The Children Act (11 page)

He fell back against the pillows to catch his breath. She had been standing at the foot of his bed. Now she approached the side where there was a plastic chair and said her name and put out her hand. His was cold and damp. She sat down and waited for him to say more. But his head was tilted back and he was looking at the ceiling, still recovering and, she realized, expecting an answer. She became aware of the hiss of one of the machines at her back, as well as a muted rapid bleeping, at the audible threshold, or at least hers. The heart monitor, turned down for the patient’s comfort, was betraying his excitement.

She leaned forward and said she thought he was right. In her experience in court, if different witnesses who had never spoken to each other all said the same thing about an event, it was more likely to be true.

Then she added, “But it’s not always. There can be group delusions. People who don’t know each other can be gripped by the same false idea. That certainly happens in courts of law.”

“Like when?”

He was still catching his breath, and even these two words were an effort. His gaze remained upward, away from her, while she thought of an example.

“Some years ago in this country children were taken away from their parents by the authorities, and the parents were prosecuted for what was called satanic abuse, for doing terrible
things to their children in secret devil-worshipping rituals. Everyone piled in against the parents. Police, social workers, prosecutors, newspapers, even judges. But it turned out there was nothing. No secret rituals, no Satan, no abuse. Nothing had happened. It was a fantasy. All these experts and important people were sharing a delusion, a dream. Eventually, they all came to their senses and were very ashamed, or they should have been. And very slowly, the children were returned to their homes.”

Fiona talked as though she herself was in a dream. She felt pleasantly tranquil, even as she guessed that Marina, monitoring the conversation, would be baffled by her remarks. What was the judge doing, talking to the boy about child abuse, within minutes of meeting him? Was she wanting to suggest that religion, his religion, was a group delusion? Marina would have expected the significant opening remark, after some gentle small talk, to be along the lines of, I’m sure you know why I’m here. Instead, Fiona was free-associating, as though to a colleague, about a forgotten institutional scandal of the 1980s. But what Marina thought did not really trouble her. She would do this her own way.

Adam lay still, taking in what she had said. At last, he turned his head on the pillow and his eyes met hers. She had squandered enough gravitas already and was determined not to look away. His breathing was more or less under control; his look was dark and solemn, impossible to read. That didn’t matter,
for she was feeling calmer than she had all day. No great claim. If not calm, then unhurried. The pressure of a waiting court, the necessity of a rapid decision, the consultant’s urgent prognosis were temporarily suspended in the penumbral air-sealed room as she watched the boy and waited for him to speak. She was right to have come.

To hold his gaze for longer than half a minute or so would have been improper, but she had time to imagine, in the condensing way of thought, what he saw in the chair by his bedside, another grown-up with a view, a grown-up further diminished by the special irrelevance that haunts an elderly lady.

He looked away just before saying, “The thing about Satan is that he’s amazingly sophisticated. He puts a stupid idea like satanic whatever, abuse, into people’s minds, then he lets it get disproved so everyone thinks that he doesn’t exist after all, and then he’s free to do his worst.”

Another feature of her unorthodox opening—she had strayed onto his ground. Satan was a lively character in the Witness construction of the world. He had come down to earth, so she had read in her skim through the background material, in October 1914 in preparation for the end days and was working his evil through governments, the Catholic Church and especially the United Nations, encouraging it to sow concord among nations just when they should be readying themselves for Armageddon.

“He’s free to try and kill you with leukemia?”

She wondered if she had spoken too directly, but he had an adolescent’s affected resilience. Toughing it out. “Yes. That sort of thing.”

“And you’re going to let him?”

He pushed himself against the backrest to sit up, then stroked his chin thoughtfully, in parody of a pompous professor or TV pundit. He was mocking her.

“Well, since you ask, I intend to crush him by obeying God’s commandments.”

“Is that a yes?”

He ignored this, waited a moment, then said, “Have you come to change my mind, straighten me out?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Oh yes! I think so!” He was suddenly the mischievous provoking child, hugging his knees through the bedcovers, though feebly, and he was excited again, working up a sardonic voice. “Please, miss, set me on the path of righteousness.”

“I’ll tell you why I’m here, Adam. I want to be sure you know what you’re doing. Some people think you’re too young to be taking a decision like this and that you’ve been influenced by your parents and the elders. And others think you’re extremely clever and capable and we should just let you get on with it.”

In the harsh light he rose so vividly before her, the untidy black hair curling over the neckline of his gown, the large dark eyes scanning her face in restless saccades, alert for any deception
or false notes. From the bedclothes she caught the scent of talcum powder or soap, and on his breath something thin and metallic. His diet of drugs.

“Well,” he said eagerly. “What’s your impression so far? How am I doing?”

He was playing her, all right, drawing her back onto other ground, to a wilder space where he could dance round her, tempt her to say something inappropriate and interesting again. It occurred to her that this intellectually precocious young fellow was simply bored, understimulated, and that by threatening his own life he had set in motion a fascinating drama in which he starred in every scene, and which had brought to his bedside a parade of important and importuning adults. If this was so, she liked him all the more. Serious illness could not smother his vitality.

So, how was he doing? “Pretty well, so far,” she said, aware she was taking a risk. “You give the impression of someone who knows his own mind.”

“Thank you,” he said in a voice derisively sweet.

“But it might just be an impression.”

“I like to make a good impression.”

His manner, his humor, had an element of the silliness that can accompany high intelligence. And it was self-protective. He was surely very frightened. It was time to talk him down.

“And if you know your own mind, you won’t object to discussing practicalities.”

“Fire away.”

“The consultant says that if he could transfuse you and raise your blood count he could add two very effective drugs to your treatment and you’d have a good chance of a complete and fairly quick recovery.”

“Yes.”

“And without a transfusion you could die. You understand that.”

“Yup.”

“And there’s another possibility. I need to be sure you’ve considered it. Not death, Adam, but a partial recovery. You could lose your sight, you could suffer brain damage or your kidneys could go. Would it please God to have you blind or stupid and on dialysis for the rest of your life?”

Her question overstepped the mark, the legal mark. She glanced across to where Marina sat in her shadowy corner. She was using the magazine to support a notebook and was writing by feel alone. She did not look up.

Adam was staring at a space over Fiona’s head. With a wet clicking sound he moistened his lips with a white-coated tongue. Now there was sulkiness in his tone.

“If you don’t believe in God you shouldn’t be talking about what does or doesn’t please him.”

“I haven’t said I don’t believe. I’d like to know whether you’ve considered this carefully, that you may be ill and disabled, mentally, physically or both, for the rest of your life.”

“I’d hate it, I’d hate it.” He turned from her quickly in the attempt to conceal the tears that had suddenly formed. “But if that’s what happens I have to accept it.”

He was upset, holding his gaze well away from her, ashamed that she could see how easy it had been to deflate his bumptiousness. His elbow, slightly crooked, looked pointed and fragile. Irrelevantly, she thought of recipes, roast chicken with butter, tarragon and lemon, aubergines baked with tomatoes and garlic, potatoes lightly roasted in olive oil. Take this boy home and feed him up.

They had made useful progress, reached a new stage, and she was about to follow up with another question when the Caribbean nurse came in and held the door wide open. Outside, as though summoned by her fantasy cuisine, was a young man in a brown cotton jacket, barely older than Adam, standing by a trolley of brushed steel containers.

“I can send your dinner away,” the nurse said. “But only for half an hour.”

“If you can bear it,” Fiona said to Adam.

“I can bear it.”

She got up from her chair to allow the nurse to make her routine check on her patient and the monitors. She must have registered his emotional state and seen the wetness around his eyes, for she wiped his cheek with her hand just before she left and whispered loudly, “You listen carefully to what this lady has to say.”

The interruption had altered the mood in the room. When Fiona was back in her chair she didn’t return to her intended question. Instead she nodded toward the sheets of paper among the debris on the bed. “I hear you’ve been writing poetry.”

She had expected him to reject the prompt as intrusive or condescending, but he seemed relieved to be diverted and she thought his manner was sincere, completely undefended. She also noted how quickly his mood shifted.

“I’ve just finished something. I could read it if you want. It’s really short. But wait a minute.” He rolled onto his side to face her directly. Before speaking he wetted his dried lips. Again, the creamy white tongue. In another context it might have been beautiful, a cosmetic novelty.

He said confidingly, “What do they call you in court? Is it ‘Your Honor’?”

“Usually it’s ‘My Lady.’ ”

“My Lady? That’s fantastic! Am I allowed to call you that?”

“Fiona will do.”

“But I want to call you My Lady. Please let me.”

“All right. What about this poem?”

He leaned back against the pillows to get his breath back and she waited. Reaching forward at last for a sheet of paper near his knee brought on a round of enfeebled coughing. When that was done his voice was thin and husky. She heard no irony in the way he now addressed her.

“The weird thing, My Lady, is that I didn’t start writing my best poetry until I got ill. Why do you think that is?”

“You tell me.”

He shrugged. “I like writing in the middle of the night. The whole building shuts down and all you can hear is this strange deep hum. You can’t hear it in the day. Listen.”

They listened. Outside, there were still another four hours of light and rush hour was peaking. In here it was the dead of night, but she could hear no hum. She was coming to realize that his defining quality was innocence, a fresh and excitable innocence, a childlike openness that may have had something to do with the enclosed nature of the sect. The congregation, so she had read, was encouraged to keep their children apart as far as was possible from outsiders. Rather like the ultra-Orthodox Jews. Her own teenage relatives, girls as well as boys, had all too soon protected themselves with a sheen of knowing toughness. Their overstated cool was charming in its way, a necessary bridge to adulthood. Adam’s unworldliness made him endearing, but vulnerable. She was touched by his delicacy, by the way he stared fiercely at his sheet of paper, perhaps trying to hear in advance his poem through her ears. She decided that he was probably much loved at home.

He glanced at her, drew breath and began.

She waited in case there was more but he put the page down, leaned back and looked at the ceiling as he spoke.

“I wrote it after one of the elders, Mr. Crosby, told me that if the worst was to happen, it would have a fantastic effect on everyone.”

Fiona murmured, “He said that?”

“It would fill our church with love.”

She summed up for him. “So Satan comes to beat you with his hammer, and without meaning to he flattens your soul into a sheet of gold that reflects God’s love on everyone and for this you’re saved and it doesn’t matter so much that you’re dead.”

“My Lady, you’ve got it exactly,” the boy almost shouted in his excitement. Then he had to stop to recover his breath again. “I don’t think the nurses understood it, except for Donna, the one who was in here just now. Mr. Crosby’s going to try and get it published in
The Watchtower
.”

“That would be marvelous. You may have a future as a poet.”

He saw through this and smiled.

“What do your parents think of your poems?”

“My mum loves them, my dad thinks they’re okay but they use up the strength I need to get better.” He rolled onto his side again to face her. “But what does My Lady think? It’s called ‘The Hammer.’ ”

He had such a hunger in his look, such longing for her approval, that she hesitated. Then she said, “I think it shows a touch, a very small touch, mind, of real poetic genius.”

He continued to gaze at her, expression unchanged, wanting more. She had thought she knew what she was doing, but just then her mind emptied. She didn’t want to disappoint him and she was not used to talking about poetry.

He said, “What makes you say that?”

She didn’t know, not immediately. She would have appreciated Donna returning to bustle around the machines and her patient, while she herself went to the unopenable window and looked out across Wandsworth Common and decided what to say. But the nurse was not due for another fifteen minutes. Fiona hoped that by starting to speak she would discover what she thought. It was like being at school. Back then she had mostly got away with it.