A Greater Evil (13 page)
Her own reaction to a few minutes of alarm on the halted Tube this afternoon felt ridiculously exaggerated as she listened to the recorded voices of men who’d been sent to the hospital as children nearly a hundred years ago. Awed by the stoicism with which they described their frightening, comfortless lives, she moved on until she came to a long, narrow glass case. This held tokens left by some of the mothers who’d handed over their babies in the earliest years of the hospital’s existence.
A small notice described how its policy of giving anonymity to the women meant none of their children ever knew they had arrived with a brooch, a lock of hair, a seal, or a scrap of paper that might one day identify them to their birth mothers. After the loneliness she’d heard in the recordings, she could hardly bear the thought of how much it would have helped the foundlings to know their mothers had cared enough to leave these pathetic objects with them.
Raising her eyes, Trish saw a row of letters written by or for desperate women, begging for their children to be admitted to the hospital. Clearly, whatever its privations, it had offered a better life than any other available to them. One letter in particular made her stop breathing for a second. Signed by Margaret Larney, it had many crossings-out and read:
I am the unfortunate woman that now lies under sentens of death at Newgatt. I had a child put in here before when I was sent here his name is James Larney and this his name is John Larney and he was born the King Coronation Day 1758 and Dear Sir I beg for the tender mercy of God to let them know one and other.
Human nature doesn’t change, Trish thought, whatever else happens. I wonder what she’d done to earn her death sentence, poor Margaret Larney. How bad could she have been if her overriding thought as she faced the hangman was that her two fatherless boys should be allowed to know each other after she was dead?
Trish stared at the letter, trying to decide what to say to Sam about the woman she had just met in Holloway; how to advise him now.
On Wednesday Trish was sitting in the Temple Church beside David, listening to the first line of ‘Three Kings from Persian Lands Afar’. In spite of the stone vaulting and the muffling effect of the huge crowd, the sound of the solo voice was pure and literally thrilling. She shivered and could feel hairs on the back of her neck stiffening. The other voices of the choir joined in and the effect became a lot more ordinary.
She looked away from the singers, around the rich crowd, and thought how odd it was that they were only a twenty-minute Tube journey from the miserable, impoverished world contained within Holloway’s red walls. To her left she could see the life-sized effigies of supporters of the order of Knights Templar, which lay only inches above floor level under the dome. Long legged and dignified in their chain mail and surcoats, they were images of stoicism in suffering.
They reminded her of the voices of the foundlings she’d heard in the museum, which in turn reminded her of how she still hadn’t decided what to tell Sam about Maria-Teresa. Would it help him to meet her and see that, even if she had been the woman who’d abandoned him, she was no monster? Or would it stir him up even more? After all, this must be just about the worst time to take any risks with his fragile stability.
Thinking of him, and what he would face if Caro went ahead and charged him with his wife’s murder, Trish lost all sense of the music around her and was back in the original court, telling the judge what had been done to Sam and why he had to be rescued from his foster parents. Could you ever get past something like that? He’d done so well, achieved so much. If he had to go back to court now, to stand in the dock and wait to hear whether the jury thought him guilty of killing Cecilia, he’d lose it all. No more than justice if he had done it, but Trish still believed – still fought to believe – he hadn’t.
David was tugging at her shoulder. She looked round to see the whole congregation standing to sing the last carol. There weren’t many other children here, packed as the church was with the grandest members of legal London, but she’d wanted him to see it now that he was old enough to appreciate it – and to join in the carols. Unlike her and George, David could sing in tune and she tried to give him every opportunity to exercise a skill that still seemed unearthly to her. As usual, she kept her mouth shut, not wanting to embarrass him or herself.
She could see Antony Shelley, her head of chambers, a few pews ahead with his beautifully dressed wife at his side. Another thing Trish still hadn’t decided was what to do about their Twelfth Night party. Always one of the most glamorous evenings of the year, this time it clashed with George’s office party. Normally she’d have cut that short without compunction, but now he wanted her support, to show Malcolm Jensen and the other partners there was nothing to be ashamed of in their relationship and no genuine conflict of interest for anyone at QPXQ Holdings to fear.
The congregation subsided for the final prayer and she leaned over her knees and shaded her eyes.
‘Amen,’ bellowed the congregation a few moments later, and it was all over for another year.
As Trish and David waited their turn to move away from the pew and join the shuffling queue to get out into the cold, she heard someone say her name and looked back to see Mrs Justice Mayford smiling at her.
The judge looked older than she should have, but there was a little more colour in her cheeks than there’d been the day they met at Somerset House and her smile no longer made Trish want to burst into tears of sympathy.
‘It’s lovely to find you here, Trish,’ she said. ‘I’ve been trying to telephone to say that I won’t be able to accept your really kind invitation to join you for Christmas lunch. I couldn’t just leave a message because I wanted you to know how much it means that you asked me.’
‘I’m glad. But it’s a pity – for us – that we won’t be seeing you. How’s the baby? Is there any news?’
‘She is doing better. She’s off the ventilator now, which is definitely something. But …’
‘I’m glad,’ Trish said again, wishing she’d thought of another phrase. She was like an old-fashioned vinyl record that had got stuck.
‘They’re keeping her in over Christmas. Which is just as well. The thought of Sam learning to look after such a tiny creature on his own is … tricky.’
Trish would have given a lot to know whether Gina had actually asked the doctors to pretend the baby needed a longer stay in hospital than necessary. She looked up to assess the other woman’s sincerity and saw an expression of such penetrating intelligence, she felt herself blush.
‘Happy Christmas, Trish,’ Gina said with a kind smile. She turned towards David. ‘Is this your son?’
‘We’re brother and sister; we live together. David, this is Mrs Justice Mayford.’
‘How do you do?’ she said.
To Trish’s relief David shook hands with aplomb. She wished the judge a happy Christmas, then moved away. It took five minutes to get from their pew to the outside world. Too many of the congregation had too much to say to each other for any faster progress.
‘I liked that,’ David said, tipping his head back to look up at the sky. Here in the Temple garden, it was just possible to see one or two stars.
‘Good.’ Trish knew better now than to hug him to share her pleasure with him. They walked side by side, with two feet of safe space between them, down towards the river and so home. ‘I’ve never asked if you’d like to do some extra music at school, learn the piano or something. Listening to you sing just now, it struck me that I should have.’
‘I’ve got enough to do as it is.
Are
we going to be able to go to Heathrow tomorrow to collect the cousins?’
Trish smiled inwardly at the connection between the two remarks. Luckily, for once, she had enough time to give him what he wanted.
‘Yes. The courts have closed for Christmas. Chambers is already emptying, and I’ve told Steve I’m not available till after New Year. So I’m all yours and the cousins’ now.’
‘And George’s.’
‘Yes. George’s too.’ And Sam’s, she added to herself. But this was David’s time, so she made an effort to forget Sam and added aloud: ‘What I thought we’d do tomorrow is take the car out to Heathrow, pick them up and drive them to their hotel so they can get some sleep, while you and I go on to buy the food. George has given me a shopping list that’s about two metres long. D’you want to help?’
He looked round, his face bright in the lamplight. ‘Yeah. I need to make sure you get a big enough turkey. Is that bloke you told me about, the one whose studio’s round the corner, going to come on Christmas Day?’
‘I still don’t know. But I’ve got a present for him in case he does. When we’re back with the shopping, if we’re not too knackered, I thought we could start to wrap. How would that be?’
‘Great.’
They were knee-deep in boxes, torn-off price labels, clumps of useless but viciously sticky tape, and heaps of wrapping paper offcuts the next day. The phone rang for the fifth time since they’d unloaded what looked like enough food to keep three armies supplied for weeks. Trish sighed.
‘I’ll get it,’ David said, leaping to his feet.
Trish’s knees were aching so much she couldn’t work out whether it was better to go on kneeling on the rug to wrap her share of the parcels or to perch on the edge of the sofa, bending to the task.
The huge dining table was out of operation at the moment, covered with wire trays of mince pies George had baked before work and the marzipan-covered cake he was planning to ice as soon as he got in. He seemed determined to recreate in Southwark the kind of elaborate ritual with which he’d grown up in the English countryside.
Trish’s very different childhood had entailed far less ceremony, and the Christmas food had been restricted to a roast turkey breast and bought plum-pudding with brandy butter. In George’s world there seemed to be special menus and recipes for every meal from breakfast on Christmas Eve until supper on Boxing Day. He was contributing the skill and effort, and a ludicrous array of wines, spirits and liqueurs, while she was supplying the ingredients he’d specified. She still couldn’t get over the sight of the trolley she’d filled at his instruction. Even with David’s appetite and the presumably similar hunger of his cousins, it had to be far too much.
Still, the scents of spice and pastry, combined with the pine needles, made an intriguing change from the usual furniture polish and flowers.
‘Trish,’ David called. ‘Sam Foundling on the phone.’
She heaved herself up from the floor, grimacing at the pain in her knees, and walked to take the receiver from him.
‘Sam. How are you?’
‘Okay. Trish, I’ve just heard from the hospital.’ His voice was buoyant enough to tell her the news was good. ‘She’s now off all the tubes and things and as soon as they’re sure she can manage, she’ll be out of the SCBU and on an ordinary ward. They say I should be able to have her out and home by the New Year.’
‘That’s fantastic news, Sam. I’m so glad.’
‘So, I can come to lunch on Christmas Day after all. If it’s still okay with you.’
‘We’d love to have you. David, my brother, and I are just back with the shopping.’ She laughed. ‘There’s more than enough. Come any time after one. We’ll probably eat about half past. See you then. Oh, by the way, Gina told me yesterday that she won’t be coming.’
‘I know. I just phoned her about the baby and she said she’s going to some old friends in Dorset.’
‘Fine. Have you decided on a name for your daughter?’
‘Not yet. Gina wants me to call her Cecilia, but I want her to have a name of her own. She mustn’t grow up to think she’s only a substitute. She has to know who she is as herself, right from the start. But I don’t know what I want for her yet.’
‘You probably need to get to know her a bit before you decide,’ Trish said almost at random, just for something to fill in the conversational gap, but Sam sighed.
‘You see, you always do know what I’m thinking. You don’t get it wrong, like everybody else.’
‘Good. But I ought to go now. See you on the twenty-fifth.’
‘Before you go, Trish …’
‘Yes?’
‘You were going to the prison to see that woman. What happened?’
Trish looked towards David, happily wrestling with an intractable parcel and showing no interest in her conversation. She still didn’t know whether he’d realized that the Sam Foundling who phoned her was the same Sam Foundling in the news because his wife had been murdered. David occasionally read the papers and had a knack of picking up the most gruesome stories from school friends, but he’d made no mention of it. The reports had been surprisingly minimal so far and the press hadn’t yet suggested Sam had anything to do with it.
‘I can give you all the details later,’ she said casually, keeping her eye on David, ‘but my impression is she almost certainly at some stage left a box like that outside the hospital. There was too much detail, trivial but telling, for her to have invented it entirely. And the route she described fits the map. I checked.’
‘But the baby needn’t have been me. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. If it was, she’d have been just seventeen.’
‘Do you think I should take the DNA test she wants?’
Trish paused to make sure she was going to say what she meant. ‘In many ways it would clarify things, but it wouldn’t help with your original dilemma of whether to have anything to do with her.’
‘I suppose not. So that’s probably it for now. No. Sorry. What I wanted to ask is: did you
like
her?’
Another pause let Trish examine her memory, recreating the moment when Maria-Teresa’s air of defeat and misery was lightened with intelligence, dignity and hints of lifesaving stubbornness.
‘I didn’t have long enough to decide. But she didn’t make my skin crawl, as some people I’ve seen in prison have. And I’d say she was considerably more intelligent than her letters suggest. I’d have no problem going back to see her again. So, as far as it goes, I suppose there was more liking than disliking, if that makes sense.’
‘It does, but it’s not helpful.’