Convalescence (7 page)

“That's the old boy's dormitory,” she said.

“The old what?”

“Dormitory,” she said.

I looked puzzled.

She sighed. “I told you I grew up at the orphanage, right?”

“St. Joseph's, yes.”

“Well a few times a year, during the summer, a group of kids from St. Joseph's were invited by your uncle to spend the week here—a summer vacation, if you like. I was lucky enough to come here a couple of times.”

“But why would he do that?”

“Well, as I said, he was on the board of governors, and it was always during the summer holidays when Hughie was off from school. I think Mr. Bentley saw it as a way to keep his nephew amused. Hughie was away at boarding school during term time, and I don't think your uncle much liked the idea of Hughie mooching around here, kicking his heels, so we were shipped in as entertainment for him.”

“Didn't you mind?”

“You have to be kidding,” she said. “I don't know about other orphanages, but St. Joseph's wasn't exactly a laugh-a-minute kind of place. The nuns were very kind…mostly…but there's not a lot in the way of entertainment. Chapel every day is all well and good, but a girl can only pray so much before she runs out of things to pray for. In the end it's just like reciting a shopping list for things you know you never have a chance of getting,” she said wistfully.

Suddenly she brightened. “We did have a television, but that was limited to one hour a day before supper, and we all had to watch it together, crammed into the refectory, so the chance of coming here and having a couple of weeks to run wild was an enormous treat.”

“I can see that it would be,” I said, realizing just how fortunate I'd been to be raised in a loving family.

“Anyway, carry on. What else have you heard?”

I told her about the gramophone.

That produced a warm smile of remembrance. “I remember that old record player. Some of the younger children used to play with it. There used to be a big box of 78s. There were lots of children's records—‘Three Billy Goats Gruff', that sort of thing. It was a bit of a pain, though, especially when they used to set it going first thing in the morning when you were still asleep. Why is it that small children wake up so early? Anyway, carry on.”

“But don't you think it strange that the gramophone was playing in an empty room, with no one to set it going.”

“Perhaps there's a ghost,” she said.

I looked at her, startled, but then I saw the twinkle in her eyes.

“You're joshing me,” I said, slightly hurt that she wasn't taking me seriously.

She knew she'd hurt my feelings. “Sorry,” she said. “Tell your story. I won't utter a sound.” She made a zipping motion across her lips.

“No,” I said. “I'm telling you, just so you can reassure me that I'm not going barmy.”

So then I told her about the mist-boy, and I watched the smile fade from her eyes.

“This boy…describe him,” she said. Her voice was low, and there was an edge of urgency about it.

“He was about my size, my age.”

“What color hair?”

“Fair, and he had a fringe that kind of swept down over one eye.”

Her face had gone pale. “Did he say anything to you?”

“Kind of.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, you sometimes see it at the cinema when the film goes out of synch. The actor's lips move but the sound comes out a second later.”

“So what did he say?”

“He seemed to know my name. He said, ‘Help me. Help me, James'.”

Amy gave a long sigh and almost jumped from the bed, crossing to the window and opening it wide. I heard her take a couple of long breaths.

“What is it, Amy? Do you know who the boy could have been?”

She turned back to face me. She had tears running down her cheeks. She nodded her head. “Yes,” she said. “It sounds like Michael.”

“Michael?”

She nodded again, came back to the bed and sat down.

“Michael O'Herlihy.”

“Then you knew him?”

“Quite well. He was at St. Joseph's with his brother, Tim…and then he wasn't.”

“What do you mean, ‘and then he wasn't'?”

“It happened all the time. Some children, the lucky ones, got adopted. When we stopped seeing Michael around, we assumed that was what happened to him. His brother had been chosen a few months before, so nobody thought it was unusual.”

“Why didn't you ask the nuns what happened to him?”

“It wasn't something you brought up. They didn't like it if you questioned them…about anything really. Besides, they had their stock answer—‘God will answer your questions, child'. The problem was that he never did, so you stopped asking.

“But I missed Michael, missed him hugely. He was at St. Joseph's when I first arrived. He was a few years older than me and he kind of took me under his wing, showed me how things worked at the home, which of the nuns were kind, and warned me of the ones not to cross.”

“You sound as though you were sweet on him,” I said.

“Oh, I loved him, loved him very much. It's why I fell for Andy. He reminds me a lot of Michael…the same smiling Irish eyes, the same gift of the blarney.”

“Well, didn't you find it strange that Michael left without saying goodbye?”

“Of course I did,” she snapped petulantly. “But that's what happens when you're adopted. You go on to your new life without looking back. Michael going broke my heart. I cried over him for weeks…and now you're telling me you've seen him…here.”

“I'm telling you what I saw in the dormitory. I didn't say it was him. I never met him so I wouldn't know.”

“What was the music that was playing?” There was urgency in her voice now, that had been absent before.

“I don't know,” I said, wondering why on earth that mattered.

“Think,” she said. “It's important.”

I tried to picture the record's label in my mind. “It was a march,” I said. “Very oom-pah-pah. Blaze something.”

“Blaze Away?”

“Yes, that was it. ‘Blaze Away.' How did you know?”

Her eyes filled with tears. “It was his favorite. He was always playing it. What else did he say?”

“Nothing,” I said. “It's just like I said.”

“But there must be more. Why should he ask you to help him? Was he in some kind of trouble?”

I hesitated, not really sure that I should continue.

“There
was
something else, wasn't there? Tell me. I need to know.”

“It was his face,” I said.

“His face?”

“He flicked his hair out of his eyes…”

“He was always doing that. I wondered why he never got it cut, but he said he liked it that way. Is that it?”

I shook my head. “His face. One side of it was pretty smashed up.”

A kind of sob broke in her throat. “How badly?”

“It was pretty grim,” I said.

“His beautiful face,” she said and looked away as the tears began to flow once more.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I'm just telling you what I saw.”

I reached out to touch her shoulder, but as my fingers brushed the cotton of her nightdress, she flinched.

“Amy?” I said softly. “Why me? If you two were so close, why didn't he appear to you? You've been here much longer than I have.”

She turned her tear-streaked face and stared at me for a moment or two. Finally she said, “I don't know,” and then gave another sob and buried her face in the pillow.

Worried that if I stayed, I'd cause her more pain, I slipped from the bed and returned to my own room, only to spend the rest of the night tossing and turning, unable to get the horrific image of Michael O'Herlihy's bruised and battered face out of my mind. It was there, hiding behind my eyelids, appearing in stark detail every time I closed my eyes.

I heard the grandfather clock in the hall strike three before my brain finally gave up its struggle with Morpheus and resigned itself to being awake.

When it struck four, I climbed out of bed and went to fetch my book from the dressing table where I had left it. I hoped that the book would help me finally get off to sleep, but I was sadly mistaken.

I knew the instant I picked it up that something was wrong. My fear was confirmed when I took the book back to bed, opened it and watched in shocked silence as fifty or more loose pages fluttered down onto the counterpane.

The book had been ripped up. The pages that remained had been scrawled on in orange crayon, childish scribble mostly, but as I leafed through the damaged book I saw there had been crude attempts to form letters with orange wax. By the time I reached the end of the book, the letters had formed proper words—three words in particular.
HELP ME JAMES.

I tossed the book down to the end of the bed and sat for a long while staring at it, maybe waiting for something to happen to it again.

As dawn broke, I was still staring at the book, but it remained inert, just lying there on the counterpane as if mocking me.

I heard the clock in the hall chime six times and, finally, sleep claimed me.

I awoke around noon and went down to the dining room, but I'd missed breakfast. The table was bare, as was the sideboard. Hearing my stomach rumble, I went through to the kitchen, hoping to find Amy to beg a sandwich, but the kitchen was empty. There was no sign of Amy or the cook, Mrs. Ebbage.

I went out into the garden and walked around to the garage. The door was open and the car was missing, and I guessed Mrs. Rogers had gone into town. Perhaps taking Amy and Mrs. Ebbage with her, so I went to the library again and picked an
Eagle
annual from the steamer trunk and took it down to the summerhouse to sit and read.

For about an hour I stared at a
Dan Dare
comic strip with glazed eyes, not really seeing the colorful panels. My mind was elsewhere, going over the events of the past few days, searching for explanations, but finding none.

In the end I closed the annual and dropped it to the rush mat that covered the floor. I climbed out of my deck chair and went across to the doorway, planting my hands on either side of the frame and stretching.

Through the trees I could see Barnes pushing a wheelbarrow on the path down to the pond. I trotted across the lawn, found the path again and followed it down to the water.

Andy Barnes was standing in the pond, up to his thighs in the water. He was wearing heavy rubber waders and was dragging weed from the pond with a rake, depositing the dripping green clumps on the bank.

“Hello,” I called as I approached. “Do you need some help?”

He stopped mid-drag and looked around, brushing a stray curl of his ginger hair away from his eyes.

“I'm clearing the blanketweed,” he said. “And you're not really dressed for it, are you?”

I looked down at my tee-shirt, khaki shorts and sandals, and shrugged. “I suppose not,” I said.

“Then you'd better take off,” he said. “I'm busy.”

“Can I stay and watch.”

He turned back to the pond but I saw his shoulders shrug. “Please yourself,” he said and started to drag more weeds from the water.

I went down to the spot where I'd sat with my uncle the previous evening, plucked a long blade of grass and stuck it between my lips.

“I was looking for Amy,” I said. “Has she gone to town?”

“Don't know,” came the surly reply. He didn't look round.

“Only I can't find her in the house.”

No response.

He turned and dumped another mound of weeds on the bank a yard away from me. Water drained out of it, and as the weeds settled I saw that it was alive with small pond creatures—some water boatmen, three or four thin, black leeches, a newt and a couple of sticklebacks. Had I a jam jar, I would have collected them.

Instead, I just watched as the leeches squirmed and the sticklebacks gasped for life. The newt managed to crawl across the weed and drop back into the pond.

“Were you here when the children from the orphanage used to come for their holidays?”

The question made him pause. He pulled the rake upright, rested its head on the bottom of the pond and seemed to lean on it. “Why d'ya ask?”

“Well, were you?”

“Yes, I was here. Why?”

“I was wondering if you remembered any of them.”

He gave a sort of rueful grin and shook his head. “I stayed away from them. Bloody kids with their stupid questions…a bit like you.”

“So you don't remember any of them?”

He shook his head again. “Don't think so…apart from Amy.
I remember her.
” His face twisted into a kind of lewd, lopsided grin I decided I didn't like very much.

“Do you remember Hugh, Mrs. Rogers's son?”

“Yeah, of course, but he wasn't from the orphanage.”

“But Michael was. Michael O'Herlihy? He was. Remember him?”

He glared at me. “What is this? Twenty bleedin' Questions?”

“I just wondered if you remembered him, that's all. He was Irish, about my size, with light hair that flopped over one eye.”

A spark of recognition flared in his eyes. “What if I do?”

I took the blade of grass from my teeth and replaced it with a fresh one. “I just wondered if you knew what happened to him. Amy said he just disappeared one day. She thinks he might have been adopted.”

“Well, there you go then. These kids, they were never here very long. There was lots of coming and going. I never got involved with them. I left that to them up at the house.”

“But you
do
remember him.”

“I remember him, the cocky little sod. Full of himself. Thought he was better than…well, thought he was better. I was glad when he didn't come here again. Adopted, you say? Well, God help the poor people who got lumbered with him.”