Kensington Heights

by Leslie Thomas

  ‘It is like in the Balkans,’ he enthused studying the unconscious Savage. Nod had been relieving himself among the shrubs and appeared sheepishly.

  ‘Let’s get him in,’ urged Korky. ‘The quicker the better.’

  She opened the creaky rear doors of the van and kept a look-out along the road and inside the hospital grounds while the men positioned the wheelchair and in one hefty movement lifted it and its deadweight occupant into the back of the vehicle. Mr Kostelanetz climbed in and applied the brake to the chair. It was all done in two minutes.

  ‘Planning,’ said Mr Kostelanetz. ‘Planning.’ He whistled to Korky who appeared from the rough hedge. They climbed into the van. Korky put a blanket over Savage and, one each side, she and Mr Kostelanetz sat and silently held on to the chair. Nod started the rattling engine and they pulled away.

  The wheelchair would only just fit into the confined lift at Kensington Heights. Mr Kostelanetz and Nod eyed each other with mutual apprehension and distrust as, with joint clumsiness, they manoeuvred the conveyance and the slumped Savage into the tight space. Savage had begun to rouse; he muttered and his head moved. Korky observed him anxiously.

  Mr Kostelanetz said: ‘Who will do the button?’ Their faces drifted to Korky.

  The chair occupied the entire lift space apart from a six-inch gap at one side. Korky eyed it. ‘I could get in there,’ she calculated. ‘Sideways, standing on one leg.’

  More mumbling from Savage spurred her. Deftly she climbed and wriggled into the aperture. She balanced on one stork-like leg. ‘See you up there,’ she whispered. She closed the doors and pressed the button.

  The noise and upward movement further roused Savage. She watched him worriedly. The two bulky men were still panting up the stairs as the lift reached the sixth landing. Korky opened the door and waited for their arrival. They both leaned against the wall to recover. Then she said: ‘Go easy. We don’t want him waking up on the landing.’

  Mr Kostelanetz unlocked the apartment door and they propelled Savage into it. He began to move more strongly. His arms went out as though searching for something to touch, he groaned and opened his eyes. They widened uncomprehendingly. His mouth opened. He screwed up his eyes and opened them again, his hands rubbed at his face.

  Once more his eyes closed, wearily as though he could not take in what they saw. ‘No, no,’ he mumbled to himself. ‘No. Not this.’ He opened them again. They were full of disbelief, almost fear.

  He turned his head around the apartment. ‘What have you done?’ he demanded thickly. ‘What am I doing here?’ Abruptly he realised and spluttered at the cautiously smiling Korky: ‘Take me back! You’re crazy.’

  Mr Kostelanetz shifted his shoes on the spot. Nod looked frightened. Firmly Korky stood in front of the wheelchair. ‘Why don’t we all have a nice cup of tea,’ she suggested. She made to turn towards the kitchen but Savage caught her arm. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing,’ he blurted angrily. ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘I’m crazy?’ she exploded. She took in the others. ‘We’re crazy?’ She tugged her arm from him. ‘Listen, mate, you’re the one who was in the hospital. And you want to go back.’

  His anger collapsed. He began to sob. ‘Of course I’ve got to go back. Get me out of here. Don’t you realise it’s my only chance.’

  Sternly she leaned towards him. ‘It’s your only chance of staying in that nut-house for the rest of your life.’ She jabbed a finger at him. ‘Or maybe that’s what you want. You don’t want to be a person, you want to be a bloody patient.’

  ‘Don’t you realise what has happened to me?’ he said thrusting his head towards her.

  ‘So you got shot,’ she said. ‘Twice. But you’re still alive. Just a-bloody-bout.’ She flung her hand towards Nod who backed to the wall. ‘See that man? His parents were killed in the Blitz in London.’ Nod, astonished at the news, attempted to agree. ‘And Mr Kostelanetz,’ she blazed on. ‘His father was tortured by the Nazis. His mother died of a broken heart.’ Her confidence dropped. ‘In the Balkans.’

  ‘Get me back,’ Savage almost snarled at her through gritted teeth. ‘Get me back to the hospital.’ He began to propel the chair towards the door.

  ‘All right, all right,’ Korky bellowed back at him. ‘Go on back, you prat. Take the easy way.’ She grabbed the handle of the vehicle. ‘Listen, Savage.’ Her harsh voice dropped to a plea. ‘Listen. We’ve done this for you. They can’t have you back unless you want to. Here you can at least live some life.’ She studied his broken face. ‘You can carry on with your islands. You’ve wasted all that. And I – me, Korky Wilson – I’m going to get you out of that chair and get you to walk again.’

  ‘Korky,’ he repeated gratingly. ‘I want to go back.’

  ‘All right! Sod you!’ The telephone rang. Nod picked it up and handed it to Mr Kostelanetz who grunted and listened. He replaced the receiver and turned with slow drama. ‘My contact,’ he nodded at the phone. ‘He informs that the police are coming around.’

  For a moment nobody spoke. ‘Maybe they just want the chair back,’ suggested Nod.

  Korky said: ‘They can have it. And what’s in it.’ In a fury she turned on Savage. ‘Go on, bugger off. Go back to the cosy loony bin. I’ll never . . . I’m never going to . . .’ She broke down sobbing, leaning across the wheelchair. Savage reached out and gently held both her forearms. She looked up into his face. They stared at each other. There was a tight silence. Then Savage sighed: ‘All right. I’ll stay.’

  Korky whooped and kissed him through her tears. ‘It’s going to work!’ she promised. ‘We’ll make it work.’ Mr Kostelanetz, his eyes bubbling, reached over and soundlessly shook hands with Savage. Nod stared with embarrassment out of the window and said: ‘They’re here. The coppers.’

  ‘Christ!’ exclaimed Korky. Her face went close to Savage again. ‘Can they take you away?’

  His shoulders sagged. ‘At this point they’ll do what the hospital tells them.’

  ‘Hide . . . We’ve got to hide you,’ dithered Korky. Her eyes went to each room, finally at the single glass door out on to the small balcony. ‘Out there,’ she decided. ‘I’ll get some blankets.’ She nodded to Mr Kostelanetz who took hold of the chair and began to turn it.

  Savage, words beyond him, hid his face in his hands. Nod opened the stiff glass door with difficulty. ‘All of a sudden he has trouble with locks,’ grumbled Mr Kostelanetz. The door pulled and the raw winter evening air blew in. ‘Here,’ said Korky appearing with two blankets. She wrapped them around Savage. ‘Will it go through?’

  ‘Just,’ said Mr Kostelanetz.

  ‘No, no. It’s no good. All this is madness,’ put in Savage hoarsely. ‘Let them take me back . . . later we can . . .’

  ‘Not bloody likely,’ exclaimed Korky. ‘Not now. You’ve promised.’

  They heard the lift coming up. ‘Quick,’ urged Korky. They got the wheelchair outside on the narrow, dark balcony. Sideways it just fitted. Only Savage’s head was projecting from the blankets. The doorbell rang. ‘Stay with him,’ said Korky giving Mr Kostelanetz a push. The startled man found himself out in the chill night with London’s lights shining below. He pulled his collar up.

  ‘Shush,’ he warned Savage who huddled with eyes shut. ‘Shush.’

  From the inside Korky shut the door and locked it. She pulled the lace curtains across.

  ‘Sit down there.’ She pointed Nod to the sofa. ‘We’re in love, see.’

  Nod was pleased. She opened the door to reveal two young and nervous-looking police officers. ‘Good evening,’ said one. ‘Can we come in?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘We’re looking for a person called Savage, Frank Savage,’ recited the other consulting a notebook.

  ‘He’s in an invalid chair,’ put in the first.

  Korky eased open the door. ‘No one of that description here,’ she said. She half-turned to Nod. ‘We haven’t seen a bloke in an invalid chair, have we, dear?’

&nbs
p; Nod said: ‘No, we haven’t.’ The policemen walked in cautiously. Nod added: ‘Darling.’ Korky sat beside him moving close. ‘Just me and my fiancé,’ she hummed. Nod blushed and wagged his head towards the policemen with a sort of triumph. Korky glanced down and saw wheel tracks across the carpet. ‘Show the officers around, dear,’ she said.

  Nod blinked but led the policemen towards the main bedroom. Korky picked up a tufted mat and placed it across the wheel tracks. ‘This place gets so untidy,’ she explained as the visitors reappeared. ‘Sorry about the bed.’ She manufactured a blush. ‘It’s all over the place.’ She looked meaningfully at Nod. ‘Isn’t it.’

  Nod pinked with pleasure. ‘Innit,’ he agreed.

  ‘He used to live here, that Mr Savage,’ said Korky airily. ‘But he got shot. By the police. By mistake.’

  The officers looked discomfited. ‘Right,’ said one inadequately.

  ‘Then the poor bloke went a bit funny and he’s in a hospital somewhere.’

  ‘That’s the point,’ said the second policeman as if relieved to confirm the background. ‘He seems to have vanished from the hospital and they’re worried about where he is. He’s not dangerous or anything.’

  ‘He couldn’t have got far in a wheelchair,’ said Korky archly.

  ‘That’s what we thought,’ said the first policeman. He looked around. ‘And up here on the top floor as well. There’s no logic to it.’

  ‘There’s not,’ said Korky. Nod and the second policeman both nodded agreement. The officers said they would be on their way. A sound came from the balcony window. ‘Wind’s getting up,’ said Korky firmly moving towards the front door. ‘It don’t half blow up here.’

  They were outside on the landing. One officer squinted towards the balcony but decided against saying anything. ‘Goodnight then,’ one said.

  ‘Sleep tight,’ said the other.

  ‘We’ll let you know if we see him,’ said Korky putting her arms around Nod. She blinked. ‘But I don’t expect we will.’

  They sat motionless for three minutes, her arms still loosely about his large, hot neck. Nod remained pleased. Then they heard the lift. ‘I thought so,’ muttered Korky. ‘Quick.’

  To his amazement she pulled off her sweater and the bra which she handed to him. ‘Flash it,’ she ordered. The doorbell sounded. Korky answered with the sweater held negligently across her chest.

  ‘Sorry,’ said the first policeman. He looked guiltily at his colleague.

  ‘If he should turn up,’ said the second, ‘give us a call will you.’

  Korky opened the door wider. Nod was standing dangling the bra. ‘What number?’ he asked.

  ‘Same old number. Nine-nine-nine will find us.’

  ‘Remember that,’ Korky said to Nod who promised he would.

  ‘Right,’ said the second officer. ‘’Night then.’

  ‘Yes, ’night,’ said the first glaring at the other. They left. Nod demurely handed back the bra. She replaced her sweater.

  Korky gave it another five minutes before she opened the balcony door. Mr Kostelanetz, purple-faced, stiff-moustached, watery-eyed, shivering, almost fell into the room. ‘Whisky,’ he said. ‘I need whisky.’

  He stumbled towards the kitchen. Nod went out on the narrow balcony and he and Korky manoeuvred Savage and the chair into the room. Savage let the blankets drop from his face. He blinked around at them. ‘You all need treatment,’ he said. ‘You ought to be in there with me.’

  Twenty-Six

  Each morning they would get to the lift, Korky would open the old, crashing gates, and Mr Tomelty would appear to help her manoeuvre the chair into the confined space. Korky would hurry down the stairs to the ground floor and shout up when she was there. When he had closed the doors on Savage, Mr Tomelty would call down to Korky and she would press the outer button to summon the lift. Mr Tomelty would follow it down and be there to help extricate the chair. The routine went on for weeks.

  With reluctance Dr Fenwick at Marshfield Manor had agreed that Savage could remain in the apartment. ‘I’m not convinced,’ he had said. ‘But give it a try.’ One of the conditions was daily attendance at a Kensington physiotherapy centre. In the exercise room there Korky cajoled and encouraged Savage while he progressed through a regime of exercises from his sitting position. When he flagged she would scold him. Sometimes she used the pulleys and weights herself, hanging on the wall while he laboured on. Weeks had gone by and he was still in the invalid chair.

  ‘When’s he going to stand up?’ Korky asked.

  The physiotherapist, a fragile-looking woman with big hands, shook her head. ‘Nobody knows.’

  ‘Can’t we try and stand him?’ insisted Korky. ‘What would happen?’

  The woman shrugged and said: ‘He would probably fall over.’

  When the daily session was complete she would push him along Kensington High Street. It was scarcely spring again although the trees were greening and there were odd times of tangible sunshine. Korky was learning to cook and they would do the shopping together when they were out, she wheedling him along the pavements. Then they would have coffee in a place that had made room for wheelchairs. There was another man who used to clatter into the café in a chair but he spoke no English. Later they would walk the width of the park to Bayswater Road, along with the traffic to Notting Hill Gate and then down the upper slope of Church Street to Kensington Heights.

  She had learned to transfer him to the toilet seat and every day she helped him wash while he remained in the chair. A nurse bathed him at the physiotherapy centre. He shaved himself. Sometimes it took him half an hour. There was no hurry. One morning she found him, lather down half his face, staring at the mirror, helpless as a clown.

  In the afternoons Mr Tomelty would come up, or sometimes Mr Maddison if it were Mr Tomelty’s day off, and help him from the chair on to the bed. Mr Prentice, whose eyebrows had never grown again, took his turn with them in the evening assisting him into bed. Other residents would visit him, Wilhelmina Blenkinsop, Miss Cotton and Miss Weiz; Percy Belfont came and spoke about returning to Antwerp to die.

  While Savage slept in the day Korky would sometimes go out and walk, quite often without aim; sometimes she would watch an old afternoon film on television.

  Savage had attempted some work on the islands encyclopaedia but his heart was not in it. The word processor stood with its lid shut like a closed mouth.

  Once he had opened the window and pitched six random pages from his manuscript out into the London air. He had re-read them repeatedly and, despair folding over him, had sat staring through the panes before reaching and releasing the window catch. He fed them out one by one.

  Wilhelmina Blenkinsop was returning from her weekly morning at Harrod’s and one of the pages had fluttered down and struck her lightly on the hat. She lifted her lined face and narrowed eyes and observed the others descending. Mr Tomelty who was cleaning the courtyard watched too. ‘Words from Heaven,’ he said. Miss Cotton and Miss Weiz who had just emerged from the block followed their gazes.

  ‘Hawaii,’ read Wilhelmina aloud from the sheet which had landed on her hat. ‘Pacific group formerly known as the Sandwich Islands . . .’

  ‘That is interesting,’ put in Minnie Weiz. Mr Tomelty had dutifully gathered the other sheets. ‘Here’s another . . .’ he said like someone given an unexpected pleasure. ‘Now, that is most interesting. Fascinating that is . . .’

  Mr Prentice joined the group, raising his non-existent eyebrows to peer up at the top window.

  Miss Cotton, who prided herself that her eyesight was better than that of the others, thought she could see part of Savage’s face behind the glass. ‘Poor imprisoned man,’ she said piously. Tomelty gave her a glance, then transferred it to the sheets of paper he had gathered. ‘They must have slipped out,’ he said. ‘Accidentally. I’ll take them back up to him.’

  ‘I’m not getting any better, am I?’

  Korky glanced at Savage apprehensively. ‘They said
we’d have to give it time,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t think you ought to be here.’ They were watching television and they kept their eyes on the screen.

  ‘Where would I be if I wasn’t?’ she asked.

  ‘Getting on with your life.’

  ‘Oh, we’re back on the old “getting on with your life” bit are we?’

  He touched her from the chair. ‘Yes, we are.’

  Korky turned from the programme. ‘As far as I am concerned I am getting on with my life,’ she said firmly but softly. ‘I’m taking care of you.’

  ‘Do you know how long this is likely to go on? Me in this chair?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Exactly. It could be years. The rest of my life.’

  She said: ‘You are not going to evict me again. We’ve been through all this more than once, Savage. You’re always trying to throw me out, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘I want you to have some life.’

  ‘How much life did I have when you met me first? Do you call living rough with a load of kids with fleas having a life?’

  ‘I want to go back to hospital.’

  Rising angrily she strode towards the kitchen. ‘Well, you’re not going,’ she almost snarled. ‘You don’t need to be in hospital. It’s just a bloody let-out for you. You’d be taking up space they need for real patients.’

  She put the kettle on. ‘I need the space,’ he insisted. ‘Korky, I’m not just staying here. Hanging on. I’m not screwing up your life.’ His voice fractured. ‘I’m never going to be out of this fucking chair.’

  Korky whirled around and charged back into the room. ‘Bollocks!’ she shouted at him. ‘Bollocks, Savage!’

  ‘Don’t swear at me.’

  ‘I’ll swear if I like. You need somebody to swear at you.’

  ‘Listen, those doctors know I’m not going to get any better. Can’t you tell, they know.’

  ‘What do they know, I’d like to know,’ she said. ‘Nothing. It’s all bloody guesswork.’