The Distant Home (4 page)

A few hours later Sally and Bobby were whizzing up and down the footpath of Middle Street, both now more confident on their rollerblades. Maria and Jim were working in their front garden, but only partly because it needed work, the other reason being to keep an eye on Bobby and Sally as they got accustomed to their blades.

Sometimes Sally and Bobby had to speak quite severely to Jim and Maria about their tendency to be over-protective. They always apologized and promised to be less protective next time, but somehow it never turned out that way.

Mrs Webster made her appearance, coming out of her house with two gift-wrapped parcels and her special weeding device. No one in Middle Street had ever seen anything quite like this device, which in appearance was very like her walking cane, and no one had ever been able to buy one like it. Mrs Webster used to say she got it ‘where she used to live’ (and even Sally and Bobby had never been able to discover where that was, except that it was a long way away from Middle Street). When pressed, Mrs Webster would say that her weeder was so old they probably didn’t make them any more.

At first, everyone thought it was a strange-looking poison wand, but that didn’t explain why the weeds gave off a little puff of smoke before they went black and died. Sally once suggested it was a kind of laser gun, but Bobby told her not to be silly—little old ladies who lived in Middle Street didn’t carry laser guns. Even he knew that much.

Anyway, this morning, Mrs Webster came out with her gift-wrapped parcels and her weed zapper, put the parcels on the rocking chair on her front porch, and began dealing with the dandelions in her lawn.

For a little while, Bobby and Sally did not notice Mrs Webster working away quietly zapping weeds with her weeder, but when they did see her, they coasted up to her fence to show her their rollerblades.

‘Pretty cool, eh, Mrs Webster?’

‘Radical,’ said Mrs Webster. Mrs Webster liked to keep up with what she called ‘changes to the language’. She leaned over the fence and examined the blades on Sally and Bobby’s feet. ‘Why didn’t they come up with them sooner? The wheel may have been invented late, but it’s been around some time.’

‘I heard some ice hockey player had them made up for him so’s he could practise off-season,’ Sally said.

‘I didn’t know that,’ said Bobby. ‘How come you knew that?’

‘I read it somewhere,’ said Sally.

‘That’s cheating,’ said Bobby, his eyes devouring the gift-wrapped parcels on the rocking chair.

‘Oh, I nearly forgot,’ said Mrs Webster. ‘I must be losing my marbles.’

‘That’ll be the day,’ Bobby said to Sally as Mrs Webster strode over to her porch and picked up the parcels.

‘Sally … and Bobby,’ Mrs Webster said on her way back to them, a parcel held out to each of them.

As they took the parcels Sally held hers up on the palm of one hand as if she were trying to guess its weight.

‘Don’t tell me, let me guess, it’s a book about a girl like me who has to go off on some quest and kind of grows up while she’s doing it.’

‘That’s what all proper books are about,’ said Mrs Webster.

Bobby grinned. This was a game the three of them played every year. ‘And mine’s, ah … let me think. A computer game where the trick to winning is you have to sacrifice the thing you really want to keep.’

‘Sure thing,’ said Mrs Webster. ‘That’s what all proper games are about.’

Bobby and Sally now chimed in together, beating Mrs Webster to it. ‘Because that’s what life’s about.’

All three of them were laughing, Mrs Webster a little ruefully. ‘I must’ve said that a lot of times, uh?’ she said.

Sally smiled. ‘A few thousand.’

‘Was your life about that?’ said Bobby.

Mrs Webster looked at him indignantly. ‘“Was”? I’m dead? I’m pushing up daisies?’ She leaned in, glaring at him fiercely. ‘Let me tell you young man, that is precisely what my life’s about.’

‘Crusades? Tasks? Monsters?’ Sally’s question was interested, not challenging the truth of what Mrs Webster was saying.

Mrs Webster looked off across the fence to where Jim and Maria had stopped their work in order to listen, and when she spoke she seemed to be speaking to them as much as to Sally and Bobby. ‘Monsters aren’t all scales and fangs and green slime you know. They can be aching joints. Tasks can be as tough as getting up in the morning and baking cookies.’ Then she smiled directly at Sally and Bobby. ‘Now get on with you. You can leave those here if you like. Since you already know what they are.’

‘Thanks, Mrs Webster,’ chorussed Bobby and Sally and handed back the presents and coasted away.

Afterwards, it was not possible to work out quite how it happened. The twins, as they often did, seemed to get the same idea at the same time, and now it was to rollerblade across the street to the footpath on the other side.

They hit the concrete drive at the same moment, neither one leading, but when they started to cross the road, Bobby, with his greater experience on borrowed blades, drew ahead of Sally.

Which is why the car hit her and not him.

The car just seemed to materialize. No one heard it coming, it was just suddenly there, speeding round the corner, making no attempt to stop, a flash of blue paint, the blare of a horn, Sally turning in horror to see the car bearing down on her.

Jim, Maria and Mrs Webster stood staring in numb shock. Bobby turned back, his eyes wide with horror. The moment stretched interminably.

And all the while Mrs Webster was moving, vaulting the fence and running for Sally like a charging football player! It was impossible, an old lady could not have done it. But she had done it. She was moving for Sally, getting within centimetres, split seconds of snatching her to safety.

The effort was superhuman. But it was not good enough.

There was a terrible thud as the car struck Sally and tossed her aside and then it was speeding away again and Sally was lying broken on the road.

Mrs Webster, still moving at full speed, two-stepped like a footballer dodging a tackler and raced to Sally’s side, dropped to one knee, and then did something very strange.

Her sweet face was suddenly distorted with rage. Swiftly she lifted her weed killer like a shooter looking for a target; in this case the target was the speeding blue car which was even then turning a corner out of Middle Street and thus out of sight.

Whatever it was Mrs Webster was intending she now put to one side as she laid down her weeder and checked Sally’s condition.

By this time, Jim, Maria and Bobby had recovered themselves enough to run over. They found Mrs Webster kneeling by Sally, checking vital signs, but in strange places. She was taking a pulse at the ankle, looking at the skin color on the inside of the arm, feeling each side of the chest. ‘She’s going to be all right,’ Mrs Webster said. ‘We’ll get her into my place!’

‘No!’ Jim countermanded. ‘We can’t move her till the ambulance gets here.’

‘I’ll ring them,’ shouted a neighbour who had come running, and she moved off to do so.

Maria was kneeling by Sally, checking her throat pulse, moaning, ‘Sally! Sally!’

‘Is she going to be all right?’ Bobby said, and then looked off in the direction the hit-run driver took. ‘Didn’t even stop!’

‘I’ve got stuff in the house,’ Mrs Webster said to Jim.

He shook his head savagely. ‘No one moves our daughter till the ambulance gets here! Understand?’

‘I can’t feel her heart!’ Maria cried.

Mrs Webster was touching both sides of Sally’s rib cage. ‘It’s okay, I’ve got a strong pulse,’ she said, her voiced pitched to soothe.

‘But there’s no heartbeat!’ Maria said, feeling for it on the left side of Sally’s chest.

‘Further down, Maria. I promise you she’s going to be all right.’

Maria ran her hand down to where Mrs Webster was touching the side of Sally’s rib cage, and looked at Mrs Webster, her anguish for a moment replaced by amazement.

‘She’s going to be okay,’ Mrs Webster again said calmly, and then looked up the street. ‘Is that the ambulance coming?’

Jim and Maria looked in the direction Mrs Webster indicated so they did not see her stick something that looked like a small, circular, flesh-coloured sticking plaster under Sally’s hair.

But Bobby saw. Mrs Webster looked up at that moment, caught Bobby’s puzzled expression, and put her finger to her lips.

It was then that Bobby knew something very weird was going to happen.

It was like a politician’s motorcade. First came the ambulance, siren going, with Maria and the unconscious Sally in the back with one of the paramedics, followed by Jim and Bobby in the family station wagon, and then, following them in the same little beat-up car in which she had arrived twelve years ago (and about which the neighbours had been saying ever since, ‘Where does she get spare parts for that ancient thing?’) was Mrs Webster.

If the whole thing had not been so desperate, Bobby would have enjoyed it. As it was, all he could think of or see, like flashes from a movie, was Sally looking up in horror as the car bore down on her and then Sally falling and the car driving away.

He felt furious at himself for having crossed the street with Sally, wondering if it had been his fault, whether she had been following his lead or whether, as they so often did, they had simply acted in unison.

And on top of all that he felt an anger such as he had never felt before. This anger, this blinding rage that made him wish to do things he knew he should not even think about, was for the driver of the blue car, the human blur behind the steering wheel of the machine which had so brutally cut down his twin sister. But this last anger was powerless, it had nowhere to go, because the whole thing had happened so fast that no one had managed to get the licence number. No description, no number, no chance to find the perpetrator unless the police who came to the accident scene could track the car down in some other way.

The young constable had said that the blue car might have to go in for repair, that it might have been stolen and when recovered might have fingerprints which might be in the files. Might, might, might. As soon as Bobby’s anger reached out for some target, it slipped away, concealed under a cloud of ‘mights’.

And all the time he was thinking this, the ambulance sped along in front of him, its two-toned siren going ‘Sal-ly, Sal-ly’ like some mocking robot voice in his brain.

In the back of the ambulance, Sally lay unconscious. Maria sat by her, silently praying, stroking Sally’s hand as the paramedic worked on her.

‘Is she going to be all right?’ asked Maria, desperately wanting to hear ‘yes, she’s going to be fine’, but knowing that no one yet knew.

‘She’s breathing but I can’t find a pulse.’ The paramedic was puzzled, concerned.

‘Mrs Webster was feeling the side of her chest. Down here.’ Maria put her hand to where Mrs Webster had found the heartbeat.

‘Got it,’ said the paramedic, obviously puzzled.

‘And here,’ said Maria, touching the other side of Sally’s rib cage.

The paramedic reached over and put his hand where indicated. Now he was more than puzzled, more like astounded. ‘Two heartbeats?’

‘I’ve always sort of been aware of it, and it always seemed odd, but she’s been the healthiest child I’ve ever known,’ said Maria.

‘Like an echo,’ muttered the paramedic. He looked up at Maria. ‘No doctor ever found this?’

‘She’s never been to a doctor,’ Maria said.

‘Never?’

‘Never.’

The small circular patch that Mrs Webster had placed beneath Sally’s hair was picking up every word and transmitting it back to Mrs Webster in her little car.

When Mrs Webster was alone and unobserved, she was somehow different. She still had the outward appearance of a little old lady, but it was as if there was someone different living inside her body, someone tougher, steelier, the sort of person who could vault fences, run like the wind, and order removal men around like a drill sergeant. It was this Mrs Webster who was listening to Maria’s conversation with the paramedic, coming through loud and clear on her hearing aid.

Maria went on. ‘She’s never been sick in her life.’

The paramedic was sceptical. ‘Come on. Colds? Flu?’

‘Never.’

For Mrs Webster, the conversation had reached dangerous ground, but the concern on her face was not the motherly concern of a sweet little old lady. It was more the concern of an officer for green troops under fire, of a coach sending her inexperienced team in against hardened professionals. Mrs Webster looked as if she knew there was worse to come.

It was the same hospital where the twins were born. The ambulance drove in through the gates, its siren dying off as it reached the entrance to the emergency ward. It came to a halt, the driver jumped out and ran back to help. The Harrison family car and Mrs Webster’s car pulled up. Bobby and Jim and Mrs Webster were all getting out and moving to the ambulance, where the paramedics were rolling out the folding trolley on which a very pale Sally lay.

They were moving fast, pushing the trolley into the emergency section even as Maria climbed out of the rear of the ambulance. The family followed the paramedics in a rush.

‘The ambulance man seemed puzzled about the two heartbeats, Jim,’ Maria was saying as they reached the entrance.

‘Never had anything wrong in her life!’ Jim said sharply as they entered.

Hannah Rosen, the emergency intern on duty, fell into step alongside Sally’s trolley as they moved her toward one of the treatment rooms.

‘Weird one, Doctor Rosen,’ the paramedic was saying. ‘Two heartbeats, and I coulda sworn to a fracture of the left leg, tib and fib, now I’m not so sure.’

‘Let’s get her to X-ray,’ Rosen said. She was abrupt for two good reasons. The first was that she had been on duty for twelve hours and this looked like making it sixteen. The second was that, more than anything else about this job, she hated accidents involving young people.

Bobby saw Sally being whisked away, and wanted to follow, but Mrs Webster laid a light but, as always, strong hand on his arm. ‘I can hear what’s happening,’ she murmured to him.

‘That thing you put in Sail’s hair?’ he whispered and she nodded. The strange thing was that he accepted this sort of thing from Mrs Webster. She was unlike any other adult he knew. If Mrs Webster stuck something in Sally’s hair and then said she could hear what was going on, then you accepted it was really happening. She was that kind of person.

Mrs Webster stood there, one hand to her hearing aid. She was hearing Rosen saying ‘I want a full body scan.’ By that simple statement Mrs Webster knew that the whole situation was pickling and pickling fast. She needed to get back to her communication equipment at home and talk to her superiors as soon as possible. But first she had to organize Sally’s escape.

As Jim and Maria headed for the desk, Mrs Webster turned and moved Bobby a short distance away from the others. ‘We’ve got to get Sally out of here,’ she told him.

Bobby stared at her. ‘Out of here? Why?’

‘She’s in danger, and it’s up to you to get her out.’

He stared at her, but did not dispute what she said. It was like the transmitter she had planted in Sally’s hair. When Mrs Webster did or said something, you accepted it.

‘There’s things about Sally that people mustn’t know,’ Mrs Webster went on. ‘Remember the game I gave you last Christmas? Castle Of Zahan? It’s that situation.’

Even Bobby had pause at this. ‘But this is a hospital,’ he said. He knew he would be running full-tilt into every kind of adult authority if he tried to get Sally out of here.

Mrs Webster brushed that small problem aside as if it didn’t exist. ‘Think Castle of Zahan. When you get her out of here, bring her to my place.’

‘To your place?’ Bobby asked. ‘Not home?’

‘My place. The back way, we’ve got to keep her under cover.’

Bobby nodded. When Mrs Webster gave you orders, she really gave you orders. ‘Your place. Got it.’

As he moved away, Mrs Webster was already heading over to Jim and Maria, suddenly every inch a sweet little old lady again. ‘I think I’m probably in the way,’ she quavered, and by the tone of her voice, she sounded very fragile and old, ‘I’ll just go home now and you can tell me when you know something?’

Jim nodded, understanding that Mrs Webster had been having a very stressful day for someone her age. ‘Sure, Mrs Webster. Where’s Bobby?’

‘Went to take a leak, I think,’ she said, and then recovered her old lady act just in time, and said, her voice quivering with fatigue, ‘Bye bye.’ She gave them a little finger wave and tottered away toward the exit.

‘Thanks for everything,’ Maria called after her, and Mrs Webster lifted her walking cane in response without looking around. Maria watched her leave the building, and then looked at Jim. ‘I still can’t get over the way she jumped the fence.’

Jim shrugged. ‘Crisis situation, sudden burst of energy. I read about it in a magazine one time. There was a case where a very small woman actually lifted a truck off her child. Without the emergency situation, she couldn’t have done it.’ He paused. ‘She’s paying for it now, poor old thing.’

So intent were they watching Mrs Webster’s exit, that neither Maria nor Jim noticed Bobby heading along the corridor where the medical staff had taken Sally.

Mrs Webster continued her tottering gait all the way out of the entrance to the emergency ward, but as soon as she was out of sight, she strode, taking long paces, half-running to her little car. She leapt in and took off like a Formula One driver with an arch-rival close behind, a world championship to win and nothing left to lose. Her engine’s roar lifted in tone as she shifted into top gear, and then she was gone.