Ian McEwan - The Children Act

“When they all stood? I almost cracked up completely.”

“It was the last song.”

“The Mahler.”

“‘The Salley Gardens.’”

He assumed an amused, disbelieving look. He had heard her perform it with Mark a dozen times before. “How so?”

There was also in his manner a touch of impatience. He was wanting to fulfill the promise of a wonderful evening, to put their marriage back together, kiss her, open another bottle, take her to bed, make everything easy between them once more. She knew him well, she saw all this, and again she felt sorry for him, but she felt it from a great distance.

She said, “A memory. From the summer.”

“Yes?” His tone was only mildly curious.

“A young man played that tune to me on his violin. He was just learning. It was in a hospital. I sang along. I think we made a bit of a din. Then he wanted to play it again, but I had to leave.”

Jack was in no mood for puzzles. He struggled to keep the irritation out of his voice. “Start again. Who was this?”

“A very strange and beautiful young man.” She spoke vaguely, trailing away.

“And?”

“I suspended proceedings while I went to his bedside to see him. You remember. A Jehovah’s Witness, very ill, refusing treatment. It was in the papers.”

If he needed reminding it was because he was installed in Melanie’s bedroom at the time. Otherwise, they would have discussed the case.

He said staunchly, “I think I remember it.”

“I gave the hospital leave to treat him and he recovered. The judgment had… it had an effect on him.”

They stood as they had earlier, on each side of the fire, which now gave off a fierce heat. She stared down into the flames. “I think… I think he had strong feelings for me.”

Jack set down his empty glass. “Go on.”

“When I was on circuit he followed me up to Newcastle. And I…” She wasn’t going to tell him what happened there, and then she changed her mind. No point concealing anything now. “He walked through the rain to find me and… I did something so stupid. In the hotel. I don’t know what I was… I kissed him. I kissed him.”

He took a step away from the fire’s heat, or from her. She no longer cared.

She whispered, “He was the sweetest fellow. He wanted to come and live with us.”

“Us?”

Jack Maye had come of age in the 1970s among all its currents of thought. He had taught in a university his entire adult life. He knew all about the illogic of double standards, but knowing could not protect him. She saw the anger in his face, tightening the muscles along his jaw, hardening his eyes.

“He thought I could change his life. I suppose he wanted to make me into a kind of guru. He thought I could… He was so earnest, so hungry for life, for everything. And I didn’t…”

“So you kissed him and he wanted to live with you. What are you trying to tell me?”

“I sent him away.” She shook her head, and for the moment she couldn’t speak.

Then she looked at Jack. He stood well away from her, feet apart, arms crossed, his still-handsome, good-natured face stiff with anger. A wisp of silvery chest hair curled up through his open-necked shirt. She had sometimes seen him tease it up with a comb. That the world should be filled with such detail, such tiny points of human frailty, threatened to crush her and she had to look away.

Only now, when it stopped, were they aware of the rain that had been beating at the windows.

Into this deeper silence he said, “So what’s happened? Where is he now?”

She spoke in a quiet monotone. “I heard it tonight from Runcie. Some weeks ago his leukemia came back and he was taken into hospital. He refused the transfusion they wanted to give him. That was his decision. He was eighteen and there was nothing anyone could do. He refused and his lungs filled with blood and he died.”

“So he died for his faith.” Her husband’s voice was cold.

She looked at him without comprehension. She realized that she had not explained herself at all, that there was so much she hadn’t told him.

“I think it was suicide.”

For some seconds neither spoke. They heard voices, laughter and footsteps in the square. The musical event was breaking up.

He cleared his throat softly. “Were you in love with him, Fiona?”

The question undid her. She let out a terrible sound, a smothered howl. “Oh Jack, he was just a child! A boy. A lovely boy!” And she began to weep at last, standing by the fire, her arms hanging hopelessly at her sides, while he watched, shocked to see his wife, always so self-contained, at the furthest extremes of grief.

She was beyond speech and the crying would not stop and she could not bear any longer to be seen. She stooped to gather up her shoes and hurried across the room in her stockinged feet and along the hallway. The further away from him she was, the louder she cried. She reached her bedroom, slammed the door behind her and, without turning on the light, fell onto the bed and sank her face into a pillow.

HALF AN HOUR later, when she woke, climbing in a dream an interminable vertical ladder from the depths, she had no memory of falling asleep. Still in a daze, she lay on her side, facing the door. Along its bottom edge, a slit of light from the hallway was reassuring. But the imagined scenes before her were not. Adam falling ill again, returning home weakened to his loving parents, meeting the kindly elders, returning to the faith. Or using it as the perfect cover to destroy himself. May he who drowns my cross by his own hand be slain . In low light she saw him as she had on her visit to Intensive Care. The pale thin face, the shaded purple under huge violet eyes. The caked tongue, arms like sticks, so ill, so determined on death, so full of charm and life, pages of his poetry spilling over the bed, pleading with her to stay and play their song again when she had to return to court.

There, in court, with the authority and dignity of her position, she offered him, instead of death, all of life and love that lay ahead of him. And protection against his religion. Without faith, how open and beautiful and terrifying the world must have seemed to him. With that thought she slipped back into a deeper sleep and woke minutes later to the singing and the sighing of the gutters. Would it ever stop raining? She saw the solitary figure making his way up the drive of Leadman Hall, bent against the rainstorm, finding a way in the dark, hearing the falling branches. He must have seen ahead the lights in the house and known she was there. He shivered in an outhouse, wondering, waiting for his chance to talk to her, risking everything in the pursuit of—what exactly? And believing he could get it from a woman in her sixtieth year who had risked nothing in life beyond a few reckless episodes in Newcastle a long time ago. She should have been flattered. And ready. Instead, on a powerful and unforgivable impulse, she kissed him, then sent him away. Then ran away herself. Failed to answer his letters. Failed to decipher the warning in his poem. How ashamed she was now of her petty fears for her reputation. Her transgression lay beyond the reach of any disciplinary panel. Adam came looking for her and she offered nothing in religion’s place, no protection, even though the Act was clear, her paramount consideration was his welfare. How many pages in how many judgments had she devoted to that term? Welfare, well-being, was social. No child is an island. She thought her responsibilities ended at the courtroom walls. But how could they? He came to find her, wanting what everyone wanted, and what only free-thinking people, not the supernatural, could give. Meaning.

When she shifted position she felt against her face the pillow wet and cold. Fully awake now, she pushed it aside to reach for another, and was surprised to touch a warm body stretched out alongside her, at her back. She turned. Jack lay with his head propped on his hand. With the other he pushed her hair clear of her eyes. It was a tender gesture. By the light from the hall she could just see his face.