The Innocents

by Francesca Segal

  27

  Adam had worked straight through until 10:00 on Monday morning, when Kristine had loaded him into a cab and sent him home. He had gone past fatigue into hyperactivity and the final few hours, making the last amendments to the affidavit advised by the barrister, had been some of the most productive of the weekend. Jonathan, overseeing him, had been pleased with the work. But when he got back to the flat the exhaustion had resurfaced and redoubled, weighing in his limbs until Adam felt as if he were wading through thick mud. He was asleep before he had time to eat or to call Rachel at the Royal Free or even to remember to plug his phone into its charger. When his alarm went off early that afternoon he felt more exhausted than before he’d slept, but the sensation of heaviness had gone at least, and his only assignment from Lawrence had been to pop in and check on Ziva. The partners were now locked in a council of war in Tony’s office. Later that day they had a call scheduled with the trustees of the pension fund and until after the call, Adam was on standby.

  He arrived at the hospital just after Rachel had left it. She and Jaffa had spent the weekend at Ziva’s bedside overseeing a constant stream of well-wishers—the community had mobilized, and a rota was required to manage the deliveries. If left alone, it was possible Ziva might actually be walled in behind boxes of Marks & Spencer biscuit assortments. When Adam had said he could visit her, Jaffa and Rachel had both jumped at the opportunity to go home, briefly, and cook. “Ima wants to make some chicken soup to bring in because the food’s so disgusting, and Granny likes my brownies so I wanted to make some. I know millions of people keep dropping stuff off for her, but there’s so little we can do for her that makes a difference and nice things to eat must help,” Rachel had told him on the phone. Adam was inclined to agree. Even if the hospital meals hadn’t been quite so execrable, Jaffa’s chicken soup and Rachel’s brownies were good enough to heal for.

  Ziva had been moved up a floor, the ward sister told him when he arrived, because she was doing so well.

  “I am now officially classified as geriatric,” she told him when he found her new room. “Not that I had before delusions of youthfulness, but now it is on the door of the ward it is official. We get our own zone. It is quite an achievement, no?”

  She was sounding better, but nonetheless Adam felt awkward. She wore a floral nightgown and a fleecy, royal blue bed jacket. The nurses had washed her hair and it was combed back on her head in thin white strands, pink scalp visible in small, vulnerable patches. He had never seen her without it set into a high, proud puff around her head. She looked shrunken and her hands, resting on ruthlessly bleached hospital covers, were mottled with liver spots that he’d never noticed before. But just twenty-four hours earlier she had been speaking a strange salad of languages and slurring a little when she did remember to address them in English, whereas today her speech was labored but clear. The difference was remarkable. He forced himself to focus on her eyes.

  “How do you feel, Ziva? You look great,” he said, carefully avoiding the trailing plastic tubes as he leaned over to kiss her.

  Ziva laughed weakly. “I will not call you disingenuous because I presume that you are using the term relatively. I did not, I understand, look particularly ‘great’ when Ashish found me. I am feeling not so bad, Adam. But still I cannot walk. They tell me maybe never. I will have to be carried in a litter like an empress.”

  “Well, being treated like an empress is no more than you deserve,” he told her. In the previous cubicle the Gilberts had appropriated chairs of blue plastic from all over the ward and had lined them up at Ziva’s bedside; in this room there was only one, light wood with a fraying wicker back, and it had a bag of fruit from Marks & Spencer on it. He moved the bag to the bedside table and sat down.

  “Have you been sleeping?” he asked.

  “Ach, I can sleep in the grave. For me it has been far more healing to have Ellie here.”

  “Is she here?”

  Involuntarily he cast an anxious glance around the small room, as if she might have escaped his notice.

  “She is having a cigarette and making some phone calls. She had of course work today that she is missing. She will be back in a minute.”

  “She smokes too much,” he said, with feeling.

  Ziva considered this for a long time and then said very slowly, “That is probably true, but my darling battles bigger demons than nicotine, and so if these papirosn keep her steady, then it could be worse. She’s back with us, you know. And she was gone for a long time. So everything is—Whatever she needs, it is okay.”

  Ziva seemed exhausted by this speech. She closed her eyes and they had been silent together for some time when Ellie came back, wearing reflective, gold-framed aviator sunglasses and holding two takeaway cups. Ziva held out a shaking hand to her and Ellie put down the drinks and went to her side, sitting down on the bed and steadying Ziva’s outstretched arm in a firm clasp. Adam jumped to his feet. She hadn’t called him from the station. She hadn’t called him at all, though she must have been in London for hours.

  Ziva grasped her granddaughter with a desperation that Adam had never seen in her. She seemed frightened, and he was ashamed of where his mind had been only seconds before.

  “Bubele, I missed you so terribly just now. Time is doing strange things to me. Ninety years feels like it’s gone chik-chak but you go out for five minutes and already I’m missing you. Perhaps it is that one experiences time as a fraction of what one has left rather than what has gone before.”

  Rachel would have squawked a protest to this, insisting that Ziva had many long years ahead of her. She never permitted Ziva to discuss mortality—her own or anyone else’s. But Ellie merely said, “Is that your own?” She had not yet looked at Adam.

  “I believe it is mine. Formulated just now. Certainly it is a new theory to me even if others have thought of it first.” Ziva looked down, watching her own hands stroking Ellie’s on the thin hospital sheets.

  “I think if you’ve started philosophizing it means it’s soon time to get you out of here. Too much thinking time. I brought you a hot chocolate from Starbucks.”

  She turned, finally, to Adam. “I didn’t get you anything,” she said levelly, “because I didn’t know you were here.”

  “No problem, I don’t want anything.”

  An eyebrow arched above her sunglasses. “You don’t want anything? What a painless life you must lead if there’s nothing at all that you want.”

  “There are very few things I want,” he said, staring at his own reflection in her glasses. He could not look away from her, nor could he stop himself from adding, “But the things I do want, I want more than anything.”

  “And what if you have to choose between those things? What if you can’t have both?”

  Ziva had been sipping slowly on the hot chocolate that Ellie held to her lips but her eyes moved between her two visitors, quick saccades from one to the other. When Ellie put down the cup for a moment Ziva struggled to sit up.

  “What can I get for you?” Ellie asked her. She took off her sunglasses and began to look at the sides of the bed. “There must be a button here if you want to sit up a bit more comfortably.”

  “Adam must do a favor for me, a little thing, if he does not mind so much. I have on the table there a list of things that I will be needing from the house. Would you mind so much to get them for me? You have just arrived, I know, but my granddaughter will stay with me.”

  Adam nodded, feeling a dull rush of disappointment that he had been dismissed without a chance to be alone with Ellie. “Do you need them now?” he asked.

  “If you please.”

  There was a rap on the door and a nurse came in wearing a faintly nervous expression. Adam wondered if she was looking around for Jaffa.

  “It’s time Mrs. Schneider had a bit of a rest, if you don’t mind. She’s had a real party going in here all day, haven’t you Mrs. Schneider?” She spoke very loudly and cheerfully, in what Adam imagined to be the prescri
bed geriatric ward bedside manner. It was probably driving Ziva wild with irritation.

  Ziva didn’t answer but closed her eyes again. She looked very tired, and as if she were in pain.

  Ellie had unpacked the fruit and arranged it on the bedside table that loomed high on its practical wheels above the bed, and was now collecting rubbish—the Starbucks cups, yesterday’s newspaper, some free scratch cards and flyers that had tumbled out of a magazine—into the plastic bag.

  “In that case,” she said, “I’m going to let you rest just for an hour and pop back to the house with Adam. I’ve got to make sure that Rocky isn’t wreaking havoc. You know what he’s like when he’s left alone. I’ll just feed him, close him in the kitchen and come back. I’ll be back really soon.”

  She stroked her grandmother’s cheek. Ziva exhaled heavily and nodded but did not open her eyes. She wore an expression of defeat.

  They did not speak in the car. For twenty minutes they drove in silence. They did not speak as Adam parked near Ziva’s, nor as they walked down the shade-dappled path to the house. They did not speak as Ellie fumbled for the keys in the pocket of her leather jacket, opened the door and stepped inside to calm the high, threatening shriek of the alarm. And they said nothing as they came together in the dark hallway, finally, drawn into each other’s arms with angry desperation, grappling and clawing like adversaries, stumbling together through the drift of denim and cotton and leather discarded at their feet and finally, finally, enfolding each other like mingled flames. There were bright spots on his vision though his eyes were closed and Adam felt himself for the first time wholly consumed, soul and blood and flesh, swallowed in the heat of her until he was only this, only now, lost forever to everything that had been before her skin. They did not speak until they lay together, wet with sweat and Ellie’s silent tears, and even then, the only word he ever spoke aloud was her name, over and over with the rhythm of her breath as again and again he bent to kiss the tiny tattooed Hebrew letter samech hidden beneath her left hip bone, a secret mark that he had never known was there.

  28

  “Rachel? Rachel?”

  It was still early when Adam got home and he was certain that Rachel would be back at the hospital delivering the brownies. He hoped so, desperately. In that moment he could not imagine ever being alone at home with her again. There was no answer and he breathed with relief. He wanted to lie down somewhere—he had an urge to be connected to the ground, to lie on grass or in a field; but if it could not be then he wanted instead to collapse on his back on the floor of the sitting room and stretch and unfurl like a starfish. Alone, he did not feel in turmoil.

  The Tupperware container of brownies was still on the table in the kitchen however, and when he went into the sitting room he saw that Rachel was asleep on the sofa. When he came near her she blinked and smiled. She yawned loudly.

  “Hi, Ads. Why are you being all formal all of a sudden?”

  She sat up sleepily and began to rearrange herself, pulling down the T-shirt that had ridden up over her stomach and swirling her tousled hair into a bun.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Calling me Rachel.”

  Adam felt suddenly, urgently ashamed. “I—I don’t know. I hadn’t even thought about it.”

  She lay back down again, her knees pulled up to her chest, and her hair fell across her cheek. She pushed it away. “Mmm. I’m so tired. How’s work?”

  “I’ve not done much today since I spoke to you earlier. I’m waiting to hear from your dad. And Ziva’s doing well.”

  She smiled. “She’s soooo much better. She’s going to be able to go home really soon, they think. She had a good sleep after you left this afternoon, apparently, and then the physio tried her walking with a Zimmer frame and she could do it. Only for a minute before she got tired, but still.”

  “That’s such great news, Pumpkin.”

  “I know, she sounded like herself again, all strong and determined all of a sudden.”

  “Who was at the hospital just now?”

  “Just Ima and me, and Ellie called and said she was on her way back and nearly there so I—Just when I was leaving.” She rubbed her eyes. “And I forgot to take the brownies back! I made them and then walked out without them—I’m so knackered. We should probably take them later.”

  “Pumpkin you’ve had so much on, if you’re this tired, let’s have supper at home and you can take them in first thing instead. Jaffa’s there, and your cousin.” Even her name was sacred now; he would not hex himself by speaking it aloud to Rachel. He could not go back to the hospital, obviously, nor could he allow Rachel to go. But he was surprised when she nodded.

  “That’s a good idea, and I think it gets a bit much for Granny anyway, when we’re all in there at once. I can’t be bothered to cook, do you mind? Shall we curl up here and get a pizza?”

  Rachel tipped her face up and held her arms out to him, like a toddler asking to be carried. In recent months he had begun to notice how many of these tics and mannerisms she had; had seen how a lifetime of her parents’ infantilizing worship had meant that her default posture was to be cute. Once he had noticed it had been difficult to stop. His irritation had only increased, compounded by embarrassment, when he realized that her dependence and innocence had been traits that he’d once found appealing. They were deeply, intractably ingrained, but how could he have known it? When they’d met they had both been childish because they were children. More than once since they’d married he’d had to stop himself from snapping at her to talk in a normal voice, to act her age. But today he felt pity, and the same lurching vertigo he had felt when he’d left her to go to Paris. Poor, sweet Rachel. She loved him with such loyalty and such simplicity. She was so unprepared for the havoc that his betrayal could wreak in her perfect, simple life. He went to her and held her as she asked him, burying his face in her shoulder. She stroked his back.

  “Poor little Ads,” she whispered. He lowered himself to sit beside her, his arms still locked around her, his face still hidden. “Poor Ads. You’ve been working so hard. What a mess this all is.”

  The claim was not going well. Lawrence had been philosophical since the hearing and did not hold out hope that they would receive very much, if anything, he told Adam as they ate bagels together in the small office kitchen. Although he remained committed to pursuing the case, Adam could see that most of his energies were diverted, in private, to finding another solution. Justice done to Ethan Goodman concerned him less than seeking justice—and reimbursement—for his own staff.

  Tony had brought the bagels, having decided on the way to work that his team needed cheering sustenance. But they were from the supermarket rather than Carmelli’s and there was something not quite right about them, too similar in texture to bread rolls—too light and airy, with an outside that needed very little jaw strength to penetrate. A real bagel should have a touch of India rubber about it, Lawrence had said sagely, holding up one of the impostors, and should be heavy enough to induce a soothing catatonia. Despite the chaos, Lawrence and Tony found time to argue this point for some five minutes before going back to their own offices. Adam was relieved to be at work. He was grateful to give himself over to it.

  A nuzzling, cooing Rachel had climbed on top of him early that morning and, already half-roused by vivid waking dreams of Ellie, he had been too weak-willed to push her off. He had spent a long time in the shower after that and had sat morose on the Tube, feeling more disgusted with himself for sleeping with his wife than he had felt the day before after sleeping with her cousin. Aware that this was staggering hypocrisy, he nonetheless resented Rachel for having sullied something. She had interposed herself, and now when he called up those private, precious moments with Ellie it was as if there were fingerprints smearing what had been inviolable.

  Yesterday’s dizzy elation had given way to a queasy hangover, although beneath it he felt an instinctive certainty that all between him and Ellie was as it should be. Everything else
, however, was a mess.

  The return date was looming. Matthew Findlay had also been put on the case and now worked quietly and steadily across from Adam, clicking the top of his pen. Until deep into the afternoon the two men read together in near silence.

  A text message arrived. Adam had been completely absorbed; Ellie’s name took him by surprise. All it said was

  What now?

  Kristine popped her head round the door. “Call’s been moved forward. Lawrence wants you all before the barrister rings.”

  “Coming.”

  He tapped quickly, “I don’t know, but we’ll work it out. I know you have to stay near me,” and then went to join the others in the conference room.

  When the meeting ended Adam went back to his desk and was checking for the tenth time whether Ellie had answered him when Lawrence came in.

  “Ziva’s being discharged today, she’s able to go home in about an hour.”

  “That’s brilliant news. Do you want me to go and pick her up or anything?”

  “No, that’s fine, stay here. Jaffa and Rachel will take her back.”

  “Is she going to be okay at home?”

  Lawrence did not look convinced. “Well, Ellie is staying with her for a bit.”

  “That’s a great idea!” Adam’s voice sounded high and false to his own ears. “I mean, how brilliant for both of them that they can sort of, take care of each other. Ziva’s going to need lots of hands-on help by the sounds of things and she can make sure that Ellie doesn’t go off the rails again, I suppose. It might be good for her to be living with Ziva and good for Ziva to be living with Ellie. Nowhere near Marshall Bruce or his wife. So good for everyone,” he finished. He wanted to fall through the floor. For the first time in twenty-four hours he could no longer feel Ellie’s skin, could not summon the shivers of pleasure that had buoyed him all day at the slightest thought of her yielding body. All he could feel was his father-in-law’s comforting, familiar presence before him and the vacuum that would open between them if Lawrence ever found out the truth. Until now, his intermittent shame had taken Rachel’s form. Suddenly Adam felt with equal force how profoundly he had betrayed a man who loved him.