The Nick of Time

by Francis King

  He never telephoned. Some money arrived, week by week, for almost two months. Then it stopped arriving.

  ‘So much luggage!’ Meg stared in amazement at the three large suitcases, the holdall and the innumerable carrier bags.

  ‘Sorry. Too much?’

  ‘Oh, no, dear! That’s OK. If the worst comes to the worst, Mr Bagley can put what you don’t want in the storeroom. But what have you got there?’

  ‘Clothes. Mostly clothes.’

  ‘Yes, I can see that you care about clothes. Like I did. Before this thing hit me.’

  But she mustn’t think about the MS. Or about Eric. It had been morbid to go over it all again in her mind, while waiting for Mehmet’s return.

  ‘You know what? Before you start your unpacking, I could do with another cup of tea. D’you think you could manage that for me?’

  ‘Of course, Mrs – Mrs.’ Again he gave that cheeky, friendly grin. ‘Meg. Meg, Meg, Meg!’

  ‘I’m glad you’ve got it right at last.’

  Chapter Two

  Marilyn always differentiated between the shuffle of some of her patients on the narrow stairs and the thump of others. Those who shuffled were usually the elderly and it was they who most often wasted her time. Those who thumped were usually the impatient young, who would blurt out what was wrong with them even before they had sat down, and who would leap to their feet even while she was writing a prescription.

  That day almost all the patients were elderly, some grimly stoical, some edgily jocular, some plaintive and fretful, as though she were somehow to blame for their nauseas, itchings, twitchings, tinnituses, giddinesses, cramps, throbbings, aches. The room was heated by nothing more efficient than a small electric fire scarred with rust, because something was again wrong with the boiler and the plumber, also one of her patients, was ill with flu and no colleague of his was free to come to fix it until the next day. As she touched the often misshapen, often wrinkled, often waxily yellow bodies before her, she would hear a gasp at the shock of her cold hands and would sometimes even catch, through a corner of her eye, a brief rictus, or sense, through her fingers, an involuntary shudder. About many of these ageing or even ancient bodies there was a terrible pathos, which usually filled her not merely with compassion but also with a remote, eerie grief. But today, mysteriously, she felt nothing but impatience, irritation, or even – when confronted by some of the most demanding – revulsion and something near to hatred.

  Yet all through this day like any other day, she had known that eventually it would somehow be different. It would not be different like that terrible day, now more than a year past, when the happiness of driving through the Tuscan landscape had so abruptly been extinguished. This day would be different not because of a sudden plunging into darkness but because of a no less sudden soaring, as from the depths of an ocean, into a world of dazzle. Yes, she had been sure of that, it was what had buoyed her up when yet another flu patient, sneezing and coughing, soggy handkerchief pressed to inflamed nose, had asked her for the miracle – ‘I wonder if antibiotics would be any help’ – that so many of them imagined, even the most intelligent of them, that she withheld out of either caprice or a perverse desire to make them go on suffering. It was what had also buoyed her up when Jack, her senior partner, had come in to chide her for some deficiency in the latest entry, made by her in his absence also with flu, in the record of one of those elderly women who insisted that they must see not Marilyn but him and who showed their disgruntlement when this was not possible.

  That emergence into the dazzle from the darkness occurred when, as she was tidying up her desk and shutting down the computer, she all at once heard Carmen racing up the stairs. There was a perfectly efficient intercom but Carmen would all too often prefer not to use it, just as, when warming up a pot of clammy noodles or a bowl of lumpy tinned soup for her snatched lunch, she preferred not to use the microwave. ‘I suppose it’s difficult for a girl from some Pyrenean hovel to get used to the gadgets of civilization,’ Jack once remarked in his lordly way. But mingled with his condescension there was always a genuine, if surprised and even reluctant, affection for the Spanish girl.

  ‘Dr Carter, Dr Carter!’

  The voice often had that urgency to it, even when the problem, so far from being urgent, was utterly trivial.

  ‘Yes, Carmen. What is it?’

  Marilyn was tired, she wanted to get home, to have that first glass of vodka on ice, which so easily was followed by others, and then, stretched out on the sagging sofa, to pick up the latest murder mystery that Audrey, her sister-in-law, had brought from the library or scrupulously purchased, not appropriated, in the charity shop that she had started to manage after having been made redundant.

  Carmen was pretty but wan. There were dark, shiny rings under her eyes and her face was so pale that her heavily-applied lipstick – she used no other make-up – had an arresting vibrancy. Although her legs and arms were sturdy, the rest of her body gave an immediate impression of fragility, even chronic ill health. Her energy was prodigious. ‘ She gets through more work than the rest of them put together,’ Jack declared. When not on duty at the surgery, she was always rushing off to do some chore – have something photocopied, deliver a manuscript, register a letter, buy some toothpaste from Boots or fill in lottery numbers at Budgens – for the husband, Andy, at least twenty years older than herself, whom she proudly told everyone was a writer. But, apart from an occasional article or short story, Andy had published nothing. Jack said that he was even less likely to see a novel in print than to become a lottery millionaire.

  ‘There is a man downstairs. Emergency! He is badly hurt. Please – come, come!’

  Marilyn was used to Carmen’s emergencies, which were never really emergencies but the case merely of an elderly asthmatic who was gasping for breath, a drunk who could not be aroused from a stupor, or a child who, out of boredom more than anything else, had vomited over the shoes of another, adult patient.

  ‘One of ours?’ Marilyn asked wearily, as she continued to tidy the papers on the desk.

  ‘No, not ours. But he is bad, bad. Cut.’ Despite half a dozen years in England, Carmen’s English was surprisingly poor; and at moments of excitement, like the present one, it became even poorer.

  ‘Well, in that case I can’t see him. You know the rules. You must tell such people to go either to the doctors with whom they’re registered or to casualty at Chelsea and Westminster.’

  ‘He said he went to Cromwell but they sent him away.’

  ‘Well, of course they did. There’s no casualty department there. You know that. Tell him to go to Chelsea and Westminster.’

  ‘He is bleeding, bleeding badly. Please Dr Carter!’ After eleven years, Marilyn was immune to any concern, other than a professional one, for any of her patients except those few who were either personal friends or people for whom she had been caring ever since, eager, idealistic and still unmarried, she had first joined the practice. But concern constantly flowed through Carmen, a molten, irresistible stream, her dark eyes suddenly glistening and a hand going out impetuously to touch, stroke or support anyone, however unlikable, whom she thought to be suffering.

  ‘Am I the only one still here?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Yes!’ Carmen came and stood close to Marilyn, as though more effectively to transmit her concern. ‘Please see him! Otherwise – maybe he will die.’

  ‘Oh, rubbish!’

  Carmen would often decide that a patient was on the verge of death; but on the sole occasion when, soundlessly, without any fuss, an elderly man had indeed died while sitting alone, the last of the queue, in the waiting-room, she had been totally unaware of the occurrence, even though she had gone in to tidy the magazines and toys, as she always did at the close of a day. Subsequently, a fellow receptionist, the last to leave, had realized what had happened, after having first imagined that the shabby, urine-stinking, puce-faced old man, an alcoholic disliked by all of them because of his rudeness, was merely asle
ep.

  On an impulse, Marilyn relented. Had she, she later wondered, relented because she had realized that this stranger whom Carmen claimed to be dying was the messenger who, all that long, tedious day, she had known, known by a strange fluttering of the nerves and a heightening of the senses, was on his way to her? ‘Oh, very well, tell him to come up.’

  ‘He is bleeding. Blood in waiting-room.’

  ‘Well, give him a towel or something. I don’t want him bleeding in here.’ Unlike Jack, Marilyn was never rude or inconsiderate with the staff; but she was often abrupt with them. They had come to accept that. She was, they would say, a good sort, or at least not a bad sort; her heart was in the right place; basically she was kind; after what had happened one had to make allowances. But for people to make allowances because of what they invariably called her ‘ tragedy’, was something that only made that tragedy less bearable for her.

  At first all that she could see of the man’s face was the close-cut, black, wiry hair, coming down in a vee to his forehead, one eye under a thick, arched eyebrow, and his cleft chin. This was because one hand was pressing the multicoloured towel, here and there already blotched with blood, against the other eyebrow and his cheekbone. That silly girl had given him the roller towel from the loo only used by the staff, so that one end dangled down below his waist. Marilyn always noticed people’s hands and so she noticed that the hand pressed against the towel was large and strong, with carefully tended nails and tufts of black hair sprouting at the base of each of the fingers. He peeled the towel away from his face and immediately drops of blood fell to the floor. Hurriedly he replaced the towel.

  ‘Oh, don’t mind about that,’ she said as simultaneously he said ‘Sorry.’ She nodded to Carmen, who was standing behind him, her face puckered with solicitude. ‘That’s all right, Carmen. Thank you. I expect you want to be on your way.’

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want any help?’

  ‘No, that’s fine. I’ll lock up.’

  ‘Then I go. OK? If I don’t hurry, then I am too late to buy Andy ticket.’ No need to ask what ticket she meant. A moment later, Carmen was racing, thud, thud, thud, down the stairs. Was she ever not in a hurry? More than once Marilyn had seen her jogging away ahead of her, to or from the surgery or along the high street, as though – as Jack put it – the Furies were pursuing her.

  ‘Nice girl.’

  ‘Yes. A nice girl.’ Marilyn sighed. ‘Why don’t you lie out on that?’ She pointed to the couch. ‘Then I can have a good look.’

  He kicked off his expensive-looking moccasins, climbed up on to the couch, the towel still pressed to eyebrow and cheekbone, and then, eyes shut, wiggled his toes as she stooped above him. He was wearing grey cord trousers and a sweater with BRUNO MAGLIA embroidered on it. It had always struck her as vulgar of people to choose clothes that proclaimed to the world ‘Look, this is a designer product, it was extremely expensive.’ Suddenly she noticed that blood had congealed here and there on the fabric. ‘Pity about your sweater. I hope that blood comes out.’

  ‘My trousers too.’

  As she examined his injuries, she asked: ‘ How did this happen?’

  He screwed up his eyes. ‘ I trip. Crossing road. Maybe this car coming too fast, maybe I mistake. I jump to pavement, so not to be hit, and maybe judge wrong, I catch foot and bang! I fall, hitting edge.’

  ‘Didn’t the driver stop? He could have taken you to the Chelsea and Westminster.’

  ‘Maybe no see me.’ He winced as her rubber-gloved fingers felt the wound on his temple. ‘Cromwell just round corner – I know Cromwell, two, three years ago my cousin patient there – but bastards there say, ‘‘No, no, go away’’. So I saw name outside house, doctor, and’ – again he winced – ‘here I come!’

  ‘Yes, here you come.’ She all but added: ‘Making my day even longer and messing up my consulting room with your blood.’

  Suddenly, for no apparent reason, he smiled at her. His front teeth were white, and regular except for one, an eye tooth, which was chipped. ‘Did you break that tooth in your fall?’

  ‘No. Long time ago. Some time I must have cap.’

  She straightened, easing down the fingers of the rubber glove on her right hand with the rubber-covered fingers of the left. She could feel her palms sweating. She hated wearing the gloves but these days, with the prevalence of Aids, it was even more prudent than ever to do so. ‘You know – I have to say this – these injuries don’t fit in with what you’ve told me.’

  ‘What you mean?’

  ‘Well, if you’d really hit the edge of a pavement, there would be bruising. The wound would look quite different.’

  His mouth, previously slack, straightened, his voice hardened. ‘That is what happen. What I tell is truth.’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s no concern of mine. But these are cuts made with, well, something sharp. A knife? No. My guess would be a bottle, a broken bottle.’

  ‘You wrong. Truly, you wrong.’

  She shook her head. ‘No, I’m right, I’m pretty sure I’m right. Well, never mind. But that’s why I must make sure there’s no glass in the wounds before sewing them up.’

  ‘Sewing them up?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. But I’ll give you a local. You won’t feel anything – or, at least, not much.’

  Stoically, eyes closed and teeth gritted, he endured what followed in silence. ‘It’s odd,’ she said at one point, ‘I was never any good at darning, in those days when people still darned things instead of throwing them away and replacing them, but when I do this kind of sewing it’s always surprisingly neat.’

  ‘It leave mark?’

  ‘A scar? Not much. I hope not. If it does, a serious one, then we shall have to think of a plastic surgeon.’

  ‘That cost lot of money?’

  ‘Not on the National Health.’

  He frowned. The answer did not seem to satisfy him.

  She broke off from her work: ‘ Yes, I’d say that this was done with the jagged end of a bottle.’

  He did not reply.

  Later, she noticed the rent in his trousers, over the thigh, revealing purplish bruised flesh. ‘ Someone kicked you too.’

  He turned his head aside, muttering something scarcely audible to her in what, she decided, must be some Eastern European language.

  She had already begun to compare this youthful body, lying on the couch over which she was stooping, with those often misshapen ones – disfigured by operation scars, abdominal creases, flab, cellulite, varicose veins, eczema, psoriasis – that she had been obliged to examine throughout that long day. Removing his trousers before going to bed with her for the first time, Ed had said ‘Lucky for me that women don’t care much about how a man looks.’ Nor had she indeed cared about how he had looked then, with his narrow, almost fleshless torso and his long, thin legs and arms. But it was a myth, comforting to someone physically so puny, that it was only to gay men and not also to most women that a man’s physique mattered.

  When she had finished the stitching and given him first an antibiotic and then an anti-tetanus injection – to her surprise he told her that he had never in his whole life been inoculated against tetanus – she said ‘I’d better take a look at that too,’ pointing to the rent in his trousers. He stared up at her. ‘Slip them off.’

  He got up off the couch, hesitated a moment, and then lowered the trousers to his ankles. ‘Impossible wear these again,’ he said, ruefully pulling down the corners of his mouth. ‘New.’

  ‘They look expensive.’

  As he stood before her, he inserted his thumbs into the elastic of his Y-fronts. She read, embroidered black on the white, CALVIN KLEIN.

  ‘You’d better get back on to the couch.’ He swung himself back. The cheekbone and the flesh above the eyebrow were now slightly puckered, as they might have been after he had slept on them. Once again she stooped. ‘My guess is that someone also kicked you.’

  Again he made no reply.

  ‘
Were you in a fight?’

  ‘I no fight, madam. Never.’ He shook his head from side to side on the pillow. ‘ I man of peace.’ She did not believe that, and she knew that he did not expect her to believe it.

  When she had finally finished with him, he drew a wallet out of the back pocket of the trousers – so now she knew for sure that the reason for the attack had not been to rob him – and opened it. ‘What I owe please?’

  ‘Nothing. Forget it.’ Why did she say that? she immediately asked herself. With those clothes and that expensive-looking watch, he could certainly afford to pay her for the half-hour that he had added to her working day.

  So far from insisting or making any protest, he at once looked relieved, shutting the wallet and thrusting it back into the pocket. ‘You very kind. I must really go hospital but …’ He shrugged. ‘Always long wait, and I bleeding, bleeding. When I see your name, doctor, like that, walking down street, I think maybe Allah show it to me.’

  At the door she told him that he must come back to have her or one of the two practice nurses remove the stitches. She gave him a card. ‘That’s me, Dr Carter, Marilyn Carter, and that’s my partner. You can ring up and make an appointment in ten days or so. All right?’

  He slipped the card into the same back pocket in which he had pushed the wallet. He nodded. ‘ You very kind, Dr – Dr Marilyn. How I say thank you? It is late, I keep you.’

  ‘Oh, I’m often as late as this.’ She sighed. ‘ Too many patients, too little time.’

  ‘Many patients, lot money.’

  She was taken aback. She almost retorted: ‘Not from patients like you.’ But instead she replied with an assumed indifference: ‘Well, like most doctors these days I manage to get by.’

  He hesitated on the doorstep. There was no one at reception, the waiting room behind her was in darkness. Briefly, apprehension brushed against her, a damp and chill invisible presence. Jack always said that, when alone in the surgery, she should never see anyone whom she did not know. Only a few months before, he had pointed out, that Polish woman doctor in Kentish Town had been beaten up, in fact all but murdered, and robbed.