by John Burke
‘He won’t come to any harm,’ said Laura. She took bandages from her bag. ‘I’ll immobilise his arm. He should be allowed to sit somewhere where he won’t get bumped into. He won’t be able to use his arm properly for a few days, but provided he isn’t pushed about he’ll make a quick recovery.’
‘Splendid.’ Mr. Cartwright unfolded, and was incongruously jovial from the heights of his six-foot-two slenderness. ‘This’ll give you an excuse for doing nothing, hm, young fellow?’
‘Come to my surgery this evening between six and seven,’ Laura told the boy. ‘I’ll have another look then.’
He got up and went to the door, which Mr. Cartwright opened with a flourish, aimlessly patting him on the shoulder as he went out.
Laura had very little time for Mr. Cartwright. He was too predictable. You knew what his next remark was likely to be, and you could usually deduce what odd, twisted schemes he was brewing up. He would, for example, not miss the present opportunity of making some reference to the nearness of the Jury doctor and to Laura’s remoteness.
‘Well, thank you for coming all this way.’ Here it came. ‘Of course we could have got Doctor Whiting — it seems silly not to call him in, when he’s so close — but I know how worried you folk are about etiquette. And about losing patients to another doctor, eh?’ He gave a happy splutter.
She did not bother to reply, knowing that there was nothing which unsettled him more than to be ignored. She picked up her bag and made for the door.
‘Well, thank you,’ he said again, effusively. ‘Thank you. I hope we don’t have to — er — worry you again.’
He was plucking at her attention, feeling that the interview had not been satisfactorily concluded.
‘The boy will be perfectly all right,’ said Laura, to round off the affair.
This gave him a lead. With his hand on the doorknob, he wagged his head, leaning confidentially towards her. There was a stale smell arising from his gown. He said in an undertone:
‘Rather a difficult case, that boy.’
‘Indeed?’
If the boy had been anyone else, Laura would not have waited. She would have made it clear that she wanted to get away, and Mr. Cartwright would have been left in his study deploring the haste and rudeness of doctors. But this was a question of Gilbert Drysdale. Despite her impatience, she waited. However much she might try to pretend that she was not interested in this result of what had happened so many years ago — even that she detested the boy — she had to learn anything there was to be said about him.
‘You know the case, of course? Living with his grandfather — mother ran off with an American soldier, and heaven knows who the father —’
‘Yes, I know the case,’ said Laura brusquely.
‘How people can be so callous about their children’s welfare . . .’ Mr. Cartwright sighed a painful sigh. ‘And now the grandfather wants to take him away from school at the end of the summer term.’
‘He’ll be fifteen by then?’ She was startled, knowing that it must be so yet hardly able to believe it.
‘Of course the law is that they can leave school when they’re fifteen,’ said Mr. Cartwright crossly. ‘But when a grammar school place is accepted for a child, it should be done so on the understanding that that child will remain at least until sixteen — and preferably to eighteen.’
‘Mr. Drysdale wants his grandson to start work?’
‘They’re all the same. Really, they have no sense of responsibility whatever. I make it quite clear that if there are any financial difficulties, or problems at home, the headmaster is here to help.’
‘And,’ said Laura maliciously, ‘they don’t realise that it knocks points off your salary scale, do they? Perhaps if you were to put it to them . . .’
Mr. Cartwright’s mouth opened protestingly. Then he allowed it to stretch into a reluctant smile.
‘Now, now! What a suggestion. Really!’
‘Perhaps when I see old Drysdale, I’ll have a word with him. For the boy’s sake,’ said Laura.
She had not expected him to look pleased. His gratitude was forced. He liked the right thing to be done; he genuinely, in his own muddled way, liked parents and guardians to be persuaded to do what was best for their children; but he liked to do the persuading himself.
‘If you have any influence with him, that would be most kind of you,’ he dubiously said.
Laura went out and drove home.
She left the car at the front of the house and went briskly in through the waiting-room.
‘Oh!’ Charlotte, startled by the opening of the door behind her, jumped away from the table. Then she smiled ingratiatingly.
Laura said: ‘What are you doing?’
It had started out as no more than an idle, conventional query. She was quite indifferent to the ways in which Charlotte filled in time. But before the words were out of her mouth they had been an accusation. She stared at the jumble of magazines on the table.
‘I was sorting things out,’ said Charlotte.
‘Sorting them out?’
The usual neat piles of Punch, The Tatler and the women’s magazines had been toppled together. A few torn covers flapped over the edge of the table. The mutilation was as immediate a challenge to Laura as the sight of torn flesh in an accident would have been. Things that were torn, messy, loose and untidy demanded immediate action.
She pushed past Charlotte and began to extract the more battered magazines. These she put aside on a chair, and restored the others to their original piles.
‘I was only looking out a few things,’ protested Charlotte, making an occasional dab at some shred of paper which Laura unfailingly twitched away before she could reach it.
Laura held up the outer pages of a woman’s weekly paper. Its centre pages had been removed.
‘There was an article I wanted to read,’ said Charlotte.
‘And you actually tore the pages out, just for that?’
‘I wanted to keep it.’
‘It wouldn’t occur to you that somebody else might want to read it? One of the patients for whom I supply these things, for instance. Somebody might want to finish the short story which runs on to one of those pages.’
Charlotte gave an abrupt, shrill laugh. ‘You sound just like Peter.’
Laura stood very still. ‘Do I?’
‘Like Peter used to, at first.’ Charlotte waved towards the table. ‘He was always carrying on at me, at first. If I left a book behind a cushion, he’d feel it. Like the princess and the pea. He couldn’t bear to see a book left open — face down, or anything like that — or anything with a coupon cut out of it, or a page torn.’ She laughed again, this time wistfully. ‘He was so silly.’
Laura took up the torn copies under her arm and turned towards the passage.
Charlotte, trying to assist and finding herself once more thwarted, said in an unsteady voice:
‘He got it from you. All that sort of thing, it all came from you. But he grew out of it.’
‘Did he?’
‘He used to tell me about you,’ Charlotte persisted, following Laura down the passage, raising her voice. ‘We used to laugh about things like that.’
‘Did you?’
‘He used to thank me. He used to laugh, and thank me for . . . for saving him from being an old maid.’
Peter’s mine, she was saying. Peter, she was assuring Laura, doesn’t belong to you any more. I took him over, laughed at him, laughed with him, taught him to laugh at everything you shared; I own him now, you’re nothing to him, we both laughed and we’ll go on laughing and there’s nothing of Peter left down here with you any more, nothing left, nothing . . .
Then Charlotte caught up with Laura and seized her arm. Laura jerked away from the contact.
‘I’m only joking,’ said Charlotte. ‘It wasn’t like that at all.’
‘No?’
‘Of course it wasn’t. You know that. I’m only pulling your leg.’
‘Are you? I se
e.’
Suddenly Laura knew what she intended to do. She could not have explained even to herself why she knew so surely that this was essential — could not have said what she hoped or expected from it. The plan rose within her, compelling, a devouring force, not to be denied.
She said: ‘Would you like to help me this evening, Charlotte?’
‘Help you?’
They were in the kitchen. Laura put the bundle of magazines down near the back door, and turned to face Charlotte. Mrs. Swanton watched them.
‘You could give me a hand with evening surgery,’ said Laura. ‘I sometimes get quite a crowd here, you know, and it’s difficult to cope with them all. If you could get all their names in the right order, and usher them in and out, and perhaps get their record cards out for me, it would make such a difference.’
Her mother stared at her disconcertingly.
‘Whatever’s got into you, Laura? You know you’ve always said you couldn’t bear anyone else playing about with —’
‘Things have been piling up just lately,’ said Laura smoothly and untruthfully. ‘Besides, it might give Charlotte a . . . well, let’s call it an interest in life.’
Charlotte stuck out her lower lip and looked sullen. But she said: ‘I think it would be interesting.’
‘You can wear one of my white lab coats. You should look rather fetching.’
Charlotte’s suspiciousness did not abate, but within the space of a few minutes there was a contemplative, anticipatory gleam in her eye. It was not hard to guess what her thoughts were; not hard for Laura, who felt that she was getting to know Charlotte very well — getting to know and despise her more and more. Charlotte was seeing herself as a trim, efficient receptionist. She would smile professionally, give a proprietorial glance at the rows of bottles in the consulting-room as she ushered a patient in, nod graciously when showing one out, and in a few weeks’ time begin to make knowledgeable judgments of patients and their ailments.
Not that Laura had any settled intention of employing Charlotte regularly. She was merely experimenting, with particular concern for this evening. The first performance might well be the last. Charlotte herself would probably not want to go on after this evening.
Chapter Eight
Evening surgery was not, as it happened, a crowded one.
‘You can get used to things gradually,’ said Laura. ‘Take your time.’
‘I must try and do a lot more for you,’ said Charlotte. She was eager and in some way remorseful. ‘I’ve really been dreadfully idle. You must make me do things for you, Laura.’
The door outside closed quietly, and she hurried out.
Laura listened to the irregular opening and closing of the door, wondering when Gilbert Drysdale would come in. That shuffling step she recognised as old Cobbett’s. The rachitic cough was Johnson’s. That quiet opening and closing . . . that might be anybody.
Charlotte ushered them in and out with a smug little grin that at times threatened to get out of control. How she loved the whole business: it was pitiful. Really, a more vapid, thoroughly unsuitable wife for the erratic Peter it would have been hard to imagine.
Then, after a short spell of what Laura referred to as a brisk trade, culminating in a Bell’s palsy case, there was a lull. Laura half rose from her chair, then decided to wait. She must not spoil the effect.
Once again the sound of the door. A pause, and Charlotte came in.
Her face had changed. She was pale and her lower lip seemed to have sagged. She looked helplessly at Laura.
Laura said: ‘Who’s next?’
‘A boy. Gilbert Drysdale.’ The name was barely audible.
‘Oh, yes,’ Laura casually said. ‘Wheel him in.’
Gilbert came in, slouching slightly. He hesitated inside the door and glanced doubtfully at the glass case of surgical instruments in the corner.
‘Well, and how’s the elbow?’ asked Laura.
Charlotte remained where she was for a moment, staring at the boy’s face; then with the faintest noise in her throat she turned and went out.
Laura prodded the arm. The swelling had gone down. She nodded. ‘Cleared up nicely. That didn’t take long, did it?’
‘No, miss,’ said Gilbert with relief.
Already he was moving tentatively off the edge of his chair.
‘But go easy with it for a little while.’
‘Yes, miss.’
Laura said: ‘Just a moment.’
He stopped, apprehensive.
‘I’ve been wondering,’ she said, feeling her way, ‘if you’d like to earn some extra pocket money.’
He waited for her to go on.
‘You have to cycle through Brookchurch every evening on your way home from school —’
‘’Cept when I get the bus.’
‘Yes. But the bus stops here anyway, so that needn’t affect what I’m thinking of.’ She took the cap off her pen and began to draw neat little diagrams on a prescription pad. Laura was not a confirmed doodler. When she did indulge herself, the results were invariably trim and formal. ‘I thought,’ she said, ‘that you might be able to drop in here each evening to do a few odd jobs for me. My mother finds it hard to get about as freely as she would like, and there are all sorts of things she isn’t fit to tackle. Chopping wood for starting the boiler — getting anthracite up from the shed — and I always have a batch of medicines to be taken down to the bus-stop. Usually they have to wait until morning: it would be a help if you could get them down in the late afternoon when you leave. You might even deliver a few of them to the actual addresses if they’re on your way.’
Gilbert stared fixedly at a shelf ahead of him. He appeared both resentful and interested. He was at an age when accepting or discussing money no longer came easily; an age when he had uncomfortable intimations of a dignity which must be preserved.
Laura added: ‘You could have something to eat here, and a cup of tea, to keep you going.’
‘Oh, that . . .’ Gilbert waved the irrelevance aside.
‘Perhaps you’d like me to have a word with your grandfather?’
‘I can do that myself, thank you, miss.’
‘And you’ll do it?’
‘I’ll have to see,’ said Gilbert. He smiled tantalisingly, in a way that stabbed at her. ‘I’ll let you know, shall I?’
‘Please,’ said Laura.
‘It’ll be all right, anyway.’ Gilbert finally got up.
It was as good as settled. She had done it, and had not even attempted to estimate the consequences. She saw it only as a situation rich in potentialities; she had only the vaguest idea of what the outcome could possibly be.
She sat there after Gilbert had gone, surprised and for a moment a little alarmed by her own impulsiveness. It was disturbing, the effect Charlotte had on her. But the alarm was momentary. What she was doing was in a way like trying a certain course of treatment on a patient. You thought your diagnosis was right, but the patient’s description of symptoms was so vague that you could not yet be sure. You experimented cautiously . . . and usually you were right. It was gratifying to find how often you were right.
Only in this case she was really being very far from cautious.
She was still sitting there when Charlotte came in.
Charlotte stood in the doorway, and looked at her, and said:
‘Why did you do that?’
‘What’s wrong, Charlotte?’
‘That boy — you knew he was coming tonight, you knew, didn’t you? That’s why you asked me . . . You wanted me to see him.’
Laura said nothing.
‘He’s . . . he’s Peter’s son, isn’t he?’ said Charlotte.
Laura screwed the cap carefully back on her pen. It had worked, then. Yet now she realised that she had not expected recognition to be so instantaneous. A slight suspicion, perhaps: a disquiet that Charlotte would not be able to explain; and then, gradually, the dawning awareness. That was how it should have been. Not this sudden flash of
intuition. Nobody else in the district, so far as she knew, was aware of the identity of Gilbert’s father. Nobody else had noticed any resemblance — and the Brookchurch folk were, as a rule, maliciously observant.
Abruptly she was caught up in a great wave of jealousy. She was quite unprepared for it. The satisfaction she had hoped to win from revealing Gilbert to Charlotte had somehow turned sour. Instead, she felt this bitter loathing, this jealousy of a woman who was so stupid and so worthless and yet so much in love with Peter, so much a part of Peter, that she could tell at once who Gilbert was.
‘Peter’s son, isn’t he?’ Charlotte insisted.
Laura got up suddenly and began to replace record cards in their drawer. She said:
‘Yes, he is.’
Chapter Nine
Peter wrote on drab paper the information that he had been moved to a prison in the North. It was one of the ‘progressive’ prisons, and he had no complaints. He did not want Charlotte to come and see him. He would sooner serve out his sentence alone, undisturbed. When he was free and could hold up his head again, they would meet and everything would be different.
Charlotte cried over the letter, and then felt hurt about it. He didn’t want to see her. It was one of his poses, of course. The phrases had a familiar melodramatic ring about them. A month from now he might well be begging her to visit him.
When her immediate annoyance had died down, she admitted to herself that she was glad he did not want her to travel all that way. She was not sure that she could have faced him right now. She needed time; needed to get over the shock of this recent revelation. If she had made the long and doubtless exasperating journey now, she would have spent the hours in the train framing reproaches. She would have been keyed-up when she arrived, they would have quarrelled, and the journey back would have been wretched.
Better to wait. Better not to see him.
She would have liked to show the letter to Laura and to say, ‘I told you he’d feel like this.’ But she could not talk about Peter to Laura. Not yet. And under Laura’s cold eyes the words would have spelled out only one thing, without other meanings or reservations: ‘He doesn’t want to see you. He’s been thinking things over, and he doesn’t want to see you.’
