Lamb in Love (9 page)

“She's too attached, poor thing,” they said. “Too attached. And he's not even her
own.
”

V
IDA REMEMBERS THE
evening they first spoke of it, she and Mr. Perry. It had become her habit to stay awhile after Manford had fallen asleep, tidying up the kitchen and checking to see if there was anything Mr. Perry wanted before she left for the evening. She had put the bell in Manford's crib, looked to see that he could reach it if he was distressed. Vida slept in a cot in Manford's room when she stayed overnight, as she was terrified of his needing her but not being able to wake her in the usual fashion of children—by calling for her or crying. But when she slept at her own home, she had to content herself with the presence of the bell, which would jangle if Manford woke thrashing from a nightmare or pulled himself to stand at the bars of the crib. On those occasions, Mr. Perry would see to his boy himself. But more than once, while staying the night at Southend, Vida had
woken with a start in an utterly silent room to see Manford sitting up in his crib, his big head soaked in nightmare sweat, his mouth open in an O of terror, tears running down his face. As the years went on, she slept at home less and less and gradually moved in to her own room at Southend House. This arrangement, though she and Mr. Perry never spoke of it formally, seemed to suit everyone best.

Manford was still an infant, however, the particular evening she paused in the door of the library, on her way home to her parents' house. “Will you be needing anything before I go, Mr. Perry?” she said to his back, for he was bent at the long table under the windows where he drew, the sound of tracing paper rustling beneath his hands.

He turned. “Thanks, no,” he said. “You've been very kind.”

“It's my pleasure, Mr. Perry,” she said, and it was, though she didn't know if he would believe that.

He smiled at her. “Come in,” he said, and then bent over his drawing again for a moment, adding something to the paper. She had stolen a look or two at his work from time to time while tidying the rooms. His drawings were marvelous things, the blue pencil lines so fine, views of Winchester Cathedral swelling up from the page in surprising feats of perspective, as though you were suspended midair up in the nave itself, she thought, each detail on the page looking as though it were composed of fine hairs. It always perplexed her, looking at those drawings, that he made the cathedral—such a vast and heavy place, she thought, built of enormous stone upon stone—appear so light, as if of spun sugar. At Christmas, when she went alone for the midnight service to hear the choir, she would raise her eyes and see Mr. Perry's lines in the vaulting roof, the empty space there scored by the invisible shapes of his geometry.

That evening he stared at his drawing a moment longer and then, without looking up at her, he said, “How would you like to go to London next week, Vida? For a trip.”

“London?” Vida found herself looking vaguely around the room, as if someone might step forward from the shadows with a suitcase for her.

Mr. Perry continued to stare down at his drawing. He frowned and put his finger on the paper, stroking the surface lightly. “You've noticed, Vida, I'm sure,” he said then, “that Manford's not—not like other children.” He paused. “You remember Dr. Bernstein, the gentleman who stayed with us last month? My American friend?”

Vida had felt her pulse begin to race, as though she were being drawn blindfolded to what she sensed was the edge of a cliff. “Dr. Bernstein,” she said faintly. “Very kind.”

“Ted's a good friend,” Mr. Perry said, and Vida thought wildly that perhaps that would be it, that the conversation had ended, disaster had been averted. But after a moment he went on. “I asked him here for a particular reason, Vida. I wanted him to see Manford.” He stopped, searching for the words. “He believes—Dr. Bernstein believes—that Manford is—damaged. That there was some brain damage, probably at birth, when we lost Manford's mother. Manford is—” And here Mr. Perry wiped his hand over his eyes as if to clear away something that had fallen there. “He doesn't believe Manford will ever be like you or me, Vida,” he said, and Vida heard the terrible fatigue in his voice, a sound that sent a cold breath over her skin.

“No,” she said, very low. Because of course she had noticed. You couldn't help noticing.

And so they took him to London.

D
R
. F
ABER
, H
URSLEY'S
local doctor as was his father before him, met them there.

“Thanks for making the trip, Faber,” Mr. Perry said, jumping up from a chair in the London doctor's hospital office to shake Dr. Faber's hand when he came in on a breath of gritty fresh air. Vida was happy to see Dr. Faber herself. His long red sideburns and funny old jacket were familiar, reminding her with a rush of relief of home. The hospital was huge—the biggest building she'd ever been in except for the cathedral, and she jumped every time one of the lift doors opened or someone passed by with a patient on a gurney.

The morning of their appointment, they were shown into an office with red leather armchairs and a heavy desk. Vida held Manford tightly on her lap. He was heavy already, the size of most four-year-olds, though he was only two. And still in a nappy, Vida thought regretfully, for just at that moment she wanted Manford to show himself to his absolutely best advantage.

“Happy to oblige, Thomas,” Dr. Faber said cheerfully, perching himself on the edge of the desk. “Change of pace from the country.” He winked at Vida. “Enjoying your taste of the cosmopolitan life, Vida? Don't know as you've ever been to London before, have you?”

But she wasn't enjoying it, she wanted to tell him, dear Dr. Faber, who'd taken care of her ever since she'd been a thin little girl in a camisole. She couldn't concentrate on London, she was so worried about Manford. Mr. Perry hadn't been particular about what would happen, and she hadn't liked to ask, thinking that perhaps she was expected to know already. The night before, they had stayed in a hotel, she and Manford in one room with a crib set up specially for him, and Mr. Perry in the adjoining. She'd
drawn a bath that night after seeing Manford to sleep and had marveled at the size of the tub, a huge thing you could sit in up to your neck. But it had made Vida feel as if she were drowning.

It seemed foolish to her later, but at the time she thought they might actually physically examine Manford's brain—cut open his poor head and reach in and touch his brain somehow, wiggle it under their thumbs, see what it did, see if they could make it jump. She'd felt sure they would hurt him. Thinking back on it, she realized that Mr. Perry must have been as nervous as she was. He probably hadn't known what would happen, either, and even capable people like Mr. Perry, she thought, could become hopeless and childlike around hospitals.

The worst point was when they met Dr. Tallent, the doctor who was to look Manford over. He'd stepped into his office that morning, surprising them while they were sitting there with Dr. Faber. Vida noticed unhappily that he gave her an odd once-over.

“Mr. and Mrs. Perry,” Dr. Tallent said, sticking out his hand, and Mr. Perry turned horribly red in the face.

“No, no. This is Manford's
nanny,
Archie,” Dr. Faber said comfortably, standing up. “Vida Stephen, Archie Tallent.”

“Oh, quite,” Dr. Tallent said, turning away from Vida after a moment to face Mr. Perry. “Sorry about that. Yes, I recall now, your wife, the circumstances—condolences, sir.”

Dr. Faber and Dr. Tallent and Mr. Perry began to talk, but Vida sat still as a statue, her ears ringing, unable to concentrate on what they were saying. Manford rested quietly on her lap, sucking on his bottle.

“Right, then,” Dr. Tallent said after a few minutes, standing up. “Let's see what we've got, shall we?” And he turned to Vida.

She stood up quickly, hoisting Manford along with her, still holding his bottle. Dr. Tallent stared at her and then, as if deciding
something, came around from behind his desk and, smiling at a spot just past Vida's ear, reached over to chuck Manford on the chin with a finger. He came closer, bent over to look into Manford's face. Manford followed him with his eyes. Vida's knuckles grew white. Dr. Tallent lifted up one of Manford's eyelids with an antiseptic-smelling thumb, exposing Manford's eyeball. Manford rolled his eye. Dr. Tallent frowned.

“Right,” he said again, standing upright.

Vida gave a long exhalation of relief. So that was it. She'd been silly to—

“Someone'll be in to fetch him,” Dr. Tallent said then. And the tails of his white coat forked and vanished.

The walls around her seemed to bulge. Vida looked over at Dr. Faber, stunned. Was she that stupid? To think that was all—Dr. Tallent looking at Manford's
eyeball?

Dr. Faber came across the room to her and put his hand on her shoulder. “They won't hurt him, Vida,” he said kindly. “They're only going to have a look at his head, through an X ray, and do some tests. I'll be right there with him. We'll bring him straight back.” He waited, smiling kindly. “Come on,” he said then, and held out his hands.

But when Vida failed to move, staring up at Dr. Faber's face with a look so anguished that later he told her that he'd never felt like quite such a sod in his whole life, he had to reach and take Manford from her, hoisting him into one arm and bending to retrieve the dropped bottle. Vida felt Manford's body leave her. She put her hands up over her face.

But when she heard Dr. Faber open the door, she took her hands away and looked. Manford was gazing back at her with a look of puzzlement, and Vida felt herself leaning toward him.

Now,
Manford, she thought. Now. Make a sound. Protest. Show them you can. Do it now.

And she'd wanted that for him then, as fiercely as she'd ever wanted anything. Though it had hardly yet begun, she had wanted it all to stop right then, all the prodding and the poking and the speculation and the misunderstanding and the confusion and the terror. After that visit to London, she would never again leave his side at the doctor's—though it was mostly Dr. Faber who saw him after that, and then just for colds and flus and the usual sorts of things. For there was nothing to be done about any of it, he explained to her later. He worried some about the stiffness in Manford's hips, the spasticity, he called it, but Manford had learned to walk all right, though awkwardly—with his hands held out in that funny way, for balance. “After this,” Dr. Faber told Vida, “it's just a question of us all understanding each other.”

But the doctors in London determined that Manford was indeed retarded, his brain injured in a permanent and significant way. Damaged is what they called it, Vida thought in disgust, as if Manford wasn't twice over—even as a baby—a better person than all of them put together. Over the next few weeks, as her fury over the London trip abated, her anger became localized within her, something hard and immovable. Some lively part of Manford's brain—an important part, Dr. Faber explained—lay hushed in silence, gray like moss. She'd put her hands to Manford's head, felt all over the slight lumps and bumps of it, the way she imagined the moon might feel in your hands. She'd wondered if she could feel with her fingers the places where the brain had died, as if there might be a special coolness there, like the cold, black caverns of the moon.

And sometimes she wonders if something
didn't
happen to him that day in the hospital in London when they took him away.
Dr. Faber had brought him back at last to where they had been told to sit in the waiting room. There'd been a fish tank there, and Vida had watched it the whole while he'd been gone, mad red fish circling round and round, following one another. Or not following, she reconsidered with a shock; chasing. Manford had been sound asleep against Dr. Faber's shoulder.

“Wore him out a bit, I think,” Dr. Faber said, settling him in Vida's arms apologetically, and she'd thought Dr. Faber smelled strongly then, of sweat. He smiled at her, though. “He's quite all right, Vida. Just needs a sleep, I should think.”

Manford had slept for ages that afternoon in the hotel. They missed their train while he slept, for Vida wouldn't wake him. Mr. Perry would stop in the room, and she'd put her finger to her lips and shake her head severely. Now, remembering it, she thinks it's funny that he took her word for what should be done. What on earth did
she
know?

When Manford woke at last, he'd opened his eyes and looked at her, and she thought for one, long, terrible moment then that he would turn his head away, that he would know she had deserted him. But he smiled at her, and she lifted him in her arms and thought there wasn't anything so worthy of gratitude as forgiveness. And she wouldn't ever let it happen again; the next time, she would go and stand by him.

But there never was a next time. That was it.

Five