The Touch of Innocents

‘She killed my baby girl. I’m not going to let her have that chance with my only son, Toni, not if I have to fight her in every court in the land.’ He slipped into his jacket, flexing his shoulders as though the well-tailored suit was his armour and he was once again ready to do war with the world. ‘I want custody.’

She stared without comprehension at the face at the foot of the bed. Too much had collided in her mind that day and it had left her drained and disorientated. Shortly after breakfast she’d heard he was looking not just for a divorce but custody. War, with Benjy as the battlefield and her fresh out of ammunition.

There was physical pain, as though someone were wrenching out a tree which had its roots growing deep within her. She saw life through a haze of unreality, the sterile and polite conversations around her bed echoing like the hollow laughter of a cocktail bar, the walls drawing in, closing down her world, stifling her. While she was there, idle, they would be plotting to grab Benjy. She had to get out.

When she had raised her intention of discharging herself, they had not been unsympathetic. Her physical progress was excellent, her neurological signs improving, as long as she didn’t overdo it the change of scene and stimuli might do both her and the child good. They had suggested – firmly, to the point of insistence – that she spend ten days as an out-patient in the neurology department and then, with fortune and continued progress, she would be free. Another check-up in three months, again six months after that, and they could pronounce her recovered. A minor miracle of the medical profession on which they could congratulate themselves.

It was only at the point when she began to focus on escape as reality rather than theory that she came to realize what a huge step it entailed. She was a woman in a strange land, penniless, with neither possessions nor friends, and a young child in her charge, lacking even a means of proving her identity. Such practicalities had seemed so unimportant – up to now. Where did she start trying to pull it all back together?

She was stumbling through an undergrowth of tangled personal details when out of the blue he was there, waiting to catch her as she fell.

‘Hello. How are you getting on?’

She gazed at him in some bewilderment. ‘I know you but …’

A hand reached out. ‘Paul Devereux. Remember? You interviewed me, a few months ago.’

‘Of course …’ The soft, watery pale blue eyes, the clipped sentences. ‘I’m sorry. It’s as though you’ve stepped out of a past life. I don’t associate you with this world.’ She waved her hands around her, extending one to meet his greeting. The lights were beginning to switch on. ‘You gave me an exclusive.’

‘And you gave me a bloody hard time.’ His expression implied no hard feelings.

‘If I remember correctly,’ she replied, tenaciously but not unkindly, ‘you played the male politician and expected me to play the little lady. Foreigner, too. Easy meat, you thought.’

He took the challenge in his stride. ‘Indeed, it hadn’t passed my attention that you were both a foreigner and an attractive woman – if one is allowed to remark on such things in these politically correct days of ours.’ He shrugged to indicate he was a hopeless case. ‘And by the time you’d finished I felt in need of a visit to one of my own casualty departments.’

‘Something like that,’ she nodded approvingly.

‘No need to worry. The scars have almost healed.’

‘I wasn’t worried, Mr Devereux,’ she assured him, rejecting with a smile his appeal for the sympathy vote.

‘No, I didn’t suppose you were. I see you are regaining your strength. Practically fighting fit, I’d say.’ He was enjoying the banter. ‘I’m delighted.’

‘Why?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Sorry. I mean, why are you here? It’s not every day a Government Minister drops in to check my vital signs.’

He chuckled. ‘As Secretary of State for Health, hospitals were very much part of my world, and this hospital in particular. This is Weschester, my constituency, you see, and I make a point of dropping by every month.’

‘I don’t have a vote, I’m afraid.’

‘Voters hold sway perhaps once every four or five years, Miss Dean. Chickenfeed compared with the power wielded by you and your colleagues in the media. But this is merely a social call. Heard what a remarkable recovery you’ve staged. Wanted merely to find out how you were progressing.’

She told him she was leaving hospital. He seemed dutifully concerned. She admitted that it was going to prove rather more complicated than she had realized. Should’ve asked K.C. for help, but hadn’t thought …

‘As your local Member of Parliament ad interim, perhaps I can help.’ His smile was warm, well practised. A political smile. To be ignored. Yet in those remarkable blue eyes, where feelings can rarely be hidden, she thought she could detect more than a merely professional interest. Not entirely avuncular, either.

‘I have nothing, absolutely nothing, but the hospital gown I am wearing.’

Aware for the first time that she was a shade underdressed, she moved across the room to her dressing gown.

As she put it on she couldn’t help but feel self-conscious. She hadn’t lost weight as quickly as she would have liked after the second birth, her breasts were heavier and she wasn’t wearing a bra, and the muscle tone she’d been building to lift and tuck everything back to its former shape had largely dissolved with the extended bed rest. It bothered her that he was looking, but only because she wasn’t at her best. The style in her dark red hair was gone and she felt dowdy, unattractive. Very post-maternity. Once again she was left wondering if there could be life after birth.

By contrast he saw a handsome woman of above average height who, although still frail, moved with grace across the room and who even in her anonymous hospital cotton was unquestionably feminine. The skin was clear, fresh, the hair brushed lustrous and her green eyes bright, active, questioning, eyes that were not made up but which scarcely needed artificial highlights, eyes he had seen many times on reports from the danger zones of the world where make-up would have looked faintly ludicrous. Green eyes, his favourite. Eyes that had danced in the midst of a room crowded with grizzled correspondents and that had helped him pick her out for the benefit of an exclusive interview.

It was the first time a man had stared at her like that since she came to hospital, and he made no attempt to hide his appreciation; self-consciously her mind brushed over the tiny root-like veins on her leg which had erupted during pregnancy and which she had resolved to have cosmetically removed. When she had the time.

Suddenly her thoughts struck her as strange. She had been faithful to her husband throughout their marriage yet here she was already worrying about what other men might think of her, and she of them. Such sensations were smudged with sadness, yet she could not deny the kernel of excitement that was also there. At least she was starting to feel something again.

‘And technically I have trouble in proving I exist. All my identification was lost in the crash.’

‘No problem. If you’ll allow me I’ll kick some backsides at the US Embassy. Get someone down to see you.’

‘You’re very kind. Should have done that myself but, before today, I hadn’t really given it a thought. Such things seem irrelevant when you’re lying in hospital with your memory rattled to pieces. I suppose I’d better get hold of my bank and find some means of living and dressing; social services are finding a boarding house in the town for Benjy and me to stay while I sort things out.’

She was thinking out loud, not beseeching help, but he responded without hesitation.

‘Look, you’re trying to get well, not bury yourself in problems. Allow me to cut through all this for you. Please. Not often a politician can do anything about real problems, we’re always too busy pretending we’re saving the world.’

She was amused by his modesty.

‘I have a house in Bowminster, about fifteen miles from here. Stacks of room, empty during the week while I’m in London. You and your son would be very comfortable, and very welcome. There’s thatch and plenty of land and a gardener who can be your chauffeur and run any errands. Give you the time and freedom to sort everything out.’

‘That’s far too generous …’

‘Don’t make me out to be something I’m not, Miss Dean.’

God, how incredibly modest and English he was, she thought. For a brief moment she looked into his moist eyes, flecked with the strange upper-class confection of authority and inbred decay, and wondered if all those stories were true and he was an archetypal English fag, before she realized she was being revoltingly cynical. Still, if he were, it meant she had nothing to worry about by staying in his house …

‘Since I have no family living with me any longer …’

OK, a closet fag. Christ, Izzy, the guy’s trying to help you!

‘… I hate the thought of the house standing empty for so much of the time. I’d be very happy. Telephone bill’s already enormous so don’t worry about that. And as for clothing and the rest, that’s easy.’ He plunged into his jacket pocket for his wallet. ‘You have to be a good credit risk. Here’s two hundred pounds to get you going. Give it back when you’re on your feet.’

‘But I can’t accept money from …’ – she was about to say a strange man but it sounded too pathetic – ‘… from a politician. The Secretary of State for Health.’

‘Oh, but I’m not!’ He clapped his hands, delighted to be able to overwhelm her argument. Unlike last time. ‘You missed it. The reshuffle. I’m now Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State for Defence. And you, Miss Dean, are a foreign correspondent. If my attempt to help bothers you, simply treat it as a bribe.’

They both laughed; she felt desperately vulnerable, it was time to stop fighting. She thanked him, and he arranged for his gardener to pick her up at two that afternoon.

Only later did the realization dawn that this was the man in whose hands were now held the future of the Duster and with it her vengeful husband’s fortunes.

A sense of well-being began to build inside Izzy as she collected Benjy and began to gather up the few items of clothing and second-hand soft toys that had appeared from the various streams of helpers and benefactors which trickle through any hospital. She had her son, whatever his father planned, and at last she was making a start on piecing her life back together again. She was no longer alone; things couldn’t get any worse, she told herself.

The Devereux driver would be arriving soon and it was time to bid her goodbyes. She made the round between ITU and the neurology department and up to the toddlers’ ward, all the places which had been her world for the last few weeks, shaking hands, receiving wishes, congratulations and gratuitous advice, offering her thanks.