The Watchful Eye

by Priscilla Masters

  There was a brief embarrassed silence which Claudine filled. ‘Maybe I should have done some nibbles,’ she said doubtfully.

  Her husband cut right across her. ‘You know I don’t like them,’ he said. ‘They spoil your appetite.’

  ‘Mmm.’ She eyed him over the rim of her glass, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

  Daniel set aside thoughts of olives and a bowl of crisps.

  ‘The girls are setting the table for me.’ She was still smiling but it was a little less natural, a little more strained. ‘I hope they do a good job.’

  Brian stretched across and gripped his wife’s arm. ‘I was consulting Daniel about our little problem,’ he said.

  ‘Oh.’ Claudine’s face became even more strained. ‘I didn’t want anyone to know…’ Her voice trailed away.

  ‘He’s a doctor,’ Brian said crossly.

  Claudine looked at Daniel. ‘It’s quite horrible,’ she said, slowly, ‘imagining some strange person touching something so intimate. I feel surprisingly…’ she turned her toffee eyes on him, ‘violated,’ she finished.

  Again Daniel felt his face flush like a thirteen-year-old’s.

  ‘So why does he do it, Daniel?’ Her face was open. He noticed her skin, tanned, very smooth, her mouth, pursed in a typically French way, as though she was about to utter the ‘u’.

  But it was her husband, not Daniel, who answered her appeal. ‘Because he fancies you, apparently.’ It was said with venom. ‘And he has problems with normal relationships.’ He spoke carelessly but his face was grim. Daniel reflected that he would not change places with the petty thief when Anderton finally collared him. He would beat the shit out of him. ‘She thinks,’ he continued, mockery pitching his voice higher, ‘that it’s because she’s French.’ Now there was a distinct note of malice in his voice which was making Daniel feel even more uncomfortable. There is nothing worse than being party to marital disharmony. Made even more poignant by the fact that he could hear the two girls shrieking and playing over their heads in, presumably, Bethan’s room.

  Claudine flushed and protested. ‘I only asked, Brian.’

  ‘You only asked,’ he mocked in a fake treble voce voice.

  Daniel felt sorry for her so he tried to reassure her. ‘Brian’s right,’ he said. ‘It is usually some poor inadequate person. Someone who’s not having much success with women. They’re usually socially gauche. They’re not generally predatory, Claudine. I doubt it’s directed at you simply because you’re French and for what it’s worth I don’t think you’re in danger.’ He smiled to give his words credence.

  Anderton cleared his throat noisily.

  ‘I’ve told Claudine that I’ve had experience of this sort of thing before and that in that case it did escalate.’ His words were both a challenge and a threat.

  His wife’s face was taut. Anderton leant forward towards her, his face mean and hungry. ‘I’m not going to let this happen.’ He waited just a minute before continuing towards what must be the logical and predictable next step. ‘This is a small town, Daniel,’ he said softly. ‘Your practice is the only one. You must know practically everyone in Eccleston – particularly the weirdos. You’ve had training – some – in this sort of affair.’

  It was an unfortunate word to use. Even more when his voice was heavy with menace.

  But Brian Anderton blundered on. ‘You know what sort of person would do this. The type.’ He drained the last drops of his second lager. ‘You can profile the person, keep a watch out.’ Then he hit with his question. ‘Can you think of anyone like that in this town?’

  Daniel pushed the image of Guy Malkin firmly to the back of his mind. He was appalled that the policeman was even asking him to collude with something so patently unethical. ‘You can’t ask me to make guesses,’ he said – perhaps a little stronger than he had meant. ‘My patients have an absolute right to confidentiality. I can’t start pointing you towards one of them. It’s not always easy to tell anyway. What if my guess was wrong?’

  Anderton moved forward. ‘And if it was your wife?’

  Daniel felt his face become shuttered and hurt. Too late Anderton realised his mistake. ‘Sorry, mate,’ he said clumsily, rising to his feet, disappearing and returning with another couple of lagers. ‘Sore subject. Didn’t mean to tread on corns.’ Involuntarily they both glanced down at his size elevens and Daniel reflected that with his big feet and clumsy personality Anderton had probably trodden on a lot of corns in his time.

  ‘I don’t think these people are generally violent,’ he said, struggling to return to the original subject. ‘I think your tragedy, Brian, was an extreme case.’ He allowed his gaze to settle on the policeman’s hard, strong face. ‘But if you like I’ve got a friend who’s a forensic psychiatrist. I could ask her for a profile if you like. Then you’d at least have some idea of what you’re up against. At least it might help you identify the suspect.’ He smiled. ‘Nip it in the bud. In the meantime,’ he turned to look at Claudine who was watching him, her slim fingers with their gold wedding band wound around the stem of her wine glass, ‘I suggest you dry your washing indoors.’

  ‘That’s what I told her,’ Anderton said loudly, jabbing the air towards her with his forefinger.

  Daniel was again flooded with embarrassment.

  The silence grew. Daniel glanced across at the policeman once or twice and wondered if he was imagining the chill that was creeping between them. He was relieved when he heard a buzzer sounding from the kitchen and Claudine jumped up. ‘Oh, I forgot to uncork the wine. Will you do it please, Brian?’

  It broke up the conversation effectively.

  As Daniel had anticipated the meal was good, very good: chicken breasts in a white wine sauce, vegetables slightly crunchy, potatoes cooked in garlic, butter and cream. Holly kept smacking her lips and saying it was ‘yummy’. She had second helpings and he teased her about being a pig. Bethan, he noticed, ate sparingly, like her mother. Not for the first time he wondered that the best cooks in the world are also the slimmest race. He and Claudine watched the two girls eating indulgently. Brian, he noticed, was quiet and something told Daniel he was feeling alienated from him.

  What he had done to upset the policeman he didn’t know.

  The food was the tastiest he had eaten in ages and that included restaurant food.

  It also felt good to be eating in company again. The girls chattered throughout the meal, making the slight awkwardness between the two men less obvious.

  Claudine waited until she had served the cheese before asking, ‘And how is Elaine?’

  Daniel looked up. ‘I didn’t realise you knew her.’

  ‘Not well,’ she said, ‘we were just acquaintances.’

  She flushed suddenly and looked down at her food which made Daniel decide that she hadn’t much liked his ex-wife.

  ‘Doing well,’ he replied tightly.

  ‘Mummy’s getting married again,’ Holly piped up. ‘I’m being her bridesmaid.’

  ‘Oh.’ Daniel felt Claudine’s sharp look at him.

  He tried to make light of it. ‘Time to move on.’

  Bethan piped up. ‘When did you know Holly’s mummy?’

  ‘Years ago. You and Holly were in the little playgroup together just behind the library.’

  Both girls stared at her.

  ‘You won’t remember it. You were just small.’ Claudine laughed and rumpled her daughter’s hair. ‘Just a baby.’

  Bethan scowled. Like most girls of that age she hated to be reminded that once she had been a baby.

  As they finished the cheese course Daniel helped Claudine carry the dishes back into the kitchen, leaving Brian sitting at the table, staring stonily in front of him as though wondering how much longer he had to suffer the intruders.

  Claudine stacked the dishes tidily in the sink, rinsing them before putting them in the dishwasher. ‘I thought we’d have the cheese before dessert,’ she said. ‘I hope you don’t mind doing it the French way. We can r
elax and have a little more of the wine.’ Her eyes were bright with mischief. ‘I hope you’re not thinking of driving back, Daniel. My husband is off duty tonight but one of his colleagues might just pick you up and breathalyse you.’ She threw her head back in a wide laugh. ‘That really wouldn’t do for the town doctor, would it?’

  ‘No. No. We’ll walk.’

  ‘That’s good. Then you don’t have to worry about enjoying the wine.’

  Her manner was flirtatious and he knew that she was fully aware of that. Then followed a small embarrassing incident but it consolidated the instinct that the policeman resented his presence. Daniel had stepped aside for Claudine to walk before him through the kitchen door, back into the dining room, but that meant she must squeeze between him and the fridge freezer. Their kitchen was not big.

  At the same time Anderton must have fancied a third or fourth lager. He walked in at just the worst possible moment. Daniel and Claudine were pressed together.

  Anderton said nothing but his eyes were wary and suspicious.

  Daniel spoke. ‘I’m sorry.’ For one brief second he had felt the curve of her buttocks against him and pulled back.

  ‘OK. OK. No problem,’ she said, it seemed both to Daniel and her husband.

  Wisely, after the satisfying meal, she had prepared a small cheese board with some Comte, a strong Cheddar and a wedge of Shropshire Blue. It was served on a blue and white Wedgwood plate with some oat biscuits and a bunch of grapes artistically draped over the cheeses. Dessert was the best mousse au chocolat he had eaten in his entire life and that included lunches at the Savoy when his mother had treated the impoverished medical student to decent food. Since first trying it then it had been his abiding favourite, so he considered himself an expert on the subject.

  He shared this with Claudine and took pleasure in her broad smile. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘A compliment indeed and from such an authority on chocolate mousse.’ She frowned and teased him further. ‘Such an extensive subject and one that requires hours of research and a lot of dedication.’ She opened her eyes very wide as she spoke. He and the girls giggled with her, trying to ignore the fact that Brian had made no comment but was scowling into his lager can.

  They lingered over a last glass of wine but Holly was getting sleepy and it would take them ten minutes to walk home. At ten o’clock he finally stood up, effusive in his thanks. Claudine offered him both cheeks to kiss and Bethan gave her rediscovered friend a hug. Brian merely nodded without looking up.

  The police house door closed behind them and they set off for home.

  There was a short cut that threaded behind the church, through some new builds, which would shorten their walk home. The night was chilly and Holly started grumbling at having to walk at all but there was no way he was going to risk being banned from driving. It could cost him his job. So they set out. The new builds were still little more than a building site, lit by orange arc lights to discourage theft.

  A hooded figure walked towards him and he clutched at Holly’s hand, thinking about Anderton’s little problem.

  ‘Evening, Doctor.’

  He couldn’t be sure who it was. Some patient he had had a brushing encounter with. It started him thinking how very sinister hooded figures could be – from yardies to hoodies, from monks’ cowls to the burkha. There is something scary about people who veil their faces against recognition.

  He puzzled about the hooded figure’s identity most of the way home, then gave up.

  Holly was tired. Her eyelids were drooping even as she washed, cleaned her teeth and put her nightdress on. He started to read her part of the Narnia Chronicles but she was asleep before he’d got to the bottom of the first page.

  A message was flashing on the answerphone. He pressed play and heard his ex-wife’s solicitous enquiry about Holly which made him angry. Surely she could trust him to look after his own daughter? Then he realised she was doing it simply to rile him. Elaine had a real talent for selecting the very phrases that would most annoy him.

  Daniel banged his finger down to press delete, poured himself another glass of wine and slumped in front of the usual Saturday night dreadful telly.

  He couldn’t concentrate on the film at all, a weird murder mystery that shoe-horned Martians, flesh-eaters and a cat burglar together with a woman with impossibly pointed breasts into the same one and a half hours. He sat back, his eyes on the TV but his mind wandering through the past week.

  He was beginning to realise that a few things had disturbed him recently. Sometimes it took until the weekend to have time to ponder. He was concerned about Anna-Louise Struel. Recently there had been a plethora of articles in the medical press as well as a graphic television programme which had clearly shown mothers deliberately harming their children. Did Vanda simply fabricate these stories to gain attention or was she really harming her own daughter? He must speak to Caroline Letts, the forensic psychiatrist he knew, and learn some clues that could alert him to the truth. He knew the basics – that situations like this invariably meant some pathology in the mother. Which would put Anna-Louise further at risk. Daniel sighed. The silly film had finished and he was getting maudlin. He knew he was going to have to share his concerns with his partners and they would all have to be vigilant. It was an added pressure to an already busy job. And now there was Anderton’s silly story, which was altering his perception of this chocolate-box town. It wasn’t simply the minor theft from the policeman’s washing line that was troubling him. It was that he knew Anderton’s perception of these minor events was coloured by his previous experience. On top of that he was worried that when Anderton caught the perpetrator he would explode.

  So now, for him, the town was spoilt – less than perfect. For him Eccleston had always held the magic of a storybook place, almost a film set. It was why he had jumped at the chance to join the practice here. Now he could see that there was something contrived – almost unreal – about it. One of the first things he had done when he and Elaine had moved here had been to seek out the local historians through the library. So he knew that the Georgian façades and prolific hostelry existed because in the eighteenth century Eccleston had been an important coaching post en route to Chester, itself an important city. The decades had wrought their change. But there had been a deliberate attempt to conserve the High Street and now the entire area had a conservation order slapped on it. There was still a butcher and a baker. All, he thought, with a sudden chill, but the candlestick maker. For the first time since he had come to live here he wondered whether this perfection came at a price. The next moment he was telling himself the obvious truth that here, as everywhere else, whatever the superficial appearances might suggest, people were people. Good, bad, clever, stupid, kind, cruel.

  Anna-Louise, Guy Malkin, Arnie Struel. These were the real inhabitants of Eccleston. Maud Allen’s day was well over. The last of her generation, she would leave behind a legacy of a world which had been vaporised.

  And so, only slightly disgruntled, he went to bed.

  He was woken on Sunday morning by the peal of the church bells from the Holy Trinity. As there was no movement from Holly’s room he made his coffee and returned to bed, mug of coffee and Sunday paper in hand, to listen to them. He even opened his bedroom window to hear them more clearly. Wherever you go in the world you will hear specific sounds which relate to the religion of the populace. As the muezzin calls the faithful to prayer in Muslim areas throughout the world, the Buddhist is summoned by handbells, so you hear the call for Christians in a peal of church bells. Inevitably it reminded him of poetry –

  ‘What passing bells for those who die as cattle?’

  ‘Stands the church clock at ten to three

  And is there honey still for tea?’

  He drank his coffee, scanned the paper and reflected how seduced he had been by village England, how hard he had fought to become the country GP, how very much he had wanted to be the family man, old tweeds, digging the garden. And instead here he was,
snarled up in modernism, divorced, an absentee father, plucking up courage to trawl the Internet for someone who would share his dream.

  Suddenly he felt like hurling the cup across the room.

  Holly overslept in the morning and he fidgeted around downstairs, waiting for her to appear. Every time he put his head round the door she was still fast asleep, breathing noisily. At ten he finally heard her stir and she appeared, tangled-haired, rubbing her eyes, in her pink pyjamas. ‘Is it very late, Daddy?’

  He was reminded of the White Rabbit. Late. Late. Always late. From the time when he awoke on a Sunday he was aware that the day was foreshortened. Elaine would arrive between four and five and reclaim her daughter, so he resented the lie-in robbing him of precious time with Holly.

  He cooked breakfast, aware of precious moments ebbing away like the tide. It was a tradition that he fed her up and she loved scrambled eggs. While he was waiting for the eggs to cook she washed her wellies until they were clean enough to wear round the house and later in her mother’s car. At twelve he drove her to one of the nearby farms to see the newborn lambs and he watched her indulgently while she stroked the animals, running from pen to pen, cooing over the calves.