Off Minor

Thirty-one

When Resnick had been a boy, eleven, his grandmother had slipped and fallen in the small back room, the parlor. Her arm or leg, some part of her, had dislodged coals from the fire, the coal had smoldered on the carpet as she lay unconscious, stunned by the blow her temple had taken from the polished tiles of the hearth. After not so many minutes a spark attached to the fabric of her dress and flared to life. Resnick’s mother, mixing the flour and suet for dumplings in the kitchen, adding water from the measuring jug, a teaspoon of dry mustard, a sprinkling, thumb and forefinger, of dill, had smelled burning. Not the stew. By the time she had found the source, the older woman’s clothes were ablaze around her and she had woken to the center of a dream that was no dream, a nightmare no nightmare, the screams that broke searing from her, her own screams. An old woman with her hair ablaze around her face.

Resnick’s mother had responded with the cool control and speed that sometimes visit us in dire emergencies. By the time the fire brigade arrived, the ambulance, the police-and they were quick-all but a few smoldering remnants of the fire had been extinguished. Her mother lay close against the heavy sideboard which stood along the side wall, blankets covering most of her body, shrouding her burnt, blistering head. She was taken to the hospital, sedated, treated for shock, transferred to the burns unit as soon as her condition had stabilized. “You have to understand,” the registrar said, “your mother has been through a traumatic experience. It will take time for her to recover.” Almost a month Resnick’s parents kept to the silent bedside, disturbed only by whimpers of pain whenever she moved. Resnick himself was kept at home, told little of the worst, shielded from upset. When his grandmother did at last open her mouth it was to scream and call her daughter a whore.

There were weeks of silence and sudden, wild accusations almost inevitably in Polish. In the worst of these, her children were betraying her to the Nazis, she was being dragged headlong from the ghetto, she was bundled into a cattle car on its way to the concentration camp, she could see the ashes floating on the air, smell the burning of the ovens, the sweet pungent smell of smoldering flesh, of skin, of hair.

When, finally, she was allowed home all that she would do was sit in the kitchen and rock herself slowly back and forth in a high-backed wooden chair, a shawl around her head where her hair had grown back patchily between her scars. Resnick stood once until the blood in his legs sang, hand in hers, uncertain if she knew, not who he was but whether he were even there. After little more than weeks, another ambulance came and she was taken off, this time to the hospital for the mentally disturbed where she would end her days.

On Sundays they would drive and park in the hospital grounds, his father in suit and tie, his mother in her good dress, a bag containing fruit, home-made biscuits, a Thermos of soup held at her side. Resnick would be told to lock the doors and stay in the car, while they disappeared into this tall, dark building with turrets at the corners, iron railings ranged along the roof. An hour later they would reemerge, his father shaking his head, mother sniffing, dabbing at the tears. When he would ask them how his grandmother was, his father would fail to reply, his mother would press her lips together and force a smile. “A little better this week, don’t you think so, Father? Yes, Charles, a little better.” When, after almost a year, she caught pneumonia and died they agreed it was a blessing. For her funeral, the community came out in force, the procession from the cathedral to the cemetery blocking the traffic for almost half an hour.

Now Resnick sat in the car park again, an early winter evening that promised little more than rain.

The doctor’s call had come through to Resnick late that afternoon, hesitant, careful. “An officer was in contact earlier, making inquiries; she referred me to you.”

There were lights in one wing of the building only. The remainder stood dark and disused. Despite protest, it seemed likely that within a twelvemonth, the rest would be closed down, most of the patients released into the community. Some would stay in hostels or live together in houses which the authority had bought and renovated specially for them. But many would shuffle, bewildered, between an already overextended network of social workers and volunteers, out-patient clinics and GPs. Soon Resnick would take to recognizing their faces on the benches above Bobby Brown’s Café, by the fountains in Slab Square; leaning outside the night shelter near the London Road roundabout, asleep among the cigarette ends and vomit on the bus station floor.

The nurse who met Resnick was in his late twenties, slight and not far short of Resnick’s height; his sandy hair was worn long, eyes clear pale blue. He was wearing loose beige cotton trousers, a faded green shirt over an equally faded T-shirt that swore solidarity to a cause Resnick could not discern. He told Resnick Diana had been admitted the previous Friday, claiming she no longer felt able to cope.

“What with?” Resnick asked.

The nurse looked back at him, somewhat incredulous.

“She’s been here ever since? No way she could have gone back outside?”

“She could. But, no, I don’t think she has. She hasn’t wanted anything to do with anyone or anything. That’s the only way we’ve been able to keep the news away from her.” He looked at Resnick earnestly. “I presume you’re not proposing to tell her, about her daughter?”

A shake of the head.

“It can’t be kept from her for ever. It shouldn’t, but coming right now …”

“You have my word.”

“What you have to understand, Diana is under a great deal of stress; she has been for some while. Having said that, a lot of progress has been made. But even so, something like this, it could put her back a long way.” The eyes held Resnick fast. “In agreeing for you to see her, we’re assuming that you will be sensitive to her condition.”

Resnick nodded. “I understand.”

“I hope so. She’s waiting in one of the quiet rooms, just along here.”

Resnick followed the nurse down the high-ceilinged institutional corridor. From another floor he could hear the music from Neighbours, starting or finishing, he wasn’t sure which. “She is on quite strong medication,” the nurse said, lowering his voice outside the door, “she should understand you correctly, but it might mean that some of her responses are rather slow. Also you might notice some shaking, especially her hands. A side-effect of the drugs.” He opened the door and stepped inside. “Diana, your visitor’s here.”

Resnick hadn’t been sure what to expect, his mental pictures overlaid in advance by the gaunt shock of his ex-wife’s face when finally she had confronted him after years of psychiatric treatment and hospitalization. But Diana Wills looked up at him pleasantly, her smile a little hesitant yet real enough, her face, if anything, fuller than the photos he had seen had suggested.

“I’ll leave you for a while,” the nurse said.

There were three chairs in the room, a low circular table, pictures on the walls, flowers. Resnick pulled one of the chairs closer to Diana and sat down. “I’m a police officer,” he said. “Resnick. Detective Inspector. Charlie.”

Diana looked back at him and gave the same quick, nervous smile.

“We were worried about you.”

She opened a hand and pulled at the tissue that had been squashed there, used it to dab at the corners of her mouth. She was wearing a button-through dress, soft green, a brown ribbed cardigan. “Worried? I don’t understand.”

“When you didn’t come home.”

“Home?”

“At the weekend. The neighbors, they were just a bit concerned. Had a word with the local bobby. We thought you might have had an accident or something.”

“Jackie.”

“Sorry?”

“Jacqueline.”

“Your friend.”

Diana pressed the tissue to her mouth again. “You know Jacqueline?”

“I said, we were worried. We got in touch, in case she knew where you were.”

“I should have gone to see her.”

“Yes.”

“This past weekend.”

“Yes.”

Now both of Diana’s hands were beginning to tremble and she slid them from sight. “Was she angry with me?”

“No, not at all. Just concerned.”

“You’ll tell her where I am?”

Resnick nodded.

“I shouldn’t want her to worry.”

“Of course not.”

“Not Jackie.”

“No.”

“She’ll be so ashamed as it is.”

“Why’s that, Mrs. Wills?”

“Diana, please.”

“Diana.”

“What did you ask me?”

“You said that your friend would be ashamed.”

“Well, of course she would. Anyone would.”

Resnick willed himself to look at her face, not be distracted by the increased agitation of her hands. “Can you tell me why Diana?”

She sat suddenly upright, eyes widening with surprise. “Because of what I did, of course.”

“What you did to whom?”

The sound was faint in the small room, its syllables barely passing her lips. “Emily.”

Resnick could feel the dampness gathering in his palms; he was beginning to smell his own sweat. No way she could have gone back outside? “What about her, Diana?”

She pushed the folded tissue to her lips. “I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t.”

Resnick’s voice, low, not wishing to startle, almost as quiet as hers. “I know that you didn’t.”

“I knew it was wrong.”

“Yes.”

“That’s why I came here.”

“Yes.”

“I couldn’t think what else to do, where else … and I thought, I knew … you see, I’d been going there, more and more, I knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t … couldn’t stay away, I had to be close to her, Emily, all the time. He should never have said it was wrong for me, he never … I’m her mother.”

The hands which had been shaking faster and faster stilled themselves now by grasping Resnick’s arms at the wrist, biting tight.

“I had it all planned, I knew what I was going to do. I didn’t know yet when, but I knew. Emily and I, on the train. To Jacqueline. She wanted me to go and live with her after all. She kept saying. She couldn’t have wanted me to go without my little girl, she would never have expected that. She couldn’t, could she? But she kept asking, over and over. It would be better, she said. Nicer. And it would have been, don’t you think, Charlie? Much nicer. The three of us together.”

“Yes.” Resnick nodding as Diana released her grip, “yes, maybe it would.”

“But inside,” Diana said, “I knew that it was wrong. But it was as though I couldn’t stop myself. Which is why I came back here, to the hospital. So that I wouldn’t take Emily away.” She wiped her mouth and smiled. “I’ve been here before, you know. It’s nice here. It’s quiet. They understand you. They make you better.”

For a moment, Resnick hid his face in his hands.

“What is it?” Diana asked. “Whatever’s the matter?”

Not so many minutes later, the nurse returned. In the corridor Resnick offered Diana Wills his hand and as soon as, tentatively, she touched it with her fingers, he stepped forward and took her in his arms, held her tight.

The rain was falling, blackening the building, further blackening the sky. Resnick engaged gear and sat where he was, engine idling. Ahead of him was a long night that would stretch into the small hours of morning. He would drink coffee black and listen again to Billie with Lester Young, to Hodges and to Monk. Why, when he had refused every one of Elaine’s pleas for help, when he had made no attempt to find out where or how she was, even now, did be find it so easy to sympathize with this stranger, to take and hold her in his arms and feel her tears upon his chest, this woman he had never before met?