Children's Ward Page 10

  She hadn’t seen Gregory since that evening in the garden, when he had kissed her, a kiss she could still feel bruising her mouth if she let her thoughts take her back three days. The patients he had on her ward were either seen by his house-surgeon, or a message would come up from outpatients where Gregory would be holding a clinic, asking her to send those children he needed to see down there. There was no doubt in Harriet’s mind that he was avoiding her, and much as she ached for a sight of him, to have him near enough to remind herself of the way his arms had felt about her that night that now seemed so long ago, she was obscurely grateful for his absence. In a way, she had transposed some of her feeling for Gregory to Tod, and there was one thought now that persisted above all others. She must find Tod’s home. Somehow, she must find it.

  It was with an absurdly optimistic lift in her heart that she got Tod dressed in his new duffel coat the next afternoon. The shoes he had been wearing the day he was admitted were polished carefully, and didn’t show their shabbiness quite so badly, and she pulled the little woollen cap over his fair head, and put the mittens on his hands, even though it was summer now; he looked too fragile to be warmed even by the fitful sunshine of a typical May afternoon – typically blowy, as only an English May can be.

  She had managed to beg the use of an elderly pushchair from the physiotherapy department, and she tucked Tod into it at the main gate of the hospital, and looked deeply into his eyes as she crouched in front of him, strapping his narrow body in.

  ‘I’m going to take you for a walk, Tod, my love,’ she told his silent face. ‘Just for a walk. And if you want to go anywhere special, just show me, hmm?’ But he made no movement in reply.

  In later years, Harriet was to remember that first afternoon when she walked with Tod through the narrow clamorous streets of the close packed corner of London that she knew so well, remember that first afternoon in detail. She trudged up street after street, past high narrow fronted houses with flights of steps in front of them, past the blocks of flats that reared their massive bulk over the bare patches that had once been bomb-damaged during the war, threading her way through pavements filled with chattering groups of women, dodging screeching children, passing small shops, big shops, edging past patient bus queues, waiting wearily for traffic lights to change green so that they could cross the wider traffic-roaring roads.

  The passing scene blurred a little, seeming to bob up and down with her own movement, and Tod’s brown coated form sat slumped in the pushchair in front of her, his yellow hat bobbing too, as the pushchair went on its creaking way, the wheels squeaking their lack of oil at her.

  And gradually, the circle she had planned to cover round the hospital on that first afternoon was covered. Street after street passed by them, mile after mile of grey pavement slid away under her weary feet. Three hours after she had left the hospital she began to work her way back towards it, passing along ever new roads, past rows and rows of anonymous houses. And still Tod sat still, not moving, no sign of the stiffening of the shoulders that Harriet was watching for, the sign of some sort of tension that would show her she was near his home ground.

  And for a whole week, it went on. She arranged for her own off duty to be every afternoon, much to the joy of her nurses, who thus had more free evenings than they were accustomed to get. Harriet’s days became a weary trek, each morning occupied with the rush of ward work, each long evening on duty ending with an exhausted bath and restless sleep, with the eternal trudging through the streets every afternoon, with Tod in his pushchair in front of her, a Tod as apparently unaware of his surroundings as he seemed to be in the ward.

  Most evenings, Sally would call in at the ward on her own way off duty to ask with a mute look for news, and each time, Harriet would shake her head silently. Sally could have wept for Harriet, at the way her eyes seemed to grow larger in her face as she lost weight almost visibly, at the violet shadows that stained the hollows of her cheeks, painting the skin under her eyes with the ugly badge of fatigue. Even Paul, on his visits to patients in the ward, was worried, asking Sally privately what was the matter with Harriet – was she ill? And Sally, almost impatient at her own loyalty to what she considered Harriet’s idiotic behaviour, didn’t tell him, passing it off as ‘just one of those things’.

  Paul asked Harriet one evening what was the trouble, and the concern on his friendly and familiar face made the weary Harriet want to cry, to throw herself onto him, to hold onto his strength. But she had laughed with a lightness she had to fight to dissimulate, and changed the subject to a discussion of one of the children in the ward.

  On each of the long afternoons when they walked through diesel smelling streets, Harriet would stop the chair for a while, would lift Tod out, and put his mittened fist on to the side of the pushchair, closing his unresisting fingers round it, so that he held on. Then, slowly she would walk on, and Tod, pulled by the chair, walked too. This at least, Harriet felt, was something. By the end of the week, he was walking more strongly, and for longer periods, before showing signs of being tired, would even begin to trot beside her if she did not make him hold on to the chair. And even as her own physical health seemed to suffer from the long and agonising programme she had set herself, so Tod seemed to improve. The food he was eating so voraciously began to show on his thin frame; he filled out, his legs losing the pathetic skinny spaghetti look, his cheeks beginning to flush with the faint rose that other children had even in these crowded city streets.

  As they walked, Harriet dividing her attention between the route they were taking and Tod’s face, always watching for some sign that he recognised the street they were in, her thoughts would take their own way, and she was too bone tired to be able to control them.

  She wondered about this girl – Tod’s mother – the girl she felt sure she would find soon, one of these afternoons. For there was no doubt in her mind now that Tod had a mother, somewhere. She knew enough about children to realise that whatever had broken the bond between his mother and himself – whether it had been a street accident, or what it had been – Tod had had a close relationship with her, and it was the loss of this closeness that had driven him to the silent misery she felt in him.

  She found herself weaving fantasies about the girl, fantasies that could explain her silence, explain why she had not come to find this little boy who trotted so quietly at Harriet’s side. And as she grew tireder, so her fantasies became wilder, filled with melodramatic ideas of abduction, even murder. But when this happened, she forced herself to stop, telling herself with heavy common sense that the girl had probably just run off somewhere, sick of caring for her child, sick of Gregory’s silence. For Harriet now believed that Gregory had wilfully abandoned the girl, the girl and her child, and had left them without a backward glance.

  And so her attitude to Gregory changed, sick loathing of him fighting the love that still filled her whenever she thought of his lean body and grizzled head, until her head spun wildly, till she hardly knew what she felt or what she was doing. Only a dumb determination to find the answer for Tod’s sake kept her going.

  And then, so suddenly that she was caught unawares, the very thing she had been hoping would happen did at last happen; and so tired was she that she had almost forgotten why she was walking these dreary streets with Tod.

  They had just turned into a narrow alleyway of a street, a street lined on both sides with small houses whose chipped and peeling front doors opened directly onto the greasy pavements. There was no sign of any green anywhere, no front gardens to hold the dusty privet hedges that helped to liven some of the roads in the district. Only patches of bright curtains in one or two of the windows lifted the general greyness, and these were few; most of the houses were as dirty and ill kept as they were ugly.

  Tod stopped short, and Harriet had walked on a few paces before she realised that the yellow hat was no longer bobbing at her side. She turned, and stared back at Tod, where he stood stock still in the middle of the pavement.
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br />   His head was up, his chin pointing straight ahead of him, his whole body rigid as his blue eyes slowly moved along the street, staring at a tiny grimy shop window full of empty packets of cigarettes and dusty models of boxes of chocolates, at the rubbish filled gutters, the narrow houses.

  Almost too tense to breathe, Harriet watched him, making no sound. Then slowly, Tod began to move, to walk first, and then to run, his thin legs gathering momentum. He ran past her, without looking at her, and abandoning the pushchair, Harriet ran after him.

  He stopped at the last house in the street, to stand at the front door, a door that had once been green but now bore only traces of paint on its blistered woodwork. His face had lost its stillness, the emptiness that Harriet had come to accept as part of him, was crumpled in an agonising grimace. Then, suddenly, he pushed on the door, pushed hard, and the door clicked and opened.

  He stood poised in the dark opening, and Harriet stood behind him to look into the narrow hallway beyond, hardly seeing the dirty wallpaper, the unscrubbed bare wooden boards, the broken bicycle leaning against one wall.

  From beyond a tattered curtain that screened the far end of the dingy hallway, a voice called ’Oo is it? That you, Joe? –’Oo is it?’ and the curtain parted. An old woman in a dirty overall, her thin hair pulled into metal curlers, a smudge of grime across her forehead, came slouching towards them, a frown appearing on her wrinkled face.

  ‘Oo –’ Then she saw Tod, and with a look of pure surprise she cried ‘Davey – Davey! Where you come from, Davey?’

  And the child at Harriet’s side screamed a loud inhuman scream, and turned to Harriet to bury his head in her skirt, to weep the first tears she had seen him weep since she had first known him.

  Chapter Eleven

  He clung to Harriet, held on to her with all the strength he had, and Harriet held him close, picking him up to croon gently to him, rocking him in an attempt to soothe the bitter weeping that threatened to tear him apart.

  The old woman in curlers, clucking a sympathetic counterpoint to the child’s noisy weeping, pulled them both into the house, leading them into the kitchen at the end of the hallway. Even in the midst of her distress for the child who was clinging so tightly to her, Harriet was repulsed by the smell of the cluttered room, the mixture of cats, of meals long ago cooked, eaten and forgotten, of sheer dirt. The woman shoved a pile of newspapers off a shabby broken armchair, and pushed Harriet into it, and she sat and rocked monotonously, until the shaking body in her arms gradually relaxed, till the tears that stained the swollen eyes and ravaged the smooth young cheeks had stopped.

  ‘Well, I never,’ the woman said, moving heavily about the tiny room, making ineffectual attempts to tidy it into some semblance of order. ‘What’s up with him? Why’s he crying so? Poor little feller – takin’ it hard, is he? Well, it’s no wonder, is it? Always was a quiet one, was Davey, and these quiet ones – well, they do run deep, don’t they, like people always say? Quiet ones run deep.’

  ‘Look,’ Harriet said. ‘I must talk to you – but it’s a bit difficult with Tod – Davey here. Is – can I ’phone from anywhere? I’ll try to get him back, and then I can talk to you –’

  The old woman looked dubious, and peered suspiciously at her. ‘Well, I don’t know, I’m sure – I mean, why should you want to talk to me? From the Council are you?’ She looked at the scrap of dress that showed beneath Harriet’s coat, her uniform dress.

  ‘No, I’m not from the Council. I work at the Royal – and Tod – Davey’s a patient there. And I must get him back before I talk to you –’

  ‘There’s a ’phone over at the shop,’ the woman said unwillingly. ’But I –’ Awkwardly, because of the way the child was clinging to her, Harriet fumbled in her pocket, and pulled a crumpled ten shilling note out. The woman brightened, and said with senile briskness, ’Well, I suppose I could go for you. ’Oo do I ’phone?’

  ‘The Royal – and ask for Sister Andrews on the theatres. Tell her, will you, that Sister Brett needs her at once. Tell her what the address is, and tell her to take a taxi – say it’s urgent.’

  Mutttering the message under her breath, and repeating the number to herself the old woman slouched off, and Harriet was left sitting in the dim and dirty kitchen, the child on her lap still snuffling softly as he clung to her.

  Gently, Harriet disentangled his grasp, pulled him up till she could look at him. ‘Davey?’ she said gently. ‘Davey?’

  The child lifted his head, looked at her and repeated, ‘Davey,’ in a voice thick with tears.

  ‘Did you live in this house, Davey, love?’ Harriet asked softly. ‘Was this your house?’

  The child nodded jerkily, and then he said, ‘Mummy – Mummy –’

  ‘With Mummy?’

  His face crumpled again, and tears filled the blue eyes. ‘Mummy –’ he said, choking through his misery. ‘Mummy won’t wake up – Mummy –’

  And Harriet, unable to bear the look on his thin face held him close, letting her pity and love pour over him, too upset herself to question the pitiful little boy any more.

  The woman came back very soon, and told her that she had spoken to Sally, that ‘She’s comin’ right over, she says. Says not to worry – she’ll be here soon as may be. Must be well off, you hospital people, takin’ taxis all over the place –’

  Harriet answered absently, still holding Davey close in her arms, her head full of the questions she must ask this woman, but feeling instinctively that she could not ask them in the child’s hearing. Whatever had happened here was too raw, too agonising to be talked about in front of him.

  The fifteen minutes that it took Sally to arrive seemed to Harriet an eternity, and her relief when she heard the door rattle, heard Sally’s clear voice calling out her name was so great it almost overcame her.

  She hurried to the door, carrying Davey with her, and very quickly, told Sally what had happened.

  ‘His name is Davey – and he’s desperately upset, Sally. Look, I must talk to this woman, but I can’t – not till Davey’s settled. Please, Sal, take him back for me, will you? Get him to bed, and get Staff Nurse to give him some nepenthe – it’s written up for him and I think he needs it. I’ll get on to Dr Bennett myself as soon as I get back –’

  Sally nodded, and climbed back into the taxi that still sat at the curb, its engine ticking over quietly. Davey resisted at first, as Harriet gently put him onto Sally’s lap.

  ‘It’s all right, love. This is Sally and she’s my friend. She’ll take you back to bed, and then I’ll come soon. I must talk first – I won’t be long –’ and the child was suddenly too weary, too emotionally exhausted by his distress, to argue. Harriet watched his white face at the window as the taxi disappeared round the corner on its way back to the Royal, and then she turned, and stopping to salvage the pushchair, made her way back to the house where the slatternly woman was standing leaning against the door, chattering busily to the few women who had emerged from their own houses to watch what was going on.

  ‘I’m sorry there was so much noise,’ Harriet began, feeling she must propitiate this rather horrible woman if she was to get anything out of her. ‘But now, if you could spare the time, perhaps we could talk?’

  The woman peered at her and said with a cunning sideways look at Harriet’s coat pocket, ‘Well, time’s money you know –’ and obediently Harriet reached for her purse, and found another ten shilling note.

  ‘Well, now Sister – Brett wasn’t it?’ The old woman led the way back to the dingy kitchen and settled herself in the armchair. She looked up at Harriet and grinned. ‘I’m Mrs Ross – owns this house I does. What can I do for you?’

  ‘You know that little boy?’ Harriet asked crisply.

  ‘Know ’im? Know ’im? Course I do! Lived in my house two years he did! Course I know him!’ Mrs Ross looked suddenly suspicious. ‘Any reason why I shouldn’t?’

  ‘I’d better explain –’ Harriet said wearily, and as simply as she could
told Mrs Ross the whole story of Tod – Davey – she would find it difficult to use his real name for some time –and the mystery that surrounded him. The woman listened enthralled, her mouth half open. ‘I thought I’d find somewhere he’d recognise if I tried hard enough,’ Harriet finished. ‘And he recognised this house –and that’s all I know. The rest I’ve got to find out from you.’

  ‘Well, I never.’ Mrs Ross was clearly delighted. ‘There’s a thing! Just like a film, ’nt it? Poor little sod –’

  ‘Please,’ Harriet said, sickened by the look of senile pleasure in Mrs Ross’s eyes. ‘Who is he? Where’s his mother?’

  ‘Well, that’s it, you see! He’s lost her – dead she is! Poor little thing!’

  Slowly, Harriet got the story out of her, patiently questioning, leading the garrulous old woman back to the point every time she strayed off it, which was very often.

  Davey’s mother had been a girl called Susan Brooks, and she and Davey had come to Mrs Ross’s house two years before. She had told Mrs Ross that her husband was dead – though Mrs Ross, with all the painfully acquired wisdom of her London background, didn’t believe for one moment that she ever had a husband. Mrs Ross had let her the two top front rooms ‘at a shockin’ low rent, mind you, but I was sorry for the poor cow –’ and they had moved in. She had made her living as a dressmaker, taking in work from a small wholesale dress factory round the corner, and a very poor living it had been.

  ‘Hardly set foot outside the place she didn’t, except to fetch and carry her work. And wouldn’t let the boy out neither. She wouldn’t let her Davey play out in the street, not her! – kids down here not good enough, I suppose – but I’d let him play out in my back yard sometimes. She’d take him walks around the streets now and again, but not too often. And she never talked to no one, nor got a letter or anything. I told her – only a few weeks before she died, poor thing, told her she’d have to let the boy go soon. Couldn’t keep him at her apron ends always, I told her. He’d have to go to school, one day – five he is, and the truant people’ll be after you, I told her. But there – she just smiled the way she did, all secret, and never argued or said anything –’