Judgment Day (6 page)

Clare closed the front door. “Right. We'd better get going. Don't worry. Sweaters on, Anna and Thomas.”

“I don't want to come,” said Thomas.

“It is illegal,” said Clare, “to leave children under ten alone in a house, as I've told you before, much that you care. So it's one out, all out, I'm afraid. Coats.”

Sue Coggan was now launched on another round of apology. “Oh dear, of course I didn't think … I'd forgotten it would mean taking them all. I feel awful dragging you out. Tracy do stop sniffing and don't hang on my arm like that. I rang Luxicars in Spelbury but they said forty minutes at least and the doctor said better go as quickly as…”

“It's all
right
. Not to worry. Let's go.”

In the car, Anna said, “If she breathed the button in further would it go right down inside her? Down into her tummy? And then would it …” Thomas interrupted, “It would come out in the end when she…”

Clare crashed the gears, bawled, “Shut up! Be quiet both of you or I'll belt you when we get back.”

There was a little indrawn hiss of breath at her side. Sue Coggan shifted Tracy from one knee to another: “And of course we had to come out just as we were, I didn't like to stop and tidy up for too long, Tracy's got filthy socks on, as I say I was just going to start on the baths. Thank goodness I've got my bag, anyway, and a comb and things, we can have a bit of a cleanup when we get there.”

“
Socks?
” said Clare. The windpipe of a five-year-old child—how wide? One doesn't know about these things, one just imagines, as one does everything, constructs a scenario. Like a hollow plant-stem? Bigger? But not very big. How many holes, the button? Which way round? I'm driving too fast. Think. Which direction is the hospital when you get to the roundabout? Left. Left and then that shortcut through the industrial estate.

“It's going to make them ever so late for bed, I'm afraid, and your two, I
am
sorry. John'll have kittens when he gets in, no tea or anything, I left a note of course, explaining, the thing is it's his late night, he goes over to the other branch. Tracy don't fidget, just sit still, it's very kind of Mrs. Paling to take us like this. I turned the oven right off, I've got a cottage pie in, I wondered about leaving it on low but you don't know how long they'll take. I had Tracy in Spelbury General, Mandy was the John Radcliffe in Oxford, of course, before we moved.”

“Mmn?” About another two miles. You can't stop outside the Casualty, it's ambulances only. Drop them off, then find somewhere to park.

“
What
a thing to happen. You just never know, do you, what they'll think of? I mean, medicines, one's careful about, the bathroom cabinet's always locked, but a
button
… Honestly, I might have guessed, I walked under a ladder
in the High Street this morning, not thinking.” A giggle. “I thought then, Sue my girl you've got something coming to you. Are you superstitious? I'm afraid I am.”

Christ. Petrol. No, it's O.K. That's all we need.

“Tracy don't kick Mrs. Paling's car seat like that. You don't want a smack, do you?”

Clare said, “I should keep her as quiet as you can. Never mind the car seat.”

“I love minis. Aren't you lucky. It's V registration, isn't it? I always say to John if only…”

“Here we are. I'm going straight to the Casualty entrance. You get out, with Tracy, and go to the desk. I'll bring the rest when I've parked.”

When she came through the doors, a few minutes later, trailing children, there was no sign of Sue Coggan or Tracy. They sat in a row on tubular chairs with canvas seats; Anna and Thomas fought over the single comic among tattered Sunday newspaper color supplements. The Coggan child sat docile, swinging her legs. There was no one else there except an old man, hunched into a raincoat, breathing noisily. Nurses clattered along corridors with trolleys.

Anna said, “Will they cut her open to take it out?”

“No. Be quiet. Give Thomas the bit you've finished with.”

Either you lived with specters, or they simply were not there for you. Either you waited for the coin to be flipped, at any moment, or you were barely aware of the reverse side. There are two worlds: the real world, in which we live, and pretend we don't, and the world in which bed for little girls is always at seven and the cottage pie is forever cooking nicely in the oven.

Somewhere, a child began to scream. Anna said, “Is that…”

“Let's go and have a walk round outside, you've finished the comic. Come on, Mandy. I think I saw a sweet shop just opposite the hospital gates.”

Mandy said, “Actually we aren't allowed sweets between meals.”

She had got them outside now, was heading for the gate. “Never mind. Be a devil We'll have walnut whips all round, and blow the consequences.”

The point being, of course, that for many the real world hardly ever does rear its ugly head, maybe never until the end and not then if it's short and sharp. You can pass through fairly unknowing, an easy ride. Hunger and pain and panic are somewhere else. In books and newspapers. On the telly. In the past, not nowadays. But for people like me they grin away from the other side of the road; there really is a skeleton at the feast. And yet, and yet … And yet given all that, knowing what one knows, there are still moments of absolute, of untouchable felicity. Now is that not curious? Is that not impossible? Account for that, please.

“Can I have another?”

“No. You'll be sick. We'd better go back and see how Tracy is.”

A plastic disc, half an inch or thereabouts in diameter, lodged somewhere in a small pink flesh and blood passage, and which surely if mishandled, if pushed or jolted, must slip back and down instead of forwards and out and then … but she could still breathe through her mouth, or could she if it got stuck further down?

Sue Coggan was in the reception hall. Tracy, clutching her hand, looked smug.

“All well. Such a clever man, he fished away with a sort of hook and out it came! Tracy was ever such a brave girl, not a squeak. There, you won't do anything so silly as that again, will you! Honestly though, I didn't know which way to look—not until we got into the cubicle with the doctor did I realize I came out with my apron on, my kitchen apron. What he must have thought!”

“He thought, presumably,” said Clare, “that you'd been understandably worried about your child.”

“Yes, I s'pose so. Anyway, all's well that ends well, and I really am grateful, I don't know what I'd have done without you. Mandy, what've you got all over your mouth?”

“Chocolate. I'm sorry, my fault. I corrupted her. Shall we go back, then, if Tracy's feeling all right?”

Chapter Four

George Radwell, looking round the village hall, thought they could have done worse. On the other hand, they could have done better. About forty to fifty. Out of three thousand or thereabouts. Well, it was what you would expect. He knew nearly all the faces: churchgoers, or local activists, or both. Mr. and Mrs. Paling, sitting at the end of the second row, were a surprise. Furtively, he observed them: they stood out, seeming taller and somehow in better health than everyone else. Mr. Paling was a good-looking chap.

The Diocesan Architect's assistant presented a suitably gloomy picture, and sat down. George himself had spoken
twice, first to open the meeting and introduce the Diocesan Architect's assistant, then to outline his own thoughts about the situation and the preliminary proposals of the Parochial Church Council. Miss Bellingham had interrupted, several times, to make corrections or additions of her own. The chairman of the Parish Council, also, had broken in to make some comment about building costs and estimates. George well knew that he lacked presence; that he was the kind of person who, if speaking, gets interrupted, who seems indeed to invite interruption. When he was young, and had first taken services, it had never ceased to surprise him that the congregation suffered these to proceed without interference. He half expected to have a sermon halted from a back pew; for that reason he always avoided looking at people when preaching, if you kept your eyes down, or trained on the roof, there seemed more of a sporting chance that you'd be allowed a clear run. He tried this now, fixing his gaze on the ladder of stacked chairs at the back of the parish hall. It didn't work. Indeed, the chairman of the Parish Council, rambling off on his own tangent, was only silenced eventually by Mr. Paling's crisp suggestion of the formation, here and now, of a working committee to take over the whole question of fund-raising.

George thought, I should have said that.

Names were proposed. Miss Bellingham. The chairman of the Parish Council, Harry Taylor. Mr. Coggan. Sydney Porter.

Someone—someone rather deferential at the back, who knew, clearly, who Paling was, and what—wondered if Mr. Paling could be persuaded to join the committee.

Mr. Paling, regretful but still crisp, said that unfortunately his business commitments took him away from Laddenham
so much that he feared he would be somewhat of a broken reed on any committee.

There was a silence. People rustled, looked round to check on who was there.

Mrs. Paling, startling George into a twitch that almost overturned the glass of water in front of him, said she had time and energy and would be glad to help. Heads turned, not recognizing the voice, interested. George said er, good, well, thank you very much, Mrs. er…

“Paling.”

“Of course.”

And behold there was a committee.

*  *  *

Sydney Porter, as secretary of the Parochial Church Council, made a list of the names put forward. Knowing how things usually fell out, he would probably be secretary of this thing as well. And treasurer, because otherwise it would be Miss Bellingham, and Miss Bellingham couldn't do bookkeeping for toffee. He knew them all, except the tall woman from the other side of the Green. Well, they'd have their work cut out.

*  *  *

Peter said, “Was the dumpy chap in the green anorak the father of the child in the swallowed button saga?”

“Not swallowed. Up her nose. Yes, that's right. He's the local estate agent. Coggan & Son. He's Son.”

“Ah.”

“You should live in these parts,” said Clare, “like me. You get to know a lot.”

“You could come over to Brussels, you know, on one of
these trips. Fix up the children with Mother, or something.”

“Good. I'll bear it in mind.”

“The vicar seemed a bit of a dimwit.”

“Mmn. And he doesn't much go for me, I suspect. Will I be considered to have been pushy, do you think? Proposing myself.”

“On the contrary, you're just what they need. Ginger things up a bit. More to the point, are you going to find it a drag?”

“That remains to be seen. It'll keep me off the streets, anyway. And I probably care more about the sanctity of the building than they do. In a strictly non-religious sense, of course.”

“Well,” he said, amused, “I'd never have thought it your scene. A church committee. Daniel in the lion's den.”

“It was Daniel, you may recall, who had the last word.”

*  *  *

George Radwell supposed he would have to be chairman of this fund-raising committee. It would look a bit odd if he weren't. The prospect depressed him, not least because already, in the mind's eye, there loomed the abrasive presence of Mrs. Paling, and how he would cope with that he did not know. He could see her already, sitting there with that toothy smile and those little pointed breasts, asking awkward questions and saying things that threw you off key so that you said things back that made you appear foolish and you could see yourself as she saw you: foolish. She was a clever woman, no doubt, for what that was worth. Well, if she had some bright ideas about fund-raising maybe it would turn out to be worth having her. But.

But one could have managed very well without. He sighed.

And now there was someone coming up the front path toward the front door. A someone he didn't recognize: a large, heavy, middle-aged woman. Mothers' Union business, no doubt, or the preliminaries about a daughter's wedding—could be anything. He went to the door.

She sat on the leather sofa in the study, a massive figure in blue crimplene, hefty knees a little apart so that he had to keep his eyes averted from the shadowy hinterland between and beyond. She had a doughy, expressionless face. At first he could not make head or tail of why she had come. She dumped herself there and seemed to expect him to find out the reason. She was called Mrs. Tanner. She lived on the council estate on the far side of Laddenham. She came to church, now and then, Christmas and that. She did not look, on the face of it, like a person in search of spiritual guidance, but then you never knew. George shifted uncomfortably in his chair, fumbling for further conversational openings. And then at last she said it was about her illness.

“Illness?” George eyed her with apprehension. Cancer? Some awful diagnosis? He hoped not; comforting the dying was a thing he never could cope with, his eyes slid from their gaze and his voice loudened with heartiness. She certainly didn't look ill, at all.