Pat Barker: Border Crossing

Lauren was loading the dishwasher. ‘Where did you put my coat, darling?’ he called downstairs.

‘Utility room.’

As soon as he lifted it off the peg, he knew. River mud and, mixed in with that, a whiff of stale tobacco. He thrust his hand into the right pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. It was immediately obvious what had happened. He’d wrapped his own coat round the boy, because it was heavier, and that was the one he’d handed into the ambulance. He couldn’t put off trying to get it back, because there were spare keys in the pocket, and oh God, yes, his address on the envelopes. Admittedly, the boy wasn’t in much of a state to contemplate burglary, but you didn’t know. You didn’t know who or what he was. He could be a drug addict desperate for cash.

‘I seem to’ve got the wrong coat, darling. I’ll have to go to the hospital.’

‘Can’t it wait?’

‘Well, no, not really. There were letters in it.’ He didn’t want to alarm her by mentioning the keys.

It was only a short drive to the General, but then he had to spend fifteen minutes trying to find somewhere to park. Visiting hour. Cars crammed bumper to bumper in every legitimate, and illegitimate, space.

The casualty department was packed. On a bench near the door a boy with a torn ear and blood trickling down his neck stared around with a kind of blank belligerence. A short distance away a young boy, his voice shooting up into registers he never intended, was trying to calm down a middle-aged woman. ‘Howay, Mam. Don’t let him see you upset.’ ‘ Upset? I’ll give him bloody upset…’ On a trolley near by, an old man, with a miner’s blue scars on the backs of his hands, gasped his life away.

‘Ward Eighteen,’ a nurse said, raising her head, briefly, between disasters.

He walked the length of the corridor to Ward Eighteen and stopped by the nurses’ station. An old man in a wheelchair, at the entrance to one of the wards, grabbed a nurse’s behind as she walked past. ‘Now then, Jimmy,’ she said. ‘You be a good lad now.’ The old man cackled in demented glee, and pawed another nurse. They’ll trank the life out of you, old son, Tom thought, if you don’t behave.

A tall, rangy woman with strands of ultra-fine hair escaping from a knot on the top of her head, glasses dangling from a gold chain, and a general air of equine goodwill squeaked up to him on rubber-soled shoes. ‘Tom. Hello!’

Mary Peters. He couldn’t have wished for anyone better. ‘Hello, Mary. I’m looking for an attempted suicide you had brought in this morning. Quite a young lad.’

She twinkled at him. ‘Oh yes, I know. One of yours?’

‘No, this isn’t a professional visit, actually.’ He felt embarrassed. ‘I’m the one who fished him out. Only in the process he ended up with my coat. And I got his.’

‘Yes, we found your coat. And the letters. You’re lucky,’ she said, leading the way down the corridor. ‘The nurse read the name and address on the envelopes and assumed it was his name. You were very nearly admitted.’ She stopped in front of a door. ‘Fortunately he came round in time. His name’s Ian Wilkinson.’ She tapped her throat. ‘And he won’t feel like talking.’

‘What did he take?’

‘Temazepam. About ten, he thinks.’

The young man lying in the bed stared at Tom, the colour draining from his face. Tom was puzzled by the reaction, and by his own sense that he knew this boy. Of course he dealt with hundreds of disturbed young people in the course of a year… Still, he generally remembered them. He wasn’t good with faces, but he remembered names. Ian Wilkinson. It meant nothing.

‘This is Dr Seymour,’ Mary said. ‘Who rescued you. I don’t suppose you…’ Her voice died away, as she registered the atmosphere in the room. ‘Well,’ she said, after a slight pause. ‘I’ll leave you to it, then.’ At the door she turned. ‘Coat in the locker, Tom, when you’re ready.’

‘Thanks,’ he said, shifting his gaze in time to see the door close.

The boy was hauling himself up the bed as if his first impulse were to escape. His colour hadn’t returned. ‘You don’t recognize me, do you?’ he said. ‘I suppose I ought to find that reassuring.’

‘You were covered in mud.’

‘No, I mean before.’ His voice was hoarse. ‘When I was ten. Do you remember, you —’

Oh my God, Tom thought. He sat down heavily on the chair beside the bed. ‘Danny Miller.’

‘That’s right.’

Saying the name changed his perception of the face. Now, second by second, under the sharp bones and planes of the adult face, a child’s rounded, pre-pubescent features rose to the surface, and broke through, like a long-submerged body. ‘I’m sorry,’ Tom said. ‘I didn’t even know you were out.’

‘It was kept pretty quiet, as you can imagine. And…’ He nodded towards the door.

‘Yes, of course. New name.’

‘Ian was the governor’s second name. Wilkinson was the chaplain’s mother’s maiden name.’ His voice was expressionless.

‘How long have you been out?’

‘Ten months.’

‘I won’t ask how it’s going.’

Danny — he couldn’t think of him as Ian! — looked startled for a moment, then burst out laughing. A second later he was pressing his throat. ‘Tube.’

‘It’ll be sore for a few days.’

When Danny could speak again, he said, ‘What do you reckon the chances are of this happening?’

‘Of our meeting like this? A million to one.’

‘Makes you think, doesn’t it?’

It certainly did. Tom was already wondering whether this was genuine coincidence, or a dramatic gesture gone badly, almost fatally, wrong. Dramatic gestures of that kind are not uncommon, and they very frequently do go wrong, because the people making them usually have spectacularly flawed judgement. But to believe the meeting had been intended, he’d have to believe that Danny, for some undisclosed reason, had located him, and then, instead of ringing the doorbell, had decided to introduce himself by jumping into the river. It made no sense.

‘You know, when something like this happens,’ Danny said, ‘it makes you realize things aren’t just random. There is a purpose.’

Yes, possibly, Tom thought. But whose? ‘It doesn’t make me think that.’

‘You know the chaplain I just mentioned? He used to say coincidence is the crack in human affairs that lets God or the Devil in.’

Tom smiled. ‘I think what we need to let into human affairs is a bit more rationality.’

A pause. They seemed to have got in very deep, very quickly. Almost as if he’d read Tom’s thoughts, Danny said, ‘At least we’re not talking about the weather while you eat all the grapes.’

There were no grapes. No visitors. Nothing. Looking round the bleak, bare room, Tom knew it was impossible just to take his coat and go. ‘When do they say you’ll be out?’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Will you go home?’

‘No, I’m in a bedsit. I’m a student.’

‘What’re you reading?’

‘English.’

‘Do you have somebody you can talk to?’

A shrug. ‘My probation officer. Martha Pitt.’

‘Oh yes, I know Martha. Shall I give her a ring and tell her you’re here?’

‘No, don’t bother, it’s the weekend. She has enough trouble with me. She was trailing over the Pennines last weekend to come and get me. I ran away to prison.’

‘You went back to prison?’

‘Yeah, I know. Sounds mad, doesn’t it?’

‘What happened?’

‘They told me to bugger off. And then the governor rang Martha, and she came and got me.’

‘Was that when you —’

‘Decided to go for a swim? No.’ He looked away. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps it was. It certainly didn’t help.’