HH took a drink of the brandy I had put into his glass.
“He didn’t say nowt but I reckon our Tessa encouraged him. The more I spoke to him the more I took to him. Straightforward chap he was and dead set on sticking by his kids. ’E knew that if ’e told ’is wife everything and she divorced ’im, she would be given the custody of them. ’E said she wasn’t fit to look after them as all she ever thought about was books.”
“Did you tell Tessa you’d been to see Tony?” I asked.
There were tears in HH’s eyes as he said: “It was such a right mix-up I clean forgot to tell the lad not to mention it. It wasn’t till the housekeeper phoned this morning that I thought Tessa might have been serious about taking ’er life if I tried to find Tony. She’s seemed so happy down here these last weeks I reckoned that was all just talk because she was worried, to begin with. I should have remembered she was a Brindley. We don’t say nothing lightly; none of us.”
“We still don’t know that she’s taken her own life,” I said.
“You may not,” he said, “but I don’t need no Coroner’s Officer to tell me about our Tessa. How she’s done it I don’t know, but she’s done it.”
I phoned the local police station for the Coroner’s Officer. It was well on into the afternoon before he arrived.
When he came he found an empty bottle of sleeping tablets outside Tessa’s bedroom window where it had been thrown into the wisteria. It looked as if she had taken them from the housekeeper’s room and swallowed more than half the bottle in a successful attempt to end her own life and that of the child she was carrying.
This evidence didn’t surprise Brindley who still sat, a broken man, in the chintz armchair. He remained unmoved when he was told there would have to be a post-mortem and an inquest.
When the Coroner’s Officer left, taking with him the notes he had made about his findings, the house returned to its morning stillness.
When a bell rang, shattering the silence, I went to answer the front door.
On the doorstep stood a young man in a grey flannel suit. Over his shoulder I saw the battered drop-head coupé in which he must have arrived. He was goodlooking but his face was tired.
“Mr Brindley?” he said.
I held the door open for him to come in. There was no doubt in my mind who he was.
In the lounge where bars of sunlight now striped the thick green carpet, the young man stood awkwardly.
HH glanced once at him, then sank his head again on to his hands.
The young man took an envelope from his pocket.
“I had a letter from Tessa,” he said, speaking to Brindley who took no notice, “saying goodbye. I realised suddenly that I couldn’t let her go, so I told my wife everything. I should have done it before. She wants me to divorce her as she’s found a don who thinks, as she does, that love should be spiritual. She doesn’t even want the children.”
H H Brindley didn’t move. The young man looked at me as if for help, then struggled on addressing the motionless figure in the armchair.
“I came straight away,” he said. “I know how you must feel about me and that it should all never have happened, but I’ll make it up to her, I promise.”
He took a step towards Brindley and said clearly: “I want to marry Tessa.”
It seemed an age before HH lifted his head from his hands and looked at the young man with red-rimmed eyes in which there was hatred only for himself.
“Tessa’s dead,” he said. “She killed herself.”
There was nothing more that I could do. I picked up my case and left, leaving together the two men who had loved Tessa Brindley more than anything else in the world.
Nineteen
On the gravel drive the shadows of the yew trees were lengthening. The countryside seemed not so beautiful and the winding lanes frustrating rather than picturesque. Each time I looked in the driving mirror I saw the face of Tessa Brindley, and ringing in my ears was her gay laugh remembered from the night she came to dine with us. I remembered the look of adoration in Faraday’s eyes, and Tessa’s frank gentleness on the occasions when I had seen her professionally.
It was a long time since I had seen suicide by an overdose of barbiturates, although at one time in my life they were almost an everyday occurrence. But then I hadn’t known them personally and full of life as I had known Tessa.
My first hospital job after qualifying had been as Casualty Officer at a small hospital. The surrounding district was one inhabited, in addition to the more conventional residents, by a vagrant population of artists, writers, musicians and refugees from a variety of persecuted countries. This shifting band of wanderers lived for the most part in bed-and-breakfast vacancies where unsympathetic landladies, loneliness and frustration of their artistic abilities did nothing to increase their happiness. For the most part they had no families. They walked alone, drank rivers of coffee over midnight sessions of intellectual and earnest discussion, loved and lost. When the loneliness or the longing for home or the meanness of the landlady became more than they could bear, they tried to put an end to it all. Sometimes they were successful; often they were not.
Usually they were young men and girls in the very prime of their lives. If they were brought in dead it was my job to go out to the ambulance to confirm this and they were taken straight to the mortuary. Sometimes they were blue because they had sought oblivion by hanging themselves; often they were sodden from drowning. Some of the attempts at suicide were merely hysterical gestures, to “show” a lover who had jilted them or bring remorse to a friend who had treated them badly. They didn’t expect to die but often did.
Those who wished to make really sure took enormous doses of barbiturates or gassed themselves, taking extensive precautions to see that no gas escaped and no fresh air entered the room.
If they had been found before they were quite dead we applied artificial respiration, oxygen and stimulants by injection. Sometimes, in cases of barbiturate poisoning, they were unconscious for four to five days, but we kept them alive with intravenous fluids, powerful stimulants to counteract the drugs they had taken, and large doses of penicillin to prevent them getting infected lungs and pneumonia. It took me a long time to get used to the fact that those patients who recovered, because of unceasing efforts on the part of doctors and nurses, usually came back a month or two later, having made doubly sure that this time the job was not botched.
That district had one of the highest suicide rates, and many of the victims had been as young and as beautiful as Tessa. I hadn’t forgotten them, and it would take me a long time to forget her.
As I drove due west into the sun, my windscreen a resting place for dirt, dust and numerous summer insects, I looked out for a telephone box. It had been impossible to phone home from Brindley Manor as HH had put through a call to his wife who was holidaying in Majorca, and was waiting for her to ring him back. I had been away far longer than I had expected, and was now anxious to make sure that Sylvia hadn’t started to have the baby.
I stopped outside a phone box in a deserted road. The number rang for a long time during which I noticed in the little mirror that I had two grey hairs, then Iris answered. I asked her if Sylvia was all right.
“I’m awfully glad you’ve rung,” she said. “She hasn’t said anything but she’s gone to lie down.”
“Let me speak to her.”
“OK. Hold on.”
“And, Iris…” But she had gone. I heard the mocking burr of the dialling tone against my ear. We had either been cut off or Iris, dreamy as she was with love, had replaced the receiver. In any event, I had no more change.
Back again in the car I started the engine, intending to drive the two or three miles into the next village, which was Hoxley, where I would be able to get some change and phone again. I had just put her into gear when there was a horrible “clank” which seemed to shake the whole car, then another clank, followed by a continuous, harsh grating noise. The car refused to move. I tried again w
ith exactly the same result. As George Leech had prophesied, something drastic seemed to have happened and it couldn’t have happened at a worse moment. Wishing that I had listened to him and invested in a new car, I got out and started walking down the hot, tarry lane towards Hoxley. A few cars passed me but took no notice of my raised arm and pointing thumb asking for a lift. Remembering the number of times I had sailed merrily by hitch-hikers, I couldn’t blame them. After I must have walked a hot and tedious mile, pressing myself against the prickly hedge every time I heard the sound of an engine, I was picked up by the matey driver of a brick lorry and dumped outside Hoxley’s one-eyed, sleepy-looking garage.
The garage owner, in greasy overalls, said “Ooh” and “Aah” and shook his head when I asked him if he could go and have a look at my car, abandoned outside the phone booth. There was only him there, he said, since his mate was out and he had no one to leave in charge. My explanation that I was a doctor, and that I thought my wife was going to have a baby any minute, left him cold. When I took out my wallet, he said well he might just nip down on his motorbike to oblige. I promised to look after the garage for him while he was gone, if he didn’t mind me using his telephone, and for a small sum the bargain was sealed.
From the tiny cupboard of an office surrounded by bottles of chrome-cleaner and shiny tins of One-Step polishes, I dialled my home number. I heard the ringing tone which jangled on and on and on, but there was no reply. I got hotter and hotter with agitation. I dialled the number again and asked the operator to test the line. There was definitely no reply.
I rang Humphrey Mallow’s number. His secretary said he was out. He had gone to the hospital for an emergency Cæsarian. No, she didn’t know who the patient was and she hadn’t spoken to my wife, but then she’d only just come back from delivering some X-rays for Mr Mallow. Why didn’t I phone the maternity hospital if I thought she might have been admitted? I phoned the hospital. Sister said no, my wife hadn’t rung to say she was coming in, and Mr Mallow wasn’t in the building as far as she knew.
I couldn’t think what might have happened to Sylvia but my imagination was running riot. I stared with impotent hatred at the receiver, gave the sister the name and number of the garage in case she should get any news, and told her that my car had broken down and that I was likely to be there for some time. She promised to ring me if she heard anything from Sylvia. Half-heartedly I tried my home number again. I hung on listening to the monotonous burr-burr until I could no longer stand the heat in the little glass-fronted box on which the sun was beating down, then I replaced the receiver.
I had no customers in the garage, and waited impatiently for the owner to come back. When he did, he put away his motor-bike with maddening slowness and wiped his forehead, which was beaded with sweat, on a filthy black rag. He shook his head sadly.
“You can say goodbye to that little lady,” he said. “Reckon it’s your crown wheel and pinion gone. Cost more to put right than what it’s worth. Mind you,” he said, warming to his theme, “I’m not saying they wasn’t a very good little car in their day, but if you don’t mind my saying so, Doctor, you didn’t oughter ’ve kept ’er so long; not in your line of business you didn’t. You might ’a been lucky an got another coupla thousand out of ’er. On the other ’and you might ’a ’ad a narsty haccident.”
I didn’t mind him saying what George Leech had said long ago.
“What about a taxi?” I said. “Or a car I can hire? Anything at all. I have to get home in a hurry.”
He looked at his watch.
“Reckon Alf’ll be back inside ten minutes,” he said.
“Who’s Alf?”
“My mate. He’s out taking a lady to the airport. He’ll run you home, Doctor, Alf will.”
“You don’t think he’ll be more than ten minutes?”
“Never known Alf miss his tea yet.”
“All right,” I said, and, perching myself on an empty oil drum, settled down to wait for Alf.
“There’s a caff up the road,” the garage man said. “Joe’s place.”
I shook my head.
He found another oil drum and, rolling it over to where I was sitting, made himself comfortable beside me.
“Fag?” he said sociably, taking from his overalls some cigarette papers and a tin of tobacco.
“No thanks.”
After a few minutes of intense concentration the cigarette was ready, and he was running his tongue along the length of the paper. To my surprise, the cigarette, prepared by his filthy paws, was still white.
After he had lit it, taken a long draw and removed a few loose shreds of tobacco with great ceremony from his lips, he said:
“See my head?”
I looked at him without encouragement, wondering where Sylvia could possibly be and what was happening while I was stuck on an oil drum in a one-eyed garage.
“Wouldn’t think it ’ad a steel plate inside, would yer?” He paused for an exclamation of surprise which was not forthcoming. “It ’as, though. And take a butcher’s at me ear.” He stuck his greasy mop of hair, which all but hid a disfigured ear which had been the subject of plastic repair, under my nose.
“Battler Britain,” he said proudly. “Tail-end Charlie. Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang.” He aimed an imaginary gun at the two petrol pumps. “Lucky to be ’ere. Came down in the drink. Never did like the water…”
I looked at my watch. I would give Alf five more minutes, then walk up the road and try to hitch a lift.
The garage man droned on about his wartime experiences. Going through in my mind every obstetric disaster in the book, I heard only the odd word. “East Grinstead…skin grafts…got me ticket…met the wife…always been keen on cars and kits… bought this little place with me gratuity…pension.”
At every sound of an engine I pricked up my ears.
When at the end of ten lengthy minutes, there was still no sign of Alf, I got off my oil drum.
“Look,” I said, “I’m just going to try my home number again and if your pal Alf hasn’t turned up by then I won’t wait. I’ll start walking and see if I can hitch a lift.”
I was halfway across the oily-smelling yard towards the little office when I heard the deep thrum of an approaching engine. I waited as it drew nearer and louder, and jumped back as the familiar long snout of a gleaming black Allard swung into the garage, missing me by inches.
A yellow-gloved hand preceded a head of slicked-back black hair out of the window.
“Hop in!” Archibald Compton said.
The garage man was staring with open-mouthed admiration at the car.
The door swung open and in a daze I accepted the invitation.
“Hurry up, man! The membranes have just ruptured but she’s doing fine. I don’t suppose you’ll have an increase in the family before we get there.”
“Sylvia?” I said stupidly.
Compton nodded and revved up. I shut the door just in time. With his yellow gloves chasing each other round the wheel, he swung the long black nose round the petrol pumps and with an urgent boom-boom-boom we were off down the road, leaving behind the garage man and a cloud of dust.
“I might as well explain,” Compton said, driving with terrifying expertness and keeping his foot well down on the accelerator until the trees flashed by so fast they appeared planted only about two inches apart, and the engine sounded like a child crying.
“I’d be glad if you would.” I stretched my legs out in front of me on a level almost with my body from the low-slung seat.
We curved sickeningly round a bend. “I was in Sister’s office at the hospital when you phoned,” Compton said. “I’d been to visit a patient of mine who’s just had a mis. Just after you rang off your wife was admitted, and Sister was so cross that she hadn’t known a minute or two before while you were still on the line, that she told me the whole story.
“She wanted to phone you back and tell you your wife had just come in, but I wouldn’t let her. I knew you’d only be worried at b
eing stranded here, so I thought I’d pop down myself. I had nothing else to do and I used to live down this way so I know all the short cuts.”
“I hardly know what to say,” I said. “It’s terribly decent of you to go to so much trouble.”
“No trouble at all. Any excuse for a drive. I can never let her have her head at home. I know what it’s like, anyway, when you’re expecting a first baby. Especially when you start thinking what could happen.”
“Did you see Sylvia?”
“Yes. The membranes had ruptured but she had a long way to go yet. She was still smiling. Your maid brought her in by ambulance.”
All the things I had said or thought about Archibald Compton went crawling round in my head. This was the first time I had exchanged more than two or three words with him, and I was unable to detect the ogre who I imagined had come to gobble up my practice.
“How are you doing in the practice?” I asked, because I knew that he would probably not bring the subject up before the surly brute he must imagine me to be.
“Not too badly. I have enough patients to keep me busy, which was the general idea. I’ve often wanted to come and apologise for practically squatting on your doorstep, but up till now the past was too close for me to be able to talk about it with any confidence that I could finish the conversation. I only chose that spot so that I could be near my wife’s family.”
“The Harts?” I said, knowing now why they had gone off my list.
“Yes. I’ve no family of my own. You don’t need to worry, anyway; I’ve no intention of trying to build up a large practice. I shall most probably emigrate in a year or so.”
I pictured his life since the tragedy which had taken his wife and child. The loneliness with too many hours to think, the sudden necessity for reorientation to bachelordom again, the solitary lunches in the suburban cafés; my unfriendliness. I had thought him brash, conceited; he had probably only been unhappy.
Love on My List Page 17
