The Question

by Jane Asher

  Eleanor reluctantly perched on the edge of the steel and canvas chair and watched as the girl lifted a telephone on the desk and turned slightly away from her as she spoke into it with what she was relieved to see appeared to be urgency. The girl glanced up and towards her as she continued to speak, but then frowned in what looked like puzzlement as she stopped in mid-sentence and listened, swivelling her body even further away as she did so, until Eleanor could see little but the curve of her cheek where it blended in profile into the outline of the receiver.

  ‘Oh God, no! Don’t let him be dead! Oh, dear God, dear God, dear God, don’t let him be dead!’ she whispered to herself as she went on watching the girl’s back intently, terrified that if she even blinked she might lose this moment of suspension and let the world drop in an imploding mess of horror. The girl turned back towards her now, and was speaking again into the telephone so quietly that Eleanor could make out nothing of what was said, but conveying through her continuing frown something that Eleanor could make no sense of, but which filled her with terrible fear. Something was horribly wrong.

  She could stand it no longer, and leapt up from the chair and moved to the desk, only just managing to stop herself grasping the girl by the shoulders and wrenching the information from her.

  ‘What? For God’s sake, what is it? Tell me – please, tell me. What’s going on?’

  The girl put down the receiver and stood up, then spoke as she walked round to the front of the desk and took Eleanor gently by the arm.

  ‘May I ask you to come with me, please? Dr Simons would just like a word with you.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, let me see my husband! Where is he? I need to see my husband!’

  ‘Of course you do. Just come with me, please.’

  She led her along a corridor and into a small, bright room that opened off it. Eleanor vaguely noticed the phrase ‘Family Room’ that was stencilled onto the cream paint of the door as she passed through it, but was relieved to find it empty apart from a few nondescript pieces of furniture that her mind was too overwhelmed to take in. She stayed standing as the girl gestured to her to sit down, then brought her hands to the sides of her head in a fierce clench of despair as panic threatened to make her fall. After what seemed to be just a couple of seconds, a young man in a white crumpled coat appeared round the door and walked quickly towards Eleanor with his hand outstretched and a cheerful smile on his face. Ignoring the hand and the smile, Eleanor grabbed him by the upper arm, fiercely, and spoke closely into his face in a guttural whisper full of anger and fear.

  ‘For God’s sake, young man, take me to my husband. He’s been involved in a serious—’

  ‘Just a moment, Mrs Hamilton,’ the doctor answered, gently removing Eleanor’s hand from his arm and stepping slightly away. ‘Forgive me – believe me, I do know how anxious you are, naturally, and I am going to do my utmost to help you. Your husband is in no immediate danger, and I will, of course, take you to him in just a moment, but …’

  He hesitated, while Eleanor’s emotions wheeled and plummeted in a giddy mixture of relief at hearing John was alive and out of danger, and sickness at seeing the anxiety and uncertainty on the man’s face.

  ‘Yes? Yes, what is it?’

  ‘I have a small problem, which I’m sure can be cleared up in just a few moments and which no doubt you can put straight for me. It’s not at all an uncommon problem that we encounter. Well, let me come straight to the point. We, er – we already have Mr Hamilton’s wife here in the hospital, at his bedside in intensive care. I just wanted to avoid any – well, you can see what I mean, I’m sure.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We not infrequently have a former wife appearing at the same time as—But I just want to avoid any possible embarrassment. Are you Mr Hamilton’s first wife?’

  ‘I am his wife.’

  ‘Yes, yes of course. Well, as long as you know that the other – that Mrs Hamilton is at your husband’s bedside. I just wanted to be sure. Shall I take you to see him, now?’

  It was hard for Eleanor to tell which upset her more as she approached the bed: the sight of the tubes, wires and bits of metal protruding from John’s head, linking him to mysterious machines that whirred and clicked on the trolley at the bedside, or that of the small, bent figure sitting on the chair. Eleanor turned to the doctor, still at her side, and spoke calmly and proprietorially.

  ‘How is he? What happened? What is the prognosis?’

  She astonished herself by acknowledging even as she said the last word that she revelled in the thought that Barbara might not know what it meant.

  ‘Mr Hamilton has had a very serious road accident, I’m afraid.’

  ‘He ran into another car, Eleanor. It’s terrible – it’s just so terrible …’

  As Barbara turned to look up at her, Eleanor felt a wave of nausea wash over her at the sight of the woman’s bloated, puffy eyes and mottled skin. She lowered her gaze to the woman’s hand, red-knuckled and sore-looking where it grasped a soggy, mucous-filled tissue.

  ‘Shut up,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m trying to talk to the doctor about my husband.’

  ‘Mrs Hamilton, please …’ the young doctor went on. ‘Yes, your husband was involved in a very serious road accident and I’m afraid he’s extremely unwell. We do have him stabilised, and, as I said, at the moment he is in no immediate danger, but – well, at the moment all we can do is watch very carefully and wait. I’m afraid there are head injuries involved, and one can never be sure with such things exactly what—’

  ‘What sort of head injuries? You can tell me – I’m not stupid – tell me what’s going on. What’s going to happen to him? Is he going to die?’

  ‘Mrs Hamilton, please. Your husband is in deep coma at the moment, and as this has persisted for several hours now I am unable to give you at this stage an optimistic assessment. At this stage his eyes are closed, as you have seen, and he has no sleep/awake pattern of any kind, which is why I describe his condition as of now as being in coma. It’s very hard to say at this point exactly how your husband’s condition is going to progress. He has a relatively minor fracture of the skull, but what is more worrying is the bad shaking up his head took in the impetus of the crash. The brain scan shows evidence of serious damage to the brain surface as a whole, but so far there is no possible way of us knowing just how badly, or how permanently, his brain function has been affected.’

  He was speaking in a low, conspiratorial tone which pleased her, leading her to assume that he now realised she was the correct Mrs Hamilton and that the other woman was to be ignored and sidelined in the ensuing discussion.

  ‘The next few hours are vital. We have to watch carefully for any swelling in the brain; this, obviously, is critical. As the skull is a rigid box it can’t expand at all, and if the brain swells it may be forced down into the base of the skull. This can compress the vital brain centres and – well, I’m sure I don’t need to explain to you that of course anything like that taking place would mean—’

  ‘Of course you don’t. Thank you, I understand.’

  ‘I have, of course, explained all this very carefully to – to Mrs Hamilton, here.’ He gestured a little half-heartedly towards Barbara, who had turned back towards the bed with her head bowed and her shoulders hunched forwards.

  ‘Oh. I see. Well, in future, Dr – sorry, Dr …?’

  ‘Simons.’

  ‘In future, Dr Simons, I’d be grateful if you would confine any discussion of my husband’s condition to me. This woman is no relation to him, and anything she needs or does not need to know can be conveyed to her by me.’

  Barbara didn’t even look up, but muttered quietly down into her chest, ‘That’s fine, doctor. Just do as she says. I don’t care. That’s fine.’

  ‘I’m afraid in any case I shall have to ask you both to come with me now and leave the team to continue monitoring John’s progress. I shall keep you fully informed of any changes whatsoever, but the best thing for everyon
e now is for you to let us get on with our job. I’ll find a nurse to come and get you a cup of tea.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  The two women sat opposite each other in the family room, two cups of tea on the small table between them. There was silence, broken only occasionally by the sound of Barbara sniffing, blowing her nose or gasping a little as she wiped her eyes with the sticky tissue. Eleanor gazed at her in revulsion, maintaining her own quietly calm state by recognising just how close she herself was to disintegrating into an emotional heap exactly like the woman opposite, but determined to keep herself as remote as possible from a kinship of any kind with Barbara. Any scrap of tolerance, even pity, that she had begun to feel for her over the last few weeks had disappeared as suddenly and devastatingly as had her recently found sense of purpose and optimism. The shock of the accident and of seeing John in such horrific and terrifying circumstances seemed to have temporarily wiped all feeling from her conscious mind except that of overriding, ferociously strong hatred. Hatred not only for Barbara herself, but for all the unknown forces she now felt had been determined to mess up her life from the start. She could feel no hope of any kind about anything at all.

  ‘Eleanor. What shall we do? What can we do?’ The distraught woman looked up and caught Eleanor’s cold gaze piteously.

  ‘Nothing, of course. We shall wait. Or, at least, I shall wait. I don’t really see any need for you to be here. I shall contact you as necessary. I think it’s right that John has only his real family here now. Have you contacted Sophie?’

  ‘Oh poor, poor Susan. Yes, I have. So she gets you to call her Sophie, too, does she? Poor little thing. So sweet. But I still think of her as Susan. I can’t help it. She’s on her way. She sounded so upset. Oh, poor little thing.’ She began to cry again, and Eleanor turned away, frightened she might do something stupid like hit the woman if she had to go on looking at her.

  ‘I shall tell Sophie, if you like. You really don’t have to stay. I can tell her. I can look after her. We’re very close, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I’m very grateful. You’ve been very kind.’

  ‘I don’t want your gratitude. I didn’t do it for you. I’m trying to save her.’

  Barbara looked across at her with an expression of uncomprehending misery. ‘Save her? What from?’

  ‘Oh, never mind.’

  ‘Please let me stay, Eleanor. I know we’re in an awkward situation, but I couldn’t bear not to be here. I just want to stay here and be near him. We’ve managed so well since – well, since you found out the truth. I was so relieved, you know. I hated all the lying and you not knowing. I always said to John that we should sort things out. And it’s been so – so sensible between us, hasn’t it? I can stay, can’t I?’

  ‘I can’t stop you.’

  ‘That poor young man … Oh, it’s so dreadful. You know he died, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. We’ll leave all that to the police, shall we? And the lawyers.’

  ‘But he died – only twenty. It’s so horrible. Poor young man. Poor, poor—’

  ‘Barbara, you didn’t know him. People die every day in road accidents. Let’s just concentrate on John, shall we? Now, I have things to do. I have to ring someone from the office; let them know that—’

  ‘It’s all right, I’ve done it. I rang Ruth.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ruth. At home. She’ll sort things out tomorrow. She always does. She was going to phone you, but I told her I’d already got the police to do that. She was very surprised, of course, to hear that we – that we knew each other, but she said to give you her best wishes and condolences.’

  The scream of rage inside Eleanor’s head was so loud it threatened to escape, but she pressed her eyes and mouth shut for a second until the spasm had passed.

  They sat on in silence for a bit. Eleanor reached forward and picked up the cup of tea nearest to her, but hesitated on seeing the brownish mottled scum that clung to the surface. She put it back down on the saucer and sat back in her chair. There was another long pause, then she spoke quietly, looking out of the window intently as if trying to decipher something just out of view.

  ‘What did you want? What did you hope to gain?’

  ‘What do you mean? Gain from what?’

  ‘From taking my husband. From stealing another woman’s husband.’

  There was another silence, then Barbara buried her head into her chest and began to cry quietly. She said something impossible to identify amidst the muffled sobs.

  ‘What? I can’t understand you. Stop crying and answer me.’

  ‘I said nothing,’ Barbara murmured, sniffing and swallowing. ‘I didn’t want to get anything. I just wanted to love him and look after him. That’s all I ever wanted.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. You wanted money, and security and a home. Didn’t you? You trapped him. Didn’t you?’

  ‘I just wanted him. I wanted to make a home for him. That was all.’

  ‘Huh!’ Eleanor scoffed, then turned away from the window to look directly at the distraught, dishevelled creature in the chair opposite. ‘How did you do it? Get pregnant, I mean? How did you trick him? Was he drunk and you threw yourself at him? Or did he pay you? Was he lonely one night and picked you up like a tart? Is that it?’

  ‘No, Eleanor. It was nothing like that. Oh God – look, what’s the point of all this? What’s the point of hurting each other any more than we have already. I’ve done wrong, I know that. Oh God, I know that – can’t you see? But it wasn’t wrong that I cared for him and looked after him and loved him. You didn’t seem to—Oh, never mind. We need each other now. Can’t we at least – be kind to each other?’

  ‘Tell me how you did it. I need to know. How did you trick him into letting you get pregnant? He never wanted children. It was the last thing he wanted. Our lives were planned so carefully – he wouldn’t just have abandoned it all unless he’d been forced to. How did you do it? You can tell me. You might as well. It can’t make any difference now.’

  Barbara sighed, a deep, forlorn sigh full of unhappiness and resignation. It echoed with something disturbing; something nameless that Eleanor didn’t like, and it filled her with a terrible foreboding that she couldn’t understand. It was as if by continuing to question the reluctant woman she suddenly sensed that, far from easing her own relentless need for more knowledge, more truth, more secrets to be revealed, she might just instead be forcing open the lid of a terrible Pandora’s box of unknown horrors.

  They both went to speak at the same time, and even as Eleanor tried to stop her, Barbara had already begun to utter the words that struck into Eleanor’s heart with a force of sickening intensity.

  ‘Because he wanted it. He begged me to have his child, if you must know. I know it’ll hurt you – I know you’d both decided not to have children, but he wanted one with me. He always said I was – was a motherly sort of person. That I was meant to be a mother. I don’t see why I should try to protect you from that any more or why I should take any more of your insults. You let him go. You gave up on him. It wasn’t my fault – or his. We’d been together for months first. It wasn’t how you think. He wanted a child – a baby. And he wanted me to have it.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’ How many times had she said that? She couldn’t go on simply denying everything this bitch said. She had to think. She had to remain in control. And she had to believe that the future she had been about to engineer that very morning was still a possibility. John, Eleanor and Sophie. Together. A picture of herself and Sophie pushing John in a wheelchair suddenly flashed into her mind. Surprisingly, it didn’t look too bad. Not as upsetting as one might think. John looked almost serene. And she and Sophie looked peaceful, ministering – in control. Exactly. Maybe things weren’t going to be so bad, after all.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it any more. I’m sorry, Barbara, you’re right. We should be civilised about this. I don’t for a moment believe what you’ve just told me, but this isn
’t the time to argue. We’re both extremely upset and may say something we’ll regret. We have to think of John now. Stay if you want to.’

  How very gracious of you, thought Barbara, allowing the anger she often felt grumbling underneath at the way Eleanor treated her to surface briefly. You patronising fart. But, she reasoned, as you say, this is no time to deal with our problems. Plenty of time for that later. All my energies must be concentrated on John now; on getting him better. If that means putting up with your insults and snobbishness, then so be it. I’ll laugh about it with him later.

  By the time Sophie arrived Eleanor and Barbara had had several visits from the medical staff and had been allowed to see John twice more. The first time had been initiated in a flurry of excitement when the young doctor had come to inform them that John’s eyes were now open, but a dash to intensive care had led to the disappointment of being told that there were still no discernible signs of awareness. They retired back to the family room to await Sophie, and the doctors and other staff continued to come and go, bringing little news but helping to allay their mounting panic with bulletins of ‘no change’. A nurse brought fresh tea, and they both drank it, acknowledging a kind of truce in the wordless passing of milk and sugar across the small table. Eleanor couldn’t help a little lurch of pride at the sight of Sophie as she walked in, so smart and pretty in her little cream dress and so polite and grateful to the nurse who escorted her. She walked straight over to Barbara and threw her arms around her, then turned in surprise as Eleanor greeted her.

  ‘Oh! Eleanor! You’re here. Oh, that’s good. Oh, thank you for coming – I’m so glad you’re here. Poor Dad – how is he, Mum? What’s happened to him? Can I see him? They didn’t really tell me. How is he?’

  Eleanor looked across and felt a stab of self-pity as she took in the instinctive pairing of mother and daughter as they clung to each other. The subtle, but undeniable exclusion of her ‘aunt’ was unexpected, and she knew all at once that she had been picturing a very different scene as she had waited so impatiently for the child’s arrival.