by John Burke
It was obvious that Gilbert was delighted by what had happened. He was startled by the efficiency with which breakfast was made — and, one felt, somewhat startled by his own efficiency in getting off to school on time. Mrs. Swanton made it her job to look after him: at first she treated him warily, as though never sure what he might say or do, but within a day or two she was bullying him amiably in a way she had never been able to adopt with Laura, who had coldly answered back, or with Peter, who had laughed brightly and ignored her.
On a Friday afternoon the school broke up for the Easter holiday.
The weather seemed promising. On Saturday morning the sky had that burnished appearance which it usually did not acquire until deep summer, and then not invariably. The freshness of the breeze kept it from being a hot day; but it was a day for walking across the marsh to the sea, and during lunch Gilbert looked continually out of the window.
‘Going anywhere special this afternoon?’ said Laura idly. She wondered, with that same sensation of feeling her way, whether now was the time to take him out in the car, casually, and begin talking to him, casually.
Charlotte looked up and said: ‘Shall we go for a walk, Gil? There are lots of things I want to ask you about the dykes.’
Laura watched. The boy looked at Charlotte, and went faintly pink.
‘All right,’ he muttered. His voice was reluctant, but that did not imply that he was reluctant to go out with her.
Laura had never been able to provoke that shyness in boys or men. Never. She had watched her school friends maturing, learning and practising; had watched the ease with which they brought on that awkwardness, and had scorned them for their cheap laughter and jubilation afterwards. She wouldn’t have stooped to such nonsense. And if she had done, she could not have succeeded. She had always known that.
The sight of a grown woman exercising these powers on an adolescent was disgusting.
Charlotte and Gilbert went out together, and were away for some hours. Most of the time they were in full view of the back windows of the house — two distant specks in the bright haze of the marsh. Called out on one urgent visit that proved to be not at all urgent, Laura passed close to them late in the afternoon as she drove round the winding roads. They were bent over a ditch, and from this short distance it was clear that Gil was explaining something to Charlotte. His whole attitude was that of someone engrossed in a subject, sharing an enthusiasm.
Laura drove past them on her way out and on her return. They paid no attention to the car passing.
On Sunday morning, Charlotte announced that she and Gilbert were going to church.
‘How nice,’ said Mrs. Swanton. ‘We’ll all go.’ Charlotte and Gilbert did not exactly exchange glances, but there was a slight movement of mutual commiseration.
‘That’ll be lovely,’ said Charlotte.
She smiled uncertainly at Laura. Gilbert, too, looked at Laura. He wanted her approval. He might be fond of Charlotte, but he needed Laura’s approval. She was glad of that. It would make things easier — those vague but important things that were not yet clearly formulated.
She said: ‘Not for me. I remain a slave to the telephone.’ And then she flicked out at Charlotte: ‘I don’t remember you bothering about church any other Sunday since you’ve been here.’
‘We just thought it’d be nice. It’s such a sweet little church.’
Gilbert had turned his attention to Charlotte’s face. He heaved a sigh of relief when she had spoken, as though she had made everything all right. It was an addition to the routine — something else into which he gladly fitted once it had been sanctioned.
‘I’d better not come, after all,’ said Mrs. Swanton. ‘The dinner . . .’
Laura could have offered to look after the dinner. Instead, she chose deliberately to let the two of them go alone. At the back of her mind lay the thought: Let them talk drivel to one another; let them think they’re becoming friends; and then let’s see what happens when . . .
When what?
She was not ready yet to give the answer.
‘You don’t mind’ — thus Charlotte, on the Monday — ‘if Gil and I go down to Tapton Harbour for the afternoon? I’ll be back in time for surgery.’
‘No need to worry about that. I managed before you came,’ said Laura in a tone that could have been humorous but was not, ‘and no doubt I’ll manage later when . . . when you’ve gone.’
Alone at her desk, she thought about Peter. Instead of trying, as she had so often tried, to keep him at a distance, she invited him back into his home. She sat quite still, and heard his laughter, muffled, somewhere at the back of the house. A tune was whistled.
Peter.
The door would close with a click, and he would come in. Careless as he was, he never slammed doors. He had a mincing, affected way of leaning on a door and half swinging with it, letting the catch click home. On the rare occasions when he entered briskly, you knew he had done something wrong — very wrong.
She heard his voice as he explained. Always reasoning, explaining something away.
Then the voice faded. She half rose from her chair, as though if she hurried she might catch Peter on his way out through the waiting-room. But the sound had gone farther away than that: it fell into the tumultuous silence of the marsh, and was lost.
It would come back. When it did come back, she would not allow it to be confused and distorted by the overtones of other voices. Of Charlotte’s voice.
She got up and went to the bench to tidy up record cards. After a minute or two she found herself surveying the bottles on the shelf immediately in front of her. There was nothing much here. But in the poison cupboard on her left there were so many things.
The thought took her unawares, and shocked her. She thrust it away. It went and sat on the edge of her mind, patiently waiting until she was ready to recall it.
Chapter Fifteen
She had, she admitted, thrown them together. But it had not been part of the plan — unsure as she was of its ramifications, Laura nevertheless knew that it could be no part of the plan — that Charlotte and Gilbert should get on so well. The sound of their confiding voices as they left the house, and their laughter in the spring afternoon, were not right.
But she was not perturbed. She noted with satisfaction that Gilbert continued to seek her approval. He might enjoy chattering to Charlotte, and in his gawky adolescent way perhaps he was absurdly infatuated with her; but she, Laura, was his standard of reference. Sometimes, even, he edged away from Charlotte when she was talking too loudly, with that exasperating intensity which she so often brought to bear on trivialities. In the sidewise glance of his eyes he disclaimed her.
I can get him if I want, thought Laura with a strange exultation. It was somehow important that she should be sure of this. He’s mine, she thought, when I need him: I’ve only got to reach out and I can take him from her.
Just as, in due course, she would be able to take Peter from her. Or take her from Peter. Laura was not yet sure which way round it would be.
From one of their walks the two came back less happily than was usual. Charlotte had bought them each a large ice cream, and now she had a violent stomach-ache. She came humbly into the consulting-room, where Laura was fastening up a box of sleeping tablets.
‘I’ve got this awful pain. Like a rip-rap exploding in my stomach all the time.’
Laura put a dab of sealing-wax on the paper. ‘Have you ever had a rip-rap exploding in your stomach?’
‘This is just what it must feel like.’
One of the many conclusions that Laura had reached after some years in general practice was that people who tried to describe pain were not suffering very greatly. Real pain was just pain: the sufferer would point, and say ‘A pain — here.’ No verbal flourishes. A pain.
She said: ‘Probably indigestion.’
Charlotte explained about the ice cream, and Laura smiled mirthlessly. She reached up and took down a glass jar.
Ch
arlotte said: ‘The label’s rubbed off. How do you know it’s the right stuff?’
‘I know what’s in every bottle on these shelves,’ said Laura. ‘I could find any one in the dark if I had to. Unless,’ she added, ‘you’ve been moving them about while my back’s been turned.’
‘Of course I haven’t. Why ever should I?’
Laura handed the draught to Charlotte, who tipped it back, and then screwed up her face.
‘Ugh. Beastly.’
Like so many other patients, she did not bother to thank Laura. Really, she was so ordinary, ought one to feel any emotion about her at all? As a patient, she would not have aroused the faintest personal response from Laura.
But as the days went by, Laura realised that she would never be truly calm until this situation was resolved. Small things irritated her; things that at one time she would have been able to shut out of her consciousness now nagged and pricked at her. In particular the sound of Charlotte’s voice rasped. It struck some discordant resonance inside her head, so that she wanted to put her hands over her ears. But there was no ordinary way of shutting out that voice. It echoed on even when Charlotte was not there. Her laughter at a distance . . . the faint whisper of her chatter to Mrs. Swanton at the back of the house . . . the snatches of popular tunes she moaned to herself all day long . . . all these things seemed to get louder and louder, like a clamant radio that nightmarishly increased in volume and could not be turned off.
One morning towards the end of Mr. Drysdale’s second week in hospital, Laura found herself staring at the scales on the bench. That weight — surely she could not have used that weight for the last lot of medicines she had made up?
She leaned over it, incredulous, and found that she had sent Gilbert off with a package for one of her patients that contained a dose of phenobarbitone just ten times as strong as it ought to be.
It wouldn’t kill the patient, but it would make him extremely sleepy. It was unwise to take chances. She got out the car and pursued Gilbert, who had set off on his bicycle ten minutes previously.
She caught him without difficulty. He looked surprised as she waved him in to the side.
‘I’ve sent a wrong medicine,’ she said. ‘I must take it back and make sure the right one goes off tonight.’
He grinned, as though pleased to find that even she, whom he respected so much, could make mistakes. She nearly smiled back, suddenly seeing how easy it would be to like him — and then she was gripped by a searing pain, stirred by deep venomous anger at the mere idea.
‘Put your bike in the back.’
With the hood down, it was easy to lay the bicycle over the back seat. Gilbert got in the front with her. She slewed the car savagely round, and drove back.
From the corner of her eye she was aware of him glancing tentatively at her. For the moment she could not say anything further to him. She was shocked by her own negligence. No one would know about it, and in any case there would have been no disastrous results. In spite of all the public panic and radio warnings about doctors who had left dangerous drugs in their cars, phenobarb was not as deadly as it was made out to be. But this indication of her lack of concentration was alarming. Something would have to be done. She must get herself out of this state. It was humiliating. She could afford to be vague no longer. She must act. Poison was accumulating in her system, working within her, distracting her. She must start releasing it.
It would have to be done. It wasn’t her fault that she had to do this. She hadn’t invited Charlotte to stay, had she? She hadn’t wanted her here. She hadn’t arranged for Mr. Drysdale to have such trouble with his veins and then to develop a varicose ulcer.
‘You went to see your grandfather yesterday, didn’t you?’ she said in a level tone.
‘That’s right,’ he said.
‘How was everything?’
‘He’s doing very well, miss,’ said Gilbert politely. ‘Fussing about coming home.’
His face gave nothing away.
She said: ‘Are you looking forward to having him home again?’
‘Yes.’
‘You wouldn’t . . .’ The car drew up in front of the house. ‘You wouldn’t like to come and live here some day?’
‘Here?’ The echo was automatic, to gain time, but his eyes were revealing. He looked up at the prim square façade. There was uncertainty; there was bewilderment; but there was something else as well.
Laura said: ‘Yes. How would you like to live here with . . . with your father?’
It was too abrupt. She had alarmed him.
‘My father’s dead,’ he said.
‘Are you quite sure?’
‘Of course. Grandad told me.’ But she sensed a wariness in his manner. With unexpected bitterness he blurted out: ‘Of course there’s one or two at school — they’d say anything — dirty lot.’
‘What do they say?’
He was trembling. For a moment he shed the politeness he had always maintained. A manner he had acquired at school, and which he probably wore consistently among his friends there, rose suddenly like a cloak that he had pulled up around his shoulders. He snarled in the local accent:
‘What’s it got to do with you?’
‘I’m your father’s sister,’ said Laura. She held open the door of the car. ‘I think we’d better go in and talk about him.’
He remained motionless. She thought that when he moved he might run away. Then he shook his head pitifully and said:
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
He slid mechanically out of the seat, and in the same dazed way held the gate open for her. She went through. He followed her up the path.
‘I’ll tell you all about it,’ said Laura pleasantly. ‘It’s all quite simple, really.’
They went into the consulting-room. She shut the door. They sat down, and she told him. It was as though she were discussing some pains he felt, explaining what they were and what they meant. But she did not yet suggest any appropriate treatment. Such recommendations would come later. Here and now she merely told him, calmly and clearly, about the past.
PART TWO
The potent poison quite o’ercrows my spirit.
Chapter One
He lay on his stomach, the sun hot on the back of his neck. Below him, pale pink trefoils flowered in early splendour across the surface of the still water. He stared at them. There was no movement.
It was early afternoon, and already the day had been too long. He had escaped from the house and the sound of voices, yet still Doctor Swanton’s words seemed to pursue him. They would not leave him. In some ways it was worse out here; the rustling in the grass did not drown her voice as other voices might have done. He was exposed, defenceless.
A lark vibrated in the air a hundred yards away, then dropped. A couple of sheep bleated for a few moments, then lost interest and went on plucking away at the clover.
‘I’m afraid,’ Doctor Swanton was saying gently, ‘we must face the fact that your father always had a weakness for that sort of woman.’
That sort of woman . . . His mother. And Charlotte.
He could not remember the order in which things had been said. They were all in his mind together now, not jumbled up but all there at once, clear and separate, so that he could distinguish each and every remark.
‘I’m not saying that your grandfather was wrong to keep the truth from you. I’m sure he did what he thought was best. But you’re old enough to know exactly what did happen — I think it may help you — and perhaps it will come better from me than from him.’
Not dead. His mother alive, his father alive. His mother had run off with an American. That was how little she had thought of him. ‘That sort of woman.’ And the dirty whispers, the vague suggestions that had once or twice been made to him in the school playground, were true.
He buried his face in the grass.
‘I hope things are going to be different in the future. Your father is not a bad man. You’ll like him. It
’s just that he’s weak.’
Weak. Not meaning that he wasn’t strong enough to work. Nothing like the meaning of ‘weak’ when scribbled by Miss Holyoake across home-work. Not illness — not what his grandfather meant when he said he felt weak and not up to doing much. It was something else: something he was old enough to grasp at. It was as disturbing as all the coarse jokes that you either ignored or laughed at, but that all left the same disquiet.
He wriggled, pushing himself up from the grass, turning on his side and letting his gaze wander over the bright beauty of the fields.
Weak. The sort of weakness that made you feel queer when you saw a girl with her head back, laughing in the middle of a group of boys . . . Or Charlotte raising her hand to push back her hair; Charlotte hurrying along the landing into her room.
‘I can’t say what will happen when your father comes home. But I hope we can keep him here. He needs a proper home. You might like to stay here, too — you’d be a help to him — but of course we can’t settle things like that yet. Mrs. Swanton — his wife — may have different ideas. It’s too early to make plans.’
He could not make plans of any sort. Even the rest of this day was hard to work out. He dreaded going back to the house, dreaded facing them all. Yesterday and this morning had been awful. The immediate future might be worse. He felt that the weight on the top of his head was increasing. It was beginning to hurt, and would get worse.
The Easter holidays would soon be over. He must think about that. The holidays over, his grandfather back, everything would be all right. He would leave the Swantons and not see them again, not see them ever again if he could manage it.
He wondered if things could ever be really all right again.
He wondered what his father looked like.
