The Watchful Eye

by Priscilla Masters

  She sounded the woman for him.

  He clicked on the picture and screwed his face up.

  It was hard to say what she looked like. Much of her face was hidden by a thick curtain of dark hair. Her lips were very pink and pouting. He made a face. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  Well – there was only one way to find out.

  He typed in his details, paid his enrolment fee, obtained a Box Number, sat back and smiled. It was as simple as that.

  He felt he had made some progress, gained control.

  What he was forgetting was that we do not have control of our lives at all. The entire roller-coaster, from cradle to grave, is a series of events, each one leading to a destiny of its own. We can turn and twist, but our fate will find us somehow.

  He allowed himself a beer or two, watched some football on the TV, still with the smug, self-satisfied feeling, and dreamt.

  His mother had always called him a romantic, using the word as an insult. And he knew he was. To use one of today’s favourite clichés, he was a man in touch with his feminine side. In his mind’s eye he was already picturing the woman of his dreams. The woman of the photograph, subtly altered. Smiling, not pouting, with clear skin and a positive, chirpy personality. Someone like…Claudine.

  ‘You don’t mind, do you, Brian?’

  He was suddenly, unaccountably truculent. ‘And if I do?’

  ‘Come on, cherie,’ she appealed. ‘Be reasonable.’

  The policeman nodded and dropped his head, almost in an apology.

  His wife took it as such and they watched Bethan play with her dolls, dressing and undressing them in one outfit then another, always, Brian noted, taking great care to fold the clothes and coordinate the bags, the shoes, the trousers, the tops. As she played with the doll she muttered to herself.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll wear this…It’s far too cold for shorts…I never did like that handbag. I shall throw it away.’

  Mother and father smiled at each other.

  Which made Brian feel awful.

  Why couldn’t he have kept his temper?

  His mind flicked back eight years to the girl who had come into the station, begging for his help to free her from the man who was so convinced she loved him he could not leave her alone. His help she had sought and he had failed her. She had been so vulnerable. While he had riled against the law which allowed situations to progress too far before it intervened, he had promised he would help, that he would defend her and that she could trust him to protect her.

  To the death.

  He had searched her face and seen terror. Not simply fright but an abject and paralysing fear.

  He had wanted to protect her as had all the other officers in the station but it had been to him that she had turned and he had puffed his chest out.

  He would have to beat the little shit up. Burn the bastard, he had thought.

  Chapter Eight

  Saturday, 29th April

  It was his turn to attend the Saturday morning surgery. Vanda Struel was distraught, hopping from one foot to the other as she displayed her daughter, almost shaking the child in Daniel’s face. ‘Just look at her leg. It’s a mess. Anyone can see it’s an infection. She needs antibiotics.’ There was anger in her voice, as well as the frightened question, what is wrong with my daughter?

  ‘My mum says there’s summat really wrong with her that you lot aren’t pickin’ up on.’ Vanda’s blue eyes appealed straight into his. ‘But what can I do except keep bringin’ ’er down? I aren’t a doctor, am I?’

  Daniel could not answer her question but turned his attention to the child.

  For once Anna-Louise was showing some emotion. She was in pain and she was frightened. She was always a still child but this morning she was rigid, hardly breathing, her eyes fixed on his in a terrified, frozen stare. Even the little tongue hardly moved. Yet yesterday she had been all right.

  When Daniel reached out to her she gave the softest little whimper. He had worked for six months in the paediatric department of his teaching hospital and to see a child frightened and in pain still upset him. Not for a moment had he ever entertained the idea of staying in paediatrics. He simply wasn’t tough enough. And fathering Holly had finally convinced him that he had made the right choice – to veer away from hospital work into general practice – so he could spend more time with his family. He felt his lip curve into an ironic sneer.

  ‘Let me take a look.’

  Hardened medic as he was, he found it hard not to exclaim when he looked closer at her leg. There was a reddened area as big as a marble which had the classic signs of infection. He remembered the words from medical school. Rubor, dolor, calor. Redness, heat and pain and from his own observations and the way the child flinched when he touched the area he had no doubt that this was all three. Antibiotics was the simple answer. Amoxycillin or one of the other common, broad-spectrum drugs. But now he was beginning to suspect something deeper. Why was the child both retarded in development and prone to this plethora of complaints? Was it as he had suspected – that her mother had a hand in it? He took a syringe from the drawer. ‘Vanda,’ he said. ‘I’m a bit worried about Anna-Louise.’

  Her eyes fixed limpidly on his. Her anger was spent. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I think your mother might be right. It’s possible that she may have something else wrong. Something underlying. I’m going to do some blood tests to try and find out what it is.’

  Most mothers panic at this. If a doctor even hints that a child may have something sinister the matter with them the mother flips. Straight into hysterics.

  Not Vanda Struel. She merely stared back at him, unflinching, unblinking. Unexpectedly he picked up on a family resemblance – for the first time he could see a hint of Bobby in Vanda’s eyes and some of Anna-Louise in her calm acceptance of fate – some passivity in her face too.

  ‘Whatever,’ she said, casually shrugging.

  All doctors verbally walk you along the procedure, as though a patient has no eyes. ‘I’ll have to put a tourniquet around her arm.’ He was watching Vanda very carefully, searching for the return of emotion. He found none. ‘Can you hold her still for me, please?’

  Anna-Louise didn’t flinch when he inserted the needle into the vein. Neither did she scream or struggle. She was completely passive, her dark eyes dry. Not a tear or a whimper escaped from the child. She blinked once when she felt the prick of the needle then she looked away, disinterested.

  Daniel put the bottles in the fridge. They’d missed today’s collection and would have to wait until Monday. He prescribed some antibiotics and told Vanda to bring her back on Monday morning if she was no better.

  Brian Anderton was in a bad mood even before he arrived home. The night had ended badly. The High Street had come to a standstill when two huge pantechnicons had met face to face and, like battle lines drawn up in days of old, both had flatly refused to reverse, prepared, if necessary, to fight to the death. Both drivers sat obstinately in their cabs, arms folded, trying to glare the other one out while behind them the traffic built up making the situation even more impossible. Soon the entire town had been gridlocked with car drivers driven by frustration to keep their hands on their horns, which had made his job worse. He had spent more than an hour reasoning with first one driver and then the other, had directed the traffic himself and finally sorted out the chaos. He’d had a good mind to book the pair of them for obstruction, as well as all the car drivers for causing a disturbance. But it was no use explaining to a Polish lorry driver chinning up to a Liverpudlian that an eighteenth-century High Street had catered for horse-drawn post chaises not cars, let alone lorries. The morning had been warm and afterwards he had sweated in the police van, fuming for twenty minutes after the gridlock had cleared.

  And now he had another two shifts ahead of night duty, which he hated, particularly over the weekend. Bethan might be an only child but she could be very noisy, however much Claudine tried to quieten her. He felt his mouth
tighten. But then, he thought, Bethan would be with her little friend this weekend, the daughter of single, attractive, predatory, Doctor Gregory. he felt his temper getting even worse. He didn’t trust the little squirt as far as he could throw him. And then on top of that some perv was stealing his wife’s lingerie as a bloody sexual trophy. And that, in turn, had resurrected memories he’d been trying to bury for eight whole years. The memories were wounding him even now, humiliating him. She had asked for his help. He’d promised he would but his hands had been tied by the law which had mocked him and failed her. It didn’t matter how often he tried to shift the blame, it always seemed to come back to him.

  He buried his face in his hands but it was no good. He could still see the flames burning orange into his eyes, still feel the awful heat, hear the terrible screams, and worst of all, smell the stench of roasting human flesh. Even now the smell of roast pork could make him retch. He’d asked Claudine never to cook it, saying it didn’t agree with him. It didn’t, but he’d never told her why.

  So PC Anderton had plenty to put him in a bad mood.

  He banged the garden gate open and slotted his key into the door, then went straight into the kitchen, hoping his breakfast would be on the table but it wasn’t, and when he glanced through the kitchen window and caught sight of Claudine’s underwear pegged on the line again he lost his temper.

  ‘Claudine,’ he shouted up the stairs.

  She appeared at the top of the landing. ‘Brian,’ she said. ‘You’re early. Your breakfast isn’t nearly ready. I’m just washing Bethan’s hair. Someone had nits in the classroom.’ She giggled and that further inflamed him.

  ‘Get down here. Now,’ he said, through clenched teeth.

  She hadn’t picked up on the anger in his voice. ‘A minute, please.’

  ‘Down,’ he bellowed. ‘Claudine. NOW.’

  She got the message then, came tripping downstairs in tight jeans and a white, cotton shirt. He noticed she was not wearing a bra.

  ‘What is it, darling?’

  He took her by the arm and shoved her through into the kitchen. ‘What’s that?’

  She followed his gaze. ‘It’s my washing,’ she faltered. ‘You know I hate to dry it in the tumble dryer. It doesn’t smell as nice. The heat of the dryer weakens the elastic and it was such a nice day.’

  Images of the burning man raced across Brian’s mind so he was hardly aware of bringing his hand up. It was as much of a shock to him as to her when he heard the slap.

  She gasped with the pain, tears starting to her eyes. ‘Brian?’

  ‘There’s no need to encourage him,’ he said, dragging her in front of the window. ‘Look at it.’ He forced her face upwards. ‘Look at it,’ he said again. ‘Dancing. Enticing. Exposing. What sort of a woman are you, Claudine?’

  She couldn’t stop the tears now. ‘What sort of a man are you, Brian?’ she sobbed. ‘You never did this before. What is the matter with you?’ Puzzlement made her voice low and troubled.

  ‘You’re a flirt,’ he said. ‘Someone who leads men on, pretends they can have sex with her. Oh yes. You love to walk down the High Street, your basket over your arm, smiling at men.’

  ‘No,’ she protested. ‘No.’ Then, ‘Who are you, Brian? I don’t recognise you.’

  He was still glaring at her when Bethan ran in, her hair still dripping. She looked from one to the other, her mouth a round ‘O’. ‘Mummy, Daddy.’ As she studied her parents she met something she did not understand. ‘Is everything all right?’

  Both parents struggled to reassure her but the expression on Claudine’s face gave the game away. Bethan’s shoulders drooped.

  ‘Go and dry your hair,’ Claudine said quietly. ‘Breakfast won’t be long.’

  Bethan ran from the room.

  Bobby Millin was struggling to get Vanda to realise. ‘Look at her. She ain’t right, is she? Did you tell the doctor what I said? I may not be medically qualified, my girl, but even I can see there’s something wrong with that kid. I don’t know why they’re being so blind. Doctors,’ she finished scathingly.

  But it was no use. Vanda’s attention was all on the television. ‘Doctor’s seen her,’ she muttered, without shifting her gaze from the TV screen. ‘He isn’t worried about her.’

  Bobby moved in front of her to block her daughter’s view of the television set. ‘They don’t know everything, Van. That’s what I’m tellin’ you. Don’t you ever listen to me?’

  Reluctantly Vanda’s eyes fixed on her mother for the briefest of moments. ‘Doctor Gregory’s gettin’ her to see a specialist. He’s put her on antibiotics.’ She gave her mother a fierce look. ‘He took some blood from her. He’s going to send it to the lab. They’ll soon see if anything’s really wrong.’

  ‘It could be too late by then. Look at the state of her.’

  Anna-Louise was sitting on the floor, surrounded by plastic toys but she was not playing. She was sitting very still, her eyes flicking from her grandmother to her mother and back again.

  ‘Take her back to the surgery,’ Bobby urged. ‘Tell Doctor Gregory she needs to see the specialist now. Not in a week or a month. Now.’

  ‘You take her.’ Vanda flicked her cigarette ash carelessly into an ashtray. Worthington’s – nicked from the pub. ‘She’s your granddaughter.’

  Bobby Millin was incensed. ‘She’s your daughter for Heaven’s sake. Don’t you care about her?’

  Vanda’s answer was another dismissive shrug.

  Daniel was struggling with his surgery. Spring had had its effect on him. He desperately wanted some sort of excitement in his life. The surgery seemed dreary, the patients uninteresting. He saw one after the other then pressed the buzzer for the next one, almost groaning when he saw who it was. This he didn’t need.

  ‘I’ve got a pain in my tummy.’

  Today Chelsea was dressed in some loose-fitting trousers which slung low on her hips, revealing a plump stomach, and a brief, low-cut T-shirt that barely covered her breasts.

  Daniel asked the usual questions: where exactly was it? How long had she had it for? Did she have any other symptoms? The questions drew all negative answers.

  ‘Did you take the pill I gave you?’

  He already knew the answer from the evasive look which came into her eyes. ‘I might have forgotten it.’

  ‘When was your last period?’

  Another vague look.

  ‘I’d better examine you,’ he said reluctantly. ‘I’ll call in the nurse as a chaperone.’

  ‘Don’t need one.’ The T-shirt was already pulled over her head exposing plump, bouncing breasts.

  Daniel halted the progress of her undressing. ‘You’d better go into the examination room.’ He handed her a sample jug. ‘Could you manage a sample of urine?’

  Chelsea looked bemused.

  ‘Wee,’ he said. ‘Piss. Urine. Could you manage a sample of it into the jug?’

  The girl giggled. ‘I could try,’ she said jauntily.

  When he joined her in the examination room the girl was naked. Without a word he handed her a towel to cover herself. Her legs were wide open, he noted, a look almost of invitation on her face. She licked moist lips.

  He had been worried she might have an ectopic pregnancy which could rupture the fallopian tube. It was a serious condition – potentially fatal; but he found nothing to support this. Just a slight twinge in the left inguinal fossa. He told her to get dressed and return to the consultation room. Then he took the sample she’d provided to the nurse’s room and watched as Marie tested it. It was negative.

  He advised her to take some painkillers for the discomfort and to come back or even call out the emergency doctor if she had continuing problems. He watched her go with an uncomfortable feeling that he’d missed something, some vital sign. He pushed the thought right to the back of his mind. These niggles could drive a doctor mad. He resolved to forget about her – it was probably nothing more serious than irritable bowel syndrome – and concentrate on the
rest of his surgery.

  To his surprise his last patient of the morning was Maud Allen, suddenly looking her age as she sat down stiffly. She gave him a weak smile. ‘I wasn’t feeling too good,’ she said. ‘To be honest I’m having a bit of pain here.’ She indicated the edge of her breast. It didn’t surprise Daniel that she was experiencing some pain. He’d almost anticipated it.

  ‘Mrs Allen,’ he said. ‘Have you got your appointment through for the clinic?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said brightly. ‘It’s on Tuesday but…’ Her voice faltered. ‘I’m having a problem sleeping.’

  ‘It’s natural,’ he said. ‘I expect you’re worried.’

  She simply nodded.

  ‘But there are…’ He’d been about to say, all sorts of treatments, but she stopped him with a look.

  ‘I don’t want an operation at my age.’

  ‘Mrs Allen, it almost certainly won’t come to that. It can possibly be treated with one simple tablet a day.’

  ‘I’ll believe that when I see it,’ she said. ‘I watched my husband fade away as they injected him with God knows what.’

  ‘Medicine’s advanced since then.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ she said. ‘The only thing I want from you, Daniel, at the moment, is adequate pain relief and something to help me sleep.’

  He nodded, typed out a prescription for morphine and a sleeping tablet and handed it to her. She didn’t even glance at it but smiled. ‘Thank you, Daniel,’ she said.

  He mused for a while after she had gone. She’d only started calling him by his Christian name recently. Previously she had maintained formal address. She had been widowed more than twenty years ago, way before he had joined the practice. Her husband had been a lecturer in Wolverhampton, she a teacher in the secondary school in Stone, Alleyne’s. She lived in one of the ancient cottages up Kerry Lane. He loved the place. Quaint and full of character and original features, arched Gothic windows and with its own apple tree orchard, which did beg to have a pony grazing in it. It would probably be up for sale before long, he mused. Had he, Holly and Elaine still been the happy family he had anticipated, he would have considered buying it and letting Holly have the pony she had so wanted.