‘Not the Cadogan?’
‘You know it?’
‘I took my wife there, before kids. It was a haunt of Robert Forrest’s, actually, he recommended it to a friend of ours. Used to whisk his own, uh, partners up there …’
On reflection it was of course tactless for me to have blurted out any of that. Eloise’s expression had indeed turned a shade doleful. But I wasn’t expecting what followed.
‘Do you know how Malena is …? That was his— partner, wasn’t it? Do you happen to know?’
‘I hear she’s quite broken, by events. She’s suffered the most terrible misfortune.’
Eloise looked downcast now, the energy of moments ago all drained from her. I really didn’t wish for her to be dwelling on this. ‘Ellie, I have to tell you, it would worry me, if I felt somehow that Robert still had any sort of— hold, over you.’
‘Why so?’
‘Well, you know. Because of the nature of your relationship. How he treated you. It was wrong. Unhealthy. You knew as much.’
She looked up at me, her gaze rather penetrative. ‘Did you actually like him? Your “old friend” Robert?’
‘I loved him.’ This I surprised myself by shooting back, yet more by feeling so suddenly that I meant it. ‘But he did become … well, over time he just lost the things about him I was fondest of.’
‘And are you just the same good soul you were as a boy? Or do you maybe judge him too harshly?’
This came snapping out of Eloise with such bite that for a moment I had no response. But she calmed, visibly, seemed to see she had overstepped the mark. When she spoke again her voice was husky.
‘We were neither of us so “healthy”. But both grown-ups. We’re all grown-ups, Steven. Some of us get married, some even for love. Some have children, some don’t. Some stick together, others fall apart. But it’s all done by consenting adults. For better, for worse …’
I didn’t quite accept this coming from her – a shade too much of her former feigned world-weariness. But it’s too late now for me to reopen the workbook. And Robert, at least, is out of her life.
September 22nd
A day so well starred has wound up shrouded in misfortune. On some level I blame myself. At a suitable point I will have to step back and assess properly my own conduct throughout this whole episode.
I was planning my afternoon on the basis of being free to wave Eloise off, when Niamh told me that Tregaskis had requested – indeed demanded – an audience with me. In the first place I don’t know why I imagined I could cruise through that confrontation. Yet I went to his room directly, albeit ensuring Brian, our sturdiest nurse, was posted outside the door. There were dark circles under Tregaskis’s eyes, he gazed sorely at me from seated.
‘She’s leaving?’
‘Eloise? She’s checking out, yes.’
‘You decided that …’
I shrugged. ‘She and I both. Her treatment is done. Didn’t you know? Since you and her have such a bond …’
That is the moment I regret: the quite needless barb. Yet I’m not sure it struck home. Tregaskis was in the depth of such dolour. ‘I just don’t hear her in my mind any more’, he muttered. ‘But I can see, how wrong it is – wrong, wrong, wrong.’
‘David, I’m sorry, we do need to look more seriously and honestly at this whole business of who you think is talking to you.’
He jabbed a finger at his sculpture, his clay woman.
‘Where do you think that came from, Steven?’
I was going to say I thought it was cracked out of his very own head, when suddenly he grabbed my hand.
‘She’s not human, do you understand me, Steven? She’s a vessel, for a spirit. And the spirit is nothing but pure, brutal essence of self-seeking. Thinks of nothing but its own safety, its own advantage, how it can live and feed off others –’
I got up, he tried to bar me, began to shout. ‘I’m talking to you, one sane man to another. You mustn’t let her go.’ Then he lost it, was howling, jerking around, his hands up in my face. Brian barrelled through the door, David kicked and windmilled but was soon neutralised, face to the floor, Brian holding both arms. I didn’t want to break out the haloperidol, but then nor was it lost on me that David has always feared and hated restraints – had a horrible experience of them once when sectioned. I only wanted to go as far here as was necessary, while carrying out my duty to preserve the peace.
‘This is not acceptable, David,’ I stooped and told him calmly as I could. ‘I have to ask you to spend the rest of the afternoon in the seclusion room. Unrestrained, but on your own. Until you’re calm and I can trust you in that.’
He nodded assent between hard breaths. I went to the door, Brian helped him to his feet. ‘On your head, Steven,’ I thought he said, and I turned to him. ‘When what will happen, happens – may it fall … let it fall on your head. Because you’ll know I tried to warn you.’ Then he fell into silence, sat on the edge of his bed resignedly, looked into space with lacklustre eyes. It was a sorry sight. But not one that led me to anticipate violence, not of any kind.
I collected myself, went down the corridor to Eloise, knocked on the door and waited. Having had no response I turned the handle, walked on in – yes, again, inappropriate, a mark of my disordered thought processes. Still, I was glad I did so, for I learned something.
I could hear water running into the sink. The wardrobe lay open and cleared out, bedcovers smoothed. Some clothes, goods and chattels were stacked neatly on the bed next to her two matching monogrammed Vuitton holdalls. I looked through the door of the en suite where Eloise stood over the basin in an azure-blue bra and skirt, brushing her teeth. Thankfully she didn’t see me and I turned away, abashed, intending to redo my entrance, rap harder this time. But then my attention was snared by what was poking out of the top of the packed Vuitton bag. I wouldn’t have pried: other eyes might have seen the tangle of black padded PVC and Velcro and imagined some sort of fetish item. But I pulled it free knowing it had a wholly different function. From memory I folded up the various straps and flaps and panels in the proper manner, and so assembled the infamous Forrest cold-therapy mask®.
I looked up to see Eloise gazing at me curiously. Without obvious self-consciousness she joined me at the bedside, shook a cabled roll-neck jersey from one of her stacks and pulled it on over her head.
‘You like that?’
‘Sorry … I’m just surprised you have it with you. It’s not usable in this way, is it? You don’t still have discomfort, do you, from when Robert operated?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s a souvenir. A relic.’
‘But you’ve kept it since Robert … worked on you?’
‘That would be right.’
She began to pack up her second bag. Unpleasant as I knew it would be, I had to raise the matter. ‘Ellie, this may sound difficult – but when that man’s body was found in our woods last week … Well, there was reason to believe he might have one of these masks about his person.’ Her eyes met mine now, patiently. ‘Now I didn’t think it at all right that you be dragged into that just because of some circumstantial … whatever.’
She smiled slightly. ‘But you think perhaps I robbed this? From a corpse?’ She rode over my wince. ‘It’s mine, Steven. For better or worse.’ She reached and took it from my hand, I relinquished it. She had succeeded in turning the tables, from her peculiarity to my impoliteness. ‘Now, do you have my telephone, inspector?’ Dumbly I handed it over.
By 3pm she had said her goodbyes to the staff and those few patients with whom she was on first-name terms. I stood with her a while on the steps. The small talk was dwindling – I think I was on the point of offering her a cigarette – when we saw an old silver Jaguar XJ coming up the long winding drive. Such a difference from Leon’s first appearance weeks ago … He parked with a flourish and got out, his amusement mirrored by Eloise. I followed her like a dutiful retainer, they kissed, Leon loaded her bags in back. He told me his ‘boy’ Curtis,
a car enthusiast, had loaned him this vintage ‘ride’ just for the occasion. Leon is cool, for sure, but today he was boyish – ‘proud as Lucifer’. I shook his hand, kissed Eloise’s cheek, feeling for all the world as if I were giving her away. They got into the Jag, Leon started the engine …
Then I heard the shouts above and behind me from the common veranda – angry, alarmed cries. I turned, and then – truly it seemed in slow motion, as they always say – David Tregaskis was jumping up onto the stone balustrade, wild-eyed, staring at us – and before any onrushing staff could get a hand on him he had leapt off the edge. He plummeted the full thirty feet, hit the ground, I looked away, but from so close I heard – felt – the sickening crack of bone.
I ran to him, howling at the orderlies to get all the patients off the veranda. The adrenalin from the drop, the shock of his landing, those endorphins may have cushioned him – but the pain signals were headed for the brain. Everyone was swinging into action around me, Leon at my side first. What I saw was a tibial fracture, jaggedly through the skin, a grisly sight. The left ankle was done by the impact, turned all of ninety degrees to the right. I shouted for ice, codeine, blankets. Then David started raving in agony.
Leon, I must say, was a rock. He wanted to help, was all for loading David up and driving him. I assured him the patient could only be shifted by paramedics, that we had all the means for the best possible comfort, that he and Eloise should get on their way and not linger at this awful scene. I was only sorry that such a pall had been cast over the day. I’m sure Leon won’t forget what he saw.
Eloise stood at a remove. Her expression – I can’t say it was appalled, even shocked – grim for sure, but her chin was in the air, as if to say, How could he have done this? In that, she would be right. But there was an economy of pity, in that look: proof, if nothing else, that David’s sudden recent imagining of their profound bond had been written entirely on the wind. In any event, she and Leon waited for the ambulance before departing.
Then I gathered up the pieces of the story: how David had tricked his way out of the seclusion room, asking for water then attacking Brian with considerable force. It is an ugly, sorry end to our relationship: we have seen the last of David here, that is for sure.
The remainder of the day I have spent on the telephone. I called the chairman, and Eileen Tregaskis. ‘A regrettable incident …’ I told both that my investigation was under way. Later I spoke to the orthopaedic consultant at the hospital: severe compound fracture of right tibia and fibula, a steel nail inserted; left ankle dislocated, ligaments separated, needing a screw. David will have a long time inside his own mind to weigh up the cost of his actions.
These, though, were far easier calls than the one I then made to Sir James Keaton, the special anxiety compounded by his PA keeping me on hold for what stretched to several long minutes. I have no fear of this ‘powerful’ man, and I feel the barest modicum is owed to him in terms of courtesy. Where has he been for all of Eloise’s life? What great business was he engaged in? I had bought the lovers just about enough time, and I could feel his rage, the lack of preamble before his threats began. But I knew where I stood.
‘What you’ve gone and done, Hartford,’ he said with what seemed to me a pantomime of controlling his anger, ‘understand, that’s not okay with me. And you’d better watch out for what’s gonna follow.’
‘I’m fulfilling my duty of care to Eloise,’ I maintained calmly. ‘Exercising my professional judgement.’
‘Yeah, well – we will see, won’t we, precisely what the fuck that amounts to.’
A perfect end to the day … It’s nearing 8pm now, but of course I can get home and I will. I want to see Tessa, god, I so do. The slightest solace she can offer, I will seize with open arms.
September 23rd
I am in the largest spare bedroom at Grey’s, the room that ‘would have been’, for the second child they never had.
‘Family man’ – what a sham. This life I made was not the one I intended. But we rubbed along, Tess and I, said to one another that this was adulthood, these our shared responsibilities. Even now it’s anathema to me that I should relinquish them.
But just how mistaken have I been? Is it possible I’m as much the guilty party as she contends? Already last night feels like it took place years ago, a judgement passed down in some other life. Returning to the house, stepping over the threshold – nothing felt different to how we’d muddled along yesterday. I was chasing sympathy, yes, but I also felt I had an ace in hand, that my duties with Eloise were now discharged.
Did I spend too long in the quiet hallway, shrugging off coat and scarf, turning out my pockets, rifling the mail, scanning the paper – forestalling our first conversation? We have not communicated in any manner but this for so long now. I found her in the kitchen, standing over the empty sink, her back to me – not upstairs by the tub, or sat on the stepladder to the twins’ bunk.
‘Where are the boys?’
‘At mum and dad’s.’
I admit, I went to the cooler, poured a glass, thinking only that it was good we had this evening to ourselves. I had taken a swallow, allowed other thoughts in, before I realised Tessa was staring at me, her eyes tragic, the line of her mouth tense and foreboding.
‘Steven, I dropped the boys off because I didn’t want them to be here. For what I want to say.’
‘Which is what?’
‘You’ve been making life unbearable for us. And you just don’t seem to care. You’re not a husband to me any more. Hardly a father. You know it, I know you do. And you’re just not sorry for it, and you won’t do anything to change it. So … I want you to leave.’
‘“Leave.”’ Time had slowed, drastically. ‘Now?’
‘I’d prefer it, yes. I’d think it kind of you, if you packed a bag tonight and went somewhere else. You could drive back to Blakedene. I mean, it’s got so you might as well have your mail forwarded.’
I was still reeling. ‘And then what?’
‘I don’t know. We should take some time apart, and if there’s something to talk about at the end of it, then we talk. But things can’t just continue. Not like this.’
There were so many things I could have said, things I should have said many times before. What I said was: ‘Tessa, please. This has been, just a dreadful day. You’ve really pulled the rug from under me.’
‘How can you be so self-pitying? How do you think my day was? What do you think our life is, Steven?’
‘I’m not under any illusion—’
‘No, you just want to be free of what your life actually is, or have some spare compartment in it you can retreat to. We don’t have that luxury, Steven, I didn’t marry you dreaming we would.’
‘We all have separate sides, marriage has to accommodate that—’
‘No, you just want me to put up with it from you. I’m tired of you having no interest in my side, my mind. Resenting it.’
That charge was so hard I began to feel a perishing hopelessness in the discussion. In my mind I was, indeed, now packing my bag … Then the awful skittering bleep of the phone, its echoing double in the living room. Part of me expected Killian. The dead man speaks. A male voice came on the machine, yes, but irate.
‘Tessa? Tessa, it’s me. I don’t care, just pick up. If he’s with you pick up and put him on.’
She was unabashed. I tried to mimic him. ‘Pick it up Tessa. Say what you have to.’
She shook her head, let the machine click off. ‘He’s not … we’re not. Before you jump to conclusions. He’s a colleague, he’s been a friend to me. Listens, respects me for who I am, all the things you stopped doing.’
‘Ah, good of him …’
‘I’ve never been unfaithful to you, Steven. Don’t console yourself with that one.’
‘And I never cheated on you. Don’t just look at me, I haven’t.’
‘I can’t read your mind but I know when you’re not with me. I’m sorry I’m not your dream woman. Sorry f
or you. But I’m not going to be made to feel shit about it one more second.’ Whatever fight I had in me was gone. She saw as much. ‘As I say, I’d take it as a kindness if you would pack a bag.’
‘Can I not just take the sofa? Just for tonight?’
‘Do what you want, Steven, I know you will.’
She walked out and up the stairs. I walked out and into the hall, saw the boys’ coats, their bikes side by side. At that, truly I felt a gnawing in the heart, felt weak, thought that I could weep. The boys favour their mother – I, just a restive stranger round the house.
Upstairs in my office I found our bank statement open on the dresser: the cash debit of ten thousand pounds, its re-credit three days later. Of course, she’s not wrong, I have too many recesses.
I was considering a hotel. Finally I called Grey, fell on his considerable mercies.
The devastation feels complete. In my heart I’m quite sure things were meant to go this low.
But another sort of certitude comes along, the one that braces itself for things to bottom out so that one can resume the climb, albeit from the foot. I wasn’t made to collapse in a crisis. Where I have landed has a barren feel, a very circumscribed space, and my current resources aren’t even adequate to fill it. But that will change. Now I have work to do.
* * *
This is abysmal, this is hell – I’ve been put here on purpose.
It could never have been foreseen, not this – no one by what they’d seen could have believed this could happen. I looked in Leon’s eyes, I saw his care for her, read his happiness, his hopefulness, it was all of a piece with hers. Yes, she spoke of his temper, but this linked to all the things he believed she couldn’t or wouldn’t be for him. Now they were going to be together, it was all agreed. It was entirely well starred.
What’s going to happen to me? Pitiful, but I have to think this, now, quickly. Even Niamh is looking at me differently. This is a tragedy we’re all experiencing right now, but the staff are looking to me and how I handled this patient, who now lies on a mortuary slab, killed, allegedly, by the man into whose hands I entrusted her.
The Possessions of Doctor Forrest Page 19
