The long corridor stretched ahead to where shadows played in glass doors.
‘Does he get many visitors Sister?’
‘A few from time to time, not many.’ She stopped to pick up a towel which was lying on the floor then turned to face him, folding it neatly as she spoke. ‘Have you ever visited before Mr Cameron?’
‘No, this is the first time.’ He could feel her looking at him and it made him nervous, anxious to find the right words. ‘I asked my parents a few times shortly after but they discouraged it. I suppose I stopped asking after a while. I wasn’t much older than he was.’
She smoothed the towel flat with the palm of her hand and suddenly he felt like a little boy with a poor excuse. In desperation he played his best card.
‘I was the boy who found him.’ Immediately he felt foolish. He had told her something he had already told her on the phone. The words sounded pathetic – a child’s attempt to claim some adult’s approbation. As she set the towel on a radiator he felt the heat of his embarrassment flush his face and turned his head away.
‘Come into my office for a few minutes Mr Cameron.’ She gestured him wordlessly to a seat then sat behind her desk.
He hoped the redness had seeped out of his face and concentrated on regaining composure, some control of the situation. ‘I suppose it must seem very strange to you, wanting to come here after all this time. I don’t know whether what I said on the phone made any sense or not, but if you think it would be best that I didn’t visit, then it’s OK.’
For the first time he could see her relax a little. ‘No, you can visit. Seeing a new face from time to time does him no harm. You understand we have to be careful. Sometimes we do discourage people – this is not a zoo, not a place to satisfy idle curiosity.’
He nodded his head to show his understanding of what she was trying to say. For a second he thought of attempting some further explanation of his motives but he knew he would have to lie to her and she was not a woman who looked as if she could be easily deceived. He would have to lie because he had no words to express the truth, was unsure of what the truth was any more. All he knew was the strength of the need which had brought him to this place. A need for what? To confess? To be given absolution? To receive a blessing? He didn’t know. His fingers felt the damp spots on his jacket.
‘You can see him for about twenty minutes. Much longer than that will probably prove too tiring for both of you. He has his own regular routines and too much deviation from them can be confusing and possibly distressing for him. He may, or may not, give you some response. It depends on the mood he’s in – a bit like us all I suppose.’ For the first time she allowed herself a brief half-smile. ‘As you know he never developed the power of speech. At first they thought it would come but it was too late. He walks, not perfectly, but fast enough when he wants something. A few times when he’s felt shut in or something’s upset him he’s taken off on us, but mostly, as far as it’s possible to know these things, he seems reasonably contented with his life here. He doesn’t give out a lot, keeps himself mostly to himself. Likes to watch television – I think that’s what he’s doing now in the day room. What he remembers or what goes on in his head would take someone more than me to say.’
She straightened some papers on her desk that were already straight and did not look up when she spoke again. ‘I see a lot of sad things in my work and if you let them affect you, you wouldn’t be very good at doing your job, but whenever I think about it it makes me shiver. It’s hard to believe that such a thing can happen.’ She looked up at him and he could see that she was embarrassed at revealing a personal aspect of herself.
‘It was very terrible. Sometimes I dream about it,’ he said quietly.
But she was deliberately looking at her watch, discouraging him from saying any more. She had closed herself off again and as she stood up he rose and followed her down the corridor to the day room. Once again she walked a few paces ahead of him and the only sounds were the clack of her scuffed white heels on the tiled floor and the crisp rustle of her uniform. He could see the doors ahead, the smear of fingers on the glass. Mrs McQuarrie’s handprints on the porch window. Jacqueline’s wet prints as she turned back to the changing room. The wreath of bruising. Always the wreath of bruising. Part of him wanted to turn and run, to run and never stop. But it was already too late. She held the door open for him.
It was a large room with a long window stretching the length of one side, affording a view of open countryside. The ebbing light of the afternoon filled the room with a shifting greyness, draining all the colour from it but no one had switched on the light. Tables and chairs sat in tight, inward-looking groups, comics and magazines stacked in neat piles, and the only colour in the room came from the television set which convulsed with cartoons.
‘I’ll leave you to make your own introductions. You can call in to my office on the way out and let me know how you got on.’
He felt startled by the abruptness of her departure which left them alone together in the room. He hesitated – all he could see from the doorway was his left hand on the arm of the high-backed chair, the thin white fingers splayed across the wooden armrest. On the coffee table in front was a remote control for the television. He stepped forward slowly, saw the side of his face for the first time. Smaller, younger than he had any right to be, a stubble of cropped hair flecked with thin slivers of pink skull, his eyes and cheek coloured only by the changing light from the television. He sat down on one of the chairs but the eyes stayed locked to the screen, the face a pale gleam in the gloom of the room. The light seemed to shape, then shade his face, moving across it like a shadow on water. A child who knew the world only through a fantail of light from an opening door, the chinks in the slats behind sacking. A child carried into the fierce, raw light of the world wrapped in a sheet.
He told him everything, holding nothing back, his voice strange to him as if it came from somewhere far outside himself. When he had finished the unblinking eyes still stared up at the screen as if he had heard nothing, nothing had registered. He grew more desperate.
‘I was the one who found you. I was the one whose hand you touched, the boy you tried to say something to.’ He stopped. The eyes had turned towards him, flicking over his face as if searching it for something forgotten, the mouth suddenly breaking into wordless speech. A hand was reaching out to him, reaching through the vistas of years, the pale glint of finger slowly crossing the space which separated them. He raised his own hand in response, then let it fall again, as the finger fell randomly on to the control and the eyes turned away to stare through the grainy striations of light at the picture trapped between stations, the rising pulse of static.