They walked in pouring rain to the railway station, where a long line of taxis waited for passengers under a glass-fibre roof. The driver of the first taxi in line was playing cards on the front of his cab with another driver. When Christopher approached him and gave him the address of the nursing home, he frowned and addressed his fellow drivers in Hindi. They conferred in Hindi for some moments while Christopher and Angela waited. Then, the first taxi driver said in English, “It will be a lot of money. Leamington Spa is many miles.”
Christopher said, “That’s all right, I’ve got a lot of money.”
The driver then said, “Please, the dog is not allowed to sit on any seat. This taxi is a London cab, only three weeks old.”
Christopher ordered the dog to lie on the floor with such ferocity that for the first few miles of the journey it lay as still as a stone dog, not daring to move.
Christopher and Angela held hands on the back seat and watched in silence as the town gave way to rainy suburbs and then to flooded countryside: they passed swollen brown rivers and ditches and once, to the driver’s excitement, they were forced to take a diversion to avoid a flooded road under a railway bridge. The taxi seemed to be driving under water. A tractor carrying bales of hay made its way slowly towards them, the tyres half-submerged in the flooded field.
Angela tried not to watch the meter which changed with horrific frequency from pence to pounds. When it reached thirty pounds she whispered, “Chris, the meter.”
He squeezed her hand and said, “I’ve got money today, and this is how I want to spend it.”
They passed through a small village, where mothers waited under umbrellas outside an infants school.
The nursing home had hardly changed at all. The elm trees lining the drive had gone and been replaced by deadened green conifers. As the taxi crunched along the gravel drive Angela looked up at the small, dark-paned window of the room she had spent three days in before emerging to live her life as a childless woman. She knew that this journey was wasted. They would never find where Catherine was laid to rest. It was all so very long ago. She said none of this to Christopher, who was leaning forward £agerly on his seat, like a child on a trip to the seaside waiting for his first glimpse of the distant sea.
Christopher paid the driver, then persuaded him to wait for them, arguing that he was unlikely to get a fare for the return journey. The driver looked at the forbidding façade of the nursing home and the misty fields surrounding it and agreed to wait.
The rain had stopped. They walked the dog around the grounds and waited while it squatted at the side of a hedge. Angela was reluctant to go inside the building. She still remembered the sounds and the smells that had invaded and disturbed her thoughts for years after her two visits here. She still remembered the pain. They stopped and looked at the red-brick walls, the turreted roofs and the chimney stacks. Smoke escaped from one chimney pot. The taxi driver agreed that the dog could sleep on the floor of the cab. Then Christopher looked at his watch and said, “It’s time we went in.”
They walked across the staff carpark. In the area marked ‘Doctors’ Cars Only’ stood two cars, a pale blue Bentley and a dark green Jaguar XJS. Christopher stroked them as he passed by and said, “I see the murderers are at their work.”
They watched a mini-bus draw up to the steps by the porticoed main entrance. The driver, a young man in a dark business suit jumped out and went to the back of the van and opened the doors and pulled down a set of collapsible steps. Four women got out, each holding a small overnight bag. The driver held out his hand to help them down the steps. Each woman touched his hand briefly to aid her balance. The driver led them into the entrance hall and left them at a counter, like a hotel reception desk. Christopher and Angela followed, and waited their turn. The woman behind the counter wore a medical type uniform and a badge on her breast which said, ‘Mrs Forsythia Oxenbury—Elms Nursing Home’.
Each woman gave her surname in a quiet voice: Cart-wright, Taylor, Smith, Leystone, then stood back. Angela imagined the tiny floating things each woman carried in her womb. When the women had been processed by Mrs Forsythia Oxenbury and taken to their beds, Christopher told Mrs Oxenbury that he had an appointment to meet the owner of the nursing home, Mr Porteous De Lavery. This was news to Angela, but nothing he did surprised her now.
They waited for ten minutes, before being shown by Mrs Oxenbury into what looked like a private lounge. A coal fire burned in a grate. Porteous De Lavery was a small, polished man, whose greying hair was carefully arranged in strands across his head. He got up from the sofa and came towards them, smiling.
“Mr Moore?” he said. His voice was light and pleasant.
“And this is Mrs Lowood,” said Christopher. She saw De Lavery’s glance of dismissal. A fat uninteresting woman, it said, though well enough dressed.
“I didn’t quite understand what you wanted to see me about when you rang…please, do sit down.”
Christopher and Angela sat side by side on the chintz-covered sofa, and De Lavery sat in a leather armchair next to the fire. He crossed his small legs and turned towards them still smiling. Christopher said, “Seventeen years ago our daughter was born here.”
De Lavery frowned and uncrossed his legs. “Can I stop you there Mr Moore? This is not, and never was, a maternity hospital.”
“I know that,” said Christopher, “but, as I said, our daughter, Catherine, was born here on June 20th, 1979 at—what time was it, Angie?”
“Twenty to five in the afternoon,” she said quietly.
“She lived for about twenty minutes,” said Christopher.
“Then there should have been a birth certificate and a death certificate issued,” said Mr De Lavery. “Was there?”
Angela shook her head.
“I’m not bothered about the paperwork,” said Christopher, “but I would like to know where our daughter is.”
“I don’t know what you mean by is, Mr Moore. Are you talking in the religious sense?”
Christopher laughed. “Would I come to you if I wanted a discussion about heaven and hell? I’ve got shelves full of theology at home. Just now I’m half-way through St Thomas Aquinas.” Mr De Lavery was not a reader and was baffled by this turn in the conversation.
Angela said, “Is she buried somewhere?”
Mr De Lavery got up and stood with his back against the fire. “No,” he said. “We ran out of consecrated ground in 1976.”
“So, what did you do with our little one, Mr De Lavery?” said Christopher.
“The…foetuses are incinerated, Mr Moore.”
“Whereabouts?”
“At the medical incinerator. The Waterloo Road Crematorium.”
“They’re just thrown in, are they, in a bag?”
Mr De Lavery turned and kicked the coals in the grate. Red sparks flew up the chimney. “Yes, they are just thrown in, in a bag. What would you expect us to do with them?”
Christopher took the question seriously. He thought for a moment, then turned to Angela and said, “Did you think about it, Angie, at the time?”
“No,” she said. “I just wanted rid of her, Chris.”
Mr De Lavery smiled gratefully at Angela, and went to the door and opened it. And as there was no more to be said, they thanked him and allowed him to show them out.
He watched until their taxi had turned the corner at the bottom of the drive, then went back to his room and warmed himself by the glowing coals of the fire. He should have remembered, he thought, to tell them that the incinerator was blessed annually by certified churchmen of various denominations. It might have given them a little comfort.
Later, as he made a short cut to his private apartment in a wing of the house, he passed by the operating suite. He stopped at the door of the recovery room and looked in. Women lay on their sides on high trolleys. Each had a stainless-steel bowl next to her head in which to vomit. Some were still sleeping, but of those awake, all were crying. It was only the effect of the anaesthetic, he knew that, but he found it particularly disconcerting today. He made a mental note to speak to the senior theatre nurse and ask that in future the door to the recovery room be kept closed.