Grave Doubts (6 page)

Fenwick was appalled but Chris simply nodded, understanding.

‘She’s walking to heaven. It’s a long way, that’s why it’s taking such a long time.’

He looked up, his blue eyes radiating satisfaction that he had at last worked it out. ‘Isn’t that right, Daddy?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’ His voice was thick and he took a mouthful of coffee. He hoped that they couldn’t read his eyes but ever perceptive, Bess pulled her hand free and patted his arm.

‘It’s all right, Daddy. I know it’s sad but I think she wants to go now. It can’t be much fun being in hospital all this time.’

‘You’re probably right.’ He looked at them both and saw an extraordinary acceptance. To them it was simple. It was he who risked complicating matters by saying more.

‘I tell you what, why don’t we go home now.’

‘I’d like that.’ Chris put his coat on without protest. ‘I want to paint Mummy a special picture.’

He painted a picture – a boat on a sea with a beach in the foreground. There were three figures on the sand, one big and two small. Their faces were sad. There was a single figure on the boat with a carefully drawn, outsized hand raised in farewell. It had long dark hair and was smiling. Across the top, Chris wrote in his best handwriting: FOR MUMMY, LOVE CHRISTOPHER. Bess decided that she wanted to do something as well and pulled out her needlework box. Inside was a piece of unfinished cross-stitch of a daisy on a blue background. The daisy was complete except for its yellow centre and one leaf. She stitched them diligently before picking out in angular letters: MUMMY + BESS XXXXX.

Fenwick praised their work, gave them their tea and waited for the emotional storm to break but the evening passed peacefully. They played a game together and the television remained switched off. There were long cuddles before and after their baths. Before bed they said a special prayer for their mummy but there were no tears. They asked if they could sleep in one bed for that night and Fenwick agreed. Chris fell asleep with his arms around his new tank, Bess with her arms around her brother.

At eleven o’clock, the phone rang. Normally it would be work but with Bess’s words still echoing in his ears he lifted the receiver with dread.

‘Fenwick.’

‘It’s Doctor Mortimer, Mr Fenwick. I’m the registrar on duty at St Theresa’s. There has been a change in your wife’s condition. I think you should come.’

‘Tonight?’

‘I think it would be best, yes.’

He woke Alice who exuded a sympathy he found hard to bear.

‘If you could stay close to the children, Bess sometimes has nightmares and I don’t want them to be on their own.’ He said nothing about the source of her bad dreams.

Alice gave his arm a squeeze.

‘Of course, I’ll be here for them.’

He drove the familiar route through heavy rain, along empty roads already filling with water in the dips. The children’s goodbye gifts were securely wrapped in plastic bags on the back seat.

The hospital was sparsely lit and a kindly porter led him through dim corridors on rubber-soled shoes that squeaked on the linoleum. His wife had been wheeled into a side ward on her own. He saw at once that most of the tubes had gone. The ventilator clicked and sighed, and his own breathing adjusted to match its slow rhythm. Someone had combed out her glorious hair and it fell across the pillow in a dark halo. Her hands lay on the top of the covers across her concave stomach, pretty cotton sleeves covering the worst of the pin marks and bruises caused by long years of intravenous attention.

He became aware that a young man, probably the registrar, was at his side.

‘How long?’ he asked.

‘Hard to say, but not very long now.’ They spoke in whispers in case, against all probability, the woman lying before them could still hear. Fenwick stood up and they walked out into the corridor to continue their conversation.

‘Her liver’s failed but she’s in no pain, we’ve made sure of that. It’s just a matter of time.’

‘You want to turn off the ventilator?’

‘It’s your decision. It always has been, but there can be absolutely no hope now.’

He waited as Fenwick paused and looked at the relentless machine.

‘I need a little time.’

‘Of course. Can I get you anything? Some tea?’

Fenwick smiled faintly at the universal English antidote.

‘Yes, that’s kind.’ He had learnt that it was better to let people help.

He opened the carrier bags – one from a shoe shop, the other from a toy store, and pulled out the painting and the needlework. He propped them up on the wheeled unit to one side and realised, belatedly, that he had brought nothing himself. The tea arrived and he was left in peace. He lifted one of his wife’s pale hands into his own. It was warm and soft, the nails trimmed and clean, and he was grateful to the unknown person who had attended to this detail for her.

He watched Monique’s breast rise and fall but knew that it signified nothing. He sipped his tea. When it was finished he would go and find the registrar. He realised that he was swallowing a drop at a time as he held her hand, counting the pulse as if it were magic.

It was nearly dawn when he returned home. The house was dark and silent in the grey light. A blackbird, too lustful for sleep, was singing from the holly tree. Alice was asleep on the sofa, mouth sagging open. He went and made himself another cup of tea.

The anger surprised him. He had expected to be calm, not filled with this fury that wanted to destroy the order around him. All his previous denial, the rage against Monique and her melancholy disease, had been lying in wait down the years for this moment. He wanted to howl out loud. Instead he squeezed the teabag bone dry, his knuckles white, and wiped his face with his free hand. He was adding a dash of milk when the heard the soft pad of slippered feet behind him.

‘Has she gone, poor dear?’

‘Yes Alice, she’s gone. Would you like some tea?’

His housekeeper came to his side and put her plump arm around his waist.

‘Don’t mind the anger, or the guilt when it comes. It’s natural, trust me. We all feel it when they go.’ She gave a faint squeeze. ‘A cup of tea would be nice, thank you.’

They drank in silence for a while as the dawn chorus grew from a single chirp to a raucous battle for supremacy. Light filtered into the kitchen.

‘Are the children OK?’

‘Slept the whole night through, not a murmur out of either of them. The funeral…?’

‘I’ve got all that to arrange. Would you mind helping me? It won’t be large but I’ll need to let her family know.’

‘Of course.’ She hesitated. ‘Will you take the children?’

It was a question that had been plaguing him during his long ride home.

‘I think so. They need something tangible, to say goodbye. But only if they want to.

‘I suspect that they will.’

‘So do I.’

When the phone rang she pretended that she hadn’t jumped.

‘Hello?’

‘Sergeant Nightingale? This is Dr Batchelor. We haven’t met but I was hoping you could spare me some time. I’m a prison psychiatrist. Mr Griffiths is one of my patients.’

At the mention of Griffiths’ name, Nightingale leant back against the wall and slid down until she was seated on the cool bleached wood floor.

‘Could I ask you a few questions…are you still there?’

‘Yes.’ Her voice was husky and she coughed. ‘I’m not sure that I’m in any position to help you.’

‘I know that this is a little unusual…’

‘A little!’

‘But you corresponded with Wayne electronically for months.’

‘That doesn’t mean I knew him or that I have any insight to share with you.’ She crossed her fingers at the lie. ‘A meeting would be highly irregular and a waste of your time and mine.’

‘Over the phone then.’

‘No, Doctor. I really don’t want to start something like this. I’m sorry but I can’t help you.’

‘It may do you some good.’

‘I have to go now. Goodbye.’

She replaced the receiver and rested her head in her hands. The whole afternoon lay in wait ahead of her. She felt trapped inside her flat but when she stepped outside she had the sense that she was being followed. It was stupid, another sign of the paranoia that her counsellor had warned her about, but it was debilitating just the same.

Every night her sleep was tormented by horrific nightmares. In the most recent one she was kneeling in front of Griffiths, like a supplicant, her face level with his navel as he forced her to strip naked. She’d woken shivering from the dream just after midnight. After two cups of herbal tea, she had drifted off to sleep, only to find herself on her knees again in a gutter, with Griffiths standing naked in front of her, his arms outstretched as if for crucifixion. She didn’t see the knife until he brought it down in a swift arc to be level with her eyes. Slowly, he’d forced her mouth open and inserted the blade, resting it deliberately on her tongue like a communion wafer. He had forced her lips closed around it, then pulled out quickly. The razor-fine edge cut flesh and she tasted blood in her mouth.

The iron taste was still there when she woke up. When she put her hand to her face it came away bloody. In her waking confusion she’d looked around the room, searching for an intruder. It wasn’t until she was washing her face in the bathroom that she realised she had a nosebleed. She shouted out in frustration at the betraying weakness of her body, swearing as she changed the stained pillowcase and musty sheets. At dawn she fell into a black slumber from which she woke unrefreshed three hours later.

She had called in sick, a lie that appalled her, but the thought of the station was worse than the idea of staying home. The phone was left plugged in as a penance and she received three silent calls before ten o’clock. Each one unnerved her. From assuming that they were nothing but childish pranks she’d become convinced that they were driven by some malign purpose. Desperate to leave the house, she had booked a hair appointment and filled the time beforehand in shopping for things she didn’t need.

She’d told the stylist to be ruthless, emphasising low maintenance whilst remaining indifferent to style. He called the finished effect
gamine
. She thought that she looked like a shorn Joan of Arc, ready to lead an army or face the fire. In an attempt at sensible eating she went to a vegetarian restaurant for lunch but when the quiche and salad arrived she found that her appetite had disappeared and hid most of the pastry under her untouched lettuce. Back home she drank an energy booster, ignored the flashing light on her phone and decided to go for a run.

Jogging had first become an escape for her at fourteen when she had literally run away from home with her few possessions strapped to her back. When the authorities brought her back she ran away again and again, until one policewoman by chance had impressed her so much that she had formed an ambition to become just like her. But the running had continued through college and police training. She had even run on the morning that she had been told her parents were dead.

This run was different. She ignored the park as too routine and chose instead a long track through the remnants of ancient forest that survived from the swathe of trees that had once covered the whole of the South of England. She normally saved this run for special occasions. Today it was her last attempt to break away from the paranoia that threatened to consume her, and the compulsive behaviours she was intelligent enough to recognise but not strong enough to manage. Every physical element of her life was rigidly contained. It was her mind that ran out of control.

Three hours later Nightingale’s trainers were covered in dust. Her T-shirt stuck to her back, outlining the uncompromising sports bra she wore when jogging and her hair was plastered flat to her skull framing a face drawn tight with exertion. A deceitful day off had deteriorated into an endurance test.

In the lengthening shade of an enormous oak she sucked the last drops of water from the bottle at her belt. The rustling of the leaves around her mimicked following footsteps but she shook the thought from her mind, telling herself that she was safer out here than anywhere else. She looked at her watch reluctantly. It was time to begin the long jog back to the car and then home. The thought twisted inside her, sharper than any knife and she pushed herself on.

When she reached her favourite tree she finally paused and drew in lungfuls of air. She was a long way from her car. It would be madness to exhaust herself this far into the forest but she had not yet escaped her thoughts, not even in the tedium of counting steps. She leant forward, hands on thighs, her head hanging down towards last year’s leaves lying on the packed earth under the tree. She watched drops of sweat speckle their dusty surfaces and define the faint veins in skeleton shapes. When these leaves had fallen her parents had been alive.

A sob escaped from her mouth. She covered her lips with her hands, as if trying to swallow the noise but it was impossible. Another great cry fell from her and tears joined the spattering of sweat evicted from her body. The sounds ran together until she was howling continuously. Her legs folded beneath her and she crumpled to the ground holding her head tight, as if she could squeeze the raw emotion that was pouring from her back inside. Instead she felt a counteracting pressure swell against the bone of her skull and press her lungs inside their ribcage so that she had to pant for breath.

The crying had no point of origin or purpose, it just was. Wave after wave passed through and out of her, rocking her body backwards and forwards in an awkward rhythm. At some point the crying quietened and then the tears stopped. She took her hands away from her head and looked at her fingers. They were bleached white of blood from the pressure she’d exerted on them. She stared at the ring on her right hand, recalled the Christmas it had been given and felt another sob form at the memory. The tears returned and she bit down hard on her tongue in a vain attempt to stop them. The next wave of grief hit her, softer but somehow deeper and sadder, with no thread of hope.

There was a juddering in the ground beneath her that turned into heavy running footsteps and she looked up to see two curious children staring at her. Her eyes were so swollen from weeping and unshed tears that she couldn’t make out their faces, but she could see that they were dressed incongruously in shorts and Wellington boots. Another picture from her mental childhood scrapbook clicked into focus. She and Simon had worn the same. There were adders in the woods and Wellingtons were safer than sandals.

‘I’m OK,’ she said, her voice husky. ‘I’m fine,’ but they ran off. She hoped that she hadn’t scared them.

It was cold in the darkening shade of the tree and Nightingale shivered as she tried to stand, protecting her body from unexpected frailty like an old woman.

‘Daddy! Daddy! Come quickly. There’s a sad lady crying under our tree.’

Fenwick’s heart sank. Since the funeral the children had assumed a disconcerting façade of babyishness, behaving badly during meals, insisting on long bedtime stories and a nightlight. When they weren’t squabbling they would collapse in strange bouts of giggling over the most stupid things. They refused to discuss their mother’s death and glared at him angrily whenever he tried to raise the subject. He’d hoped that this walk to one of their special places would break the mood and bring them all closer together.

He’d begun to hope that the plan was succeeding. The shell he had seen grow over both Chris and Bess had started to crack as they retraced familiar paths and splashed through memories of streams now drying to a trickle. He was inclined to ignore this woman whoever she was. Life was complicated and it was tough. Sometimes the knocks made you cry. It was usually best to deal with them in private and she wouldn’t thank him for intruding, he was sure of that.

‘Come on, Daddy.’ Bess’s concern shot through him. He felt awful. She expected him to behave with common decency in response to another person’s need. What had he been thinking even to consider passing by on the other side?

‘Which way?’

‘Over here.’ Chris ran on ahead, forcing Fenwick and Bess to sprint in order to catch him.

The woman was no more than a girl; thin, grubby, sweaty, in running clothes that were covered in dust and fragments of leaves. Fenwick wondered whether she had fallen and went over as she tried to stand. When she flinched at his shadow and looked up with desperate blue eyes he saw that it was Nightingale.

He stared in shock, appalled at the terrible sadness he saw so openly in her pale face. She averted her head but there was no flash of recognition in her face and she obviously hadn’t realised the identity of her discoverer. His heart went out to her. It wasn’t right. She would hate this intrusion.

‘Nightingale.’ His voice was soft but she jumped as if she had been bitten by one of the poisonous snakes he warned the children about.

‘Oh no!’ It was a desolate wail and he had no idea what to say. He stood there, hands hanging uselessly by his sides.

‘Why are you so sad?’ Bess wasn’t burdened by his layers of sophistry.

‘I’m OK,’ was the whispered reply.

‘Then why are you crying?’ Bess peered at her then gave a little start.

‘I know you. You’re the police lady that came to our house last year. Daddy,’ Bess turned on him, accusingly, ‘she’s not crying because you’ve been nasty to her, is she?’

For some reason his daughter’s words triggered another surge of sobbing from Nightingale, strong enough to shake her shoulders.

‘Hey,’ Fenwick instinctively bent down and wrapped an awkward arm about her shoulders. ‘Good grief, you’re freezing. You’ll catch your death of cold. Here,’ he took the jumper he had slung around his shoulders and eased it over her head. He guided her arms into the sleeves and she hugged the wool to her. ‘Why don’t I give you a lift home?’

‘No.’ He could hardly hear her. ‘I have my car. Please,’ she wouldn’t look him in the eye but he could feel the intensity of her appeal, ‘it would be best if you left me alone.’

‘At least let me walk you to your car. Where is it?’

‘Near the end of the Devil’s Run.’

‘That’s miles away. Is that how far you’ve come?’ He tried not to let it sound like an accusation. ‘You must be exhausted. My car’s over in the National Trust car park. We’ll drive you round.’

‘No, I…’

‘Does that mean our walk’s over already?’ Chris made no attempt to hide his disappointment.

‘Chris.’

‘See, it will only be a problem. I can find my own way back.’

‘No you won’t. Christopher, if we go now we’ll be in time for an ice-cream from the shop on the way home.’

Chris’s face brightened at once. Nightingale gave a huge sigh and shrugged her shoulders. Fenwick was too adept at recognising and capitalising on defeat to let the moment pass and helped her to her feet. As the children ran on ahead, Fenwick slowed his pace until he could match his stride to hers.

‘Would it help to talk?’

She shook her head.

‘Sometimes it does you know, however hard starting might seem.’

‘I’d rather not.’

They walked on in silence, their strides synchronised, the rustle from their feet through the leaves matched in rhythm. Fenwick glanced at her face whilst she stared at the ground just ahead of her feet. She appeared bruised and exhausted. Her vulnerability moved him and he felt his throat harden into an ache. He’d never witnessed this aspect of her before. At work she was tough and dependable, so logical and cool. The depth of her emotion surprised him.

He started to talk about the forest through which they walked, just as he would have done to Chris and Bess. His words were careful and measured, sentences peppered with curiosities and legends as he wove mystery into the fabric of his narrative.

They reached a stream in which the children had stopped to play.

‘…And this is where an eminent Victorian gentleman swore on the Bible that he had photographed fairies.’

‘Do you believe in fairies?’ No respecter of silences, Bess asked Nightingale the same question that she asked every adult she accompanied to this spot.

Nightingale stared at her, confused. A ghost of a smile tugged at her lips.

‘Do you?’

‘I asked first.’

‘Perhaps I do. They might exist. Who can say?’

Bess appeared to like this answer.

‘That’s what I think too. Do you believe in ghosts then?’

Nightingale slipped on the mossy stones at the edge of the stream and Fenwick caught her arm to prevent her from falling. When they reached the other side he waited for her to take it away but she didn’t and he let it lie there.

‘I don’t think we want to talk about ghosts right now, Bess. It’s not a good subject when someone’s a little upset.’

‘Why are you upset?’

Fenwick glared at Bess but she ignored him and to his surprise Nightingale answered.

‘I’m sad because some people I knew have gone away and I miss them.’