Warhol's Prophecy (16 page)

‘I haven’t got
time
to be bored. Not with a house, a child and a husband to look after.’

She was aware of him gazing at her. She met his stare and held it.

‘I’m sorry if I interrupted anything, I should have called first and asked if it was OK to come round,’ he said apologetically. ‘But I didn’t think you’d mind.’

‘I don’t,’ she said softly.

They sat in silence for what seemed like an eternity, drinking their coffee, gazing at one another. But it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, Hailey realized. There was no need for them to speak. No desperate attempts were necessary to fill the gulf between their snippets of conversation.

It feels right, doesn’t it?

She watched as he finished his coffee.

This stranger.

You’ve met this guy only twice, and you’re now sitting drinking coffee with him in your own kitchen.

‘You certainly have got a beautiful house,’ he said finally. ‘It must have involved a lot of work.’

She nodded.

‘A lot of ambition too,’ he added. ‘This place is like a sign that you’re both successful, isn’t it?’

‘It’s not meant to be. We liked the house, so we bought it. Quite simple really.’ She smiled, but her smile wasn’t returned.

‘But people will look at this house and know that someone successful lives here – someone with money,’ he insisted.

‘It’s our home, Adam, not a status symbol.’

‘When I’m famous I’m going to have a house so big you’ll need golf carts to get from room to room.’ He laughed.

‘And servants?’

‘Probably. A couple of maids, a cook, a butler. Whatever famous people have.’

They both laughed.

‘Call me if you need a PA,’ she joked.

‘I will,’ he told her, reaching across the table.

Even without thinking, she touched his outstretched fingers with her own.

The contact felt as if someone had pumped a small electrical charge through her.

‘I’d better go,’ he said quietly.

‘You don’t have to rush off, Adam,’ she assured him.

‘I was intending to visit my father,’ he told her. ‘I ought to go now.’

She nodded. ‘Is he very bad?’

‘He probably won’t even recognize me,’ Walker said philosophically. ‘But at least I’ll be there for him, for an hour or two.’

‘It
must
be hard for you.’

‘Sometimes he remembers things. He’ll talk about things that happened years ago. Other times he just stares at the wall – or at me. He asked one of the nurses to throw me out once. It’s a horrible disease.’

‘What about the rest of your family?’ she wanted to know. ‘Do they visit too?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said quickly. ‘We’ve never been a close family. We don’t keep in touch.’

‘Not even with your sister, the one whose little boy was killed?’

‘Like I said, we’re not that close.’

Hailey nodded, deciding not to press her point.

‘I once said to my father that it was ironic – with him having been a vicar all his life. He’d served God, and then God had done
that
to him: taken his mind. Amusing in a perverse kind of way, isn’t it? God must have one hell of a sense of humour.’

Walker got to his feet.

She walked with him to the front door.

‘Thanks for the coffee,’ he said. ‘Sorry again for barging in.’

‘I’m glad you did.’ She touched his hand and held it for fleeting seconds.

‘Give my regards to your husband,’ he told her.

She nodded.

‘He won’t mind that I came by, will he?’ asked Walker.

‘He’ll be sorry he missed you.’

She moved to open the door, in the process leaning close to him, close to his face.

Hailey could smell him distinctly, that musky scent from his leather jacket.

She swallowed hard.

Again her heart was thudding that little bit faster.

‘Tell Becky I called,’ said Walker, as he stepped out into the porch.

‘I hope things go all right with your father,’ she said.

He nodded and turned to walk away.

‘See you again,’ she said.

I hope.

He waved.

She watched until he had disappeared around the corner.

T
HE WIND WHIPPED
around the Scorpio, occasionally shifting it slightly to one side.

Adam Walker sat behind the steering wheel, looking out at the building before him, his eyes fixed hypnotically on the red-brick edifice that faced him.

Bayfield House Nursing Home was a modern building in about four acres of its own grounds. It housed around twenty-five residents, between the ages of sixty and ninety, some disabled in mind or body, others merely losing the battle with advancing years.

There was a good ratio of staff to residents, and they did their best to make day-to-day life enjoyable for their charges. There was a doctor on the premises twenty-four hours a day.

Walker swung himself out of his car, and headed up the short path towards the double doors that led into the main reception.

He pulled up the collar of his jacket, then muttered something to himself, spun round and headed back to the Scorpio.

He reached onto the back seat and grabbed the cellophane-wrapped bunch of flowers. He’d bought them at a garage on the way.

Every time he visited here, he brought flowers.

That was what you were supposed to do, wasn’t it?

Adam trudged back up the path and pressed the security buzzer next to the front door. The closed-circuit TV camera peered down at him as he looked up into its single eye.

A moment later there came a whirring sound, and the doors opened to allow him access.

The main reception area was empty.

There was a large, low table surrounded by leather-upholstered chairs in the centre. Corridors led off from the reception area like spokes from a wheel hub.

Walker made his way slowly along the central corridor, glancing into open rooms along the way. They, too, all seemed to be empty.

For one bizarre moment it appeared that the entire nursing home had been evacuated. As if its residents had merely disappeared. He wondered if he might come across a steaming cup of tea left unattended. This place was like an earth-bound
Marie Celeste.

Then he heard voices coming from the day-room up ahead.

Through a pair of glass double-doors he could see several of the elderly residents seated in high-backed chairs in front of a television. As he walked in, he also noticed two nurses in attendance.

First one, then the other smiled at him, and he reciprocated, crossing over to the younger of the two.

She was wearing a light blue uniform, her long hair tied in a ponytail pulled back so severely from her hairline that it looked as if someone was trying to tug her scalp off.

The small badge pinned to her left lapel announced that her name was
ANNA COLEMAN
.

‘How are you, Anna?’ He grinned.

‘Are those for me?’ She nodded towards the flowers.

‘If they were for you, this bunch would be twice as big,’ Walker told her.

‘You smoothie,’ interrupted the other nurse. ‘She loves all that stuff.’

‘Haven’t you got some work to do, Nurse Stinson?’ replied Anna with mock irritation. Her cheeks had coloured slightly.

‘Yes I have, Nurse Coleman.’ The other woman smiled.

Two or three of the residents gazed blankly at Walker. The others seemed more intent on the TV screen, although Walker wasn’t sure they even understood what they were watching.

‘I’m looking for my father,’ he said.

‘He’s in his room.’ Anna’s smile faded.

Walker nodded, turned, and headed back down the corridor, back into the reception area and off to the right.

There were more bedrooms in that direction. He knew that at the far end of the corridor there was even a small chapel.

Beyond it, outside, was a beautifully kept garden, even an orchard where apple trees blossomed in spring. The setting was idyllic.

Strange therefore, he thought, that he hated this place so much.

He passed two rooms with their doors wide open.

In the first a man in his seventies lay on the bed, reading a newspaper.

In the second another man sat staring out of his window, tapping out a Morse-like tattoo on the sill with one arthritis-twisted forefinger.

The door of the third room along was firmly closed.

Walker paused outside, holding the bunch of flowers before him like some aromatic, cellophaned cosh.

He swallowed hard, then – without knocking – walked in.

The man sitting up in the bed, propped there like a puppet with its strings cut, turned to look at him. But the eyes were blank, no recognition registered there.

The patient was in his early seventies, white hair combed back from a heavily lined forehead, wisps of hair also curling from each nostril and ear.

Closing the door behind him, Walker stood at the end of the bed.

‘Hello, Dad,’ he began flatly.

I
F THERE WAS
any recognition in the eyes of Philip Walker it didn’t show.

He watched silently as his son moved around to the side of the bed and brandished the flowers at him.

‘I brought you these,’ said Adam.

On the bedside table there was a vase filled with dead flowers, its water beginning to smell rancid.

Adam took out the dead blooms and dumped them in the waste-bin beneath the sink, then he swilled out the vase and set about replacing the old flowers with the new.

The room was about fifteen feet square: carpeted and tastefully decorated, but otherwise fairly spartan. There were a couple of pictures on the wall. Copies of El Greco’s
The Agony in the Garden
and Antonio Allegri da Correg-gio’s
The Mystic Marriage of St Catherine
hung on either side of a large crucifix.

Reminders?

Adam put down the replenished vase, aware that his father was peering up at him. He was frowning slightly, as if trying to remember who this newcomer was, and what he wanted here.

Adam sat down beside the bed and looked at him.

‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.

No answer. Only blank eyes staring back.

‘When you weren’t in the day-room, I thought there was something wrong.’

Philip Walker was plucking gently at the flesh on the back of one liverspot-dappled hand.

‘Has the doctor been in today?’ Adam asked.

‘Doctor?’

His father spoke the word whilst looking directly at Adam.

‘Doctor,’ he repeated.

Adam shook his head.

‘No,’ he said softly, ‘
I’m
not a doctor. Do you know who I
am
?’

Silence again.

Still plucking at the flesh.

‘Do you fancy going for a walk?’ asked Adam. ‘The fresh air might do you good. Better than being stuck in here all day.’

He looked again into those blank eyes, then across at the wheelchair in the corner.

His father turned to look at the flowers.

‘“Man cometh up and is cut down like a flower”,’ he said slowly, as if considering each word before he spoke it.

It was Adam’s turn to stare silently at the old man.

‘At how many funerals did you say those words?’ he said finally. ‘How many did you see off? How many good men and women did you bury?’

The old man was plucking at the back of his hand again.

‘How many children?’ Adam persisted.

‘“Suffer the children to come unto me”,’ his father intoned.

‘So, is there still something in there?’ Adam said, tapping his own temple. ‘Still a light in the forest?’

‘“I am the light”,’ said his father.

Outside, the wind seemed to be growing stronger. It swirled around the building angrily.

Inside Philip Walker’s room there was only silence.

His son sat motionless for long moments, then leant forward and flipped open the bottom section of the bedside cabinet.

The smooth white band of stiff material was where it always lay.

The dog-collar.

He smiled ruefully to himself and held it up before him.

‘It’s like a badge, isn’t it?’ he said, without looking at his father. ‘A badge for a club that you never leave.’

The old man continued pulling at his hand.

‘You’ll
never
leave it, will you?’ said Adam. ‘You’ll
never
tear up your membership card.’