Crooked Heart (21 page)

S
he was trying to find her purse, pawing through greasy heaps of clothes in a room full of rubbish.

Her cheek hurt.

She saw blood on a blanket.

She saw a man with hairy nostrils holding an oversized tea strainer above her face. ‘Nice big breasts,' he said – she thought he said – ‘and you'll soon be asleep.'

She saw an old woman thrashing her skinny arms and screaming for Mary.

Her cheek still hurt, a steady pulse of pain.

She saw tea in a thick green mug, a paper straw angled temptingly towards her mouth. She tried to sip and tea cascaded down her front.

There was a crash and she opened her eyes to find the world sharp and bright. An enamel bowl had been slammed on to the table beside her, and a nurse was pouring hot water into it from a jug.

‘Can you manage to wash yourself, do you think, Mrs Overs?' asked the nurse.

‘I'm not Mrs Overs,' said Vee, and the words came out as a string of vowels; her mouth wouldn't close properly and her cheek felt the size of a cottage-loaf. She raised a hand to her face and felt a wad of cloth and a bandage that encircled her head.

‘You mustn't touch your dressing. If you want to ask anything you can write it down.'

The nurse extracted a tiny notebook from her pocket, together with a red pencil.

‘I'll be back,' she said, ‘after your wash.' She pulled a screen around the bed, and left Vee with a view of faded sunflowers.

She dabbed at herself with the flannel and memories came back in pieces. A letter handed to a bitch of a girl in a knitted hat. An empty wardrobe.

‘Mrs Elias, it's morning,' called the nurse, from a couple of yards away.

‘Morninaaaah.' The word stretched into a yawn. ‘I had such a nice sleep.'

‘I think a lot of people had such a nice sleep. There wasn't a raid last night.'

‘No raid?'

‘Not in London anyhow.'

‘No raid! Did you hear that, Mrs Thomas?'

‘What?'

‘There was no raid in London last night.'

‘No what?'

‘Raid.'

‘No bread?'

‘No. No RAID.'

‘Oh. May I have porridge then?'

‘Morning, Mrs Connell. Did you have a nice sleep?'

‘I didn't I'm afraid, nurse, I'm so used to the bombs now that it was much too quiet for me. I'm a bit funny that way.' There was a tinkle of self-deprecating laughter.

More pieces slotted into Vee's memory. A dropped torch. Shadows on a wall.

‘Oh
Christ
!' The words came out as a blunt bellow, the sound of a cow giving birth. She pushed aside the bedclothes and tried to stand and found that she seemed to be on a
merry-go-round, the floor rising and falling and the sunflowers revolving queasily. She dropped back on the bed, just as the nurse reappeared.

‘What's wrong, Mrs Overs?'

‘Where's Noel? Where is he?' The words were unintelligible, even to herself; she reached for the pencil and notebook.

I HAVE TO GO WHERE ARE MY CLOTHES?

‘You can't possibly leave the hospital until Mr Feggerty says you can, and that won't be for another few days, I'm sure.'

I HAVE TO FIND SOMEONE. A BOY

Vee underlined the last word, and then jabbed at the letters with her pencil, looking up at the nurse, trying to will her into understanding the urgency of her request.

‘Do you mean your nephew? The little boy with the ears?'

Vee nodded.

‘He's come in to visit for the last two evenings. I expect he'll be back tonight. We don't usually let children in on their own, but he was very well behaved.'

She whisked away again and Vee lay back, limp with relief. The pencil clattered to the ground and she could no more have reached for it than flown a Spitfire.

It was the breakfast orderly who retrieved the pencil, and who answered a few basic questions before leaving Vee with a bowl of milk pudding. The spoonfuls slithered around an unfamiliar gap in her teeth.

She was in Ward 22 of Hampstead General Hospital, she'd broken her cheekbone and suffered a concussion and today was a Tuesday, which meant that she'd lost half a week.

‘And the Eyeties are bombing Greece,' added the orderly,
collecting her tray; Vee had almost forgotten that there was a wider war. She felt for the dressing again and then cautiously explored the rest of her face; there was nothing missing, no holes, just a scabbed graze across her forehead.

After that, her thoughts seemed to come to a halt, and she jerked awake again to find the bed surrounded by doctors, her right cheek exposed to their view in a way that felt indecent.

‘Depressed closed fracture of the right maxilla and contusion to right temporal region secondary to direct trauma,' announced a boy with spots and a moustache like a finely plucked eyebrow. ‘Can you remember what happened to you, Mrs Overs?'

SOMETHING HIT ME

wrote Vee.

A BOMB

‘Not a bomb, no. Keep watching my finger.' He traced a rapid cross in the air above her. ‘And can you recite the alphabet for me? All right,' he added hastily, as she slushed and sprayed her way as far as G. ‘That's enough. It's only the swelling that's preventing you from speaking clearly; it should improve over the next couple of days. Dressing back on now and stitches out on Friday, Sister.' And they were off, trundling a trolley full of notes towards the next bed while nurses fluttered behind like gulls following a tractor.

She was asleep when Noel arrived, and she opened her eyes to see him staring down at her from about six inches away, his expression tense.

‘Are you awake?' he asked. ‘I mean, properly awake?'

She nodded. He was wearing a man's coat with rolled-up
sleeves, and she reached out and felt the material. Wool.

‘A woman at the tube station gave it to me. The nurse said you had concussion, which is when the brain gets shaken up in the skull. It causes clouded consciousness and memory loss. You kept opening your eyes yesterday but you weren't really seeing anything. What's six times nine?'

She mimed writing.

‘Six times nine,' he repeated, handing her the notebook and pencil.

36 WHERE ARE YOU STAYING? WHAT ARE YOU EATING?

‘That's not right, it's fifty-four. What's the capital of Sicily?' His voice was shrill, bullying; he was scared, she realized. She wrote:

AM NOT GOOD AT ARITHMETIC OR GEOGRAPHY. ASK ME HOW TO KNIT A SOCK.

‘Oh.' He let out a long breath. ‘I see what you mean. There's no point in giving me the sock answer, though. I wouldn't know if you were right.'

She pointed to a chair by the bed, and after a moment he sat down. ‘I've been sleeping in Hampstead tube station,' he said. ‘If you pretend you've been separated from your family then people give you food and things. During the day, I go to the library.'

YOU COULD GO TO YOUR UNC

‘No,' he said, reading upside down.

THEY'RE NOT BAD PEOPLE

He folded his arms and looked out of the window. At the next bed, Mrs Connell's daughter was peeling an apple for her mother and complaining about the avarice of the greengrocer.

‘Cup of tea, Mrs Overs?' asked the orderly.

‘Yes, please.'

She waited until the trolley had been pushed away again and then picked up her pencil.

WHY ARE THEY CALLING ME THAT NAME?

‘Because I told the ambulance driver you were my auntie Margery. I thought if we were related they'd let me go to the hospital with you, but they didn't. I think it's because they didn't want me telling anyone.'

‘Telling what?' she mouthed.

‘How you got hurt.'

She waited.

‘It was the door,' said Noel. ‘You got hit in the face by the ambulance door.'

She'd been thrown to the ground, taking Noel with her and he'd struggled to his knees in the black fog, shouting for help, hearing the groan of her breathing. The ambulance women had seemed more irritated than guilty, once it had been established that their victim was still alive. They'd loaded Vee into the back of the van and gone off to find more casualties and Noel had been handed over to a passing policeman.

‘I came to visit you the next day. And the day after.'

‘I know,' mouthed Vee.

She lifted her hand to her face and touched the dressing. Then she picked up the pencil again.

DOES IT LOOK BAD

He spoke reluctantly. ‘There was a bit of a dent.'

‘A dent?'

‘Actually, the correct medical term is “depression”. That's why they did the operation.'

‘A dent.' So she'd look different for ever, she thought. Ugly. Her vision blurred.

‘It doesn't matter,' Noel said. ‘I'd honestly rather have a dent than ears like Etruscan jug handles.'

That almost made her smile; she reached out and gave his elbow a pat and he looked down at his arm as if she'd just thrown paint at it.

‘I've brought a book with me,' he said. ‘It occurred to me that when I'm not feeling tip-top I like being read to. Would you like that?'

She nodded. Not that she'd had any experience of it.

‘It's an American detective story called
The Big Sleep
. I was looking for something that would hold the attention of an invalid and the librarian said it was a whip-crack read.'

He opened the book carefully. ‘I shan't attempt the accent,' he added, and cleared his throat. It was a long time since he'd read aloud; at the end of the first page he looked up to see if Mattie was listening, and saw Vee jolt into place. She nodded again, encouragingly.

‘Go on,' called Mrs Connell from the next bed, ‘it's very good so far.'

‘I think,' said Noel, ‘that Philip Marlowe is assuming that Taylor had something to do with the death of Geiger.'

‘How long since you cleaned your teeth?' asked Vee.

‘I had an apple yesterday.'

‘That's not what I asked. And when did you last wash your face?'

‘Ages. They don't have the facilities on the underground and I didn't have any money for a toothbrush.'

They were waiting at the bus stop a hundred yards from the
hospital; in the daylight, Noel's skin had a greyish tinge, peppered with smuts. Vee yearned for a handkerchief to spit on.

‘Of course it's possible,' said Noel, ‘that Geiger was killed by someone he was blackmailing. Don't you think?'

Vee nodded absently. The wind stung her injured cheek. The large dressing had been removed early that morning, the stitches tweaked out and she'd seen her face in the washroom mirror. It had been both better and worse than she'd feared: bruising, no obvious dent, but an iodine-daubed operation scar like a thick-lipped, complacent smile just beneath her cheekbone.

‘Lovely neat job,' one of the nurses had said, reapplying a smaller dressing. ‘Try using lanolin daily.'

Though it seemed to Vee that what constituted a ‘neat job' on someone's face would be considered an incompetent botch on a pair of trousers.

‘So sorry you're going,' Mrs Connell had said. ‘I wanted to hear the rest of the detective book. He's a card, your little nephew, isn't he?'

The card was currently looking up the road to see if the bus was coming. From this angle, Vee could see the back of his neck.

‘Soon as we get home, I'm going to run you a bath,' said Vee. ‘You can stay in it until you're the right colour again.'

‘If we get the 46 south,' said Noel, ‘we can take it as far as King's Cross, and then catch the train to St Albans. That way, you'll hardly have to walk at all.'

‘Did you hear what I said about the bath?'

‘Yes.'

‘Just because you've managed on your own for a few days doesn't mean that you don't need me to look after you. I think that sometimes you forget how old you are.'

‘I'm eleven.'

‘You're ten.'

He shook his head. ‘I was eleven the day before yesterday.'

It was ridiculous what made her cry these days; it was as if the blow from the ambulance door had unplugged something.

Noel was looking at her anxiously.

‘I'll make you a birthday cake,' she said, wiping her eyes.

‘Oh, I don't care about
birthdays
,' said Noel, dismissively. ‘Don't worry about missing that. Mattie said that we should celebrate each glad moment as it comes.'

‘I'll make you a glad moment cake, then. If I can get any eggs.'

When the bus came, a very old gentleman stood up to give Vee his seat, and she was glad to take it; bed-rest had made jellies of her legs. Noel stood in the aisle beside her, book in hand.

‘Diversions taking place,' shouted the lady conductor. ‘Don't thank us, thank Mr Goering.'

They passed a lorry being loaded up with rubble; next to it was a lamp-post bent almost in half, so that it looked like a giraffe peering in through the bus window.

‘That's right where our bomb dropped,' said Noel. ‘I remember seeing that lamp-post when the dust started to clear.'

None of the remaining houses in the street had any glass in the windows, or much in the way of roof slates, but there were still people living in them. One woman was scrubbing her doorstep, looking quite cheerful. Mrs Connell in the next bed at the hospital had informed Vee that it was good luck to have a bomb in your street, since the Germans never dropped two in the same place.

Beside her, Noel turned a page.

‘I'm just glancing ahead,' he said. ‘Getting the gist of it. It'll be easier to read aloud if I know roughly what's coming.'

‘You'll have to return that to the library,' said Vee.

‘I can post it.'

‘Stamps have to be paid for.'

She closed her eyes for a minute or two and then opened them as the bus jogged over a pothole.

‘Look,' said Noel. ‘I bet that was the one before ours.'