The Touch of Innocents Read online

  Then he had joined her, bearing a large leather-backed book.

  ‘Here she is.’ His finger traced across the page. ‘Yes, I do remember her. I performed the autopsy myself – we have to, you realize, with every unexpected death.’ His tone was full of sympathy. He had split and sundered hundreds of bodies; on the table they were to him just another day’s engrossing forensic work, an endless stream of testaments to Man’s folly, brutality, and plain bad luck, but he had never forgotten that behind every statistic and restitched corpse lay someone else’s grief. Or almost every corpse. Occasionally there were those who seemed to have arrived direct from nowhere, like the baby.

  ‘She’s marked here as an Unidentified Female Child – approximately six months of age – the night of 1st November – she died of a sub-dural haematoma, I’m afraid. There was a little light bruising on one arm but no other serious injury. She would have felt absolutely no pain,’ he reassured her. ‘See for yourself, if you would like.’

  He handed her the register. Her eyes wandered across the double page, halting at each entry, the details, medical terms, signatures, dates, before moving on. As they did so they left a trail, two small drops of tears which fell on the pages.

  So it was true.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologized, wiping the pages dry. ‘I’ll be all right.’

  ‘Of course, Mrs Dean. I understand. You know, she was a very beautiful baby,’ he continued, feeling the need to offer further comfort. ‘I remember her very clearly. Her face was very peaceful. She had lovely dark curls, reminded me a lot of my own little boy.’

  Izzy wiped her eyes and turned to face him. ‘No, Mr Russell, she had red hair. Took after me.’

  ‘But dark, surely …’ he began to protest, before realizing it would serve no purpose. ‘I’m sorry, I felt sure … Must be my mistake.’ Yet his voice lacked the edge of conviction. He was humouring her.

  ‘My little baby had red hair,’ she repeated, voice wooden. A coil of chaos was beginning to turn inside her.

  ‘Of course, you must be right. Foolish of me. I …’ He hesitated, stopped. He found something important to study at the end of his fingertips.

  Inside Izzy there was no more place for words, for logic, for a man’s explanation of things. She felt as she had that very first time she had known Bella. The faintest fluttering, deep within, a butterfly, a stretching of wings. Life. And from that touch of life a tremor of excitement and hope lengthened throughout her entire being.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I can be of much more help.’

  ‘Mr Russell, you’ve been more help than you could ever believe.’

  Unusually for a man whom others tended to hold in some kind of anxiety-based awe, the hospital psychologist was feeling perturbed. Already the therapeutic glow of his long weekend spent annihilating pheasants was beginning to fade as his systems re-engaged gear for another offensive against emotional and psychological incontinence. He had been summoned in peremptory fashion to deal with a patient he should already have got to know considerably better than he had, but, with the local health authority stretching resources ever more thinly upon the ground, how could he be expected to deal with every inmate? Particularly one who the clinical records showed was recovering exceptionally well, yet who was turning out to be no more than another overwrought woman clutching at unreality.

  Izzy was seated in a utilitarian consulting room which was undersized and distinctly cramped. In front of her, perched on the edge of his desk and trying to look informal while at the same time achieving the height which would give him dominance, was the psychologist. Behind him in the chair sat her neurologist, Weatherup, while to her rear she could sense rather than see the hovering presence of a hospital administrator. They had her surrounded.

  The psychologist waved his glasses at her. When he felt harassed he had a habit of repeatedly gesticulating with them to emphasize a point before ramming them back on. To assist in this process he had a remarkably flat and bony bridge to his nose which in wistful moments he thought tended to make him look rather owlish, but which to Izzy, looking up at his perch from the discomfort of her sagging and foam-upholstered chair, gave him the air of a buzzard at prey.

  ‘Look, Miss Dean. Izzy.’ He attempted a smile and leaned forward in what he took to be a confiding manner, but which to her was more like the buzzard reaching for its breakfast. ‘Perhaps it’s my fault; I should have got to talk with you more fully before now, but I wasn’t expecting you to leave hospital quite so soon. You must realize that the feelings you are experiencing are entirely natural. Having trouble accepting the loss of your baby. Not being able to grieve properly. After all, one minute she’s there with you and the next – at least the next as far as you are concerned – she’s been dead many days and you’ve had no chance to say your goodbyes. We understand, really we do.’

  He braced his shoulders and the spectacles were thrust back on his nose.

  ‘But you must try to grasp the fact that in this country we don’t make mistakes like that.’

  He had the patronizing manner of any number of public men who conducted interviews while staring at her ankles or the bulges in her blouse, unable to accept that a woman could comprehend or even be truly interested in the depths of his answers. Often-times in their anxiety to act out what they regarded as the strong sexual role model they would fall off guard, giving up far more than they would ever have considered providing to a male reporter. But this one was giving up nothing; he had nothing to give, other than excuses and platitudes.

  ‘We have systems for such things, you see,’ he continued. ‘Patients are tagged with a plastic ID bracelet from the minute they come into hospital and that ID stays with them until they leave. It can’t drop off or be lost, it has to be cut away; there’s no scope for confusion. You must trust us on this one.’

  She didn’t. ‘I thought I read some while ago about parents being sent home from a maternity hospital with the wrong babies.’

  ‘Wasn’t that in America?’

  ‘Bournemouth, I believe.’

  ‘I’m sure I’ve heard about it happening – only very occasionally even there – in America, but never here. Not in England.’

  ‘In Bournemouth,’ she insisted.

  ‘But not in this hospital, Miss Dean,’ the administrator joined in. To question was to criticize, and it was his system she was questioning. ‘There weren’t two different babies in this case. Just yours. So it couldn’t have happened, I’m afraid.’

  ‘The confusion over your baby’s hair colour was a simple error of memory, Izzy,’ Weatherup intervened. ‘After all, hair colour and the like aren’t recorded in the mortuary register. It was just a stumble of memory. Goodness, you of all people should understand that.’ He tried to raise a reassuring chuckle which became impaled and died upon her direct and very professional green eyes.

  ‘I’d like to question the other staff. The nurses on duty that night.’

  ‘You’d be welcome, of course you would. In fact, I’d recommend it as part of your therapy.’

  ‘Therapy? To forget?’

  ‘To come to terms, Izzy,’ Weatherup continued.

  ‘Gentlemen, I have no intention of coming to terms, as you put it, if that means brushing aside these inconsistencies.’

  ‘There are no inconsistencies,’ the administrator joined in with a protest, his voice rising a semi-tone in impatience. ‘We’re talking about nothing more than the confused memory of a technician whom you took by surprise in a part of the hospital where you shouldn’t have been.’ He was growing exasperated, he didn’t care for anyone prying into the efficiency of his systems, least of all a foreigner and a patient who within minutes hopefully would be on his discharge list and no longer the hospital’s responsibility.

  ‘This isn’t getting us very far,’ Weatherup intervened, keen to get the conversation back on track. ‘Izzy, talk to the nurses, if that’s what you want. Find out how much they really care – and care
d for Bella.’

  ‘But remember we’ve had perhaps a thousand patients through the doors of Accident & Emergency since you were there,’ the administrator interjected. ‘You can’t possibly expect them to remember every detail.’

  ‘You must have those details recorded somewhere.’

  ‘They would be in the post-mortem report …’ the neurologist began.

  ‘I’d like to see it.’

  ‘They contain all sorts of medical details, some of which you wouldn’t understand and others which as a mother you simply wouldn’t enjoy.’

  ‘I’m a journalist,’ she reminded him forcefully.

  ‘PM reports are confidential,’ the administrator snapped. ‘Especially to journalists.’

  ‘I …’ She was about to tell them about Benjamin, but stopped. She knew it would be of no use. A child’s recollection set against their prejudice. They had closed minds and, anyway, Benjy’s garbled words were scarcely intelligible to her, let alone to flaccid men such as these. It took a woman, or at least a better man than these, to acknowledge that simply because someone was less than forty – indeed, less than four – their opinions might yet carry weight.

  The psychologist, too, had concluded that the interchange was going nowhere. The spectacles were already waggling at her. ‘You must accept, my dear, that emotional doubts are absolutely natural in a woman who has been through a harrowing experience such as yours. They are to be expected. Quite normal. What we have to do is to enable you to release your anxieties, to come to terms with the tragic events. What I am going to do is to recommend that we arrange for you, via our excellent social services staff, to visit the scene of the accident. It will be painful, of that there is no doubt, but it will help act as some sort of … catharsis, a purgative for your doubts and emotions. Help to face up to the reality of your baby’s loss. And we shall arrange for you to talk to some of those who would have helped take care of little …’ – he glanced down at his notes – ‘Isabella.’

  ‘I’ve already done that. I talked to the mortuary technician. Didn’t help too much, did it?’

  Damn the woman and her intransigence! The glasses were rammed back on his nose. Already the bridge was beginning to shine brightly, to appear angry and sore, belying the fixed smile which split his features. ‘And I suggest that we have a regular session, just the two of us, every other day while you are an out-patient here. Get to know each other.’

  ‘And I’m sure we can prescribe something to help you sleep – if you feel you need it, that is,’ Weatherup offered, trying to be helpful.

  That’s it, she mused, the traditional medical response. Surround and sedate.

  The psychologist had dived into the pocket of his waistcoat and produced a small appointments diary. ‘Let’s start our counselling on Mon … No. How about Tuesday?’ His silver-encased pencil was poised ready to strike. She was about to be arranged, filed, written in and written off.

  God, but she knew she needed help. An angry and insatiable dog was scratching away within her, a mongrel whose father was pain and whose mother was Izzy’s own sense of guilt that somehow she had been responsible for her baby’s fate, that she had let Bella down.

  She would find relief only in facts, yet she knew there were no answers lying on this man’s couch or sitting at his feet upon his undersprung chair. She had to accept the possibility that he may after all be right, that the neurotic and emotionally unstable woman reflected in his bespectacled eyes was deluding herself, clutching at illusions in an attempt to by-pass reality and create a hope and a world which simply didn’t exist. Bella was dead, almost beyond a reasonable doubt.

  But Izzy was a professional sceptic, trained to be unreasonable, to believe no evidence that couldn’t be grasped with both hands and dragged out of shadows into the remorseless light of day.

  She was also a woman who would bleed rather than be snowed under by the patronizing concerns of the male Establishment.

  Be reasonable, they said. Yet how could a mother be reasonable?

  They were looking at her, waiting, the silver pencil still poised. There were times to strike, times to dissemble, times simply to lie. She had their attention. She settled back into the foam-filled embrace of the chair, crossed her legs in a manner which raised the hem of her second-hand skirt to expose her knees, and smiled. If they insisted on a silly, simpering woman, that’s what she would let them think they had.

  ‘Of course. You’re right. I’ll telephone to arrange an appointment. Soon as I’ve settled in.’

  The psychiatrist braced his shoulders in victory. He pushed his spectacles back up the bridge of his nose, put away his diary and silver pencil, relished his small triumph. He thought he had the measure of Isadora Dean.

  Bloody fool.

  They approached the Devereux home through a long avenue of dogwood, its blood-tipped tendrils reaching up through the decay of autumn like … What? The prospect of life and hope? Or flesh-stripped fingers piercing through a burial mound? Izzy couldn’t decide.

  Devereux’s driver had been waiting for her; indeed, as a result of her foray into the mortuary and diversion amongst the medical profession at Weschester General he had been waiting some considerable time. He seemed gruff, taciturn, his manner suggesting impatience, or was it simply the innate reserve of country folk when dealing with strangers?

  In any event conversation was impeded since, while he drove, she was left to sit in the back seat clutching Benjamin, who was petrified at the prospect of another car journey into the unknown. Not that the Devereux vehicle bore any substantial resemblance to the shattered Renault: a Rolls Royce Silver Cloud, nearly forty years old, a classic combination of blues and grey with original albeit cracked leather upholstery, of the vintage which set idiosyncratic yet enduring standards of design before luxury cars began their inexorable progress towards computer-induced anonymity. Devereux travelled in style.

  The gardener-cum-chauffeur was named Chinnery, that much she managed to extract, but no first name. Around forty, hirsute, dark frown, short-cropped hairstyle with tattoos on his forearms, and working clothes which were well worn but practical and clean. Only his boots betrayed the slightest sign of soil, where the mud had been carefully scraped from around the sole leaving a damp tide mark. She guessed he was ex-military, other ranks, used to taking orders but no experience of socializing in the officers’ mess. And the same weathered, suspicious face she had seen peering out at checkpoints and from behind barricades in every war zone she had filmed, where the hoe and sickle had all too frequently been interchangeable with a Kalashnikov and ammunition belt and where mounds of freshly dug earth betrayed anything but the beauty of an English garden.

  The Devereux house, like his car, was large and superbly appointed. An old brick-and-sandstone farmhouse with a gently beaten face that had undergone many modifications over the centuries but which now settled under a thick and freshly trimmed covering of thatch that the winds of winter had as yet had no opportunity to bedraggle. The setting was magnificent, with views over many hundreds of acres of wood and farmland to the spires of the small town of Bowminster, nestling below in the protective embrace of gently sculpted hills. Beyond Bowminster, with its toy-like rooftops and smoke curling up from a dozen wood fires, perhaps some twelve miles away and through a cleft in the surrounding hills she could see the grey waters of the English Channel.

  This was Hardy country, the very heart of it, beauty and timeless mystery that lingered in the rural shade. And personal tragedy, always in Hardy there was personal tragedy. Was there ever a happy ending? She couldn’t remember.

  As they had driven through the winding avenue of dogwood and into the cobbled courtyard surrounded by pleached limes, she had grown uneasy. The exclusiveness of the setting meant isolation and reminded her that she was alone. She was a woman used to the bustle of the DC Beltway or the suicidal rush of an autobahn, clouds of traffic fumes rather than scented sea breeze; the bucolic tempo of Bowminster encouraged introspection, med
itation, relaxation. Not throttling out the truth about Bella.

  As the Cloud braked gently to a halt she found herself drumming her fingers in impatience, but relief in the form of the outside, familiar world was at hand. In the courtyard was parked a black Ford saloon which, judging by the fresh mud thrown up against the bodywork, had come a considerable distance and in something of a hurry. It bore diplomatic plates.

  The driver emerged, a diminutive but meticulously presented man with undersized shoulders and overtrimmed moustache who scurried over to open her door. His bearing, head high and chest thrust forward above awkward, spindly legs, reminded her of the strut of a chicken. From the cut of his suit and the length of his trousers, which showed altogether too much sock for Europeàn tastes, she guessed he was American. Kentucky Fried.

  ‘Pomfritt. Harry Pomfritt, Miss Dean,’ he introduced himself with diction slightly too precise. East coast. Private school. ‘Consular Officer from the Embassy. Mr Devereux asked me to meet you. Delighted you’re out and about.’ He suffered a slight lisp that became more apparent when excited or ill at ease.

  Hoping to be helpful, he reached for Benjy, who shrank back, in fear of being stolen away from his mother once more.

  ‘Perhaps not,’ the official agreed. ‘May I help you with your luggage?’

  ‘Hardly. I’m wearing it.’

  Pomfritt stepped back and smoothed his moustache. This was clearly not his time to bat. He remained quiet until Chinnery, also without a word, had left them seated around the refectory table in the large flagstoned kitchen.

  Pomfritt decided it was time to intervene once more. He clapped his hands enthusiastically. ‘I could murder a cup of good English tea,’ he contributed.

  The implication was clear; instinctively, with neither conscious deliberation nor intention to offend, he assumed the woman would make it. It was scarcely a novel reaction. Camera crews around the world would conclude without debate that, as the token female, Izzy was the one to organize the wake-up calls, book the restaurant, act as secretary or social hostess. After all, it was only natural …