Frankie Styne & the Silver Man (8 page)

She sprinkled Jim with the powder and rubbed it in, making him look, she thought, even more silver than before.

‘As for Tom, his hobby is karate, Thursday nights and Saturday mornings; used to be rugby but he got too many injuries. He's the manager of a computer shop. He buys her underwear to apologise for rows . . .' Jim lay heavy in her arms, his eyes sealed, his mouth loose.

‘Oh, Silly . . .' She shifted him to the floor, and fastened a disposable nappy around his waist.

‘Incontinence,'
the doctor had said,
‘may well persis
t
.
'
Though there was another Silver Lining, because if she had a washing machine buying these'd be more difficult to justify long-term.

‘Silly—no point in pretending. Manners is another thing you're spared . . . I can see this is sending you to sleep . . . Nice that we share the same attitude to life.' She wrapped him tightly in a square of blanket with
hospital property
woven into it. Then she did something for the first time. It was over and above what she had described to Mrs Purvis and the hospital doctor as ‘the necessary' and doing it, despite the fact that she and Jim shared the same bed (leaving the cot Mrs Purvis sent unused in the corner of the room), made her feel a little strange. She bent and kissed him, properly, on the top of his head. It was the new name, somehow, that made it possible.

Purvis

After the birth Liz had scarcely spoken. Between feeds she would sit in her room at the B & B watching television.
Bonding difficulties,
Annie Purvis had written.
Apathetic.
At first—before the tests—it had seemed that Jim's sluggishness was a reaction to Liz's indifference.
The pair of them were acting as if somehow the whole thing had been a mistake they'd rather forget.

‘Do you worry that you'll hurt him, Liz?' Annie Purvis remembered asking. ‘Is that why you never pick him up? Do you wish you'd never had him? Is that why you don't look at him? You can tell me, Liz. It's quite understandable. It's not, Liz, as if you planned on having a baby so young.'

‘If you can't cope, you really don't have to. But once you've agreed to an adoption and filled in the forms, you can't change your mind.'

‘Sometimes, Liz, we have to learn to love.'

‘Pick him up now, Liz, hold him, and see how it feels.' It had been a strange and sweet feeling, that combination of pity for the silver-haired baby boy and understanding of his mother, herself just a girl. Being a third person, knowing and watching as change took place. Being a childless woman, saying, ‘He might like it if you talk to him while he feeds,' then noticing her own nipples harden, and a wave of warmth spread across her belly, increasing with each of the baby's sucks.

‘Liz, have you made any plans? Thought what you'd like to do?'

‘Go to Corsica. Or Mexico.' She had mentioned it before. It wasn't a good sign.

‘With Jim?'

‘I suppose so.'

When the test results came through everything had changed. For a start, there was a great deal of interest. Spinney's Syndrome was rare and not often tested for, although the procedure was simple enough and could be done early. Fortunately the paediatrician at the hospital had just been to a conference about it. And so, all of a sudden, it seemed that perhaps Liz was reacting to Jim, rather than the other way round. And it had become clear, quite clear, that she didn't want her baby taken away . . .

Annie Purvis looked around the faces at the table. Today there were more than usual, including a police inspector and a WPC, as well as an elementary school teacher and the three of them from social services. At the beginning of a meeting, there was often a silence while they waited for the late people to arrive or not. Some used it to gather their thoughts and notes together. Mrs Purvis looked at hers, but found herself still thinking about Liz Meredith instead of Clare Moat and her parents. It was at this point far more enjoyable to think about Liz. Her telephone should be connected by now. The roof over her head, the thin wires joining her up to the rest of the ordinary world were, Annie Purvis thought, very good signs.

‘We'd better begin,' said Mrs Newby, who, being Area Director, was acting as Chair. She wore a business suit but her skin glowed, as if she had just returned from a beach holiday. Next to Annie sat Mandy, both younger than Annie and senior to her, with an office, of sorts, to herself. She was solidly built, and legendary for the terrible state of her clothes: everything she wore was creased, even things that looked new would somewhere harbour a stain: today, there were three buttons missing from her purple cardigan. Her desk always had at least one drawer open, another stuck—yet somehow she managed to seem attractive and to be extremely competent. On her other side was Mrs Thomas, the teacher whose concerns had, eventually, brought them to this point.

The Chair leaned back, as if it were story time. ‘I understand that the parents have declined to attend. Annie?' she prompted.

‘Jackie Moat,' Mrs Purvis began, ‘is twenty-four and Clare, aged six, is her only child. Clare's father isn't known. A year ago Jackie moved into her boyfriend's flat. Brian is thirty; he used to be in the army but now works mainly on building sites. Jackie cleans early mornings at the local supermarket. I first visited Jackie and her family six months ago when Mrs Thomas, Clare's class teacher at primary school, alerted the department . . .'

Mrs Purvis wore a fine gold chain around her neck, slipped invisibly beneath her blouse, and her fingers reached between the buttons to feel for it as she spoke. It bore a plain gold crucifix, so thin that it could be bent between finger and thumb. Yet if someone had asked her whether or not she believed in God she would have looked up in surprise and said no.

She had taken a minor in philosophy at university: it seemed, at the beginning, necessary to get things straight, though by the end of it she had not and was sick of the attempt. In her entire life she had been to church perhaps five times, and those long ago and best forgotten; she didn't pray. She had bought the cross long after all of that, chosen it instantly from an assortment of charms and pendants spread on a blue velvet pad. For days or weeks on end she'd forget it, and then suddenly she'd feel it slip on her skin, a faint snagging somewhere private near the heart. When the chain chafed, when the crossed slipped, or its corners dug in, it made her conscious of herself. It reminded her to ask herself questions, to consider her actions and evaluate their purpose; it reminded her of her own frailty, as a stab of pain, a fall, or sudden dizziness might.

‘When Clare first came to school,' Mrs Thomas said, ‘she was the kind that attracts a following. Very lively.' Mrs Thomas herself was about forty and stolid, her face heavily coated in a tinted cream which gave it a mask-like finish and made her eyes, by contrast, seem frighteningly unprotected: the wetness and shine of them, the tiny veins, the pupil shrinking as she looked to the light. Sitting next to her, Annie Purvis had to twist her neck to see Mrs Thomas, and noticed, as she spoke, that her breath smelled as sour as it had the first time they had met in her office.

‘But then she got mopey, cold-seeming. Withdrawn. Still perfectly behaved, but she wanted to do everything on her own. And she was beginning to read quite well, but now she does it without seeming to enjoy it at all and she won't learn new words.' Mrs Thomas's voice was fluttering very slightly. It was as if something fragile and living were imprisoned in her throat, dashing its wings against its damp and heavy sides, and Annie found herself wanting somehow to stop it, not necessarily kindly.

‘She won't join in any more. As if she was there in body but not in mind . . .' Annie looked away at the walls, which didn't help; they were painted with huge leaves and flowers of all nations sheltering a muddled assortment of animals, the domestic looking wild, the wild domestic. The mural had just been finished. Some parts, done by the art students, were very neat and professional; others, painted by the children, ran over their sketched outlines, dribbled their way down the wall: a tiger melted beside a
trompe l'oeil
bush, a large bird hovered over a heat haze of green and red that threatened to consume it. The overall effect, she thought, though well intended, was alarming.

‘Children do go through phases. But then she got this thing about being touched: no adult can touch her. If they do, she'll scream. And it isn't acting . . .' The tremor in Mrs Thomas's voice seemed to magnify. Annie Purvis imagined she could feel it through her hand on the table and so slipped the hand to her lap, but then the voice seemed to be shaking at the legs of her chair, climbing from the seat to the top of her spine—she fought the impulse to stand, and glared at the paper before her.

‘The first time that happened, I asked her at break time if there was anything wrong, and she just said “no” very politely, and waited for me to let her go.' Annie Purvis could see it: the small girl with her china-pale face, her fine hair fastened in a ponytail with a silvered band, the big woman bending or sitting down, the smell of cosmetics and stale breath, the tiny hairs on the upper lip clogged with powder, the voice fretting and over-sweetened with sympathy.
Who would tell you anything?
she thought, then reproached herself for thinking it and reached for her pen to doodle with.

‘I didn't know what to do . . .'

‘So Clare has become withdrawn and disturbed,' said Mrs Newby firmly, putting an end to it. ‘Thank you, Mrs Thomas.'

Annie Purvis smiled at her and thanked Mrs Thomas. ‘I made three visits to the flat,' she said smoothly. ‘The first time, I saw Jackie and Clare. Clare looked well, but she is a very quiet child. I took her to the park. She said little unless asked a direct question that she could answer with a yes or no. Did she like their new home? She was more forthcoming here; she said yes, because the other flat had been cold. Did she like Brian? Yes, because Brian bought her presents. Sometimes she called him Brian and sometimes Daddy. She liked having a daddy. She wouldn't talk about being touched, but Jackie said she hadn't noticed anything at home.

‘On the two other visits, Clare was at a friend's house, returning towards the end rather tired. Jackie strikes me as an immature but well-meaning mother. I felt she was very open with me. She manages money well and she's learning Spanish at an evening class. The flat is poorly furnished but she keeps it very clean. Clare has her own bedroom. Jackie couldn't think of any reason for Clare's behaviour, but said she'd noticed her being more “serious.” She said she herself is very happy in her relationship with Brian, and feels he's dragged her out of a dead end; she could hardly believe her luck. But he has on two occasions hit her. She said he was good with Clare, bringing her presents and playing with her if he got home on time. She thought Clare was fond of him. She said that he would be angry if he knew I had visited because he hated busybodies. My feeling was that the family was quite a caring one, despite Clare's being perhaps in some way unhappy. I asked Mrs Thomas if there could be anything at school, perhaps bullying—'

‘But there isn't, you see,' Mrs Thomas interrupted. There was a brief silence around the table, which formed a low hexagon composed of smaller, triangular tables: different colours, all primary bright. Each of these triangular tables had three legs. Underneath the multicoloured octagon was a neat plantation of aluminium. Around the edges of the room were plastic hods, packed with toys. Cushions and small chairs stacked in teetering columns insisted cheerfully on the presence of another world, albeit set within and dwarfed by the jungle. A large drawing of a thermometer was pinned to the back of one of the doors, marked off in degrees of a thousand pounds. Six of these had been filled in, each a different colour. In fact, though, the room was rather cold.

Mrs Thomas continued, her voice louder. ‘You hear these things—I thought about it for a long time. But in the end I contacted the social services again, because I'd never forgive myself, but then again, I'd hate to cause a lot of upset for no good reason—it's really very hard—' and she began to cry, the tears ploughing very slowly through the powder on her cheeks. She looked defiantly at Mandy.

Mrs Purvis brought her bag onto the table and searched for the tissues she knew were there. Her movements were economical. She realised she was not alone in her anger; for a moment everyone hated Mrs Thomas, the insistent bringer of bad news, the one to open the box and let the world's nightmares come screaming out. Not fair, of course. She extracted the tissue and handed it over.

‘All the same,' she addressed the meeting, ‘I felt that the fact that Brian has been violent and that Jackie was so adamant that asking to see him would cause trouble could mean there was cause for some concern. I told Jackie that I was still worried about Clare and it'd be a good idea to take Clare in for a hospital check-up in case anything was wrong. She had no objections.'

The others nodded; it was good that Jackie had nothing to hide. But also it was possible, Annie Purvis knew, that Jackie had everything to find out. She saw Jackie for an instant, her startled eyes, rimmed with bright blue eyeshadow, the way they looked out at the world and then hid themselves
in slow blinks.

‘Good,' said Mandy. Sitting between her and Mrs Thomas, thought Annie Purvis, was unsettling: on the left, what she sometimes feared becoming—or was already, somewhere deep inside; on the right, the woman who, bar the crumpled clothes, she would like, perhaps impossibly, to be.

‘What about visitors?' Inspector Hunt interrupted.

‘Jackie occasionally brings her women friends back after collecting Clare from school. Sometimes Brian drinks with friends, but he doesn't bring them home. They rarely go out together, and Jackie has her Spanish evening class, but she doesn't make it every week because she can only go if he's home in time to look after Clare.'

‘Clare was admitted on Saturday,' said Dr Susan Spark, without being invited to speak. Her small round face was calm, but it was easy to imagine it laughing. Annie Purvis envied her both her clear voice and the limits of her task. ‘She was found to be in fair general health, if slightly underweight. She was very distressed at the idea of examination but eventually allowed it. There were signs indicative of abuse: ecchymosis and edema on the
mons pubis,
ecchymosis on the upper thighs, erythema, fissures around the anal canal—' In the fractional pause that followed, Annie Purvis found herself willing the doctor not to translate. She was not normally like this. It was because of having a layperson, Mrs Thomas, in their midst. ‘That's bruising, swelling and redness, cracking,' the doctor said.

‘I have to say that we feel strongly that this kind of medical finding can't be considered in isolation. It may well be caused innocently . . . Its status as evidence is questionable, as we all know,' said Inspector David Hunt.

‘Yes, but it does call for an explanation,' said Mandy.

‘Of course,' Dr Spark said. She sat very straight. ‘However, that's my assessment, based on my own findings.'

‘He has no record,' said Inspector Hunt.