Notes from an Exhibition (27 page)

He had recently stopped always going to Sunday School and started occasionally sitting with the grown-ups in Meeting instead. The power of the silence impressed him and what was Quakerly and what wasn’t was often on his mind. Wanting more pocket money now that he was older wasn’t. Being nice to Steve Pedney, even though other people weren’t, was. We all had a little bit of God or Goodness in us, even Steve Pedney, like a tiny candle you couldn’t blow out however hard you tried and however bad you were and when you sat with the others in silence you had to think of that candle and try to make it shine brighter. Or you had to think of the people who needed it, not just Steve Pedney but children in Africa or Rachel in St Lawrence’s or your new baby brother, Hedley who you weren’t sure you were going to like much and imagine holding them in a kind of warm light made by all the people in the circle. It was quite hard work, a bit like magic, and he enjoyed it. When they had assembly at school and all mumbled the same prayers together and it was all about God and Jesus and everyone saying exactly the same thing, it seemed shockingly noisy and so perfunctory it was hard to see what the point of it was. Antony said it was up to him what he believed, that he, Antony, believed in God and Jesus and would probably call himself a Christian and that Rachel didn’t entirely but that they both believed in goodness, the little candle inside everybody, even Steve Pedney. Even Steve Pedney’s mother, who Garfield had seen in the Co-Op once, who had arms like roast pork and looked awful.

St Lawrence’s was big; lots of large old buildings and
quite a few smaller ones. It was like a little town behind its own wall. It wasn’t like a hospital because it didn’t have ambulances coming and going and there wasn’t a queue of people with blood coming out of them or taps stuck on their toes and bunches of flowers to give to friends. It seemed very quiet. You only knew it was a hospital because it had those coloured signs with white capital letters that only hospitals had. RECEPTION, the signs said, as if they were shouting. THERAPY UNITS. DRUG DEPENDENCY UNIT. REHABILITATION UNIT.

They were a little early. Visitors were only admitted from two until four so they had to wait in the reception area and sit quietly looking at magazines until it was time. There were a few other visitors waiting too: a man with some books in a basket, an old woman with a bunch of grapes already arranged on a plate, a man and woman who murmured together in a corner and looked really worried as though they’d come in secret and hadn’t expected anyone else to be there. The murmuring woman started to cry and Garfield had to whisper to Morwenna not to stare. Morwenna was still too little to know what tactful meant so he was surprised she didn’t loudly ask why, the way she usually did. She fell to drawing on ladies’ faces in a copy of
Woman’s Realm
. Garfield pretended to read a copy of
Motor Sport
, which was a man’s magazine, but he was really watching Antony.

Antony was normally very serious and calm. You didn’t really notice his moods because he didn’t have any. He was always the same, the unchanging pavement under Rachel’s weather. But today he was different, even nervous. He kept looking at his watch, as though he didn’t trust
the clock on the wall above the nurse’s head, and turning his wedding ring round and round as though he wanted to unscrew his finger.

He had seen the baby before. They hadn’t. Not really. Children weren’t allowed to visit the Bolitho Home in case they gave the babies germs or tuberculosis so Garfield had been made to wait on the pavement outside, holding Morwenna’s hand although she was wriggling like a fish and her hand was all sweaty and she kept asking why. Then Antony had appeared in a window, as he said he would, and held up the baby.

‘Look,’ Garfield told Morwenna. ‘Up there. See? That’s the baby. That’s our brother. See?’ But she had just started crying
Anty Anty
which was how she said Antony. She hadn’t been interested in the baby at all. Which wasn’t surprising because at that distance it looked as if Antony was just holding up a bundle of white blanket with a lamb chop inside it. When Garfield asked him what Hedley was like, he said it was impossible to tell because new babies were so wrinkled and red and cross and either cried or slept. So perhaps he was worried Hedley would have changed in a bad way. Or perhaps he was worried about the sickness in Rachel’s head. Garfield had looked up
depression
in his dictionary but it had only confused him by talking about weather fronts and dips in the landscape along with
uncontrollable or clinical sorrow
.

The nurse’s clock was electric, like the ones in school, so it didn’t tick. Its secondhand swept round so smoothly you couldn’t really use it to count the seconds and it conveyed the impression that time was passing more swiftly. Something Garfield had learnt to resent in maths tests. Only the minute
hand clicked. While Morwenna fidgeted beside him and Antony composed himself into stillness the way he did in Meetings, he watched the clock click from five to two to a maddening two minutes past before the nurse lifted the little upside-down watch on her starched apron front and announced, ‘You can go in, now. Just present yourself to the nurse on duty in the ward you want to visit.’

‘Which ward do we need?’ Garfield asked as they approached a big sign listing all of them with arrows in all directions.

‘Williams,’ Antony said and led them up a big flight of boomy steps with no carpet on them.

‘It smells,’ Morwenna complained. ‘I don’t really like it.’

‘Ssh,’ Antony told her. They had to pass a man who was staring and not talking and she took Garfield’s hand. She only did this when she was scared, which helped in a way because it meant he couldn’t be scared too.

‘Come on,’ he told her. ‘We’re going to see Hedley!’ But he flinched a bit when they passed a door where a woman was crying very loudly, like Morwenna did when she didn’t get her way.

He made himself look into wards as they passed. In some, people were dressed and walking about or just sitting in chairs. In some they were all in bed. There always seemed to be either men or women. There was a room where everyone was really old and a children’s ward with pictures on the wall, which he hadn’t expected. He decided to start breathing as shallowly as possible so as not to draw the madness in.

‘Williams Ward,’ said Antony. ‘Here we are. Williams Ward.’

The nurse there was young and really friendly. She crouched down so her head was the same height as Morwenna’s nearly and said, ‘And who’ve we got here?’

‘I’m Garfield and this is Morwenna,’ he told her.

There was a really strong smell of lavatories but not from the nurse, who smelled of fabric conditioner.

‘Is that a fact?’ she said. She had huge breasts, he noticed, so that she could probably read her upside-down watch without needing to lift it. ‘Have you come to see baby Hedley?’ she asked Morwenna. Morwenna nodded.

‘And our mother,’ Garfield said. ‘Please.’

‘Mum’s a bit sleepy,’ she said. ‘So she might not chat much but she’s been looking forward to seeing you both. I know she has. You’re better for her than any pills. Soon cheer her up.’

She smiled at Antony as she stood and Garfield saw she had a great curvy bottom to match. He was surprised to wonder how it might feel to push his face into it quite hard or to take shelter under her bosom as under a great, soft-stacked cloud. She might have read his mind because she briefly laid one of her hands on the back of his head and let it slide down on to his nape in a way that gave him goosebumps and made him blush.

‘You’ll find her in the room on the end,’ she told Antony softly. ‘Down the ward and turn right. I’ll go and fetch young Hedley from his cot.’

There was a Bob Hope film playing on the television and several women were watching it or pretending to. Their faces faced the screen but Garfield was sure their eyes were slyly turned on him as he passed. He hated Bob Hope films. They were full of jokes he didn’t understand
because everyone talked too fast and he associated them with nausea as they only ever seemed to be on when he was held home from school with a stomach bug. (He had heard it said that he had a sensitive stomach and was deeply ashamed of it.)

Morwenna was holding Antony’s hand now, which must mean she was really scared and Garfield was briefly envious of the soft girlishness that would let her take such favours as her right until well past the age at which he had been told to be a big boy and stop crying and stop wanting to be held. Like Morwenna, he suspected, he really wanted to be carried high on Antony’s shoulders, which was where he used to feel safest, but Antony had a bad back and wasn’t supposed to do that any more.

A woman in a yellow dressing gown with a head that was much too big came up to them and said, ‘You give me sweeties,’ in a voice that was all wrong.

‘I’m sorry,’ Antony told her, ‘we don’t have any,’ and passed on with Morwenna.

But Garfield had bought a mixture of Black Jacks and Rhubarb and Custards with some of his pocket money that morning. He had one Black Jack left and knew the woman knew it was in his shorts pocket because she wasn’t moving away but was staring down at him. ‘All right,’ he told her. ‘It’s my last one, though.’

She took it from him and tore off the wrapper in seconds and threw it in her huge mouth. Like a frog’s, her lips seemed to divide her head clean in two when they parted.

She gulped.

‘You’re supposed to make it last,’ he told her.

She was holding out a fleshy hand again. ‘You give me
sweeties,’ she repeated and a dribble of liquorice spit fell on to her chin.

‘It was my last one,’ he said. ‘I told you.’

He ran to escape her terrible stare and caught up with Antony and Morwenna as they were turning right at the far end of the ward. He glanced back to see if she was following. She had stayed where she was but she was staring and when she saw him look she twitched up her nightdress and he looked away fast but not quite fast enough.

There was a row of individual bedrooms off a corridor. They had brass numbers on the door and, when a room was occupied, little cards slotted into brass holders, with people’s names on them. They made Garfield think of the jar labels in the larder at home, only instead of saying Dark Muscovado Sugar or Macaroni they announced their contents as Julie Dawson, Maggie Treloar or, in the case of room seven, Rachel Middleton (& Hedley).

It was funny seeing her called that because when she painted everyone called her Rachel Kelly.

‘Why do all the doors have windows in them?’ he asked.

‘So the nurses and doctors can always see in,’ his father said and gave the little cough that showed he was unhappy. ‘So nobody can hurt themselves without someone seeing,’ he added. ‘Ready?’

Garfield nodded.

‘Mummy!’ Morwenna shouted and Garfield shushed her.

Antony peered through the window in Rachel’s door, knocked twice, gave a little smile then opened the door
and gently pushed Garfield and Morwenna in before him. ‘Look who it isn’t,’ he said. He used a funny tone of voice, slightly wheedling, as though Rachel had stopped being a grown-up.

She was sitting in the room’s only armchair, beside the oddly high-up window. ‘Look,’ she said sleepily. ‘I have to sit on all these so I can see out.’ She shifted slightly to reveal a great heap of telephone directories she had used to raise the chair’s cushion by nearly a foot.

Garfield was shy of hugging her so, while Morwenna ran to jump on her lap, he jumped a few times instead to see what she was seeing, and caught a few glimpses of a lawn and trees and rosebuds. He was glad to see she looked fairly normal. She was wearing daytime clothes – a dark-blue dress covered in white spots – but she looked pale and somehow uncooked without her lipstick and there was something different about her eyes and she needed to wash her hair.

‘What’s wrong with your eyes?’ he asked her.

‘My eyes?’ she asked slowly then understood. ‘Oh. No mascara. Do they look terrible?’

He stopped jumping and dared to look at her full on. The directories made her so high she and Morwenna might have been on a throne. ‘Not really,’ he admitted. ‘Just sort of pale. And weak.’

‘Hello, darling,’ Antony said and kissed her on the lips then sat on the end of her bed.

She had slowed down completely. Garfield was used to her being sharp and crackly and rather frightening because you had to think quite carefully what you said because she never missed anything and might pull you up
short at any moment. But now she was so slow and placid she was frightening in a different way, as though her mechanism was winding down and no one else had noticed or thought to turn the key. For a whole minute they just sat in silence, Antony sad and watchful on the bed, she on the chair and Morwenna blissful and unquestioning on her lap. Like a ravenous cat given milk, Morwenna always became entirely focused on a pleasurable moment.

The room had no other furniture but a little chest of drawers with a vase on it and a heap of drawings Rachel had been doing with wax crayon.

‘Can I see?’ Garfield asked. You never looked at her pictures without asking, in case you had sticky fingers.

She stared at him and he could almost hear the glutinous plop as her mind closed over his question and drew it in. She nodded at last with a smile and he went to look.

Instead of doing the obvious view out of the window she had done the window itself, the panes of old, uneven glass, the flaking paint creamy with age, the damp stained roller blind for blocking out the sun, and the arrangement of gutter, brickwork and drainpipes a little to one side. Then she had done her bed, over and over, with the rumples in different places and the sunlight in different places but the brutal black bedstead exactly the same each time, like a cage about something shifty and fluid. It was so unfair, he thought, that when he did pictures with wax crayon they looked like every other boy’s wax crayon pictures but when she did them it didn’t look like wax crayon any more. There were no pictures of the baby.

‘I asked for pastels,’ she said.

He was proud to know better than to think she meant sweets.