The Cuckoo's Child (18 page)

Miss Plover subsided, her throat mottling, still holding the dustpan. Isobel mounted a diversionary tactic.

“Do you have plans for the weekend?” she asked. “We're going down to Christchurch to visit a former colleague. You'll have the house to yourself.”

I said I would probably be a tourist and go and see the sights.

“Well, as long as you'll be here, would you mind feeding Mao and Orlando for us? You don't have to worry about Fergus—Evelyn'll see he's shut up in her room with plenty of food. Unless he escapes, of course,” she added.

I promised I would cope.

I had two days to explore London, and it seemed like a penance. I made myself work out a program of activities; I would play tourist and wear myself out. In that I succeeded. The two days passed in a confusing, exhausting welter of images: mad-eyed pigeons blowing about like leaves in Trafalgar Square; a kaleidoscope of neon signs as I whirled round Piccadilly Circus on the top layer of a doubledecker bus; Elizabeth I gazing imperiously out of the sombre background of her portrait, a fan of ostrich feathers in her hand; the same face, sunken, the bony nose like a prow, on her tomb in the Abbey; an escape artist struggling free of chains and ropes just behind the Tower; roving bands of young men with pallid stubbly heads and bovver boots; the shabby tiled tunnels of the Underground, like a vast neglected public convenience, sucking me in, down, down the creeping escalators, blowing their foul warm breath in my face, the reek of old sweat and exhaustion, to Mind the Gap and fight the pull of the shining rail, then spitting me up and out again into the struggling light and the din of changing gears and the ceaseless countermarch of people, to continue my solitary way with all the others.

It was a relief to trundle back to Wimbledon and let myself into the silent house. The cats insinuated themselves into my room, and we curled up on the windowseat, found a concert on the radio that was to include Elgar's Cello Concerto, and listened to the wind keeping the night on the move outside while we shared a chicken tikka masala from the Indian takeout down the road. There was nothing more to be done. There was nobody I could see or talk to, nowhere I could explore, nothing I could search out. The hours before Monday morning stretched elastically into the dark, but a little sleep would gather them in, make them nothing. I had never felt so peaceful, so entirely let off, so free of every claim on me. Canada, Neil, you—even Daniel—seemed impossibly remote. It was as if I did not exist at all except in that ring of purring light filled with the first achingly beautiful notes of the cello.

Monday saw me up early. A phone call to Miss Warner at the Lodge assured me that Mrs. Blacklock was having one of her good days, “so far, at least,” and I set off with the director's directions in my hand, brimming with confidence.

Southwark Lodge was a handsome brick building pinched between a diocesan office and a funeral home. A line of discouraged trees wilted along the property line between the Lodge and the undertaker's, but it formed an inadequate screen; a sign that read
CHAPEL OF REST
flickered above the thin branches, clearly visible.

The front door of Southwark Lodge opened onto a pleasant lobby with a reception desk at the back. A huge split-leaf philodendron stood in a vast tub by the entrance. Its leaves, like big green hands with spatulate fingers, groped up the wall and dangled, loose-wristed, from strong, fleshy stalks. New leaves, waiting to unfurl, pointed stiff as gun dogs. A tiny old lady with wispy grey hair skewered into an untidy bun held a green hand in her own as if she were about to kiss it, dusting its leathery surface with a grubby handkerchief. She caught me watching her.

“They have to breathe, you know,” she said. “I dust them all every day.”

“It obviously appreciates it,” I said.

The old lady leaned closer, still holding the leaf tenderly.

“I talk to them too,” she whispered.

“I've heard they respond to that.”

She nodded vigorously and patted the monstrous vine as if it were a prize pig.

“Proof of the pudding,” she said conspiratorially.

“Mrs. Lambert giving you some gardening tips, is she?”

The face from the newspaper photograph had materialized at my side.

“Hilda Warner,” it said, extending a hand that lay cold and limp in mine. “And you must be Mrs. Alvarsson. Won't you come this way?”

The director turned and led the way down a wide hallway with a gleaming floor. We passed either side of an aged man shuffling with infinitesimal steps after his walker down the centre of the corridor, and my guide shouted cheerily as we surged by.

“Taking your morning walk, Mr. Simmonds? Good for you!”

Mr. Simmonds seemed unable to cope simultaneously with the bow wave of our passing and conversation. He stooped and slowly raised his face from its rapt observation of the ground.

“What's that?” he asked in a frail thread of a voice. But the director, like the express trains I had seen rocketing through Wimbledon Station, was already in another place, urging a cleaner to hurry up and get her bucket and mop out of the way. The old man mumbled to himself and almost imperceptibly got under way again. I felt obscenely large and healthy.

I caught up to the director as she stood in the doorway of a large room at the end of the hall. A sign on the wall read
SUNROOM
, and it was indeed filled with light, if not sun. Plants crowded the space, some the size of small trees, fingering the skylights as if yearning for a way out. There were clearings in the greenery filled with bentwood chairs and couches, occasional baize-covered card tables, wheelchairs and discarded walkers, and populated by residents reading, chatting, playing cards, doing crossword puzzles, talking to themselves or sitting, chins on their chests, puffing gently as they slept. Just like the day room in any hospital ward. You can see it, can't you, Stephen? Lord knows, you've seen enough of them.

Miss Warner led me through the jungle to the far side of the room where the windows gave on to more green, for the Lodge had a small garden at the back, a little oasis in a desert of brick and concrete. This was obviously the prime position in the room, and there, supported by cushions in a gleaming electric wheelchair, was Mrs. Blacklock.

“Here we are,” the director boomed. “Here's the visitor I told you about, Mrs. Blacklock. Remember I told you someone was coming?”

Jessie Blacklock was tiny and bent, as if she had leached away over the years and folded in upon herself, weightless as a leaf. Her hands were skeletal, the fingers restlessly playing with the satin edge of the blanket over her knees, the knobbly joints too large, poking at the dry skin covering them. A thin gold band slid up and down the third finger of her left hand, stopped only by the first knuckle from falling off altogether. She was bundled in a padded pink nylon dressing gown, as insulated and cocooned as a baby in a bunting bag.

Her face, though, immediately challenged this impression. The flesh covering her skull had dwindled to nothing, and the skin, left with little to cover, had collapsed into folds and seams, little dewlaps and pouches, trenches and troughs, the mouth a puckered scar, the whole surface crazed with a network of fine spidery lines, just like a dried-out lakebed in a long drought. Her white hair was fine as a baby's and very sparse. The pink scalp was clearly visible through it. She peered at me through gold-rimmed spectacles. Her eyes were dull and rheumy.

“I don't know her,” she said suspiciously. Her voice quavered.

“No,” said the director, “remember I told you you wouldn't know her, but you might have known somebody she wants to find, somebody who lived on your street.”

“I don't know you,” the old woman repeated.

“No, you don't,” I said. “We've never met. Can I explain?”

Mrs. Blacklock grasped my hand and leaned forward.

“I'm one hundred years old. Fancy that!”

“Congratulations,” I said, “that's wonderful. And it's partly the reason I've come to see you.”

“You've missed the birthday cake. We ate it all.”

“It's probably just as well. I eat too much as it is.”

“Hundred candles there were, all lit up. Did you see my picture in the paper?”

“I did.”

“First time I ever got my name in the paper. I told that young man. First time I ever got my name in the paper. I said to him, I said, will I have to wait another hundred years before I get my name in the paper again? And he said, well if you're planning to live that long, I guarantee they'll send someone round to take your photo. Made me laugh, he did.”

The director coughed.

“Mrs. Alvarsson wanted to ask you about a woman who lived on Morocco Street during the war.”

“Which war would that be?” asked the old woman. “I've seen more than one in my time, you know.”

“It was the Second World War,” I said, “in 1941, during the Blitz.”

“I remember the Blitz. Terrible, that was. Lived from day to day. Never knew if you'd make it through the night. One of them incendiaries fell on the house next door to me, lucky I was down the Underground that night or I'd've been a goner too. Made a terrible mess of my house that did.”

“Can you remember a woman called Sarah Murphy at all? She lived at Number 14.”

The old woman mumbled, the end of her nose edging closer to the point of her chin as she did. She looked more and more like a diminutive, wrinkled Punch.

“I went to school with Sarah Porter,” she said finally, “silly girl, married a fishmonger. I don't know how she could put up with the smell, but then she always was daft.”

“Sarah
Murphy
?” I prompted.

“There was a Murphy down the Cut before the war, but he disappeared. Never knew what happened to him.”

“But you can't remember a Sarah Murphy on Morocco Street?”

“Well, dear. I didn't live on Morocco Street myself. I lived round the corner on Leather Court. We kept to ourselves on the Court. You can't expect me to know everyone, can you?”

Her reedy voice sounded aggrieved, and the fingers fidgeted restlessly.

“No, no, of course not. It's remarkable you remember as much as you do.”

She was mollified.

“They say I'm a wonder. I'm a hundred years old, you know. You wouldn't think it, would you? I had a cake with a hundred candles on it. I don't look it, do I?”

Oh yes, you do
, I thought,
you look as old as time
.
You look as if you've just left Shangri-La, and the years are catching up with you, like they did with What's Her Name, at the end of the film. I'd believe you if you told me you helped build the Pyramids, but you don't remember Sarah Murphy and that's all I care about right now.

“What a shame,” said the director over the sparse hairs.

“Well, it was a long shot. Back to the drawing board.”

A gentle snore punctuated the silence. Jessie Blacklock was fast asleep, drooling a little from the corner of her purse string mouth.

“I'll get her back to her room,” said Miss Warner. “Can you find your own way out?”

For a moment I stood staring into the garden where a light rain was falling, exciting a flock of starlings who were striding about, stiff-legged, prodding and poking at the grass.

“Penny for them?” said a voice.

Another woman, using the support of a cane, had made her way quietly to my side. I smiled at her.

“Not worth that much,” I said.

“Come and sit down over there a minute,” she said. “I may be able to help you. I couldn't help overhearing. There's no such thing as a private conversation when you have to talk to oldies deaf as posts!”

I followed her to a table close by screened by a large ficus. She plumped heavily into a basket chair and waved me to its mate opposite her.

“Now,” she said, breathing heavily, “did I hear you say you wanted to know about a Sarah Murphy? From Morocco Street?”

“That's right.”

“Well, you asked the wrong one there. Thinks she's the bee's knees just because she's a hundred. Thinks she's the world authority on everything! Well, I'm ninety-seven and I can still get upstairs if I don't have to hurry, and what I can't remember isn't worth knowing. And besides, I lived on Morocco Street during the war, at Number 39, and I remember Sarah Murphy very well!”

Her round face beamed with triumph at my astonishment.

“This is incredible!”

“Didn't expect that, did you? Yes, she was just a young thing, in her twenties then, with a little girl, I seem to remember. Married to an Irishman, drove a lorry for Carter Paterson's, something like that, but a bit of a wide boy, if you take my meaning, always got his finger in some pie or other, not too particular about keeping the right side of the law. She was a sweet little thing, though, too good for the likes of him, but there, that's the way of the world, isn't it? Is she a relative of yours, then?”

I admitted I didn't know.

“I think she may have been someone my mother knew, maybe someone she was planning to stay with in London. She was killed before she got there, I think. But if I could find this Sarah Murphy, perhaps she could tell me something about my mother, where she came from, what her name was, stuff like that. I've got very little else to go on.”

“I can't tell you much. Sarah was a nice little thing, always said good morning if you saw her in the street, you know. Now there's a thing—funny how it comes back to you—she didn't come from round here, she wasn't a Londoner, I'd swear an oath on it. She had an accent, one of those nice country ones, like they have on
The Archers
, you know.”

I didn't, but I could imagine a sort of generic Mummerset. Was there some place they actually spoke like that? But there were more urgent questions.

“Do you know what became of her? There's no house at Number 14 now.”