a series of answers to the coroner, all of which were written
down.
'Was she clothed?'
'No, sir.'
368
'Not at all?'
'No, sir.'
'Did she seem distressed?'
'Very much so, sir.'
'Was she weeping?'
'Well, yes; cryin', sir, sort of.'
'Did she seem frightened?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Did you form any idea of what?'
'Well - 'seemed like she was afraid of somethin' or somebody,
sir. I mean, like she was runnin' away - that's to say,
best as she could.'
'Did she say anything?'
'Nothin' as you could understand at all, sir. She said one
or two things, like, but they was in a foreign language and I
couldn't understand 'en. All kind of mixed up, they seemed.'
'Was she wounded or bruised at all?'
'Not as I saw, sir."
'Was she bleeding? I mean, from the private parts?"
'No, sir. Not as I noticed."
'Did you notice whether she was wearing any wedding
ring or otherwise?'
'She definitely hadn't no ring on, sir.'
He went on to tell of wrapping her up as best he could
and driving her to the hospital. No one else wanted to ask
him any questions and he left the court.
'The police don't really come into the picture with regard
to Mrs Desland, do they, Superintendent?" asked the coroner.
'No, sir. Except that Constable Thatcher accompanied Mr
Desland into Mrs Desland's ward at the hospital and was
there with him for a time.'
'Very well. Then let's take the evidence of the medical
witnesses next.'
He looked round inquiringly and Dr Fraser stood up.
'Now, Dr Fraser,' said the coroner, when he had taken the
oath, 'you received this poor young woman when she was
brought into the Casualty Department, did you?'
'No, sir,' replied Fraser. 'That duty was carried out by ma
colleague, Dr Pritchard. He's no* able to be here this morn369
ing, because of an urrgent case from which he could no" verra
well be spared. But Ah'm the senior gynaecological consultant
of the hospital, and by yere courtesy, sir, an' if you yersel'
think that it's satisfactory, Dr Sullivan, the pathological
consultant, and I are here to give ye a full account of what
happened. That's on behalf of the hospital as a whole, d'ye
see. Ye'll appreciate that it's no verra practical to take too
many dorctors off duty at once. Ah should emphasize that
Ah masel' was called to attend Mrs Desland before her death,
so Ah'm well able to give ye all the medical details of the
matter.'
The coroner, looking down at his notes, was considering
this when I felt Lucas stir beside me. As he was about to
stand up I touched his arm and whispered, 'That's all right.'
'But we certainly ought to have the Casualty ward doctor
here,' he whispered back. 'You told me he treated you harshly
and accused you of harming your wife. The coroner ought
to know that.'
'No, Brian, I don't want that. Please.'
He hesitated a moment, then whispered, 'Very well,' and
sat back.
Ts everyone agreeable to Dr Fraser representing the hospital?'
asked the coroner, looking at us. Lucas nodded.
As Dr Fraser spoke of the episiotomy scar and the evidence
of a previous birth, and then went on to explain tubal infection,
ectopic pregnancy and the difficulty of diagnosing
immediately an early rupture in an unknown patient unable
to converse or answer questions, I began to feel nausea
and mounting dread. It seemed as though Kathe's body,
fouled and contorted with pain, was lying stretched on the
floor of the court for all to stare at; a desolate temple, whose
doors hung sagging, where dried dung littered the cracked
and broken paving and dead leaves, blown on the wind,
pattered against the scrawled walls. I shut my eyes. '0
Kathe, come and stop it! You must stop it! Only tell me how
to stop them!'
My mother, putting her hand on mine, whispered, 'Do you
want to go out, darling?'
370
'You say there may be no visible bleeding at all?' asked
the coroner.
'Ay, that's right, sir. There may well be no sign of bleeding
for many hours. Nor was there in this case. The bleeding's
internal, d'ye see; from the ruptured Fallopian tube
into the abdominal cavity.'
'Do you want to go out, Alan dear?'
'Then in what way does death occur?'
'I'm all right,' I answered, clenching my hands and wiping
the sweat from my forehead. 'I'm all right.'
'Well, in this case, verra soon after Ah'd been called to
examine the patient on Tuesday evening, there ensued all that
Ah feared but expected. There was a sudden, massive intraperitoneal
haemorrhage. There was no overt metrorrhagea that's
to say, external bleeding - but Ah felt sure that the
patient must be suffering pain and we gave an appropriate
injection. Soon after there was a severe collapse, marked by
low blood pressure, a subnormal temperature and a weak,
rapid pulse. We gave a transfusion and took all appropriate
resuscitative measures, but death followed about two hours
later. It was a wretched, tragic business, sir."
The coroner wrote for some little time.
'Now, Dr Eraser, remembering that you are on oath, I
hope you will be very careful to give a conscientious and
considered answer to my next question. In your opinion,
could Mrs Desland's death have been prevented?'
'No!' I felt myself on the point of shouting. 'No! No! It
couldn't! Why can't you all go to hell and leave me alone
with her?'
'This, of course, is what one always asks oneself,' replied
Fraser slowly. 'Dorctors are no different from the rest of
mankind, sir, ye ken. They're aye strugglin' wi" difficult problems
and intractable material. There's always the margin of
error. But let me say this. These ectopic cases vary verra
much. Some are painful but not dangerous; some are serious
but no' fatal. And some are fatal. In my experience, once
rupture has taken place, especially in such a case as this,
where the patient is inarticulate and already in a bad con371
dition before she comes into medical hands, then if the rupture
is serious and potentially of a fatal nature, there's every
danger of losing the patient. Ah cannot say more than that.'
The coroner pressed him a little further and then called
Sullivan and questioned him about the post-mortem; but I
had ceased to pay attention. When Nurse Dempster silently
passed me two tablets and some water in a plastic cup, I
swallowed them without hesitation. I suppose it was valium
- I don't know. I'm here, Kathe, I kept thinking. I won't leave
you. I'm suffering with you, my love. I always will.
When I looked up and tried once more to pay attention,
the police were giving evidence. I listened for a while.
Foolish stuff. A report to the
station - a car sent out - Mr
Desland - brambles - lacerations - distress. I knew it all. But
I had not been expecting the conclusion.
'What do you say she said?'
'The lady spoke in German, sir, as Mr Desland was good
enough to inform me in reply to my asking him. He told me
the meaning of what she said.'
'And what was that?'
' "I had no pity," sir.'
'But you can't testify on oath, can you, that this is the
meaning of what she said?'
'No, sir.'
'Well, that's all, then. Thank you, constable.'
There was a pause, which gradually became an intermission
as the coroner, absorbed in his notes, bent over his
desk, re-reading, making amendments here and there and
finally writing at some length on a fresh sheet. A certain relaxation
spread through the court and people began to
fidget and converse in low voices. Two of the reporters got
up and went outside. Another sharpened a fresh pencil,
half-turning, in the bad light, towards the window behind
him.
Dr Fraser, I thought, was a humane man. Had his despair,
as he watched Kathe dying and knew there was nothing he
could do about it, felt anything like mine now?
At length the coroner straightened his back and looked
round the court.
372
'Well, order order," he said quietly, in an expressionless
tone. 'We'll proceed.' Having waited for silence, he turned
towards me.
'Mr Desland, I ought now to explain to you the extent of
my responsibilities in this matter. As of course you know,
I have first and foremost the duty to inquire into the cause
of your wife's death. It's already clear that she died from
very unfortunate natural causes and no one is going to dispute
that. But I also have the duty to inquire into the circumstances
attendant upon the death, and these, as I'm sure
you'll agree, were unusual. In fact, there are several things
which must strike any normal person as somewhat out of
the ordinary. I assure you once again that I sincerely wish to
avoid adding to your distress; but you would agree, would
you not, that it's better that I should ask questions and
give you the opportunity to answer them, than that they
should remain unanswered now and perhaps be asked
later by others, behind your back, when you can't answer
them?'
'Yes, sir.'
He nodded. 'Then I would like to ask you, please, to tell us
in your own words what passed between you and your wife
that morning; and in doing so to bear in mind, if you will,
one or two specific questions which have occurred to me.
I've written them down and I'll pass them to you in a
moment for your convenience, but first I should like to make
them clear to the court. You must understand, Mr Desland,
that no one is accusing you of anything. I'm merely seeking
information. You realize that?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Well, I note first, that you and your wife lived at Newbury,
and I gather that you'd both driven down from there by car
on Tuesday morning last. That's a hundred miles or thereabouts.
You must have made a very early start indeed. I
don't know whether this was the beginning of a planned
holiday, or whether you'd made any previous arrangements
to stay in this or any other neighbourhood. But the police,
when they telephoned your shop that afternoon, certainly
373
understood from your employee that she'd been expecting
you as usual that morning. Perhaps you can tell us something
about that.
'Then - and I'm sincerely sorry, Mr Desland, to be cornpelled
by my duty to go into matters which normally, of
course, everyone is entitled to regard as being of a private
and personal nature - it seems that you and your wife had
sexual intercourse on the beach. The place was entirely
deserted, no doubt, but some people might perhaps think
that this was rather unusual for a married couple with a
home of their own and every opportunity for privacy. And
either before or about that time, apparently, your wife's
wedding ring must have been removed. I understand that
you have it - or had it - together with another ring of hers,
in your possession.
'And then, for some reason, you became separated from
one another. I suppose any reasonable person, considering
the matter dispassionately, would be bound to think that
somewhat strange. Naturally, one wonders what may have
taken place to bring the separation about and how it was
that she came to be found by Mr Sims, wandering beside the
road without her clothes, apparently frightened, incoherent
and out of her mind.'
He paused. Without looking up, I could feel upon me the
eyes of everyone in the court.
'Now, some considerable time later - about an hour later,
perhaps - the police are searching the area, following Mrs
Desland's admission to hospital, and they find you quite
badly cut about, lacerated by brambles and stung by nettles
- er - let me see - yes, here it is - Constable Thatcher
said, "His face badly swollen into lumpy patches by what
appeared to be nettle stings." And when the police told you
that your wife had been taken to hospital because she was
ill, you replied, "I'm sure she is."
'Of course, if Mrs Desland had been able to tell us anything
about this herself, we should know more. She wasn't
able to do this. But one thing we know she said, just as you
and Constable Thatcher were leaving her room at the hospital.
You told the constable that she said, in German, "I had
374
no pity". That, of course, rests entirely on your own reply
to him and you may perhaps be going to tell us that it's
not accurate. But if it is accurate, I wonder whether you can
tell me what it may have meant. Did it mean "I showed no
pity", or "I received no pity?" '
He came to a stop and I looked up to meet, behind the
rimless glasses, his steady, inexpressive eyes. After a moment
he picked up the top sheet of paper lying in front of him
and held it out. Brian got up, took it from him and laid it
in front of me.
'Well, now, Mr Desland,' went on the coroner, 'those are
merely reflections, and I certainly don't want you to regard
them as a cross-examination or a questionnaire that you've
got to answer, or anything of that sort.' (How terribly effective,
I thought, was this moderation. It lay upon you as
lightly and closely as a net.) 'I want you to feel free to tell
me just as much or as little as you wish, and of course, if
you prefer, you need not say anything at all. Perhaps I
should have made that clear earlier, but I thought your
decision might to some extent be dependent on what I've
just said.'
At this moment my attention was distracted. The door of
the court opened and a young woman in a streaming wet
macint
osh, with a plastic hood tied closely round her face,
slipped quietly in, showing the uniformed janitor what appeared
to be a press card. He nodded and she sat down in
the seat nearest to the door, took a notebook from her bag
and bent over it without looking up.
The coroner had evidently been waiting for me to answer
him. Now, with no least hint of impatience in his voice, he
said, 'Well, Mr Desland, do you wish to give evidence?'
I made no answer, for I was staring at the girl. I knew
and did not know at whom I was looking; as a midnight
sentry might know and not know that the challenged man
standing before him was his general; or two grief-stricken,
mourning wayfarers might recognize and fail to recognize
a chance-met companion trudging a dusty road. That incredulous,
heart-thumping part of me which knew was no
longer attending to the coroner.
375
'Do you wish to give evidence, Mr Desland?'
For the first time the girl, smiling and laying a finger on
her lips, raised her head and looked straight at me. It was
Kathe.
I might have known she wouldn't fail me! Everything
was easy now. I knew where I was and what I had to do a
trifling task of explanation, which wouldn't take long. Of
course all these puzzled, limited people, living on a lower
plane, couldn't be expected to understand what had happened.
They did not know Kathe and on that account were
to be pitied. I should have to talk down to them - politely,
of course. To them that are without, all these things are done
in parables, that hearing they may hear and not understand.
For there is nothing hid that shall not be manifested. But
fancy their thinking they could catch my Kathe in their
clumsy nets! Well, as soon as they had been satisfied she and
I would go away together.
'Yes, please, sir,' I answered and, with my eyes still on
Kathe, took the oath.
'I'm most grateful to you, sir, for this opportunity to tell
the court what took place on the beach, and chiefly for my
poor wife's sake. I don't want to stress my own grief, for
fear I should be thought in some quarters - not by yourself,
sir - to be exploiting it. But perhaps I might just say that
great as it is, it would be much greater if I had to feel that
I had had no opportunity of correcting any idea that we
had a quarrel, or that anything whatever passed between us
of an unpleasant or even of a sorrowful nature. There was
nothing like that at all.'
I could tell that already my air of assurance and almost
aggressive confidence had caught the coroner's interest.
Kathe, still smiling with amusement, gave me a little nod of
approval, and I went on.
Til try now to do as you have asked, sir, and give you an
account in my own words of what happened.'
'Thank you, Mr Desland.'
'Well, sir, my wife and I had been married for just over six
weeks. I should mention, since the point's been raised, that
she had had a previous child before I met her. I'm sorry to
376
say that it died some time ago, before our marriage. I was
anxious, of course, to help her to get over that. So we were
very happy that for a little while past we had both felt
reasonably sure that she was pregnant.
'She was of an impulsive and I think it would be accurate
to say, a rather passionate temperament - warmly emotional.
Some people might even say capricious. She was given to
sudden turns of fancy, often without apparent motive. And
I - er - well, sir, it pleased me, really, to indulge her wishes,
not only because I loved her, but because this characteristic
of hers was closely related to a brilliant flair she had for
the work we did together - that is, the finding, buying and
selling of antique porcelain and china. That, as you know,
is my occupation. She'd been with me in the business only
a short time, but already she'd shown, and often when she
seemed most - well, wayward, one might say - a quite
remarkable ability, and had found and purchased on her own
initiative several valuable and profitable items. What it
comes to, sir, is that I was not in the habit of opposing her
whims, because I'd learned to respect and trust her intuitive
discernment.'
Almost gaily, I looked across the court at Kathe with a
glance that said, 'How'm I doing?' Her look answered, 'Very
soon, now, we can be gone together.'
'I think I understand, Mr Desland,' said the coroner, in a
carefully sympathetic tone of voice.
'I might mention, sir, that, as I told Dr Fraser in the
The Girl in a Swing Page 43
