Nest of Sorrows (33 page)

‘Is there?’

‘Yes!’ At last, she looked him in the face. ‘Yes, there is.’

He lit his pipe slowly. ‘Well, all I can say, Rachel, is that I’ve watched that poor girl looking at you. Worships you, she does . . .’

‘Not as I’ve noticed. Specially today.’

‘Shut up, Rachel! For once, bloody shut up and listen to somebody else for a change. At a guess, I’d say that Kate has spent her life looking for love and not finding it. From the little she’s said, I gather that her father didn’t love her, and I don’t think she was so sure about you either. If you’d loved her, you would have protected her from him – that’s how a child thinks. Now, them childhood feelings don’t go. You can argue with yourself, tell yourself you’re being stupid, but a kiddy that grows up feeling unloved becomes a grown-up what can’t cope.’

‘She can cope! Course she can cope!’

He nodded. ‘Aye, happen she can on the surface. But what about all them years she put up with Geoff and his mother, never a word out of her, never a try to defend herself. That was because she didn’t believe in herself, couldn’t make no decisions. Well, happen her first big decision was not having the baby, and her second was getting away from them two leeches. This is just the beginning of who Kate is, she’s never been herself before.’

‘Rubbish!’

‘Just you leave her alone, Rachel.’

‘She’s my daughter, not yours. Who are you to tell me what to do with her? And I shall leave her alone, never fear. My daughter’s a murderer, and I’m not apologizing to no murderer. So there!’

He looked up to the ceiling as if seeking divine guidance. ‘You’ll regret this, lass. This will be with you all your life.’ He sighed deeply. ‘Well, as you said, it’s nowt to do with me, none of my affair. So,’ he stared hard at his wife, ‘on your head be it. Aye, on your head and not on mine, thank God!’

The man in the white coat carried on hitting her. She wanted to sit up in the bed, needed to scream out, ‘I’m not dead, I’m still here,’ but he continued with the heart massage. And she didn’t even feel detached or dizzy, so she couldn’t understand why this great fight to save her life was going on.

How long had she been here? Years and years. And years. But here, in this extremely bright white room – how long? Was that her heart, beep, beep, hiccup and beep? Or was the other noise – that long drawn-out sound – was this the echo of a heart not beating at all?
I am alive! Look at me, you idiots, I am alive!

‘She’s back, Sister. What’s the BP?’

‘Ninety over forty and rising.’

‘Good. Let’s hope she’s strong enough for more treatment. We’ll need to get her dialysed tomorrow if these kidneys don’t pick themselves up of their own accord.’

Kate stared up at him. He had a silly moustache with some food stuck in it. She wanted to tell him about the food, only her mouth was on strike.
Am I paralysed? Did the operation turn out a mess? No! There is nothing wrong with my kidneys. I have been monitored weekly for centuries now. Prodded and poked and weighed and measured. Analysed, tested, catalogued, categorized, filed, disposed of! There is nothing wrong with my kidneys, you stupid ill-washed man
.

The sister bent over the bed. ‘I wonder if she can hear us?’

Of course I can hear you. I can hear and see like everyone else. Your moustache is nearly as thick as his, though at least you don’t have your dinner stuck to it. What is the matter with this place? Is this an emergency room or a bloody pantomime?

The doctor coughed thickly and Kate wondered what she was going to catch in here. After joining the private medical scheme, too, posh Chorley New Road nursing home with operating facilities and television in every room. Bloody hospitals. Breeding grounds for germs, they were . . . If a person insisted on being ill, then he or she would be better staying away from hospitals altogether.

Another day. Another room. The whizzing and whirring of machinery.

They are cleaning my blood. My blood is being taken out of my body to be swished through a machine with knobs and dials on. There’s probably bleach in there, some sort of sterilizing fluid. I shall finish up with Domestos in my veins. This will kill ninety-nine per cent of all household germs. What about the other one per cent? Should I worry about it? Dear God, let me not be a candidate for dialysis now!

She turned her head. No. There was just the one clear tube in her arm. Whatever the noise was, it was not connected with or to her. Above her head a saline drip. Drip-drop-dripping, drip-drop-dropping . . .

Hypnosis. Now they are trying to mesmerize me into submission. I shall fight the good fight. Why is my head such a mess, why can’t I think in straight lines?

How many days now? They were talking again. Talking about why she could only think round corners. ‘She’s had so much to cope with . . . mumble, mumble.’ Then later, ‘The kidneys were clearing none of it, antibiotics . . . anaesthetic . . . mumble, mumble.’ She wanted to scream at them, to tell them to speak up, but her mouth was dry. ‘There will have been hallucinations, I should think. And, of course, she’s diabetic.’

Yes. I am a freak. Bring in the spectators, eh? On with the show, the show must go on. It’s pantomime time, folks! Where’s the magician? Perhaps if I try hard, I might become invisible. Though I must stay. There is a reason for staying. It is down a corridor somewhere. Boothroyd is going in the national press. Such a long way home . . .

‘She’s had only one visitor.’ The nurse sounded sad.

Doctor Food-In-The-Moustache fiddled with his tie. He was something of a fiddler, always messing about with thermometers and gauges. There was one in every class at school. Two, sometimes. She didn’t go to school any more, though. There had been a caravan, a cold caravan with just a paraffin heater. How long ago? He coughed again.

‘Mrs Carter’s been every day.’

Good old Mo! Why hadn’t she been awake for Maureen?

‘And it would seem that Mrs C’s been instructed by this one not to tell us anything. It looks as if our Katie wants to be alone. Should have been a bloody film star!’ Kate promised herself that she would get him later. Where it hurt, possibly in the cheque book.

‘Well, she does have her rights, Doctor. If she doesn’t want her family and friends fussing round the bed . . .’

‘Hmm.’ Phlegm rattled ominously yet again. Kate decided that he was a candidate for double pneumonia. ‘Shame, though. She looks so lost and lonely.’

‘Getting sentimental in your old age, Doc?’

‘The girl’s fighting for her life. Any worse, and she’ll have to go to the district hospital. And I don’t want to move her . . .’

‘I . . . will . . . not . . . be moved,’ managed Kate at last.

She caught them smiling as she slipped back into the endless dream.

Standing in Miss Ashe’s office. ‘These phone calls from your husband really must stop.’

‘It’s OK, I’ve got an injunction. If he phones me here or comes near my flat, he will be fined or put in prison.’

‘But why are you resigning, Mrs Saunders? Are you going into another post?’

‘No. I’m finishing with teaching.’

‘Is it because of the phone calls? And how will you live?’

‘It’s nothing to do with phone calls. And I’ll manage, Miss Ashe. There’s more to life than teaching. A lot more.’

She knew it was a dream, because she was whisked now from Head Teacher’s office to a strange place that was half caravan, half her flat on Chorley New Road. Maureen. Lipstick smudged across her two front teeth, hair escaping from a hurriedly donned scarf, eyes wide with shock and disbelief. ‘You have to let me tell them! I can’t go on saying you’ve moved to Manchester. Let me tell your mother, at least! Please let me send for Rachel, please? I’m taking you to the nursing home. Let me fetch your mother.’

‘No.’ The wind rattled a blind on the caravan window, yet Kate could reach out and touch the Paisley shawl on the old armchair by the big fireplace in her own living room.

Maureen was bouncing around in an agitated fashion. The caravan rocked. ‘But you look so ill. What if you go into a coma all by yourself? Someone should know how ill you are.’

‘The doctors know. Diabetes can be real fun, you should try it some time. I shall be in hospital soon. In and out, in and out . . .’

‘Then Geoff must be informed.’ Waves crashed against rocks, but that was silly, there were no waves on Chorley New Road . . . ‘You must not carry on with this stupidity, Kate. Why? It’s verging on lunacy! I’m taking you to hospital, then I’m getting Geoff . . .’

‘Tell him, Maureen, and our friendship will be over.’

‘BUT WHAT IF YOU DIE?’

Kate stirred in the hard hospital bed.
I am here. I am dying. But no, I shall not allow myself to die. There is a plan, and I have so much to live for now. There’s . . . there’s down the corridor and there’s Boothroyd. I am KAZ and Boothroyd is mine. They are doing an offer of tea towels with Boothroyd on them. Did I do that picture? Yes. In the caravan. Yes, I did the cartoon for the tea towel. And seven weeks’ advance work. I have to get out of here to keep my spot in the paper. The editor knows I’m here. He promised not to send flowers. Perhaps I am coming back now. Perhaps I can go down the corridor . . .

‘Good morning, Katie.’

Bloody nurses. Always so cheerful, they are. And so flaming false.

‘I’ve brought your breakfast. The insulin and sugar levels are balanced and your kidneys have picked up fine. Isn’t it wonderful? There we are now, just a wee bit of porridge . . .’ Eat it up. Come on, mouth, open. There, she has gone. Nursie with her plastic smile is no longer with me.

Damn these dreams!
Where is he? Where is my son? Why have you taken him away from me? You had no right. Tell me where he is!

Gone. Down the toilet with your hopes.

No! He is in Boothroyd Junior! He can’t be in the toilet and in Junior! Look at
Boys’ Laughs!
Junior is my son. He’s not just a duck, he’s my . . . All those months of hiding. Maureen bringing the shopping, the two Misses shooing Geoff from the door, Melanie on the phone, ‘But when can I see you, Mum?’ For what? Which is true? How do I find the truth?

A handsome stranger sitting on the edge of the bed, beautiful blue eyes and wavy brown hair. Sister will not be pleased; visitors must not sit on the edges of beds . . .

‘Mrs Saunders. Remember me?’

Talk to him, you fool. Stop sulking. ‘Yes. Just about. My faculties are not as sharp as they might be.’ She remembered him now. Yes, she definitely remembered him.

He smiled tentatively. ‘I teach at Lark Lane. You had my sister in your class until she . . .’

‘Until she died.’ Leukaemia. Pretty girl, dark hair and impossible violet eyes. ‘You were her guardian, weren’t you?’

He nodded. ‘Our parents were killed when Rosie was very small. I brought her up. You were so kind to her, Mrs Saunders. She loved you.’

Yes, she loved me. There were cards on a string above the bed. She had done her homework. Come back, Kate. Don’t go into the nightmare again. Look at him – speak to him!

She raised her head. ‘We all loved Rosie.’ She stared at him. Was he trustworthy? He looked trustworthy. Strong face, broad shoulders, kind eyes. ‘Don’t tell anyone I’m here, will you? I’m supposed to have emigrated.’

‘Where to?’

She smiled for the first time in weeks. ‘Your guess is as good as mine. Timbuctoo. Or three, if you like. How did you find me?’

He hesitated a fraction. ‘My . . . friend is a porter here.’ Then, in stronger tone, ‘I’m homosexual.’

‘Are you? I’m Sagittarius.’

He laughed heartily. ‘That has to be one of the most original reactions I ever had! How long have you been in here?’

‘Most of my life. Have we had Christmas?’

‘Few weeks to go yet. Can I do anything for you?’

Kate stared up at him. This was a crazy moment, or was it the beginning of a miracle, the start of her recovery, a first step towards life? Because she felt so close to him, as if the two of them had been joined for years, joined at the hip, inseparable, paired, twinned. Yes, this was crazy.

He was sad. In spite of all the surface frivolity, she could have almost reached out and touched the grief. It was raw and sore, just beneath the surface, just barely covered by a thin parchment of normality. Their eyes locked for several moments, as if each were reading the other’s mind and soul.

They were coupled, the two of them, attached one to the other by and through Rosie. Kate’s thoughts were still somewhat dislocated, yet she recalled that awful long night so clearly. They had been strangers, yet because of his sister, they were now almost friends. No, more than friends. Perhaps people who sat together during a death were always united thereafter?

But she knew him. She knew him as well as she would ever know anyone. To this man she would and could talk; in this man she knew she might confide. It was madness, the whole thing was odd. She would never be able to explain it, yet her trust in him was suddenly and blindingly implicit.

‘Can I do anything for you?’ he repeated quietly.

She thought about this. ‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘You can go and see my son. He’s in an incubator somewhere miles away. I wouldn’t know him myself, but the name will be on the cot. He’s Michael. Michael John Saunders. Only don’t tell anyone about him because I had him aborted months ago.’

‘Did you? How strange.’

Her grin widened. ‘I had to have an abortion because of my diabetes. But I chickened out at the last minute and spent the night in a Liverpool hotel.’

The visitor chuckled. ‘Alone?’

‘No. I shared my bed with a bottle of champagne. It altered my perspective and buggered the insulin good and proper.’ There! She was talking sensibly, coherently, even wittily!

His eyes widened. ‘But how did you conceal the . . . ?’ Words failed him as he marvelled at what she had done. Whatever her reasons, the task must have been a monumental one.

As if a dam had suddenly burst, words poured from a mouth that had been sealed for far too long. ‘At first, I thought I might confide in my mother. But we had a big row about that abortion I pretended to have, so that left just Maureen. I quit school before the bulge became too obvious, told Maureen Carter the truth, and after that she looked after me. I lived in a caravan till Mo found me almost in a coma. And here I am, here I’ve been ever since. The only problem was my poor daughter. I still don’t know what to do about her.’