Transmigration (27 page)

 

 

The doctor could not understand what had happened, and was honest
enough to admit it to himself and to Rodney. The human brain was still
comparatively unmapped territory. Rodney had never been operated on
and there had been no real psychiatric treatment. It had been thought
that he could not possibly respond to it, being capable of only a few
meaningful sounds that meant he was hungry or thirsty. or wanted to go
to the bathroom.

 

 

A normal brain could suddenly go wrong. This seemed to be a case of a
brain that was not normal suddenly going right.

 

 

One thing was obvious, even at this stage. Rodney would have to leave
Paradise. Indeed, the doctor was clearly reluctant to let him sleep even
that night in his old cell.

 

 

What was coming should have been obvious, but Rodney was not thinking
about what might be coming, being too concerned over setting the past
and the present to rights to have time to consider the future.

 

 

Anyway, it was no surprise at all when Dr. Brooke said: "There's a place
in Cumberland . . . "

 

 

Rodney stepped off the train at the station. He was alone. Showing more
confidence than he probably felt, Dr. Brooke had said he was quite
capable of traveling by himself. It was one of the trusting gestures
made by psychiatrists which didn't always come off.

 

 

In his small suitcase he had only a few clothes and a toothbrush.

 

 

It was hot, and as he emerged from the station a crowd of screaming
children in swimsuits ran past him, the girls chasing the boys. He looked
at them with pleasure.

 

 

It could be no coincidence that he was once again a foundling without
a name. There was no coincidence in his life.

 

 

Somehow he suddenly knew who Rodney was. There was no means of proving
it, but it didn't matter. He needed no proof.

 

 

Paula Baudaker had had one fling in her uneventful life, and it was
all tragedy. Rebelling against her humdrum life with Baudaker, she had
an affair with another man, a worthless man, a subnormal man. And she
didn't know what to do when she found herself pregnant.

 

 

She couldn't face Baudaker became her transgression was so utterly
senseless, motiveless, so shamefully wrong. Besides, the baby would not
be normal. She knew that from the start.

 

 

So she went away for six months and had the baby somewhere, left it in
public care and went home to see Baudaker once more. Perhaps if he had
been cruel it would have been kind. Instead, he was overpoweringly glad
to see her back.

 

 

And she couldn't take it. She put her head in the gas oven.

 

 

Whether this was true or not was unimportant. In any case, Rodney would
never tell Baudaker about it. It would not add to his happiness. But it
fitted into Fletcher's cycle so neatly it had to be true.

 

 

Rodney did not hurry along the dusty, sunkissed street. It was wide,
with small shops on both sides, cars parked on cobbles off the main
road, pretty young mothers pushing prams and leaving them outside shops,
children everywhere, running, shouting. Several people smiled at him
and he smiled back.

 

 

It was true that beauty was in the eye of the beholder. This small town
could be considered dirty, untidy, unattractive and unwelcoming if people
were predisposed to see it like that. Or it could be. as Rodney saw it, an
ideal place to grow up and find oneself, if such a thing were necessary.

 

 

The institution on the outskirts looked rather like an institution,
but not unfriendly. At least the iron gates were wide open.

 

 

He should have gone straight to the front door and announced himself,
but he did not. He wandered round the old building and found that at the
rear the gardens were lovely. Several children passed him, staring at him
curiously. They were, sadly, quite unlike the shrieking brown children
in the town. They were too clean, too solitary, too cautious. Several
of them had calipers on their legs, and some had wasted limbs. But most
of them smiled back at him.

 

 

Joyful shouts from a field behind the gardens, screened by a high hedge,
indicated that the children who could take pleasure in gregarious play
were doing so. For the most part, he saw those who could not.

 

 

He saw no teachers or doctors or nurses, and was glad of it. There had
to be freedom in a place like this, or it was valueless. Life, too,
offered freedom. You took it or you put yourself in chains.

 

 

Of course the place could not be perfect. There would be stupidity and
cruelty and intolerance and boredom and frustration. But these were the
obstacles in the obstacle-filled race of life. Anyone lucky enough to get
a second chance in life ought to be able to make light of circumstances
twenty times worse than he was likely to encounter here.

 

 

He would not be moving on. Whatever happened, he had found his final
haven.

 

 

Final? Well, the wild possibilities suggested by Sir Charles Searle
almost at the moment of death and, possibly, revelation would have
to be considered sometime. But they were not the sort of things a
thirteen-year-old boy had to bother his head about for a long time. His
very age, independent of anything else, gave him at least half a dozen
years' grace before he could take any positive place in the world..

 

 

There was no hurry.

 

 

On the lawn in the middle of the rose garden, reading a book, lay a
girl. She wore the navy pants of a child and the casually tied suntop
of a pretty and well-shaped woman. She was brown and was the loveliest
thing he could recall seeing in his life.

 

 

"Hello, Judy," he said.

 

 

Lying on her stomach, she looked up from her book. "Hello," she said. "You
know me?"

 

 

He dropped on the grass beside her. "I'm not sure. I used to think so."

 

 

She rolled over and sat on her heels. "You're Mr. Fletcher!"

 

 

"No," he said. "Rodney."

 

 

"Rodney what?"

 

 

"Well, I was asked if I had any preference, since most people have second
names, and just for convenience I said Fletcher,"

 

 

"That is what I said. I knew you were Mr. Fletcher."

 

 

"No, Judy. Please, not Mr. Fletcher."

 

 

"Fancy meeting you, Mr. Fletcher," she said, and laughed. "It's a small
world, isn't it?"

 

 

Rodney. I'm still older than you, but only a week older. You can't
possibly call me Mr. Fletcher."

 

 

"Tell me all about it, Mr. Fletcher." She was teasing him. She was
the most beautiful girl in the world. He was in no doubt about that,
though he remembered Gerry had thought much the same about Daphne and
Ross about Anita. He had nothing against Anita or Daphne, but anyone
who preferred them to Judy needed his head examined.

 

 

"Take your shirt off," she said. "You're as pale as a ghost,
Mr. Fletcher."

 

 

He took his shirt off. "I don't think, after all, I'll tell you anything,"
he said.

 

 

"Be like that. See if I care." She laughed and pushed him so that he
lost his balance and clutched her. Her warm brown flesh felt even more
wonderful than it looked. Thirteen he thought with momentary gloom. Why
couldn't he and Judy have been five years older?

 

 

A bell in the home rang. It was so loud and shrill it made him release
Judy. "What on earth's that?" he said.

 

 

"Tea bell. We can have tea and buns if we like."

 

 

"Are you hungry?"

 

 

"Not particularly."

 

 

"Neither am I. Let's stay here."