Relatively Strange (45 page)

In the dimly lit room a policewoman, trousered legs neatly crossed, was sitting by the window catching what daylight was seeping below the drawn floral curtain onto the pages of a newspaper. She nodded at us, kept her voice low,

“WPC Lynton. Best get your coats off – like a hothouse in here.” She indicated a corner of the room where a chair already held her thick uniform overcoat and jacket. I slipped out of my coat, adding it to the pile but could already feel sweat prickling my armpits.

“Chairs by the bed, see? Make yourselves comfortable. She’s dropped off again I think, but she doesn’t sleep long. Friends are you? Family?”

“Work with her.” I cleared my throat, summoning a bit of saliva to a suddenly parched mouth as we turned to the bed. I could hear Rajitha’s light, rapid breathing behind me, when I glanced back, her face was unreadable. We moved quietly but Lauretta heard us. The covers convulsed as she surged up wide and white-eyed. She saw us coming towards her and started to whimper, then shockingly, to shriek.

“Ah, for goodness sakes, don’t just stand there gawping like a pair of eejits the two of you, take her hand, let her see who you are.” Sister Brogan hurtled back in, reaching the bed in a couple of swift strides.

“There darlin’, you’re all right, you’re all right. We’ll have no more of this racket if you please, Dr’ll have my guts for garters. Now, will you look, sweetheart,” she reached a hand behind her and pulled me ungently forward, “See who it is come to visit.” Under the professionally soothing hands and tone, the ghastly shrieks were subsiding into sobs and dying. The woman, breathless in the bed, and I stared at each other. I wouldn’t have recognised her and I don’t honestly think, out of context and without her glasses on she knew who I was until Raj moved up beside me. Bridie was still bustling,

“Sit down now, sit down, can’t chat standing can you?” We were pushed, shocked and unresisting into two chairs at one side of the bed and Lauretta, re-eased down now on to the pillows, turned her face slowly towards us.

The whole of the left side of her head was encased in thick, cream colored bandage, stained yellow in places with some kind of ointment. The crepe, extending low over her left eye, gave her a clownish appearance, compounded by wisps of thinning red hair, flaming garishly against the cream material. I realised, abruptly, that the normal luxuriance of curls of which she was so proud, must be a hairpiece. Somehow – and ridiculously – this seemed a greater violation of her privacy than anything else.

Twin drip tubes snaked into the back of her left hand which she kept twitching, as if to dislodge the discomfort. Another tube emerged from below the blankets and dripped into a urine bag, inadequately concealed beneath the bed-frame. I hoped Lauretta, so ladylike at all times, didn’t know we could see that. Surrounding her right eye, panda-like was a deep, bluely black bruise. It leaked down to her cheekbone where it was turning sour green. A crescent-moon, stitch-puckered, partially scabbed cut, curved from below her other cheekbone to disappear under her chin. Her lips were cut and swollen and her eyes, denuded of their customary lavish lashes were watery, red-rimmed and deeply bewildered.

“Won’t let me have a mirror.” she murmured, “Look a fright I expect?” We both shook our heads in pointless denial and each received a painfully sharp prod in the back from an admonitory nursing finger,

“Cat got your tongues?” Rajitha obediently leaned forward across me and carefully took Lauretta’s hand, the knuckles scraped and scabby the carefully filed almond oval nails, undressed without their usual red Revlon.

“Don’t be silly, you look fine, Laur.” she said, “Just fine. How’re you feeling?”

“Feeling? Oh, well, thank you.” Lauretta smiled politely with her newly shaped mouth, “Well,” she repeated, “Bit shaky still at times of course. So sweet of you both to come.”

“Couldn’t miss the chance of a day off, could we?” Rajitha said, “And Colonel and Mrs H-B send you all their very best and we’ve brought you chocolates, Suchards you like those – from them too.”

“Kind. Lots of people’ve sent flowers.” Lauretta gestured with the dripless arm in the direction of a serried rank of vases.

“Shame,” she said, “ You’ve just this minute missed Mother, she’s here every single day. Taxi there and back … won’t hear of not coming, bless her. Have to get out soon, she’s not managing well on her own.” She licked dry lips that trembled,

“I want to go home, they won’t say when I can.” a tear slid out of one eye and traced the path of the bruise. She sniffed hard, “Sorry girls, all the way to see me and here I am wet and woolly. How’s things at the office? What about all those letters I’d taken for Professor Kenyon, did you find them?” I leaned forward, shoulder to shoulder with Raj, so Lauretta could see us both easily. I took her hand from Raj’s,

“Done and dusted. No problem, I found your notebook and your shorthand’s always so easy to read. He said they were fine, says get well soon.” My voice sounded far too jolly.

“Does he know … what happened? Another tear leaked and dribbled. “Does everybody know?” she moved her head restlessly from one side to another, voice rising, “I didn’t want everyone to know, I really didn’t, they didn’t need to know.” I looked helplessly across at the policewoman, who moved to the other side of the bed.

“Now then Lauretta,” she said firmly, “We’ve been through this haven’t we, no point in upsetting ourselves all over again. You know it was in the papers, we talked about that. But we have to catch the so and so, don’t we?”

“I can’t tell you any more. I’m sorry, so sorry, don’t remember, I’ve said, haven’t I? Want to, just can’t. I’m sorry.” With each sorry she was turning her head back and forth on the pillow in escalating upset, small bubbles of spittle gathering at the corners of her lips, nose running. Her raw distress was breaching my barriers. I belatedly realised, tried to pull away but could do too little, too late. With a rush, all the more devastating for its suddenness, I was suddenly open to her, flooded.

My head rocked back with the shock and I knew, to my shame and without a shadow of doubt, I’d have run if my hand hadn’t been wrapped tight in hers, a grip so frantic I couldn’t loosen it. Slamming into me was her pain, disbelief, grief, shame and overwhelmingly vivid images. She couldn’t sleep, couldn’t rest un-drugged, the recollections were continuous and, all the more terrifying, out of chronological order. No beginning, no end, no time frame. Shock had reduced memory to a never-ending parade, a grim merry-go-round of sight, sensation, smell and pain, all the more surreal because she was unable to sort them into any sort of coherent order. But I could.

I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding, hauled another one in through a constricted throat. Like a ripped picture book, images were scattered every which way. I didn’t want to look, but of its own accord my mind sought to make sense out of what it was seeing. Order out of disorder, placing things in sequence and context, however dreadful. I knew instinctively that for Lauretta, order might be the only path back from endless re-living.

“Out the way now, quickly.” Nurse Brogan had a hypodermic. Lauretta saw it and began to sob louder.

“No, no. No injection. Please, not again.” she didn’t want to be put under. Awake was haunted enough, unconsciousness worse – no control. They thought they were helping but they were only intensifying and prolonging her nightmare.

“Wait – please wait, just a moment,” I said “She’ll calm down, I promise.” I turned back to Lauretta, leaned over her, obscuring view of nurse and needle.

“He hurt me.” she said softly to me and something in her voice had changed, hysteria giving space to acknowledgment. The policewoman, alert at her other side, leaned forward too.

“Lauretta, have you remembered something? What can you tell me?”

“He hurt me.”

“I know my love. That’s why we need you to tell us as much as you can. Can you tell me what he looked like?”

“The time. He asked me the time.” Lauretta was staring at but not seeing me. In her mind, and mine, was the terrible tale told by the scattered pages. Together, we found the one she was looking for, the beginning. She winced but didn’t turn away. Her eyes widened, but not at anything in the room.

“How could I have forgotten, how silly? When I got off the train – he was there, he asked me the time. That was him. I didn’t know, I didn’t know.” WPC Linton perched precariously now on the other side of the bed had notebook and pen.

“You saw him clearly? Are you sure this was the same man who later attacked you?” Lauretta shut her eyes for an instant, re-opened them on certainty.

“Yes. He smelt. Same smell.” She paused as we were both swept by an over-sweet after-shave, then mintiness – toothpaste, masking cigarette smoke. “Yes, I smelt him, on the platform … he came very close and then … later. She swallowed convulsively. “Later I … I’d forgotten but I did, I recognised the smell.”

“How old? Was he tall? Short?”

“I think maybe 35 – 40?” Together we searched, I turned over images she’d deliberately hidden away, fed the pictures back to her. She flinched but didn’t stop.

“Yes, late thirties, fair skinned, very smooth skin, no stubble, smooth.” She shuddered, “Hair, sandy coloured I think, long, brushed very neatly back, I noticed that, he didn’t look scruffy.”

“Tall? How tall?

“Don’t know, can’t … no, wait … when he stopped me, asked the time, I didn’t have to look up much, so not that tall I suppose. Thin, though, very thin, but later… so strong. I didn’t realize…”

“Take your time, you’re doing so well Lauretta, what else can you tell me. Everything, any little thing helps.”

We’re walking briskly through the shortcut – takes you from the side of the station to the main road, past the wooded area running round the back of the railway. Saves going through the busy forecourt where all the buses stop and local kids congregate, cuts a good five minutes off the walk home and we’ve to get Mother’s prescription before the chemist shuts, should just do it. Oh and mustn’t forget, Aspirin, used the last yesterday. No harm going this way at this time, broad daylight, lots of people around. Feet hurt, lovely shoes but oh now, they so need coming off. Thank goodness train on time for once. Lamb chops for supper with mash. Potatoes peeled before we left this morning, in cold water ready for boiling, meat seasoned on a plate in the fridge, most of the fat cut off because Mother hates fatty. Enough rhubarb crumble left for afters, with ice-cream, or maybe custard – use up yesterday’s milk.

The sudden yank on our hair that jerks our head back is both agonising and entirely, shockingly unexpected. In that moment, our rational mind struggles to make sense – an overhanging branch? The hairpiece always so securely pinned and anchored has been ripped right away from our head. We twist round and see the almost comically astonished reflection of our own expression on the face of the man close behind, the man holding a mass of red curls in one still-upraised hand.

He’s angry, why’s he so angry? Our hairpiece has thrown him, he’s surprised and we know, with absolute and complete certainty this is not someone who cares to be surprised. He’s disconcerted for the barest second. Why’re we frozen like a light-dazzled rabbit? There’s an instant when we could run, but we don’t. What’s happening is so completely unlikely that common sense insists we’ve got it all wrong, there’s been some kind of a mistake. He draws back a fist and punches, the blow connecting at the very moment we realize that sometimes, terrible things do happen to ordinary people. Our head jerks back with the force of this reality. Glasses fly off and hit the ground, someone’ll tread on them and they’re only a couple of months new. He slides an iron arm round our waist – to anyone coming up behind, we seem like a suddenly reunited couple – and slips swiftly sideways – from the path into the trees.

We should shout, we should scream – isn’t that what they always say, make a noise, make as much noise as you can? – but our mouth is full of blood. Feet dragging, we’ve moved so far into the trees now, we can’t assess the way back to the path. We’ve lost a shoe – they were expensive, kitten-heeled suede, last year’s Russell & Bromley sale. Mother always said they’d spoil, wearing them to work, though this probably wasn’t what she had in mind. We take a breath, swallow blood that makes us gag. Another blow, to the side of the head this time. The world spins and starts to darken. He’s got a knife, like the carpet layer used, a Stanley knife? He reaches for the neck of our shirt and as the short blade slips so easily through the fabric, it bloodies a line down our chest too. We’re so bewildered and appallingly, paralysingly, fear-full and we hurt so very much. I ripped my hand from Lauretta’s grasp, my mind from hers.