As I begin to mumble my story she walks me through to a small back bedroom where floral curtains and a mass of potted plants are allowing only a dim green light to filter onto spartan furnishings: divan bed, armchair, chair, bookcase. There is none of the religious bric-a-brac I had imagined. Not even the texts my mother invariably hangs on bedroom walls (’They shall rise up on wings as eagles: they shall run and not faint’). Perhaps it’s not going to be the performance I expected.
‘Ah, the girl. No, don’t tell me anything, Mr Crawley. No medical details, please. It only interferes. Just lay her on the bed then, will you.’
Naturally as I try to slip her coat off, for the room is over-heated, Hilary wakes with a heart-stopping howl that freezes thought. Her mouth opens wide, wide, wide. She wails. Under my breath I involuntarily mutter, ‘Bloody hell!’ And immediately, startlingly, I sense that although it is surely impossible with the volume of that howling, Miss Whittaker has somehow heard me. I turn quickly to find her smiling at me with sympathy, but also with a certain sternness. Again I am reminded of my mother.
‘You don’t believe, do you, Mr Crawley?’
‘No, I’m afraid I don’t.’
‘You don’t believe I have any power.’
She talks sweetly without any hint of challenge.
‘Well, I. .’
And all the while I’m trying to stop poor bloody Hilary from rolling off the bed. She is unusually agitated.
‘So may I ask why you came?’
With sudden and I know rude belligerence, I say, ‘Why shouldn’t I come? I’ve got nothing to lose.’
She doesn’t react. On the contrary, there is something irritatingly demure about the way she stands with her fleshy white hands folded in front of her. ‘I think I understand,’ she says. ‘In any event it surely doesn’t help if you curse and swear over your child, does it?’ She raises her eyebrows. We exchange a brief glance, during which I again have the impression that she is coolly aware of what I am thinking: that she is a pious fraud.
‘Do you want me to undress her?’ I ask. The child is crying softly now.
‘No, no, you just relax and sit in the armchair for a little, will you?’
I had been afraid I might be asked to pray or something. She waits for me to move away and then goes to the bed and strokes Hilary’s hair. Immediately the child quietens and begins to gurgle softly.
‘What a pretty little girl,’ Miss Whittaker murmurs. ‘What a pretty pink ribbon Mummy has put in your hair. What pretty clothes. Someone’s mummy and daddy think a lot of them, don’t they? Someone’s a very lucky little girl.’
Curiously, she is right. We do think a lot of her.
I sit in the chair watching the woman’s squat back. Hilary is lying quite still and calm, despite the strange place, the strange voice. This is very unusual. A good sign. So, do I sense the faintest ray of hope? It’s quickly quelled. How can this woman even know what’s wrong with my daughter? There’s nothing to be seen without taking her clothes off. She’s not obviously spastic or mongoloid. The charlatan doesn’t know what I brought her for.
Kneeling on a cushion, Miss Whittaker runs her small podgy hands the length of the child’s body, letting them slide lightly over her clothes. Minutes pass. She has stopped talking now, her hands move back and forth, not hypnotically or even rhythmically, but more with a questing motion, stopping here and there, hovering, moving back, coming quietly to rest: on her head for a full minute, above her knees, her ankles, which below her socks, I know, are fierce with scars. Hilary lies still, eyes blindly open, breathing soft. She doesn’t even move when a plump hand covers her face, gently pressing the eyelids. Leaning over her, Miss Whittaker blows very lightly on her forehead. Then repeats the whole rigmarole.
I watch, biting a nail. Fifteen minutes. It’s hard keeping still frankly. I fidget. I feel tense. It’s farcical. For of course, now I’m here, I don’t expect anything. In the end I would have done a lot better by myself and Hilary if I’d gone to St James’s Park. Shirley would think I’d lost my marbles.
Another ten minutes before at last Miss Whittaker rises slowly to her feet, then sits on the bed and strokes Hilary’s hair in what is now an entirely normal way. Immediately the child begins to smile and gurgle again.
‘Poor little lovey.’ Then she turns to me. She says: ‘Well, apart from some small irritation or infection which I may have been able to help, your child is really perfectly healthy, Mr Crawley, and beautifully, beautifully innocent. Don’t you see how her smiles shine?’
What? Is the ‘session’ over? Is that her verdict? But she holds up a hand to stop my protest. ‘As for the question of what she is, I mean the form in which she was sent into this world, I’m afraid it is far, far beyond my humble powers to alter that.’
After a moment’s awkward silence in this dimly-lit room, I decide the best thing to do is cut my losses. Only £12.50 after all. A joke. I stand up to go, reaching for my wallet.
She smiles her sad smile, so similar to any sympathetic, middle-class smile an older woman might give you waiting in a long queue at supermarket or post office. She is still stroking Hilary’s hair. For the first time, standing above her now as she moves her legs, crosses her ankles, I think of her as feminine, ample, faintly perfumed, a woman. They are always women. And she says calmly:
‘Perhaps I could help you, though, Mr Crawley.’
‘I’m sorry, I beg your pardon.’
‘Perhaps I could help you more than your child.’
‘Oh I’m fine.’ Caught by surprise, I automatically assume my jocular office persona. ‘As terminal patients go I mean.’ I laugh falsely. I’m never ready for people’s extraordinary presumption.
She raises her eyebrows. ‘In some ways you may be less healthy than your daughter.’
‘That,’ I tell her emphatically, dropping any attempt at humour, ‘is patently non-sense. Anyway, I’m in a hurry.’
‘Of course, as you wish.’ But then as I extract my wallet, she adds: ‘It’s just that you said you were desperate.’
‘I am. For her.’
‘And for yourself.’
‘Only in so far as I find her suffering unbearable.’
‘So perhaps I could help you with your desperation, help you to bear it.’ She works on me with her soft eyes the way certain women will.
‘Frankly I’d say desperation was the only normal response to this situation. I shall be desperate while she is like she is. She is the cause, not a symptom. And that’s that.’
Miss Whittaker sighs, faintest half-smile wrinkling the corners of a generous pale mouth. ‘As you wish. Dear Hilary,’ she says again as I struggle to get her into her coat.
At the door she declines payment with a simple shake of the head. She has exactly my mother’s serene sad wistfulness. For Christ’s fucking sake. I hate people who won’t take the money you owe them.
And once in the car I go for the Fulham Road with a real vengeance. Only at the second or third lights do I remember I’d offered to take her to Richmond. Of course. Suddenly it’s very important that I honour this promise. I don’t want to be thought a shit. I am not. Quite the contrary. I swing the car through a U-turn, alarming the inevitable pensioner in his Morris 1100. But when I get back to Fernshaw Road no one answers the door. She has put two milk bottles out that I don’t remember seeing before. I look up and down what is after all a fairly long street. Could she really have walked so far?
At the first newsagents I pick up a few bars of chocolate and feed myself quickly, heading for Battersea Park. Who knows if a band mightn’t be playing there? In the mirror I can see poor Hilary’s lolling head. My eyes fill with tears. It is this I can’t stand. I would so dearly like to give my daughter some chocolate, to see her gobble it up greedily like I do. I would like to give her at least this small piggy pleasure: good thick foil-wrapped chocolate. But the sugar brings Hilary out in rashes that cover her whole body.