Fruiting Bodies Read online

  ‘You ought to sleep now. The demonstrators have been moved off and you must take advantage of the quiet while you can.’

  ‘Has Mr Ringstead reappeared?’

  ‘Doctor Kimmeridge has done all that’s necessary for you,’ said Sister Chesil repressively, as though the consultant’s movements were none of Willow’s business. ‘There’s no more serious bleeding down there and nothing for you to worry about.’

  The midwife glanced at Tom. Seeing that his eyelids were slowly shutting once more, she added: ‘You should follow your husband’s sensible example and get some sleep.’

  A small snore, more like a snuffle, emerged from Tom at that moment and the midwife nodded in satisfaction.

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ said Willow, as usual envying Tom’s ability to drop off even in the most inauspicious circumstances.

  ‘Sleep well now,’ said Sister Chesil as she disappeared through the curtains.

  An hour or so later Willow woke from a dream-filled doze as there was yet another commotion, this time only just outside her ward. She thought the demonstrators must have found their way in and moved her head so that she could see through a gap in the checked curtains. She could just see the swing doors of the ward being pushed open by one of the nurses, who seemed to be talking to someone out in the passage. Her striped uniform dress was stretched tight over her buttocks as she pushed backwards, and her waist looked very small in its deep red-elastic belt. After a moment Willow heard a breathless and troubled youngish voice saying: ‘They’ve found him, you know.’

  ‘Where?’ came an urgent, older, female voice. ‘Where?’

  There was an indistinct mumble of words and then an exclamation:

  ‘God, how terrible!’

  Willow struggled to hear what else was being said, but there were too many different voices, most of them only whispering. Then a man’s voice said much more loudly: ‘I told you, he was face down in the birthing pool. Of course he was dead. How couldn’t he have been?’

  Another mumble of more distant voices made it impossible for Willow to hear anything more until the male voice said: ‘I know. It’s appalling that no one even thought to look in there. What were you all doing? Somebody ought to have thought to look.’

  Wondering whether they were talking about a baby and how anyone could have left him alone in the birthing pool, Willow pushed herself up against her pillows to make sure that her own daughter was still in her cradle. It looked as though she was peacefully asleep.

  ‘He must have been like that for ages,’ said one of the shriller female voices from outside the ward, breaking into the peace of the dimly lit room with its sleeping women and babies. ‘How could it have happened?’

  ‘The police are on their way,’ said Sister Chesil’s unmistakably authoritative voice. ‘We’ll know more when they’ve seen him. It’s silly to speculate without information. Get back to work all of you.’

  ‘What?’ Tom had woken up and was rubbing his eyes with the knuckles of both hands. ‘What’s up, Will?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said, staring at him. ‘But someone’s dead. The police are coming.’

  ‘What? Nonsense. Don’t be so silly.’

  ‘I’m not,’ she said, angry that he should have contradicted her so automatically and in such a dismissive tone of voice. ‘They’re talking about it outside. A nurse has just said that someone’s dead, drowned in the birthing pool. The police are on their way. I don’t know if it’s a baby or whether it’s … Tom, d’you think it could it be Ringstead?’

  ‘Surely not. I’m sorry if I sounded sharp, but you must have misheard, Will. Perhaps you were dreaming. Look, I’ll nip out and check.’

  He turned back with one hand on the blue-and-green curtain. ‘You don’t mind if I go, do you?’

  ‘No. I want to know what’s happened, too – and who it is.’

  Chapter Two

  Night One and Day Two

  The squeak of the ward doors swinging open woke Willow again half an hour later, and she was blinking as Tom pushed his way back through the blue-and-green curtains. He stood for a moment watching her and she noticed that his eyes were alert and his mouth looked hard.

  ‘So what’s happened?’ she asked before he could speak. ‘You’ve got your professional look on.’

  ‘Have I? Sorry. That’s the last thing you need.’ Seeing that she was about to argue, he smiled deliberately and tried to think of something that might distract her from the news he did not want to tell her. ‘You know we’re going to have to decide what to call our daughter now that she’s a real “human bean”.’

  ‘I know,’ Willow said, stifling her impatience with difficulty. ‘But we can’t decide something that important in the middle of all this or we’ll make a mistake we’ll regret for ever. Look, Tom, I need to know what’s happened. Who’s dead?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s good for you to think about it now. Too worrying, Will, and you shouldn’t be worried at all tonight.’

  ‘Nothing could be more worrying than not knowing. Tom, stop protecting me, please. It’ll drive me mad. Just tell me what’s happened.’

  He looked at her for a moment and then shrugged.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s Ringstead, Will. They don’t yet know exactly what happened, but he was found face down with his head in the birthing pool.’

  ‘Drowned?’

  ‘Probably, but they won’t know that for sure until they’ve done the autopsy.’

  For a moment she could not speak. When she could she asked what else Tom had discovered.

  ‘No details yet,’ he said. ‘A team’s arrived from the local AMIP, and the inspector wants to talk to me. I’ll know more when I’ve seen her, and I’ll come back and tell you anything I can then. If you need me before that, send one of the nurses. They’ll know where we are. I’m so sorry, Will. On this of all nights.’

  ‘It’s hardly your fault,’ she said and then, seeing his expression, quickly added: ‘I know that’s not what you meant. I’m sorry, too. But must you get involved with the AMIP team? It’s not your case and you look worn out. Couldn’t you go home and get some sleep?’

  Tom’s face creased into the old smile and Willow felt herself smiling in response.

  ‘Thanks, ducky, but I can cope. All the AMIP bunch will want is an account of everything I heard and saw this evening. It won’t take long. I’ll have a word with them and then get my head down. You ought to sleep, too. Try not to worry too much about poor Ringstead. I don’t want you lying awake in misery when you should be triumphant.’

  ‘I’ll try not to.’ Forgetting all her earlier irritation, she searched her mind for a way of reassuring him and eventually found something that might do. ‘There wouldn’t be much point in any case. It’s over for him. Whatever it was that led to his death, it can’t hurt him any more.’

  ‘Yes. There is that.’ Tom’s mockery and his toughness alike disappeared in a wave of tenderness. ‘Will, I …’

  She held out one of her hands as he hesitated.

  ‘I know. Me, too. Take care, Tom. Don’t let them exploit you. You’re a desk man now, not operational.’

  He bent down to kiss her and then left. She did her best to sleep but was not successful for a long time. Alexander Ringstead must have died just as her daughter was being born, and no amount of rationalisation could make that any different.

  Falling asleep eventually, she missed Tom’s promised return by only a few minutes. He stood at her bedside, determined not to wake her and yet longing to be able to talk to her again. After a while he left the ward as quietly as he could to go home and snatch a little sleep himself.

  Willow woke later to a cacophony of chatter, crying babies and clattering cutlery and opened her eyes to see a woman in a pale-green dressing-gown standing at the foot of her bed with a tray in her hands.

  ‘Hello,’ she said.

  ‘Hello,’ answered Willow, pushing the hair out of her eyes and trying to think who the woman could be.
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br />   ‘I brought you some breakfast.’

  ‘Thank you; but why you? Don’t the nurses do it?’

  ‘Not often. They’re so busy these days that we tend to help out once we can move reasonably comfortably again. I’m in the next bed there. I had my baby two days ago and I’m used to being up and about. How are you feeling? I gather you had quite a rough time.’

  ‘Not really, compared with some stories I’ve heard, but I didn’t sleep very well: thinking too much about poor Mr Ringstead, I suppose.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ said the woman, putting the tray down on Willow’s table and swinging it across her bed. ‘Everyone’s talking about it. Isn’t it awful?’

  ‘Do you know what actually happened?’

  ‘They say he was drowned in the birthing pool. That’s all I know.’

  ‘Oh, God!’ said Willow, putting a hand over her eyes for a moment. ‘But how could he have drowned? It’s so shallow. He was a big man. He must …’ She broke off, reluctant to admit the thought that had been with her ever since Tom had told her that it was Ringstead who had died. She looked up at the other woman, who nodded.

  ‘I know,’ she said, looking sick. ‘He must have been murdered.’

  ‘Unless he had a heart attack and fell in,’ said Willow, feeling as though she were fighting for some hopeless cause. ‘Or perhaps he did it himself. Even that would be less awful. At least, I think it would.’

  ‘Oh, I think that’s very unlikely. What a way to choose! After all, he could have got any number of sleeping pills and things that would have been much easier. Besides, he wasn’t the suicidal type at all; so cheerful and sure of himself.’

  Willow looked towards her sleeping baby. She had always known that she would be bringing a child into a world full of violence, but she had never dreamed that it would come so close so quickly.

  ‘God knows how they’re going to cope without him here. It wouldn’t surprise me if the whole place fell apart,’ said the other woman, unaware of the effect she was having on Willow. ‘I’m glad I’m going tomorrow. What about you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Willow, and then added as she tried to comfort herself: ‘But Doctor Kimmeridge is very good. I’m sure he’ll hold things together.’

  ‘He’s only a registrar. One of the other consultants will have to take over and none of them are a patch on Mr Ringstead.’

  ‘How do you know anything about them?’ asked Willow. ‘I thought everyone on this ward came under Ringstead. I haven’t even heard any other consultant’s name being mentioned.’

  ‘Nor have I this time, but I had different ones for each of my other two babies. And people talk, you know. Take it from me, Ringstead was one of a kind. They’ll never find anyone else as good.’

  The woman seemed belatedly to realise how worried Willow was becoming and added in a more soothing voice: ‘But you needn’t worry. All the tricky bits are over for you now.’

  ‘Are they?’

  It was a long time since Willow had felt quite so ignorant. Her steady progress to a relatively senior position in the civil service had left her not only well informed and articulate, but also convinced of the value of her own judgment. Her subsequent – unexpected – success as a romantic novelist had brought her confidence of a different kind, and a series of haphazard but ultimately successful investigations of serious crime had only strengthened her opinion that she knew what she was doing, who she was, and where she was going.

  The birth of her baby had changed all that, and she felt as though she had emerged into an entirely new world with rules and dangers of which she knew very little.

  ‘I’d better get on with the other trays,’ said the other woman before Willow could ask anything.

  She smiled bravely and poured herself a cup of strong Indian tea as she contemplated her breakfast tray. Looking at the flaccid toast and swamped cereal, she could not help yearning for the sort of perfect, imaginatively cooked food her housekeeper, Mrs Rusham, made for her and Tom every morning. Pushing the thought away, she ate what was in front of her.

  Then came the tricky business of getting out of bed and discovering which bits of herself hurt most. It was a relief to lean over the cradle and watch her daughter’s huge eyes widening. The baby could not possibly have recognised her so soon, Willow told herself firmly, but even so it was an unexpected relief not to be greeted with screams of panic or dismay. Willow picked her up out of the cradle, carefully supporting her worryingly floppy head and laid her on the bed to change her.

  Having dealt with the dirty nappy reasonably well, Willow got back into bed with the baby in her arms and tried to feed her. That was less successful. The two of them struggled for some time. The baby howled in frustration and Willow winced each time her sore nipples were squeezed between the extraordinarily hard gums her daughter had been given and tried not to panic.

  Eventually they both gave up. While the baby lay crying against her, Willow mopped her own eyes on the sheet and told herself that they would get it right next time.

  ‘How are you this morning, Mrs Worth?’

  Willow took the sheet away from her eyes and saw Doctor Kimmeridge standing by her bed with an unknown nurse and a young male medical student in attendance. Unfairly angry with Kimmeridge because he had seen her in tears, Willow said stiffly that she was perfectly all right.

  He told her to give her baby to the nurse and lie back. Willow closed her eyes as he examined her. When he had finished, he asked whether she had any questions.

  Willow sat up and straightened her nightgown with jerky movements.

  ‘Yes. I want to know exactly what happened to Mr Ringstead and whether he drowned or died in some other way before he fell in the pool.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ Kimmeridge said quite sharply. ‘I know nothing about that. I’m concerned only with your health and that of your baby. Now, have you any sensible questions?’

  Willow shook her head, blinking at the irritability in his voice, which seemed excessive even in the circumstances. As he stalked away to his next patient, the young Irish nurse waited behind to say in a soft brogue: ‘Don’t mind him too much. It’s been a terrible strain for him having to field all Mr Ringstead’s patients like this.’

  She must have been in her early twenties and would have been very pretty if her eyes had not been swollen with tears. Her hair was mouse brown but it gleamed with health under her stiff white cap, and there was a sprinkling of freckles over her small, straight nose. The plastic label on her blue-and-white-striped dress announced that her name was Brigid O’Mara. She looked intelligent and kind, and it was obvious that she was devastated by Mr Ringstead’s death.

  ‘He hasn’t had any sleep yet, and he’s as worried as the rest of us. Are you sure there’s nothing you want to ask? Most new mothers are full of questions and you didn’t look happy when we arrived.’

  Willow gave in and let herself describe the abortive feed and ask for some advice.

  ‘Don’t worry about it too much,’ said Nurse O’Mara, showing no sign of the impatience that Sister Chesil had not bothered to hide the previous night. ‘Most new mothers have trouble feeding their babies at first, but you’ll soon get the hang of it. Everyone does.’

  Willow sighed, hating the mixture of pathetic gratitude and even more pathetic anxiety that she felt.

  ‘I’ll have another go in a minute,’ she said.

  ‘Good. And try not to get upset if it doesn’t work at first. That’ll only make your baby nervous and both of you even more tense. Remember that it always takes time and don’t think you’re getting it wrong. I’ll be back in a while to see how you’re getting on, but I must go now or Doctor Kimmeridge will be getting impatient.’

  ‘Will he have to carry Mr Ringstead’s responsibilities for ever?’ Willow asked, almost clutching Nurse O’Mara’s starched apron in her anxiety not to be left alone with the hungry baby.

  ‘Oh no. He’s just holding the fort until they bring in another con
sultant to take over. Now I must be off. I’ll come back as soon as I can.’

  The baby soon began to whimper and then burst into full-blown crying. Willow scrambled out of bed to pick her up and then took her back into the warmth of the covers.

  ‘Push your breast a bit further in,’ said a kind voice a moment later. Willow looked up and, through watering eyes, saw the woman from the next bed watching her with sympathy. ‘If her gums are further in, they won’t hurt so much.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Willow a moment later. She slowly relaxed. ‘That’s better. It works.’

  ‘Of course it does. Are you all right now?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  ‘Pleasure.’ The other woman walked back to her own baby and efficiently hoisted him into position and started to feed him.

  Willow soon forgot about everything else in the fascination of her first successful unsupervised feed. When Nurse O’Mara came back, Willow greeted her with a broad smile.

  ‘So,’ she said with obvious pleasure. ‘The feed went better, did it?’

  ‘Yes, much better.’

  ‘Well, good for you then.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Willow, just as a clamour of hoarse, angry shouting burst out below her window, vividly reminding her of the previous night. ‘Is that those wretched rioters again?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. The Funny Feminists.’

  ‘What?’

  Nurse O’Mara looked at Willow with all the brightness fading out of her face again. Her lower lip began to tremble. She coughed, swallowed and then said in a reasonably controlled voice: ‘That’s what Mr Ringstead always called them. Sorry.’ She reached for a Kleenex from the box on Willow’s locker, wiped her eyes and then blew her nose. ‘Whenever I think of the things he used to say, it makes me cry.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Willow gently. ‘He had quite a sense of humour, didn’t he?’