Kensington Heights

by Leslie Thomas

  The remainder of the group stood motionless as a frieze. ‘You have killed a good man,’ said Bertie Maddison eventually.

  His wife had brought her sherry glass. ‘You really are . . .’ she said in a low, shaky but outraged voice to the policemen: ‘. . . the ultimate cunts.’

  At her words the other residents broke into a ragged clapping. As they did so the senior police officer in a special cap arrived. He heard the rough applause as he left his car. ‘This time, at least,’ he grunted to his driver, ‘it sounds as if we have done something right. We seem to have the full approval of the public.’

  Twenty-Three

  He was not dead. Not quite, the ambulance attendant assured Korky. A second ambulance arrived and took the soot-faced Mr Prentice and a policeman bitten by his own dog.

  Korky got in with Savage. Miss Bombazine went to get dressed and said she would follow. As they were about to close the door Freddie breathlessly appeared and climbed in too. ‘The sodding police have taken my bike,’ he complained. ‘They say it’s evidence.’

  ‘There’s the evidence,’ said Korky pointing to Savage stiff below the blankets. His ashen cheeks were streaked with red. ‘He was frightened of blood.’ The ambulance attendant seemed to notice her painted face and strange muslin dress for the first time. ‘Party was it?’ he guessed as though he had seen it all too many times. ‘Got a bit out of hand.’

  It took less than ten minutes to reach Charing Gross Hospital on Fulham Palace Road. Korky tried to hold Savage’s hand as they carried him in. She and Freddie sat down to wait. Miss Bombazine arrived with one of her own coats which she put over the girl’s shoulders. ‘You go, both of you,’ said Korky patting her hand. ‘There’s no use you staying here. I’ll stay.’

  Miss Bombazine said she understood but Freddie held Korky’s hand and said he would stay with her. They sat unspeaking on the chairs in the waiting room until eventually she said: ‘Please go, Freddie, it’s going to be a long time.’ She kissed him on the cheek. ‘I’d rather be here by myself.’

  He brought her a cup of tea and then left. A nurse appeared holding a piece of paper. ‘Are you with the patient from Kensington Heights?’ she enquired. Dumbly Korky nodded.

  The nurse said: ‘He seems to be all right. You can go in and see him.’

  Astounded Korky stood and unbelievingly followed her from the waiting room. ‘All right?’ she managed to ask. ‘Did you say he’ll all right?’

  ‘That’s it,’ said the nurse airily. ‘It was only superficial.’

  Stark-faced Korky followed her. They went into a room off the corridor marked: ‘Casualty Department’. Sitting there, looking discomfited, was Mr Prentice. ‘It was only my eyebrows,’ he said.

  Korky choked, turned without a word and went back to the waiting room. She sat for another hour, staring into the green space of the room, scarcely breathing, scarcely living. Her eyes only moved when someone appeared outside the glass panel of the door, framed like a picture. Once a man in a white coat stood there and she opened the door and said: ‘How is Frank Savage?’

  ‘Sorry, love,’ he said softly. Her heart became ice. But he went on: ‘I’m a dentist.’

  After another fifty minutes a calm nursing sister opened the door and said: ‘The surgeon will be in to see you.’

  She would say nothing more. Korky sat praying tightly. The surgeon arrived quickly, a short man who looked as if he was normally cheerful.

  ‘He’s not dead. We’re trying to save his life,’ he said solemnly. ‘We’ve removed one bullet from his lung but the other is wedged in his spine.’ He held up an X-ray photograph. ‘See. There it is.’ She saw the bullet, like a dead grub at the base of the backbone. The man seemed to be searching for something good to tell her. ‘It’s straight anyway,’ he said eventually, squinting at the X-ray again. ‘That makes it a bit easier. Sometimes they fly all over the shop.’

  ‘They teach them to shoot straight,’ Korky said dully. Full of pleading she looked at him again, tears welling. ‘Just tell me he’s going to be all right,’ she whispered. She dropped her head and lay against the lapels of his white coat while she sobbed. Slightly embarrassed he put his arm around her shoulders, hardly touching her. ‘We’re going to try,’ was all he would say.

  She cried even more deeply and pounded his chest softly with her fists. ‘You’ve got to make him live,’ she said like a silly threat. ‘He’s all I’ve got.’

  She eased herself away from him and apologised. ‘You should go home,’ he said kindly. ‘Come in tomorrow morning.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘About nine. He’s in intensive care now but he’ll need another operation.’

  ‘And that’s going to be difficult.’

  ‘Not easy.’ He opened the door for her and she almost stumbled out. ‘I’ll ask reception to get you a taxi,’ he said kindly. ‘It’s pouring.’

  ‘It’s all right.’ She shook her head. ‘Thanks, it’s not far. I need a walk.’

  They went into the hospital lobby. A stretcher with a recumbent figure was coming through the door. ‘I’ll have to go,’ said the surgeon.

  ‘They keep you busy, don’t they,’ she mumbled.

  It was raining coldly and it was almost one in the morning. She pulled Miss Bombazine’s coat about her and thrust her hands into the pockets. From one she withdrew a packet of purple condoms and from the other a plastic crucifix. She looked at one object and then at the other and put them back. Instead of turning right in the main road, she turned left. The rain thickened and began to soak her hair and her face but she scarcely felt it. Like a sad reflection she walked slowly along the streaming pavement, in front of the dim shops, not noticing the cars, taxis and goods vehicles that passed her, throwing up the spray of Fulham Palace Road. A man shouted bawdily to her from a car but she kept walking. She turned left and eventually left again until she was in the King’s Road. The rain poured. By the time she had reached the Safeway supermarket down beyond World’s End, the coat hung on to her like blotting paper, the cold stream going down her neck and inside her clothes. She could feel it running down her legs from the top. Blindly fighting against it she turned into the yard at the rear of the supermarket. The trailer was still parked there, near the steam outlet, and beneath it was the group of waifs. Without a word she knelt down and edged herself in among them. Some groaned and grunted at the intrusion. A girl lying below layers of sacking against the inside of the wheel said: ‘You’re bloody wet, mate.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Korky. ‘It’s pissing.’

  ‘So it is,’ said the other girl half-easing herself up. She glanced at Korky and reaching out pushing her soaked hair sideways. ‘You’re that . . .’

  ‘Korky,’ said Korky.

  ‘Right. I remember you. Remember me? Bettina.’

  Korky studied her in the damp dimness. ‘Right, I remember.’

  ‘You don’t get so many down here now,’ said the girl. ‘A lot of them have chucked it. Gone home and that. There’s not so many living out as there was.’

  Bettina arranged herself around the big tyre of the trailer and pulling her covering about her prepared to return to sleep with a conventional: ‘Goodnight then, Korky.’

  Korky remained sitting, the wet coat clinging to her thin body. ‘Want a puff?’ Bettina suddenly asked. ‘I’ve got some.’ She sat up again and handed Korky a joint. ‘Already rolled,’ she said with a little boast. Korky took it and the other girl produced a match.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Korky. ‘Sure you can spare it?’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said the girl, ‘I’m going to be lucky. I’m getting out of this bleeding lark anyway. There’s got to be better ways of being by yourself.’

  She did not smoke one herself but curled against the wheel again. Korky sat hunched, damp, dead of emotion, and smoked the joint. She took the crucifix from the coat pocket and clutched it. ‘Save him, Jesus,’ she threatened. ‘Or I’m never going to bloody believe in you again. Ever.’

  S
he pulled herself into the rain-soaked coat and curled against the others. She closed her eyes and began to cough.

  ‘I’ve been in here three weeks.’ His voice was slow as if he had to consider every word.

  ‘It is three weeks yesterday that the policemen took shotpots at you.’

  Mr Kostelanetz solemnly opened his overcoat. He had acquired a smooth-haired grey one for the changing of the seasons. It was warm in the ward. The window framed an afternoon sky more grey than the coat.

  Savage said: ‘Has Korky been?’

  Mr Kostelanetz wriggled uncomfortably and opened the coat wider. His unease rose darkly to his face, his moustache bounced a little and his eyelids folded and unfolded. ‘Before, no,’ he admitted eventually. ‘But today she will come. You understand, she is also in this Charing Cross. She is a little way only from here. In her own bed.’

  Savage’s head had remained upright on the pillow and his eyes had been fixed if not focused ahead with hardly a movement towards his visitor. At first, it had been too painful to move; now the gaze was dumbly, habitually in that direction. Mr Kostelanetz had understood. This time, very slowly, the eyes came around to face him with a hint of expression. ‘In here? In this hospital?’

  ‘You are correct,’ muttered Mr Kostelanetz. ‘Korky has been very sick.’ His expression dropped to even further melancholy. ‘We thought there would be two funerals in one week.’

  Gradually, as if he wanted to avoid believing anything else, Savage returned his gaze to the front. ‘What happened to her?’

  The other man shrugged. ‘It was the same as the first time. She was out in the rain all night. Next day, bronchitis. But this time it was bigger bronchitis. Worse, much worse. It was a race which one of you would die first.’ He rolled his large head. ‘It was not a good week.’

  ‘God, I can’t believe it.’ Savage turned towards Mr Kostelanetz again. ‘But she is all right now?’

  ‘She is okay, recovered. She is coming to see you.’

  Savage said: ‘You have been a good friend.’

  Mr Kostelanetz nodded lugubriously. ‘I would like to say that it has been a pleasure . . . but I am afraid . . .’ He tried to brighten. ‘But maybe from now everything will be good. Soon you will be well.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Savage’s pale, creased face moved sideways on the pillow. ‘I want you to help. You must tell her, Korky, that this is a break for good. I’m dragging her down with me. It’s a wonder she isn’t dead.’

  Mr Kostelanetz puffed out his cheeks. ‘It is sometimes seeming that way,’ he agreed. ‘That crazy policewoman, your friend. They have told you all about that?’

  ‘I know. The police came. We’re like bits of flotsam, some of us.’

  ‘What is this floatsam?’

  ‘Bits and pieces floating on the sea.’

  ‘I see.’ Mr Kostelanetz noted the word. ‘And so they cannot help themselves.’

  ‘Right.’

  There was a movement at the door of the room and Savage caught it and saw Korky’s long, pale head come around the jamb. She was trying to smile. Her hair was cut close. ‘Hello, Savage,’ she said. She attempted to make it cheerful but it emerged as a whisper. ‘I’m here.’

  He smiled towards her and lifted his hand. She came into the room in a quilted, flowered dressing gown that accentuated her washed-out skin. Miss Bombazine in her black shiny suit followed.

  The older woman was holding Korky’s arm but the girl gently broke away and stepped uncertainly towards the bed. Mr Kostelanetz, as if the sequence had been rehearsed, rose and she sat on the chair. She and Savage came face to face. She eased herself towards him and kissed him awkwardly, sideways on the mouth. He put his left arm around her neck. ‘Oh, Savage,’ she began to sob. ‘What a bloody state we’re in.’

  ‘We will leave you,’ said Mr Kostelanetz decorously. Miss Bombazine waved delicately with her gloved fingers but then halted. ‘I just wanted you to see this,’ she said nervously fumbling in her handbag. She brought out a single photograph and coming closer held it up so that Savage could see it. ‘Remember.’ It was the three of them, Savage, Korky and Miss Bombazine, laughing in the sunshine by the Thames. Savage nodded recognition. Miss Bombazine put the picture away. ‘That was a lovely day,’ she said in a hushed way. ‘One of the best days of my life.’ They turned and with Mr Kostelanetz holding her elbow, they went from the room.

  ‘They’ve been so sweet,’ said Korky still crying. ‘Mr Kostelanetz is setting her up in proper business, a poodle parlour, where you take dogs to be . . .’ The tears began to run again. ‘Savage . . . I don’t know what . . .’

  He fought back his own tears, pushing her gently away from the bed. ‘Sit down, Korky,’ he said. She obeyed, moving back on to the chair, her face streaked grey with tears. She wiped her cheeks with the padded sleeves of her dressing gown. ‘Let’s pull ourselves together,’ she told him.

  He touched her wrist as it lay on the sheet. ‘You won’t want to talk about it, I suppose,’ she said.

  ‘None of it,’ he said. ‘How did you get bronchitis again?’

  She looked abashed. ‘I’m bloody mad,’ she said. ‘The night they brought you in here I just wandered around in the peeing rain. All night I was out. Down at World’s End. It bloody nearly was the world’s end for me too. It would have been a fine thing if we’d both snuffed it’

  A sadness more than a silence fell over them. ‘I’m going to spend a long time in a wheelchair,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll wheel you.’

  ‘I think we’ve spent too much time wheeling each other,’ he told her with a slight smile. ‘You’ve got to go out and get on with it alone, Korky. It’s your life.’

  ‘I can still wheel you,’ she responded sulkily.

  ‘They’ll move me from here.’

  ‘I’ll follow you.’ Her face was puffed. ‘You’re trying to give me the elbow.’

  ‘Korky love, you’ve got to get yourself sorted out. We can’t go on the way we have. I may never be out of hospital.’

  ‘You’re giving up, Savage. You mustn’t’

  ‘Things have got to change. You’ve got to move into the top of Mr Furtwangler’s house. You’ll have a job and somewhere to live.’ He regarded her wryly. ‘And pack in the seances.’

  Her hand went to her mouth. ‘They’re packed in.’ Shakily she laughed. ‘Mr Prentice, that old fart, blew his eyebrows off with the explosion. It was only supposed to be a puff of smoke. His moustache was jammed up his nose.’ Her eyes deepened. ‘When will they get you walking again?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You’ve got to want to walk again, Savage,’ she warned. ‘You’ve not got to give up, jack it all in just because of things going a bit wrong . . . a few police bullets . . . You’ve got the rest of your life.’

  ‘And you’ve got the rest of yours.’

  Twenty-Four

  Still wearing her red headscarf the woman rammed her tea trolley into the waiting room at Marshfield Manor Hospital. The lower part of the door was dented and devoid of varnish. ‘Never made this opening big enough,’ she complained as she manhandled the vehicle into the room. ‘Like some tea, dear?’ she asked Korky.

  Without waiting she carefully selected a thick cup from the pile on the top of the trolley. ‘That’s a nice one, no cracks,’ she said. She smiled hugely, her rabbit teeth pointing down at Korky, who sat bemused. Korky said: ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘There’s enough crackpots in this place,’ giggled the woman. ‘That’s what Nurse Jones always says when I give her some tea in a nice cup with no cracks.’ She seemed suddenly to become aware of Korky’s youth. ‘You’ve got lovely hair, dear,’ she said. ‘I used to have hair like you.’

  Uncomfortably Korky watched as she removed her headscarf and revealed an almost bare scalp, its iodine baldness relieved by sparse tufted islands. ‘When you lose your brains it rots your hair,’ she explained. She replaced the headscarf and tied it carefully below her sagging chi
ns. ‘Now, tea,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, please,’ repeated Korky unsurely.

  She watched, puzzled and then astonished, as the woman put the cup beneath the tap of the urn and apparently filled it with invisible tea. ‘Just right,’ she said as the cup was pedantically set on a saucer. ‘Mustn’t spill any,’ she said. She looked brightly into the wondering face. ‘Milk and sugar?’

  ‘Oh . . . yes . . . please.’

  ‘How many sugars?’

  ‘Two . . . please.’

  To Korky’s immense relief the door opened again and a man walked in. ‘Ah, tea-time,’ he beamed. Once more her heart plummeted but the man winked at her. He carried a file.

  ‘Nearly done, Dr Fenwick,’ said the tea lady. ‘Will you have some?’

  ‘Thank you. I will.’

  She directed another invisible squirt of tea from the urn and handed the cup to the doctor. ‘I know it’s only one lump,’ she said adding the non-existent milk and sugar. He and Korky sat facing each other holding their empty cups on their knees. Dr Fenwick took a sup and hesitatingly Korky did likewise. ‘Just right, thank you, Mrs Dines,’ said the doctor.

  ‘Yes, lovely,’ agreed Korky.

  With a massive clattering of the tea trolley the woman went out. Dr Fenwick introduced himself and they set aside their vacant cups and shook hands. ‘It takes all sorts, I suppose,’ said Korky inadequately.

  ‘In here, it does,’ he said. He smiled pleasantly. ‘I’m sorry we haven’t met before but I’ve been taking some leave. You are a friend of Frank Savage. You’ve been several times to visit him.’

  ‘Yes, I have. I’ve been to see him just now.’

  ‘How do you think he is?’

  ‘I was going to ask you that,’ said Korky surprised. ‘But since you ask I think he’s in a diabolical state. He hardly speaks.’

  He thinned his lips and nodded. ‘When he was here at Marshfield Manor before, his wife used to come to see him.’

  ‘Irene,’ said Korky.

  ‘Yes, Irene. She would come and stay for as long as she, they, could stand it then drive home in tears. He had nothing to say to her, he had blocked her out. He’d withdrawn.’