Indian Summer

by Sara Sheridan

  ‘Well, that’s that,’ Mirabelle said.

  ‘I don’t like it at the home,’ the girl’s tone was confidential. ‘I don’t want to go back.’

  Mirabelle wasn’t sure what to say. ‘Well, we can’t stay out here. Come on,’ she tried. Behind them, as they turned back up the beach, a plump man dressed in black was staring from the pavement on Kingsway. He jumped on to the pebbles and made a beeline to meet them. There was something familiar about him, Mirabelle thought. He seemed like a cannonball, moving without deviation as if he had been fired. The girl’s shoulders rose almost imperceptibly.

  ‘There you are, you little rascal,’ he said as he got close enough, his voice as rich as Kerry soil.

  ‘Ah,’ the sound escaped Mirabelle’s lips as the memory hit her. ‘Father Grogan.’

  The man squinted. He peered underneath the brim of her hat as if he had lifted a rock to examine the insects beneath. ‘You. Ah yes, you were Father Sandor’s friend. God rest his soul.’

  Mirabelle nodded. ‘I was,’ she said. Sandor had been dead for years now. He’d been murdered right in front of Mirabelle. Her gaze lifted to the long windows of her drawing room where the old priest had been beaten, keeled over and died before she could even call an ambulance. The assailant had got away.

  ‘Sandor was a good man,’ Father Grogan said, cutting in on her recollection.

  It was what people always said when men died, Mirabelle thought, though she had known some bastards go down in her time. She felt a slick of sweat on her neck, nothing to do with the heat.

  ‘And you’ve been diverting our little Lali here?’

  ‘What a lovely name,’ Mirabelle said, as Lali solidly fixed her gaze on her sandals. Mirabelle wondered if the child had only just realised that her feet were wet. She continued. ‘I noticed Lali had been at the beach all day – we got talking.’

  ‘Well, that’s the first thing. You shouldn’t be out this late, young lady. You know the rules. Back by five. You’re over an hour after your curfew. You need to count the church bells.’ The priest held up his hand, the fingers splayed. ‘Five,’ he said.

  She’d be easy to find, Mirabelle realised – a little black girl. All Father Grogan would have to do is ask in the street. Mirabelle knew from Vesta’s experience, having dark skin was to live your life in the spotlight. Lali seemed oblivious to the injustice of what had probably occurred.

  ‘Sorry, Father,’ she said without looking up. ‘This lady helped me give the last rites to a crab.’

  ‘Last rites to a crab!’ Father Grogan hooted. ‘Bless me! We’ll make a proper Christian of you yet, girl. A real little nun.’

  Mirabelle held out her hand. ‘It was lovely to meet you, Lali,’ she said. ‘I’m Mirabelle Bevan.’

  ‘Miss Bevan. Yes. That’s the name. Well, you must visit us,’ Father Grogan insisted.

  Lali’s dark eyes looked sad. Her gaze hardened.

  ‘Visit?’ Mirabelle repeated.

  ‘At the Convalescent Home for Children. On Eaton Road,’ Father Grogan spelled it out. ‘You’d like that, Lali, wouldn’t you? We can always use an extra pair of hands, Miss Bevan. We have twenty-seven children at the moment – we’re bursting at the seams.’

  Mirabelle made a noncommittal sound. Convalescing children were not her stock in trade. ‘Perhaps I could make a donation,’ she said. ‘The thing is, Father, I think little Lali here is having a spot of trouble with some of the boys. They aren’t being very nice to her.’

  ‘Oh boys,’ the priest said dismissively. ‘These things find their own level.’

  ‘Bullying, you mean?’ Mirabelle persisted. ‘From what I could see, Lali is younger than them. Smaller too. I would hope you might look into it.’

  Father Grogan turned up the beach. ‘I’ll have a word with the nurses,’ he said. ‘Of course I will. Come along, Lali.’ He grabbed the girl’s arm and proceeded at some pace. Mirabelle raised her hand and watched as the priest climbed the steps to the promenade, with Lali in his wake, and they disappeared along the front and round the corner. The air was still warm. Mirabelle picked her way up the pebbles and drew her key from her purse. It was none of her business, she told herself – an unhappy little girl, like that. The father would look after it. She’d told him about the bullying, after all. He’d have to.

  And there it would probably have ended, had Lali not been sitting on the bench opposite Mirabelle’s flat the following morning when she opened the curtains. The church bells were ringing but the fact it was Sunday had not diverted the crowds from the beach. Today a line of little boys paddled in the sea with knotted handkerchiefs on their heads. A tall fourteen year old in shorts had set up a bicycle fitted with a Wall’s icebox on the promenade and a small queue had formed for his wares – ice-cream briquettes that fitted snugly into rectangular wafers. Beneath him, three women sat in the shade of two huge black umbrellas that, in the history of English weather, had seldom been used for the purpose of giving shade.

  Father Grogan would not allow his charges to skip Sunday service, Mirabelle thought as she picked up the Sunday newspaper from her doormat and laid it unread on the long sofa. She wondered if Lali had been spanked yesterday for not going back to the home on time, and if Father Grogan had done anything about the poor kid being bullied. Coming back to the bench like this smacked of some kind of protest. It was not, she noted, a great attempt at running away – returning to the same place she’d been found only the evening before. Mirabelle glanced in the direction of the kitchen door. It was none of her business, she told herself. She couldn’t take on every waif and stray. Lali’s legs swung over the edge of the bench as if she was keeping time. Mirabelle continued to watch her for a second or two. Then she decided it would do no harm to walk the kid up to Eaton Road and have a word with someone at the convalescent home – she’d see to it herself.

  Chapter Two

  Nature does nothing in vain

  The houses were arranged in terraces built of pale, stone-coloured bricks. Steps led to each front door directly from the pavement, and the basement levels peered over the edge of the paving stones like nosy neighbours. The children’s home comprised two whole houses that had been knocked together. At the back of the properties, the gardens opened on to the County Cricket Ground and, as Mirabelle approached, she could hear the satisfying sound of the ball being struck as the teams warmed up at the nets.

  Lali had taken her hand as they turned on to the street and walked up the sunny side, away from the sea, across Church Street and up the hill. The child’s hot, soft palm made Mirabelle feel uncomfortable. Although she found herself fond of Noel H. Lewis and had agreed to be the baby’s godmother, she wasn’t sure what one actually did with children if one had them for a protracted period. She had not admitted this to Vesta when she had taken on what was, after all, a lifelong responsibility. Casting her mind back to her own childhood had not helped. Her memories were solitary, of reading books in the old drawing room at her parents’ house, or playing alone in the garden on a swing under the trees.

  Her grandmother, she recalled, had taken her on outings to museums and art galleries, but not for very long at a time. ‘Children must learn to love paintings,’ the old lady had explained. ‘They must feel satisfied not bored. They need a focus for their attention.’ Yes – a focus. Grandmère had had a dog, Mirabelle remembered, as they climbed the steps and rang the bell. Lali twisted round, dropping Mirabelle’s hand and hiding behind her frame. ‘Don’t worry,’ Mirabelle reassured her, ‘I know you don’t like it here, but I’m going to sort things out.’

  After a short wait, a middle-aged woman in a nurse’s uniform opened the door. She cast her green eyes up and down Mirabelle in some kind of assessment.

  ‘There’s no refunds, you know,’ she said, looking over her shoulder. ‘Didn’t we tell you not to come back?’

  ‘I think there’s been some kind of misunderstanding,’ Mirabelle faltered, pulling Lali out from behind her. ‘Is this one of your charge
s?’ Lali’s hand clamped itself around one of Mirabelle’s fingers as the smell of boiled vegetables and bleach wafted across the threshold. Behind the nurse, the shady hallway was furnished with a huge, dark wooden coat stand along one wall and a line of mismatched chairs along the other.

  ‘Gosh. Sorry. I thought … my mistake,’ the nurse floundered, turning her attention to the little girl. ‘Well, you’re a little monster,’ she said fondly. ‘Sister Taylor nearly had a conniption. You are supposed to be at Sunday School at the Sacred Heart, right now, as you know full well.’

  ‘My name is Mirabelle Bevan,’ Mirabelle introduced herself. Unable to divest herself of Lali’s solid grip, she smiled rather than offering a handshake.

  ‘I’m Nurse Frida.’

  ‘The thing is, I think Lali is having difficulty with some of the boys. I spoke to Father Grogan about it yesterday. I wouldn’t fling around the accusation of bullying lightly, but she’s clearly not happy.’

  Lali’s eyes were glued to the doorstep.

  ‘We can’t have that,’ the nurse’s voice was comforting. She stepped backwards to usher the child into the house, but Lali lingered, unwilling to move. Mirabelle smiled. She tried a different tack. ‘Father Grogan suggested I volunteer here, you know, but I haven’t the least idea what I might do.’

  The nurse laughed. ‘Well today there’s nothing. We have quite a routine on Sundays. During the week, perhaps?’

  ‘Could I have a look around?’

  ‘There’s hardly anybody in,’ Nurse Frida retorted. ‘If you come back next week, as I say, the father will be able to help you.’

  ‘Is the home run by the church?’

  Nurse Frida shook her head. ‘The father takes an interest, that’s all. He pops in almost every day, though not today – he has services to see to.’

  ‘But it’s not a church home. You’re not a nun?’

  The nurse laughed. ‘Heavens, no.’ She smoothed down her uniform as she regained her composure and raised her palm to her white nurse’s cap, from which a lock of glossy grey hair had escaped. Her skin seemed fragile somehow – it reminded Mirabelle of airmail paper. ‘There isn’t a convent for miles – way out at Rottingdean. It’s a mistake easily made, I suppose. With the cap. I was widowed, as a matter of fact. Harry died in Burma.’

  Mirabelle paused. She had been widowed too. After a fashion. Jack had died only a few streets away, the war had been over and the circumstances meant she could never admit their connection. This child seemed to trail all Mirabelle’s most painful memories in her wake – Father Sandor yesterday and Jack Duggan today. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  The nurse relented. ‘Listen, why don’t you have a look around the garden? There are three beds out there. Two boys and a girl taking the sea air. It’s a nice dry heat on a day like this. Lali can show you.’

  Lali obediently crossed the threshold and pulled Mirabelle through the hallway, which felt several degrees cooler than the air outside and a good deal darker. ‘Take the shortcut through the back ward,’ Nurse Frida instructed as she headed smartly through a door that took her in the other direction. Lali trailed Mirabelle into an almost empty room painted a cheery bright yellow, through a set of open French windows, and on to a paved terrace at the rear, which was bathed in bright sunshine. Over the back wall, the sound of a cricket match under way wafted on the hot air towards the terrace.

  Running along the back of the house, under large green canvas umbrellas, the three beds Frida had described were placed at even intervals, with wicker garden chairs in between. Beyond them, the wall between the gardens of the two houses had been removed and the resulting plot was the size of a small park. On one side there was an open stretch of lawn, peppered with balls of various sizes that had been left outside by the children, and a single tree which boasted a tin swing hoisted on two thin ropes. On the other side there was an attractive orchard with apple and plum trees and a wide vegetable patch planted in neat rows with winter vegetables and potatoes. At the brick perimeter wall, the garden fell into something of a waste-ground. There were several heaps of compost, a couple of broken children’s bicycles and a patch of rough mud. The sun was unrelenting. It was like walking into an oven. Away from the front, without the breeze off the sea, the back of the house was sheltered.

  ‘This is Pete,’ Lali said shyly as she approached the first bed. ‘He comes from Whitechapel too.’

  The boy was stick thin and so white his skin almost glowed in the shade. ‘Wotcha, Lali,’ he said and then wheezed. The trouble he was having breathing didn’t seem to discourage him from sitting up, which he managed with determination. The beds were made up like drums, Mirabelle noticed; not, perhaps, as comfortable as a patient might like. It took a moment or two for Pete to work the sheet loose enough for him to move. He wore pale blue pyjamas that seemed to hinder him further as the sleeves were too long.

  ‘I’m Miss Bevan,’ Mirabelle said.

  ‘Doctor are you?’

  ‘I’m Lali’s friend.’

  Pete snorted.

  Mirabelle pulled up a chair and sat down. She didn’t want to be rude, but she felt she had to ask. ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  The child looked at her as if she was a fool. ‘I got tuberculosis, miss. We all got TB. The sea air is good for it. The air up in London isn’t.’

  Mirabelle’s eyes fell back to Lali. The girl looked hale and hearty, if a little thin.

  ‘Oh she’s all right now.’ Pete raised his eyes and coughed again. ‘Lali will be home in no time. When she came here she was as bad as me. Worse!’

  Lali shrugged.

  ‘She’s not even coughing any more. Some get better, some don’t.’

  As if to confirm this, there was a chorus of coughing from the other two beds. The girl next to Pete started to wheeze. Her cheeks turned yellowish pink and she gasped for breath, her hair falling over her eyes in a mousey-brown sheet. Like him, she seemed too small for her thin white nightgown.

  ‘Take it easy,’ Pete said. ‘You’ll have Nurse Frida out here and then we’ll be for it.’

  The girl nodded. ‘OK,’ she gasped, and flung herself back on to the pillows.

  The boy in the end bed put his hand over his mouth.

  ‘Would you like me to read to you?’ Mirabelle asked. ‘Is there a book somewhere?’

  ‘You could just tell us a story,’ Pete instructed, as if it was the most natural request in the world.

  Lali seemed happy with this. She hopped on to the end of Pete’s bed and sat with her hands folded in her lap, waiting. Mirabelle took a breath. She had no idea about children’s stories – she certainly couldn’t make anything up and it seemed to her that stories from her own experience would be wholly unsuitable. Anything noteworthy she had ever got involved with included at least one murder. These children had some experience of death, she realised. But still. She tried to remember the books she had read in her parents’ drawing room all those years ago.

  ‘Peter Pan,’ she said slowly. She had seen the play at the theatre as well. She cast her mind back – it had been a Christmas treat. They had worn thick winter coats and she had carried a muffler. The book had been her present that year. She must have been around the same age as these children. Nine perhaps. She couldn’t for the life of her remember how the story started. Something about a children’s nursery and a dog. ‘Do you know it?’ she asked.

  Pete shook his head but Lali sat up eagerly. ‘Yes. Neverland,’ she said. ‘My mother got it out of the library last year when I first got sick.’

  ‘Does it start in the nursery?’

  ‘Nanny the dog putting the children to bed,’ Lali giggled. ‘There’s Wendy and little Michael and Tinkerbell. She’s a fairy. And Peter – like you, Pete. I’d never thought of that.’

  Mirabelle was about to make an attempt on J. M. Barrie’s classic, when further along in the second house a back door opened and a woman emerged with a bucket. She wore a nurse’s uniform like Frida, but she was younger. He
r skin was dark, but not as brown as Lali’s, and her glossy black hair was plaited and pinned tidily in a bun under her nurse’s cap. An Indian nurse was not unusual these days, Mirabelle supposed. The woman hauled the bucket to the end of the garden and poured the contents on to the compost heap, digging the mulch over them. Mirabelle strained to see what she was doing – it was only kitchen peelings, probably, but she couldn’t make it out. It struck her that a nurse shouldn’t be working in the kitchen. Surely a place like this had a proper cook, though perhaps not on a Sunday. ‘Come on,’ Pete insisted. ‘What about this story?’

  Mirabelle got to her feet and moved her chair, but really she was trying to get a better view. The woman wiped her hands on her uniform, picked up the bucket and was about to trudge back up the garden when two cats appeared on the back wall, jumped down and sniffed the compost. Seemingly infuriated, the nurse shook her bucket at them and they fled. That’s odd, Mirabelle thought. Then Nurse Frida emerged from the ward, gave a cursory glance in the other woman’s direction and strode with purpose towards the beds.

  ‘It’s time for the children to have their medication,’ she said. ‘I will have to ask you to leave, Miss Bevan. The others will be back from church any moment. We’re almost ready for lunch.’

  ‘Aww,’ Pete whined. ‘She was going to tell us a story.’

  ‘Miss Bevan will have to come back another day.’

  ‘She hadn’t even started,’ he objected.

  From the second bed the girl started to cough again and Nurse Frida folded her arms. ‘Miss Bevan.’ Her tone was not to be argued with.

  ‘I’ll see her out.’ Lali jumped to her feet.

  ‘Thank you, Lali, dear.’ Nurse Frida nodded curtly.

  As Mirabelle walked back into the house, there was the sound of polite clapping from the cricket ground beyond the wall. Nurse Frida tucked in Pete, smoothing down his bed sheet firmly. Lali had taken Mirabelle’s hand again and was leading the way. Through the empty ward, the shady hall was a relief. She wondered if it was helpful to bake the children in such strong sunlight, even though the umbrellas afforded a little shade. Lali’s eyes became serious suddenly.