The Private Patient (3 page)

“Where is he now, your father?”

“Frankly, Rhoda, I haven't the slightest idea. He emigrated to Australia when I won my scholarship to drama school. We haven't been in touch since. He may be married or dead or both, for all I know. We were never what you'd call close. And he didn't even support us. Poor Mummy learnt to type and went out to earn a pittance in a typing pool. An odd expression, ‘typing pool.' I don't think they have them now. Poor Mummy's was particularly muddy.”

“I thought you said you were an orphan.”

“Possibly I am. Anyway, if my father's not dead, he's hardly present. Not even a postcard for eight years. If he isn't dead, he'll be getting on. He was fifteen years older than my mother, so that makes him over sixty.”

“So he's unlikely to appear demanding a little financial help from the legacy.”

“Well, he wouldn't get it if he did. I haven't seen the will, but when I rang the family solicitor—just out of interest, you understand—he told me he wouldn't give me a copy of it. He said I could get a copy when probate had been granted. I don't think I'll bother. The Westhalls would leave money to a cats' home before they left a penny to a Boyton. My claim is on the grounds of justice, not legality. I'm their cousin. I've kept in touch. They've got more than enough cash to spare and they'll be very rich once probate is granted. It wouldn't hurt them to show a little generosity now. That's why I visit. I like to remind them that I exist. Uncle Peregrine only survived thirty-five days after Grandfather. I bet old Theodore hung on as long as he could just in the hope of outliving his son. I don't know what would have happened if Uncle Peregrine had died first, but whatever the legal complications, nothing would have come to me.”

Rhoda said, “Your cousins must have been anxious, though. There's a clause in all wills saying that the legatee has to survive twenty-eight days after the death of the testator if he is to inherit. I imagine they took good care to keep their father alive—that is if he did survive for those vital eight days. Perhaps they popped him into a freezer and produced him nice and fresh on the appropriate day. That's the plot of a book by a detective novelist, Cyril Hare. I think it's called
Untimely
Death,
but it may have been published originally under a different name. I can't remember much about it. I read it years ago. He was an elegant writer.”

He was silent and she saw that he poured the wine as if his thoughts were elsewhere. She thought with amusement and some concern,
My
God, is he really taking this nonsense seriously?
If so, and he started pursuing it, the accusation was likely to finish him with his cousins. She could think of few allegations more likely to close Rose Cottage and Cheverell Manor to him for ever than an accusation of fraud. The novel had come unexpectedly to mind and she had spoken without thinking. That he should take her words seriously was bizarre.

He said, as if shaking it off, “The idea is daft, of course.”

“Of course it is. What do you envisage, Candace and Marcus Westhall turning up at the hospital while their father is
in extremis,
insisting on taking him home and popping him into a convenient freezer the moment he dies, then thawing him out eight days later?”

“They wouldn't need to go to hospital. Candace nursed him at home for the last two years. The two old men, Grandfather Theodore and Uncle Peregrine, were in the same nursing home outside Bournemouth but were such a trial to the nursing staff that the management said one of them would have to go. Peregrine demanded to be taken in by Candace and there he stayed to the last, looked after by a doddery local GP. I never saw him during those last two years. He refused all visitors. It could have worked.”

She said, “Not really. Tell me about the other people at the Manor, apart from your cousins. The main ones, anyway. Whom shall I meet?”

“Well, there's the great George himself, naturally. Then there's the queen bee of the nursing services, Sister Flavia Holland—very sexy if uniforms turn you on. I won't worry you with the other nursing staff. Most of them come in by car from Wareham, Bournemouth or Poole. The anaesthetist was an NHS consultant who took as much as he could stomach from the Health Service and retired to an agreeable little cottage on the Purbeck coast. A part-time job at the Manor suits him very well. And then, more interestingly, there's Helena Haverland, née Cressett. She's called the general administrator, which covers practically everything from housekeeping to keeping an eye on the books. She came to the Manor after her divorce six years ago. The intriguing thing about Helena is her name. Her father, Sir Nicholas Cressett, sold the Manor to George after the Lloyd's debacle. He was in a wrong syndicate and lost everything. When George advertised the job of general administrator Helena Cressett applied and got it. Anyone more sensitive than George wouldn't have taken her on. But she knew the house intimately and, I gather, she's made herself indispensable, which is clever of her. She disapproves of me.”

“How unreasonable of her.”

“Yes, isn't it? But then I think she disapproves of practically everyone. There's a certain amount of family hauteur there. After all, her family owned the Manor for nearly four hundred years. Oh, and I should mention the two cooks, Dean and Kim Bostock. George must have filched them from somewhere rather good—I'm told the food is excellent, but I've never been invited to taste it. Then there's Mrs. Frensham, Helena's old governess, who's in charge of the office. She's the widow of a C-of-E priest and looks the part, so it's rather like having an uncomfortable public conscience on two legs stalking the place to remind one of one's sins. And there's a strange girl they've picked up from somewhere, Sharon Bateman, who's a kind of runner, doing unspecified jobs in the kitchen and for Miss Cressett. She mooches around carrying trays. That's about all as far as you'll be concerned.”

“How do you know all this, Robin?”

“By keeping eyes and ears open when I'm drinking with the locals in the village pub, the Cressett Arms. I'm the only one who does. Not that they're given to gossiping with strangers. Contrary to common belief, villagers don't. But I pick up a few unconsidered trifles. The Cressett family in the late seventeenth century had a fiendish row with the local parson and no longer went to church. The village sided with the parson and the feud continued down the centuries, as they often do. George Chandler-Powell has done nothing to heal it. Actually it suits him. The patients go there for privacy, and he doesn't want a lot of chat about them in the village. A couple of village women come in as part of the house-cleaning team, but most of the staff come from further afield. And then there's old Mog—Mr. Mogworthy. He worked as gardener-handyman for the Cressetts and George has kept him on. He's a mine of information if you know how to get it out of him.”

“I don't believe it.”

“Believe what?”

“I don't believe that name. It's totally fictitious. Nobody can be called Mogworthy.”

“He is. He tells me there was a parson of that name at Holy Trinity Church, Bradpole, in the late fifteenth century. Mogworthy claims to be descended from him.”

“He could hardly be. If the first Mogworthy was a priest, he would be a Roman Catholic celibate.”

“Well, descended from the same family. Anyway, there he is. He used to live in the cottage which Marcus and Candace now occupy, but George wanted the cottage and kicked him out. He's now with his aged sister in the village. Yes, Mog's a mine of information. Dorset is full of legends, most of them horrific, and Mog is the expert. Actually, he wasn't born in the county. All his forebears were but his dad moved to Lambeth before Mog was born. Get him to tell you about the Cheverell Stones.”

“I've never heard of them.”

“Oh, you will if Mog's around. And you can hardly miss them. It's a Neolithic circle in a field next to the Manor. The story is rather horrible.”

“Tell me.”

“No, I'll leave it to Mog or Sharon. Mog says she's obsessed with the stones.”

The waiter was serving their main courses, and Robin was silent, contemplating the food with gratified approval. She sensed he was losing interest in Cheverell Manor. The talk became desultory, his mind obviously elsewhere, until they were drinking their coffee. Then he turned his eyes on her and she was struck again by the depth and clarity of their almost inhuman blueness. The power of his concentrated gaze was unnerving. Stretching his hand across the table, he said, “Rhoda, come back to the flat this afternoon. Now. Please. It's important. We need to talk.”

“We have been talking.”

“Mostly about you and the Manor. Not about us.”

“Isn't Jeremy expecting you? Shouldn't you be instructing your clients on how to cope with terrifying waiters and corked wine?”

“The ones I teach mostly come in the evening. Please, Rhoda.”

She bent to pick up her bag. “I'm sorry, Robin, but it's not possible. I've a lot to get through before I go to the Manor.”

“It is possible, it's always possible. You mean you don't want to come.”

“It's possible, but at the moment it isn't convenient. Let's talk after the operation.”

“That might be too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“For a lot of things. Can't you see that I'm terrified that you might be planning to chuck me? You're making a big change, aren't you? Perhaps you're thinking of getting rid of more than your scar.”

It was the first time in the six years of their relationship that they had ever spoken the word. A taboo never acknowledged between them had been broken. Getting up from the table, the bill paid, she tried to keep the note of outrage from her voice. Without looking at him, she said, “I'm sorry, Robin. We'll talk after the operation. I'll be taking a cab back to the City. Is there anywhere that you would like to be dropped?” That was usual. He never travelled by underground.

The word, she realised, had been unfortunate. He shook his head but didn't reply and followed her in silence to the door. Outside, turning to take their different ways, he suddenly said, “When I say goodbye I always fear that I may not see that person again. When my mother went to work I used to watch from the window. I was terrified that she might never come home. Do you ever feel that?”

“Not unless the person I'm parting from is over ninety and frail or suffering from a terminal illness. I'm neither.”

But as they finally parted she paused and for the first time turned to watch his retreating back until he was out of sight. She had no dread of the operation, no premonition of death. Mr. Chandler-Powell had said that there was always some risk in a general anaesthetic, but in expert hands that could be discounted. Yet, as he disappeared and she turned away, she shared for a moment Robin's irrational fear.

5

By two o'clock on Tuesday
27
November Rhoda was ready to leave for her first visit to Cheverell Manor. Her outstanding assignments had been completed and delivered on time, as they always were. She was never able to leave home even for a single night without rigorous cleaning, tidying, emptying of bins, locking up of papers in her study and a final check of internal doors and windows. Whatever place she called home had to be immaculate before she left, as if this punctiliousness could guarantee that she would return safely.

She had been sent instructions for the drive to Dorset with the brochure about the Manor, but as always with an unfamiliar route, she listed the route on a card to be placed on the dashboard. The morning had been fitfully sunny but, despite her late start, getting out of London had been slow and by the time, nearly two hours later, she had left the M
3
and joined the Ringwood Road, darkness was already falling and with it came heavy squalls of rain, which within seconds became a downpour. The windscreen wipers, jerking like living things, were powerless to cope with the flood. She could see nothing ahead but the shine of her headlights on rippling water which was fast becoming a small torrent. She saw few other car lights. It was hopeless to try to drive on, and she peered out through a wall of rain, looking for a grass verge which might offer firm standing. Within minutes she was able to drive cautiously onto a few yards of level ground fronting a heavy farm-gate. At least here there would be no risk of a hidden ditch or soft wheel-sucking mud. She turned off the engine and listened to the rain battering the roof like a hail of bullets. Under the assault the BMW held a cloistered metallic peace which intensified the tumult outside. She knew that beyond the cropped invisible hedgerows lay some of the most beautiful countryside in England, but now she felt immured in an immensity both alien and potentially unfriendly. She had switched off her mobile phone, as always with relief. No one in the world knew where she was or could reach her. No cars passed and, peering through the windscreen, she saw only the wall of water and, beyond it, trembling smudges of light which marked the distant houses. Usually she welcomed silence and was able to discipline her imagination. She contemplated the coming operation without fear while recognising that she had some rational cause for anxiety; to be given a general anaesthetic was never without risk. But now she was aware of an unease which went deeper than worry about either this preliminary visit or the impending surgery. It was, she realised, too close to superstition to be comfortable, as if some reality formerly unknown to her or thrust out of consciousness was gradually making its presence felt and demanding to be recognised.

It was useless to listen to music above the competing tumult of the storm, so she slid back her seat and closed her eyes. Memories, some old, some more recent, flooded into her mind unresisted. She relived once again the day in May six months ago which had brought her to this journey, this stretch of deserted road. Her mother's letter had arrived with a delivery of boring post: circulars, notifications of meetings she had no intention of attending, bills. Letters from her mother were even rarer than their brief telephone conversations, and she took up the envelope, more square and thicker than the ones her mother normally used, with a slight foreboding that something could be wrong—illness, problems with the bungalow, her presence needed. But it was a wedding invitation. The card, printed in ornate script surrounded by pictures of wedding bells, announced that Mrs. Ivy Gradwyn and Mr. Ronald Brown hoped that their friends would join them to celebrate their wedding. The date, time and name of the church were given and a hotel at which guests would be welcome at the reception. A note in her mother's handwriting said,
Do come if you can, Rhoda.
I don't know whether I've mentioned Ronald in my letters. He's a widower
and his wife was a great friend of mine. He's looking forward to meeting you.

She remembered her emotions, surprise followed by relief, of which she was slightly ashamed, that this marriage could remove a part of her responsibility for her mother, might lessen her guilt over her infrequent letters and telephone calls and even rarer meetings. They met as polite but wary strangers still inhibited by the things they couldn't say, the memories they took care not to provoke. She couldn't remember hearing about Ronald and had no desire to meet him, but this was an invitation she had an obligation to accept.

And now she consciously relived that portentous day which had promised only boredom dutifully endured but which had led her to this rain-lashed moment and to all that lay ahead. She had set off in good time but a lorry had overturned, shedding its load on the motorway, and when she arrived outside the church, a gaunt Victorian Gothic building, she heard the reedy uncertain singing of what must be the last hymn. She waited in the car a little way down the street until the congregation, mainly middle-aged or elderly, had emerged. A car with white ribbons had drawn up but she was too distant to see her mother or the bridegroom. She followed the car, with others leaving the church, to the hotel, which was some four miles farther down the coast, a much-turreted Edwardian building flanked by bungalows and backed by a golf course. A profusion of dark beams on the façade suggested that the architect had intended mock Tudor but had been seduced by hubris to add a central cupola and a Palladian front door.

The reception hall had an air of long-faded grandeur; curtains of red damask hung in ornate pleats and the carpet looked grimed as with decades of dust. She joined the stream of fellow guests who, a little uncertainly, were moving to a room at the rear which proclaimed its function by a board and printed notice:
Function room available for private
parties.
For a moment she paused in the doorway, irresolute, then entered and saw her mother at once. She was standing with her bridegroom surrounded by a little group of chattering women. Rhoda's entrance was almost unnoticed, but she edged through them and saw her mother's face breaking into a tentative smile. It had been four years since they had met but she looked younger and happier, and after a few seconds kissed Rhoda on the right cheek a little hesitantly, then turned to the man at her side. He was old—at least seventy, Rhoda judged—rather shorter than her mother, with a soft round-cheeked, pleasant but anxious face. He seemed a little confused and her mother had to repeat Rhoda's name twice before he smiled and held out his hand. There were general introductions. The guests resolutely ignored the scar. A few scampering children gazed at it boldly, then ran off shouting through the French windows to play outside. Rhoda remembered snatches of conversation. “Your mother speaks of you so often.” “She's very proud of you.” “It's good of you to come so far.” “Lovely day for it, isn't it? Nice to see her so happy.”

The food and the service were better than she had expected. The cloth on the long table was immaculate, the cups and plates shone and her first bite confirmed that the ham in the sandwiches was fresh off the bone. Three middle-aged women dressed as parlour maids served them with a disarming cheerfulness. Strong tea was poured from an immense pot and, after a certain amount of whispering between the bride and groom, a variety of drinks was brought in from the bar. The conversation, which had so far been as hushed as if they had recently attended a funeral, became more lively and glasses, some containing liquids of a highly ominous hue, were raised. After much anxious consultation between her mother and the barman, champagne flutes were brought in with some ceremony. There was to be a toast.

The proceedings were in the hands of the vicar who had conducted the service, a red-haired young man who, divested of his cassock, now wore a dog collar with grey trousers and a sports jacket. He gently patted the air as if to subdue a hubbub and made a brief speech. Ronald, apparently, was the church organist and there was some laboured humour about pulling out all the stops and the two of them living in harmony to their lives' end, interspersed with small harmless jokes, now unremembered, which had been greeted by the braver of the guests with embarrassed laughter.

There was a crush at the table so, plate in hand, she moved over to the window, grateful for the moment when the guests, obviously hungry for the food, were unlikely to accost her. She watched them with a pleasurable mixture of critical observation and sardonic amusement—the men in their best suits, some now a little stretched over rounded stomachs and broadening backs; the women, who had obviously made efforts and had seen an opportunity for a new outfit. Most, like her mother, were wearing floral summer dresses with matching jackets, their straw hats in pastel colours sitting incongruously on newly set hair. They could, she thought, have looked much the same in the
1930
s and '
40
s. She was discomforted by a new and unwelcome emotion compounded of pity and anger. She thought,
I don't belong here,
I'm not happy with them, nor they with me. Their embarrassed mutual
politeness can't bridge the gap between us. But this is where I came from, these
are my people, the upper working class merging into the middle class, that
amorphous, unregarded group who fought the country's wars, paid their
taxes, clung to what remained of their traditions.
They had lived to see their simple patriotism derided, their morality despised, their savings devalued. They caused no trouble. Millions of pounds of public money wasn't regularly siphoned into their neighbourhoods in the hope of bribing, cajoling or coercing them into civic virtue. If they protested that their cities had become alien, their children taught in overcrowded schools where
90
per cent of the children spoke no English, they were lectured about the cardinal sin of racism by those more expensively and comfortably circumstanced. Unprotected by accountants, they were the milch-cows of the rapacious Revenue. No lucrative industry of social concern and psychological analysis had grown up to analyse and condone their inadequacies on the grounds of deprivation or poverty. Perhaps she should write about them before she finally relinquished journalism, but she knew that, with more interesting and lucrative challenges ahead, she never would. They had no place in her plans for her future, just as they had no place in her life.

Her last memory was of standing alone with her mother in the women's cloakroom, gazing at their two profiles in a long mirror above a vase of artificial flowers.

Her mother said, “Ronald likes you, I could see that. I'm glad you could come.”

“So am I. I liked him, too. I hope you'll both be very happy.”

“I'm sure we shall. We've known each other for four years now. His wife sang in the choir. Lovely alto voice—unusual in a woman, really. We've always got on, Ron and I. He's so kind.” Her voice was complacent. Gazing critically into the mirror, she adjusted her hat.

Rhoda said, “Yes, he looks kind.”

“Oh he is. He's no trouble. And I know that this is what Rita would have wanted. She more or less hinted at it to me before she died. Ron has never been good at being alone. And we shall be all right—for money, I mean. He's going to sell his house and move into the bungalow with me. That seems sensible, now that he's seventy. So that standing order you have—the five hundred pounds a month—you don't have to go on with that, Rhoda.”

“I should leave it as it is—that is, unless Ronald isn't happy about it.”

“It isn't that. A little bit extra always comes in useful. I just thought you might need it yourself.”

She turned and touched Rhoda's left cheek, a touch so soft that Rhoda was only conscious of the fingers shaking in a gentle tremble against the scar. She closed her eyes, willing herself not to flinch. But she didn't draw back.

Her mother said, “He wasn't a bad man, Rhoda. It was the drink. You oughtn't to blame him. It was an illness, and he loved you, really. That money he sent you after you left home—it wasn't easy finding it. He spent nothing on himself.”

Rhoda thought,
Except on drink,
but she didn't speak the words. She had never thanked her father for that weekly five pounds, had never spoken to him after she left home.

Her mother's voice seemed to come out of a silence. “Remember those walks in the park?”

She remembered the walks in the suburban park when it seemed always autumn, the straight gravelled paths, the rectangular or round flowerbeds thick with the discordant colours of dahlias, a flower she hated, walking beside her father, neither speaking.

Her mother said, “He was all right when he wasn't drinking.”

“I don't remember him when he wasn't drinking.” Had she spoken those words or only thought them?

“It wasn't easy for him, working for the council. I know he was lucky to get that job after he'd been sacked from the law firm, but it was beneath him. He was clever, Rhoda, that's where you get your brains. He won a scholarship to university and he came in first.”

“You mean he got a first?”

“I think that's what he said. Anyway, it means he was clever. That's why he was so proud when you got into the grammar school.”

“I never knew he'd been to university. He never told me.”

“Well, he wouldn't, would he? He thought you weren't interested. He wasn't one for talking, not about himself.”

None of them had been. Those outbursts of violence, the impotent rage, the shame, had done for them all. The important things had been unsayable. And looking into her mother's face, she asked herself how could she begin now? She thought her mother was right. It couldn't have been easy for her father to find that five-pound note week after week. It had come with a few words, sometimes in shaky handwriting:
With love from Father.
She had taken the money because she needed it and had thrown away the paper. With the casual cruelty of an adolescent, she had judged him unworthy to offer her his love, which she had always known was a more difficult gift than money. Perhaps the truth was that she hadn't been worthy to receive it. For over thirty years she had nursed her contempt, her resentment and, yes, her hatred. But that muddy Essex stream, that lonely death, had put him out of her power for ever. It was herself she had harmed and to recognise this might be the beginning of healing.