Second Opinion

by Claire Rayner

  The whole street had obviously been gentrified to the utmost. The little working men’s cottages that had been built a hundred or more years ago had been emptied of their original tenants, tricked up with heavy oak front doors, brass knockers and carriage lamps and a great deal of pastel paint on the old window frames, and resold, probably at absurdly inflated prices. The windows themselves were filled with glowing white net curtains and expensive cars were parked outside many of the houses; she spotted three BMWs within forty yards as well as a couple of Mercedes.

  Number seventy-five looked as prosperous as any of the others; even more so, perhaps, for it had bright window boxes filled with glossy-leaved plants and was clearly the habitation of people who regarded themselves as tasteful in the extreme. She rang the bell, which made an old-fashioned clamour inside the house, with some trepidation. Maybe they wouldn’t want to talk to anyone from the hospital where they had been made so unhappy …

  The man who answered the door was square and stocky, with a neat moustache over narrow lips. His hair had receded to vanishing point on his crown, but his side hair was rich and thick and dark. He was wearing a cashmere sweater over a silk shirt, expensively cut slacks and leather loafers that looked very comfortable indeed. The smell that came out from the warm interior was of whisky and good cigars and expensive food and she could see beyond him to an expanse of silk wallpaper and thick carpets and pale blonde furniture.

  ‘Can I help you?’ His voice was low and pleasant and what she knew the British usually called cultured, which meant he sounded like a Radio Three announcer.

  ‘I’m probably all wrong coming here, Mr Chowdary,’ she said. ‘You are Mr Chowdary? It’s just — I’m Dr George Barnabas. From Old East.’

  He stared at her with a smooth face devoid of any expression. ‘I am Viv Chowdary. Why are you here?’

  ‘I —’ She caught her breath, furious with herself. She should have thought this out more carefully. Coming at all had been mad. She began to extemporize a little wildly. ‘I was thinking about your loss, and it seemed to me, well, it isn’t easy at Christmas, is it?’

  He looked at her for another several seconds until she thought he was about to close the door in her face and then his look softened. ‘You are kind. Come in. I’m afraid my wife is out, visiting her mother, but I’m happy to see you. Come in.’

  The room he took her into was richer and warmer even than she had suspected it would be. The carpet was thick, the sofas deep and soft, the walls lined with books, the ornaments costly. He was very hospitable, offering her drinks, almost embarrassed to give her the tonic water which was all she wanted, and then he sat down in the deep leather armchair on the far side of the fireplace where gas flames leapt convincingly in a pile of artificial logs. He cocked his head on one side. ‘So. What do you want to say?’

  ‘That I’m sorry your baby died.’ She wasn’t extemporizing now. She meant it. This room was so very tidy, so obviously the habitation of two adults. She could imagine how much they had wanted their baby to fill this slightly arid ambience.

  ‘You are most kind,’ he said with great dignity. ‘I appreciate it. I am sure my wife will too, when I speak to her of your visit.’

  She sat and looked at him for a long moment, with no idea of what to say next, and when the words came out of her mouth, she was almost surprised.

  ‘It wouldn’t have been so bad for you if you could have had a photograph,’ she said. ‘I wish that had been possible.’

  He smiled, a small secretive little curving of the rather red lips under the narrow moustache. ‘Ah, well now. Perhaps I should not tell you this — you are a colleague of Dr Arundel?’

  ‘Oh no. I mean yes in that we both work at the hospital, but not together. I’m — the — I’m in the laboratories.’ (I hope he doesn’t connect me with post-mortems, she was thinking at the back of her mind. Horrible for him if he does.) ‘So I don’t see much of her. I just know she likes to have pictures of — of all the babies born out of her department and, well, of course, with your baby it just wasn’t possible.’

  He got to his feet and went across the room to a desk in the corner, a modern replica of an old Victorian design with little drawers and shelves all over the high back. He reached into one of the drawers and came back with an envelope.

  ‘I took one,’ he said. ‘I was there in the labour ward when they were doing things and our baby was lying there in the scales of the weighing machine, you know, and I took a Polaroid. It’s all we have.’

  He opened the envelope and held out a little square of pasteboard to her. She reached out her hand and took it almost reverently. And found herself looking down on the picture of a baby. Parts of the picture were blurred — clearly the child had been kicking so the legs couldn’t be easily seen. But the rest of her was clear and leapt out of the picture at her. She had a cap of short dark hair and dark eyes which stared out serenely from a small round face. The hands and arms were streaked with vernix, the greasy yellowish skin-protection substance babies have in utero, and her face was a little blood-streaked. So, it seemed, was her body; across her chest was a long reddish mark. George looked at it, then said, ‘She was lovely. Really lovely.’

  ‘I know,’ Viv Chowdary said. ‘That is what made it so hard. She looks so — so normal. Except for the little mark and they told me that would fade eventually.’

  ‘Mark?’ George said.

  ‘On her chest. There, you see? I mentioned it to the doctor — what was his name? Like a station on the Paris metro. Oh, I know. St Cloud, Dr St Cloud. I said to him she has a mark, is it the birth, was she injured? Will it go? And he said, oh, it’s a strawberry naevus, it will fade before she is two years old, even sooner. But it never got the chance to fade, did it?’

  He took the picture back and looked at it for a long moment, and then put it back tidily in the envelope. ‘But she was beautiful,’ he said softly and took the envelope back to the desk.

  ‘Mr Chowdary,’ George said and she hoped her voice was sounding normal still. ‘Why didn’t you let Dr Arundel have a copy of that photo for her wall of successful cases? She told me she was so sorry not to have one.’

  ‘But it was not a successful case, was it?’ He was all sweet reason. ‘My baby died.’

  ‘Yes, she died.’ George stood up. ‘And I offer you my deepest condolences in your trouble.’ And she held out her hand and shook his as he bent his head courteously and led her to the door.

  ‘I hope — I hope it will be possible for you to have another baby, Mr Chowdary,’ she said as they reached the front door and he opened it. The street outside looked bleak and cold, for rain was threatening. ‘Dr Arundel said you would be able to try.’

  ‘As to that, who can say? It is in the hands of the Good Lord, but we are thinking, Angela and I. Thank you again.’ And gently but definitely he urged her forwards and the door closed behind her, leaving her staring down the street with its brassy little carriage lamps and windows winking with Christmas lights. Her head was in a whirl and she was trying hard to understand what had happened.

  Because in the PM report on the Chowdary baby there had been no mention of a strawberry naevus on the baby’s chest. And surely any pathologist worth the name would have made a note of it?

  ‘I have to check with whoever actually did the job,’ she said aloud to the street. Because if whoever it was missed that, whatever else might he have missed? Maybe there was something done to that baby that we don’t know about? Maybe this baby too, like the Oberlander child, was deliberately killed? As Harry obviously suspected.

  A car came round the corner and parked beside the first house. The door opened and a delivery man jumped out. He left his door ajar and the car radio, turned up to top blast, echoed down the street. ‘“The cattle are lowing,”‘ roared the invisible singers. ‘“The baby awakes …”‘

  George pulled her collar up around her ears and headed north back to Tower Bridge and Old East. Christmas and dead babies. They didn’t go t
ogether at all.

  21

  She was woken on Christmas morning by the smell of turkey roasting and lay curled up in the tangle of her duvet letting memory roll over her like a sea fog. The Christmases of her childhood had always started so; her mother would get up in the middle of the night — or so it had seemed to small George — to creep down to the kitchen and start the oven. ‘Because,’ she would tell the loudly complaining Oscar, ‘roasting it slow and easy makes it more toothsome and you’d sure complain if I did it any other way.’ George had spent every Christmas morning of those long-ago years lying listening to her parents bicker downstairs and smelling turkey cook; or had it been on Thanksgiving? Suddenly she couldn’t remember, and didn’t want to remember; today would be different, she told herself, however familiar the smells, and she threw back the duvet and padded off to the bathroom to shower and dress. It wasn’t much fun having to sleep in her living room, but she was getting used to it.

  By the time she had finished dressing, climbing into a new pair of vividly black-and-white striped leggings which made her seem taller than ever in spite of being worn with flat blocked ballet shoes, topping them with a baggy scarlet shirt that she knew made her look particularly good, Bridget had cleared away her bedding and set the studio couch back into its usual be-cushioned state. She’d lit the gas-flame fire, too, and brought in a big crimson poinsettia in a pot and set it on the coffee table where it spread itself wide and glowed gloriously in the dim December morning.

  ‘Happy Christmas, honey,’ she said, coming to kiss George, her skin soft and papery against George’s firm cheek. ‘We want you really to relax today. Vanny and I are going to do everything, just everything. We’re well ahead in the kitchen so you sit down and take it easy.’

  She reached for the record player and pushed a switch, and the sound of Lalo’s ‘Symphonie Espagnole’ seeped into the room. George felt her eyelids prickle. They had taken so much trouble, to the extent of making sure her favourite music was playing; it was very generous and, impulsively, she hugged Bridget.

  ‘And a Happy Christmas to you too, love,’ she said. ‘And if you think I’m letting you take over my kitchen then you sure as hell have another think coming. Move over, I’m coming through!’ and she led the way into the kitchen with her arm about Bridget’s shoulders.

  Her mother was standing at the stove, stirring something, and George went over and kissed the back of her neck, which was pink and damp with the heat and concentration on what she was doing.

  ‘Happy Christmas, Ma,’ she said. ‘It really has the good old down-home smell in here, it’s great!’

  ‘It will be,’ Vanny said serenely. ‘As long as you stay outa here and let me get on. Bridget, give George her coffee and juice and that Danish and then come back in here and deal with those potatoes. Gus’ll be here in no time and I want to be primped up and ready when he comes.’

  George tried to protest, but got nowhere. The two of them were far more adamant than she was and wouldn’t hear of her doing a thing, and at last she gave in, for they were getting more and more heated over her attempts, and she went and sat curled up on her sofa, with a pile of long neglected BMJs and Lancets beside her; she wasn’t working, she assured them both, truly she wasn’t. Only reading the funny bits.

  The morning drifted away in an increasing kaleidoscope of food smells and heat, and as the warmth built up, she was unable to hold her lids open. They’d gone to bed late the previous night, what with the dressing of the tree (which now looked well worth all their efforts as it shimmered proudly in the darkest corner of the room) and the last weeks had been a strain. Now she could relax the inevitable happened, and she fell asleep.

  She awoke with a start, throwing her arms out and flailing widely in her alarm. Gus was standing over her, rubbing one cheek with an aggrieved look on his face.

  ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘I only bent over you, for Gawd’s sake! Just to see if you was really asleep or just restin’ your eyes. You didn’t have to do that!’

  ‘Do what?’ George said, still dazed.

  ‘Hit me from here to Christmas next year,’ he said and grinned. ‘Here’s to a Merry Christmas this year, anyway.’

  He looked, she realized, like a stranger. The familiar crumpled suit and tie and overcoat were gone; in their place he was wearing elegantly cut black trousers and a scarlet cashmere sweater over a very white shirt, which was open at the collar showing thick muscles and a broad strong neck. His hair had been carefully brushed but with no effort at the control it usually had when he was working it curled with great abandonment all over his head, so he looked like a raffish and far too knowing middle-aged cherub.

  ‘Happy Christmas,’ she said and rubbed her eyes. ‘I didn’t hear you ring.’

  ‘I didn’t have to. Your ma and Bridget were watching for me from the window and didn’t give me time. Bridget was down and had the door open as I walked up the steps.’ He beamed at her. ‘Soul mates, ain’t we? I always said we had a lot more in common than you’d credit.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Matching,’ he said contentedly and patted his scarlet belly. ‘Red and white and black. Very fetching.’

  Bridget came bustling in from the kitchen bearing a tray with four of George’s best custard glasses on it. Each was filled with a steaming pinky-red concoction and Bridget fussed happily, making them each take one and then calling Vanny, pink and perspiring, from the kitchen to take hers.

  ‘Here’s to Christmas and happy times,’ Bridget proposed and took a heavy draught. ‘And there’s plenty more where this came from.’

  It was potent and spicy and George coughed. Bridget beamed.

  ‘The real stuff, huh? Drink up and I’ll fetch more.’ And she hurried Vanny away and left them.

  ‘My God,’ Gus said and sipped his glass carefully, holding the handle between his square fingers with great delicacy. ‘This is lethal.’ He raised his voice. ‘What’s in the block-buster, Bridget?’

  ‘My own recipe,’ Bridget sang from the kitchen, the pride in her voice very clear. ‘A little red wine and brandy and so forth!’

  ‘And so forth,’ Gus called back and shook his head. ‘Half a distillery if you ask me.’ He sat down on the leather footstool at George’s feet, for she had curled herself back into the corner of the sofa. ‘So, how goes it, George? Did you get straight with all your work before the dreaded holiday descended?’

  ‘Not quite,’ she admitted. ‘I had to set aside all the stuff we’d been busy with.’ She made a face. ‘I got everything else done though, so at least I’ll be able to get right back on it, with a little luck, come next week …’

  He lifted his brows. ‘You don’t have to be so nose to grindstone, you know. Not for me. We can manage well enough, if you’ve —’

  She bristled. ‘Trying to cut me out? I won’t have that —’

  He sighed with an elaborate show of patience. ‘Let me finish, let me finish! I was about to say, if you’ve other things to do, we’ll hang on till you’re free. Then we can look at that code together.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, a little mollified, feeling her face go pink. She put it down to the hot punch, which she was sipping steadily, for potent though it was it also tasted marvellous. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘That’s a step in the right direction,’ he said and leaned forwards.

  In the kitchen Bridget was chattering as usual and Vanny was singing in a high sweet voice ‘… off with the raggle-taggle gypsies, oh,’ and nearer at hand the gas flames hissed and plopped in the fireplace. His face looked remarkably large, she thought with a remote dreaminess. I can see right into his eyes. They’ve got sort of amber flecks in them. I think this punch is doing odd things to me. My pulse has gone up at least ten points, and she marvelled a little at how it was possible to be so objective when she was actually feeling very strange indeed.

  He bent a little closer and grinned at her. ‘I could have put some mistletoe in my hair, but the hell with it,’ he said softly
and put a hand behind her head to bring her closer to him and kissed her.

  It really was extraordinary. She was a grown woman and not without experience — if of a rather limited nature lately, since her relationship with Ian Felgate had foundered just before she’d come to Old East — and she would never have thought herself a woman to be knocked sideways simply by being kissed. But this kiss was different; and she emerged breathlessly with a whole range of amazing feelings surging through her and a dazed look on her face.

  ‘Who needs mistletoe?’ Gus said even more softly, reaching forward and kissing her once more. To her amazement it was just as exciting this time; and she gave up thinking about it or about anything at all. She just put her arms up and round him, and held on tight and co-operated with all the enthusiasm she could find. Which was considerable.

  More by luck than judgement they were apart when Bridget came in again, this time bearing a plateful of home-baked biscuits on to which she had piled turkey liver pâté, and she seemed oblivious to George’s red cheeks and Gus’s air of self-satisfaction.

  ‘Don’t eat too many,’ she instructed. ‘Vanny’ll just about kill me if you lose your appetite for her turkey and all the fixin’s. Not long now. Do we open the presents before lunch or after?’

  ‘Uh — I don’t mind.’ George was flustered and trying hard to hide it. ‘Whatever everyone else wants to do.’

  Gus looked across at the tree, beneath which there were now more parcels than ever, and grinned. ‘Leave ‘em till after lunch. There’s nothing so exciting as making people wait for what they most want.’ He threw a wicked leer at George which made her snort with laughter. Bridget beamed and nodded.

  ‘Just what I always think. OK, then. The great blowout starts in fifteen minutes!’

  Lunch was long and excessive and punctuated by much cracker-pulling, greatly to Vanny and Bridget’s amusement.

  ‘We only have these for children’s birthday parties,’ Bridget confided to Gus. ‘It was real sweet of you to bring them. And such fancy ones!’