For the Sake of Elena

She led him into a conference room that was roughly the size of an academic classroom. It contained little more than a large, rectangular table covered by green linen. At this, a young man was sitting, bent over a notebook. Lank hair the colour of old wet straw fell across his wide brow and into his eyes. As he wrote, he paused to chew at the fingernails of his left hand.

Bernadette said, “Wait a sec,” and from the door she flashed the lights off and on.

Gareth Randolph looked up. He got slowly to his feet, and as he did so, he gathered up from the table a large pile of used tissues, crushing them into a wad in his fist. He was a tall boy, Lynley saw, with a pallid complexion against which the scattered pits of old acne scars stood out in crimson. He wore typical student garb: blue jeans and a sweatshirt onto which had been stencilled the words What’s your sign? superimposed over two hands making a gesture which Lynley couldn’t interpret.

The boy said nothing at all until Bernadette spoke. And even then, since his eyes were on Lynley, he made a rough gesture so that Bernadette had to repeat her fi rst remark.

“This is Inspector Lynley from New Scotland Yard,” she said a second time. Her hands fluttered like quick, pale birds just below her face. “He’s come to talk to you about Elena Weaver.”

The boy’s eyes went back to Lynley. He looked him over from head to toe. He replied, hands chopping the air, and Bernadette interpreted simultaneously. “Not in here.”

“Fine,” Lynley said. “Wherever he likes.”

Bernadette’s hands flew over Lynley’s words, but as they did she continued with, “Speak to Gareth directly, Inspector. Call him you, not him. Else it’s quite dehumanising.”

Gareth read and smiled. His gestures in response to Bernadette’s were fluid. She laughed.

“What did he say?”

“He said, Ta, Bernie. We’ll make you a deaf woman yet.”

Gareth led them out of the conference room and back down the hall to an unventilated office made overly warm by a wheezing radiator. Inside, there was not much space for more than a desk, metal bookshelves on the walls, three plastic chairs, and a separate birch veneer table on which stood a Ceephone identical to those that Lynley had seen elsewhere.

Lynley realised with his first question that he would be at a disadvantage in this sort of interview. Since Gareth watched Bernadette’s hands in order to read Lynley’s words, there would not be an opportunity to catch a revealing if fleeting expression quickly veiled in his eyes should a question take him unaware. Additionally, there would be nothing to read in his voice, in his tone, in what he stressed or what he deliberately left unaccentuated. Gareth had the advantage of the silence that defi ned his world. Lynley wondered how, and if, he would use it.

“I’ve been hearing a great deal about your relationship with Elena Weaver,” Lynley said. “Dr. Cuff from St. Stephen’s apparently brought you together.”

“For her own good,” Gareth replied, the hands again sharp and staccato in the air. “To help her. Maybe save her.”

“Through DeaStu?”

“Elena wasn’t deaf. That was the problem. She could have been, but she wasn’t. They wouldn’t allow it.”

Lynley frowned. “What do you mean? Everyone’s said-”

Gareth scowled and grabbed a piece of paper. With a green felt-tip pen he scrawled out two words: Deaf and deaf. He drew three heavy lines under the upper case D and shoved the paper across the desk.

Bernadette spoke as Lynley looked at the two words. Her hands included Gareth in the conversation. “What he means, Inspector, is that Elena was deaf with a lower case d. She was disabled. Everyone else round here- Gareth especially-is Deaf with an upper case D.”

“D for different?” Lynley asked, thinking how this assessment went legions to support Justine Weaver’s words to him that day.

Gareth’s hands took over. “Different, yes. How could we not be different? We live without sound. But it’s more than that. Being Deaf is a culture. Being deaf is a handicap. Elena was deaf.”

Lynley pointed to the first of the two words. “But you wanted her to be Deaf, like you?”

“Wouldn’t you want a friend to run instead of crawl?”

“I’m not sure I follow the analogy.”

Gareth shoved his chair backwards. It screeched against the linoleum fl oor. He went to the bookshelf and pulled down two large leather-bound albums. He dropped them onto the desk. Lynley saw that across each was imprinted the acronym DeaStu with the year beneath it.

“This is Deaf.” Gareth resumed his seat.

Lynley opened one of the albums at random. It appeared to be a record of the activities in which the deaf students had engaged during the previous year. Each term had its own identifying page on which Michaelmas, Lent, or Easter had been written in fi ne calligraphy.

The record consisted of both written documents and photographs. It encompassed everything from DeaStu’s American football team whose plays were called by students on the sidelines who beat an enormous drum to signal the team via vibration-code, to dances held with the aid of powerful speakers which conveyed the rhythm of the music in much the same way, to picnics and meetings in which dozens of hands moved at once and dozens of faces lit with animation.

Bernadette said over Lynley’s shoulder, “That’s called wind-milling, Inspector.”

“What?”

“When everyone signs at once like that. All their hands are going. Like windmills.”

Lynley continued through the book. He saw three rowing teams whose strokes were orchestrated by coxswains utilising small red fl ags; a ten-member percussion group who used the movement of an oversized metronome to keep their pulsating rhythm together; grinning men and women in camouflage setting out with banners that read DeaStu Search and Pellet; a group of flamenco dancers; another of gymnasts. And in every photograph, participants in an activity were surrounded and supported by people whose hands spoke the language of commonality. Lynley returned the album.

“It’s quite a group,” he said.

“It’s not a group. It’s a life.” Gareth replaced the albums. “Deaf is a culture.”

“Did Elena want to be Deaf?”

“She didn’t know what Deaf was until she came to DeaStu. She was taught to think that deaf meant disabled.”

“That’s not the impression I’ve been getting,” Lynley said. “From what I understand, her parents did everything possible to allow her to fit into a hearing world. They taught her to read lips. They taught her to speak. It seems to me that the last thing they thought was that deaf meant disabled, especially in her case.”

Gareth’s nostrils flared. He said, “Fug at sht, fug ’t,” and began to sign with hands that pounded through his words.

“There is no fitting into a hearing world. There’s only bringing the hearing world to us. Make them see us as people as good as they are. But her father wanted her to play at hearing. Read lips like a pretty girl. Talk like a pretty girl.”

“That can’t be a crime. It is, after all, a hearing world that we live in.”

“A hearing world you live in. The rest of us without sound get on fine. We don’t want your hearing. But you can’t believe that, can you, because you think you’re special instead of just different.”

Again, it was only a slight variation on the theme Justine Weaver had introduced. The deaf weren’t normal. But then, for God’s sake, neither were the hearing most of the time.

Gareth was continuing. “We are her people. DeaStu. Here. We can support. We can understand. But he didn’t want that. He didn’t want her to know us.”

“Her father?”

“He wanted to make believe she could hear.”

“How did she feel about that?”

“How would you feel if people wanted you to play at being something you weren’t?”

Lynley repeated his earlier question. “Did she want to be Deaf?”

“She didn’t know-”