(1992) Prophecy (11 page)

The boy’s stunned mother held a bloodstained handkerchief over his hand. Oliver took his arm and removed the handkerchief. The forefinger was hanging from a thread of skin. Blood spurted unevenly from the stumps of the other fingers; some pattered like rain onto Frannie’s trousers as she knelt with wet towels at the ready, and she swallowed the bile that rose in her throat. The boy screamed relentlessly, emptying one lungful of air after another and pausing only for choking gulps. A slick of warm blood struck Frannie’s cheek, then another her forehead and she felt it sliding down towards her eye. She turned away, swallowing hard again, fighting not to be sick, unable to look at the hand or the boy’s twisted, boiling face.

Oliver swathed the hand in a tea towel, and she helped him wind it around the wrist, then repeated the process with a second one. He put a third over the top, and with Frannie and the boy’s mother’s help, using the knife steel as the lever, wound the towel tightly into a tourniquet. The boy’s father leaned over, agitatedly crowding them, a feeble twitch animating his expression of utter helplessness.

Oliver scooped up the fingers and parcelled them in another towel, which he gave to Frannie. ‘Pack these in ice.’

The commotion had attracted the attention of several visitors, who watched in a group a short distance off. They were talking amongst themselves, trying to work out what had happened. One woman said she thought the dog must have bitten the boy.

‘Dom? You OK, Dom?’

Edward was rushing towards them, his face horrified. ‘Dom?’ He looked at his friend, then at Frannie. ‘What’s happened?’ His eyes shot to the tourniquet. ‘Hey, Dom –’ He blanched.

As Frannie ran into the house she wondered where he had been during the past few minutes, and why he had not come with her. She unfolded the towel on the draining-board, and stared at the three fingers, each of which was leaking blood. Like joke fingers, she thought. Then a wave of giddiness struck her; her stomach up-ended; she swayed, gripped the edge of the sink and threw up into it. Her eyes streamed and she wiped them with her shirtsleeve, then rinsed the sink out, washed her hands and forced herself into sensible action.

There were several trays of ice cubes in the fridge, and she searched for a suitable receptacle. The screaming was coming closer and Oliver carried the boy in, followed by the parents and Edward. Mrs Beakbane was trying to comfort the boy by assuring him the ambulance would be there any moment. Oliver laid him on the sofa, and Mrs Beakbane went to the sink and peered at the fingers with a surprising nonchalance that made Frannie feel displaced.

‘I was a Red Cross nurse in the war,’ she said, as if by way of explanation, and helped free the ice cubes,
again making Frannie feel inexperienced and in the way.

The screaming abated into an undulating, sobbing moan of pain. Edward hovered, looking very distressed. He put his arm around his friend but the boy shook him away and began screaming again, even more vehemently than before. His mother sat beside him, white-faced.

‘Look,’ the father said, ‘this bloody ambulance could take hours. I’ll drive him myself.’

‘No,’ Oliver said. ‘He’s got to go somewhere they can do microsurgery – they might be able to sew the fingers back. If you go to the wrong place you could waste valuable time; I think you only have a few hours before the nerve endings die.’

‘Six,’ Mrs Beakbane said, authoritatively. ‘My Harry lost his little finger in a lawnmower but we never found it until the following day.’

The father paced over to the sink, then turned away rapidly at the sight of the fingers. Frannie stood back and let Mrs Beakbane pack them carefully, using all the cubes, then they were placed with a couple of freeze packs inside a picnic cool-box.

Oliver phoned a doctor friend who gave him some names and suggested a hospital less than half an hour away, which seemed to relieve the father.

The ambulance arrived a few minutes later. The boy and his mother went in it, and his father followed in the Volvo. Frannie, Oliver and Edward watched numbly as they left. A couple of short pulses of the siren pricked the air and then there was silence.

They walked back towards the house, Oliver with his head sunk in thought, Frannie uncertain what to say. Edward stopped by the pond. Frannie waited a moment for him, then went inside. Mrs Beakbane
excused herself, saying she had to go to a problem she had been dealing with in the tearoom.

Oliver poured the remnants of coffee in the percolator down the sink and turned the tap on. Frannie gathered the two mugs from the table and carried them across.

‘It’s OK – they can go in the machine.’ His words made Frannie feel even more useless. As if she hadn’t yet found her role. His eyes skimmed her face and he lowered his voice. ‘You have a bit of – er – warpaint on you.’

She touched her cheek with her fingers and saw blood on them. ‘Oh, God!’

She hurried upstairs to the bathroom. Her reflection in the mirror startled her. Streaks of blood ran down her forehead and cheeks. Her eye make-up had smudged and run. Her stomach rolled again. Sour bile rose in her throat and she puked it out. Then she stripped off and washed herself, put her trousers and top into the sink to soak, wrapped herself in a towel and went to her bedroom to change.

When she returned, Edward was sitting in the kitchen, glancing in a rather adult way through a newspaper. He looked up at his father.

‘Do you think they will be able to sew Dom’s fingers back on, Daddy?’

‘They can do pretty clever things with microsurgery these days.’

‘It’s a pity it wasn’t his left hand,’ Edward said. ‘Then at least he could still do sport.’

The comment hung over them and there was a long silence broken only by the sound of Captain Kirk grinding on a bone. Edward closed the
Daily Mail
and began turning the pages of
The Times
. ‘You didn’t remember to fix my Scalextric, Daddy.’

‘I did. The brushes had gone on one of the cars.’

‘It’s not working.’

Frannie frowned, wondered when Edward would have had time to play with any toys. And what he was searching for in the newspaper.

‘It is. Did you switch the transformer on?’

‘You’re useless, Daddy. You should have taken it to the man in Lewes to fix.’

‘Well, it was working last Sunday. I spent an hour on it.’

Edward seemed unconvinced. Oliver looked at his watch. ‘Right, let’s make some plans for this afternoon.’ He shrugged apologetically at Frannie. ‘I have to do a few things. Would you like to lounge around the pool? Have a swim? The water’s very warm.’

‘Can I show Frannie round the grounds?’

Oliver signalled Frannie with his eyes that she did not have to.

She winked, then smiled at Edward. ‘Thank you, I’d love that.’

‘Can I show Frannie the aeroplane, Daddy?’

‘I have to go down and turn the engine over; I might catch up with you.’

‘Is your name really Frannie?’ Edward said.

‘Yes.’

He held out his hand for hers and for a moment she thought he was going to shake it. Instead he held it firmly, pulling her very slightly towards him, as if there was an urgent message he needed to communicate. Then slowly, without slackening his grip, he led her towards the door.

She glanced at Oliver and noticed a strange look of apprehension on his face as he watched his son. The shadow that crossed his eyes was one of fear. She turned to Edward but all she could see was the trusting face of a small boy who has found a new friend.

Frannie and Edward, closely followed by Captain Kirk, ambled past the Range Rover and along the front of the house. A bird chirruped with a ping that sounded like a spoon against china and as Frannie breathed in the scents of the air and felt the afternoon sun on her face, the horror of an hour ago receded a little in her mind; but not the unease. She still wondered why Oliver had kept quiet about his title; quiet about Meston Hall; wondered if it had anything to do with his wife’s death, for instance. And was there anything else he was keeping quiet about?

She avoided looking at the gravel in case she saw the stain of blood and stared up at the façade, picking out details of its decaying state: a chunk missing from the coping-stone of the parapet; a cracked window; a bird’s nest under the eaves; wasps going in and out of a hole in the roof.

An elderly man with a shiny camera case and a woman in a straw hat were going in through the front door and Frannie caught a glimpse of a marble floor and white columns. Edward pointed across the valley. ‘The English Channel’s the other side of those hills. Brighton’s over there to the right – you can see the glow of the lights on a clear night.’

‘Do you like living here?’ Frannie asked.

‘Yes, quite.’

‘Only
quite
?’

‘I like some things,’ he said, more brightly.

‘Have you got many friends here?’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’ He seemed about to say something else, then changed his mind.

They walked past the end of the house and up the private road towards the junction bounded by hedges.

‘Is Frannie short for something?’

‘My full name’s Francesca.’

‘Is that Italian?’

‘Yes.’

‘Does that mean you’re a Catholic?’

‘I am a Catholic, yes.’ She was surprised by the question. ‘What are you?’

Edward was silent for some moments, then he pushed his hands into his pockets and stared down. ‘We have our own chapel.’

‘Can I see it?’

‘There’s not much to see.’

‘I’d be interested.’

He pointed in front of them. ‘It’s through there, but it’s not worth going in.’

‘Couldn’t I have a quick peep inside?’

‘Why?’

There was something oddly strained about his voice and she almost wished she hadn’t pursued the idea. ‘I’m very interested in churches,’ she said.

‘All right.’

They waited for a car full of visitors to pass, then crossed, went through an opening in the hedge and the chapel was in front of them. It was small and narrow, rising out of a riot of weeds and in the same poor state of repair as everything else. A well-trodden cinder path went up to the door, through a tiny graveyard peppered with old tombstones.

The interior felt more cared for. Marble and alabaster tombs were spaced along the sides and there were plaques on the floor. Frannie read one of them.
Lord Thomas Bouverie Henry Halkin. 15th Marquess of Sherfield. 1787–1821
.

While Edward walked on slowly down the centre of the aisle, running his hand nonchalantly from the top of each pew to the next, Frannie scanned the structure of the building, trying to date it. Deep, solid buttresses and well-dressed stones; classic Perpendicular tracery in an elaborate geometric pattern. Geometry, she thought suddenly. Mathematics. Oliver’s words at lunch on Tuesday echoed suddenly in her head.
Mathematics and design are inseparable
.

‘Every Marquess of Sherfield for four hundred and fifty years is buried in here,’ Edward said. ‘Except one.’ He stood gazing at the floor in front of him. Frannie joined him. He was looking at an onyx rectangle, with a brass plaque in the centre which read:
Lady Sarah Henrietta Louise Halkin, Marchioness of Sherfield. 1963–1988
.

Edward’s face reddened, and Frannie sensed a tension in the air between them as if she had intruded into something private. She wondered if that was the reason he had been reluctant to show her in here. She kicked herself for not having realized that his mother would be buried here.

He began to hum softly, and after a few bars she recognized the tune as ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’. Then he turned and began to saunter as if he was in no hurry – as if he had all the time in the world – towards the exit, humming more loudly now, the way someone might who is alone in the dark and wants to demonstrate that he is not afraid.

Captain Kirk was lying obediently outside. Edward stopped humming and knelt beside him, telling him he had been good. Then they left the graveyard and walked along a cart track that sloped downwards towards a cluster of farm buildings. An invisible barrier separated them. Frannie wondered what to say to
repair the situation, realizing how very little she knew about children. She was not used to dealing with the problems of motherless young boys and she simply didn’t know what to do. She almost wished that Mrs Beakbane would appear. She had no idea of how Edward felt about seeing his father with another woman.

A vapour trail was unravelling across the sky. Grit crunched beneath their feet. ‘You said there was one Marquess who was not buried in your chapel – who was that?’

‘Lord Francis Halkin,’ he said. ‘The second Marquess.’

‘Where is he buried?’

‘I don’t know.’ He lowered his voice as if he were letting her in on a secret. ‘There were quite a lot of people who didn’t like him very much.’

‘Why was that?’

‘I’d like to be buried somewhere that’s completely secret. Where no one knows where I am,’ he said, not answering her.

‘So you don’t have to spend eternity with your ancient relatives? You’d like to meet some new people when you die?’

Edward broke into a fit of giggles. ‘I think they’d be
dead
boring, don’t you?’ He giggled again.

‘
Dead
right.’

‘
Dead
on!’ he said. ‘Hold out your hand.’

She held it out and he turned it palm up, then slapped it with his own palm. ‘
Dead
on!’ he said again as he did so. ‘You have to do that when you say “dead on”!’

‘I’ll remember.
Dead –
cert!’ She stopped as a stone on the ground caught her eye, knelt, and picked it up. She pulled her handkerchief out of her pocket, spat on
it and rubbed one side that was almost flat. She examined it carefully, whilst Edward watched her in silence, then she held it in front of him. ‘Look!’

He stared blankly. ‘What at?’

Frannie pointed carefully with her finger. ‘Can you see? The shape of the shell?’

He peered closer, still uncertain.

‘It’s a fossil – of a seashell – an oyster or something.’