Toby's Room (7 page)

And then, just as she reached the bus stop, she realized she’d left her bag behind.

It was Friday afternoon, and the Dissecting Room would be locked up over the weekend. It was no use: she’d have to go back. She ran most of the way, a blundering, impeded canter through slush and icy puddles, slipping and slithering across patches of black ice. As she pushed the doors open, cold air rushed after her into the building. She waited impatiently for the lift and then ran all the way down the top-floor corridor.

The Dissecting Room smelled different: less formaldehyde, but enough bleach to make your eyes sting. The lights were still on, so somebody must be around. In the harsh glare, the organs in their display jars glittered like jewels. Forgetting her lost bag, she stood at
the foot of the slab where she’d worked and slowly recreated the man who’d lain there, surrendering himself to their scalpels through the long hours of dissection. She remembered the shock she’d felt when the covers first came off; the glow of his uncut skin. Now, when there was nothing of him left, the full force of her desire to know who he was, who he’d been, returned.

The door at the far end of the room had been left ajar. Normally, it was kept locked. This was where the mortuary attendants disappeared to at the end of each session; access to students was strictly forbidden. She walked across the room, hesitated, then pushed the door further open. Nobody spoke, nobody demanded to know what on earth she thought she was doing, so she went in.

To her left, a trestle table ran the full length of the room. On it were three bundles of bones, each with a label attached. With a thud of the heart, she guessed the labels would have names on, and walked across to read them, but no, there were only numbers. Number three was hers, the little that was left of him. He looked like a Christmas turkey the day after Boxing Day, when all the bones have been picked clean.

She looked around for solace, for something, anything, to make this bearable, and her eye fell on a green ledger. The corners were furry with use and so smeared by greasy fingerprints they looked black.
Of course
: they’d have to keep records because these pitiable piles of bones had to be given a proper burial – and presumably they’d be kept under the names they’d borne in life. She picked up the book and, fully aware that she was breaking every conceivable rule, began shuffling through the pages. The last entry should give her three names, one of them female. That would still leave two possibilities, but, irrationally perhaps, she felt she’d know his name when she saw it.

‘Miss Brooke! Can I help you?’ The usual sneer.

‘I was looking for my bag.’

‘Well, you’re not likely to find it in here, are you?’

She tried to push past him, but he wouldn’t step aside. She was totally in the wrong, she knew that, but she didn’t take kindly to
being bullied, and instinctively she went on the attack. ‘Why do you dislike me so much?’ she asked.

‘Because you think you’re the lily on the dungheap.’

So direct, so uncompromisingly contemptuous, it shocked her. ‘Well, somebody has to be and it’s never going to be you.’ How childish that sounded. How embarrassingly childish. ‘I just wanted to know who he was.’

He took the ledger away from her. ‘I think you’ll find your bag’s in the changing room.’

He waited till she reached the door. ‘It wouldn’t have done you any good anyway,’ he said, holding up the ledger. ‘He was one of the unclaimed. Nobody knows who he was.’

‘The unclaimed?’

‘Found in a shop doorway, I expect.’

She nodded, took one last look at the heap of bones, and went in search of her bag.

That evening Elinor sat alone in her lodgings. She’d had a bath, washed her hair, put on her dressing gown and curled up in front of the fire. Only now, when it was over, did she realize how much the work of dissection had taken out of her. She stared at the blue buds of the fire, listening to its hissing and popping, but saw only the nameless man as he’d been on that first morning: the huge, yellow-soled feet and the flat plain of the body stretching out beyond them. What a dreadful end. Even Daft Jamie had had a name.

She ought to make the effort to go out, if only round the corner to Catherine’s. A few of the girls had started to meet and do life drawing away from the college, taking it in turns to pose. They were supposed to be meeting tonight, but nobody would show up in this weather. Still, an evening alone with Catherine – the little German girl, as Kit Neville rather patronizingly called her – would be good too. Cocoa and gossip, that’s what she needed. But how bad was the snow? The way it was falling when she came in, it might be impossible to get out.

She couldn’t see much from the window, so she went downstairs and looked out into the street. Snow was still coming down fast, six inches at least had piled up against the door; it must have been falling steadily ever since she got home. Looking up into the circle of light around the street lamp, she could see how big the flakes were. Whirling down from the sky, each flake cast a shadow on to the snow, like big, fat, grey moths fluttering. She’d never noticed shadows like that before. Mesmerized, she stood and watched, trying to follow first one flake and then another, until she felt dizzy, and had to stop.

When she looked up again, she realized she wasn’t alone. A man was standing at the foot of the steps, only five or six feet away from
her. The snow must have muffled the sound of his approach. She took an involuntary step back.

Instantly, he took off his hat. ‘Miss Brooke?’

‘Ye-es?’

‘My name’s Andrew Martin. I’m a friend of Toby’s.’

Yes, she remembered seeing him on the steps of the medical school with Toby. ‘Is he all right?’

‘Well, no, not really, that’s why I’m here.’

Fear slipped into her mind so easily, it might always have been there. ‘How bad is it?’

‘I think you should come.’

‘I’ll get dressed. You get back to him.’

‘No, it’s all right, I’ll wait.’

She stepped back. ‘Well, at least wait inside.’

He brushed past her. She closed the door, shutting out the dervish dance of flakes and shadows. He stood awkwardly, snow coating his shoulders as if he were a statue. Big, raw, red hands – he’d come out without gloves – a long nose with a dewdrop trembling on the tip, and a terrible, intractable, gauche shyness coming off him like a bad smell.

‘I won’t be a minute,’ she said.

She ran upstairs, burst into her bedroom, snatched up the first clothes that came to hand, put on her coat and wound a scarf round her neck, all the time trying to think what she would need to take. She’d be staying all night; she might have to stay longer than that. Nightdress, then: soap, flannel, toothbrush, toothpaste, brush, comb. What else? She snapped the lock shut and carried the case downstairs.

The snow on his boots had melted to a puddle on the floor.

‘Can we get a cab?’

‘No, I tried on my way here but they said they’re not taking fares.’

London had become a silent city. For Elinor the stillness added to the strangeness of this walk through deserted streets with a man she didn’t know to a place she’d never been. How secretive Toby was, really. She hadn’t realized till now. He always seemed so laugh
ing and open, so uncomplicated, and yet he’d never once invited her to his lodgings or offered to introduce her to his friends.

‘Has he seen a doctor?’

‘Two days ago, he said go home and go to bed.’

‘Which of course he didn’t.’

‘No, well, he had to go into college; he had an appointment with his tutor. And he didn’t seem to be too bad. But then last night his temperature absolutely shot up.’

‘What’s his breathing like?’

‘Quite bad, I think it might be pneumonia.’

‘Is there a telephone?’

‘I think the landlady has one, but she lives next door.’

‘It’s just I’ll have to tell my parents.’

‘No, you mustn’t, he doesn’t want them to know. He’s afraid if your mother comes she’ll get it herself.’

‘They’ve got a right to know.’

‘You talk to him then, he might listen to you.’

Mother
would
come and nurse him. Surprising, perhaps, in such an indolent woman, but she’d have been on the next train.

‘Is term over?’

‘Finished yesterday. That’s why he wouldn’t give in, you see. He won’t take time off.’

She caught the note of hero worship in his voice. When Toby was at school, he’d always had hero-worshipping younger boys trailing round after him, coming to stay in the holidays, taking him away from her. This Andrew might think he was special but he was merely the latest in a long line.

They were climbing a steep hill now, which at least allowed her to stop talking for a while. The smell of sulphur that had hung over the city for weeks had gone; the air tasted crisp and sweet. With each step she pressed her foot down hard, relishing the squeak of her boots on the impacted snow. Odd, to be able to feel pleasure at such a time. She didn’t, even now, believe Toby was really sick, or in any danger. He never had been. Apart from the usual childhood things that everybody gets, she couldn’t remember a time when he’d been ill.

The houses on either side were more imposing now, set well back from the road and screened by trees. She bumped into a low-hanging branch that sent snow cascading over her head and shoulders. Taking off her hat, she beat it against the side of her coat.

Andrew was staring, as if he’d only just seen her. ‘You’re awfully like him, aren’t you? I didn’t think boy/girl twins could be identical.’

‘They can’t,’ she said. ‘One’s a boy, one’s a girl.’ He was supposed to be a medical student, for God’s sake. ‘Anyway, we’re not twins.’

‘Oh. I’m sure Toby said –’

‘I think I’d know.’ That verged on the sharp. ‘Toby was a twin, the other one died.’

‘Sorry, I must’ve got it wrong.’

He was still looking puzzled: Toby
had
said they were twins. She didn’t understand any of this, but there was no time to think about it now. ‘Is there anybody in the house who can help look after him?’

‘No, not really. I live at home, I can come in during the day, but I couldn’t stay overnight.’

‘I meant the landlady, somebody like that.’

‘I’m afraid she’s much too grand for anything like that. And I don’t think he knows any of the other tenants.’

The walk took a lot longer in the snow than it would normally have done. By the time they reached Toby’s lodgings Elinor was gasping for breath, in no state to face four flights of stairs, or brace herself for what she might find when she reached the top.

Andrew pushed open the door, called out a cheerful greeting and then stood aside to let her go in first. Her nostrils caught the usual sickroom fug of camphor and stale sweat. The room was in darkness except for a circle of firelight flickering on the hearthrug. She couldn’t see where she was going, but then Andrew stepped in front of her and lit the lamp. A bristle of meaningless detail: clothes, shoes, socks, furniture, books, dirty dishes piled up in a sink. None of it registered. She saw only Toby’s face.

‘Elinor.’

Three quick strides took her to the bed. ‘It’s all right,’ she was saying. ‘It’s all right.’

He gazed up at her, and a thick, pasty-white tongue came out and licked his cracked lips.

‘Don’t try to talk.’

As she spoke, she was pulling off her coat and scarf. She tossed them on to a chair and stamped her feet to shake off the curds of snow. The room filled with the smell of wet wool and the cold air they’d brought in on their skins.

Elinor glanced round. The fire was burning low, but there was a basket full of logs, presumably carried up by Andrew. There was a jug of water by the bed. As for food, well … She doubted if Toby could eat anything and she certainly didn’t want to.

‘You won’t tell Mother, will you?’

‘She’s got a right to know.
And
Father.’

‘Honestly, Elinor, this is a terrible thing …’ He was struggling to sit up. ‘Don’t let –’

He’d always been like this about Mother. Nothing must be allowed to upset or disturb her at all. It made Elinor actually quite angry: so much concern for Mother, so little for her. It obviously didn’t matter if
she
got ill. And Father, where was Father in all this? Nowhere. Rachel, not even mentioned. But she could see he was becoming more and more agitated.

‘All right,’ she said, at last. ‘I promise.’

He closed his eyes then and let her settle him on to the pillows, which were damp with his sweat.

When she’d made him as comfortable as she could, she turned to Andrew, who’d been hovering, awkward and clumsy, by the door, his gaze fixed on Toby’s flushed and sweating face.

‘I’ll be all right now, if you want to get off.’

He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘I don’t want to, but I think perhaps I’d better.’

He went to stand by the bed. For some extraordinary reason she felt she ought to look away, but then, deliberately, didn’t. She watched him wrap one big red hand round Toby’s twitching fingertips.

‘Right, then, I’ll see you in the morning.’

‘What time?’

‘Nine-ish.’

‘Oh. Not till then?’

‘All right, I’ll try to get in for eight.’

Toby seemed about to say something else, but then shook his head.

She followed Andrew out on to the landing.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘here’s my telephone number. You will let me know, won’t you, if he gets worse?’

‘Yes, of course,’ she said, automatically, though she thought:
I’ve just promised not to tell my mother and father. Why on earth would I tell you?

She stood in the darkness, listening to his footsteps going down the stairs, until she heard the click of the front door closing behind him. When she got back to the room, Toby’s eyes were shut, though she didn’t think he was asleep. Perhaps he wanted to avoid the rawness of undiluted contact with her, now that his friend had gone and they were alone. She looked down at him. There was a grey tinge to his complexion now, except for two patches of dark red on his cheeks that seemed to get more intense as she watched. The effect was ridiculous and even slightly sinister; he looked like a broken doll.