The Long Corridor

by Catherine Cookson

  The clock in the hall struck the quarter-hour. It would soon be time to start surgery, but he would go in the kitchen and have a cup of tea with Maggie first.

  In the kitchen, Maggie said to him, ‘I would like to slip into Newcastle; it’s me niece, she’s bad. There was a letter waitin’ for me at the house when I slipped along a while ago. I could be back by nine or so.’

  ‘You go on, Maggie, and do what you want to. And look, I’m all right here, get yourself home to bed tonight.’

  ‘I’ll do no such thing. I’ll stay here until Miss Jenny and the child comes back. And if you want my opinion I think you’re mad not to let them know.’

  ‘Perhaps I am, Maggie, but I’ve worked it out it’s better that way.’

  ‘Have your own way then, but don’t tell me to go until they’re in the house.’

  He put his cup down, patted her shoulder as he passed her, and went to his surgery.

  Elsie as usual had placed the patients’ cards on his desk, and he began to look through them. Annie Mullen was the first. He hadn’t seen Annie for months. It came back to his mind the very night she had paid her last visit; it was the same night as Jinny had come back and said she was married. It was also the same night that Bett had told him that one day she would get him where she wanted him. He shied away from the thoughts that might lead to renewed recrimination of his wife. She was gone; let her rest. He felt nothing but pity for her now…Was that all he felt? Wasn’t his big body really light with the feeling of release? He quickly passed on to the next card. This read: Harold Gray. Well, Gray was due for another visit. He looked back at Annie Mullen’s card and saw that he had signed them both off the same evening. Funny how things link up. He pressed the bell on his desk, which would show a light outside his door. The next minute there was a tap on it and Annie Mullen entered.

  ‘Hello, Annie. Sit down. How are you?’

  ‘Middling, Doctor, just middling.’ She sighed. ‘But before I start yapping on about meself I would like to offer you me condolences. ’Twas sorry I was to hear of your dear wife’s passing. It was tragic, tragic.’

  ‘Thanks, Annie.’

  ‘The mind can only stand so much, that’s what I say. You know I often think, Doctor, that the body is stronger than the mind. At least, I can stand pain in me body but I can’t put up with the naggings at me mind.’

  ‘Has she been on again, Annie?’

  ‘She’s never stopped, Doctor. Anyway I’m after thinkin’ I won’t have to put up with her much longer.’

  He looked at her grey, drawn face and said, ‘Now, Annie, you mustn’t get despondent. Come along, tell me what the trouble is.’

  ‘It’s me stomach.’

  ‘You’ve had pain?’

  ‘I could say so.’

  ‘A great deal?’

  ‘I’d be tellin’ a lie if I said no.’

  ‘Go and take your things off’—he nodded towards the screen in the corner of the room—‘and get on the couch.’

  She nodded back at him and went behind the screen, and as he listened to the rustlings of her undressing he looked back over her case history, to which he added hard work, worry, and sorrow, which had brought her to where she was now, and at sixty-nine she was about to die. He knew it, and she knew it.

  A few minutes later, when he came from behind the screen and returned to his desk, he talked to her as she dressed again. ‘I’m going to get you a bed in hospital, Annie. Now you mustn’t worry; you’ll be under Doctor Fenner, he’s a grand man. I know him well and I’ll have a word with him about you. You might be in for a week or two and when you come out I’ll make arrangements for you to go to a convalescent home.’

  To all his talking she made no answer until she was seated opposite to him again, and then, looking him in the eye, she said, ‘Do you believe I’ll ever come out, Doctor?’

  ‘Mm! It’s an even chance, Annie,’ he said. He should have put the percentage at ninety-five but truth was cruel and age had to suffer enough cruelty. ‘It all depends if you put up a fight.’ He put his hand out and patted her broken-nailed, blue-hued fingers, where they lay on the edge of the desk.

  ‘Well, we’ll see, Doctor, eh? We’ll see about the fight…But about what you promised me.’ She brought her face nearer to his. ‘You won’t be able to do anything for me if I’m in the hospital.’

  ‘Don’t you worry.’ He picked up her hand and pressed it. ‘They’ll see to it. You’ll be in much less pain than you are in now. You know, Annie, you should have spoken about this years ago when you first felt the pain.’

  ‘Aw, Doctor, if I kept runnin’ to you with every pain and ache I would have been camped on your doorstep for years.’

  He came round the desk and put his hand on her shoulder and led her to the door, and looking down at her he said, ‘They don’t come like you today, Annie; they’re made in a different mould.’

  ‘Will I be seein’ you again, Doctor?’

  ‘Good gracious, Annie, of course you will. Now goodnight, and don’t worry; you’ll be hearing from me very shortly.’

  ‘Goodnight, Doctor, and God bless you. And thanks for all the kindness you’ve shown me all these years.’

  When he was seated behind the desk he did not immediately press the button. Poor Annie. Poor Annie. And when she was in hospital he wouldn’t be able to visit her, at least not professionally. It wouldn’t be in his province; that kind of thing was the privilege of the consultant, or assistant physician.

  He pressed the button and there was no tap on the door before Harold Gray entered. He didn’t look at the man but went on writing as he said, ‘Good evening, Mr Gray. What’s your trouble now?’

  ‘It’s me back again, Doctor. I’d be all right if it wasn’t for this back.’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes. Well, I’ve been thinking about your back, Mr Gray.’ He raised his eyes. ‘It came to my mind when I was down in the physiotherapy department. Now I think I’ll send you for some massage. Since the X-rays have failed to find anything we’ll try some massage. How about that?’

  ‘It’s up to you, Doctor, it’s up to you.’

  Yes, it was up to him…and old Peter Willings. Old Peter could spot a phoney a mile off. He wondered why he hadn’t thought of him before in connection with Mr Gray. He said now, ‘I’ll give you a note making an appointment. Mr Willings will give you a good do over.’…‘And how!’ he added to himself. He’d like to gamble that Mr Gray’s back would be better in a fortnight. He wrote rapidly on a sheet of paper, put it into an envelope and sealed it. If Mr Gray decided, as he very likely would, to steam the envelope open, he would find only some medical terms which he wouldn’t be able to translate.

  ‘There you are.’ He handed the letter and certificate across the desk to Mr Gray. ‘You take that letter to the hospital, to the physiotherapy department, and ask to see Mr Willings. Ask to see him personally.’

  ‘I will, Doctor.’ Mr Gray stood beaming down on Paul. His smile said there was one born every minute, the secret was to know how to handle them. ‘Goodnight, Doctor, and thank you.’

  ‘Goodnight, Mr Gray.’

  He sat looking at the closed door. It took all kinds. The world was filled with the Annie Mullens and the Mr Grays, but how he loathed the Mr Grays…

  It was five past seven when the last patient left the surgery and, gathering up the cards, he went across the waiting room and into Elsie’s office.

  ‘Anything in, Elsie?’

  ‘Yes, two calls, but I put them through to Doctor Price.’

  ‘Now why did you do that?’

  ‘Because he told me I had to.’

  ‘Yes, for the last two nights…’

  ‘…And for tonight. He got through to me just after he left here and he gave me my orders.’ She bounced her head at him. ‘And now you go indoors and get yourself something to eat and sit down and have a rest.’

  There was a faint smile on his face as he answered her, and in the same vein as she had spoken to him, ‘And you
get yourself away home and leave that lot until the morning. I’m always telling you. Goodnight.’

  ‘Yes, you are. Goodnight, Doctor.’

  Elsie’s tone was crisp and normal sounding. Everything had returned to normal; at least it would appear so. He crossed the empty waiting room and stood on the step above the courtyard looking up into the sky. The long northern dusk was creeping over the Salvation Army building. The figures he could see crossing the Square through the open gate were dim, mist-shrouded.

  He shivered and turned indoors, and going to the door marked ‘Private’ he entered the hall. Once inside, the silence and emptiness of the house hit him. He was instantly conscious that Maggie wasn’t in the kitchen. He walked slowly across the hall and down the length of the passage that led to the playroom. He switched on the light and looked inside. It had been his nursery, and Lorna’s nursery, but now it was full of discarded pieces of furniture and old books. Why had he come here? He closed the door, walked back down the passage and into the morning room. It had always struck cold, this room; it was too big for a morning room. Bett had been right there, but he had opposed her, even to the extent of not letting her take the old couch away. The couch now was made up as a bed for Maggie. She had refused to sleep upstairs, either in one of the spare rooms or in Lorna’s. He bent and switched on the electric fire; it would be warm for her coming back. Next he went into the dining room. He had always liked the dining room, always liked to eat here, but of late years it had been used less and less. It was a good-shaped room with good furniture, the oval dining room table surrounded by Hepplewhite chairs. The glass-topped sideboard with the wine cabinet built in. The china cabinet ornate but beautiful, which Bett had considered a monstrosity. He would like to use the dining room more. He closed the door after him and went into the drawing room. Here the emptiness of the house was more telling. The easy chairs, the couch, and no-one sitting in them. The baby grand in the corner with the top closed, the music stacked neatly in the cabinet. But then the piano wasn’t often used; he hadn’t played it for a long time. He had the urge to go to it now and open it up, but the thought seemed indecent. He put some coal on the fire and stood with his back to it; then slowly he began to inhale, deep, deep breaths that expanded his chest and pressed out the muscles of his stomach. And do what he might, he could not check the feeling of release and relief from rising in him. All day he had been pressing it down, pushing it away, ignoring it, telling himself it was too soon for that, she was hardly cold yet; it wasn’t decent. Wasn’t he full of genuine remorse for the part he had played in her life and the awful end it had brought her to? Yes, yes, he was. And there was part of him just as vitally aware now, as it had been when he saw her lying on the floor, that always he would carry the deep secret feeling of guilt within him. But it was a guilt bred mostly from things undone, and not the big things, such as lack of understanding and not being able to forgive her for using him, but the small things, small unkindnesses like preventing her from moving the couch out of the breakfast room, although he himself had always considered it an eyesore…Yet all this apart, he had to face the fact that the feeling of remorse was being overwhelmed at the moment by that of release. He began to pace the floor. Be as conventional as he liked, wear a face of mourning, yet to himself he knew he must own to the truth. This feeling was telling him he was free; after sixteen years he was free. It went further: it told him he was just turned forty, that he could start another life, that he was still young enough to achieve something…Here he stopped in his pacing as the words of Annie Mullen came back to his mind. ‘But you won’t be able to come and see me in hospital, Doctor.’ He began to walk again, but more slowly now. There’d be more Annie Mullens and more times when he’d know the frustration of not being allowed to follow a case to the end. Once patients went into hospital they were on an island and he couldn’t make contact with them until they returned to the mainland and came under his jurisdiction again…Did he want to be able to follow them to the island? Again he stopped, and the answer was almost verbal. Yes, he did. It wasn’t true what he had said to John, he still wanted that appointment, but he knew he didn’t stand a chance in hell of getting it if Beresford told Bowles about the letter. Even if they didn’t connect it in any way with Bett’s death he wouldn’t have a chance, for Bowles too had his cronies. Sir David Cooper, for instance, who was also on the Board. And you only need two such men to give their heads an almost imperceivable shake and it would be over. There was the reason for his fear; being ignored or overlooked, being considered unfit to fill a post of responsibility. The humiliation would be too much.

  There came a pause in his thinking, and he turned his steps towards the hearth again and stood looking down into the fire, and as he stared into the flames there was borne right home to him, and it came in the form of a shock, the fact that unless John made Bett’s death clear to Beresford there would, as he had said, be more than the post of Assistant Physician at stake, more than even his practice; there could be his liberty. There was only Maggie’s word to prove that she’d heard someone moving about around twelve o’clock, and thinking that it was himself she had got up from the couch in the morning room and gone to the door, and when she saw her mistress going up the stairs she went back to bed.

  Of a sudden he began to sweat. They could question whether Bett would have been able to come downstairs if she had taken the two sleeping tablets prescribed for her. John had said he had left them on the side table, together with a glass of water. But if she had intended to acquire more of the tablets she wouldn’t have taken them, would she? He recalled the moment when John had told him that he had left the tablets on the table. He’d had his back towards him and his voice had sounded odd. He could recall it now, muffled, muddled…Was all this imagination? Had John really given her the sleeping tablets? If so, it would have taken a mighty effort of will for her to keep awake until twelve o’clock. But then Bett had had a mighty will…And what was John thinking?

  He began to breathe deeply again, but it brought no feeling of relaxation now. He was imagining all kinds of things, but what he mustn’t imagine was that John suspected him of doing Bett in.

  This is what came of being alone in the house. He wished Maggie were back or that someone would call. He went and poured himself out a large whisky, and after drinking it at a gulp he again made an inspection of the house, upstairs too now, all except Bett’s room. For although her body was no longer there her presence would be heavy in it.

  He stood on the landing looking about him, seeing things that he had forgotten were there. The black Chinese dragon-carved chair, which, taking into account its sloping back, had never been made to sit in. The set of Chinese prints along the landing wall. His father’s tastes had run to the Chinese, and he had done quite a bit of collecting in his later years. He stood on, pondering, as if undecided what to do with himself; then releasing his lip, which had been held tightly between his teeth, he ran down the stairs and went straight to the phone and rang John Price.

  ‘Hello there,’ he said. Then, ‘Oh, hello. Is that you, Muriel?’

  ‘Yes, Paul. How are you?’

  ‘Oh, not too bad. I just wanted a word with John.’

  ‘Oh, he’s out, Paul, he’s gone along to Doctor Beresford’s. Some consultation about a patient, I think…Why don’t you come over? Now, why don’t you?’

  ‘Aw, I’m not fit company for a dog, Muriel, not tonight at any rate, but I’d be glad to keep you to your invitation tomorrow, say.’

  ‘Any time, Paul. Just suit yourself.’

  ‘Will you ask John to phone me when he gets in, Muriel?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course.’

  ‘Goodnight, Muriel.’

  ‘Goodnight, Paul…Take care of yourself.’

  ‘I’ll do that. Goodnight.’

  When he replaced the phone he kept his hand on it, and as he stood thus he became conscious of the tick of the hall clock. He had never heard it so loud before. It seemed to boom through the e
mpty house. Many a time over the years he had longed for a period of peace and quietness. Well, now he had the quiet, utter quiet, and it was terrible.

  When the doorbell rang his hand jerked on the phone, almost lifting it from its rest, and before going to the door he wetted his lips and pulled his collar straight. And when he opened it and saw the white face of Brian Bolton looking at him, he again wetted his lips and after a moment said, ‘Yes?’

  When the boy did not speak but moved his head from side to side, Paul said briefly, ‘Come in.’

  In the hall, his head hanging, Brian still made no effort to speak.

  Paul, his tone even, asked, ‘You want to see me?’

  ‘Yes…but…but not about that.’ His head was slightly raised now but his eyes were still downcast. ‘I haven’t been able to sleep since I heard. I…I can’t get it out of my head that she did it because…Oh God!’ He turned sideways and leant against the wall and buried his face in his hands.