A Winter's Child (47 page)

No doctors.

‘I can't manage alone, Nola.'

‘It doesn't matter. I'll take my chance.'

She had set herself to endure pain and the risk of death and endure it she would. It was not courage. She had gone far beyond that. For when no alternative existed, neither courage nor cowardice had any meaning. And this afternoon, when she'd gone, dry-mouthed, light-headed not from gin but from lack of food, to that prim little house with its potted plants and lace curtains, even the offensive cordiality of the ‘medical practitioner'who lived there, his hands folded together like two plump, white slugs, had seemed better than the disgrace of discovery. Men were
allowed
to treat themselves to their little sexual fads and fancies. Men – her own mother had made clear to her – were made that way. Women were made differently. Or at least – since men wanted it so – pretended to be. It followed, therefore, that if a woman
had
to sin – and, really, the sin itself never seemed to matter much – she either covered it up or paid the price. And paid it, of course, alone. Silently. Fatally, if necessary. Any way she could, so long as the good name of her family and her lover's family were not dragged through the mud.
That
was what mattered.

And so she had gone with that cordial, furtive little man into his back parlour, lay down upon his sofa and allowed him to rape her with cold steel, her skin crawling with disgust for the man himself, those fat slug fingers on her bare skin, that oily smile, until the sweat of pain and blind terror wiped her revulsion away making her weep and plead for him to stop – dear God how had she sunk so low? – and then sob with the heartbreak of bereavement when he had told her why he could not.

Bereavement! Why had
that
word, for God's sake, written itself inside her head?

Even now.
Bereavement.

‘No doctors,' she said, rearing backwards again in her extremity, her whole body rigid with hurt and horror. Her other pregnancies had been luxuriously drugged and distant. This was her first acquaintance with raw pain and she had not expected it to be so ferocious. Nor had she expected to feel so debased, so filthy. It made no difference. ‘No doctors.'

‘All right. But listen, Nola – I'll have to leave you for a minute –'

‘No – why? No you won't.'

‘Yes. I have to.'

‘No. Why? To call a doctor?'

‘No.
If you want me to look after you then I need the things to do it. I'll have to run to the chemist –'

‘No.' And she dissolved, almost faded into weak and angry tears.

‘Listen, Nola. I have to look after you properly, don't I – for my own sake as well as yours.'

‘Oh God! I never thought of that.'

‘So – you lie still. Very still.
Please,
Nola.'

‘Yes – but
promise.
No doctors.'

‘I promise.' And quickly washing her hands she ran across to the dentist on the other side of Mannheim Crescent, begged permission to use his telephone, and when, with considerable suspicion, he showed her to the instrument and stood back, not quite out of earshot, to make sure it really was the matter of life and death she had described, she could not, for a moment, remember the all too familiar number of High Meadows.

She had no guarantee that Benedict would be there. None. It was seven o'clock. An hour before dinner-time. Miriam, who never answered the telephone in any case, would be upstairs changing. So would Polly. Benedict, just as likely as not, would be at Thornwick or dining out at the Redfearns. What then? There was no telephone at the farm. Dare she contact him at the Redfearns, who would want to know why? Yes. Of course. She would have to. And if she couldn't find him, if he had gone into Lancashire or God knew where, then she would have to get medical attention as best she could. She would call Kit. He would help. She would call him
now.
It was a reassuring thought, instantly wiped away by the realization that she could not take the risk of implicating him in what might well become Faxby's greatest scandal for many many years. No. She must find Benedict. Or she would have to cope alone.

She asked the operator for his number as quietly as she could, although it seemed unlikely that either the dentist or his sharp-eyed wife would recognize it, enduring a long wait before a dignified voice announced himself as ‘The Swanfield residence'; and then more agony as no firm promise could be given as to whether Mr Benedict might be at home or not.

‘One moment, Madam. I will enquire.'

‘Please hurry.'

‘Certainly, Madam.'

But the house was a large one, its pace leisurely. And Nola should not have been left for a moment, much less the time it would take for that cadaverous butler to walk upstairs and down that interminable corridor to Benedict's bedroom door. She went with him, every ponderous step of the way, willing him to walk faster, to be propelled by her own fierce urgency. Dear God. And if Benedict was there – if – then he would have to come all the way downstairs himself to take her call. Please hurry. Certainly, Madam. She had never before in her life felt so compelling a desire to scream.

‘Swanfield here.'

She had found him. And now, how did one convey to a man on a far-from-private telephone, that his wife had taken refuge in a common lodging-house and might well be bleeding to death.

‘Oh, Benedict.'

‘Claire?' She had never telephoned him before.

‘Yes. Could you come to Mannheim Crescent at once, please. Nola is with me. You must see her.'

There was a slight pause.

‘Can you be more explicit?'

‘I'll try. She's been taken ill. Very ill.'

‘Have you called a doctor?'

‘No. One would have to – choose discreetly.'

This time the pause was imperceptible.

‘I see. Yes – I'll be with you in fifteen minutes.'

‘Thank you.'

What else could she say?

Nola was barely conscious when she returned, her breathing laboured and guttural, her cheeks already sinking, her face fleshless, assuming the mask of bones and hollows Claire had seen so many times. Men wore this mask before they died. So, it seemed, did women. Automatically she performed the routine gestures of care, checked the pulse, the temperature, smoothed the brow, made the patient and the patient's bed tidy, tidied herself, sat down and waited for a higher authority. The doctor. Or Benedict. Or something even more final. Whichever should come first.

Not long. Benedict. Entirely composed, rock hard, she thought, but no rock to lean on; a rock, rather, on which vessels would break themselves if they ventured too close. Once she had almost – almost – sailed too near to him herself. Never again.

‘Did I understand you correctly, Claire?'

‘Yes.' And as he entered her flat it was no longer her own, his presence filling it, arranging it, disposing of her time and ingenuity – her services – in a manner best calculated to suit his needs. He had already arranged for a doctor to attend. Since he was himself in evening dress she realized he must also have cancelled a dinner engagement somewhere or other, before setting out. Had his memory stumbled with shock as hers had done so that he had been unable to recall a familiar telephone number? She doubted it. She could, with very little effort of the imagination, even hear his voice making cool explanations, ‘I do apologize – something has just come up – no, no, nothing serious – just a slight hitch.' And even Elvira Redfearn would be unlikely to question him as to what sort of hitch it might be.

‘I don't think you should go in to see her before the doctor comes,' she said, standing between him and her bedroom door.

‘Do you not?' He brushed her aside somehow without even touching her, opened the door, went in and stood for a moment looking down at his wife. Claire did not see his face. She was looking at Nola. Nola was looking at her. ‘Judas,' she said.

The doctor came.

‘Ah – doctor.' Benedict turned from the bedside, his manner serious but affable and a little relieved – exactly right. ‘Thank you for being so prompt. As you see, my wife has suffered a tragic accident.'

‘Quite so.' It was not, Claire noted, the comfortable little man who looked after Miriam's coughs and colds, but a younger, smoother, even more elegant individual of the type known as ‘a man of the world'.

‘An accident, you say –? Indeed?' And even at a quick, preliminary glance, his manner implied that one could see accidents like these in the charity ward of the General Hospital every night of the week.

‘Yes,' Benedict replied. ‘An accident – I did say that.'

‘You were aware then, Mr Swanfield, of your wife's condition?'

‘Naturally.'

And it was very clear that, whether or not he was believed, he did not intend to be contradicted. ‘As aware, that is, as she was herself. We had begun to hope. But, after fourteen years, one tends to hope with caution. Rightly so, in this case, as it has turned out, I regret to say.'

‘I see,' said the doctor.

‘Then please do what you can – regardless of cost, I need hardly add.'

Nola closed her eyes.

Claire, feeling herself dismissed, went into her living room and sat down. She had done what she could to save Nola's life. And now the responsibility was no longer hers. She knew the doctor did not believe Benedict. She also knew that Benedict did not care whether he was believed or not, so long as he was obeyed. She thought there was every chance of it. Taking out a cigarette she smoked for a while, looking at her hands, noticing traces of blood around her nails, a streak of it drying a dark, brick-dust red along her arms. No doubt, that was why the dentist and his wife had looked at her so – what was it? – so
avidly.
She had seen that look before. The savouring of secondhand tragedy, other people's pain. The look of the Roman arena.

She finished her cigarette and lit another, leaning back in the chair and closing her eyes, her body feeling limp, depleted, as if it had been wrung out like a wet towel. She had no idea what would happen now. Benedict would decide. And she was quite simply too tired to grapple, just now, with her own complicated reactions. Her first desperate instinct had been to call him. Standing in the dentist's dingy hall with the telephone clutched in her hand she had suffered an agony of apprehension in case he could not be found. Benedict would know what to do. And here he was, doing it, coolly, efficiently, extremely well. His performance made even more impressive, perhaps, by the hard fact – in which she was in no doubt – that he did not actually give a damn. What more could she expect? He had acknowledged paternity of his wife's child, knowing it could not be his, as Paul had once done. She knew that Paul had acted from compassion. Had Benedict felt even remotely sorry for Nola? Did he understand now, as he stood at her bedside purchasing the silence of her doctor, that she had-submitted herself to this butchery through fear of him? He was a clever man. His mind far more highly-trained, experienced, seasoned than Nola's. And she concluded, therefore, that he did.

Her bedroom door opened and he came through it, the doctor a discreet pace behind him, continuing his low-voiced discussion without even appearing to notice her, the doctor looking professionally bland yet sounding just a little alarmed, like a man who has been manoeuvred perhaps a shade too far.

‘Very well, Mr Swanfield, if that is your wish.'

‘It is.'

‘Quite so – but just the same I feel compelled to point out to you-'

‘I believe you have already done so – several times, in fact.'

‘Then allow me to repeat once again – to stress – so that my own conscience may be clear –'

‘Conscience?' And Benedict's cold sarcasm cut the air like a knife. ‘Good Heavens, are we talking about conscience? I beg your pardon. I rather thought we were considering the risk. Yours. And mine, of course – which amounts to much the same. Well-doesn't it?'

There was a slight pause. Not long.

‘Mr Swanfield – nevertheless –'

‘Yes?'

‘In view of the precarious balance of your wife's condition –'

‘Yes, doctor – in view of exactly that, perhaps we might incline ourselves to speed. There is a back entrance to this house through the garden. You have a private ambulance, have you not – unmarked?'

‘I do.'

‘Good. The turning is very narrow but you will just manage it. I see no reason to alarm my sister-in-law's neighbours by carrying a stretcher through her front door.'

‘No, indeed.'

‘So – perhaps we could say – rather soon.'

The doctor took his leave. Claire went into the bedroom to look at Nola who was professionally sedated and packaged now, her unconscious face too helpless and too naked to be stared at for long. And coming back to find Benedict standing on her hearthrug lighting a cigar she said very coldly, ‘You must be paying the good doctor very handsomely.'

‘Am I in a position to bargain, do you think?
I
hardly think so.'

‘And you are moving her against his advice, aren't you?'

‘I see no alternative.'

‘I do.'

‘Very likely.' And his tone said ‘Spare me the details. Don't try me any further than you must.' It was the tone he employed with Eunice.

‘She can stay here. I see no reason against it.'

‘No – I suppose you wouldn't.'

‘You do, of course?'

‘Yes.'

No more than that! Just a single word of dismissal, reducing her to the level of a busybody, a scatterbrain. How dare he! She could not allow him to get away with it. But, as she drew breath to tell him so, he added, with visible impatience, ‘The reason is, my dear, that her life is still in danger. Were she to die here then you would no doubt have cause to regret your generosity. And even if
you
are willing to take the risk then
I
have other matters and other people to consider.'