had arrived.

  ‘So soon?’ Messy said. ‘Didn’t you tell them Grey was packing? Didn’t you tell them he’s never done anything wrong?’

  ‘There’s a policeman with a warrant down there, too, Messy,’ said the General.

  ‘Trouble is,’ said Colin, who knew all about these things, ‘you got a couple of YPs in the house with a Schedule One-er. And that’s against the law, that is, Messy. Chloe knows. ’Cos I already explained to her. Even if no one’s done nothin’ wrong, see? You can’t have YPs with a Schedule One-er. They won’t have it. Any road it’s not Grey they’re after, is it, Chloe? We know who they’ve come ’ere for.’

  ‘I haven’t let them in yet,’ the General said quietly. ‘Thought I’d give you children a head start. Are you ready?’

  ‘Ready for what?’ snapped Messy. ‘Are you mad? We’ll talk to them. For Christ’s sake, they’ll understand.’

  The General landed an awkward, hurried pat on Colin’s shoulder. ‘They’re saying they’ll force their way in if they have to.’

  Slowly Colin reached across the table for Chloe’s hand. ‘Chloe,’ he said. ‘You remember all that stuff I tol’ you? About when I was in the Home that time? And the kids was bashin’ me, and the fella set fire to the bed and the other little fella tried to bleed ’isself to death an’ there was all the blood in the bath? You remember I tol’ you all that?’

  ‘Yes I do, Colin,’ she said solemnly.

  ‘That’s where they’re takin’ us, Chloe.’

  ‘But I don’t want to go there.’

  ‘O’ course you don’t.’

  ‘I don’t want to go there.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. O’ course you don’t. Neither do I, Chloe.’

  With a loud clatter, she dropped the spoon she’d been clinging onto, and jumped down from the table.

  ‘Are you ready then?’ he said.

  ‘Chloe.’ Messy tried to sound calm. ‘Chloe, come back here and sit down.’

  ‘I have a nasty feeling,’ the General said, ‘that the poor boy knows what he’s talking about rather better than we do.’

  ‘That’s right, General.’

  ‘Stop it, Colin! Both of you! Everyone! You’re frightening her! Chloe, come here. Come and sit on my knee.’

  ‘Chloe,’ said Colin, ‘are you ready?’

  ‘Yes I am.’

  ‘…RUN!’

  And Chloe did.

  She and Colin both ran. Out of the kitchen, out of the back hall, behind the old stables, past the tennis court and the old croquet court, round the walled garden, until they reached the chicken run. By the time Messy caught up with them they had hidden themselves beneath straw and chicken shit, in the corner of the hut where the eggs were laid. Messy could see the straw moving. She could hear them breathing. Without saying a word, she slid down the wall and into a heap beside them, rested her head on her knees and began to cry.

  ‘It’s all right, Mummy,’ Chloe whispered. ‘You’ve just got to cover yourself, like we have. They won’t find us here.’

  But they did. The General tried his best to put them off – first by denying any knowledge of any children, later by claiming he did remember them, but that they had both gone to Finland for a break. Eventually the police and the social workers forced their way in. After searching the house, they searched the park: the old stables, the hay barn, the farmyard…They prodded the straw where the chickens laid their eggs and hit against Chloe’s foot.

  ‘Here!’ bayed the policeman, dragging her out. ‘Over here!’

  Messy clawed at him to release her. Chloe clawed at him to be released. She kicked and fought. They both kicked and fought until someone came up behind Messy and restrained her. It all happened very quickly.

  Over Chloe’s screaming, over Messy’s screaming, as she stood there impotently and he and Chloe were led away, Colin turned back and shouted, ‘Don’t you worry, Messy. I’ll look after her. She’ll be all right wi’ me. Only tell Mr Morrison it weren’t our fault, nor anythin’, won’t you? So’s he’ll give us that helicopter ride some other fine day.’

  Perhaps even Mr Morrison might have felt a little squeamish if he had witnessed the scene. Or perhaps not. Anyway at the time he was standing in the intensive care unit of the London Central Hospital, gazing through a confusion of wires and tubes at the unconscious, sedated and paralysed body of seventeen-year-old Gjykata Drejtohet. Colin and Chloe couldn’t have been further from his mind.

  The boy, Morrison fleetingly observed, must have been quite a good-looking little chap in his heyday. Before the accident. He was tall. Dark. Couldn’t see his mouth of course, but the eyelashes were marvellous and the jaw was delightfully strong, very well defined…The money-grubbing aunt would almost certainly have been lying, but she claimed to Maurice’s lawyers that he had played for the Albanian Youth football team once. Which no doubt meant a great deal in Albania. And now he was lying here, beautiful but limp, his only sign of life the rhythmic bip bip of the ECG machine beside him.

  According to his consultant, Gjykata had shown no signs of recovery since the day he had been admitted to hospital. The consultant told Maurice that, with the aid of these various machines, Gjykata Drejtohet could persist in his vegetative state indefinitely. Maybe for thirty years. Maybe for fifty…

  Bip…Bip…Bip…Day after day…Bip…Bip…Week after week…Bip…Bip…Month after month…Lying there, unconscious, sedated and paralysed…Bip…Bip…Bip. Year, after year, after year…Whatever Maurice did, whatever he said, whatever anyone ever said or thought or wrote about him…Bip…Bip…casting a shadow over Maurice’s every move; every public statement, every public appearance, every little interview…Bip…Bip…Bip…would be Gjykata Drejtohet, bipping a-fucking-way. Not being dead.

  Maurice looked up from Drejtohet’s body to the nurse, lingering with flip charts at the end of the bed. He smiled at her and she thought she saw the hint of a tear at the corner of one eye. Blue eye. Blue eyes. Lovely hands. Gorgeous, in that suit.

  ‘Could I…if it’s all right with you, nurse,’ he whispered, ‘could I stay a little longer?’

  ‘Of course, Mr Morrison. Minister.’

  ‘Maurice. Please.’

  ‘Maurice…’ She smiled at him. ‘Stay as long as you like.’

  ‘Only I was wondering—I’m so sorry. Is there a loo?’

  When he came back he asked to pull up a chair and he sat himself beside the ECG monitor, close to Drejtohet’s unconscious head. The nurse was flattered to notice that he’d smoothed his hair. She noticed a glistening around his cheeks and jaw and imagined him, with that tear, splashing cold water on his face. What she couldn’t have noticed were the two mobile telephones Maurice had switched on and moved to his jacket pocket. Nor would she ever have imagined they were set, the one to call the other, with the touch of a single button, and that his finger was still resting on the button.

  He smiled at her. Bip…Bip…Bip…‘Have you worked here long?’ he said.

  ‘No!’ she said. ‘Unfortunately! This is my first week, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘Everyone thinks ICU’s so glamorous. They’ve seen it on TV. You know, cardiac arrests, CPRs…Stand Back All Clear. All that rubbish. But most of the time you’re just sitting here – listening to that.’ She nodded at the ECG, the one which monitored Gjykata’s heartbeat. ‘Most of the patients aren’t exactly up to conversation. So it’s just bip bip bip. All day long. Can actually be a bit of a snore sometimes.’

  ‘Gosh, I bet!’ Inside his pocket the index finger was beginning to feel slippery. ‘So, tell me—’

  ‘Elizabeth. Lizzie.’

  ‘Lizzie. Tell me, Lizzie. What happens when the bip machines…sort of stop bipping? That must wake you up, doesn’t it? What do you do then?’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Refer to the bloody handbook in my case! Hasn’t happened on my shift. Yet. Thank God!’

  ‘Ha ha…No, but seriously?’
>
  ‘Seriously? If this poor lad suddenly went into cardiac arrest?’

  ‘God forbid!’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘What would you do?’

  ‘Well – basically I wouldn’t do much. Well, yes I would. I mean. Any kind of ventricular fibrillation and that ECG monitor’s going to go crazy. Masses of activity on the screen, and the blips are going to – you know, you’ll have heard it on telly. And when I hear that noise,’ she grinned, ‘I’m going to panic like Hell, because I’ve never done it before. Not for real anyway. And it’ll be just my luck to be doing it for the first time in front of a bloody VIP!’

  Maurice smiled.

  ‘I’m going to check his pulse and if there’s no pulse then we’ll go into CPR. Cardiac Pulmonary Resuscitation. With the two paddles on the chest?’

  ‘Oh yes. I know.’

  ‘We’re going to send two hundred joules through that little heart of his, and then we’re going to do it again, and then we’re going to up the dose and do it again. Basically. Until we can get it working again.’

  ‘And if there was a pulse?’

  ‘What? Before the CPR?’ She laughed. ‘He’d be dead. CPR would have killed him. But that wouldn’t happen.’

  Bip…Bip…Bip…Maurice looked down at the unconscious body. So good-looking. So hard at work collecting potato skinz when he slipped and fell. He thought of his son Rufus, doing his MBA at Yale, who always looked where he was going. Bip…Bip…Bip…

  ‘Terrible,’ he muttered. ‘Well! Let’s hope it never happens!’

  ‘Not on this shift anyway. I’m off in twenty minutes…’

  ‘Oh you are? Well – listen. In that case, perhaps – could I take you somewhere for lunch? To be frank I’d be grateful for a little company.’

  She blushed. ‘I’ll have to nip up to the locker room first, though, Maurice. Change into some halfway decent clothes!’

  What a shame, Maurice Morrison thought vaguely. He rather adored nurses’ uniforms. ‘Lovely,’ he said. ‘Absolutely lovely. Isn’t that marvellous?’ And pushed the button.

  A little vibration in his left pocket, as expected…She was trying to remember what clothes she’d left in her locker that morning…And then a mass of activity on the monitor. The machine had started screaming. And then Morrison was screaming. For Christ’s sake, Lizzie. He’s dying. The boy’s dying. Get the CPR! We need the CPR.

  She grappled to feel his pulse but Morrison was shouting so loud she couldn’t concentrate.

  What are you waiting for? Lizzie! This isn’t a fucking practice! This is YOUR SHIFT. This is FOR REAL. And this boy is dying! He needs CPR! NOW! Somebody, somewhere, this woman has no idea. Find the fucking pulse, you bitch! He’s dying! Somebody, get us some fucking CPR!…and then Somebody was there with the defibrillator. They held the paddles over the boy’s chest. They looked across at Lizzie. ‘Pulse?…Lizzie! Pulse?’

  ‘If there was a fucking pulse she would have found it by now. For Christ’s sake, what are you waiting for?’

  ‘No pulse,’ said Lizzie. ‘No pulse.’ But she wasn’t sure.

  ‘Stand back. All clear.’

  Down went the paddles onto his sleeping chest. Two hundred joules of energy coursed through his beating heart, and his heart stopped dead.

  Not long after that, Maurice Morrison turned off his mobile telephones, apologised to Lizzie for shouting at her, bent over the bed and allowed her to comfort him while he sobbed, just like a little girl.

  Grey was striding alone down the wintry drive when Charlie finally arrived at Fiddleford. He was wearing the same large black overcoat he’d arrived in all those months ago, and carrying a single cellophane bag. But Grey always did travel light.

  Charlie stopped the car.

  ‘So you’re back,’ Grey said, walking right past him. ‘About bloody time, Charlie. The place needs you. Where’s Jo?’

  ‘Where are you going, Grey?…Grey?’ Charlie climbed out of the car to catch up with him.

  ‘I don’t know. I might go home.’

  ‘This is your home.’

  ‘They came an’ took the children this mornin’.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘I’m not allowed in the house with them.’

  ‘I know. I’ve heard the radio. I’ve seen the papers. And I’ve talked to Dad. Why the fuck do you think I came back here? Without Jo? Grey, wait! Come on!’ He grabbed hold of his arm and pulled him back towards the car. ‘I’ve just driven through it,’ he said, nodding towards the gate, still out of view. ‘There are fifteen fucking journalists out there. Baying for your blood. So wait. Wait. It doesn’t have to be like this.’

  Finally Grey stopped. He looked at Charlie. ‘She needs the kid back.’

  ‘Of course she does.’

  ‘I was foolin’ myself, Charlie.’

  ‘No, you weren’t. Fuck it, Grey. What’s the matter with you? D’you want to spend the rest of your life being a stupid, miserable sod?’

  ‘Aye, and you can talk. Where’s Jo?’

  Charlie didn’t answer. Instead he rummaged in his trouser pocket and brought out a piece of paper. On it was written the name and address, in Scotland, of the people who could clear Grey’s name: the people who had lied about him in the first place, whom he hadn’t seen or spoken to, except in court, since the day of her funeral: Emily’s parents. It had taken one call to Directory Enquiries to track them down. But Charlie had gone further than that.

  ‘What’s this?’ Grey said, peering at it briefly. ‘Where the fuck d’you get this?’ He crumpled the paper into a ball and glared at Charlie and for an instant they both assumed Grey was going to thump him.

  ‘They’re waiting for you, Grey. They want to talk to you.’

  Slowly Grey stepped away and started walking again. ‘You’ll tell Messy I’m sorry, won’t you? And Chloe, when she comes home. Tell ’em I’m so sorry.’

  After that, though Charlie continued to argue with him until they reached the gates, Grey didn’t say another word.

  ‘You’re a fool, Grey.’

  ‘Aye. Nothin’ changed there.’

  With a final nod Grey opened the gate and pushed his way into the throng. He didn’t look up, or speak. He just waited, with his head down. And when they let him, he walked. Charlie watched until they were all out of view, and turned sadly back to the house.

  He found Messy alone at the forbidden kitchen table, the telephone receiver resting uselessly in one hand, her head in the other. Charlie put his arms around her.

  ‘They hung up,’ she sobbed.

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘Everyone. They just keep hanging up.’

  ‘I think,’ he said, hugging her a bit, until he thought she would listen, ‘you need to get away from here, Messy. As far away as possible.’

  ‘I can’t! How will Chloe know where to find me?’

  ‘I’ve worked it all out. I think…You need to go to London and talk to Jo. You need to make a statement. Make a public statement. Make as much noise as you can. Get a campaign going. You’ll be nowhere near Grey. There’ll be no excuse not to return her.’

  ‘Where is Grey?’ she said suddenly.

  ‘Grey’s gone.’

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘He had to go. Of course. He had to go. Oh God.’ She started crying again.

  ‘You’ve got to go to London and get Jo. Trust me. I know it. I know her. She can turn the whole thing around. But you’ve got to go and talk to her.’

  ‘I don’t want to. I want to be with Chloe.’

  ‘I know that. But Jo can help you get her back.’

  ‘Can’t I just telephone her?’ added Messy.

  He shook his head. ‘Messy, you need to be seen fighting it out. Fighting for her…Anyway.’ He laughed slightly. ‘Jo’s taken the telephone off the hook.’

  Messy gave a wan smile. ‘I’m sorry, Charlie,’ she mumbled. ‘Only thinking about myself…’

  ‘If you do see her,’ he sat back, removing his arm from h
er shoulders, ‘or, rather, if she agrees to see you, perhaps you could do me a favour and set her straight on a few things.’

  He had to explain why Jo had left in the first place. He had to explain that Messy might need to beg a little for Jo’s help. He had to warn her it was possible that Jo would tell her to go to Hell. But Charlie doubted it. Because even if, against any evidence, she persisted in believing that he and Messy were lovers, she would still feel a duty to resolve the situation. It was Jo, after all, who had brought Messy and Chloe to Fiddleford in the first place.

  ‘I seem to remember her calling this place a “refuge”,’ Messy said wryly.

  He laughed. ‘It’s a total fuck-up, isn’t it?’

  ‘Do you think I should sue the management?’

  They both laughed, but it was desperate, wretched laughter, and very soon her laughter turned back to tears again.

  When Maurice’s helicopter touched down an hour or so later he wasn’t feeling as cheerful as all that. It had been a disturbing afternoon. A horrible afternoon, really. All the way from London, different parts of the boy’s anatomy kept flashing into his mind: the smooth forehead, the lank hair, that pale, defenceless chest. Ever since he’d left the hospital, even while he’d been giving his tearful interviews to the waiting press, he couldn’t seem to get the boy’s living, dying body out of his head.

  It meant he was finding it harder to concentrate than he usually did. As he climbed out of the roaring helicopter and looked up at the handsome house he needed to remind himself of what he was doing here again. He’d come down…(he smoothed his hair)…to get the girl. That was right. Tidy that up. And the house. This magnificent house. The very house he’d been searching for all these years.

  The children, he knew, had already left. That was straightforward enough. He could say he’d heard it on the radio. Indeed, he had heard it on the radio. So it was the truth, which was potentially confusing. Grey, he presumed, would almost certainly have gone, too. Which left the Three Idiots, as he’d taken to calling them (Nigel, Anatollatia and the General). And Messy. A depleted gathering, then. And the simpler for it.