The Fleeting Years Page 18

  By her side on an unrelentingly unkind wooden chair dinner-jacketed Peter kept vigil, just as he had for over thirty hours, hardly taking his eyes off her as he fought the battle to stay awake. In the circumstances it would hardly be true to say luck had been on his side, but at least, arriving at the airport, he had been able to check in to a flight due to leave within the hour. A taxi from Heathrow to Newton House where, without even going inside, he had collected his own sports car and driven straight to the hospital.

  Every few minutes a nurse would look in on the unchanging scene, stand over Zina with a worried expression, sometimes feeling her pulse and then disappear. And at intervals one of those same nurses would ply him with cups of tea or offers to send down to the hospital shop for sandwiches – something he declined, because the thought of eating made him feel sick. Perhaps he didn’t realize just how hungry he was, for his conscious thoughts went no further than this small room and the haunting sight of his beloved Zee.

  Leaning down so that his head was next to hers on the pillow he whispered into the space as near her ear as the bandage allowed. ‘Darling, darling Zee, hear me, please hear me. Come back to me, Zina, don’t leave me. Wake up, Zee, please, please. Oh God please.’ His voice was hardly a whisper at all. He had never before felt so helpless and alone or so frightened. So the minutes had turned to hours, night to day and into another night.

  It was about five in the morning, he ached in every limb, his eyes were bloodshot with tiredness. Suddenly he was wide-awake. Did he imagine it or did she move her eyelids? In a second he was on his feet bending over her, his face only inches from hers. ‘Wake up,’ he breathed, his hand gripping hers, ‘look at me, oh darling, yes …’ For a moment her eyes were open, she gazed blankly, then they closed again. He was at his lowest ebb. ‘Come back, wake up, bring her back, please God. Zee, don’t leave me, I can’t live without you.’ Seconds passed as he silently pleaded and she lay quite still. Then there was a change. Again her eyes opened and this time there was a difference, they weren’t staring blankly into the middle distance they were looking at him. He believed she tried to smile, had it been possible with a face so swollen.

  ‘You hav … ven’t … shaved. Can’t … to bed … like that.’ Words that were barely audible, but words for all that. It was as if she had no idea of anything that had happened or even where she was, except that she was with him.

  Almost beside himself with anxiety, fatigue and thankfulness, his control slipped beyond being held back as a sob broke in his throat. ‘Thank God, oh thank God.’ He hardly knew what he said or what he did as in relief he wept. One of the young nurses was there instantly. ‘She spoke. She knew me,’ he told her, keeping his back to her and holding his jaw stiff as he tried to hide his display of uncontrollable emotion.

  The nurse held Zina’s wrist and nodded to him encouragingly. ‘Her pulse is stronger. It’s what we’ve been waiting for. I must go and report to Sister.’

  While she was gone Peter had a chance to get his face in order. He heard the soft footsteps coming quickly along the corridor and a second later Sister was confirming what the young nurse had already said.

  ‘She’s moved into a natural sleep. Now you must go home and rest. She will sleep for some hours, perhaps all day and well into the night. And so should you.’

  Zina was starting on the road to recovery.

  Outside in the early morning of winter, daylight barely a hint of light in the eastern sky and it must have been an indication of the state of his mind that he decided to call and give Jenny the news on the way home. He had been told that she had been phoning the hospital, but his thoughts had gone no further than Zina. Jenny’s ever-ready resentment of him had turned to anger that he should have taken precedence over her and with only one visitor allowed, made sure that each day he was that visitor. Why couldn’t he have considered her and realized that she, too, had a right to keep watch? She supposed he considered he was the only one who mattered and she didn’t count. That was her immediate reaction, one that became more firmly entrenched as the hours went by. Derek and the quintet were away and originally she had planned to accompany him. He had no choice other than to go, and with Zina in hospital Jenny naturally had stayed at home feeling confident that with Peter in America she would spend time each day at the hospital. Often enough she had been irritated by what she considered Peter’s flippancy and immature need for fun, but nothing could compare with the angry jealousy that gripped her as the hours passed and she heard nothing from him. A more fair-minded side of her nature nudged her with the thought that he must have dropped everything to rush home so quickly.

  It was just after six in the morning, still dark and cold, when she turned over in bed snuggling into the warmth, glad it wasn’t time to get up. Then she seemed to freeze! She knew the sound of that wretched engine, the vintage sports car so dear to Peter! What could he be calling here for at this hour? Had he been sent for to go to the hospital in the night? But at this hour that could only mean … no, she hadn’t the courage to let herself imagine. Instead she pushed back the covers and got out of bed, pulling on her dressing gown as she hurried to the window. Probably too frightened to think clearly she expected to be able to see him, but there was nothing but the dark shape of someone coming through the gate. Please, please, she begged silently, too frightened to put words to her plea.

  Still pushing her feet into her slippers she hurried to the stairs and ran down to open the door before he reached it. In the bright light from the hall she was shocked at the sight of him. Pulling him inside, she closed the door.

  ‘They sent for you at the hospital?’ But even as she asked it she knew the question made no sense. If he’d been called from his bed he couldn’t look like this: unshaven not just for hours but for days, still wearing a dinner suit, sore-eyed, pale and exhausted he was scarcely recognizable as the screen hero beloved of so many.

  He who made a practice of hiding his emotions, joking so irritatingly rather than expose the depth of his feeling, was too tired and too thankful to think of anything but what filled his heart.

  ‘She woke,’ he said, his face working so that he could hardly speak, ‘she knew me. Haven’t shaved, she said.’

  ‘And then? Tell me, Peter!’ She heard her shrill voice; she heard the fear in it.

  He made a supreme effort, taking a deep breath as if that would give him back his control as he said, ‘They said she would sleep for hours now, a natural sleep. She’s going to get better.’

  In the next seconds neither of them consciously moved and yet he was held in her arms and she felt his last hold on control snap as he sobbed.

  ‘Have you been there all night?’ Even as she asked she realized it was a stupid question in view of his appearance, but she sensed that when he gained control he would want to forget the last few moments.

  ‘Came on the first plane when I heard. Been there ever since.’

  What a moment for her thankfulness to be overtaken by guilt at how often she had thought badly of him.

  ‘Oh, my dear boy. Have they fed you? I’ll get us something and make some coffee.’

  Getting out his handkerchief he wiped his face and shook his head. ‘Thanks, but no. I could keep awake while I was watching her, waiting for a sign. But now Mother-in-law, all I want is to sleep. So thankful, you don’t know how thankful.’

  ‘Oh but I do know. She’s my daughter.’ Could some of the animosity of years be rearing its head again? ‘You’re not in a fit state to drive. Leave your car and I’ll take you. Derek took the Volvo back to the house so you can use that until he gets home tomorrow, then we’ll both drive over, he’ll drive yours and I’ll bring him back.’

  ‘I can manage and when I get there I’ll just roll into bed.’ At that stage he wanted just to get home and Jenny wasn’t even dressed.

  ‘I’m not going to have you drive into a tree. Zina will have trouble enough to overcome without that. It’s not even light yet, no one’s going to see me.’ And the
n with an impish smile that somehow helped both of them to find normality, she added, ‘And if they do and think I’ve been on the tiles all night, that’ll give the chattering masses something to get their teeth into.’

  As Zina started on the road back, she felt frustrated by her reliance on someone else for her every need. In hospital she managed to brush her own teeth using her left hand, but that was about all. Of course she was stiff, and apart from broken limbs her body ached and was bruised and sore, but she was determined not to think of herself as an invalid. To her way of thinking an invalid was a person with an illness; she had broken bones but was disease free. So her natural optimism returned.

  It was five days after the accident and she had been told she was to be moved into the ward the next day. Halfway through the morning Peter arrived.

  ‘Having a good day?’ he asked, bending to kiss her in greeting.

  ‘You sound remarkably perky. My day? Oh thrilling,’ she answered, her voice heavy with sarcasm for such a stupid question. Then, more honestly, she said, ‘Peter, I’m not ill, I feel I want to be doing things for myself, that’s the hard bit. But I think my face is beginning to feel as if it belongs to me again.’

  ‘How about if tomorrow you come home?’ To her ears he sounded insensitive. She was in no mood for finding humour.

  ‘That’s not funny,’ she replied with a pout in her voice.

  ‘Tomorrow let’s get you home to your own bed.’ A good job Jenny couldn’t hear him!

  ‘Stop fooling, Peter.’ And this time he realized how near the surface tears were for all the attempt she made to sound unscathed.

  ‘Over this I would never tease, Zina, you know I wouldn’t. I couldn’t mention it yesterday when I came because nothing was settled. I had an appointment to see Mr Clifford, the surgeon who put you back together again, and he has agreed that tomorrow, instead of being moved to the ward, you can come home as long as we install a couple of fully trained nurses for the first weeks. Nice chap, he even helped me engage two he thought would be right. You must have made a good impression on him for him to be so willing.’ It honestly didn’t occur to him that having a famous name might have tipped the scales. ‘So tomorrow morning, m’lady, you are to be brought back home. Our Mrs Cripps is beside herself with excitement. I reckon she thinks we could do without the nurses, she’s so keen to play a sort of motherly role. So? What do you think?’

  With her left hand – one of the only bits of her not hampered by plaster or bandage – she took his right one and held it to her sore and still swollen face.

  ‘Silly to cry,’ she whispered, her mouth moving on the back of his hand. ‘So pleased. Peter …’

  ‘Happy tears, my darling.’

  ‘Happy, thankful, grateful. Have you got a hanky?’ she sniffed, ‘Wipe my face, please.’ With remarkable gentleness he wiped it, first her cheeks and then her nose. ‘I love you, Mr Marchand,’ she told him, seeming to set the scene for the next stage in their lives.

  ‘And I love you, Mrs Marchand, despite the scare you gave me.’

  The next day the ambulance took her home and, from the moment the stretcher was carried up the stairs, those days in hospital began to take on the feeling of a bad dream. This was where she belonged and where she was determined she would soon become the person she used to be.

  But it wasn’t as easy as she expected. The large bedroom had belonged to Peter and her; now there was a single bed in it as well as the double, and her nightly companion was a nurse while Peter was in the room across the corridor. But, she told herself, that was just one more reason why she had to make every effort to see she progressed even more quickly than they anticipated. Perhaps had she suffered a sickness of the body her own willpower might have helped, but setting bones can’t be hurried. Her first step towards normality came when the bandage was finally removed from her head, or so she anticipated with excitement. As she sat in bed the nurse removed it and the doctor examined the healed wound and, with thankfulness, she heard him say that it could be left uncovered. When they’d gone downstairs she waited eagerly for Peter to come back from seeing the doctor out so that he could carry her to sit in front of the dressing table. Previously, when her head had been re-dressed she hadn’t seen herself in the mirror, but there was nothing normal about her appearance for the hair had been shaved on the right-hand side from the front to almost level with the back of her ear. Now all that was visible was an ugly scar from a jagged wound stretching to an inch or so below the natural hairline on her forehead. In the triple mirror she could see that her left profile was the woman she’d been; the right profile a stranger and, to her mind, a hideous reminder of something she wanted to forget. Seeing her expression Peter stood behind her, his hands on her shoulders.

  ‘Peter, I can’t go about like that,’ she croaked, frightened to trust her voice to say more.

  ‘Wear your wound with pride. Isn’t that what we used to say to the kids when they came to be bandaged after tumbling?’

  ‘What pride can I have in being a sight like that?’ she gripped her trembling lips tightly together, holding the corners of her mouth between her teeth. She knew she was being childish; she knew she ought to be grateful that she was healing well; but shock at the sight of her reflection stripped her of everything except misery coupled with shame that she couldn’t find the grace to be thankful. ‘Don’t let anyone see me.’ Then, glaring at him in the mirror as if the whole thing were his fault, she added, ‘And don’t give me a lot of rubbish about it’ll soon start to grow; it’ll take months, you know it will.’

  She knew she was behaving badly: she knew and had neither the will nor the desire to put on a show of bravery. Right from the time of regaining consciousness she had been looking forward to having the bandages and plasters removed, somehow expecting that she would automatically be restored to how she had been before the fall. In those first moments of facing what had happened, she knew that there would never be any going back. Even when her hair grew, she could see a future with the plasters removed and perhaps she would be left with a limp or with one shoulder higher than the other. Every possible disaster crowded her mind, each one taking hope of regaining her former self further away. Small wonder she lost the battle and cried. Tears were a relief; it was as if she had been holding them in check until at last the floodgate had burst open. She turned on the stool burying her face against Peter as he drew her close, caressing the back of her neck.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she managed to gasp. ‘I’m stupid not to have expected to look a mess.’ It was hard for her to talk as she sobbed and hard for him to understand her words. But even without words he understood just what she was suffering. He had watched her, each day marvelling that she could appear so untouched, assuming a cheerfulness that surely had to break before real healing of her mind could begin. Gently he moved his fingers on the back of her neck as he held her to him, silently begging that he would find a way of helping her.

  ‘Cry, my precious, Zee. Let the tears wash away your disappointment. Don’t be frightened to cry. If you knew the tears I shed while you were lying unconscious. Just helplessly looking at you and begging that you wouldn’t be taken from me.’ He dropped to his knees, holding her close so that now he felt her wet face against his neck. ‘Now all I can do is thank God you are here. Turn round, look in the mirror, we’ll both look and make friends with your shaved head, we’ll be grateful together that we are where we are. It might have been so different. Does a few months waiting while your hair grows really matter so much?’

  ‘… sorry Peter,’ she mumbled as she tried to stem her tears, ‘… behaving badly. I am grateful, thankful, of course I am.’ Another gulp. ‘Stupid of me not to have expected to look like it. And, yes, I know it’ll grow. But that’s only one bit of me. What about when the beastly plasters come off? Will nothing be like it used to be? Thought I was going to be back to normal.’

  ‘Darling, when your plasters come off for a little while your skin will look a bit withered.
But that will last no time at all.’

  She said nothing, just sat looking dejected and sniffing.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, raising his head, ‘that’s Mrs Cripps’ step on the stairs, I’ll call her in. Don’t move.’ And before Zina had a chance to stop him he shouted, ‘Mrs Cripps, can you come in here a second.’

  The door opened and there she stood, vacuum cleaner in one hand, doorknob in the other.

  ‘Why, fancy that then, Mrs M, m’duckie, you’ve got rid of that wretched bandage and got the air to your head. There’s nothing like a bit of God’s fresh air for healing a wound. Now then let’s have a look at what they did to you. Looks a real good neat mend,’ she said as she came to the dressing table and peered at the wound. ‘Clean as a whistle.’ But there was no pretending she didn’t see Zina’s tear-ravaged face. ‘Now then, m’dear, there’s only one person going to give it more than a passing glance and that person is you, yourself. If it really worries you while the hair is growing back you can always alter your parting and comb it over this way. What do you think about that for a good idea? Mrs Beckham did tell me once that her hairdresser had been to the house – remember a year or two back when she sprained her ankle. Bet you a pound to a penny she’d come over and set you up real pretty again.’

  Peter had stood back from them, watching and listening. He saw in the mirror how Zina’s miserable expression subtly changed; and did he imagine a gleam of hope in her bloodshot eyes? No wonder he looked with affection at the faithful Mrs Cripps; he’d known she wouldn’t fail.

  ‘You called me in. Was there summit you were wanting? I got sidetracked seeing the bandaging gone.’

  ‘No, that’s what we wanted to show you,’ Peter answered.

  Taking up her vacuum cleaner Phyllis Cripps went on her way, warmed by the knowledge that they had wanted her to share those first moments towards the missus getting back to being herself. Poor dear, plain as a pikestaff it was that she’d been crying. Disappointed at what a difference it made to how she looked, no doubt about that. Then inspiration struck, and dumping the vacuum in the corridor she went back and knocked on the bedroom door.