by Stef Penney
So we ended up all going to the hospital—that is, Mum, Ivo, Christo, and me. Mum tried to make me go back to bed, but there was no way I could have slept, and anyway, it was Saturday night. I thought Christo would probably like me there, too, if he could have said anything. Anyway, we drove down to the nearest hospital—there’s one in town, so it took only about fifteen minutes—and rushed into the casualty department. Ivo carried Christo up to the front desk, and after a brief conversation, they took them off to a room, ahead of all these other people who had been waiting for ages. There were blokes sitting there with blood on their faces, people lying across chairs—they could have been dead. I mean, it was packed. I don’t know if casualty departments are always that busy, but maybe they are: one nurse—the nice one, as opposed to the snobbish one behind the desk—said “usual Saturday night” as she rushed past.
Me and Mum sat with the waiting people—lots of them were drunk, I realized (obvious, really, it being Saturday night)—while Ivo and Christo were off with a doctor somewhere. Some of the people were muttering and swearing—or groaning. I thought the groaner was probably exaggerating a bit, since if he had been in a really bad way, they would have taken him off to look at him, instead of leaving him there for hours, which is what they did. Another man kept yelling out, shouting and calling the nurses really rude names. They ignored him, and I decided that he probably wasn’t right in the head and didn’t know what he was saying. The nice nurse walked past once and said, “We’ll see you when we see you, Dennis,” which made it sound like she knew him. Maybe he goes there every Saturday. Once I looked around and he was staring straight at me. His eyes were awful: one of them was red where it should have been white, and there was dried blood coming out of his nose. He was like something out of a horror film: The Tramp from Hell. I turned back, pretending I hadn’t even noticed him or his horrible eye, or the pee smell coming off him, scared that he’d start shouting at me or worse.
I got some coffee from the drinks machine to keep us going. It wasn’t very nice—too hot, and really bitter, even when you put lots of sugar in it. I wanted to get some crisps or something as well, being starved, as usual, but we didn’t have any more change. I moaned at Mum when she refused to change a five-pound note—it was all she had left. I sulked for a bit, and then realized I was being selfish and should be thinking about Christo, who might be really ill, not myself, who was basically fine, if hungry. The hours crawled past like doddery old millipedes. Despite being starved, I ended up falling asleep, and woke up to find Ivo and Mum whispering together.
They seemed to be arguing. According to Ivo, the doctors wanted to keep Christo in the hospital while they worked out what was wrong with him. I thought this was a good idea, but Ivo seemed angry about it. He kept saying, “They just want to stick their noses in.” Mum got quite cross then, arguing that the hospital was the best place for him. I agreed with Mum but thought I’d better not say anything. Ivo was particularly cross because they’d asked him to fill in some forms—lots of stuff, like where we lived—so he’d lied and made up a house address, so they wouldn’t know we were Gypsies. But they asked all sorts of tricky questions, like who your regular doctor is, and we don’t have one, so there was a bit of trouble about that.
It ended up with Mum and me driving home at about six a.m., as the sun was rising, leaving Ivo and Christo behind. And I slept late this morning. In fact, it was after twelve o’clock, so actually, it was afternoon. I had thought I might take Christo fishing today, and the weather is perfect for it—damp and mild. But as it is, I can’t concentrate on reading or music or anything, because we’re just waiting to find out what’s happened.
Ivo finally comes back at about five, and Christo is with him. We all rush out of Gran’s trailer, where we’ve been sitting around, twiddling our thumbs.
“How is he?”
“Shouldn’t he still be in there?”
“He’s all right, aren’t you? Eh?”
Ivo kisses the top of his head. Christo is asleep, but his breathing does sound better than it did last night.
“They’ve given him some antibiotics. Said he might as well be at home.”
Ivo shrugs. He looks absolutely exhausted, all dark around the eyes.
“You’ll have to make sure he’s kept warm. Ivo, why don’t you have a kip in number two and I’ll put Christo to bed?”
“That’s a good idea. You look done in.”
Mum touches his arm gently. She looks worried.
“I’m fine.”
“Come on, Ivo, go and have a lie down.”
Gran holds her hands out for Christo. Ivo steps back.
“I will. We’re both going to lie down. In our trailer. I can look after him. All right?”
“We’re just trying to help—”
“I don’t need help.”
He turns and walks off to his trailer.
Gran says, “What’s got into him?”
“Mum, he’s tired. He hasn’t had any sleep.”
“I know! We’re offering to help him. There’s no need to be rude!”
She shouts this last bit so that Ivo can hear on the other side of the paddock; he just bangs his door shut.
“No bloody manners, that boy. He’s never had any manners since— and he was such a lovely kid.”
“He’s got a lot to put up with, Mum.”
“Don’t know why you’re always standing up for him.”
They glare at each other like a pair of cats.
Since Ivo doesn’t want us, we give up. I can’t help thinking that Christo would have been better off staying in the hospital for a while. Who knows—maybe they could find out how to really cure him. Scientists are working all the time on stuff like that. They might have come up with something new since he was a baby.
When Mum and I go back to our trailer for another cup of tea, she looks a bit worried, so I ask her: doesn’t she think Christo would be better off in the hospital, for the moment?
She sighs and shakes her head.
“I’m sure they wouldn’t have let him go if they thought he needed to be in hospital, love.”
“Yeah, I know, but . . .”
But I don’t know, so I don’t say anything else. Then a horrible thought occurs to me. I suddenly wonder if maybe Ivo took Christo out of the hospital even though the doctors had wanted to keep him there. Maybe they’re not allowed to stop you if you’re a parent. Maybe they didn’t even see—there are so few of them, and they’re so busy. It seems a pretty awful thing to think about Ivo, so I keep quiet. But for some reason I can’t help thinking it.
It’s funny; when I was younger, I really looked up to Ivo. Despite his temper and his funny moods, he seemed to be a grown-up I would want to be like. Maybe you need someone in your family or nearby that you can do that with: “When I grow up, I want to be like them.” I don’t have a dad, so who was I going to look up to? Not Granddad, with his bulging eyes and raw, red skin that looks sunburned, even in winter, and his paunch—it’s hard to believe I’m related to him at all, to look at us. He’s all right, but he doesn’t do much, either, other than what Gran tells him to, and when he’s had a couple drinks he’s liable to tell stories about when he was a boxer and knocked out the teeth of someone called Long Pete, or Black Billy, or something like that. I don’t even know if they’re true. Gran’s always moaning about how useless he is. And I wouldn’t want to be like Great-uncle, the unluckiest man around, although I do like talking to him when he’s in a good mood. But you can’t want to be like someone who’s in a wheelchair and who you have to wheel to the lavs when you go on holiday, can you? So that left Uncle Ivo.
When he—and Great-uncle and Christo—came to live with us, I was seven. All I’d known up till then was first Mum and then Gran and Granddad. I’d barely even been to school at that point. I suppose you could call it a sheltered upbringing. Or if not sheltered, from things like evictions and police harassment, then . . . small. Underpopulated, as my geography teacher wou
ld say. Great-uncle and Ivo certainly livened things up. And Ivo was cool. He was—and is—not tall but skinny, and pretty good-looking, I suppose. He’s got dark hair and dark eyes, and really smooth skin, and a way of looking at people that seems really confident, like he knows he’s better than them, no matter who they are. If we walk down the street, girls always turn and look at him. Otherwise, people tend to be a little bit scared of him. But when you see him with Christo, you know that he’s got a really good heart. And when he smiles at you, you feel like he’s given you a special present. It makes you feel great. So I looked up to Ivo. Sometimes people who didn’t know us thought I was his son, because we do look alike—same hair, same eyes. I’m not being vain when I say this—we really do. I used to be pleased when people made this assumption, and secretly imagined that, maybe, he really was my dad. After all, Mum wouldn’t talk about the gorjio who supposedly was my dad—I’ve never even seen a picture. I don’t even know his name, for Chrissake. That’s how little she’s told me. So I thought maybe that was why Uncle Ivo and I had a sort of special bond and why I got on so well with Christo—that is, until I got a bit older and thought about it, and realized how silly that was. Ivo was only fifteen when I was born (and he wasn’t very well, either).
Since coming back from France, I’ve asked Mum about my dad again. She said, “When you’re older, sweetheart. You’ve got enough to be getting on with, what with your exams and that.”
Sometimes I wonder if this gorjio ever existed.
Anyway: Ivo. Since I’ve been more worried about Christo, I’m not sure what to think about Ivo. In fact, I think I’m angry with him. I know he loves Christo, but I think he could be doing more to find a cure. Going to Lourdes was all very well, but it doesn’t seem to have helped at all. The level of holy water in the remaining jerry can is slowly going down—still with my note on it—but Christo is lying in bed with a respiratory infection. Not talking, not walking. And Ivo won’t let him stay in the hospital, where, maybe, they could find out more about what’s wrong with him. What harm could it do? Just because he doesn’t like hospitals doesn’t mean it mightn’t be good for Christo. I can’t help feeling that he’s being selfish.
I can’t remember why I felt so hopeful in France. When I think about myself in Lourdes just a few weeks ago, I can’t believe I was that optimistic. It’s like I’m looking back at a totally different, much younger, more naive, much stupider person.
19.
Ray
Hen greets me at work with a smile and a clap on the shoulder—he knows it’s my birthday, and though I suspect that, left to his own devices, he would happily ignore it, goaded by Madeleine, he asks if I have plans.
“Yes,” I say.
“Which are . . . ?” he says.
“No one you know,” I say.
“Oh-o-oh . . .” He draws the vowel out to ridiculous lengths. “The mystery woman?”
“Maybe.”
“Hm. It was just that if you didn’t, you would be very welcome to come to our house.”
“Thanks. But I really do have plans.”
He looks at me. Apparently satisfied, he insists on taking me out to lunch.
We review the Rose Wood case, although there’s not much to say. I talked to Leon about the Black Patch and Egypt Lane, and though he recognized both names, he had little to add, and nothing concrete about dates. He didn’t know for certain that Rose had ever been there. In fact, we know next to nothing: neither where she went missing, nor exactly when, nor who her friends were, if indeed she had any. We have found no record that anyone has seen her since that winter six years past. None of her sisters ever received so much as a postcard, according to them. She appears on no official records. She has pulled off a remarkably successful disappearing act.
“She’s dead,” Hen says at the end of it. “Got to be.”
He’s confirming what I have started to believe. But there are no positive signs of a death, either. I wonder for a second whether, in fact, she ever existed at all. I sigh in frustration.
“Everyone I’ve spoken to . . . they’re all so bloody vague.”
Hen twirls his coffee cup and raises an eyebrow. He grins.
“Maybe she’s at the bottom of a lake.”
A childhood friend of Hen’s mother’s dumped his wife’s body in a reservoir several years ago. He claimed she ran off with one of several lovers, and apparently no one had been suspicious. The body was found only when they dragged the reservoir to look for someone else. She had been garroted with her own tights. As a result, Hen and I are quite fond of lakes. No lakes are indicated in this case, but that’s not to say it didn’t happen. And, of course, if wives are murdered, they are usually murdered by their husbands. Ivo Janko again. Saintly, caring, long-suffering Ivo.
It’s at that point that the phone rings. Andrea puts the call through to me.
“Been thinking,” he says, “you should meet Ivo, maybe, after all.”
It’s Tene Janko. He has got someone to drive him to a phone box. He has thought about this.
“Yes. Good. Where is he?”
None of my inquiries have turned up his whereabouts. I was beginning to think him as elusive as his former wife.
“He’ll be with us. Tomorrow. If you want to come over.”
“Same place?”
“Same place.”
“I’ll be there at about . . . eleven?”
I put the phone down.
“Why’s he phoning me now?”
“Because he knows you’re getting suspicious?”
“They’re getting their stories straight.”
“You want me to come?”
I shake my head.
“Softly, softly.”
I wonder about Lulu Janko—has she been talking to her brother again?
It might have been during lunch that the mad, bad idea came into my head. Hen’s gentle pokes about my mystery date this evening—of course, I have none—and the wine I drank joined forces in a decidedly unhealthy way. My father used to say—or anyway, said at least once, in a rare moment when he wasn’t shouting at the television—“Find out what you’re good at, and do it.”
All right, I thought, over the half bottle of burgundy (Hen drank water) and the carpetbagger’s steak he insisted on standing me as a birthday present. All right, I will.
So here I am, hours later, doing what I’m good at outside a house in Richmond. It’s a large house, with elegant proportions over four stories and a wrought-iron balcony spanning the first floor. Floor-to-ceiling windows are swagged with heavy curtains. The front garden is a discreet jungle of evergreens.
Initially, I sat in my car with a telephoto lens, but the drive is too long and curving, the shrubbery too thick for the envious gaze of oiks like me to penetrate. So I wait until dusk, then slip into the shadowy driveway and melt into the darkness of the bushes—great, overgrown, welcoming rhododendrons and camellias. The dark indigo is seeping out of the sky, and I’m a dark denim shadow in the shadows. Between dog and wolf. Which am I?
All the lights seem to be on on the ground floor. Upstairs—most of the house—is in darkness. I have to work my way through thick jungle to the back of the house, to where a pair of tall, uncurtained windows spill light across an unkempt lawn and more of the funereal bushes. Despite its size, it feels like a garden that no one ever goes into or thinks about. Well, I reason with myself, it belongs to someone old and infirm. Someone who both needs a private carer and can afford to pay for it.
I followed Lulu Janko from her house. Waited until she left and drove over here, following her tinny little beige Fiat with its handily broken brake light. She parked on the quiet street among the Volvos and Audis and Range Rovers and let herself into the house with her own key. I didn’t see another thing until I sneaked into the back garden. Then this is what I see:
Lulu pushes a wheelchair in through the door and parks it near the fireplace. From the warm and mobile light, there seems to be a fire going, even though it�
��s not cold. Inside, it must be boiling. The first surprise is that the man in the wheelchair is quite young. Probably younger than me, and undeniably handsome—he has longish dark hair brushed back off a thin, fine-featured, aquiline face. Aristocratic-looking is what comes to mind, although it could be the surroundings that make me think that. His mouth opens and shuts like hers as they talk. From her body language, they seem comfortable with each other, like they’ve known each other for a long time, which may indeed be the case.
I inch forward through the damp shrubbery so that I can see more of the room. Lulu looks intently toward the window for a moment that makes my heart skip a beat, even though I know I’m completely hidden in the rhododendron thicket. They seem to be discussing whether to draw the curtains or not. After a moment’s hesitation, she doesn’t. Then she goes out, leaving him staring into the fireplace.
Why do I hate this man? He deserves my pity. Although his mouth moves and his head turns from side to side, nothing else does: he is paralyzed from the neck down. He’s helpless.
Lulu comes back in with a tray, which she puts down on a small table. She picks up a kind of baby’s feeding cup and offers it to the wheelchair man. Did she help her brother Tene when he was first in his wheelchair— is that how she got into this line of work?
Then the door opens and a well-groomed, impressive-looking elderly woman looks in. She’s instantly recognizable as the wheelchair man’s mother—they have the same face, down to the thin, pointed nose and arching eyebrows. They speak for a minute—everyone smiling and laughing away—and then she goes out. They all seem as happy as anything—I can’t see why. For a moment I am not concentrating as I try to figure out the elderly woman’s movements. I think I hear the front door close— that makes sense—the paid help is here, so Mummy gets to go out for a well-earned break—sherry, bridge, governing the local school, that sort of thing. I hold my breath in case she decides to come into the garden, but, of course, she doesn’t.