The Touch of Innocents

It was in the toddlers’ ward amidst the muddle of bright colours and overstuffed animals, at the cot next to Benjy’s, that she came across preparations for another departure.

‘Time for us to go, sweetheart,’ a young black woman was instructing a small and very white child. The child, a girl, was scarcely a year old and protesting vigorously; the woman was of West African origin by her heavy accent.

Izzy felt a tug towards the girl, vigorously red-haired like Bella had been and not much larger, and her gaze wandered back and forth between woman and child.

The woman, noting Izzy’s interest and confusion, let forth an amused whoop. ‘No, I’m not her mother,’ she beamed.

Izzy returned the good humour. ‘Somehow I didn’t think so …’

‘I take her to meet new parents,’ she explained, before realizing this was scarcely an explanation at all. ‘I am from the social services. My name is Katti. This little thing is being adopted.’

‘Poor thing,’ was Izzy’s instinctive response, but she was immediately contradicted.

‘No, no, dear. She is lucky. Nice new home. Two cars. Loving parents.’ Katti lowered her voice to offer a confidence. ‘See, the natural mother is a single lady, only fifteen, from some place around Birmingham. Come here to have her baby. Lot of these girls come here, it’s quiet, by the sea, away from friends and parents, you know. Very private. First she says she wants to give the child for adoption, then the silly thing changes her mind. But her parents won’t let her back, see?’

‘I see. But I find it difficult to understand.’

‘Right. So the girl gets scared, thinking the baby be taken from her. Runs off and lives for months in squats, hiding, caring for the baby all by herself.’ Katti’s eyes, huge and encircled with dramatic dark rings, rolled in pain. ‘And she starts thieving and doing God knows what else for food and baby clothing. By the time we find her, the little baby is like a scrap of paper, so underweight, sleeping in a cardboard box.’

‘So you have taken the baby away from its mother?’

‘Goodness, no. We talk with the girl, and talk and talk. No rush. We never do anything in rush down here.’ She laughed at what was obviously a standard Dorset line. ‘In the end she agrees it’s best for her and for baby that she stick to the first plan and let the little one be adopted. No way she can cope. We don’t blame her, poor thing, she tries so hard.’

At this point the baby, indignant at having ceased to be the centre of her minder’s attention, threw up over the clothes in which only moments before she had been dressed. Izzy smiled and the black woman scowled in mock offence, but Benjamin pointed at the baby and gave a whoop of laughter.

‘Baby thdick, baby thdick,’ he gurgled. His eyes shone with impish joy. It was the first time he had laughed since the accident.

Still a month short of his third birthday, Benjy’s speech had been in any event rudimentary and the trauma of the accident had initially destroyed his willingness to persevere, yet since Izzy’s reawakening she had spent much of every day teaching him once again the basic lessons which fear had forced from his mind. For Benjy, and even more so for Izzy, every lisping phrase represented a major victory.

Now he was laughing, too. Fighting back. Growing again. Izzy’s eyes brimmed with pride.

‘Baby’s leaving hospital, Benjy,’ Izzy told him, straightening his collar. ‘You and I are going to leave hospital, too.’

‘Dake baby wid us.’

‘No, Benjy, this little baby’s going to go to a new mummy and daddy,’ she started explaining, but Benjy’s humour had instantly turned to petulance and childish frustration. Since the accident and her traumatic albeit temporary ‘desertion’ his emotions had become fragile, more clinging, impatient.

‘Not dat baby. Dake our baby wid us. Baby Bella.’

She gathered him in her arms and smothered him in kisses, clutching him possessively as though someone were about to snatch him from her, hiding within the curls of his hair the tears that were beginning to form.

‘Baby Bella can’t come with us, darling.’ The words hung bittersweet on her breath. ‘Baby’s dead and gone to Heaven.’

‘No!’

‘I’m sorry, Benjy …’

‘No, no, Mummy. Bella nod dead,’ he responded indignantly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Lady came an took Bella away.’

THREE (#ulink_6bb66d7e-fe63-5795-8b08-8d68dc186a50)

With great tenderness Izzy sat Benjamin down, smoothed his hair, hugged him again, and gave herself time to recover. Patiently, with difficulty, she tried to explain to her son that he was mistaken. That he must have imagined things.

The boy would have none of it, sticking firmly to his claim. He had some concept of death, it was one of the first lessons that children picked up when seeing the scenes of suffering on which Izzy reported. Death was a child who went to sleep. Never to wake up.

‘Lady dake baby Bella. An Bella cry.’

‘Which lady? A lady like this, Benjamin?’ she asked, indicating Katti, the black social worker who had begun to take an interest in the plight of mother and child.

‘No, no. Different.’

‘A lady like me, then?’

Benjamin studied his mother as if for the first time, concentrating. ‘No.’

In an instant the image had returned to Izzy and, with it, dread. Fear burned a pathway up her spine, searing along the back of her neck and beneath the skin of her scalp until it had set her mind ablaze. In the flickering light cast by the flames she saw the same lurid mask as in her nightmare.

The girl. Eyes now full of terror. Melting away.

And taking Bella with her.

She grabbed a crayon and piece of paper on which Benjy had been scribbling. She drew a face, thin. Long straggles of hair.

‘Like that, Benjy? Hair like that?’ she enquired, haltingly.

He nodded.

‘An old lady, Benjamin? Was she an old lady?’

‘No, Mummy,’ he answered impatiently, shaking his head in disagreement.

‘And eyes?’

She drew two circles, but he looked blankly at her work. Then she began drawing around the circles, roughly, unevenly, until the eyes had grown small and the surrounding shadows distended and dark.

‘Yes. Dat her!’

And now Izzy fell silent, appalled, frozen in torment. It couldn’t be true. Could it?

‘Can I help?’

It was Katti. Izzy turned slowly, waking from a dream, part nightmare, part fantasy, but which nevertheless she felt certain was a dream.

‘My baby died. Here in this hospital. A few weeks ago.’