The Missing World (4 page)

Unlike Steve, Maud had no trouble recognising his voice. As soon as he said hello, she burst out, “Jonathan. How are you?”

Bizarre, she sounded almost friendly. “I’m calling about Hazel,” he said, and launched into his by-now-practised speech.

“A seizure,” she said. And then, “Thank god.”

Thank god? Only after he’d given directions and hung up did he realise he must have led her to expect something even worse. Well, why should he be the only one to suffer?
But as he neared the room this petty triumph faded. Although matters had worked out so surprisingly well with Hazel’s parents, he had no illusions that this would happen with her best friend. Maud knew every item on the charge sheet, all those crimes large and small, true and false, which Hazel held against him; she’d probably suggested a few entries herself. Several times after Hazel left, he had met Maud for a drink, hoping she might act as peacemaker. On each occasion she’d offered further arguments as to why he and Hazel were doomed. No, he thought, he could expect no mercy from that quarter.

In 407 Hazel was back from the tests, arms bruised and lips very pale. Even in her unconscious state she conveyed an extra dimension of exhaustion. He was filled with pity and a wild desire to rescue her.

At the news that Maud was on her way, Nora exclaimed, “Oh, good.”

“Why don’t you two get a cup of tea?” Jonathan said, trying to sound casual. “I’ll watch Hazel.”

Alone, he grasped her hand, the one without the IV, and implored her not to let Maud come between them. “Hazel, I’ll do anything to make things right.”

She uttered a small moan.

Thirty minutes later, he was trying to explain, again, what really had happened with Suzanne, when the door opened and Maud appeared. Rising to greet her, Jonathan was struck by how rapidly the rest of them had been worn down by the hospital. With her glowing cheeks and dark hair, Maud was a messenger from a more vivid world.

“Oh, Jonathan.” She flung her arms around him and he smelled the cold air clinging to her outdoor clothes. Despair, he thought, makes strange bedfellows.

After a long moment, his neck was straining, she released him. “Why is she still unconscious?”

“They don’t know. At first they said it was a good thing—the brain resting—but now they’re getting worried.”

He stood on the far side of the bed. The shadows beneath Maud’s eyes, which he’d always considered a sign of sulkiness, were even darker than usual. He saw that she was crying.

“Do you talk to her?” she said at last.

“Sometimes.”

She put her hands on her hips. “We have to talk to her. I mean, if we give up …” She left the threat unfinished.

He nodded, both annoyed and relieved. Maud was her usual high-handed self, but at least she didn’t seem antagonistic. Years ago, when Hazel introduced them, he had failed to understand the force of the phrase “best friend.” Over drinks Maud had grilled him—what, exactly, did a claims adjustor do?—and, at Hazel’s urging, he repeated some of his best stories: the couple who faked a burglary; the man who pried the slates off his own roof.

“Don’t you ever worry about making mistakes?” Maud asked. “Depriving some little old lady of her immersion heater?”

“Of course,” said Jonathan, then thought to add, “Don’t you?”

“All the time.” She described how she had sent a bouquet from the deceased to the widow, rather than vice versa. “She was convinced her husband called Interflora with his last gasp. I didn’t have the heart to charge her.” She shook her head. “Everyone assumes running a florist’s is laid back, but most people buy flowers at times of crisis: death, love, a new job. They expect a dozen roses to change their lives.”

“If only,” said Hazel, who had worked at Plantworks for a year and still helped out on weekends and holidays.

Maud herself, as far as Jonathan could see, was well beyond
the reach of even the most lavish bouquet. The week after he met her, she and her husband threw a divorce party, but despite all the jollity Hazel insisted Maud was lonely and often invited her along on their dates. Or did Maud invite herself? He wasn’t sure, but grew adept at booking tickets to sold-out shows, reserving tables for two in popular restaurants. Once he even asked if she was gay. Why on earth would you think that? said Hazel. She seems to enjoy your company so much, he had said.
Our
company, said Hazel, patting his cheek.

As for George and Nora, their one encounter with Maud had devolved into a fierce argument about veal calves and battery hens. Now all feuds were forgotten. The Ransomes were grateful for her devotion to their daughter. This is the best place in the country for head injuries, she told them. They’ll have her conscious soon.

On the afternoon of the third day Hazel sprang a fever and was back in ICU. The four of them sat hopelessly in the waiting room until a soft-spoken Turkish nurse sent them packing. “I’ll phone if there’s a change,” he promised. “You go home. Sleep.”

Outside, the foggy air slapped their cheeks. George remarked that it was close to freezing. “Be careful on your bike,” he admonished Maud.

Beside him Nora, pulling on her gloves, said, “Maybe tomorrow …”

“Absolutely,” said Jonathan. “She just needs rest. She …”

His truisms were lost in the rip of sirens; from opposite directions two ambulances raced towards the hospital. Probably the end of their shift, he was thinking, when something made him glance at Nora. She was watching the vehicles as if each contained her nearest and dearest. They tore through the gates, and before the sirens died away, George had taken
her arm and was leading her down the street towards their bed-and-breakfast.

Jonathan turned to Maud, who was fastening her bicycle helmet. “Do you fancy a drink?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

They walked to the pub on the corner in silence save for the clicking of her bike. Maud chained it to a railing and they entered a savagely lit room wreathed in smoke. Fewer than a dozen men were huddled at tables and the bar.

“What a shithole,” said Maud. “I’ll have a Bloody Mary.”

She headed for a corner banquette. Jonathan ordered her drink and a Scotch, both doubles, then realised he didn’t have the cash and contradicted himself. The bartender grunted.

“Cheers.” Maud raised her glass. “Alone at last.”

“Cheers.” He gulped, hoping the alcohol on an empty stomach might induce wooziness. Beside him Maud seemed committed to studying every inch of the banquette. “I just thought,” he said, “it would be good to have a chat about Hazel.”

“Oh, Hazel,” said Maud. Across the room, a man in a mac had begun to kick the cigarette machine. “Only a week ago we were talking about a cycling holiday in the spring.”

A knife in his jugular, plans without him, but no time for that now. “All I wanted to say is that I hope we can let bygones be bygones. I know you can’t be exactly thrilled to find me at the hospital, but Hazel and I have been together for four years.”

“After which she couldn’t wait to leave you.”

He clutched his glass, blind for a second. “I’ve always had her best interests at heart,” he choked out.

“I must say you have an odd way of showing it. Fuck, Jonathan, what were you thinking of?”

Finally she was looking at him, her stare like a hundred bee
stings. “I saved her,” he said. “If I hadn’t got her to the hospital, she might’ve died.”

Maud held his gaze a moment more. “To be honest”—her eyelids dipped—“I’m glad you’re here. Apart from anything else, I couldn’t handle George and Nora.”

He took the olive branch and offered his own. “I thought they’d be angry with me too.”

“ ‘Fraid not. From their point of view you’ve always been the knight in shining armour, rescuing Hazel from her hippie ways. They were so upset when she moved out that she ended up telling them it was just a trial separation.” Someone bumped their table; the man in the mac lurched towards the gents’. “Want another?”

He nearly said yes, but something in her shadowy face stopped him. This wasn’t peace, he reminded himself, only an armed truce. “Thanks, I’d better be going.” To his surprise, she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

Leaving Maud to make a phone call, he stepped outside to discover the earlier fog had turned to freezing rain. Damn, he thought, recalling the study ceiling. Tomorrow he’d phone the roofer again. He zipped up his jacket and jogged towards the bus stop.

Maud invented rules. They must behave as if Hazel were already conscious: greet her on entering the room, report daily news, include her in their chatting. At first it was hard to publicly address this unconscious being, scarcely a woman anymore, though Jonathan had learned from the chart at the end of the bed that she was having her period; but soon it became surprisingly natural to offer her a cup of tea and remark on the weather.

His own particular contribution was reading aloud, intimacy
without revelation. He chose a history of bee-keeping, which they’d read to each other one rainy Easter in a caravan near Windermere; ever since, the misty greenness of spring had been inextricably connected with the slow growth of cells, the uses of honey, lovemaking. Now Jonathan sat by her bed narrating the life of Frances Huber, the blind beekeeper who, in 1792, invented the leaf hive. Like a book, he explained, the leaves were the pages with the outer leaves, or covers, made of glass so that Huber’s sighted assistant could observe the bees and describe them to his master. Even in this bleak room, the words cast a spell.

Late on the afternoon of the fifth day, Maud whispered, “Look.”

Jonathan jumped up from the chair where he was dozing. George and Nora dropped their newspapers. Hazel’s eyelids were fluttering. She opened her eyes and gazed up at the four of them. The colour of her irises had deepened, as if the long twilight of the last week had taken up permanent residence in her brain. “Who will pay?” she said. And then, unmistakably, “Oh, what time is it?”

Such a common question, but one Jonathan had never heard her ask before. Soon after meeting Hazel he had noticed she always knew the time. When he praised this ability, she protested. You couldn’t praise something involuntary.

“On the contrary,” he’d said, “that’s the Calvinist in you, equating virtue with struggle. Aristotle believed the reverse.” He explained the theory of innate virtue, and charmed her by turning all the clocks to the wall.

“A quarter to twelve,” said Nora gently. “How do you feel?”

“Thirsty.”

Maud helped her sit up, and Nora held a glass of water to her lips. As she sank back onto the pillows, Hazel caught sight of the tubes feeding into her arm and frowned.

“You had an accident,” said Nora. “You’re in hospital.”

Hazel blinked. She turned to Jonathan, eyebrows arched, lips parted. What does she want, he thought. Suddenly he realised he had forgotten to be afraid. Was he about to be hurled into outer darkness?

“She doesn’t know us,” Nora said quietly. “We’re strangers to her.”

Now he could read the question in her face: who are these people? He stepped forward and took her hand in his. Her uncut nails pricked his palm.

“Jonathan.” Slowly she closed her eyes.

chapter 3

Freddie Adams was suffering a not unfamiliar restlessness of spirit. In spite of the hour, nearly midnight, and the weather, raw and cold, he had borrowed a bike from the flock in the front hall—Kevin’s, he was pretty sure, the only one unchained—and set off to pedal the streets of Canonbury and Highbury. He had not cycled for months and even the small hills made his side ache. Beneath him the bike creaked ominously and the gears threatened to slip.

What had set him going, woken his demon? The morning had been a breeze. He had fixed a gutter at the house across the street in exchange for lunch, a nice steak-and-kidney pie. He was barely home, however, settled on the couch with Agnes, than the phone rang. The caller introduced himself as Mr. Early: an emergency, water pouring in. Freddie listened vaguely, planning at the first pause to recommend his former boss, Trevor. Then Mr. Early said, “My mother always claimed it was bad luck to open a brolly in the house, but if this keeps up I may have to ignore her.” Picturing this guy and his family, each with his or her own brilliant umbrella, Freddie had found himself promising to arrive within the hour.

“Heavens to Betsy,” he’d said to Agnes. “Why am I such a marshmallow?”

Agnes pricked her ears and nudged her dish meaningfully.

Thirty minutes later, when he discovered the tall houses and steep roofs of Mr. Early’s street, Freddie berated himself all over again. He parked outside number 11 and sat there, hoping for a sign. If I see two magpies, he thought, or one black cat, I’m off to the nearest pub to phone and say the van won’t start. But there were no birds to be seen, nor a cat of any colour, only two white women in jackets and jeans coming down the sidewalk.

Resigned, Freddie got out of the van, secured his scarf, and opened the gate. The front garden was the usual scruffy flower bed, but the stretch of mosaic leading to the door was superb, a diamond pattern of black-and-white tiles interwoven with ochre and blue. And, equally rare, not a single tile was missing. Often a section had been ripped up to lay pipes—vandalism, to Freddie’s way of thinking.

He reached approvingly for the dolphin knocker. One of the pleasures of life in London, as opposed to Cincinnati, was the many methods of announcing your presence. In his various jobs Freddie had become acquainted with old-fashioned bellpulls, shrill chimes, and the many brass knockers: dolphins, wreaths, lions, hands, heads. These last were his favourite, though the thud they produced made him feel like a bill collector. He knocked twice for good measure and peered into the wavery, unrevealing glass.

Nothing. No cry of “Coming,” no footsteps brisk or shuffling, no light. A bubble of relief took shape in Freddie’s gut. He was off the hook. This wasn’t some old geezer who might’ve suffered a fall. Mr. Early had sounded safely middle-aged. Knocking again was beyond the call of duty, but he’d give it another thirty seconds. He stepped back to study the nearest
rosebush, the crooked branches shoulder high. If he ever talked to Mr. Early again, he might recommend Kevin, his downstairs neighbour and a knockout gardener. Last summer he’d taken Freddie on a tour of the back garden, introducing him to the creamy white Winchester Cathedrals, the many-petalled Brother Cadfaels.