A Winter's Child (48 page)

She moved a step or two away from him.

‘What you are saying, I think, is that if she dies at High Meadows you can hush it up, but if she dies here there might be a scandal. So she will just have to go and die at High Meadows.'

And throwing his cigar into the fire he spat out the one word, ‘Precisely.'

She moved away from him again, slowly but very surely, wanting distance between them.

‘What an icy bastard you are, Benedict,' she said, her voice pitched at the level of casual conversation.

‘Yes,' he answered quite pleasantly, ‘it has taken you rather a long time, hasn't it, to reach that conclusion.'

The journey to High Meadows was not the worst she had undergone. Very far from that. She had spent weary hours and days, unspeakable nights, in hospital trains packed like sardine cans with wounded. She knew the sounds and the smells of hospital ships, both in the flea-plagued heat of August when wounds festered and the murderous winter cold when they froze. This was by no means so terrible. But it was bad enough.

‘My dear young lady, you have been most helpful.' But the doctor had his own nurse with him now, a competent, astringent woman, a professional ‘civilian nursing sister'fully trained in the care of ladies and gentlemen, very much inclined to look down her nose at a common, war-time VAD. And Claire got into the ambulance only because she did not care to drive with Benedict or to leave Nola.

‘There is a danger of infection, I suppose?'

The two civilian practitioners of medicine exchanged amused glances above her head.

‘My dear – she is in excellent hands,' Sister Cardew said, smiling reverently at her employer in a manner which irritated Claire. Yet, knowing she had been reminded of her inferior professional status, told to ‘keep her nose out of things which nice young ladies ought not to understand', she contented herself by holding Nola's hand and wondering out loud, from time to time, whether it should really be so hot.

‘Her head is very hot too.'

Sister Cardew, pointedly ignoring her, smiled once again, with enormous trust and admiration, at her doctor who, for his part, smiled benignly into space.

Benedict had arrived before them. Nola's room was ready. Her maid in attendance, Parker standing by to fetch and carry.

‘My wife has been taken ill.' It was as much, in his view, as they needed to know. It would not be worth their while or their jobs either, his manner implied, to find out more.

‘Do you have everything you need, doctor?'

‘I believe so.'

‘Should any need arise, no matter how great or small, then naturally, you have only to let me know,'

‘Quite so.' There could be no doubt that the need – whatever it happened to be – could be supplied.

Claire could not tell whether Nola had suffered from the journey or not. She had been quiet in the ambulance, barely stirring in her drugged sleep, silently burning, and bleeding, Claire supposed, beneath the red hospital blankets, her life-flow restoring itself or ebbing away. Who knew?-But she looked like an image of wax as they carried her upstairs. Old wax, its edges blurring away.

‘Go with them,' said Benedict, issuing a curt command.

‘Oh – they don't want me to interfere –'

‘I dare say. But
I
do. You'll understand enough – won't you – to judge.'

‘Perhaps.'

‘Perhaps isn't good enough, Claire. Better than that.'

She had never in her life felt so hostile and bitter towards anyone.

‘All right, Benedict. I quite understand your need to be kept informed. You'll have to be ready, won't you, to talk to your friends in high places – if she dies.'

‘Claire,' he said, ‘if you wish to be useful then no one will complain. If not, then I am sure Parker will find the time to take you home.'

Polly was out for the evening, would return late and too wrapped up in her own doings to notice anything amiss. Miriam had gone to the Princes Theatre to see
No, No Nanette,
and it would be Benedict's task to welcome her home, not Claire's. What would he tell her? The smoothly contorted version of the truth which he had offered his doctor, and which Miriam, in the same knowing manner, would pretend to believe.

‘My dear boy, how sad. I had really not the least notion that you were hoping to be a father again.'

‘Quite. One must accept these things stoically.'

‘How very true.'

And Miriam would trip off to bed thinking that really, if one absolutely had to be adulterous then at least one might do it with style and, above all, with care.

Claire entered Nola's bedroom without knocking and closed the door firmly behind her.

‘My dear young lady –?' said the doctor, pronouncing a stock quotation.

‘Mr Swanfield asked me to come and help.'

‘Really –!' He exchanged a meaning glance with his nurse and lifted his shoulders in a shrug of resignation.

‘If you should feel faint, dear,' Sister Cardew said very sweetly, ‘do remember, if you can, to fall away from the patient.'

Claire told her she did not think there would be any danger of that.

Night-watching was not new to her. She had sat, more nights than she wished to remember, in a hut full of dying men, ‘using her own initiative'as the phrase went, alone because there had been an epidemic of influenza among the nursing staff and because, since the men were dying anyway, no mistake could actually be fatal. She submitted herself now to the authority of this supercilious but – she gladly admitted – skilful pair, fetching and carrying, the ‘probationer nurse' again whose job it is to bear the brunt of temper and bring the tea. She became a pair of hands in the service of ‘the patient'who could have been anyone. And eventually the crisis was over, the haemorrhage under control, Nola's heart still beating, although her face had not lost its yellowing waxen look, its nakedness.

The patient was ‘comfortable', ‘as well as could be expected'. No firm promises, mind. The words ‘infection'and ‘relapse'hovered on the brink of the surgeon's tongue, for women's bodies were unpredictable and the instruments used on this one may not have been clean. But he felt quite safe now in leaving the matter in Sister Cardew's capable hands. He would return in the morning, except that it was morning already, of course. Perhaps around eleven o'clock. Unless there should be a turn for the worse, in which case he would come at once. He begged Claire to rely on Sister Cardew's judgement about that.

‘Is she going to be all right?'

‘My dear – dear – young lady –'

‘You should get some rest, dear,' advised Sister Cardew, ‘or I shall have two patients on my hands.'

The house was strange with early morning quiet when she came downstairs for the last time, a pearl-grey light just visible behind its curtained windows, not even the chambermaids about yet, with their ashpans and coal scuttles, just Benedict, his study door ajar, sitting alone at the vulnerable hour of five o'clock, smoking, waiting, she thought, with the intent, calculated patience of cats who are only patient for a purpose.

But she was no longer angry. Perhaps she had needed anger to carry her through. And now that the danger seemed over, her strength had gone with it. Now, she was weary. Only that.

‘I think I could go home now, Benedict.' It was all she wanted. Solitude. Silence. But it was not to be.

‘I don't see how you can. There is some tidying up to be done – isn't there – in your bedroom in Mannheim Crescent. I think you will have to sleep here.'

Oh Lord. She had forgotten that. And she had no stomach now for the soiled sheets Nola had left behind, nor energy to tackle their disposal. She sat down suddenly in the chair facing his.

Damnation!

‘How is she now?'

‘Still quiet. And Cardew looks very smug.
She
thinks it's going to be all right.'

‘Yes. So it seems. The doctor had a word with me here before he left.'

But would it ever be all right for Nola? What would happen to her now? Would he punish her? Or, as always, would he simply allow her to punish herself?

‘Claire …'

She looked up in surprise, wondering what more they had to say to one another and remained, for a moment of absolute shock, with her eyes fixed on his face. ‘Benedict, you look –
ghastly.'

‘Do I? Why ever can that be, I wonder?'

His voice was clipped and cool as always, Benedict at his efficient, sardonic best. But his face, in the hesitant light of a February dawn, looked hollow with strain, his eyes sunken and black, fine lines she had never seen before, or never noticed, fanning outwards from their corners. He had been up all night, of course. And he had been drinking too. Yet – even so. He did not sound drunk. He did not look drunk. He looked as weary, as sickened, as she felt herself.

And as their eyes met they began to speak both together, his voice rising above hers, dominating it, forcing her to listen.

‘I feel under no obligation to explain myself to you – none whatsoever …'

‘Benedict – I haven't asked you –'

‘But did it never cross your mind when you were standing there accusing me of – well, what
was
it exactly?'

She had never seen him even slightly moved before. He was moved now, perhaps only to anger, but moved nevertheless as other men could be moved, leaning towards her, his eyes narrowed, his mouth a thin line spitting out words she knew he did not want to speak, something inside him that was both enraged and enormous, hurling itself against his iron-held control. If it broke through then it would hurt him. Her too, perhaps. But she could cope with her own emotion. Already she was afraid for him.

‘Accusing you?' she said carefully. ‘It seems a long time ago now.'

‘Not to me. So I'll ask you again. Did it never occur to you, while you were playing Joan of Are, that I have two children to consider? Safely away at school, I admit, but nevertheless –. Would
you
have cared for the job of telling them that their mother had died in suspicious circumstances in a lodging house in Mannheim Crescent? They are just old enough to understand those circumstances. Too young to be charitable about it. And the other boys at their school – bearing in mind that school is their home, their real life – would not have been kind.'

‘I'm sorry, Benedict.'

‘I
had
to move her.'

‘Yes – yes. I
do
understand now. I understood at the time. It was just that I felt so
sorry
for her and – and –'

‘And I didn't feel anything at all? Is that it?'

‘I suppose it is. Were you sorry?'

‘No, of course not. Machines don't feel. But they function damn well in a crisis – for that very reason. They don't feel pity at the time, or guilt afterwards – well, do they?'

‘Do
you?'

She saw that he did, and it was sufficient. It put everything, Edwina and Lois and that offensive bouquet of flowers – everything – right. Far more than it-should have done and far too soon. Already, before he had asked for it or proved to her that he deserved it, she had forgiven him.

‘I had to get her here. Yes, there was a risk. And yes – I did weigh her in the balance against my sons, and certain other things –. Played God, if you like. And if she'd died in the ambulance then I'd have been to blame. The doctor made that clear enough. Obviously you imagine I found it easy.'

‘I thought so. I'm glad you didn't.'

He leaned back in his chair, in shadow as she had so often seen him, and then emerging from it so abruptly that his face seemed very white, his eyes black hollows, he brought his hand palm down on the table beside him, setting the decanter and the overflowing ashtray dancing.

‘For Christ's sake, Claire – how can you take so little care of yourself? Don't you even know the danger you were in? If she had been found in your bed they could have arrested you. And they'd have had a decent case. You were a nurse, you little fool. You could have done it yourself.'

‘Benedict – I could not.'

Once again his hand descended palm down, with violence, on the fireside table.

‘I know that. Of course I know it. But if they'd put you on trial for manslaughter what could I have
done
about it? An expensive barrister, certainly – or two – or any number. Yes –. But could I have kept the news-reporters and the scandalmongers and the hysterics away from you? Could I have made confinement in a prison cell anything other than unendurable? I doubt it. Could I have made it easier for you to stand in the dock and be accused of something you hadn't done and wouldn't do –? You never gave it a thought, did you? You just stood there with blood on your hands worrying because I didn't look
sorry
. I intended to save Nola if I could. I was determined to save you, whether you liked it – or understood it – or noticed it – or not. Draw what conclusions you like. They'll be the wrong ones, no doubt. You were like a child, Claire, sitting on a railway track. Thank God you had the sense to call me.'

‘Yes.'

And it was then, her mind racing, reeling from one conflicting thought to another, that she turned her head – seeking a respite perhaps from looking at him with her whole vision, the full measure of her concentration – and saw the lily bowl.

‘What is that doing here?'

‘What?'

She pointed almost accusingly and barely looking round – knowing full well what she had seen and its significance to her – he made a gesture of forced nonchalance, shrugging himself quite visibly back into his cynical aloofness, like a garment which, just as visibly, no longer altogether covered him.

‘Ah –
that.
Did you want me to return it to you?'

‘Of course not.'

‘Then why shouldn't it be here?'