The Nick of Time

by Francis King

  Chapter Five

  Marilyn had woken early, a few minutes after five, and had then been totally unable to go to sleep again. After having listened to an irritatingly mechanical Bach fugue on her bedside wireless for a time, she scrambled out of bed, had a protracted soak in the bathroom off her bedroom, and then dressed and tiptoed down to breakfast. Careful to make as little noise as possible, she prepared herself toast and coffee and sat down at the table which, as always, Audrey had laid. She wanted to hear the news, since the papers, The Times for her and the Guardian for Audrey, had still not arrived, but decided not to do so. Poor Audrey was such a light sleeper and the previous morning she had once again sallied out early in order to sell flags to the first commuters to enter the Underground station.

  Suddenly, however, the door creaked open and there Audrey was, a red crease running like a scar down one side of her face where she had slept on it, and her hands thrust into the pockets of an ancient camel-hair dressing gown, appropriated from her father, who, always dapper, had been about to throw it away.

  ‘You’re very early.’

  Audrey had what amounted to a genius for stating the obvious, Marilyn thought, annoyed at the interruption. But she looked up and smiled. ‘And so are you. I hope I didn’t wake you.’

  ‘Oh, no. I heard the paper boy. He often wakes me. Why does he have to come so early and make so much noise? Usually I go to sleep again. But this time …’ Audrey went over to the percolator. ‘Are you going to drink all this coffee?’

  Although she had intended to do so, Marilyn replied: ‘Oh, no. Do take as much as you want. Shall I make you some toast?’

  ‘I’ll see to it. Thanks.’

  Marilyn did not demur. Audrey usually saw to all the household chores.

  ‘The days keep closing in.’

  ‘Yes, they certainly do.’ It was another statement of the obvious.

  ‘Christmas will soon be on us.’

  Oh, God! With difficulty, Marilyn concealed her mounting irritation. ‘Yes. Christmas! I don’t think I’ll send any cards this year.’

  Soon after that, Marilyn gulped at what was left of her coffee and, wishing that Audrey had not deprived her of her third cup, rose to her feet.

  ‘Off so soon?’

  ‘In a few minutes. There are – things I want to see to on my desk before the patients start arriving. I have so little time for all the paperwork.’

  ‘I thought that that Bessie or Tessie or whatever she is called saw to all that for you.’

  ‘Not all. There are certain things she can’t see to. Unfortunately.’ Marilyn pulled open the door. ‘Have a good day,’ she said. ‘As they keep telling each other in America.’

  ‘And you do the same.’

  It was far too early for there to be anyone other than the cleaner at the surgery. Mrs Flynn, having changed from shoes into slippers, as she always did for her work – it made her feel more comfy, she would explain – was strenuously thrusting the Hoover back and forth in the waiting-room, banging it against table and chairs as she did so. From the reception area Marilyn could already hear her singing above its growl. What she was singing, she could not recognize, but the full-throated, not always accurate contralto expressed a surprisingly vivid melancholy, as Marilyn caught the words ‘Somewhere, somehow, some time’, and then ‘ Return, return, return!’ in wailing crescendo.

  Marilyn put her head round the door. ‘Good morning, Mrs Flynn.’ She had once, coming down the stairs, overheard Mrs Flynn complaining to one of Carmen’s colleagues that ‘ That One’ (i.e., herself) was so unlike Dr Lawson, not at all friendly, not even ready to give a soul a civil good morning. Since then she had guiltily tried to give that civil good morning and to be as amiable as possible to a woman whom she had never really liked, considering her to be not merely slack in her cleaning but also insincere in her constant addressing of everyone, doctors, nurses, receptionists and even patients, as ‘dahling’. So much did Mrs Flynn resemble some amateur actress, long over the hill, in a Sean O’Casey play, that Marilyn would often wonder whether her sole claim to Irishness might not be her marriage to Mr Flynn, who had died prematurely after fathering a huge brood of children. Of these children, constantly sick, out of work or, as Mrs Flynn would put it, ‘in a pickle’, there was a lot of talk – bewildering because it was difficult to distinguish between so many of them – over the Hoover, the mop or the sink.

  ‘Ah, good morning, dahling!’ Mrs Flynn kicked at the switch of the battered machine with a misshapen, slippered foot in order to gag it. ‘You’re an early one this morning.’

  ‘Yes. I have things to see to before the patients arrive.’

  ‘Always busy!’

  ‘Yes, always – or almost always – busy. There’s never any recession in the medical business.’

  ‘Well, don’t overdo it, dahling, that’s my advice. You can’t look after the patients if you don’t look after your good self.’

  ‘Well, I suppose that’s true enough.’

  As Marilyn climbed the stairs up to her room, she felt an increasing ache in her calves. It might have been the end of the day, instead of its beginning. She lowered herself into the metal chair, functionally perfect but made so hideous by a seat covered in a jazzy red-and-black synthetic fabric that she kept telling herself that she must exchange it for one from the waiting-room, and then switched on the computer, preparatory to writing the first of a number of letters of referral. She stared at the screen. It was eleven days now since she had stitched up that Albanian’s face and he was long overdue to have the stitches removed. Or could he have got someone else to remove them? She had already inquired twice if he had been in, each time to be told that he hadn’t. Unbidden, even unwelcome, he kept coming into her mind, like some nagging infection, ebbing away and then flooding back.

  That morning, soaking in the bath, she had, as so often in the months since Ed’s death, made a half-hearted effort to pleasure herself. It was like smoking, she often thought: it brought no lasting relief, merely within a short space of time an arid craving for more. On this last occasion, the cold tap dripping (Audrey had promised to change the washer but must have forgotten) with a persistent lisping sound on to instep of her foot and then transmitting a chill through it outward to the farthest extremities of her body, she had begun by fantasizing, as always, about Ed making his gleeful, energetic, often inconsiderate love to her (a lot of laughter, a lot of throwing himself about, a lot of almost suffocating her as he squeezed and squeezed her body as though it were a bolster). But then, suddenly, it was not Ed but the young Albanian who was clutching her. Astonished, she had sat up in the bath, so violently that water splashed out on to the worn linoleum. Then, slowly, she had lowered herself into it again and resumed what she had been doing – welcoming back the previously intrusive but now wholly desired guest with a sudden, frenzied enthusiasm.

  There was a thud, thud, thud on the stairs. It could only be Carmen.

  ‘Oh, Dr Carter. Wonderful news! I must tell you!’ She was laughing with joy.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘An agent is interested in Andy’s novel. He will take him on. He has read two, three chapters and he thinks them striking.’ Carmen was clearly using the adjective that the agent had used. ‘He says he has high hopes.’ Again she must be quoting. ‘Isn’t that wonderful, Dr Carter?’

  ‘Yes, that’s wonderful, Carmen. But you do realize, don’t you, that that’s just a first step? I mean – many are chosen by agents but few are called by publishers.’

  Carmen stared at Marilyn, bewildered.

  ‘I mean, it’s terrific to be taken on by an agent. Many people try and try but never achieve it. But after that, there’s the next hurdle. Problem,’ she amended, since Carmen was frowning, as though she did not understand what ‘hurdle’ meant. ‘It’s awfully difficult, from what I’ve heard from writer friends, to get a publisher actually to take a first book.’

  Carmen was crestfallen. In a small, troubled voice she said: ‘A
ndy is so happy.’

  ‘Well, of course. Of course! He has every reason to be happy. I’m sure that soon he’ll have some more good news and be even more happy. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.’

  Carmen nodded and then gave a reluctant smile.

  ‘Tell Andy how pleased I am for him.’ Marilyn had never met Andy, but she imagined someone both physically and psychologically ungainly, awkward and grubby, whose belief in his talent, perhaps even genius, made him regard poor little Carmen merely as his handmaiden.

  ‘Thank you, Dr Carter.’ Then Carmen added: ‘He wishes one day to meet you.’

  ‘Yes, we must try to arrange that,’ Marilyn murmured, having no wish that they should ever do any such thing.

  ‘I think you know many writers.’

  ‘Did, did. When my husband was alive. But he was the one they were interested in,’ she added with some bitterness. Over the months, Ed’s friends, initially so sympathetic and supportive, had remorselessly fallen away.

  ‘I must go down. Patients will be arriving.’

  As Carmen left the room, still disconsolate – oh, heavens, why had she crushed the poor girl like that? – Marilyn called out after her: ‘That man hasn’t come back to have his stitches removed, has he?’

  Carmen turned. ‘Which man, Dr Carter?’ At least half a dozen patients had had stitches removed in the course of the last few days.

  ‘Oh, you know …’ Marilyn put on an act of being vague about the details. ‘ The one – the foreigner – Albanian was he? – who arrived just as we were shutting up shop. With those – those cuts. You remember, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes!’ Carmen’s previously glum face was once again irradiated with pleasure. ‘He telephone, just telephone. Five, ten minutes ago. Just before I come up.’

  ‘Oh, good. He was overdue. I was wondering what had happened to him.’ Marilyn made an effort not to show the joy that had suddenly surged up within her. ‘Did he make an appointment?’

  Carmen nodded. ‘I put him down for Ellen.’ This was the old and grim practice nurse, not the young and frivolous one. ‘You have such a busy day today.’

  Marilyn frowned and pursed her lips. ‘Oh, I don’t know … I’d really like to see him myself. I want to make sure his face isn’t going to be too scarred. Otherwise I must send him to see a plastic surgeon.’

  ‘Yes, he is so handsome,’ Carmen said seriously. ‘A pity if he has scars.’

  ‘What time is his appointment?’

  ‘I think eleven – eleven twenty?’

  ‘Well, show him up here, don’t send him to Ellen. Fit him in somehow.’

  ‘OK, Dr Carter.’

  Carmen began to race down the stairs. Marilyn returned to her desk.

  The morning chugged along, like some branch-line train that stops at every station and is even from time to time marooned out in the deserted countryside, where no station exists. She was brusque with some of the more tiresome patients and rude to one, an overdressed, actressy, middle-aged woman, with a piercingly high-pitched voice that suggested that she was being auditioned for a part at the Olivier and feared that, with that dud acoustic, she might not be heard. Perhaps she really was an actress? She was always full of complaints – about the ‘attitude’ (a favourite word of hers) of the nurses or the reception staff, about her treatment when referred to Chelsea and Westminster, about the side effects caused by the most innocuous of drugs. On this occasion she was indignant that neither Marilyn nor Jack had been prepared to come and see her when she had been in bed with flu.

  Eleven came and then half-past eleven and there was still no sign of Mehmet. Marilyn was tempted to check whether, by some error, he had been sent to see Ellen, as first arranged. But she restrained herself.

  Then, at long last, shortly before noon, when she rang down for the next patient, she heard a strong, regular footfall on the stairs and at once she knew, knew with a blazing certainty, she could not have said how, that it was he. She half rose from the chair in eager anticipation, then subsided again. She turned away from the door to the computer, so that her face was averted when, after the brisk rat-tat-tat of his knock and the assumed weariness of her ‘Yes! Come in!’, he entered the room.

  ‘Dr Carter! Good morning. Or is it afternoon?’

  It’s almost afternoon and you’re late. But she merely replied in an off-hand voice: ‘Good morning.’ She turned back to the computer, put a hand out to the mouse, moved it at random, clicked it. Head still averted, she said: ‘Sit down. I’ll be with you in a moment.’ Her heart seemed to be beating somewhere high in her throat. She swallowed hard. Then she turned back to him. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘You remember me? Stitches?’ He raised a hand and touched the red corrugation of first one scar and then the other.

  ‘Oh, yes, of course! You want them taken out.’ She got up from the desk. ‘Why don’t you sit over there? With luck it won’t hurt.’

  They were both silent as she made her preparations – getting out the scissors and the kidney dish, pulling on the rubber gloves that she so much hated but knew to be necessary. All the time she was conscious that he was watching her with a faintly smiling intentness, as though he found what she was doing not merely interesting but also amusing. ‘You should try not to be late for doctor’s appointments, you know.’ The reproof was friendly.

  ‘Yes. Sorry. Not easy get away.’ He did not explain what it was that he had had to get away from.

  ‘We work to such a tight schedule here. All NHS doctors do. From what I hear, my patients constantly complain that I give them too little time. But the truth is that, except in an emergency, I have to ration them to ten minutes each.’

  ‘Last time my ration more than that.’

  ‘Well, you were an emergency, weren’t you?’

  He laughed.

  As she leaned over him, one of her thighs briefly touched one of his. She had long been anaesthetized to any contact with her patients; such contact was now no different from the ones that she regularly made with her chair, her desk, her computer or her prescription pad. But on this occasion, with a hyperaesthesia both thrilling and shocking, she was aware, within that second or so of contact, of the warmth and resilience of his flesh through his jeans and her tights.

  ‘Let’s see.’ She examined the scars. ‘Yes, I’m pleased with that. It’s not often I’m pleased with my sewing.’ At home, it was always Audrey who did any sewing for her. Marilyn’s stitching of the wounds, so neat as to be all but invisible, was worthy of her sister-in-law. ‘Yes! That’s good. With time hardly anything will show.’

  ‘One friend say scar on man’s face make him more attractive.’

  ‘That must be a woman friend.’

  He nodded and then winced as she snipped at the first of the stitches above the eyebrow. She was wondering who was this woman friend who had said that to him. Was he married? Living with someone? She felt an urgent craving to know. She had already looked up the address that he had given her in the A to Z. Dalston. She had never been to Dalston.

  ‘So. That’s done. It wasn’t too painful, was it?’

  ‘Not at all. You expert, I see.’ He got to his feet and, head tilted forward at an angle, smiled up at her. ‘Thank you. Merci beaucoup.’ Did he add that to show off to her? If so, why not use some French phrase not known to everyone in the civilized world? But the accent was certainly good. ‘ Now – Dr Carter – please – not angry what I say.’ He put out a hand and placed it on her arm, in a gesture that was confidential, even intimate. ‘I not your NHS patient. Not – how you say? – on your list. I must pay you.’

  She shook her head. ‘No, no! That’s not necessary.’

  ‘Please. Please.’ As on the previous occasion, he reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out his wallet.

  As he opened it, she said sharply: ‘Put that away! We decided all this the last time. Remember?’

  He looked at her, grateful, quizzical, rueful. Then he gave a small shrug. />
  ‘Now I must see my next patient. I’m terribly behindhand.’ She reached for the door handle and pulled it open, so clumsily that it banged against her foot.

  ‘You very kind.’ He passed through the door and then abruptly turned. ‘I think some way to make return to you.’

  ‘No return is necessary.’

  He began to race down the stairs, calling out ‘Goodbye, thank you, thank you,’ as he disappeared from sight.

  Marilyn shut the door and walked slowly back to her desk. Although there were still three patients waiting to see her, she did not at once ring down. She gripped the edge of the desk before her with both hands, as though preparatory to pushing it away from her or even overturning it. She craned past it to look out of the window. But she could see nothing of him, among the people hurrying along, many of them under umbrellas. He must have gone the other way.

  She rang down for the next of her impatient patients.

  Two days later it was Saturday. Although it was already past eleven, Marilyn still lay in bed, listening to the Mahler Fifth on a CD. Audrey had brought her up her breakfast (tea, toast and a warmed croissant as a special treat) and a copy of The Times soggy from having been thrown on to the doorstep in the rain instead of pushed through the letter box. She had eaten the breakfast, not really wanting the croissant but not daring to leave it, since each Saturday it had become a ritual for Audrey to present one to her. She had then skimmed through the paper, irritated by the difficulty of turning and folding the pages. After that, she had lain back, shut her eyes, and begun to doze.

  The front-door bell aroused her. Hell! Was Audrey in or had she already gone out to Sainsbury or Tesco – her patronage shuttled between the two – for the weekend shopping? Oh, thank God. She was about to swing her legs out of the bed, when she heard the firm, unhurried tread on the stairs up from the basement. Then, amazingly, all at once, even before Audrey had opened the door, she had known – as she had previously known when waiting for the next patient in her consulting room – that it was he and no one else. But why should he come to the house? And how did he know where it was?