Tree of Hands (3 page)

‘You spoil him.'

Benet made no answer to that and Mopsa began to talk of the complexities of getting to the hospital where the first tests were to be carried out. It was such a long way and the underground system had ‘all changed' since she had lived in London. She studied a tube map and a street guide. Benet said of course she would take her by car, and if James wasn't well enough to come, she would find someone to sit with him.

When she had been living in her flat in Tufnell Park, a baby-sitter had sometimes been arranged but that was from the block of flats next door where teenage girls abounded, all wanting to earn. Here it was different. She knew no one. She didn't even have friends with small children except Chloe who was currently away on holiday.

Mopsa, never lacking in intuition of a kind, went part of the way towards reading her thoughts. ‘Can't you find someone now? I should like us to go out to eat.'

‘I couldn't leave him.'

Benet decided to ignore Mopsa's sullen look. Anyway it was becoming a question not of whether she should stay with James or leave him but of taking some more positive step. His forehead felt hot and damp. His breath strained and sometimes a honking sound came from his chest. He had made an attempt to play with the xylophone but had soon come back and climbed on to Benet's lap, the difficulties he was having with breathing making him break into miserable choked cries.

‘I'm going to have to ring the doctor.'

‘It's seven o'clock. Surely you wouldn't bother an overworked man like that just because the baby's got a cold.'

‘It's a woman,' Benet said and she said no more. In the old days it had always been useless getting cross with
Mopsa, still less losing one's temper. It threw her at once into a desperate frenetic panic. That was years ago now but old habits died hard. Benet reached for the phone and as she did so it rang.

‘That'll be your father.'

It was. Mopsa looked complacent. Signs of care and attentiveness towards herself always disproportionately gratified her.

‘Hallo, Dad, how are you?' Benet had to move the mouthpiece away from James's loud unhappy crying. ‘Sorry, that's poor James giving tongue. He's got a cold.'

Though there had never been anything so dramatic as casting her off from the bosom of the family, though in fact no positive denunciation of her had ever been made, her father had been shocked and outraged by her pregnancy and the birth of James. The situation was made worse by her being an educated person and now a well-off one, living in a society where much was on offer to prevent the births of children outside wedlock. He had never yet actually referred to James by name. When James, as had lately happened, became interested in the telephone and wanted to speak to whomever was on the line, his grandfather had been embarrassed and had spoken gruffly, had barked out a series of hallos and goodbyes and positively panted to get back to Benet. Now when she explained about James's cold, he said only, ‘Ah, well.' An awkward pause followed. ‘How's your mother? Got there all right, did she?'

‘She's fine. Do you want to speak to her?'

The pause was briefer this time but it was there. No doubt John Archdale had loved his wife once. Since then he had had a lot to bear. It wasn't her fault, she was to be pitied, she was just as helplessly ill as if she suffered from multiple sclerosis, but now, instead of love, what he felt was duty; he bore a cross that yearly grew heavier. At the moment he was probably having a little well-earned respite with those expatriate cronies of his, a game of bridge, a drink in the bar of the Miramar. The sound of his wife's
voice would not make that evening pleasanter. Benet could do nothing.

‘I'll just have a word,' he said.

From time to time in the past, Benet had heard her mother hurl at him a variety of epithets of which ‘bag of shit' and ‘filthy murderer' was among the mildest. Now Mopsa took the receiver and spoke into it in her sensible housewife role.

‘Hallo, dear.'

There was a short interchange. Benet couldn't help feeling indignant that James's name wasn't once mentioned. He was quiet now – that is, he had stopped crying – and leaned heavily against her, the rasps of breath louder than ever.

‘Yes, quite a nice flight. One thing you can say for air travel, it doesn't go on for long, it's soon over. I was met and brought here in style. Yes, in the morning, ten in the morning. You'd better phone again tomorrow, hadn't you? I'll say goodbye then.'

She put the phone down and stood staring at Benet with James in her lap. That trembly look, rather as if she were going to cry, which Benet knew of old as presaging a change of mood, had settled on her face. Suddenly Mopsa began to speak in a high and rapid, though not mad, voice.

‘I wasn't a good mother to you, Brigitte. I know that. I neglected you – well, I didn't pay enough attention to you. I was ill, you see, I was ill long before you and Dad realized. It was this hormone or whatever it is that's missing, it was missing then, it was affecting me. I wasn't a good mother. I was a lost soul, you see. Can you forgive me?'

Emotional outbursts from Mopsa always embarrassed Benet. She felt awkward, farouche, not least because of the use her mother always fell back on, in times of stress particularly, of the hated given name which, for once following in Mopsa's footsteps, she had divested herself of immediately she left home. Benet was rather angular, long-legged, with pointed features and straight dark hair. How could she have borne to suffer afresh, with a new set of
friends, the inevitable mirth and amazement consequent upon being called after Bardot?

She was embarrassed but she had to conquer that embarrassment for poor, pathetic Mopsa's sake. And Mopsa stood there waiting, hungry for love, for reassurance, her breathing fast and nearly as shallow as James's.

‘Can you forgive me, Brigitte?'

‘There's nothing to forgive. You were ill. Besides, you weren't a bad mother.' Holding James, pressing him against her shoulder, Benet forced herself to get up and put the other arm round her mother. Mopsa was trembling, she quivered like a nervous animal. Benet held her arms round her mother and round James. She kissed Mopsa's cheek. The skin was hot and dry and slightly pulsating. But Mopsa's water-blue eyes were clear and steady and sane. ‘I haven't anything to forgive, believe me,' Benet said. ‘And now let's forget it, shall we?'

‘I'd do anything in the world for you, anything to make you happy.'

‘I know.'

Benet sat down by the phone again, settled James on her lap and dialled the doctor's number.

‘HE'S GOT CROUP'.

An onomatopoeic word, roughly the sound James made when he breathed. Benet knew by the immensity of her relief – she could have thrown her arms round Dr McNeil's neck – how worried she had been.

‘I thought that was something Victorian children got.'

‘They did. Children still do. Only we can do more for them these days.' Causing Benet's relief to plummet like a lead weight, the doctor said, ‘I'd like him to go to hospital.'

‘Is that absolutely necessary?'

‘To be on the safe side. They'll have the equipment. I don't suppose you could achieve a steam-filled room here, could you?'

Dr McNeil was sixty, she was due to retire in a week or two. Was she old-fashioned? Benet wondered. A steam-filled room? She imagined a shower turned on full, crashing nearly boiling water into a bath, the door and window of the bathroom shut. But one of the bathrooms here didn't have a shower at all and the other had one that was hopelessly furred up, waiting for a replacement.

‘What exactly is croup?'

‘If you had it, we'd call it laryngitis.'

Benet left the doctor to make phone calls. She carried James down into the kitchen where Mopsa, very practical in apron and rubber gloves, was washing up cups and saucers. Relief had returned. Croup was only laryngitis.

‘I'll come with you,' Mopsa said.

Benet would have preferred her mother to stay here but she didn't know how to say so. And perhaps Mopsa shouldn't be left alone, especially at night and in a strange
place. It was unfortunate Mopsa happened to be here at this particular time. Benet could not help reflecting that, when people said they would do anything in the world to make you happy, they never meant things like keeping in the background, not interfering, acceding to your small requests.

At any rate this time Mopsa sat in the back of the car, holding James. The night was clear but moonless. Benet realized suddenly that it was Hallowe'en. She carried James, wrapped in a big fleecy blanket, into the big old vaulted Gothic vestibule of the hospital and then they were sent up to the ward in the lift.

Not very familiar with hospitals – she had been in one only once and that when James was born – Benet had expected a long ward with beds close together and ranged along both sides. But Edgar Stamford Ward was all small rooms with a wide corridor down the centre. The building, she had heard, had once been the old workhouse, but this part must have been gutted to make the children's department, for nothing nineteenth century remained except for the windows with their small panes and pointed arches. In James's room, a tent over a cot into which steam was being pumped awaited James. The nurse called it a croupette. He had been in it for about ten minutes, protesting at first, then lying quietly and clutching Benet's hand, when the doctor arrived to look at him. In the doorway he took off his hospital jacket and laid it across the sister's desk.

‘They get white-coat phobia if we don't do that,' he said. ‘Won't even go in the butcher's with you.' He smiled. ‘My name's Ian Raeburn. I'm one of the registrars here.'

There was a bed beside the cot. She was sitting on it. She had noticed it was made up with sheets and blankets.

‘Can I stay here with him?'

‘Sure you can if you want. That's what the bed's for. And you've got a bathroom next door. We're rather proud in here of encouraging parents to stay – a change from the bad old days.'

‘I'd like to stay.'

Mopsa said in a small lost voice, ‘What about me?'

‘I'll leave you to decide about that,' said Dr Raeburn. ‘I think you'll find James will be easier now he's in the tent.'

The fingers clutching her finger had not slackened. ‘You can have a taxi back, Mother. I'll come down with you and call you a taxi. You'll be all right.'

Mopsa's face had grown soft, putty-like, tremulous. Her lips shook. The bedroom was very dimly lit, a single low-wattage bulb gleaming from a fitting on the wall above the washbasin, and in this gloom the glazed look had come back into her eyes. It was the first time since her arrival that Benet had seen that look.

‘I'm never left on my own. It was bad enough being alone in the plane, I mean, without anyone I know. I can't be all on my own in a strange house.'

‘It would only be for one night.'

‘Why do you have to stay with him? He's asleep, he won't know whether you're there or not. Parents never used to stay in hospitals with children, it was unheard-of, the staff wouldn't have put up with it.'

‘Things have changed.'

‘Yes and for the worse. Your father wouldn't have let me come if he'd known you were going to leave me on my own, Brigitte. I'll be ill if you leave me on my own.'

Benet carefully disengaged her finger from James's grasp. He did not move. She was filled with an intense dislike of Mopsa, something that verged on hatred. When her mother was rational like this, though exhibiting all the signs of solipsism – indifference to others' wishes, deep selfishness – the feeling that all her madness was an act put on to gain attention was inescapable. Of course it wasn't, it was as real as a physical paralysis. And if it were an act, wasn't that in itself a sign of madness, that anyone would take an act so far?

I must not hate my mother . . .

‘You'll be quite safe. There are bars on the ground-floor
windows, there's a phone on each floor. It's not exactly a rough area, is it?'

‘I'm not going without you, Brigitte. You can't make me. I can sleep in the chair here. I can sleep on the floor.'

‘They won't let you,' Benet said. ‘They'll only allow parents. Look, I'll drive you home and then I'll come back here. I'll come home again first thing in the morning.'

‘I have to go for my tests first thing in the morning.'

Mopsa's face was stubborn and set. All the pointed, sharp witch look had come back. Her clouded eyes were fixed not on Benet but on a point in the far corner of the room. Benet looked at James. He was asleep and the vaporizer was gently and steadily puffing steam into the croupette. She picked her coat off the bed. She thought she saw surprise, perhaps a little more than that, in the ward sister's expression when she said she wouldn't be staying overnight. Mopsa, who had spent long stretches of her life in hospitals, wasn't happy here. She darted wary glances from side to side as they walked towards the lift, especially at the sign pointing in the direction of the psychiatric clinic.

The house had a welcoming feel in spite of the crates still waiting to be unpacked. It was warm and bright and comfortable. Yet for Benet the night was almost a sleepless one. She could not rid her mind of the image of James waking up in that steamy hothouse and finding her gone. What use was she to her mother? Mopsa had taken a sleeping pill the moment they got back to the Vale of Peace, had fallen asleep ten minutes later and had been sleeping ever since. Passing her door at six in the morning on her way to make tea, Benet heard Mopsa's regular breathing with a hint of a snore in it.

She phoned the hospital, spoke to the staff nurse on Edgar Stamford Ward and was told James was much the same. He had passed a restless night. The staff nurse didn't say if he had called for Benet or cried for her and Benet could not bring herself to ask. She knew he must have done. He had never before been parted from her. If only
Mopsa's tests were being done at the same hospital! Instead she was going to have to drive her miles across the sprawl of north London suburbs and fight her way back again through the traffic before she could go to James. For the first time in her relationship with James, she felt guilt, she felt she had failed him.