The Stranger Came

by Frederic Lindsay

  Lucy turned away from her, going back the way they had come, hurrying. 'Do you think,' she wondered aloud, hearing the footsteps behind her, 'she was sleepwalking when she went to bed with my husband?'

  She felt herself caught by the sleeve. She stopped unresisting in front of a ragged poster taped onto a pin board beside a yellowing page of fire regulations.

  'Lucy?'

  'I don't need you to tell me I'm mad as well. You're not my doctor.’

  'If you shook any of Cadell's patients,' Anne Macleod said, and did take Lucy by the arm and shake her, 'you'd hear the pills rattle about inside them. Pimozide, Chlorpromazine, Thioridazine, Trifluoperazine, Haloperidol, Fluphenazine, Sulpiride.’

  'And yours, are yours different, aren't your patients just the same?'

  'All the same,' Anne Macleod frowned, nodded her head fiercely. 'I work here. I'm not in charge. A hundred years ago in places like this doctors cut out the womb as a cure for hysteria. No women doctors then.’ She thrust her fists into the pockets of her coat. 'Not that things change much. Most of the patients are still women. Most of the doctors are men.’

  But before Lucy could absorb that, in the way of quiet corridors there was a sudden flurry of activity. An orderly came whistling from the lifts shoving an empty wheelchair along one-handed; while from the other direction three women in dressing-gown and slippers shuffled softly nearer. The one in the middle looked familiar, someone from the lower corridor, shuffling forward like an inquisitor – what are you doing here? What are you talking about?

  Before they came level, Anne Macleod walked away, lingering just for an instant to be seen taking a look, a last look as if checking something, at the poster, the torn poster, its needle and skulls.

  Later, alone in her room, Lucy lay on the bed listening to the sounds in the corridor.

  Acid can burn the eyes out of your head.

  And then she had said, ‘Being hypnotised gave him permission.’

  Chapter 20

  It was Anne, Doctor Macleod, who had told her.

  'There was no need for us to have to meet in the visitors' room. You could have come here, all the time you could have come here. This is a private room. Didn't you know that?'

  'Since I'm paying for it,' Maitland said. 'I'm sorry.’

  'What about?'

  'For all of this.’ The tears came and she knew how he hated that; but they wouldn't stop. She pressed her hands against her cheeks under her eyes. She felt the tears slide down between her fingers as if to open them.

  'You'll be coming home soon.’ The words were said to comfort her and that must be kind. What she needed though was for him to touch her. Not even leaning forward he sat in the chair facing hers between the bed and the window. Something in the arrangement of it, the chairs too near the bed, made her think of a room in a cheap hotel; some cramped place where lovers lay waiting for morning.

  'I don't know what's wrong with me,' she wept.

  'You had no idea about Sophie and me?'

  'If I had known, I would have wanted her dead.’ The back of her throat spasmed and she could have vomited, lowering her face to hide that from him. 'Isn't that Doctor Cadell's theory?'

  They sat in silence.

  'Only you didn't know.’

  'I went mad for some other reason.’

  'Don't talk like that,' he said. It wasn't an appeal, but a reproach; or his habit of telling her what should be done. She had not yet shaken off the habit of responding. For the long-married, habits it seemed were what survived.

  'I told Doctor Cadell about the time Daddy sent me to fetch his briefcase, when he set up the mask to frighten me.’

  'What?' Blank. Frowning.

  'I told you about it.’ A long time ago; when lovers laid claims upon one another by the things they confided.

  'But you were just a child.’

  'Why not? That's the time they're keen on hearing about.’

  '"They.”’

  'People like Cadell. For them that's the important time. Far more than what happens to you later. Like adultery.’

  Maitland stood up abruptly.

  'It's not fair of you to be angry with me in this place. There was this woman at the dispensary this morning. “When should I take my tablets?” She asked. The pharmacist told her, “take them at eight and six.”

  ‘“Oh, no, she said, my people tell me to take them at lunchtime.” And she was crying and started to shout. I was standing beside her.’

  The door opened and the nurse appeared, her heavy features lightening into a simper at sight of Maitland. 'Doctor Cadell would like to see you for a moment. Your wife won't be alone. Another visitor's come.’

  He was gone before she could say a word. By turning her head, only a little movement, she could see through the window a patch of lawn sloping up into a bank of uncut grass and then the drab wall of a long single-storey ward. Once she had been sitting on the edge of the bed and looked up to see a man at the window opposite. She had been in her nightdress, but he wouldn't have seen her; it was hard to see into a room. Waiting, she tried not to think of how she would cope when the nurse brought Janet. She knew it must be Janet and that she would say, ‘why do you keep hanging on to him? You know he doesn't want you anymore.’

  When Monty Norman came in, her first reaction was relief.

  'Gone to see the doctor, has he? I'll sit with you for a bit. All this long time, they haven't been allowing you visitors. You could say this was my first chance.’ He bent over and she felt his hand cool on her forehead, his breath on her cheek. 'You can sleep if you want to.’

  The sigh was her own sigh coming with the last breath of her life passing out of her mouth into the stale crowded air.

  Dying came harder. When she opened her eyes there was the white length of her arm and the tube rising from it to the bag of the drip. It looked so strange she reached to touch it, and a hand caught hers and put it firmly under the blanket.

  'Be a good girl,' the nurse said.

  Next time she came awake, a woman stood over her making a clenched fist from which there stuck out the glittering point of a needle. 'Don't hurt me,' she said, before recognising who it was.

  The drip went into a junction valve set into her arm and by lifting her head she could see where the tube entered and that there was a second opening into which Anne Macleod was sliding a syringe.

  'Vitamin B 12,' she said. 'We have to make sure you haven't damaged your liver.’

  Lucy tried to sit up and groaned at a spasm of pain.

  'Tummy sore? You had to be pumped out.’

  'What is the drip for?'

  It seemed important to know, not to slip under without finding out why they had done this to her.

  'You'll be on that for twenty hours. It's an antidote.’

  'Why?'

  'Against the stuff you took.’

  'Like poor Sophie.’

  'Not quite,' Anne Macleod said, 'but very nearly.’

  Chapter 21

  She dreamt that she was on a stage with a man on his knees in front of her lapping like a dog between her legs. A hand brushed the hair back from her face, stroked her forehead, the tips of fingers traced the line of her cheek. She jerked away and opened her eyes. Anne Macleod on the chair beside the bed straightened and sat back from her.

  'How are you feeling?'

  'I didn't know she killed herself like that.’

  'With tablets. Stolen from in here. Like you. Not the same kind, though.’ They were talking about Sophie Lindgren, of course; and Lucy took it for granted that had been understood, as if she had resumed a conversation they had already begun. 'Otherwise you would be dead.’

  'I'm grateful to be alive. I'll never do that again.’

  'I've heard people say that before.’

  'Believe me.’

  'That's not what I meant. Someone is found in a coma, brought into a hospital. They get pumped out, all the things that should be done, I did so much of that when I was in emergency, but we kno
w it's too late. And when they come round they say, “thank God, I'm alive, I'll never do that again.” And you look at them and you know they won't, they won't get any chance, and they’re already dead. Within days they're brought in again. The liver's gone.’

  'Is that me?' Terror of dying stilled her.

  'It might have been.’ Anne Macleod sat silent and then her mouth opened in a movement like a yawn, and she sighed, a long trembling like the beginning of a sob. As Lucy stared up at her, she looked aside and her voice when she started to speak was harsh. 'Or brain damage. You were risking more than dying.’

  'But I'm going to be all right.’ Let doctors be contemptuous or angry with her, one of the self-wounded when so many others were injured and ill. What did it matter? Let them feel what they liked. Her life had been given back to her.

  She hardly listened as Anne Macleod talked about how negligent the hospital had been in its overseeing of drugs. Bad record keeping, unlocked cabinets, an atmosphere so casual that Sophie had been able to steal the drugs which killed her.

  'It wasn't the publicity Cadell had been hoping for, but things had been getting worse for ages. The truth is it was a scandal waiting to happen. And now you,' Anne Macleod said. 'After all the changes, it wasn't supposed to happen again.’

  'Why was she here? Was she ill?'

  'All of you were here. Don't you remember? Your husband, the man Norman, the little secretary woman, and the others with the Trust, you all turned up to collect the patients for the theatre visit.’

  'I don't remember.’

  'There were drinks, you were here for almost an hour. Doctor Cadell made an occasion of it.’

  As if there was something to be defended, Lucy said, 'The Trust has had connections with the hospital since Charles Gregory's time.’

  'They think she swallowed the tablets when we were with the Great Sovek or maybe in the bar at the interval. But the tablets came from here; there wasn't any doubt of that. There were articles in the papers, visits from the Health Board.’

  'Sophie Lindgren killed herself.’ She wasn't real to Lucy anymore; she couldn't even remember her face.

  'After she died,' Anne Macleod said, 'I couldn't stop thinking about her. I had seen a pretty girl that was all I had seen, I hadn't seen any of her unhappiness, and I had been trained to see. It was such a waste. Maybe I could have done something, I couldn't stop thinking that.’

  What was real was that she had been a girl, only a girl, with all of her life before her.

  'Poor girl,' Lucy said.

  What is real, Lucy Inside said, is that I'm alive.

  Chapter 22

  When he came in she was afraid, but he sat down with his hands on his knees and looked across the bed at her. She had been waiting in the chair by the window, and at sight of him she started up then sank back not sure of what he might do if she tried to leave. Keep calm; she told herself, someone will come.

  'I'm in a room with three other people. You have this to yourself, all right for some.’

  The lights were on in the ward opposite, but there was no one to be seen, no one ever showed at any of the windows. A drizzling rain wept down on the grassy bank. Her glance snatched backed to him; he hadn't stirred. In this place full of people, she thought, I could be raped. The corridor outside was busy; nurses tap heeling past and no one to know what was being done in here. Dry­mouthed, she contemplated the idea of screaming.

  'Not much of a view,' he said, getting up and coming to the window. She tried not to flinch, feeling the heat of his body standing close beside her. 'Better view from the roof when we were up there together.’ and casually, in the same tone, 'You frighten easily. One kiss, I didn't mean to frighten you.’

  'I'm waiting for my husband to come,' Lucy said. 'He's late. He should be here by now.’

  'Funny time for a visit,' the Lewisman said, and ran his hand over the stiff brush of his hair while squinting at her sceptically.

  'He's coming to take me home.’

  'Cured, are you?' With a grin, he shook his head, did not believe that for a moment.

  'I'm going home.’

  'You're not committed. No reason why you shouldn't walk out the door. If your husband wants you back? If he's feeling lonely?'

  'He's coming to take me home.’

  'Well, then,' he said, a comfortable there-you-are-then noise that conveyed his doubt. 'And the children?' She said nothing, sure he was mocking her. 'You'll be looking forward to seeing them, their arms round you, putting their arms round you, hello, Mum!'

  'Yes,' she said, and saw him frown. 'My two children. My daughter and my little boy.’ She held out her hands and they were on either side of her, felt little hands, baby hands, and looked down and saw hers were empty.

  And all the time he was talking.

  'When I was in London, I went to this house one morning and knocked on the door. It was a terrace kind of a thing. I went there on the train, took me an hour and then there was a walk. I knew where I was going, though, they'd given me a bit of paper with it all written out – turn right out of the station, four streets along and then go left up the hill. There were black guys all over the place, coming back with the papers or out in the street washing the car. It was the middle of a Sunday morning. I thought just my luck if he's not in. Anyway, I came to the house, checked the number. It was red brick, you know the way, with a kind of cellar below and I went up the steps and rang the bell. The funny thing is when he opened the door he knew right away who I was although we'd never seen one another before. He went the colour of that sheet. "Tell Bernie I'll get the money,'' he said, "first thing in the morning.” I showed him the shooter. "It has to be now," I told him. "For Christ's sake," he said, "not in front of the kids.” And right enough a boy and girl had come up the stair into the hall – from the kitchen, I suppose. The girl had a cup in her hand. The boy might have been three or four, I'm no judge. In his underpants, nothing else on, standing there taking it all in. "You wouldn't shoot me in front of the boy?" that's what he said, "You wouldn't shoot me in front of the boy?”' The Lewisman made a face of disgust. 'And he started crying. What do you make of that?'

  'Did you kill them?'

  She was so intent upon his answer she didn't realise someone had come into the room until he backed off, stepping right away from her.

  'What are you doing here?' When she was excited, Anne Macleod's voice sounded more Highland, lengthening some of the vowels into a lilt.

  'I came in to say, “look after yourself, all the best.” She's going home today. Isn't that right? That's what she told me.’

  'It doesn't matter what she told you.’

  Lucy thought, they sound like brother and sister, though she knew another listener might hear the difference between them, coming from islands parted by miles of Atlantic sea set differently to the sun.

  The Lewisman nodded. Shrugging and grinning like a caught schoolboy, he was making ready to leave.

  But Lucy had to know. 'Did you?' she asked again. 'Did you kill them?'

  He had to bend his head down to catch what she was saying. 'Didn't kill anybody. He paid up. He knew I would have done it, you see.’ Then, as if, that out of the way, he had time to remark on what she had said, 'What do you mean "them"? I wouldn't ever hurt a child. Don't you know what Jesus said? "Better a millstone round your neck and be thrown into the sea.”’ He straightened up and spoke to Anne Macleod. 'I'd throw them in with my own hands.’

  'You shouldn't be here,' Lucy told him. That this hypocrite should hector them about Jesus gave her a moment of disgust which stood her instead for courage. 'You have no right.’

  'I tell you, doctor, this one has some funny visitors.’ He clucked his tongue in disapproval. 'It was that set me thinking about London. I met a lot of people when I was in London.’

  Lucy tried to meet his look, but its blank intensity defeated her.

  'Please,' she said to Anne Macleod.

  'How did it feel?'

  'What?' What was he
asking her?

  'Stop this, Fraser,' Anne Macleod said. 'Your hear me?'

  'I don't care why you did it. You did it with tablets, isn't that right? I was just wondering how it felt. What were you thinking about when you took them?'

  Wearied by fright, she stumbled upon the simple truth. 'I watched my hands moving. It didn't matter what I was thinking.’

  He turned that idea over, rubbing his hand back and forward over his scalp, staring down at her. In the end, nodded; one sharp jerk of the head. 'I can understand that.’

  Explain it to me then. Make me understand.

  But before she could say anything, Maitland was there at last. In jagged strokes rain rattled the window glass and smoked over the banks of lawn. The Lewisman looked out at it, hands at ease clasped behind him, his back turned to the room. Pretending. The word hissed viciously in Lucy's head.

  'Oh, Maitland,' she said, 'take me home.’

  'What's going on?' Maitland asked Anne Macleod.

  'This is a sad lady,' the Lewisman said, turning from the window. She felt the weight of his hand upon her shoulder. 'I hope you look after her with kindness.’

  'Do you, indeed?' When Maitland came across the room, he was by a full head the taller man. 'Obviously, you're not a doctor. A patient?'

  'I'm not ashamed of that.’ But it sounded like bluster.

  The hand was still resting on her shoulder, and Maitland reached out and lifted it away. Over his shoulder he said to Anne Macleod, 'My God, a patient.’

  'Fraser Allander,' the Lewisman said, and went on like a threat, 'your wife and I've become friends.’

  'I really don't have time for this.’

  'I wouldn't want her mixed up with the wrong people. I was saying to the doctor your wife has some funny visitors.’