PM_E_441 - Cold Snap

by Francis King

  ‘But it’s such a short time. Only a few days. In such a time, what can happen?’

  By now some of her panic had communicated itself to him. Though still holding her, he was looking about him, distraught. Other prisoners, other girls, paused for a moment as they passed, to stare at a couple so clearly in distress. Christine loosened her grip. She looked up at Thomas and attempted to smile. Then, as suddenly as it had engulfed her, the panic subsided. She felt only shame that she had attracted the attention of those passers-by. Who knew how much mockery he might not now suffer in the camp? And she would be the cause. ‘I’m sorry. I’m afraid I’ve disgraced you.’

  ‘Oh, such people don’t matter.’ He looked over his shoulder at the couples toiling up the slope. ‘But you. I’m worried for you. What is it, Christine? What upset you? So sudden. We were happy, yes?’

  ‘Yes, we were happy. Very happy. And we still are.’ That was the truth. ‘ I was just being hysterical, that’s all. I’m not usually like that. Sorry. Please forgive me.’

  He remained bewildered and disturbed. ‘If there’s anything …?’

  ‘No, nothing. Nothing at all.’

  She put up a hand to his face. ‘ Now – now, my dear, I’m afraid we must say Auf Wiedersehen.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  ‘I can’t think where your father’s put The Times. It’s so thoughtless of him. He knows I always like to do the crossword after breakfast. Hardly a day passes when I don’t have this sort of hunt.’ Aunt Eva pulled open one desk drawer and then another. Baulked, she tugged at a cumbersome armchair in an attempt to see if the newspaper might not somehow have slipped under it.

  Christine looked up from the letter that she was writing to Thomas.

  ‘Oh, do give me a hand, Christine. You can see that this chair is too much for me.’

  ‘It can’t be there. How could it be?’

  Aunt Eva raised hands to her ears. ‘ Please, dear, please. Not so loud! I’m not as deaf as you’re determined to imagine.’

  ‘Oh, sorry, sorry.’

  Aunt Eva picked up one of Christine’s books from the top of a pile, and then, satisfied that it had not been concealing the paper, replaced it with a sigh.

  ‘Why don’t you just ask Father?’

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly, dear. You know that for donkey’s years your father has insisted that he must not be disturbed when dealing with business.’

  ‘Business? What business?’

  ‘Well, his letters then.’

  ‘If I remember rightly, the only letters he had this morning were two circulars and a reminder that the laundry bill had still not been paid.’

  Aunt Eva was now looking behind the sofa, having already thrown its cushions on to the floor.

  Christine got to her feet. ‘I’ll go and ask him.’

  ‘Oh, leave it, please leave it. He’ll only go off the deep end. You know what he’s like. I sometimes wonder these days if he’s really quite all there.’

  Having reached the door, Christine returned to retrieve her half-written letter. She knew that her aunt was perfectly capable of reading it. A former Senior Wrangler at Cambridge, a cryptographer during the two wars, and senior maths mistress at a well-known girls public school between them, she had once always struck people as a model of intellectual and moral distinction. Now she had disintegrated into this pitiful, shrunken woman, shuffling around either in agitated search of something wholly trivial or surreptitiously reading communications not meant for her eyes.

  Colonel Holliday had been staring out of the window at two Norland nurses who were perched on a bench beside the bus stop, each extending a hand to restrain their huge landaulets from rolling down the hill. They were not an attractive or even youthful couple, but from such a distance his short sight had deluded him into believing that they were both those things. Christine’s knock sounded precisely at the moment when he had decided to fetch his binoculars from the cloakroom. Hurriedly he lowered himself into the chair behind his desk and picked up his pen. Then he shouted: ‘Yes? What is it? Oh, come in, come in!’

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Father. Aunt Eva wants The Times.’

  ‘Well, she can’t have it. I haven’t finished with it.’

  ‘But you’re not even reading it.’

  ‘True. But the rule in this house is that she reads it after I’ve done so. I pay the newsagent and so that’s my privilege. Like it or not.’

  ‘I do think that’s awfully selfish.’

  He ignored the comment. ‘As soon as she gets her paws on that bloody paper, it’s the end for me. Always cutting things out. Always getting the pages crumpled and mixed up. Interested in nothing but the matches, hatches and despatches – and the adverts, of course. It’s a marvel that she managed to survive even a week at Bletchley.’

  Christine turned away with a sigh. ‘ I can see it’s no good.’

  ‘You’re bloody right.’

  Out in the corridor Christine found Aunt Eva waiting for her. ‘Well? Did he let you have it?’

  ‘He hasn’t finished with it. In fact, he hasn’t started on it.’

  ‘What did I tell you? He never really reads it. He just gets pleasure in keeping it from me. Oh, what a mistake I made when I agreed, out of the sheer kindness of my heart, to come and live with him after your mother’s death. Didn’t someone once say that a good deed never went unpunished? I’d be so much happier on my own in that little Brighton flat – poky though it was.’

  Suddenly Christine saw that Aunt Eva was tugging a tiny, lace-fringed handkerchief out of a sleeve. She put it to her nose and sniffed. Then tears began to appear along her lower eyelids. ‘Oh, don’t cry! Please!’ As Christine put an arm around her aunt’s bony shoulders, her nostrils filled with the earthy smell that had emanated from her ever since, in the last year of the war, she had had what she would call ‘my big op’.

  ‘Forgive me. It’s silly of me, I know. But I get so depressed. I feel so lonely so much of the time. So many dear friends gone – or imprisoned in ghastly nursing-homes miles and miles away. And my brain is not what it was – not by a long chalk. I used to finish those Times crosswords regularly, day after day. Oh, and of course there’s also the constant worry about money – or, rather, the lack of it – largely thanks to your father. I was such an idiot to agree to his offer to handle my investments after brave little Edna died. A right old mess he’s made of that!’ Edna had been her closest friend both at the school at which the two of them had taught and then during those exhausting yet exhilarating wartime years when they had worked together in willing harness as cryptographers at Bletchley. ‘You don’t know how lucky you are to be young.’

  Christine was filled with pity; and yet at the same time she longed to get away. Oh, the horrible inanity of old age! It was terrible to think that a once brilliant, commanding woman should now be reduced to this.

  As soon as she had retreated to her bedroom, she told herself: ‘I must, must be patient with the poor old dear. And with father – though he deserves patience far less.’ But to have that patience was hard, and particularly hard at that moment. For days now she had been in a state of growing tension, her sensibilities so raw that the slightest intrusion on them made her want to scream.

  Her period was now more than a month overdue.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Her first decision was to go and see Dr Walsh. After all he had attended to her ever since he had decided, merely because she had suffered two severe sore throats in rapid succession at the age of barely five, that she must have her tonsils removed. Within only two or three hours he was performing the operation on the kitchen table, having first ordered one of the two cowering maids to scrub it with Lysol. In his brooding, melancholic way, he exuded sympathy – whether real or fake, she had never been sure. He, a widower, and her mother, the constant victim of a husband of erratic moods and impulses, had been close friends – perhaps even secret lovers, Christine sometimes thought.

  Eventually, however
, having made an appointment with him, she cancelled it, to go instead to a woman doctor of whom she knew only because Michael, a friend of her husband, had spoken of her. Michael’s friend had been an Austrian refugee student at the Slade when Dr O’Neill – as she then was – had met him at one of Michael’s parties. He was twelve years younger than she was, and he was already, as she had at once recognised, suffering from multiple sclerosis. He himself was unaware of the nature of his illness, since the specialist who had made the first, tentative diagnosis had decided that for the moment it would be more merciful not to tell him.

  At once the couple had fallen in love. Eventually he had proposed to her and, without any hesitation, she had accepted him. For a while he had continued at the Slade. Then a relapse had obliged him to leave. In the course of a remission he had gone back there and graduated, only once again to become so ill that much of his time was spent in bed. Dr Graff – as she now was – frequently buckled under the stress and herself became exhausted and ill. Her practice was beginning to disintegrate and she had spent most of her savings on ‘cures’ that she knew, at heart, to be useless. From time to time Michael would help the couple financially – once commenting to Christine, ‘I feel that with each cheque she hates me even more.’

  One morning, without saying anything to her father or her aunt, Christine set off for the surgery in a cul-de-sac at the Fulham end of the King’s Road. A bomb, she decided, must have fallen in the street during the war. It was odd that so little had since been done to repair the damage to the tall, narrow house. A thick dust clogged the corners of the steps, and above the portico a length of tarpaulin, having worked loose, flapped in with a grating sound at each gust of March wind. A postcard was pinned above the bell: ‘Out of order, Please knock.’ The letters had faded and run.

  Eventually, an emaciated, chalk-faced woman in a flowered apron opened the door. She smiled wanly. ‘Yes?’ Her cheekbones seemed to be pushing through the puckered surface of the skin like fists in a too tight pair of gloves.

  Christine assumed her to be a cleaner. Michael had spoken of Dr Graff as a large woman of inexhaustible vitality.

  ‘I have an appointment with the doctor.’

  ‘That’s me.’ Again she gave the wan smile. ‘And you must be Miss Holliday. A patient has cancelled, so I can see you at once.’

  Christine followed her down a dark corridor into a waiting room looking out over a narrow tongue of garden furred with long grass and weeds. There were three wicker chairs, a wooden table covered in oilcloth, and another, smaller table on which old copies of Picture Post and Punch were untidily stacked. Mysteriously, there were no radiants in the gas fire. No wonder the rooms felt so bleak.

  ‘I must take some soup up to my husband. He’s not all that well. In fact, he’s in bed. I’ll be back in a sec.’ Dr Graff sniffed. Christine had already become aware of something burning. ‘Oh, lordy, lordy! I hope it hasn’t boiled over. I must fly!’

  Christine turned over the pages of ancient magazine after ancient magazine as the ‘ sec’ extended itself to almost half an hour. At last Dr Graff returned. ‘ I’m terribly sorry. He wanted one thing, he wanted another thing, he wanted something else. You know what it’s like when people are ill. Would you like to come through to my consulting room?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s an awful mess in here.’ Dr Graff went across to the washbasin and began to soap her hands. ‘I’ve no help at present, so what with looking after my husband, my patients and the house …’ She cleared a space on her desk, pushing piles of papers now to one side and now to the other. Then she picked a card out of a wooden index box and began to jot down some of Christine’s particulars. Her mind clearly occupied with other things, she repeatedly had to go back to alter or erase something already written.

  Christine recoiled involuntarily at the touch of her spidery fingers. Dr Walsh first pulled on a pair of pink, rubber gloves before touching her so intimately. ‘Sorry. I’m afraid my fingers are cold. Poor circulation.’ There was an abstracted look in her eyes, as though her mind was still busy, not with this patient, but with the far more important one upstairs. When she asked Christine an abrupt question, she seemed hardly to be listening to the answer. Eventually, one hand brushing away a wisp of grey hair sticking damply to her forehead, she glanced down at the card on the desk and then, slightly pursing her lips, looked up.

  ‘I suppose you must have guessed what might be the matter with you?’

  ‘Guessed?’

  ‘Hadn’t it occurred to you that you might be pregnant? You’ve told me that, before this episode, you’ve never once suffered from amenorrhoea. That in itself is indicative.’

  For days Christine had been brooding on the possibility. But now it seemed unbelievable. ‘ But that’s out of the question. We always took so much care.’

  ‘Not enough, I’m afraid. All those thousands and thousands of spermatozoa can be amazingly persistent. I take it you’re not married?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’ Christine’s voice was faint. She turned her head away and leaned her cheek against the back of the cracked leather couch on which she had been lying.

  ‘Won’t he marry you?’

  Christine shook her head.

  ‘Can’t he marry you?’

  There was no answer. Christine’s eyes were shut. She might have been asleep or even unconscious.

  ‘I see.’ Dr Graff gave an impatient sigh.

  At that, Christine opened her eyes and jerked up violently. ‘You’ve got to help me. Do something. Please!’

  ‘That’s what I’m here for. But the question is what?’

  ‘Can’t you help me get rid of it? Give me something – or do something? Can’t you do that?’

  Dr Graff looked down at her hands, which now rested inert, one on top of the other, in her lap. Then she looked up. She shook her head. ‘ Sorry, my dear. Anything like that is impossible. Put it right out of your mind. I couldn’t do it.’

  ‘But surely – surely … Of course I’ll pay whatever has to be paid. Don’t worry about that. I think you know my cousin – Michael – Michael Spencer. He’s a friend of yours, isn’t he? He can vouch for me, guarantee me.’

  Dr Graff frowned and shifted in her chair. ‘I’m not going to pretend I don’t need your money. At this moment, when a hefty rent bill has just come in, I badly need money – anyone’s money. But …’ She shook her head vigorously. ‘Out of the question. Sorry.’

  Christine considered. Then she ventured: ‘ Perhaps someone else? Perhaps you could give me – refer me to someone else? How about that?’

  ‘No.’ Dr Graff’s face and voice had both suddenly hardened. ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t possibly be party to a criminal act. It would be even worse than stealing money to pay that rent bill. Let’s end this conversation. I’m sorry for you, of course I am, as I’d be sorry for any woman in your predicament. But – there it is.’ Stiffly she got up from her chair. Then she softened. ‘Why not go through with it? I’ve had a number of patients who’ve done that. Oh, of course, there can sometimes be a certain amount of gossip and scandal, but usually it doesn’t last for long. People can rarely be bothered to be malicious for any length of time. They’re lazy and it requires too much effort.’ Christine found herself unable to look at her interlocutor. She stared down at the cracked linoleum that covered the floor beneath Dr Graff’s feet. ‘You could always go away. And then, afterwards, there’s always the possibility of adoption.’ She leaned forward. ‘I could help you over that.’ She hesitated. ‘You see – two years ago my husband and I adopted a child. But – unfortunately – again our luck was out. We lost it.’ She blinked rapidly two or three times. ‘Anyway – I’ll do anything possible to make the journey easier for you. Except for that one thing …’ She looked with an awkward tenderness into Christine’s eyes and then once again shook her head.

  ‘I don’t understand. The baby’s mine. What does it matter to you if I get rid of it now or later?’ />
  ‘Well, the difference is between life and death, isn’t it? And between what the law forbids and what it allows. Please, let’s drop the idea that I might help you in that way. I’ve told you. It’s out of the question. I just can’t. Impossible. That’s it.’

  Somewhere, from an upstairs floor, a hand-bell tinkled and then, more peremptorily, tinkled again.

  ‘Oh, dear! Excuse me for a moment. That’s my husband. I’ll just see to him.’

  But Christine did not wait. She took two five-pound notes from her bag, slipped them into an empty envelope that she saw lying on the desk, and wrote across it in her firm, neat hand: ‘I hope this covers things. I am truly sorry to have troubled you.’ She was about to add: ‘Please don’t say anything to Michael.’ Then she realised that Dr Graff would never do so.

  Out in the street, she was overcome with a shame so acute that for a brief while she was morbidly convinced that every passer-by must be able to see it on her face. Wasn’t it Auden who wrote: ‘Motives, like stowaways, are found too late’? Too late she had now, this very moment, stumbled on the stowaway motive that had led her to opt for Dr Graff instead of for Dr Marsh. Michael had so often spoke pityingly of the brilliant art historian’s degenerative illness, his wife’s failing practice, and their constantly increasing rent – often eventually paid by him to save them from eviction. A successful physician like Dr Marsh, with his three junior partners and his rich wife, would be immune to corruption. But desperate, beleaguered Dr Graff …?

  Yes, though hardly conscious of it, she had made that crude, cruel calculation.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Aunt Eva had just returned from church. Standing before her dressing table, with its clutter of medicine bottles and scent bottles, pin cushions, silver-backed brushes and family photographs, many of them sepia-coloured, in their silver frames, she emitted a tremulous sigh as she carefully peeled off first one and then the other of her black leather gloves. She emitted a similar sigh as she twitched back her veil. The friend beside whom she usually sat in church was gravely ill, perhaps dying, and she still had not been able to summon up enough resolution to go and see her in the cottage hospital at the end of the road. They had known each other for forty-seven years. She shuddered. These days she felt increasingly like some disintegrating vessel beached in total isolation by a rapidly ebbing tide.