Tree of Hands by Ruth Rendell Page A

thought I’d find your spare car keys and come down here and get your car and practise driving. And that’s what I did. I’ve been doing it all morning. I’m quite an expert now.’
    Benet said nothing. It was better not. It was always best to control one’s temper with Mopsa. She turned away, first managing a strained smile. Her mouth felt dry and there was a pain pressing on the bone above her eyes. James, his skin bluish, was taking a breath every second now. For one brief instant she thought of, she pictured, that tiny narrow passage, no thicker than a darning needle, a thread, the stem of a daisy, through which all the air for James’s lungs and brain and heart must pass, and then she pushedthe thought away with such force that she made a little sound, a stifled ‘ah!’ Mopsa looked at her. They were going up to the operating theatre in the lift, all of them.
    â€˜Croup? He has to have an operation for croup? I can’t believe it. There must be something they’re not telling you.’
    Ian Raeburn said, ‘There is nothing more complicated than a swollen larynx.’
    Benet noticed a harsh, even ragged, edge to his voice she hadn’t heard there before. Did he too find Mopsa almost unbearably irritating? He went between the double doors into the theatre and the nurse carrying James went with him. Mr Drew was already there. Benet wondered if she should have insisted on going in there with James. He would be having the anaesthetic now though, it would soon be over . . . There was a kind of waiting room here, comfortless like all waiting rooms, with armless chairs and unread magazines. Four floors higher than the children’s ward, it overlooked a panorama of roofs and spires. The old workhouse windows showed a spread of the top of London with a horizon of Hampstead Heath, so green it hurt the eyes. The sunshine looked warm because it was so warm inside, a still, constant hospital heat, smelling faintly of limes.
    â€˜He’s going to be all right, isn’t he?’ Mopsa said. ‘I mean he’s not in danger?’
    Benet felt sick. ‘As far as I know, this is just routine. I don’t really know any more about it than you do.’
    â€˜Mrs Fenton’s sister had one of those trach-whatever-they-are things done. She had cancer of the throat.’
    I must not hate my mother . . .
    â€˜Your father phoned when I got back last night. He was very worried about me. He’d been phoning all the evening. I didn’t say anything about James. I thought it best not to.’
    Pointless to argue about that. A waste of time even to attempt to find out why Mopsa thought it best not to. Benet picked up one of the magazines but the print wasa black and white pattern, the illustrations meaningless juxtapositions of colours. She found herself thinking of the tree of hands, all the hands upraised, supplicating, praying.
    The double doors opened and Ian Raeburn came out. He stood there for a moment. Benet jumped up, still holding the magazine, her nails going through the shiny paper. His face was as grey as James’s had been. He took a step towards her, cleared his throat to find a voice and began apologizing, saying he was sorry, they were all sorry, beyond measure sorry. He stopped and swallowed and told her that James was dead.
    The floor rose up and she fell forward in a faint.

5
    EVERY OTHER SATURDAY, Carol was allowed to have Ryan and Tanya home and sometimes they stayed overnight. It was usually Barry who went over to Four Winds at Alexandra Park to fetch them. Carol liked to have a lie-in on Saturdays. She had a bath every morning anyway, it was a rule of life with her, but on Saturdays she made a special ritual of it, putting avocado-and-wheatgerm bubble bath in the water and rubbing body lotion on herself afterwards, washing her hair and giving it a blow-dry and painting her nails. There wasn’t a mark on Carol’s body from having had