Saturday's Child (31 page)

‘Then say nothing, just nod for yes.’

He nodded.

‘Then that is settled, Mr Smythe. The O’Garas will be moving into the house – they are to use the upstairs rooms. I am not sure yet of the date, but we shall inform you. Oh,
one more thing.’

‘Yes?’

‘I demand a free and signed copy of your book. Do we agree?’

‘Certainly.’

‘And Mrs O’Gara, my housekeeper, may need you to help occasionally in the house. Will that be satisfactory?’ There was tiredness in her tone now, and an air of dismissal
accompanied the words.

‘I shall be glad to help, Miss Moore. And thank you.’ He rose. ‘I shall not shake your hand, as that might cause pain.’

‘Ask Mrs O’Gara to come in, will you?’ said Katherine. ‘Tell her I need one of the blue pills, Mr Smythe. I have enjoyed our conversation. Goodbye.’

He left her, found Magsy in the kitchen, told her about the blue pill. ‘She suffers greatly,’ he said.

‘I know. But she is trying, Mr Smythe, is making an effort to move.’

‘You and Rachel have given her reasons to live. And, speaking of living, I am to have the summer house. It was a royal edict from the one who must be obeyed.’

Magsy laughed, picked up a bottle of pills. ‘She is not bad, you know. Yes, the pain is awful and yes, her father treated her abominably – that is the main reason for her bitterness.
But you know what she has done for my daughter?’

‘I do, yes.’

‘She is manipulative, insensitive, sometimes cruel. But underneath, there is a gold side to her. Sometimes, I find myself almost liking her. Hers has not been an easy life. She has no-one
of her own, but she has chosen me, my daughter, Rachel and you to be a sort of substitute family.’

‘Then she is privileged,’ he laughed, ‘since most of us are given a family and have no choice in the matter.’

He left the house and stood in the garden that was his own creation. Lawn, flower beds, herb patch, raspberries, lettuces, radish, rhubarb – all of these were his own work.

Yes, it was time to settle down. The summer house was probably the nearest he would come to true domesticity. He was home. And he had to go now, because Dot would be waiting to hear the
tale.

The small room was cream, a colour more peaceful than white. White could be stark, too bright for new ears. Oh, what was she thinking of? Were her senses so welded together
that sound would for ever be coloured? But at least the fear was receding, while those terrible nightmares were now consigned to her past.

She wore pads over her ears, was protected as well as possible from the bustle of this very busy hospital. She had been suffering from hysteric deafness. No-one had come across an hysteric
deafness that had spanned so many years, so Nellie was an object of kindly interest. Her doctor was a warm-hearted man, one who treated people with illnesses of the brain. Nellie, who needed no
surgery, who fitted no set of particular symptoms, was being treated for her reaction to restored hearing.

So that little child, the one who had rested her chin on tables, who had been too short to look inside a horse trough, had gone deaf because of shock. Her subconscious mind had chosen to go
deaf. Dr Christian, a gentle man whose character suited his name, had guided her through a process that had taken many weeks. She had been witness to her own mother’s death, had heard the
screams of the dying, the cry of the newborn. And her brain had simply closed down the hearing department, had decided not to leave little Nellie open to any similar shocks.

When Sal Higgins had given birth, the sight of blood had triggered something in the depths of Nellie Hulme’s head. The first sound she had heard had been the cry of Sal’s baby son.
Redness had swamped Nellie, had drawn her back to that other time, to the death and the birth she had witnessed in infancy.

Some noises got through lint and cotton wool. There was the clanking of the cleaners’ buckets, loud laughter, the clatter of the dinner trolleys. But it didn’t matter any more.
Nellie no longer shrank into herself when sounds reached her – she was even beginning to use her newfound ability, was learning to foretell the progress of life outside her little room.
Hearing might even be useful once she got the hang of it. Speech – ah – that was a different matter, a whole new dimension.

Every few days, another layer was removed from the padding. Noise soaked through more easily each time the protection was lessened. Soon, she would have to face the pain and the joy of hearing,
would be taken outside by Lily and the boys, would re-enter the land of the truly alive.

Dr Christian came into the room, mouthing, ‘Hello, Nellie,’ as soon as he had her attention.

‘Speak,’ she said. Talking was funny. She had discovered her vocal chords while sobbing, was having trouble getting them under control. Dr Christian had told her not to worry about
that, had explained that she heard herself from inside her head as well as from the outside. She would learn, he said firmly.

‘Ah, so you wish to hear my dulcet tones?’ he asked, smiling broadly. ‘Carry on reading my lips, Nellie. Separating sounds comes much, much later. Every voice is different.
Soon, you will know who is coming long before you set eyes on them.’

‘All right,’ Oh, God, would she ever be normal?

He sat beside her, moving a pile of books and some knitting from this second chair. ‘Nellie?’ He made sure that she was looking at him. ‘Today, we uncover your ears and take
out the earplugs. And I have a treat for you. Are you ready for this?’

She nodded.

‘Say yes.’

She said a bright blue ‘yes’, rather sharp, jagged.

He made a beckoning motion towards the door. Nellie turned to see that it was half open, that a nurse stood there with a large object in her hands. It was a gramophone. Nellie had read about
those, knew that they produced music and that some music was judged to be beautiful.

The nurse placed the item on a table, then removed Nellie’s bandages. ‘Hello,’ she said to the new ears.

‘Hello,’ answered Nellie, the tone still sharp blue.

The girl walked to the table, her footfalls softened by crepe-soled shoes.

‘Music?’ Nellie asked.

‘Better than that,’ answered the doctor.

The room was suddenly filled with Nellie’s dream, the good part, the best and blessed part. Birds. She closed her eyes, but fat, heavy teardrops pushed their stubborn way under tight lids
and down her face. Mother sewing, Father smoking a cigar. The trees were high and so green, waving, moving gently against a sky of brightest blue. Horse trough, kitchen table too tall, standing on
tiptoes, hands grasping a chair. Oh, dear God, who was she?

They twittered and warbled, chirruped and cheeped, these little creatures who were taken for granted by the hearing population. Nellie felt as if she were floating, as if she had been lifted
physically out of the room and into a time that was neither past nor present; she was visiting eternity.

The record stopped and she opened her eyes. ‘Birds,’ she said, dashing the tears from her cheeks.

‘Birds,’ he repeated.

She copied his voice until her own was a reasonable facsimile.

The doctor nodded towards the nurse. ‘Music now, Nellie. Written by a man who went deaf. He wrote it but could not hear it towards the end of his life. He was the other way round, Nellie,
lost his hearing and could not find it again.’

‘Sad,’ she said.

He found himself almost envying Nellie, because she would hear the sixth symphony for the very first time. Would she know rhythm? Would she enjoy the form, the patterns created by this great
master? How would she feel?

At first, it was just noise, just another new thing, a series of golden, pain-free sounds that rose and dropped like a bright waterfall. She looked from doctor to nurse, wondered what she was
supposed to be feeling. So she closed her eyes, forbade distractions. And it simply entered her, became one with her blood, with her cells, with her very foundation.

‘It had to be Beethoven,’ he mouthed to the nurse. Mozart would not have been right, too many fiddly and twiddly bits, not enough flame. And so it was that this young doctor had the
privilege of watching a very old lady as she fell in love with one of mankind’s greatest products. The only trouble with Beethoven was that he had not lived for ever, that he had not written
more before silence and death had claimed him.

The three of them sat through the movements, doctor and patient on chairs, nurse perched on the bed. The two professionals watched as Nellie’s hand came up to her mouth, knew that her
pores had opened to receive all the power and beauty of this huge maestro. To hell with medicine, Dr Christian thought – not for the first time. In this case, beauty was the cure.

It ended. Nellie opened her eyes in a different world.

‘How was it?’ the doctor asked.

And she responded in the only way she knew, with the words that described perfectly what she had just heard. ‘It was a rainbow,’ she replied, the syllables distorted by creaky vocal
chords.

And the nurse wept.

The funeral had been over and done with weeks ago, but the lethargy that had descended upon him refused to lift. There was no life in Paul Horrocks, no joy, precious little
movement. He worked, came home, ate, slept, woke, did all the same things as yesterday. Life without Mam was peaceful, silent, full of guilt.

It was August and he had not seen Magsy O’Gara since the end of June. He thought about her, knew that he was not good enough for her or for anyone, because he had wished his mother dead,
had forced upon her the tablets that had choked her.

He sat and smoked endlessly, not bothering to read a newspaper, too lethargic to pay attention to the wireless. When someone rattled the door knocker, he could not stir himself to answer. He
needed no-one, wanted no social contact, was closed for business.

‘Hello?’ The voice travelled up the hall. Bugger. He had forgotten to lock the door.

Lily Hardcastle walked in. ‘Paul,’ she exclaimed. ‘At last. I’ve been trying to catch you in. Have you been out a lot?’

‘Yes.’ He hadn’t been anywhere except to work, but he hadn’t opened the door in days.

‘So.’ She parked herself opposite him. ‘Did you hear about Nellie getting her hearing back? And Sal Higgins having a little boy?’

He shrugged listlessly.

Lily studied him. ‘You’d best shape yourself. Your mam would go mad if she could see you sitting here now needing a shave and your socks full of holes.’ What had happened to
him? ‘Have you got a new lady-friend?’

‘Eh?’

It was like talking to the fire-back. ‘I said have you got a new lady-friend?’

‘No. Why?’

Lily closed her eyes as if praying for patience. There was something very wrong here. This creature in no way resembled the smart young man who had passed through Prudence Street on a regular
basis. ‘Listen, you,’ she ordered sharply, ‘I’ve come because Rachel was visiting her mam and dad. She came to the infirmary with me to see Nellie and she said Magsy
O’Gara’s worried about you.’

‘Oh.’

‘Oh? What do you mean, “oh”? I’ll bloody oh you in a minute, Paul Horrocks. What’s happened? You used to be up and down Tonge Moor Road on that there bike like
sugar off a shiny shovel. What’s the matter? Have you given up?’

Slowly, he turned to look at the woman who had blossomed since her husband’s death, a woman who was becoming a lacemaker, a producer of garments, the head of a household. He told her, let
it all pour, about Mam, about imprisonment, about wishing Mam dead. ‘I knew I’d never be free till she died. Then I killed her.’

Lily remained mystified. ‘She died of asph— choking, didn’t she? What did you do? Strangle her?’

‘No.’ Paul elaborated, opened his chilled heart, confessed the wishes he had nurtured. ‘I prayed for her to die,’ he concluded, ‘and she did.’

Lily drew a hand across her mouth, inhaled deeply. ‘Same here in a way,’ she admitted after a pause. ‘Only it were me husband and me kids.’ And she told the long tale of
Sam and his drinking, of Danny following in Sam’s footsteps, of Aaron’s feet, Roy’s chicken pox. ‘All I could see were me in a mirror, me old, me worn down, me never
catching a glimpse of a bloody butterfly, me, me, flaming me.’ She beat her breast in time with the last four words, looked like a Catholic doing a
mea culpa
. ‘So, when they all
went down with that illness, it were my fault, because I wanted to be on me own.’

Paul threw the cigarette end into the fireplace. ‘You didn’t give them the germ.’

‘I know that now.’

He stared into the near distance. ‘I gave her the tablets.’

‘Why?’

‘To shut her up. They worked.’

Lily leaned forward. ‘Tablets for what?’

‘For pain. She said she couldn’t swallow, but I made her, held the cup of water to her mouth. And she died.’

Lily inclined her head pensively, raised it again. ‘Did you mean her to die then, when you gave her the pills?’

‘No, but I was mad at her. She was always moaning, too hot, too cold, would I smoke outside, not enough milk in her tea. She had pain in her legs, so I gave her the two tablets early, half
an hour early, just so I could get out of the house and see Magsy. She always kicked off when she knew I was going up to Hesford.’

‘Magsy is missing you. And like I said, you listen to me, Paul. I felt as if I had killed Sam. I wanted to get away from him and I am away from him. So I know what you are going through
and I know there’s no need for you to go through it. You didn’t kill your mam. She were on borrowed time, any road. The only reason she lived as long as she did were because you looked
after her all them years since your dad died.’

His eyes filled and spilled. ‘I hated her sometimes.’

Lily smiled. ‘Aye, well, we all hate somebody sometimes. Sam drove me mad, pinching the housekeeping, rolling in drunk, no thought for what we were going to eat when he’d spent up.
But I didn’t kill him and you didn’t kill Lois. So frame yourself before you finish up where Nellie is.’

He sobbed quietly. ‘Explain to Magsy, will you?’