Maddie Read online

  ‘He’s stinking with it,’ Jay said bitterly. ‘And it’s all his. Every lousy cent of it. Seven of us and we all have to go to him cap in hand to ask favours. Why the hell else do you think I’m stuck here in this stinking country, short of everything that makes life worth living? Even my mother lets him treat us that way – it makes me sick –’

  ‘If that’s all the problem is, we can sort that out.’ She sounded very offhand. ‘I told you, I can help you make money.’

  ‘A thousand pounds, you said. Four and a half thousand dollars –’

  ‘That’s just for starters.’ She smiled at him sweetly and pulled her bare feet up to tuck them beneath her dressing gown hem, curling her arms round her knees so that she could rest her chin on them. ‘I told you, I didn’t know it was so important. Now I do, we’ll soon sort it all out.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘We’ll be married, then?’

  He laughed. ‘Oh, stop all that! Wait and see how things turn out, okay? Who can say what we’ll want to do this time next year? As long as my pockets are in my father’s charge, I’m in no position to make any promises. But I’ll come on like Sam Goldwyn and give you a definite maybe. How’s that?’

  ‘And we become lovers?’ She still sat there in the big armchair with her chin perched on her knees and her arms entwined round her legs, looking very young and vulnerable and he smiled then and shook his head.

  ‘I got into enough trouble down that road in Boston. Why the hell do you think I’m here? I want no pregnant girls looking for obliging doctors this side of the Atlantic, thank you very much.’

  She managed not to show in her face how much that hurt.

  ‘There are ways of making sure that doesn’t happen,’ she said, as airily as she could. ‘People don’t have to get pregnant.’ She knew that was so from the hints of such matters she had found in her women’s magazines. Quite what they were she didn’t know, but there were ways of finding out. And find out she would.

  He looked genuinely shocked. ‘I told you, Maddie. I’m a good Catholic! I can’t use things like that. It’d be as much as I dared.’

  ‘But if a girl gets pregnant you don’t mind her finding an obliging doctor? Is that all right for good Catholics?’

  ‘Listen, I won’t even talk about it with you! Where do you get off, asking things like that? Mind your tongue, or you can go to hell with all your schemes, however much money there might be in them.’ He had gone brick-red suddenly and she lifted her eyebrows at him and laughed softly.

  ‘Nice to see I can make you take something I say really seriously. All right, I apologise if I’ve offended you.’

  ‘Well, okay,’ he said sulkily after a long pause. ‘But watch your tongue in future. If you can. Which I’m beginning to doubt.’

  ‘Oh, I can if I have to,’ she said cheerfully and smiled at him brilliantly. ‘I dare say I’ll find a way to sort that out anyway. I mean, making sure I don’t get pregnant. I wouldn’t want that either. Not yet.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’ He sounded sardonic. ‘I’m beginning to think there wasn’t anything you didn’t want right away.’

  ‘Just you,’ she said softly. ‘Just you. And you might as well give in, because you’re mine now.’

  ‘We’ll see about that. Anyway, I didn’t come here to talk about such stuff. If you want to tell me about the money thing, okay. Otherwise I’m heading for home to write my letters. It’s been a crazy waste of time to come over here. I must have been mad.’

  ‘Oh, no you weren’t,’ she said swiftly, and uncurled herself and came out of her chair in one smooth movement. ‘Now just you listen to me. Chocolate, that’s the thing. I heard Daddy talking to Ambrose about chocolate last week. And the thing is –’ and she began to explain it all to him and, at first with little interest but then with gradually increasing absorption, he listened. And as he did, slowly the scowl that had mantled his face melted away and was replaced by a look of smooth pleasure. Because it really was going to be very simple indeed to make that thousand pounds.

  November 1986

  It must, Annie thought involuntarily, have been a beautiful face, once. The eyelids were wide and heavy and even though she was now clearly well into late middle age, were smooth and showed no signs of sagging. The eyes beneath them were dark brown, very rich and deep in colour, and it seemed hard to believe that they saw, nothing as they stared so fixedly into the middle distance. But it was clear they did not, because when Joe bent to speak to her, putting his face very close to hers, her gaze did not flicker for one moment. She just was not seeing whatever it was she appeared to be looking at. The eyes seemed to be intelligent and yet there was no hint of any thought there.

  She had a high broad forehead and that too was smooth and expressionless and beneath her eyes the cheekbones lifted high and round and were as smooth as the forehead. The mouth was wide and full and, Annie thought, must once have been what is called mobile. She could imagine it moving, quirking, the corners flicking as she spoke, but all there was now was stillness, the lips half parted over strong yellowish teeth. The hair was a thick cloud of grey frizz that stood out over her head like an aureole and where the sun from the window caught the edges they glittered silver.

  She was wearing a sacklike dress of washed-out blue cotton and her legs, surprisingly thin ones, were encased in wrinkled brown stockings and her feet were thrust into brown slippers with folded-over edges and ridiculous red woollen pompoms on the front. She had a red cardigan with torn pockets and missing buttons draped across her shoulders and her hands, with long unmanicured nails, were clasped in her lap, and Annie stared at the extraordinarily long fingers and again seemed to see behind her immobility the movement they were clearly designed to make. They should be active hands, she thought, hands that waved round expressively when their owner talked, the fingers flickering and busy, rather than slumped there dead in her lap like a tangle of twigs from a dead tree.

  ‘Maddie,’ Joe said softly and then more loudly, ‘Maddie!’ but the woman showed no awareness at all, just rocking gently backwards and forwards as she had been all the time. There was no change in the rhythm of her movements, nor was there any reaction in those dark eyes.

  ‘I’ve tried all sorts of ways to get a response,’ Joe said. ‘So have the nurses, of course. We’ve tried to startle her, we’ve delivered noises so loud they must hurt, and tried delivering mildly painful stimuli. Pinches and so forth.’ He shook his head. ‘She is really quite extraordinarily detached. We thought at first it was control, but no one I think could maintain that sort of control so unremittingly. It’s more complex than that. She’s found out how to withdraw totally, and stay there as long as she likes.’

  ‘Like hypnosis,’ Annie said, and he flicked a sharp glance at her and then nodded approvingly as though she were a medical student who had shown unexpected evidence of intelligence.

  ‘Exactly like hypnosis. She’s in some sort of self-induced trance and no one has ever been able to get her out of it. But she gets herself out when it suits her –’ He looked at his watch and then across the ward towards the long table at the far end to which patients were beginning to wander in a straggling group. ‘Watch this. Lunchtime.’

  The woman sat and rocked, her gaze unwavering, and Annie stood and waited, passively, watching her. She was so very odd; not in the way the man still standing and making obscene gestures from the window was odd, nor like the weeping girl in the corner – at whom Annie could not bear to look, her pain was so vivid – but in a remote and special way. Annie actually wanted to know what was going to happen, was interested, and that was an odd feeling. Because it had been a long time since she could remember feeling the faintest flicker of interest in anyone at all, even herself.

  A nurse came in through the big double doors, pushing a high-sided chrome trolley, and the group of people at the long table seemed to waken up a little, becoming more alert, and those who had not yet reached the table moved towards it, even the man at the
window. The weeping girl did not, until another nurse came into the ward and went and fetched her and led her to the table, but she went willingly enough.

  A couple more nurses appeared and there was a sudden clatter as the trolley was opened and metal tureens and food containers were unlidded and the serving of the meal began. Some of the patients began to chatter now, and there was a semblance of cheerfulness about the place. Even the weeping girl had accepted a plate of food and was sitting staring at it, not weeping now, though she wasn’t eating either.

  ‘Nurse Collins!’ Joe called and one of the nurses, a tall girl with a smile so wide and so tooth-filled that she looked like a television advertisement, Annie thought, detached herself from the group at the table and came across to them.

  ‘Try and get her to join the others, nurse, will you?’ Joe said softly and inclined his head at Maddie and the girl stared at him and then laughed.

  ‘That’ll be the day, Dr Labosky!’ she said but obediently bent over the chair and put her hand on the woman’s shoulder.

  ‘Come on, Maddie, dinnertime! Lovely meat pie and mashed carrots today, you’ll like that. And you can have some chips with it if you’ll come over to the table – come on, Maddie, you must be hungry!’

  There was no response at all, and the nurse shook her shoulder a little more roughly.

  ‘Now, come on, Maddie! It’s time to eat it while it’s hot! I’ll help you.’ And with a practised twist of her shoulders the girl set her arm behind Maddie and urged her out of the chair, lifting her in strong young arms.

  Maddie made no effort at all to cooperate. She just hung there in the nurse’s arms, her head held foursquare on her shoulders, but otherwise as limp as a sack of dead rocks. Her legs flopped under her like a doll’s, her arms hung, hands still clasped, in front of her and her eyes still stared at the same mid-distant point. And the nurse lifted again, grunting slightly and then, breathlessly, let her go, and Maddie settled in the chair again; like a sack full of hay this time, smoothly and lightly, until she was back in exactly the same position; and began to rock again at precisely the same speed.

  Annie stared at her and then looked at Joe. ‘But what happens? Surely she must eat?’

  ‘Of course she must. And she will. Will you feed her, nurse?’

  ‘But you know what happens if we –’ the nurse began and Joe shook his head. ‘Indulge me. I want to show Miss Matthews the task she is to take on. If you’d be so good –’

  The nurse made a little grimace and went back to the food trolley and returned with a plate of food, the meat pie and the chips and the carrots neatly arranged, and with a knife and fork wrapped in a paper napkin in her other hand.

  She sat down beside the woman’s chair and smoothed the napkin over the neck of the cardigan and the blue cotton dress and then, with one more glance at Joe, in which irritation and some embarrassment seemed to vie for main components, set about forking up some of the food. She speared a chip, and tried to put it into the woman’s mouth, but the lax lips remained exactly as they had been, not moving. It was as though she were totally unaware of the fork prodding at her, of the smell of the food, which was, Annie realised, far from disagreeable, however unpleasant the cooking had smelled outside, or of its warmth. She just sat oblivious.

  ‘Ah, there you are, Cynthia!’ Joe said in a cheerful voice and Annie turned her head to see a small woman neatly dressed in a grey flannel suit with a white blouse and a lacy jabot at the collar, all immaculately clean, hovering at her side. She had a large leather bag over one arm and was watching the nurse and her efforts to feed the woman in the chair with her face creased with anxiety.

  ‘Thank you, Nurse Collins,’ Joe said then. ‘Let Cynthia take over then,’ and the nurse made a grimace and got up, gratefully, and at once the little woman in the businesslike suit scuttled to sit in the chair she had vacated.

  She picked up the fork and leaning over, fixed the handle into Maddie’s fingers, and at once, slowly but definitely, the hand moved and took the fork, and the head, hitherto erect, bent forwards so that the hair fell over the forehead obscuring the eyes beneath their heavy lids.

  Moving slowly and neatly, Maddie began to feed herself, eating steadily until all the food was gone, and then, as the little woman who still sat beside her leaned over and took the fork from her hand and removed the plate from her lap, curled her fingers once more and settled them back where they had been. And Cynthia got to her feet and quietly went trotting over to the table to take away the empty plate and the knife and fork.

  ‘She’ll bring her some pudding and then a cup of tea, and the same thing will happen,’ Joe said softly. ‘And then, after that, she’ll make her stand up and lead her to the lavatories and then bring her back. And there she will sit until suppertime when it’ll happen again. And at bedtime Cynthia will take her to her bed and undress her and Maddie will climb in and lie there until the morning when Cynthia will get her up and dress her. It’s an extraordinary thing to see, and there’s no one else at all who can do it. If anyone else tries it’s the way it was with Nurse Collins. Total refusal to cooperate.’

  ‘Has Cynthia been here as long as Maddie, then?’

  ‘Oh, no. She’s been here just three months. And she’ll be going next week to the hostel on the Larcombe Estate.’

  ‘So what –’

  Joe nodded. ‘What did she do before? She had another patient looking after her. And when Cynthia goes she’ll find someone else. I don’t know how she does it, but she always does. She never asks, never says thank you, but all the years she’s been here it’s been this way, apparently. A total refusal to accept nurses, a willingness to accept the help of other patients, but only carefully selected patients.’

  ‘And next week –’

  He nodded again. ‘Next week, when Cynthia leaves, someone else will be chosen. Or will choose to do it. Yes.’

  ‘And you want it to be me.’ She said it flatly, without any expression in her voice at all.

  He hesitated for just a moment. ‘It did seem to be an opportunity. If you are willing to spend the days here, getting her up in the morning, seeing that she eats, goes to the lavatory, washes and so forth – perhaps you can break down the barrier.’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘Because of your own, Annie,’ he said softly. And now she did look at him for a brief moment before shifting her gaze back to Maddie.

  ‘Some of us need barriers,’ she said harshly. ‘She does. Maybe it would be cruel to take hers away, if she’s safe inside it.’

  ‘Maybe,’ he agreed. ‘If we didn’t have what Gresham calls a disposal problem we might take a chance on that and let her go on as she is. After so many years of trying to get to her, and failing, it would seem the only answer. But we do have a disposal problem, so we have to do something. Don’t we?’

  ‘And the notes you mentioned? The old notes from her past time here? What about them?’ Annie was still watching the woman in the chair, seeming almost mesmerized by her rhythmic motion.

  ‘Oh, yes, we’ll find them. They’re part of the task, aren’t they? Something the journalist in you will enjoy –’

  ‘I’m not a journalist.’

  ‘Of course you are. You may have been kept from it for longer than you should have been, but it’s the work you were trained for. Investigative journalism must be very – exciting. A bit like investigating a patient to make a diagnosis. There are more things in common between us than you might imagine, Annie.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ she said harshly. ‘All right. Where are these notes? If I’m going to do it I might as well get on with it.’

  5

  November 1986

  Maddie, remembering. Maddie holding on as hard as she could to her vision of the way they had worked together, she and Jay, and holding on to the memory of that very first deal of all, the chocolate deal that had started it all. But the pictures kept sliding away, the pictures she needed to make it happen, and anger began to lift in her. She felt as t
hough she was being pulled about, being prodded and shouted at, and she had to work too hard at locking all that out to hold on to her remembering, and she felt the anger grow inside her, hot and tight, and wanted to shout at them.

  Not that she did, of course. She learned long ago the importance of not letting them know anything of what was struggling inside her head; never shout, never react, just be. So she didn’t shout and she didn’t react, and at last the proper person came and her fork was put in her hand and she could eat the tasteless stuff and then forget it and start the memories going again; and at last they left her alone.

  But even after that it didn’t work. She dredged deep inside her head for the pictures; there she was with Jay, sitting in her father’s drawing room in the Regent’s Park flat, talking to him of what she had heard when her father had spoken to Ambrose, explaining how he could, by making two telephone calls and one visit, arrange the transfer of the fifty cases of chocolate and collect the commission. She had to tell Jay that there was no need to worry; Ambrose had been told several days ago and had said he’d get on to it right away, but of course he hadn’t. Indolence was Ambrose’s middle name, she had to tell Jay, with all the amused big sisterly contempt she could, so if and when he did finally make the contact and was told the deal had already been struck, he wouldn’t say anything, least of all to his father. He’d know it was his fault that there had been the delay, and would assume that his father had gone over his head – or behind his back, whichever way he preferred to look at it – and would forget all about it, grateful for silence. No one need ever know it was Jay who had handled it, she had to explain, so he could make the money for himself, easily. Himself and her.

  But she couldn’t explain, not today. Today the whole place was much too busy, somehow, and she sat there with her gaze fixed as usual, not looking at anything, but still seeing it all, and it all appeared as it always did. People, ugly stupid people, milling about aimlessly, and the nurses bustling, pretending to care but not giving a damn inside, as she knew better than anyone, but somehow it was different, today. There was a buzz and she tried to escape from it back into her memories, but knew that she was defeated. The buzz was too loud. And she sat there rocking as she always did, listening and watching with those eyes that no one ever saw flicker, but which missed very little.