Kensington Heights

by Leslie Thomas

  Korky sniffed. ‘That’s what he’s like now,’ she said. ‘With me. He was all right at first in Charing Cross, after the shooting. I was ill myself so I didn’t see him for three weeks but when I did he seemed to be all right, more or less, considering what had happened, but after that he just . . . sort of trailed off . . . shut me out. Now I come here and he doesn’t seem to want to know.’

  ‘It’s not only you, he’s shutting out the whole world,’ he told her. ‘Which is not all that surprising, considering what the world has done to him.’

  ‘Shit on him,’ she said bitterly.

  ‘Exactly. He’s scared stiff. He feels safe in here.’

  ‘How long is he going to be here?’

  ‘As long as he wants or as is necessary,’ said the doctor firmly. ‘In essence, he’s a voluntary patient. He could in theory anyway discharge himself, although we would be very much against that. We’ve got to try, we are trying, to get him well. We almost did it once. The last time.’ He regarded her sympathetically. ‘You’ve been a great . . . help to him,’ he said. ‘I’ve read all the reports.’

  ‘He helped me,’ sighed Korky. ‘We were helping each other. Maybe too much. We were trying to do without each other a bit, when this lot happened.’

  Dr Fenwick opened the file on his lap. ‘Did you ever know about the incident in the cemetery?’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Just after he had moved into the flat in London he went to the house in Hampshire, where he had lived with Irene. She was there, as it happened, although they had both moved out. That upset him, and believe me, in his sort of psychological state it would not take much, although he probably hardly realised it himself. Then some youths attacked him on the train . . .’

  ‘He’s never mentioned it.’

  ‘It was incredible, farcical. He was trying to protect a mother and her baby from these characters and they left him covered in blood. He blacked out, which was not surprising either, and he ended up in the cemetery where Sergeant Barnard, his friend from army days, is buried. He died some time after the action in Northern Ireland. We had, reluctantly, allowed him to go there some months previously for the funeral, and in this amnesic state he returned there. The cemetery is in the Aldershot military area. That’s how he came to get a house in the vicinity. It was near to his posting at that time.’

  ‘And what happened?’

  Dr Fenwick grimaced. ‘Apparently he got locked in, although he did not remember that at all, and had to climb the cemetery wall. He went to a public house and drank a lot of Scotch and ended up in London attacking some tramps who were waiting at a soup canteen.’

  ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were making it up,’ she told him sadly. ‘Poor Savage.’

  ‘What about the woman police officer?’ he asked.

  ‘Jean Deepe,’ she responded flatly. ‘She was dodgy.’

  ‘It seems so, from what I read in the newspapers, and from the inquest report. But she helped him at the start, when he was on his own.’

  ‘She wanted a man,’ sniffed Korky. He could see her eyes had become opaque. ‘Don’t cry,’ he said gently.

  ‘I’ll try not to,’ she said rubbing her nose with her hand. ‘I expect there’s a lot worse to cry about in here.’

  ‘Or laugh about. If you don’t do one you do the other.’

  Korky rallied herself. ‘Everybody thought it was this ex-jailbird, Brendan Brownlow, who’d murdered her – except for the police, that is, who thought it was Savage. He had his gun with him and they shot him. They would.’

  Fenwick sighed. ‘I’m afraid the gun was my fault.’

  ‘You knew about it?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. When he was here as a patient the first time, they were assembling a military display at a museum and I allowed, in fact I suggested, that he should go and help set it up. I thought it might give him some temporary object, some interest in life. It seemed to work and he was there for about a week. One of the weapons in the display was found to be missing and it was not difficult to guess where it was. Frank had it. But it was harmless, there were bits missing, there was no ammunition, and I had a notion that it might even benefit him to have it.’ He paused. ‘A sort of prop, a crutch, a reassurance.’

  ‘Like a teddy bear,’ she nodded. ‘Except it was a gun.’

  He frowned. ‘I took it on myself.’

  ‘What you thought was right for him,’ she said. ‘That’s what I was trying to do.’

  ‘I made a statement to the police about the gun.’ He paused again. ‘I think I’ll be hearing more about that. Imagine that getting in the newspapers.’

  ‘Then, of course, it wasn’t this Brendan bloke who did it,’ she said. ‘It was that solicitor she’d been carrying on with. He went mad with jealousy.’

  ‘Then he committed suicide.’

  She said: ‘There was a lot of shooting going on one way and another.’ They fell silent. ‘And now he’s here,’ she said eventually. ‘Back where he was.’ She stood up. ‘How long will he be here?’ It was like a demand.

  ‘As long as it takes,’ he told her firmly, also rising. ‘I allowed him to be discharged last time against my better judgement, except that I thought he and Irene could work together to pull him through.’

  ‘You don’t think I could do it.’

  ‘May I ask what your relationship was?’

  ‘Pure,’ she said simply. ‘I love him. The ages don’t matter.’

  ‘You’re how old?’

  ‘Seventeen. I want to get him home, back to the flat. I can spend all day with him.’

  He sighed and put his hand on her narrow arm. ‘He’s still in the wheelchair,’ he said. ‘We don’t know how much of it is physical and how much psychological. We’ve got to make him want to walk. He doesn’t seem to care at the moment.’

  ‘I know. I’ve tried to make him see sense. He could be in here for the rest of his life.’

  ‘I hope not. But for the time being this is where he’s got to be. We’re working on it, believe me, but we need his help. He’s been kicked in the teeth, and not just kicked in the teeth, so many times, that he doesn’t want to move. He feels safe here.’

  ‘He’d be safe with me,’ she said doggedly.

  The taxi arrived just as the clock on the hospital tower sounded four. On the journey to the station the driver, as he always did, told her about his garden, his war against moles and aphids. It was always the same driver. She began to feel that these visits told her more about the life of this unknown gardener than they did about the life of Frank Savage.

  At Marshfield Junction Korky went into the refreshment room which glowed in the dimness and damp. The woman behind the counter, a possible sister of Mrs Dines the dispenser of invisible tea, knew her by now. ‘How is he then, dear?’ she asked as she always did. ‘Any change?’

  She had no notion of whom she was enquiring, only that regular people went to and from the hospital. Korky lied, as usual, and said that her friend was showing improvement and the buffet woman recited her customary hope: ‘Ah well, perhaps they’ll be letting him out soon.’

  There were only four tables, two on each side against the wintry windows with the counter occupying the back wall facing the door. A sheen of captive vapour caused a haze over the tubular light strips.

  Moodily Korky sat with her cup, holding it like a warmer with both hands, on a table to the right of the counter. She tugged at the plastic wrapping of a packet of chocolate biscuits. There was a wall poster announcing a competition, with a prize of a holiday in Florida, sponsored by the same biscuit company, but she decided not to enter. The door creaked and a slim woman in a fawn coat came in. She and Korky smiled conventionally. At once Korky realised who she was. Irene.

  ‘Just missed the two o’clock train, didn’t you, dear,’ sympathised the counter lady already preparing a cup and saucer. ‘Could see you running.’

  ‘The taxi from the hospital got stuck behind a farm tractor,’ confirme
d Irene. She was at the counter, her back to Korky. ‘And that means a three-hour wait.’

  ‘There’s not much to do here in three hours,’ said the woman pouring the tea. ‘Not this time of the year.’

  ‘I walked down to the village,’ said Irene. ‘There’s a café.’

  ‘Mildred,’ nodded the woman. ‘My daughter works there. We’re all in the refreshment business.’ Irene turned and sat at one of the tables opposite Korky, the table nearest the door so that she was not immediately facing. She sipped her tea once and then glanced up. Her expression altered. Korky was looking directly at her. Irene said: ‘I’m sure we’ve met before.’

  Korky swallowed. ‘Yes, we have.’ The buffet woman paused, cleaning cloth draped like a damp flag. Not many coincidences happened there. ‘Up at the hospital, would it be?’ she suggested.

  ‘It was in a restaurant in Kensington,’ Korky went on ignoring the interruption. The damp cloth dropped and the woman nodded as though she had known all the time. Irene only said: ‘Yes. You came in . . .’

  ‘And I sat right next to you . . . and your . . . husband.’

  ‘That’s right. I knew I had seen you before. How strange.’ She hesitated. ‘So have you . . . been visiting someone at . . . at Marshfield?’

  Looking down at her cup but then raising her eyes Korky said quietly: ‘Yes. The same person as you. I didn’t know you came to see him too.’

  ‘Frank,’ Irene almost whispered. The buffet woman had crammed the cleaning cloth to her mouth.

  ‘Savage,’ confirmed Korky.

  In the almost dark afternoon they walked together to the end of the platform below the dripping trees. Framed in the light of the distant refreshment room window was a face straining to see, even to hear.

  ‘I knew there was somebody,’ said Irene. ‘And it was you.’

  ‘It was me all the time,’ nodded Korky. ‘And you came to see him this morning and I came this afternoon. And neither of us knew. He didn’t mention it.’

  ‘He wouldn’t,’ said Irene. ‘And nobody else would. It’s terrible, isn’t it.’

  ‘Terrible and sad,’ agreed Korky slowly. She looked along the line. ‘The London train is in five minutes.’

  ‘Mine’s in fifteen. There’s hardly a train all day and then they have two close together.’

  Korky said: ‘You’re getting married again, aren’t you.’

  Irene nodded. They had reached the end of the platform where there was a pile of gravel and a defunct signal box. Some wet pigeons sat in its window. Together the two women turned and walked back. The distant top of the buffet lady bobbed hopefully. An old couple arrived, swathed in coats, he wobbling with a stick, and stood wordlessly staring into the grey day.

  Korky needed to tell her. ‘We’ve never been . . . well, lovers,’ she said. ‘Savage wouldn’t. But I love him.’

  ‘Me too,’ murmured Irene. ‘I went to see him in Charing Cross Hospital. After it was all in the newspapers. It’s as though these tragic things seek him out. It’s so unfair.’ Looking sideways at Korky she asked: ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Seventeen now. He took me in when I was sixteen and I had nowhere, although I told him I was older.’

  ‘It’s all strange, isn’t it.’ Irene gave a small laugh. ‘You were really priceless that day in the restaurant. I can’t believe how you carried it off.’

  Korky smiled too and, almost by accident, they touched hands. ‘Nor me. Savage wanted to tell you, to say who I was, but I didn’t give him a chance. He was livid.’ Her eyes travelled along the misty track. ‘Here’s my train.’

  They halted and stood by each other like mother and daughter as the train moved in. As it stopped they shook hands and then, impulsively but softly, kissed each other. The buffet woman almost fell from her stool. A few paces along the platform the elderly, silent, couple parted without contact. The man boarded the train and the woman stood immobile staring at him as if they would never be together again. It seemed a struggle for her to speak but eventually she said: ‘Don’t forget to tell her.’

  ‘That’s the only reason I’m going,’ said the man without warmth.

  Korky opened the door and got in. Her eyes were damp and when she turned she saw that Irene’s were also. ‘Thanks for looking after him,’ said Irene quietly.

  ‘You did too.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ll come to see him again. I wanted to come this time but it didn’t do much good. Not for either of us.’

  Korky said: ‘I know what you mean. He’d rather I didn’t come.’

  The train began to pull away. The elderly woman suddenly shouted vehemently: ‘You tell her!’

  Korky and Irene waved to each other almost shyly. ‘You’ll keep coming, won’t you,’ said Irene anxiously. She walked, keeping pace with the starting train.

  ‘Nothing’s going to stop me. But I’m going to get him out of there, Irene. And soon.’

  Twenty-Five

  Mr Kostelanetz balanced the big yellow tablet edgeways on his palm. ‘See, this hand is still good,’ he claimed. His big liquid eyes moved to Korky. The tablet toppled. ‘We used them in the Balkans.’

  ‘How long does it work for?’ asked Korky.

  ‘Up to three hours,’ Mr Kostelanetz told her. She moved her nose near the pill.

  ‘And it’s the last one?’

  ‘The last one.’ he winked confidingly. ‘I have needed to use them over the years.’ He indicated Nod. ‘And we tried one on his brother.’

  Nod said: ‘He went out for the count. But he was all right. He went down the pub after.’

  Mr Kostelanetz was closing his olive fist over the tablet but Korky picked it up with two fingertips and wrapped it in a tissue. ‘If it won’t work we’re buggered,’ she said solemnly.

  Mr Kostelanetz, unusually casual, was wearing an old green goalkeeping jersey. He kept running his fingers inside the collar. ‘Once he is back here,’ he said surveying the apartment sentimentally. ‘In the place he knows. With his friends. He will want to stay.’

  Nod said the van was outside. ‘It’s a bit of a banger but she’s filled up.’

  Mr Kostelanetz studied his watch as if it were a complex piece of equipment. ‘In ten minutes we must leave,’ he announced. ‘Everything is ready.’

  Korky picked up the tissue containing the tablet. ‘Let’s hope it works,’ she said.

  Savage was in a room with two shelves of books which remained in the same order each time she went to visit, with a television set, a radio and a window over winter Wiltshire. The radio was always on but so low it was only a mumble. She always told him what she had been doing that week, how she enjoyed living at the top of Mr Furtwangler’s house, and what was happening in the bookshop. He had little to tell her and there seemed nothing else to say. No small talk, no plans, no pieces of information. Invariably there was the tea ritual with Mrs Dines, her big empty cups, and her eccentric, relieving chatter.

  Sometimes they watched television, sometimes they gazed out of the window, mentioning the birds, the bald earth and barren trees. There were no film shows now because there had been an upset and there were no funds for a replacement projector. With Irene he had been able to sit in the dark and silence. ‘You don’t have to come every week,’ he said to Korky.

  ‘I want to.’

  ‘But it’s a long way and . . .’

  ‘. . .There’s nothing much to say when I get here,’ she provided bluntly. She leaned towards him determinedly. ‘I know that, Savage, but I’m not letting you get away with this. I’m not giving up, just because we’re out of small talk.’

  He sat dismally in the wheelchair. ‘Don’t you know whether you can walk? Can’t you feel whether you can?’ She had asked before and his answer was the same: ‘I’m leaving it to the doctors. They’ll know.’

  She always consciously avoided checking her watch but they both knew the milestones, the signposts. After forty-five minutes she said she would go to the tea machine. By that time Mrs Dines and
her phantom service had gone.

  There was often a queue for the tea and coffee dispenser. She was ashamed at her relief that it used up a few more minutes. This time she did not have to wait long. An old woman in a flannel dressing gown was in front of her, talking to the machine as it squirted. She shuffled away, the dressing gown dragging on the floor; Korky took her turn and, with a sharp glance around, dropped Mr Kostelanetz’s pill into Savage’s plastic beaker.

  ‘I think I ought to take you for a walk,’ she suggested firmly when she returned. ‘It’s not raining or anything. You need some air.’

  He always agreed; it gave them an escape from the tyranny of his room. They drank the tea. He did not detect the taste of the tablet. ‘You’re putting on weight,’ she said watching him.

  ‘No exercise,’ he shrugged. ‘Exercise is difficult.’

  When he had finished the tea she helped him on with a heavy jacket, and wheeled him from the room and out of the building. Savage acknowledged a nurse who spoke to him but the patients seemed to be oblivious, perhaps ashamed, of each other.

  It was a mild afternoon. Mr Kostelanetz had said that the drug would take at least twenty minutes to begin to work. She wheeled him as quickly as she could away from the hospital, making for the perimeter path against the screening trees, now an almost dark background. ‘We won’t be out long, Savage,’ she said to test his reaction. ‘I don’t want you getting cold.’

  He remained silent and, her heart jumping, she thought she detected a sag in his shoulders. Then he slipped to one side in the wheeled chair. She stopped, glanced guiltily around, and went to the front. His eyes were closed, his mouth was open. She leaned forward and closed his mouth. Trying not to rush, she wheeled him to the rendezvous. ‘You’re coming home, Savage,’ she told him over his slumped shoulder. ‘Whether you like it or not.’

  She rattled the wheelchair along the path, worried in case anyone came in the opposite direction. But no one appeared. The afternoon was dimming. Ahead she saw a clumsy movement among the bushes. Mr Kostelanetz was in place.