‘My . . . poor . . .’ Hildegarde repeated, but this time the last word eluded her.
I flinched at the thin, claw-like hands that reached for me, somehow afraid to let them touch, fighting the revulsion I felt for this cadaverous old lady lying there propped up by pillows, her long dry white hair, the scrawny chicken’s neck, the yellowish skin, with its deep creases and rampant liver-spots – and most of all the fetid smell that came from her, musty-sweet and tainted by the odour of degenerating flesh. I despised myself for giving in to the very emotion I reviled in others, those people who cast eyes upon my own shape for the first time and who, either because of surprise or ignorance, were unable to disguise their reactions. I quickly pulled myself together and managed to smile.
‘Sparrow,’ I said, and her expression changed as she remembered the nickname. Her mouth widened into a thin, toothless grin.
But as I drew even closer, her weak eyes narrowed and the grin shrivelled to a glower. She cocked her head to one side, eyeing me suspiciously.
‘You’re not one of my . . .’ Although the words she spoke were more crisp, the sentence trailed away again. Her hands dropped to the sheets covering her skinny old body and now there was consternation on her face. So cavernous were her cheeks that they were shadowed, and although she was slight, some of her flesh hung loose, as though the bone inside had shrunk. I hated to admit it, but the only bird she reminded me of was a vulture.
‘Miss Vogel . . . er, Sparrow, I’m a friend,’ I forced myself to say, angry at myself for giving into such prejudices. There was a hardbacked chair against the wall and I pulled it nearer to the bed. My hump pushed me forward when I sat and I rested my wrists on the edge of the narrow bed. Her head slumped back on the pillows and she watched me with distrustful eyes.
‘You are not, you are not a friend.’
The German accent was still evident in her weary voice, although it was slight, an intonation rather than a pronunciation.
‘George Wilkins told me about you.’
Her wizened face formed a thousand more wrinkles as she frowned in concentration. ‘George?’ It sounded like Chorge. ‘I don’t know anyone . . .’
‘Sure, you remember. He and his wife used to run a shop opposite the hospital you worked in.’ Shit, what was the wife’s name? I’m supposed to be a pro, I should have made a note of it. ‘The Dartford General. You were a good friend of George and his wife. You used their shop all the time.’
‘Emma. Where is Emma? Has she come to see me?’ She craned her neck to look at the open doorway as if expecting her old friend to enter. ‘Where is . . . ?’
Her hand gripped my wrist on the bed.
‘Yes, Emma. See, you do remember. Emma Wilkins.’
A toothless smile again. Heavy lids closed over her eyes as she recalled her friend. I hoped other memories would come back to her this afternoon.
‘I worked in many hospitals,’ she muttered and I could hear the wheezy rattle of her breath as it settled into her leaking lungs.
I had no idea that she had, but I prompted her. ‘Yes, you did. But you remember Dartford General, don’t you?’
Her breath now made a whistling sound as it left her mouth. ‘Is . . . is Em . . .’ the name almost escaped her ‘. . . Emma coming to see me today?’
‘No, not today.’ I didn’t want to upset her, so I lied again. ‘Emma’s not very well, but she sends her love.’
Another thin smile and she opened her eyes once more. ‘And tell me, why are you here? I’m sure . . . I’m sure I do not know you. Or are you just someone else I’ve forgotten? I do forget things these days. I do not mean to . . .’ Her hand unclasped itself from my wrist and her eyes began to close once more.
Afraid she might fall asleep, I hastened my approach. ‘Another friend sends her love, too. Shelly Teasdale. You do remember her, don’t you?’
Hildegarde gave a feeble shake of her head. ‘No, I do not . . .’
‘You helped deliver her baby in Dartford General. It was a long time ago, eighteen years . . .’
‘Baby? Oh, the poor babies.’
She lifted her head and began to look around, this way and that, searching for something. In frustration, she slumped back and turned to me. I saw a sharpness in her eyes then, a clarity that had not been there before. It was as if the wasting of brain cells had been held in check for a moment.
‘Where are the babies?’ she demanded to know.
I probed as gently as I could. ‘What babies do you mean, Sparrow?’
‘The poor little ones. The unfortunates. He said they would always be cared for.’
‘Who said? Was it one of the doctors you worked with in Dartford?’
‘All over. Other places. We always worked together. The Doctor has always been . . . good . . . to . . . me . . . to . . . others . . .’ She drew in a long quivering breath. ‘Ever since . . .’
I was losing her and I gave her arm a gentle little shake. ‘Ever since when, Hildegarde? Tell me what happened.’
Her eyelids sprang open and I saw an excitement there, as though the memories had suddenly become clear, pleasing her, giving her back some vigour. She looked up at the ceiling as though it were a screen on which those recollections were being played out.
‘I was young then. Not like this, not old and useless.’ A wheezy sigh, and then a short struggle to regain the breath she had lost. I waited impatiently, ready to grab the nebulizer mask should it be needed.
‘Oh dear Heavenly Father, I remember that night so clearly.’ She smiled and I couldn’t tell if it was because of the visions she saw, or because of the sudden lucidity of her mind.
I leaned closer, ignoring the smell that had so stupidly offended me earlier. Tell me about it, Sparrow,’ I whispered. I didn’t know why, but I wanted to share in her reverie. Perhaps I thought she was referring to the time when she had been midwife to Shelly Ripstone née Teasdale.
The hospital was in London. It was . . . no, I can no longer remember its name.’ Her voice was querulous, but it had an underlying strength to it now, the visions helping the telling. The hospital was in a bad part of the city, where the bombs had done so much harm.’
I guessed she was talking about London’s East End, or the docklands, which had been so badly battered by German planes during the Second World War.
Wilhelm was gone. Oh my darling Wilhelm . . . killed by the enemies who were to become my friends. Seven years after the end of the war there was nothing for me in Berlin and our conquerors were begging skilled people to come to their shores. In Germany we were trying to rebuild, but there was nothing there for me, no close relations, not many companions, not enough food, and the money paid for labour was a pittance. It was little wonder I saw England as a land of opportunity.’
Although her eyes remained open, some of the fresh lustre had faded from them.
‘Tell me about the hospital, Hildegarde,’ I urged quietly.
‘Ach, the hospital. So drab, so grey. Yet I thought it was wonderful, even though I was treated as an outcast. The people found it so hard to forgive and who could blame them for that? But I worked . . . my God, how I worked. Both night and day – it made no difference to me, I had nothing else to do . . .’
I was disappointed. Hildegarde was going back more than fifty years, long before the time I was interested in. Yet now, having urged her to remember, there was no diverting that train of thought.
‘I was on night duty, very tired – I’d helped deliver three little ones that afternoon. I think it was midnight. Yes, I’m sure it was . . . I took my break about that time. I had no one to talk to – the people were still suspicious of us Germans even after all that time, and besides, my English was still very bad.’
A silence followed and I had to prompt her again. ‘What happened that night, Hildegarde? In the hospital, it was around twelve o’clock at night . . . ?’
Her head slowly turned so that she could look into my eyes.
‘You do not know?’
&nb
sp; It sounded like an accusation.
She spoke in a harsh whisper. ‘Are you not one of them? Is that not why you are here?’
‘I’m not sure what you mean, Hildegarde. Why don’t you just tell me about that night?’ I was perplexed, but put her confusion down to the disease in her brain.
‘That night . . . ? Oh yes, that night. I decided I would explore the hospital . . . mein Gott, what was it called . . . ?’
‘It doesn’t matter, Hildegarde. Just tell me your story.’
‘Yes, my story. The one you already know. Are you trying to trick me, do you think I am insane? Is it that you wish to find out how much I still know, how much I have forgotten?’
‘No, Sparrow.’ I persisted in using both her Christian name and nickname in the hope it would make me sound more familiar to her. ‘I’m interested, that’s all. I’m not trying to trick you.’
‘How do I know that? The doctor tells me I should forget. But I do not want to forget!’
Her voice had risen in pitch and I patted her hand reassuringly, afraid she might alert one of the staff. ‘It’s okay. Take your time. Don’t upset yourself.’
‘Are you a friend?’
‘Yes, I’m a friend.’
‘Like Emma?’
I nodded my head.
Tears formed in the corners of her eyes. ‘The doctor isn’t my friend any more.’
‘I’m sure he is.’ I wondered who this doctor was. Could she have meant the proprietor of the home himself, this Dr Leonard K. Wisbeech?
Her chest, which had begun to rise and fall rapidly, became calmer.
‘Nobody told me there were places in the hospital where I should not go. But I was young, and curious, and I had nothing else to do that night. I wandered through the wards and corridors, getting to know the place, introducing myself to the other duty nurses. I was a stranger and I wanted to be accepted, I wanted to know my way around. It was such a huge building, but eventually I found myself on the top floor.’
She started to cough, at first softly, but then the exertion sending spasms through her whole body. I became anxious, unsure of what I should do: help her use the nebulizer, or press the call button so that a trained nurse could deal with the situation? But even as I fretted, the spasms grew less violent, the coughing less harsh, until eventually the seizure passed. Her cheeks were damp with forced tears and spittle drooled on to her chin.
I took tissues from a box on the bedside cabinet and gently wiped her face. She appeared not to notice.
‘The corridors were dark up there,’ she went on as though nothing had occurred, the rise and fall of her thin little chest assuming a regular rhythm once more, ‘so very, very dark. I did not realize this was verboten, that I should not be there. I thought perhaps that this part of the hospital was unused and I wondered why. I found the doors to a ward that had no name, no markings or numbers, nothing at all. I was too nervous to go inside, afraid I would get into trouble.’
Her voice descended to a whisper and she leaned my way, as if to confide in me. ‘I looked though. Oh yes, I peeked inside. And that was the beginning for me, you see, that was the moment it all started. That was when I became involved.’
I tensed. I didn’t know why, but my body, my mind, became suddenly alert. I tried to control my impatience. ‘What was in that ward, Hildegarde? What did you find?’
Those grey, watery eyes fixed on me. ‘I found the infants,’ she said. ‘The poor little ones whose only offence was how they looked.’
A peculiar sensation ran through me, a kind of rush that heightened my senses and set my nerves on edge. I knew the answer even before I put the question.
‘What was wrong with them, Hildegarde?’
She spoke as if from a distance, her eyes looking ceiling-wards, its whiteness a screen once more.
‘They were like you,’ she said. ‘But worse. Harmless little babies born so hideous that they had to be locked away in darkness so that the world would never know its shame. Infants whose mothers did not know they were alive.’
Her eyelids closed like curtains to the ceiling’s screen, shutting out the images, bringing an end to the spectacle. But it seemed that the pictures in her mind were far stronger than those conjured on the ceiling, for now she was closed in with them, the impressions bolder and more disconcerting because they were even more intimate. She began to twist her head from side to side.
‘They . . . they are calling me . . .’
With horror, I realized that for her, the past had become the present. Her enfeebled brain had brought the memories to her, so that she was reliving the moments of many years before. I reached for her wrist and made soothing sounds in an attempt to bring her back to reality. It was no use though: her mind was in another place.
‘The older ones . . . they are . . . their poor little stunted arms . . . they are reaching out towards me . . . “Mama”, they call . . . “Mama” . . . and I take them in my arms . . . I comfort them . . . and they love me as I love them . . .’
She was thrashing around in the bed and I stood, my hands going to her shoulders, all the time trying to calm her, to soothe her with words I knew she could not hear.
‘And he . . . and he finds me there . . . but it is too late . . . I know the secret . . .’
She was rambling, her words beginning to make no sense, her voice rising in pitch.
‘Who found you, Sparrow?’ I said close to her ear.
‘God, help them . . . please help them . . . I cannot . . . any more . . .’
‘What on earth is going on here?’
The harsh, new voice came from the doorway and I turned in surprise. The senior nurse and administrator, the one whose wrath Constance had incurred in the hallway earlier, was standing there, a look of pure rage blazing from her broad face. I hardly knew what to say. Shit, I hardly knew what to do.
Hildegarde was wriggling in the bed, the sheets becoming entangled with her stick-thin legs; she was making terrible sounds as she fought for breath, her desperate inhalations dry-raw, her wheezing alarming to hear. Her bony, blue-veined hands beat at the air and her lipless mouth was like a black hole at the centre of her face.
Nurse Fletcher hurried in, brushing me aside to get to her patient. ‘It’s all right, Hildegarde, please calm down,’ she said as she tried to smooth the little woman’s brow with the palm of her hand.
To me she shouted: ‘Why have you been upsetting her? Just what do you think you’re doing?’ Ignoring my pleas of innocence she stabbed at the call button by the side of the bed. A red light above it blinked on.
‘I really didn’t do anything,’ I tried to explain.
‘I heard her shouts from the other end of the corridor,’ the nurse said through gritted teeth. ‘You must have done something.’
I have to admit, I found this woman daunting. There was too much icy fury in her, too much barely-restrained power in her stance. I backed towards the door.
Hurried footsteps pounded the corridor outside and then the male nurse, the big guy Constance had called Bruce, was in the doorway. His handsome-but-flawed face looked dumb in its incomprehension as he glanced from me to the action on the bed.
Nurse Fletcher yelled at him: ‘Help me pin her down so I can get the mask on her!’
Again I was rudely pushed aside as he ran to help the nurse.
‘Just push her down and hold her there for me. We’ll use the nebulizer to help her breathe, then I’ll give her something to sedate her.’
By now the old lady was screaming between gasps for air and, as the orderly placed his beefy hands on her scrawny little shoulders to press her down on to the bed, I decided to leave the room – I didn’t want to witness any more of this. Outside, I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes; still I could hear the struggles from inside, the torturous inhalations now muted by the nebulizer mask but heartrending all the same.
‘Oh shit,’ I said to no one but myself.
I’d pushed the old lady too hard, and I regrette
d that, but unfortunately that was sometimes what a PI’s job was all about: probing, delving, winkling out the truth even when it meant upsetting people. This time though, I wondered if I hadn’t gone too far.
Time to leave, I told myself. No point in hanging round just to take another harangue from Head Nurse. Besides, I wasn’t going to learn any more from Hildegarde Vogel that day. As I headed for the main stairs, pale, time-worn faces appeared in doorways, some shrinking away as I passed by, others bold in their curiosity, wondering what the fuss was all about. These latter residents either glared at me, annoyed by the interruption, or looked askance, perhaps hoping I would linger awhile to explain the disruption to their daily tedium. A bald-headed man with rheumy eyes and a complexion that was slightly less healthy than a cadaver’s shook his walking-stick at me as I went by his room. He stepped into the corridor behind me, snarling and warning me to keep my distance. I not only kept it, I increased it also, hurrying to get away from there as fast as I could. More grey heads peered round doorways to disappear as soon as I drew close and I began to feel like some kind of pariah, an untouchable, spreading disease in my wake. I avoided their gazes, casting my own eye downwards so that all I glimpsed was slippered feet, the hems of dressing-gowns and nightdresses, the wheels of invalid chairs, and all I heard was mumblings and mutterings and the occasional intake of breath and the odd slamming of a door or two. My breathing had become laboured, my steps more lumbering, and I had broken out into a sweat, all because of the fear and hostility directed at me. It was funny, but the corridor seemed longer than before.
At last, I turned the corner into the main hallway and landing, and there was Constance Bell coming towards me, her own breathing a little ragged after her climb up the stairs.
‘What is it?’ she asked, her lovely face filled with concern. ‘Hildegarde’s call bell – ’
‘I’m sorry,’ I blurted out. ‘I really am sorry.’ I was still walking, heading for the staircase.
She put one of her sticks across my path to stop me. ‘What did you do, Mr Dismas?’ There was no anger, only dismay in her voice.
‘I didn’t mean to upset her,’ I replied, coming to a halt. ‘I only asked her a few questions.’