‘You will come back, won’t you?’ the little girl checked.
Mirabelle crouched. ‘Lali, dear,’ she said, ‘I’ve mentioned what happened to you to Father Grogan and to Nurse Frida and I hope they will address it. But I’ll check on you again to make sure. I promise.’
‘Thank you,’ the girl said quietly.
‘You sound as if you’re from London, you know.’ Mirabelle smiled. She didn’t want to go.
‘The kids give you a hard time if you aren’t English.’ Lali shrugged, matter of fact.
‘You hadn’t been here long when you got sick, had you?’
‘It was so cold. My mother thought that’s what it was – just a cold. The room we rented at first was bad. One of the walls was crumbling with damp and it smelled funny. The doctor said we were too slow in coming to him, but we didn’t know. I just kept coughing.’
‘You’ll be going home soon, I’m sure. Just as your friend said.’ And there were those serious eyes again. ‘I’ll pop in next week. I promise,’ said Mirabelle. She tried to frame the feeling of suspicion that was hovering on the fringes of her mind, but the words tingled and then disappeared, like a mirage. The clock by the door said five to one and, Mirabelle noticed, the smell of cooking was seeping through the hall – a meaty scent of long-simmered stew. ‘Could I use the lavatory?’ She was hedging. Lali pointed towards a door at the rear of the hall.
Inside, the room was baking hot. The bevelled window magnified the sun and there wasn’t a curtain or blind to shield it. Mirabelle stared at herself in the mirror. She ran cold water over her wrists. This place made her uneasy somehow. Mirabelle lifted her handbag from beside the sink and as she turned to go back into the hallway she noticed a thick slick of dark blood down the enamel of the lavatory. It pooled where the pan was bolted into the linoleum floor. She tutted. The blood, she noted, must be fresh. It would dry in here in a matter of minutes.
As she stepped back into the hallway, the front door opened ahead of her and a long stream of children flooded back from church. Lali was swept away on the tide. Then, when Mirabelle’s eyes lit on her, she was laughing with another girl. She looked over, as if she was asking for permission to play with her friend. Mirabelle nodded. Lali gave a little wave and the two girls disappeared through the ward and into the garden hand in hand.
The boys from the beach the day before clattered in the other direction, upstairs, and what had at first seemed an endless tide of bodies magically dispersed through various doors. In the children’s wake, three nurses stood at the row of pegs hanging up their navy capes. One of them wore a darker uniform and Mirabelle surmised she was Sister Taylor, whom Nurse Frida had mentioned.
‘Excuse me. I’m afraid there is some cleaning required.’ Mirabelle pointed in the direction of the partly open lavatory door.
‘The children’s toilet?’ the sister enquired. Her tone was authoritative.
‘Children’s? That one there?’ Mirabelle pointed again.
‘Guests shouldn’t use that. We’re very careful of cross-infection.’
‘Do the nurses have separate facilities?’
‘If you’re visiting we’d normally ask you to use the staff lavatory. It’s upstairs.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Sister? It is sister, isn’t it?’
The woman nodded. ‘Sister Taylor,’ she confirmed. ‘No harm done. Can I see you out?’
‘Yes. Of course. The thing is, I mentioned to Nurse Frida that Lali has been having trouble with the older boys.’
‘Trouble?’
‘They have been bullying her. She had some sweets, I think, and they took some of them.’
‘I’ll look into it.’
Mirabelle was about to ask something else, though she hadn’t quite formed the question, when the younger Indian nurse she’d seen in the garden emerged into the hallway and rang a brass bell.
‘Thank you, Nurse Uma. Time for lunch,’ Sister announced. ‘Nurse Berenice,’ she said, indicating a strawberry-blonde, younger woman with a pudgy face, who sprang into action. The nurse turned the front door’s ebony handle and swept it open to direct Mirabelle through. ‘I’ll see the mess is cleared up,’ Sister Taylor said. ‘Thanks for letting us know about the boys. It happens from time to time, you know. I’ll have a word.’
From the house the sound of chattering children wafted down the steps as they rushed back through the hallway towards lunch. Then the door closed. As Mirabelle walked down the stairs, she felt a welcome breath of air from the sea. Two girls whizzed past on bicycles, heading for the front. One of them rang her bell and the other squealed. For a second it seemed too quiet. Mirabelle felt her skin prickle as if somebody was talking about her behind her back. She wondered what Nurse Frida had meant about a refund when she first opened the door. She wondered which of the children had bled in the toilet, when she was outside. She wondered why it was Father Grogan who came to find little Lali the day before, and how often the nurses helped out in the kitchen. She wondered if either the priest or the nurse or the sister really would have a word with the little gang of bullies and, if so, what they might say. It was the details that made the difference, Mirabelle always thought, and something simply wasn’t right. Lali wasn’t happy. She decided to take a walk and try to make sense of it.
Chapter Three
Memory is the art of attention
Mirabelle turned along the promenade above the beach. Today, the air smelled of orange squash with a tang of sherbet and the heavy scent of frying chips. The sound of laughter floated up from the shore. Parents cheered on their children, swimming in the sea and, as they emerged, shuddering into the comfort of thin, scratchy towels, the mothers handed out homemade sandwiches freckled with the tiny amount of sand – or rather, grit – the pebble beach afforded.
Along the front, Mirabelle stopped at a café with a candy-striped canopy. She sat inside, out of the sunshine, and sipped a pot of tea while she considered. In fairness, Lali had seemed contented enough when she had left. The children’s home wasn’t some dreadful, Dickensian hellhole. But still. Over the last year Mirabelle realised she hadn’t taken a single case on the side at McGuigan & McGuigan – not one. And yet here she was, with her suspicions aroused and, as a result, her heart beating a little faster. She made the decision not to go back to her flat and read the Sunday Times as she would normally. It would do no harm to keep an eye on things, she told herself. Something was amiss, she was sure of it. It might be minor, of course. It might be nothing, but best to be sure.
She paid, leaving a tip, and stalked into the sunshine, retracing her steps until she turned off Kingsway and towards Church Street. All summer it had seemed dusty up here, like a holiday town somewhere on the continent. She crossed, continuing up the incline towards Norton Road. There was only one place to start, she realised. Mirabelle hadn’t visited the Church of the Sacred Heart for years. The last time had been Sandor’s funeral. He was buried, like Jack, in the little graveyard next to the church. Despite the baking heat, the skin on her arms raised goosebumps as she glanced over the wall in the direction of Jack’s grave, which, she noticed, was devoid of flowers. Jack’s wife must have stopped laying them at the base of his gravestone. In weather like this, they’d hardly last.
Mirabelle cut off the pavement and along the shaded stone porch of the church. She pushed open the heavy wooden door and the sound of creaking hinges reverberated around the high ceiling. The church was empty. The air smelled of dusty prayer books, cedar-wood pews and a stale hint of perfume. The congregation was not long gone. After the bright sunshine on the street, the darkness felt intimate and the huge space amplified every sound. Mirabelle took off her sunglasses.
She had only ever come here in extremis. The church had been important in her very first case – she’d sought out Sandor for help. Mirabelle sighed. The breath echoed like some kind of ghost, only covered by the sound of her steps as she walked down the aisle and knocked on the door of the vestry. It creaked open to reveal
a tidy-looking young woman in a pink summer dress, and a hat that was made out of brown feathers. In her hand, an iron was steaming over an embroidered surplice on a board. Behind, on the shallow windowsill, framed against pale green, leaded glass, a line of pots held straggling plants for which Mirabelle felt sure there must be inadequate natural light.
‘Can I help you?’
‘I’m looking for Father Grogan.’
‘The father won’t be back until later. For Vespers. You could try at the house,’ the young woman offered. ‘It’s across the road.’
‘Thank you. I wanted to ask him about the convalescent home on Eaton Road. The one for children?’
‘The TB kids? We took the choir there to sing carols at Christmas.’
‘How nice.’
‘Poor things. Most of the parents can’t visit. They come from deprived areas. London mostly. Slums, you see.’
‘It seems such a wonderful cause. I met one of the children – a little girl. She was from Jamaica.’
The woman’s lips pursed. ‘Really?’ she said, as if she wouldn’t expect the home to admit foreign children. ‘I didn’t know they had tuberculosis in Jamaica.’
There was no measure in offering an explanation. Mirabelle changed tack. ‘Father Grogan seems very involved there.’
‘Well, it’s close to the church. He has such marvellous energy, I always think, for a man of his age. He’s very inspirational.’
Mirabelle wouldn’t have used that word about the gruff-faced priest. ‘Well, you’re doing him proud.’
‘We can’t have the father in disarray, can we? That would never do,’ the woman said cheerily as she stroked the surplice and laid on the iron.
Mirabelle’s heels echoed back up the aisle. Outside, she walked across Norton Road to the priests’ house and peered through the front window. Nobody was inside. The room was a study lined with books and furnished with a leather-topped desk and three comfortable chairs. A large black telephone sat in pride of place on the desk. She tried to imagine what Jack would do in this situation and realised that he’d just watch. It’s Sunday, she thought, what am I going to see but a whole lot of Bible bashing? Then she cursed herself for her impatience. The church was important to people, even if she had lost her faith a long time ago. Perhaps Lali had as well – skipping the service like that. As a child, Mirabelle would never have been allowed to skip a Sunday on the pews. She wouldn’t have dared. The kid had spirit, Mirabelle had to give her that. It took nerve to ask for help too. She didn’t want to let her down.
She wandered over to the corner and loitered in the doorway of a closed hardware shop, which afforded an unobstructed view of both the church and the house, and, as she did so, her mind wandered. She considered walking down to the beach, but even casting her eyes in the direction of Norton Road brought her back to the feeling in the pit of her stomach – a mixture of concern and excitement. Lali trusting her. Father Grogan searching for the lost child – not the police. Not the nurses. There was something odd about it. She was getting too old for this.
Vespers was at five o’clock. From her vantage point Mirabelle could see the painted sign outside the church. She had been brought up in the Church of England and the evening service to her mind was Evensong. She remembered at school, when she was in infants, she had overheard two Catholic girls in the class talking about Vespers. ‘Sounds German. Vespers. Does it mean whisper or something,’ one of the other girls had snapped, putting on a German accent. ‘Visper. Visper.’ Mirabelle had been four years of age when the Great War had ended. There were several girls in her class who had lost their fathers. One or two had lost older brothers. ‘I hate those Fritzes,’ one of the girls said in the playground, next to the swing. ‘I’ll never forgive them.’ It occurred to Mirabelle that German still meant something bad, though it was over ten years now since the latest peace – hopefully the last one.
At length, Mirabelle watched the woman in the pink dress pick her way along the pavement, back in the direction of town. Across the road, a young couple knocked on the door of the priests’ house and were admitted. The parish at Hove was full of young families, and there must be a steady stream of weddings and baptisms with all the attendant arrangements. Mirabelle rarely passed the Sacred Heart on a Saturday when there wasn’t a wedding car outside or a photograph being taken at the door. She had found confetti in the mud on Jack’s grave more than once. The stuff got everywhere. Across the road, the couple left half an hour later and two old women turned up, one clutching a Tupperware container, which she pressed upon the tall young man who opened the door – a trainee priest, Mirabelle guessed.
At half past four, Father Grogan walked the women down the pathway. He shook their hands before waving them off. Then he continued over the road to get ready for the service. Mirabelle decided to wait until the celebrants had arrived before taking her place to the rear of the congregation. She didn’t want to be too conspicuous. At least the church was cool inside – that would be a relief. She checked her watch, then she squinted as she saw Sister Taylor appear at the top of Eaton Road. That’s strange, she thought. The sister had attended the morning service with the children. It seemed uncommonly devout to come back for Vespers, besides which she surely ought to be working. Mirabelle hid herself, turning as if she was peering through the shop window as the sister disappeared through the doorway of the Sacred Heart. Then she followed, doing her best to enter the empty church quietly, slipping into a pew at the back just in time to see Sister Taylor hammer on the door of the vestry. It creaked open. Sandor had always said he would oil it but he had never got round to doing so. It sounded as if nobody ever had.
Father Grogan clearly wasn’t expecting this visitor.
‘I have to speak to you,’ the sister insisted. The urgency of her tone filtered to the back of the empty church.
The priest’s voice was lower and more difficult to make out, but Mirabelle thought she heard him say something about ‘after the service’.
Sister Taylor hissed. ‘No,’ she insisted. ‘It’s important, Father. Now. Please.’ He relented and she disappeared inside, the door closing with a loud click. Mirabelle crept up to the altar beside the door and knelt on the stone floor. I’m getting too old for this, she thought again as she prepared to peer through the keyhole just as two young women burst into the church. They were wearing cotton dresses, pumps and straw summer hats decorated with thick ribbons. Mirabelle jumped up and stepped back, crossing herself as the women slid into a pew and whispered to each other. A twist of annoyance turned in Mirabelle’s stomach at being interrupted, but at least the women didn’t appear to have noticed what she’d been up to. Then a man arrived and made his way to a seat at the front.
Mirabelle sighed. The opportunity had passed, clearly. She decided to walk back up the aisle, slip into the sunshine and loiter by the gate. A couple of dozen more people disappeared through the church door – families, women with children, and one or two old men on their own. The congregation nodded their hellos as they made their way along the porch. Mirabelle smiled back. She’d go in at the last minute, she thought, if the sister didn’t come out. She was about to do so when the bells sounded five o’clock and Sister Taylor emerged and, with some grace, so you might consider it genuinely an accident, Mirabelle deliberately swung into her, as if she was in a rush. ‘Oh hello,’ she said, sounding surprised. ‘I’m so sorry, Sister.’
‘It’s you.’ The woman was tight lipped. Mirabelle noticed her hands were balled, the knuckles white.
‘I’m on my way to Vespers,’ Mirabelle proclaimed. ‘It must have started by now. Aren’t you coming?’
‘I have to get back to the home. One of the children left something this morning. That’s all.’
Mirabelle let her gaze settle. It was an odd response and, besides, Sister Taylor was empty handed. In the normal run of things, she was sure, a sister might send a nurse on that kind of errand.
‘Did you find it?’ she asked.
�
�I’m sure somebody will hand it in. It’s fine.’
‘What did they lose? I’ll keep an eye out.’
‘A cardigan.’
‘On a day like today?’
The sister gave a half-shrug. ‘I have to get back,’ she said.
Mirabelle watched as the woman crossed the street. Her shadow was hazy on the hot tarmac – the sun was beginning to sink. More people arrived at the church and disappeared inside – a last-minute rush. After a minute or two the sound of organ music mingled with the noise of a bus chugging along the main road, the dusty tang of lead on the hot air. Mirabelle stared in the direction of Jack’s grave. She slipped around the side of the church where the gravestones cast shadows in regular rows, as if the ground was patterned. ‘What do you think?’ she asked the bare space where Jack’s body was buried. She knew what he’d say. Trust your instincts. That’s what he’d always said. She stepped backwards. ‘And you?’ Sandor was silent. His gravestone had been carved in Hungarian, his native tongue, apart from one line, in Latin. Caelitus mihi vires. My strength is from heaven. She wondered what the Hungarian inscription said as she remembered Sandor’s laugh and imagined the advice he’d inevitably have given. Do the right thing. He had been a priest, after all, and had never shirked his duty.
The dead didn’t understand, she thought as she checked her watch. How could they? Vespers couldn’t last more than an hour and what would transpire next would be, at least, a good indication of the urgency of the problem the sister had brought to Father Grogan, she thought. Now there was no rush. As she turned to go she suddenly wondered what Jack would think of her these days – all that youthful promise and the piebald glory of wartime romance long over. The world had changed, she realised. She didn’t like to dwell on it.
Quickly she walked up Norton Road and turned on to Eaton Road. The trouble with residential streets, she always found, was that it was tricky to loiter without being conspicuous. There were all kinds of reasons a woman might be waiting near a church, but far fewer outside a house that wasn’t her own. During the war, the department had used all kinds of covers, but these days she was on her own.
Indian Summer Page 3