A Passionate Man (25 page)

‘I'll try,' June Hampole said. She looked out of the window at the early black February evening and said, ‘Oh, dear Dan, you were right and I simply don't know what to do.'

‘Ah,' he said.

‘It's Blaise and Liza Logan.'

‘Now,' Dan said, settling back into his pillows. ‘Now I am surprised. I thought that would be over. I thought Blaise returned to school looking like someone who has emerged thankfully from an obsession.'

‘No,' June said. ‘I saw them.'

‘Did you pounce?'

‘No—'

‘Damn,' Dan said. ‘Damn this flu. I'd have pounced. You'd better tell me.'

‘I really don't want to. It's so pathetic, somehow, so banal. They were in the courtyard by her car, and they were kissing.'

‘Where were you?'

‘In the little sick room making sure that poor Edward Milligan who always has something the matter, and who, I am sure, is about to get flu, hadn't been forgotten up there. I looked out of the window. Not for anything particular, just because one does look out of windows. And there they were. Kissing. And—'

‘And?'

‘Oh, Dan,' June said. ‘Liza Logan looked so much as if she were liking it.'

‘Ha!' Dan said. ‘Of course, Blaise is very personable.'

‘Don't be frivolous, it's so unhelpful. What should I do?'

‘On reflection, nothing.'

‘Nothing! But last term you were advising me to have a word with Liza—'

‘That was last term,' Dan said. ‘I think the situation was different then. I think the balance has shifted. Do you know anything about Blaise's Christmas holidays?'

June picked up one of the cats and tried to settle it on her knee.

‘No. Only that it was fun, he said. I've really hardly seen him, what with the new term, and flu.' The cat strained itself out of her grasp and returned to its ponyskin hollow. ‘It's so silly, but I really feel I want to cry. She's such a dear, such a good, reliable teacher, so popular. That bloody boy, Dan, that blasted, bloody boy!'

Dan leaned out of his nest and took his sister's hand.

‘Don't cry, Juney. It's not worth it. Really it isn't. Don't think about it and don't do anything. It'll be over in a minute, no bones broken. And now what about my eggs? Butter in first—'

The kitchen was dark and cold, and when June switched on the light there was a lot of scuttling. The kitchen cats, who had followed her down, began to wail for supper, leaping on to every surface she approached in order to be able to nag her more effectively. She couldn't think, getting out eggs and butter and the little coddling dish she knew Dan would want, why she should feel so upset. But she did. She almost felt betrayed and as if she had been made a fool of, although there was no logic to that, she knew. She got down on her hands and knees to light the reluctant oven while the cats screamed and pushed their hard greedy heads at her hands. If only Liza had not looked so eager – no, not exactly eager, more persistent. Every line of her body, even inside a winter coat, had looked tenacious, and her hands had been behind Blaise's head in a most decided way. The oven spluttered, belched out a blast of raw gas, and produced a small grudging row of blue flames. If Liza is humiliated, June thought, if Liza humiliates herself, I shall feel it so keenly. And what other outcome, with that charming, feckless boy, can there possibly be?

Sally Carter, giving Imogen lunch in the kitchen after a morning of nursery school, saw the van draw up in the field gateway a hundred yards down the lane. She left Imogen picking up single peas with her fingers, and went to stand by the sink so that she could see properly. There were three men, wearing the sludge-coloured outdoor jackets you got so sick of in winter, and two of them went round to the back of the van and opened it and took out bundles of stakes made of raw, yellow new wood. The third man had a plan which he unfolded into the wind, and stood studying it while its edges flapped like sails. When the other two joined him, he doubled the plan up into a manageable size and began to point towards Beeches House. Then all three of them began to cross the field. The surveyors have come, Sally thought. The appeal's failed. Mr Prior's found a developer.

‘Finished,' Imogen said. She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes in triumph.

Sally took a carton of yoghurt out of the refrigerator. It was the last one. In fact, the fridge was almost empty. Mrs Logan didn't seem to be concentrating.

‘No,' said Imogen.

‘It's all there is.'

They looked at each other. Imogen said conspiratorially, ‘Raithinth—'

‘I don't see why you shouldn't,' Sally said.

She took a jar of raisins out of a cupboard and put a handful of them on a saucer. Imogen sighed with pleasure. The telephone rang.

‘Is Dr Logan there, please?'

‘I'm afraid not,' Sally said. ‘He's out doing calls just now.'

‘I know. I just rang the surgery. I hoped he might have called in at home.'

The caller sounded American. Sally said, ‘Is that Lady Logan?'

‘Yes,' Marina said. ‘I'm so sorry. I should have said so at once.'

‘Is it urgent?' Sally said, slightly hoping for a little drama in a long afternoon alone with Imogen.

‘In a way,' Marina said. Her voice was hesitant. ‘Don't worry. I'll try the surgery a little later. Is Mrs Logan there?'

‘No,' Sally said. ‘She's teaching full time just now.'

‘Oh. Oh, I didn't know. And Imogen. Is Imogen there?'

Sally carried Imogen to the telephone.

‘I've got raithinth,' Imogen said. ‘Heapth of raithinth.'

‘Darling,' Marina said. Her voice shook.

‘Thally gave them to me.'

The line went dead. Imogen gave the receiver back to Sally.

‘Gone,' she said.

In London, Marina sat by her telephone and wept. The urge to speak to Archie had been so violent, and not being able to gratify it, and then her disappointment and simultaneous relief, in addition to the unexpected poignancy of hearing Imogen, were all too much. She could hear herself crying, great tearing, deafening sobs; could the people in the next flat hear her, even through these redoubtable walls? She had tried to make something happen, and it had refused her, and now, for these terrible moments at least, everything was worse than ever.

She had been going to say to Archie that she understood. She had been going to try to refrain from telling him that his letter had caused her several days and nights of anguish, and only tell him instead that he must attempt to teach himself to see that they were on the same side, that their pain and loss were in many ways the same, that they might even help each other. She had vowed to think about this for a week or so, and maybe write it to Archie in a very carefully judged letter, but the urge to speak to him, to tell him in her own voice, to hear him, had come upon her with such strength that she had seized the telephone idiotically, all at once, in the middle of a working day. And she had had the impression, when she had rung the health centre, that Archie had actually been there and had refused to take her call. On my own, Marina thought, loathing her self-pity. That's all that's come out of this. On my own again.

Chapter Thirteen

When Archie went back to the hospital later in the day, the curtains were pulled round old Mrs Mossop's bed. In the morning, in response to a call from the hospital, he had taken Sharon Vinney in to see her mother, who was in a coma and lay, fathoms down in herself, like a tiny beaked primeval bird.

Sharon had cried and cried. The features of her coarse handsome face became quite blurred with crying. She sat shaking with tears by the hospital bed, begging Archie not to leave her alone there.

‘But you might prefer to be alone,' Archie said. ‘It might do you more good. So that you can talk to her privately.'

Sharon shook her head. Her stiffly bleached hair hardly stirred.

‘It's too late. It's too late for that.'

‘It isn't too late for you,' Archie said.

‘I can't stay here. Honest I can't. I need a cigarette—'

Archie stooped over the bed. Granny Mossop's breathing was so shallow it hardly stirred the impersonal white folds of her hospital nightgown. Why, in God's name, was she not granted the dignity of her own? He looked at Sharon.

‘Why isn't she in her own nightgown?'

Sharon fled. Following, Archie caught up with her in the car-park. She was drawing furiously on a cigarette.

‘I don't want to hear anything from you,' Sharon said. ‘As a doctor you're stuck in the Dark Ages. All talk, you are. All talk and no tablets.' She glared at him with reddened eyes. ‘Talk to Mum! She's dead, isn't she, as far as I can see. She's gone.'

‘No,' Archie said. ‘But she will probably die today.'

Sharon began to weep again.

‘No thanks to you!'

Archie drove her home in silence. She snuffled intermittently and blew her nose on crumpled paper tissues.

When he dropped her in front of her cottage, Archie said, ‘Would you like to go back this evening? Because I'll take you, if Cyril's busy.'

Sharon struggled out of the car and stood for a moment looking across the lane at the unfriendly winter fields.

‘What's the use?' she said. ‘What's the bloody use?'

Archie went back alone. He took evening surgery, and then he paid two home visits and then he drove to Winchester. The geriatric ward, dim except for one or two pools of light over patients' beds, was quite quiet. Archie parted the curtains by old Mrs Mossop's bed and went in.

She looked much as she had that morning. He felt no urge at all to examine her, merely a wish to sit down by the side of the bed and hold her hand. He slid a forefinger up the inside of her wrist. Her pulse was barely perceptible. He rested his elbows on his knees and enclosed her hand in his.

He sat there for a long time, in the gentle quiet. A nurse put her head in at one moment, and tried to catch his eye, but he did not see her. He did not think much, he merely let his mind bob and drift at will in the queer, sweet peace of being alone with the last minutes of Granny Mossop's life. And, when the end came and she died with no commotion, he did not stir for some moments. He did not want to. He wanted simply to go on sitting there, in that strange suspended time that had no measure, and breathe in the momentousness of her little, silent ceasing to be.

He did not let go of her hand. In the feel of it lay all the significance and simplicity of that moment, all comprehension of this end of life which seemed at once quite familiar and yet huge with awe. He did not want to let go. He wanted this curious time that was no time to go on and on until he could be sure what it was he had learned, until he could articulate it as well as feel. There was no hurry to let go. There was nothing else to do. This time was the only thing that mattered and it was quite outside human things, worldly things. Archie bent his head until his forehead rested on his hands that held Granny Mossop's hand. Here was the still centre of everything that turned and whirled.

The curtain rings rattled faintly on their rails. Slowly, Archie raised his head. The night sister was looking in on him.

‘He's a one-off,' she said to a staff nurse later over a cup of tea. ‘You'd have thought she was his own mother. Wonder what he did it for?'

‘I have something to tell you,' Archie said.

Liza was marking comprehension exercises on the kitchen table. She wore a new polo-necked jersey and she had tied her hair back, as Clare did, with a black velvet ribbon. It made her look less sweet, more sophisticated. She put the forefinger of her left hand on the line of an exercise book to mark her place, and waited.

Archie pulled out a kitchen chair opposite Liza and sat down. Some early forced daffodils stood in a blue-and-white jug between them and Archie pushed them aside so that he could see her.

‘Two things, actually.' He paused. ‘Granny Mossop died. An hour ago. She was quite unconscious before she died.'

Liza said, ‘Oh, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.'

‘Yes.'

‘Does Sharon know?'

‘Yes. I think she is still determined that her mother's cancer was my fault.'

‘But you know, don't you, Archie, that that's just a cover-up for her own guilt.'

‘I don't know what I know,' Archie said in a voice of peculiar gentleness. ‘I just know I was glad to be there, glad to be with her, when she died.'

‘You were there!'

‘Yes. I've just come from the hospital.'

Liza put her hand across the table.

‘There can't be many doctors like you.'

‘It was chance. Chance that I was there. A lucky, lucky chance.'

‘How Sharon will abuse you for doing what she failed to do!'

‘I don't mind,' Archie said. ‘I don't mind any more.'

Liza pushed away the open exercise book.

‘And what was the other thing? The second thing?'

‘Marina,' Archie said.

‘Marina!'

‘I wrote her a terrible letter.'

‘But I thought—'

‘I know. I let you think it. But it was not a letter of sympathy, it was one of blind rage. I accused her of killing my father with her demands and depriving me of understanding his death.'

‘Oh, Archie,' Liza said.

‘Yes.'

She put her hands over her face.

‘How could you—'

‘I could easily. Then. But not now.'