It was only a few minutes past four in the afternoon, but the day suddenly grew dark, thunderously dark, and freezing-cold rain began to lash down. For a few minutes, the pathways of Kensington Gardens were criss-crossed with bobbing umbrellas and au-pairs running helter-skelter with baby-buggies and screaming children.
Then, the gardens were abruptly deserted, left to the rain and the Canada geese and the gusts of wind that ruffled back the leaves. Marjorie found herself alone, hurriedly pushing William in his small navy-blue Mothercare pram. She was wearing only her red tweed jacket and her long black pleated skirt, and she was already soaked. The afternoon had been brilliantly sunny when she left the house, with a sky as blue as dinner-plates. She hadn't brought an umbrella. She hadn't even brought a plastic rain-hat.
She hadn't expected to stay with her Uncle Michael until so late, but Uncle Michael was so old now that he could barely keep himself clean. She had made him tea and tidied his bed, and done some hovering while William lay kicking and gurgling on the sofa, and Uncle Michael watched him, rheumy-eyed, his hands resting on his lap like crumpled yellow tissue-paper, his mind fading and brightening, fading and brightening, in the same way that the afternoon sunlight faded and brightened.
She had kissed Uncle Michael before she left, and he had clasped her hand between both of his. "Take good care of that boy, won't you?" he had whispered. "You never know who's watching. You never know who might want him."
"Oh, Uncle, you know that I never let him out of my sight. Besides, if anybody wants him, they're welcome to him. Perhaps I'll get some sleep at night."
"Don't say that, Marjorie. Never say that. Think of all the mothers who have said that, only as a joke, and then have wished that they had cut out their tongues."
"Uncle… don't be so morbid. I'll give you a ring when I get home, just to make sure you're all right. But I must go. I'm cooking chicken chasseur tonight."
Uncle Michael had nodded. "Chicken chasseur…," he had said, vaguely. Then, "Don't forget the pan."
"Of course not, Uncle. I'm not going to burn it. Now, make sure you put the chain on the door."
Now she was walking past the Round Pond. She slowed down, wheeling the pram through the muddy grass. She was so wet that it scarcely made any difference. She thought of the old Chinese saying, "Why walk fast in the rain? It's raining just as hard up ahead."
Before the arrival of the Canada geese, the Round Pond had been neat and tidy and peaceful, with fluttering ducks and children sailing little yachts. Now, it was fouled and murky, and peculiarly threatening, like anything precious that has been taken away from you and vandalized by strangers. Marjorie's Peugeot had been stolen last spring, and crashed, and urinated in, and she had never been able to think of driving it again, or even another car like it.
She emerged from the trees and a sudden explosion of cold rain caught her on the side of the cheek. William was awake, and waving his arms, but she knew that he would be hungry by now, and that she would have to feed him as soon as she got home.
She took a short cut, walking diagonally through another stand of trees. She could hear the muffled roar of London's traffic on both sides of the garden, and the rumbling, scratching noise of an airliner passing overhead, but the gardens themselves remained oddly empty, and silent, as if a spell had been cast over them. Underneath the trees, the light was the colour of moss-weathered slate.
She leaned forward over the pram handle and cooed, "Soon be home, Mr Bill! Soon be home!"
But when she looked up she saw a man standing silhouetted beside the oak tree just in front of her, not more than thirty feet away. A thin, tall man wearing a black cap, and a black coat with the collar turned up. His eyes were shaded, but she could see that his face was deathly white. And he was obviously waiting for her.
She hesitated, stopped, and looked around. Her heart began to thump furiously. There was nobody else in sight, nobody to whom she could shout for help. The rain rattled on the trees above her head, and William let out one fitful yelp. She swallowed, and found herself swallowing a thick mixture of fruit-cake and bile. She simply didn't know what to do.
She thought: there's no use running. I'll just have to walk past him. I'll just have to show him that I'm not afraid. After all, I'm pushing a pram. I've got a baby. Surely he won't be so cruel that he'll -
You never know who's watching. You never know who might want him.
Sick with fear, she continued to walk forward. The man remained where he was, not moving, not speaking. She would have to pass within two feet of him, but so far he had shown no sign that he had noticed her, although he must have done; and no sign at all that he wanted her to stop.
She walked closer and closer, stiff-legged, and mewling softly to herself in terror. She passed him by, so close that she could see the glittering raindrops on his coat, so close that she could smell him, strong tobacco and some dry, unfamiliar smell, like hay.
She thought: thank God. He's let me pass.
But then his right arm whipped out and snatched her elbow, twisted her around, and flung her with such force against the trunk of the oak that she heard her shoulder-blade crack and one of her shoes flew off.
She screamed, and screamed again. But he slapped her face with the back of his hand, and then slapped her again.
"What do you want?" she shrieked. "What do you want?"
He seized the lapels of her jacket and dragged her upright against the harsh-ribbed bark of the tree. His eyes were so deep-set that all she could see was their glitter. His lips were blue-grey, and they were stretched back across his teeth in a terrifying parody of a grin.
"What do you want?" she begged him. Her shoulder felt as if it were on fire, and her left knee was throbbing. "I have to look after my baby. Please don't hurt me. I have to look after my baby."
She felt her skirt being torn away from her thighs. Oh God, she thought, not that. Please not that. She started to collapse out of fear and out of terrible resignation, but the man dragged her upright again, and knocked her head so hard against the tree that she almost blacked out.
She didn't remember very much after that. She felt her underwear wrenched off. She felt him forcing his way into her. It was dry and agonizing and he felt so cold. Even when he had pushed his way deep inside her, he still felt cold. She felt the rain on her face. She heard his breathing, a steady, harsh hah!, hah!, hah!. Then she heard him swear, an extraordinary curse like no curse that she had ever heard before.
She was just about to say "My baby," when he hit her again. She was found twenty minutes later standing at a bus-stop in the Bayswater Road, by an American couple who wanted to know where to find Trader Vic's.
The pram was found where she had been forced to leave it, and it was empty.
John said, "We should go away for a while."
Marjorie was sitting in the window-seat, nursing a cup of lemon tea. She was staring across the Bayswater Road as she always stared, day and night. She had cut her hair into a severe bob, and her face was as pale as wax. She wore black, as she always wore black.
The clock on the mantelpiece chimed three. John said, "Nesta will keep in touch - you know, if there's any development."
Marjorie turned and smiled at him weakly. The dullness of her eyes still shocked him, even now. "Development?" she said, gently mocking his euphemism. It was six weeks since William had disappeared. Whoever had taken him had either killed him or intended to keep him forever.
John shrugged. He was a thick-set, pleasant-looking, but unassertive man. He had never thought that he would marry; but when he had met Marjorie at his younger brother's 21st, he had been captivated at once by her mixture of shyness and wilfulness, and her eccentric imagination. She had said things to him that no girl had ever said to him before - opened his eyes to the simple magic of everyday life.
But now that Marjorie had closed in on herself, and communicated nothing but grief, he found that he was increasingly handicapped; as if the gifts of light and colour and perception were being taken away from him. A spring day was incomprehensible unless he had Marjorie beside him, to tell him why it was all so inspiring.
She was like a woman who was dying; and he was like a man who was gradually going blind.
The phone rang in the library. Marjorie turned back to the window. Through the pale afternoon fog the buses and the taxis poured ceaselessly to and fro. But beyond the railings, in Kensington Gardens, the trees were motionless and dark, and they held a secret for which Marjorie would have given anything. Her sight, her soul, her very life.
Somewhere in Kensington Gardens, William was still alive. She was convinced of it, in the way that only a mother could be convinced. She spent hours straining her ears, trying to hear him crying over the bellowing of the traffic. She felt like standing in the middle of Bayswater Road and holding up her hands and screaming "Stop! Stop, for just one minute! Please, stop! I think I can hear my baby crying!"
John came back from the library, digging his fingers into his thick chestnut hair. "That was Chief Inspector Crosland. They've had the forensic report on the weapon that was used to cut your clothes. Some kind of gardening-implement, apparently - a pair of clippers or a pruning-hook. They're going to start asking questions at nurseries and garden centres. You never know.
He paused, and then he said, "There's something else. They had a DNA report."
Marjorie gave a quiet, cold shudder. She didn't want to start thinking about the rape. Not yet, anyway. She could deal with that later, when William was found.
When William was found, she could go away on holiday and try to recuperate. When William was found, her heart could start beating again. She longed so much to hold him in her arms that she felt she was becoming completely demented. Just to feel his tiny fingers closing around hers.
John cleared his throat. "Crosland said that there was something pretty strange about the DNA report. That's why it's taken them so long."
Marjorie didn't answer. She thought she had seen a movement in the gardens. She thought she had seen something small and white in the long grass underneath the trees, and a small arm waving. But -as she drew the net curtain back further - the small, white object trotted out from beneath the trees and it was a Sealyham, and the small waving arm was its tail.
"According to the DNA report, the man wasn't actually alive."
Marjorie slowly turned around. "What?" she said. "What do you mean, he wasn't actually alive?"
John looked embarrassed. "I don't know. It doesn't seem to make any sense, does it? But that's what Crosland said. In fact, what he actually said was, the man was dead."
"Dead? How could he have been dead?"
"Well, there was obviously some kind of aberration in the test results. I mean, the man couldn't have been really dead. Not clinically. It was just that - "
"Dead," Marjorie repeated, in a whisper, as if everything had suddenly become clear. "The man was dead."
John was awakened by the telephone at five to six that Friday morning. He could hear the rain sprinkling against the bedroom window, and the grinding bellow of a garbage truck in the mews at the back of the house.
"It's Chief Inspector Crosland, sir. I'm afraid I have some rather bad news. We've found William in the Fountains."
John swallowed. "I see," he said. Irrationally, he wanted to ask if William were still alive, but of course he couldn't have been, and in any case he found that he simply couldn't speak.
"I'm sending two officers over," said the chief inspector. "One of them's a woman. If you could be ready in - say - five or ten minutes?"
John quietly cradled the phone. He sat up in bed for a while, hugging his knees, his eyes brimming. Then he swallowed, and smeared his tears with his hands, and gently shook Marjorie awake.
She opened her eyes and stared up at him as if she had just arrived from another country. "What is it?" she asked, throatily.
He tried to speak, but he couldn't.
"It's William, isn't it?" she said. "They've found William."
They stood huddled together under John's umbrella, next to the grey, rain-circled fountains. An ambulance was parked close by, its rear doors open, its blue light flashing. Chief Inspector Crosland came across - a solid, beef-complexioned man with a dripping moustache. He raised his hat, and said, "We're all very sorry about this. We always hold out hope, you know, even when it's pretty obvious that it's hopeless."
"Where was he found?" asked John.
"Caught in the sluice that leads to the Long Water. There were a lot of leaves down there, too, so he was difficult to see. One of the maintenance men found him when he was clearing the grating."
"Can I see him?" asked Marjorie.
John looked at the chief inspector with an unspoken question: how badly is he decomposed? But the chief inspector nodded, and took hold of Marjorie's elbow, and said, "Come with me."
Marjorie followed him obediently. She felt so small and cold. He guided her to the back of the ambulance, and helped her to climb inside. There, wrapped in a bright red blanket, was her baby, her baby William, his eyes closed, his hair stuck in a curl to his forehead. He was white as marble, white as a statue.
"May I kiss him?" she asked. Chief Inspector Crosland nodded.
She kissed her baby and his kiss was soft and utterly chilled.
Outside the ambulance, John said, "I would have thought - well, how long has he been down there?"
"No more than a day, sir, in my opinion. He was still wearing the same Babygro that he was wearing when he was taken, but he was clean and he looked reasonably well nourished. There were no signs of abuse or injury."
John looked away. "I can't understand it," he said.
The chief inspector laid a hand on his shoulder. "If it's any comfort to you, sir, neither can I."
All the next day, through showers and sunshine, Marjorie walked alone around Kensington Gardens. She walked down Lancaster Walk, and then Budge's Walk, and stood by the Round Pond. Then she walked back beside the Long Water, to the statue of Peter Pan.
It had started drizzling again, and rainwater dripped from the end of Peter's pipes, and trickled down his cheeks like tears.
The boy who never grew up, she thought. Just like William.
She was about to turn away when the tiniest fragment of memory scintillated in her mind. What was it that Uncle Michael had said, as she left his flat on the day that William had been taken?
She had said, "I'm cooking chicken chasseur tonight."
And he had said, "Chicken chasseur…" and then paused for a very long time, and added, "Don't forget the pan."
She had assumed then that he meant saucepan. But why would he have said "don't forget the pan?" After all, he hadn't been talking about cooking before. He had been warning her that somebody in Kensington Gardens might be watching her. He had been warning her that somebody in Kensington Gardens might want to take William.
Don't forget the Pan.
He was sitting on the sofa, bundled up in maroon woollen blankets, when she let herself in. The flat smelled of gas and stale milk. A thin sunlight the colour of cold tea was straining through the net curtains; and it made his face look more sallow and withered than ever.
"I was wondering when you'd come," he said, in a whisper.
"You expected me?"
He gave her a sloping smile. "You're a mother. Mothers understand everything."
She sat on the chair close beside him. "That day when William was taken… you said 'don't forget the Pan.' Did you mean what I think you meant?"
He took hold of her hand and held it in a gesture of infinite sympathy and infinite pain. "The Pan is every mother's nightmare. Always has been, always will be."
"Are you trying to tell me that it's not a story?"
"Oh… the way that Sir James Barrie told it - all fairies and pirates and Indians - that was a story. But it was founded on fact."
"How do you know that?" asked Marjorie. "I've never heard anyone mention that before."
Uncle Michael turned his withered neck toward the window. "I know it because it happened to my brother and my sister and it nearly happened to me. My mother met Sir James at a dinner in Belgravia, about a year afterwards, and tried to explain what had happened. This was in 1901 or 1902, thereabouts. She thought that he might write an article about it, to warn other parents, and that because of his authority, people might listen to him, and believe him. But the old fool was such a sentimentalist, such a fantasist… he didn't believe her, either, and he turned my mother's agony into a children's play.
"Of course, it was such a successful children's play that nobody ever took my mother's warnings seriously, ever again. She died in Earlswood Mental Hospital in Surrey in 1914. The death certificate said 'dementia', whatever that means."
"Tell me what happened," said Marjorie. "Uncle Michael, I've just lost my baby… you have to tell me what happened."
Uncle Michael gave her a bony shrug. "It's difficult to separate fact from fiction. But in the late 1880s, there was a rash of kidnappings in Kensington Gardens… all boy babies, some of them taken from prams, some of them snatched directly from their nannies' arms. All of the babies were later found dead… most in Kensington Gardens, some in Hyde Park and Paddington… but none of them very far away. Sometimes the nannies were assaulted, too, and three of them were raped.
"In 1892, a man was eventually caught in the act of trying to steal a baby. He was identified by several nannies as the man who had raped them and abducted their charges. He was tried at the Old Bailey on three specimen charges of murder, and sentenced to death on June 13, 1893. He was hanged on the last day of October.
"He was apparently a Polish merchant seaman, who had jumped ship at London Docks after a trip to the Caribbean. His shipmates had known him only as Piotr. He had been cheerful and happy, as far as they knew - at least until they docked at Port-au-Prince, in Haiti. Piotr had spent three nights away from the ship, and after his return, the first mate remarked on his 'moody and unpleasant mien.' He flew into frequent rages, so they weren't at all surprised when he left the ship at London and never came back.
"The ship's doctor thought that Piotr might have contracted malaria, because his face was ashy white, and his eyes looked bloodshot. He shivered, too, and started to mutter to himself."
"But if he was hanged - " put in Marjorie.
"Oh, he was hanged, all right," said Michael. "Hanged by the neck until he was dead, and buried in the precincts of Wormwood Scrubs prison. But only a year later, more boy-babies began to disappear from Kensington Gardens, and more nannies were assaulted, and each of them bore the same kind of scratches and cuts that Piotr had inflicted on his victims.
"He used to tear their dresses, you see, with a baling-hook."
"A baling-hook?" said Marjorie, faintly.
Uncle Michael held up his hand, with one finger curled. "Where do you think that Sir James got the notion for Captain Hook?"
"But I was scratched like that, too."
"Yes," nodded Uncle Michael. "And that's what I've been trying to tell you. The man who attacked you - the man who took William - it was Piotr."
"What? That was over a hundred years ago! How could it have been?"
"In the same way that Piotr tried to snatch me, too, in 1901, when I was still in my pram. My nannie tried to fight him off, but he hooked her throat and severed her jugular vein. My brother and my sister tried to fight him off, too, but he dragged them both away with him. They were only little, they didn't stand a chance. A few weeks later, a swimmer found their bodies in the Serpentine.
Uncle Michael pressed his hand against his mouth, and was silent for almost a whole minute. "My mother was almost mad with grief. But somehow, she knew who had killed her children. She spent every afternoon in Kensington Gardens, following almost every man she saw. And - at last - she came across him. He was standing amongst the trees, watching two nannies sitting on a bench. She approached him, and she challenged him. She told him to his face that she knew who he was; and that she knew he had murdered her children.
"Do you know what he said? I shall never forget my mother telling me this, and it still sends shivers down my spine. He said, 'I never had a mother, I never had a father. I was never allowed to be a boy. But the old woman on Haiti said that I could stay young forever and ever, so long as I always sent back to her the souls of young children, flying on the wind. So that is what I did. I kissed them, and sucked out their souls, and sent them flying back to Haiti on the wind.'
"But do you know what he said to my mother? He said 'Your children's souls may have flown to a distant island, but they can still live, if you wish them to. You can go to their graves, and you can call them, and they'll come to you. It only takes a mother's word.'
"My mother said, 'Who are you? What are you? And he said 'Pan', which is nothing more nor less than Polish for 'Man'. That's why my mother called him 'Piotr Pan.' And that's where Sir James Barrie got the name from."
"And here, of course, is the terrible irony - Captain Hook and Peter Pan weren't enemies at all, not in real life. They were one and the same person."
Marjorie stared at her Uncle Michael in horror. "What did my great auntie do? She didn't call your brother and sister, did she?"
Uncle Michael shook his head. "She insisted that their graves should be covered in heavy slabs of granite. Then - as you know - she did whatever she could to warn other mothers of the danger of Piotr Pan."
"So she really believed that she could call her children back to life?"
"I think so. But - as she always said to me - what can life amount to, without a soul?"
Marjorie sat with her Uncle Michael until it grew dark, and his head dropped to one side, and he began to snore.
* * *
She stood in the chapel of rest, her face bleached white by the single ray of sunlight that fell from the clerestory window. Her dress was black, her hat was black. She held a black handbag in front of her.
William's white coffin was open, and William himself lay on a white silk pillow, his eyes closed, his tiny eyelashes curled over his deathly-white cheek, his lips slightly parted, as if he were still breathing.
On either side of the coffin, candles burned; and there were two tall vases of white gladioli. Apart from the murmuring of traffic, and the occasional rumbling of a Central Line tube train deep beneath the building's foundations, the chapel was silent.
Marjorie could feel her heart beating, steady and slow.
My baby, she thought. My poor sweet baby.
She stepped closer to the coffin. Hesitantly, she reached out and brushed his fine baby curls. So soft, it crucified her to touch it.
"William," she breathed.
He remained cold and still. Not moving, not breathing.
"William," she repeated. "William, my darling, come back to me. Come back to me, Mr Bill."
Still he didn't stir. Still he didn't breathe.
She waited a moment longer. She was almost ashamed of herself for having believed Uncle Michael's stories. Piotr Pan indeed! The old man was senile.
Softly, she tiptoed to the door. She took one last look at William, and then she closed the door behind her.
She had barely let go of the handle, however, when the silence was broken by the most terrible high-pitched scream she had ever heard in her life.
In Kensington Gardens, beneath the trees, a thin dark man raised his head and listened, and listened, as if he could hear a child crying in the wind. He listened, and he smiled, although he never took his eyes away from the young woman who was walking towards him, pushing a baby-buggy.
He thought, God bless mothers everywhere.
No comments:
Post a Comment