The Forever Girl (4 page)

Margaret arranged for her to pick up the Honduran woman, Bella. She did so one evening, waiting at the end of the drive while the maid, who was using crutches, limped towards her.

“My leg’s bad,” she said, as she got into the car. “Swollen. Bad inside. I’m sorry. It smells bad too. I can’t help that.”

She caught her breath. There was an odour – slightly sweet,
but sinister too; the smell of physical corruption, of infection. She wondered how this could go untreated in a place of expensive cars and air conditioning. But it did, of course; illness and infection survived in the interstices even where there was money and the things that money bought. All they needed was human flesh, oxygen, and indifference; or hardness of heart, perhaps.

She reached out and put a hand on the maid’s forearm. “I don’t mind. I can’t even notice it.”

The maid looked at her. “You’re very kind.”

Amanda thought: am I? Or would anybody do this; surely anybody would?

She drove carefully. The road from the town centre was busy, and the traffic was slow in the late afternoon heat. She tried to make conversation, but Bella seemed to be unwilling to speak, and they completed the journey in silence.

The clinic was simple. In a waiting room furnished with plastic chairs, a woman sat at a desk with several grey filing cabinets behind her. There was a notice-board on which government circulars about immunisation had been pinned untidily. A slow-turning ceiling fan disturbed the air sufficiently to flutter the end of the larger circulars. There was a low table with ancient magazines stacked on it – old copies of the
National Geographic
and, curiously, a magazine called
Majesty
that specialised in articles about the British royal family. A younger member of that family looked out from the cover.
Exclusive
, claimed a caption to the picture.
We tell you what he really feels about history and duty
.

Amanda spoke to the woman at the desk. She had phoned her earlier on and made the appointment, and this had been followed by a conversation with George; now there was a form to be filled in. She offered this to Bella, who recoiled from it, out of
ancient, instinctive habit. And that must be how you felt if you had always been at the bottom of the heap, thought Amanda. Every form, every manifestation of authority, came from above, was a potential threat.

“I’ll fill it in for her,” she said, glancing at the receptionist to forestall any objection.

But there was none. “That’s fine,” said the woman. “As long as we have her name and date of birth.”

They sat on adjoining chairs. She smiled at Bella. “It’ll be all right.”

“They said at the hospital …”

She stopped her. “Never mind what they said. We’ll see what Dr Collins says. All right?”

Bella nodded miserably. Then she seemed to brighten. “You’ve got those two children, M’am.”

“Not M’am. Amanda.”

“Same as me. Two. Boy and a girl. You have that Clover? I’ve seen her. Pretty girl.”

“Thank you. Yours?”

“They’re with their grandmother in Puerto Cortes. In Honduras.”

“You must miss them.”

“Yes. Every day. Specially now.”

A consequence of the expatriate life, Amanda thought – or of another variety of it.

The door behind the receptionist’s desk opened. A woman came out – a young woman, tall, with the light-olive complexion of some of the Cayman Islanders. She turned and shook the doctor’s hand before walking out, eyes averted from Amanda and Bella.

“Mrs Rosales?”

He nodded to Amanda; they had spoken on the phone about Bella when he had agreed to see her.

Bella looked anxiously at Amanda. “You must come too.”

Amanda caught George’s eye. “If she wants you in, that’s fine,” he said. “That’s all right, Mrs Rosales. She can come in with you.”

They went into the doctor’s office. The receptionist had preceded them and was fitting a fresh white sheet to the examination couch. Amanda felt what she always felt in such places: the accoutrements reminded her of mortality. The couch, the indignity of the stirrups, the smell of antiseptic, the gleam of medical instruments: all of these underlined the seriousness of our plight. Human life, individually and collectively, hung by a biological thread.

Bella lay on the couch, wincing as she stretched out her damaged leg. Amanda stood back. She wanted to look away, but found her gaze drawn back to the sight of George removing the dressing. His touch looked gentle; he stopped for a moment when Bella gave a grimace of pain.

“I’m not surprised,” he said. “This is very nasty.”

The wound made by the ulcer was yellow. She had not expected that. She had expected red.

He probed gently with an instrument. She noticed the watch he was wearing, a square watch of a sort the advertisers claimed as
thirties retro
. She noticed that the belt he was wearing had been incorrectly threaded, missing a loop at the back. She thought of him dressing for work in the morning; dressing for his encounters with his patients, dressing for whatever the day brought him – the breaking of bad news, the stories of physical discomfort and pain; while David dressed for his meetings, his
daily stint in the engine room of money. She looked at the back of his neck; at his shoulders.

Suddenly Bella reached out a hand towards her. She had been on the other side of the room, only a few feet away, but crossed over immediately and took the extended hand. She saw that there were tears in the Honduran woman’s eyes.

George turned away from Bella and addressed Amanda. “She needs proper hospital treatment. Intravenous antibiotics at the very least. There might need to be some surgical excision of tissue. They’ll need to get the infection under control.”

She whispered. “There’s no insurance. They won’t send her off-island.”

He shook his head. “There are some good people in Kingston. Medical missionaries from Florida. They have a first-class surgeon who knows all about these infections. I’ve used them before. If we can get her to them.” He looked down at Bella and laid his hand on hers, the hand being held by Amanda. The three of them were holding hands now.

“I’ll pay the fare. It isn’t much.”

“Good. That’s nice of you. They’ll take care of the rest.”

He let go of Bella’s hand and turned to the receptionist. “Can you put on a clean dressing, please, Annie?”

He drew Amanda aside. “Why has this been allowed to get to this point? Was there nobody?”

She shook her head. “The employers washed their hands of it. You probably know them. That French couple on the corner.”

He raised his eyes. “They’re very wealthy.”

“Of course they are.”

He sighed. “You said that it happened at work? In the house?”

“She slipped at work.”

He asked whether she couldn’t get a lawyer. “There are enough of them. This place is crawling with lawyers.”

“They work for the banks.”

“Of course. They work for the banks.”

After the dressing had been changed, George helped Bella off the couch. He explained that he would try to make an appointment for her to see somebody tomorrow who would make arrangements for her to go to a hospital in Jamaica. Bella said nothing, but nodded her assent.

“A drink?” said George, as he showed Amanda out.

She felt her heart leap. “Why not? After I’ve taken Mrs Rosales home.”

“Yes. The Grand Old House?” he suggested. “An hour’s time? Six-thirty?”

“I haven’t been there for ages.”

The Grand Old House was a restaurant and bar on the shore near Smith’s Cove. At night you could sit out at the front and watch the lights of boats on the water. The staff tipped food into a circle of light they created in the water and large grey fish swam in to snap up the morsels in the shallows.

She thought about the invitation as she drove home. She should call David, perhaps, and tell him, and something would have to be done about the children. They were with Margaret, at her house, and they could stay there, perhaps, until she came home. Margaret fed them pizzas and other unhealthy foods; they loved eating there.

No, she would not call David. He had said he was likely to be delayed at the office because somebody had come in from London and there was an important meeting about one of the
trusts they administered. He might not be back until ten, or even later.

Back at the house, after dropping off Bella, she had a quick swim in the pool to cool off. Then she washed her hair and chose something that she could wear to the Grand Old House. She chose it with care; with the fingers of excitement already tapping at the door, insistent, unmistakable.

5

They had decided to investigate more closely what was happening at the Arthur house. The onset of cooler weather in December meant that Mr Arthur, who normally worked in an air-conditioned study, had opened his windows. The house was built in the West Indian style – both Mr Arthur and his wife came from Barbados – and had wide doors and windows under the broad sloping eaves of a veranda. If the windows of Mr Arthur’s study were closed to allow the air conditioners to function, then they could not see what was going on within, even with the telescope. But with the windows open and a light switched on inside, then they were afforded a perfect view of Mr Arthur, framed by the window, at work at his desk.

“What does he do?” asked James. “He just sits there and phones. Is it all spying?”

“Teddy says that he sells ships. I asked him, and that’s what he says his father does.”

James looked doubtful. “Where are all the ships? In his yard?”

She agreed that it was an unlikely story. “That’s probably what he’s told Teddy,” she said. “Because he’ll be ashamed to tell his own son he’s a spy. Spies don’t like their family to know.”

“Yes,” said James. “You can’t trust your own family not to tell other people.”

One afternoon, they saw a man come into the study. Clover was at the telescope, but yielded her place to James. “Look,” she said. “Somebody’s come to see him.”

James crouched at the telescope.

“What’s happening now?” she asked.

“There’s a piece of paper,” said James. “Mr Arthur is giving it
to the man. The man’s handing it back to him.”

“And now?”

He hesitated. “Now he’s … Look. You just look. He’s burning it. He’s set fire to the paper.”

She resumed her place at the telescope. The instrument had shifted, but a small movement brought it back to focus on the lighted window, and she saw a man’s hand holding a piece of blackened paper, then dropping it.

“Burning the evidence,” she said.

“The codes,” James said. “Burning the codes.”

They stared at each other in silence, awed by the importance of what they had just seen.

“We’re going to have to do something,” James said at last.

“Such as?”

She waited for his reply.

“I think we need more evidence,” he said. “We need to take photographs.”

She asked how they would do that.

“We go and see Teddy. Then we take photographs while we’re there.”

“Teddy doesn’t like us,” she pointed out. “He’ll wonder why we’re there.”

That was not an insurmountable problem in James’s view. They would make overtures to Teddy – they would invite him to their tree-house, even ask him to join in their counter-espionage activities.

“But it’s his own dad,” objected Clover. “He’s not going to like that.”

“We start off by watching our own parents,” he said. “That’ll show him we’re not just picking on him. We’ll say that we have
to watch everybody – with no exception. We’ll say that his dad is probably innocent, but we need to prove that he’s innocent.”

“That’ll work,” she said.

He took the leadership in these matters. It was her tree-house and her telescope, but he was the leader in these games. It had never been discussed, but that was the way that things were ordered. And this was to be the case always; she would always be the one in waiting, the one hoping for recognition, for some sign from him.

She looked at him; something quite different had crossed her mind. “Have you ever heard of blood brothers?”

The question did not seem to interest him. He shrugged.

“Well, have you?” she pressed.

“Maybe. It’s stupid.”

She frowned. “I don’t think it’s stupid. You mix your blood. That makes you blood brothers. Lots of people do it.”

He shook his head. He was still avoiding her gaze. “They don’t.” He paused. “Name one person who’s done it. Name them.”

“Lance Bodden. He’s a blood brother with Lucas Jones. He told me. He said they both cut themselves and then put the blood together. In the palm of their hands. He said there was lots of blood.”

“You can get things from that,” he said. “You get the other guy’s germs. There are lots of germs in blood. It’s full of germs, especially if you’re Lucas Jones. He’s dirty.”

She did not think there was much of a risk. “Blood’s clean. It’s spit that’s full of germs. You don’t mix your spit.”

“I wouldn’t be a blood brother anyway,” he said. “Not me.”

She hesitated. “We could be blood brothers – you and me.”

Now he looked at her incredulously. “You’re joking.”

“No, I’m not. We could be blood brothers. Not with lots of blood – just a little. We could use a pin – pins don’t hurt as much as knives.”

This was greeted with a laugh. “But you’re a girl, Clover. We can’t be brothers. You have to be a boy to be brothers.”

She blushed. “Girls and boys are not all that different.”

He shook his head. “They are.”

Her disappointment showed. “They can be friends. Best friends even.”

He rose to his feet. “I have to go. Sorry.”

“Because of what I said? Because you don’t want to be blood brothers?”

“Not that. I’ve got to go home – that’s all.”

He began to climb down the ladder. From above she watched him. She liked the shape of his head. She liked his hair, which was dark blond and a bit bristly up at the top. Boys’ hair seemed different, but she could not put her finger on the reason why it seemed different. Could you tell if it was just a single hair you were looking at? Could you tell under a microscope?