The Moon At Midnight

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Isn’t that the best?’

  ‘Do you know, this time I really thought we might have had it, really, I did. I just couldn’t see a way out.’ Loopy let go Waldo’s hands and drifted towards the drinks table. ‘Whisky sour?’ She started to make it, watched intently by her newly arrived guest. ‘Really, I thought we had well and truly had it. And so bad for the young, growing up thinking all the time that there’s no point to anything when the world is about to blow up. So difficult to explain that each day is for living, the same as it’s always been.’

  ‘Not being a father I have escaped that problem.’ Waldo sighed without sadness. ‘But I do know one thing, Loopy, no one makes a whisky sour like you, do you know that?’ Waldo sighed again, this time with satisfaction. ‘Do you think it’s because, just might be, because you’re American, maybe?’

  ‘Just might be, darlin’. Or,’ Loopy handed him the freshly made drink, ‘maybe you have to be an American to know how to enjoy it?’

  Their feelings of relief at the good news was such that they both laughed more heartily than the remark deserved.

  ‘God, it’s just wonderful to be able to laugh, or have a drink, without feeling guilty, do you know that?’

  ‘It’s a moral victory for all time.’

  ‘You’re right, Waldo, it is.’ She indicated for him to sit down, just as the telephone in the hall started to ring. ‘I’m sorry, I won’t be a minute.’

  Waldo watched her going to answer the old, black Bakelite telephone, which must have been put in when the house was built. Despite her age, everything about Loopy was still elegant, still easy on the eye, but more than that, she was just about the kindest person around. An instance of this was that she regularly asked Waldo round to dinner once a week when she knew his maid was off – to save him having the bother of cooking for himself.

  He was just beginning to feel pleasantly relaxed, talking to Hugh, laughing with him about his next choice of number, when they both overheard Loopy saying, more loudly, ‘Oh, dear God, no. No, no, of course. I’ll come at once.’

  She came back into the room again, her face pale with disbelief.

  ‘What’s the matter? Not bad news, I hope—’

  Even as he finished speaking Waldo could not help wondering why there wasn’t a better way of expressing anxiety to someone. It was so obvious that the news Loopy had just received was bad, if it wasn’t she would not be looking as she was, her face having gone from sparkling happiness to complete shock.

  She went straight up to Hugh, and touched him on the arm.

  ‘It’s Jenny, Hugh. She’s had a car accident. She’s going to be all right, just a few broken bones and so on. But I must go at once. She’s in Churchester General. Oh, poor Mattie and John, how simply terrible for them.’

  Hugh stood up, his own face now paling. Loopy looked up at him, all concern. Although Hugh never said as much, Jenny had always been his favourite grandchild, probably because she was the most like him. They shared the same sense of humour and love of music, and naturally – since Jenny had grown up in Bexham – they were both dotty about sailing. On top of which it always seemed to Loopy that Jenny had inherited Hugh’s admirable intransigence, as well as his cautious nature.

  ‘I’m coming—’ Hugh braced himself, clearing his throat.

  Loopy stopped him.

  ‘No,’ she said firmly, putting a hand on his shoulder. ‘There’s no point in us both going. You stay here with Waldo, Hugh. I’ll ring you as soon as I have any news.’

  ‘I’ll drive you—’

  ‘I don’t want to be rude, darling, but after two whiskies – I’d really rather drive myself.’

  ‘Understood. You drive then.’

  ‘No, no, I will. I’ve hardly touched my drink.’ Waldo stepped forward, taking his car keys out of his pocket, and putting his glass down.

  They all caught up their winter coats from the downstairs cloakroom and made their way quickly to Waldo’s magnificent old Bentley. As they hurried towards the car Loopy began to explain the nature of the crisis. It seemed that Tam Sykes had been driving one of his father’s cars in a field, and had crashed. On hearing this, it was Waldo’s turn for his heart to sink. Tam was almost like a son to him. Quite apart from his great affection for the boy, Waldo’d been in business with Tam’s father for years.

  ‘I kept trying to tell Peter that the boy was too young to be mucking about on his own with those motorised tin trays of his,’ he muttered to Hugh, once they were driving out on to the road and towards the hospital. ‘Just because he’s in a field might make him legal, but it doesn’t stop him from being dangerous.’

  All the way to Churchester, staring out of the back window in a numbed silent way, Loopy tried not to imagine what she would find when she reached the hospital. To stop her imagination taking off in all the wrong directions she asked Waldo to put the radio on, only to find it was playing a song that Jenny had always loved to sing to her grandfather’s playing. ‘It’s a lovely day today. . .’

  * * *

  The first person they saw when they’d managed to find the correct ward was Mattie standing at a window where the corridor gave way to the doors of the ward. Loopy went up to her at once, knowing what an agony she must be in.

  ‘Mattie.’

  She hugged her. As she did so she could feel the tension in her daughter-in-law’s body, and immediately feared the worst.

  ‘The doctor’s in with the surgeon. They’ve done their best but it’s much, much worse than we all thought. She’s alive, but—’

  Loopy’s heart sank as she heard the pallid, grey, hopeless words. ‘But?’

  ‘It will be months before she’s better, or even out of hospital.’

  ‘But she will live?’

  ‘Oh, she’ll live all right.’ Mattie shot a look at Waldo. ‘She’ll live all right, but not thanks to Tam Sykes!’

  Loopy stepped back. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘You know Peter Sykes’s one ambition is to have Tam become the next Stirling Moss? He’s spent the last God knows how long busying himself making a racing track round Bottom Field, if you please, and breathing on a lot of old bangers for the wretched boy to drive.’

  ‘No—’

  ‘Oh yes! So what must he do, he persuades Kim and Jenny to go along with him – I don’t know why – and he lost control, and crashed. He walked away unscathed – and if it hadn’t been for the motorist that Kim flagged down I actually don’t think Jenny would have even survived.’

  ‘I don’t understand what Jenny was doing in the car,’ Loopy muttered, sounding vague even to herself. ‘Jenny doesn’t like cars.’

  Tears appeared in Mattie’s eyes. It was true. Her gentle bookish Jenny didn’t like things like fast cars at all. She liked music, and sailing. Seeing her distress Waldo stepped forward.

  ‘So what happened?’ he asked carefully. ‘Did Tam hit something?’

  Mattie eyed him carefully, wiping the fresh tears from her face with her handkerchief before replying.

  ‘Kim said he just appeared to lose control. One minute they were speeding round this wretched makeshift racetrack and the next the car headed for the trees. Jenny. Jenny . . .’ She stopped and took a deep breath before continuing. ‘Jenny was thrown forward through the windscreen, and then out of the car altogether.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Mattie stared up at Waldo.

  ‘What is the point of that?’ she asked flatly, but before Waldo could say anything her eyes drifted past his and Loopy’s faces to the entrance to the outpatients’ area.

  ‘What’s she doing here?’ she muttered, turning away. ‘How could she even come?’

  Loopy turned, and seeing who it was she murmured to Waldo, ‘Take Mattie away, would you? Take her over to the window.’

  She herself walked over to greet a white-faced Rusty Sykes.

  ‘Tell her to go away! Leave us alone, won’t you?’ Mattie was still muttering as Waldo dutifully led her towards the wind
ow, where they stood sparely staring out at nothing more than a cluster of hospital buildings. ‘Her and her bloody family, it’s all their fault!’

  ‘I had to come—’

  Rusty’s whole body emanated misery as she stood tying and untying the knot in her headscarf. She seemed so deathly frightened that Loopy thought she might actually pass out.

  ‘I’ve tried to stay away, but the waiting was such agony, and the hospital wouldn’t tell us anything, seeing we’re not family.’

  ‘She’s going to live, Rusty dear, she will live.’ As she heard her voice asserting that Jenny was going to survive Loopy couldn’t help thinking but in what fashion? before she went on, ‘It’s just going to take an awful long time to mend her, that’s all. She’s not going to die.’ She touched Rusty lightly on the arm as she finished speaking.

  ‘I kept warning Peter that Tam was too young to be allowed to drive those stupid cars on his own,’ Rusty said, in a sad, weary voice. ‘I kept telling him, over and over again. Tam’s only seventeen, however brilliant his driving, he’s still only seventeen. But you know men, listening isn’t something they do a great deal, is it?’

  ‘It was very good of you to come.’ Fearing that Mattie might come over and make a scene Loopy quickly took Rusty’s arm and turning her round marched her back through the double doors and down the corridors to the car park. ‘I know that Jenny, and John, of course, will appreciate that you came, but as you may imagine Mattie’s a bit over-wrought at the moment. It’s understandable.’

  ‘I feel so terrible, you’ve no idea. I keep feeling if only I’d stood up to Peter. If only I’d made sure that Tam never went out on his own, unsupervised like that.’

  Rusty’s voice was flat and dulled and she kept tugging at her scarf as they walked along, pulling the knot up on her chin, and then back under it, time and time again.

  ‘It’s not your fault. Really, it’s young people. They never think it’s going to happen to them, until it does. We’re all the same when we’re young, it just never occurs to us that we could kill overselves in a matter of seconds, doing something not just stupid, but quite unnecessary.’

  Even as they mouthed the usual platitudes at each other they both knew that possibly the worst aspect of the accident was that young Jenny was the last person to do anything dangerous. Jenny was the last one to want to be driven like a bat out of hell. It would never be something that she’d want to do. Driving in an old banger round a field would be Kim, not Jenny Tate’s idea of fun. Kim had always been the daredevil, always falling off ponies, or out of boats. She was the goer, gentle Jenny the bookish, musical one.

  Rusty turned towards her car, her body sunk into hopelessness. ‘For this to happen to Jenny of all people.’ Her voice tailed off, and she stood by her car with the keys swinging from their silver ring, reluctant to climb into it in front of Loopy, as if she feared that by doing so she would remind Loopy of the accident.

  Loopy patted Rusty quickly on the arm and turned on her heel and left her, but just as she did so it seemed to her that she heard a sound which was something between a sigh and a sob, and following that the noise of a car starting up, which in the quiet of a Sussex town seemed strangely violent.

  ‘What did she think she was doing here?’ Mattie’s mouth was a thin line of fury.

  ‘I know, I know, she shouldn’t have come, but she feels terrible, Mattie.’ Loopy put a protective arm round her daughter-in-law.

  ‘If I thought it would do any good I would go to the Sykeses’ house and tell them what I think of them.’ Mattie sank down suddenly on one of the side benches. She looked up at Loopy, and said in a much lowered voice, ‘It’s her face, Loopy. Jenny’s pretty little face, it’s smashed to pieces.’

  Mattie was still sitting down, her head held in her hands, when the doctor came through. She immediately stood up, wiping her hands down the skirt of her suit as a cook might wipe her hands on her apron, her eyes staring fixedly at the young doctor, as if trying to learn something from his expression before he even opened his mouth.

  ‘I’m Dr Rankin, Mrs Tate. I’ve just come from the recovery room where I was talking to Mr Barton, the surgeon. I’m afraid Jenny’s injuries, while not life threatening, are nevertheless very serious. Cosmetically more than anything.’

  Loopy turned to Hugh, instinctively sensing the despair, while Mattie just stared blankly at the doctor. John had gone up north the day before to visit the new factory, but he was driving down as fast as he could. He would be with her by midnight, but until then she had to cope, she must cope.

  ‘Jenny has sustained deep cuts and lacerations to both cheeks, her upper lip and her nose. She has also broken a cheekbone and her nose, and there’s a hairline fracture to her jaw. But by some miracle the glass missed both eyes entirely, for which, I think you will agree, we must all be very grateful. As you doubtless know, the problem with glass injuries is that you are injured twice. First you fall through the glass, sustaining one set of injuries, and then you come back, once again through the glass, suffering a second set. That is why car accidents are so lethal. Mr Barton has however managed to removed all the glass shards and splinters and has done a good job on the wounds, but I’m afraid an initial assessment of the injuries tells us that there’s going to be some pretty serious scarring.’

  There was a long silence, so long that Waldo, realising the shock waves with which he was surrounded, felt he must break it.

  ‘Plastic surgery is wearing seven league boots nowadays, I believe. Surely there’s every chance that Jenny’s face can be repaired?’

  ‘Of course,’ Luke Rankin agreed. ‘But it will take time. A great deal of time. However, she has been a very lucky girl, of that there is no doubt. The very fact that Mr Barton happened to be at the hospital when he was, in itself, was very fortunate. There are few better than he, in my opinion.’

  ‘You’re too kind.’ The surgeon now appeared at Dr Rankin’s side, and proceeded to explain in some depth the exact procedure that he envisaged would be necessary before plastic surgery would be effective.

  ‘Most importantly,’ he finished, speaking in a lowered tone to Mattie, ‘Jenny herself must be handled with kid gloves. We don’t have to emphasise why. Looking in the mirror is going to be a daily trauma for her, until such time as she can be treated cosmetically. It will be a daily battle to keep depression at bay.’ He fell silent, staring round at the small family group.

  ‘Thank you so much, Mr Barton.’ Hugh stepped forward, shook his hand and, nodding curtly to Loopy and Waldo, turned to Mattie.

  ‘If you don’t mind we’ll leave you to wait for John and your father, Mattie.’

  He beckoned to Waldo to follow him as if he was a junior officer, and Waldo, taking his cue, kissed Mattie gently on the cheek, as they all did, before making their way miserably back to the car park.

  ‘I don’t think I shall ever get over this,’ Hugh announced as he buttoned up his overcoat and slid into the front passenger seat. ‘I shall never forgive those wretched Sykeses, not ever. Not to my dying day.’ He shut the car door abruptly.

  Loopy and Waldo stared at each other briefly, before opening their own doors.

  ‘He doesn’t mean it,’ Loopy whispered. ‘He really doesn’t.’

  But Waldo, knowing Hugh of old, from the days when he’d happily sent Waldo on dangerous government missions to Berlin, risking life and limb in the interests of world democracy, sensed at once that Hugh meant every word.

  Tam’s grandfather, Mr Todd, was standing facing Tam and Peter Sykes.

  ‘Waldo’s right, you’ll have to leave the area for a while, Tam, there’s nothing else you can do,’ the old man told his grandson sadly. ‘There’s so much to the accident, so many sides to it, you can’t stay on here at the moment, not when feelings in Bexham are running so high. The Tates are such a popular family. Always have been.’

  ‘He hasn’t murdered anyone – Tam hasn’t committed a murder.’

  ‘That’s not the point
. It’s a scandal. The boy’ll suffer.’

  Mr Todd shook his head at his son-in-law.

  ‘I know Bexham as well as you know Bexham, Father-in-law,’ Peter stated. ‘And all right we don’t live here any more, but I still don’t believe it’s necessary for Tam to be sent away.’

  ‘Begging your pardon, you don’t know Bexham any more, Peter, and that’s the truth, and more’s the pity, in my opinion. You had to go grand and buy Tam here big boys’ toys he’d no business to be playing with, not to the mind of this old man. If it’d been a sailing boat he’d been in, young Jenny Tate would not be lying in Churchester General. No, she wouldn’t, and if there’s any more to be said on the matter, it’s me that’s going to have the saying of it.’

  Despite this outburst, Peter remained looking recalcitrant and unconvinced.

  ‘The accident happened in Bottom Field,’ his father-in-law continued relentlessly. ‘And Bottom Field, that’s Bexham, and mark my words if we don’t get young Tam out of the area double quick, as Waldo advises, we’ll find it’ll be the worse for us. Village feelings can run high. It’s happened before – barns on fire, cars set alight on forecourts. You know as well as I do, these things happen, and there’s naught anyone can do. That’s life when feelings run high – things happen.’

  ‘He hasn’t killed anyone,’ Peter protested yet again. ‘He’s had an accident, that’s all. Young people have accidents in tractors, in boats, not just cars. Look at young Dick Fallow, he died under his granddad’s tractor, his own grandfather ran him over, remember? It was an accident. Dick’s grandfather didn’t have to leave Bexham, did he? People fall off their horses and get killed out hunting all the time, because some young thruster’s jumped in front of them, and no one leaves the area, now do they?’

  Tam, his freshly plastered wrist held in a sling, shook his head.

  ‘No, Dad, he’s right. Granddad’s right. I’ll have to go somewhere else for a bit, I will really. Besides, I think I should.’