Post of Honour (64 page)

‘Come on down,’ Claire said shortly, ‘I’d like a word with you!’ and Maureen said, ‘
Professionally?
You must be joking!’ Then, judging Claire’s tetchy mood from a distance, ‘Go along in then, I won’t be a moment,’ and Claire went in, looking round distastefully at the cheerless little room with its dog-eared calendar, row of hard chairs and worn oilcloth. There were no magazines; Maureen did not encourage her patients to linger.

‘You do look a bit off colour,’ Maureen said as she bustled in. ‘I noticed it as a matter of fact but knowing you I wasn’t going to be the first to mention it!’

‘You noticed it?’

‘Oh, it’s nothing, I can tell you that from here! I daresay you’ve been over-dieting. Overtiring yourself too—all those family upheavals on lettuce leaves and charcoal biscuits! Don’t say I didn’t warn you!’

‘I think it’s more than that,’ Claire said, ignoring her banter. ‘I think it’s The Change and if it is you can give me a tonic and some advice!’ but in Maureen’s presence her confidence returned. They had been friends now for over a quarter of a century and if there was one thing Claire knew it was that she could count on directness and no ‘Now-now-there-there’ talk from Maureen Rudd. She spoke of her occasional dizziness, her increase in weight despite dieting, loss of appetite and, above all, recurring spells of depression. Maureen was as blunt as she had expected. ‘Well, I daresay you’re right, girl, but there’s very little I can do about it! There are tablets, of course, but I never had much faith in ’em. It’s more of a mental than physical readjustment and its effect on a woman is often regulated by willpower and plain commonsense. You’ve got more than most women around here and should get through it easily enough, providing, of course, that you don’t mind me having a word with Paul on the subject. His attitude is important, or will be in your case. He mustn’t mind you flying off the handle every now and again!’ She looked at Claire with amused affection. ‘Cheer up! Most women round here who reach the point of no return are delighted. I can tell you that for nothing!’

‘I don’t suppose you’ll believe me,’ Claire said, ‘but Paul and I have never tried not to have children, not once!’ and Maureen, with an appreciative chuckle, replied, ‘I certainly do believe you! What kind of a family doctor do you think I am!’ and then, because Claire’s mood made her seem a great deal younger than fifty, she put her arm round her, saying, ‘Getting old inside a family circle is nothing to be frightened of! It’s getting old alone that’s the real spectre!’ and Claire suddenly felt ashamed of her neglect and made a promise to come up to supper, remembering that she must be very lonely in the evenings now that John was gone, and her son rarely returned to the Valley after qualifying and taking a practice in Scotland.

She remained cheerful for a spell but then the steady increase in her weight, and a tendency to tire very quickly, began to disturb her again. The tablets made her sleepy by day and restless at night, and she found she was morose on wakening, so that it was with less hesitation that she paid her second call on Maureen and submitted to a check-up despite a protest that all she really needed was sanction to throw ‘the damned tablets in the dustbin’. Maureen said, sharply for her, ‘If there’s one type of patient who makes me swear it’s the sort who come here with their own prescriptions and expect me to sign ’em! Get your clothes off, girl, and let’s take a good look at you! There’s not a thing wrong with you that isn’t in your mind and I must say you surprise me! Next thing you’ll be joining the procession of middle-aged women who come in here insisting they have cancer of the breast!’

Maureen’s cavalier handling of her patients was notorious so she submitted with good grace as Maureen made her check, grunting a little, Claire noticed, when she stooped, so that the patient got one back, saying, ‘You sound as if you could do with a diet yourself! You must turn the scale to something around twelve stone!’

‘Twelve-three to be exact,’ Maureen said, straightening, ‘but I’m not pregnant and you most certainly are, my girl!’

The certainty that Maureen must be joking irritated Claire, who thought this was carrying a joke too far. She sat up, swung off the cold leather couch and said, ‘For heaven’s sake, Maureen, I’m not one of your silly hypochondriacs who has to be bullied into . . . ’ but then she stopped, for something in Maureen’s expression as she stood with arms akimbo and back to the window, made her pause. Maureen said with a shrug, ‘You can protest as much as you like but it’s a fact, so don’t let’s have any more snivelling about grey hairs, and youth calling from the far side of the hill! You’re three months pregnant and there’s an end to it! I don’t know whether I should congratulate you or ask Parson Horsey to ring the church bells!’

Then she waited. Half a minute elapsed before Claire could make any kind of reply, for her tongue was stilled by the confusion of mind resulting from such a preposterous explanation. Pregnant, at fifty-plus! Pregnant, after a gap of how many years since the birth of her youngest child?—1918—and it was 1933, and young Claire would be sixteen next birthday! She said, in a voice so strained and uncertain that it seemed not to belong to her, ‘There can’t be any mistake? It’s a certainty, you say?’ but she did not seriously challenge the fact, reasoning that Maureen would be very unlikely to fall into such an error after seeing her through all her previous pregnancies, including an unsuccessful one as long ago as December 1907. She said, hoarsely, ‘What is it, Maureen, a . . . kind of . . . freak-miracle?’ and Maureen, who seemed to be extracting a certain amount of sardonic amusement from the situation, retorted, ‘Good God, woman, of course it isn’t! I told you you were exceptionally healthy and it isn’t all that uncommon when a woman has already had a string of children. Nature’s last fling, I imagine, and it will be the last if that’s any consolation!’ but Claire continued to sit balanced on the edge of the couch, gasping and blinking, as though she had just been dragged from cold. Maureen said, curiously, ‘Once you’ve got over the shock will you be pleased? Will Paul, do you think?’

‘How would I know that? It’s all I can do to . . . to absorb it! I feel as if—well, as if I’d been caught out doing something shameful,’ and then, correcting herself, ‘no, not shameful exactly, but something horribly embarrassing, a practical joke in very bad taste that didn’t amuse anybody!’

Maureen, who thought she knew her patient as well as anybody, was not only baffled but a little worried. She said, ‘Look here, Claire, I’ve always thought of you and that hulking husband of yours as two people marvellously adjusted to one another, a couple who had the sense to give their instincts a chance, instead of relying on one or other of these damn silly books on sex and psychology that people are churning out nowadays! I haven’t been wrong, have I?’

‘No,’ Claire said, slowly, ‘you haven’t been wrong, Maureen. I’ve always found joy and fulfilment in the physical side of our marriage and I think he has too, but—how can I explain? We don’t have to . . . to proclaim it from the housetops do we?’

‘You were proud enough of the others,’ Maureen said, not liking this turn of talk at all, ‘so why worry about a few sly giggles at your age?’

‘Age is the operative word,’ Claire said, beginning to dress at a speed that suggested she could not be out of the surgery quickly enough. ‘The “others” are all grown up, and going their own way, so to the devil with starting all over again, and having Paul’s attention directed elsewhere! I’ve earned the right to have him to myself, haven’t I?’

She went out with a rush, not even pausing to say good-bye and Maureen, who was rarely astonished, looked after her with mouth wide open. ‘Great God!’ she said aloud, as she watched Claire cross the stepping stones to the ford instead of turning for home. ‘I do believe the woman’s jealous of her own womb! Her appetite for that man has never had anything to do with children at all—they were just byproducts!’ and suddenly she felt angry with herself for her total failure to plumb the emotional depths of a patient she had always thought of as an open book and a well-thumbed book at that. She thought, ‘Well, I don’t know how Paul will react but he’s going to hear about this from me and I hope I can find him before she does!’

She was lucky, meeting Paul in the drive before Claire returned from her breathless walk along the river road and, to Maureen’s relief, he let his sense of humour take over, once he had ridden out the shock. But although glad enough to hear him laugh she deliberately sobered him, saying, ‘Right, but see that you straighten your face before she comes to you with the news, and I don’t have to tell you to pretend it’s first-hand when you get it! You’re going to need more tact over the next six months than I’ve ever seen you display!’

‘Oh, stuff and nonsense!’ he said. ‘I daresay it’s staggered her but once she’s got used to the idea she’ll be delighted. She isn’t likely to have a bad time, is she?’

‘Physically, no, she’s always produced children with less difficulty than most women but what I’m trying to prepare you for is something quite different. I’m beginning to get an inkling of what’s bothering her and I must be half-way to my dotage not to have spotted it before. How can I put it without seeming fanciful? Listen—in the old days she had youth, and vanity that goes along with youth. The children were close enough together to amuse one another, the house full of women to attend to them and you were out and about your business most of the day. It’s very different now. The children are grown up or scattered and the staff, such as they are, won’t do a stroke more than they have to! On top of that you’re now of an age when you’ll be more likely to spend your time at home but, above all, remember that when Claire looks in the glass she sees a middle-aged woman whose figure isn’t going to be improved by another child! If you think I’m exaggerating ask yourself how she behaved towards the children when they were toddlers.’

‘She was a damned good mother to them.’

‘I’m not questioning that but what was her overall approach to them? Was it mother-hennish?’

‘No it wasn’t! Now that I come to think of it it was always pretty casual.’

‘Right, well I’m asking you to think about that and for your sake as much as hers.’

He said, wrinkling his brow, ‘You know it is odd, Maureen, I don’t think I’ve ever remarked on it before but there was something undemonstrative about her approach to the kids, all except young Claire that is.’

‘Don’t be taken in by that,’ Maureen said, ‘I’ve noticed her approach to Claire myself and it’s no more than an inclination to bask in the reflected glory of the child’s looks and poise! No, Paul, we might as well face it. She fell head over heels in love with you the minute you rode into High Coombe yard when you were youngsters and all the years between have done nothing but pile coals on the fire! That’s why you’re in this pickle, isn’t it?’

‘You really think of it as “a pickle”, Maureen?’

‘Well, let’s put it this way, it’s six months’ walk through a mine field and all I’m saying, as your doctor and friend, is watch where you put your feet, lad!’

It was as well that he had this warning for Claire’s humour during that summer and autumn baffled him to such an extent that it was difficult to believe he was sharing bed and board with the same woman. It was not that she was quarrelsome or intractable—in some ways he would have described her as subdued and withdrawn—but that he, and everyone else about Shallowford, found her wildly unpredictable. Sometimes she would show a spurt of temper over a trivial omission on the part of one or other of them but at other times she seemed to have lost contact with the family. In between these two extremes she was unsure of herself to a degree that recalled the very earliest days of her marriage, when she found herself in authority over such well-established limpets as old Mrs Handcock and the unsmiling Thirza Tremlett. Towards early autumn, when her pregnancy had ceased to cause much comment in the Valley, she took to wandering off alone in the old yellow trap (Paul had forbidden Mark Codsall to let her saddle a horse) and the curious would watch her drive out along the river road to the moor, or across the pasture track to the head of the goyle that led down to Crabpot Willie’s cabin and the beach. Paul was nervous of these solitary excursions but, after a word with Maureen, he made no protest and had to admit that they had a calming effect on her nerves, for she was often more herself when she returned to preside over family high tea at six. Then, as the evenings drew in, she took to retiring early and would be asleep when he came upstairs but she rarely slept until dawn and sometimes she would be up by the time he awoke, pottering about the house before the earliest riser was astir. Not always, however. There were occasions when he caught a swift and disturbing glimpse of the pressures a fancied insecurity was exerting on her mind, as when he awoke one night to find her out of bed and crouched on the floor beside him, her head touching his pillow. He reached out to turn on the bedside light, thinking that she must be unwell and had blundered round to his side in an effort not to disturb him but she dragged his hand from the bulb and then began kissing him with a desperation that stirred his pity. He said, gently, ‘What
is
it, dear? Tell me what’s worrying you so badly? I’ll help if I can, we’ll all help . . . ’ but he learned very little even then, for once she had climbed back to bed he realised that it was not words of comfort she wanted so much as reassurance that her swollen body was not repugnant to him. He gathered this from her impatient dismissal of his half-hearted protests and his silent possession of her, without either the tenderness or the humour that had attended their love-making in the past. After that he followed Maureen’s advice to drop the half-invalid approach and a subdued Christmas came and went, the family assembling and dispersing without anyone making more than an indirect reference to her condition. She seemed to approve of this collective disregard of the embarrassingly obvious yet she remained withdrawn, so that Paul found himself noting the passage of days with the attentiveness of a castaway or a prisoner.