Is There Anything You Want? (18 page)

He half rose and held out his hand, and Cecil leaned forward and took it, the edge of the table digging into his knees. ‘Cecil Maddox,' he said. Then there was silence. Was he supposed to ask in what way Ida Yates might bother him and why she became pretty desperate? It didn't appeal to him. ‘Ida was christened here,' Martin Yates was saying, ‘and we were married here, in the church that is, and in times of trouble she's always turned to the vicar. The Rev. Barnes was very good, very understanding.' Cecil nodded. Comparisons with his predecessor would be inevitable. ‘Well,' he said, ‘thank you for filling me in, Mr Yates. I'll try to do my best, if your wife does need comfort.' He stood up, but Mr Yates didn't. Should he sit down again? But that felt foolish. Slowly, the other man got up too. ‘It's cancer,' he said, ‘that's Ida's trouble, or was, I never know whether to say it is or it was.' His hand went to his chest. ‘Here,' he said, ‘she gets frightened sometimes, she panics. I thought you should be told, in case she can't say it, in case she's confused when she comes, hysterical, maybe. Then you'll know what to do.'

Cecil almost laughed at the absurdity of the idea in this man's head – that
he
would know what to do! He was dreadfully afraid that a spasm might have crossed his face and looked like a smirk, and so he said, very hastily, and not making sense, ‘Don't worry, don't worry, that's fine.' They shook hands again, and then there was the awkward business of moving towards the door side by side, and edging through it and out into the hall and then at last Mr Yates had gone. Cecil leaned against the closed door and closed his eyes. A vision of Ida Yates hysterical and weeping rose before him and he groaned. What would he do with her? What if she were to come in the middle of the night – but no, surely her husband, the caring Mr Yates, would stop her. What had Paul Barnes done to calm her? Suddenly, he rushed into the study. Paul Barnes might have left some explanatory notes for him. There was a folder he'd noticed, in the top drawer, marked ‘Parish Matters', which he hadn't been able to face looking at. Now he took it out and flipped through it: dross. Merely telephone numbers for the church wardens, bills for new hymn books, nothing about any parishioners at all.

His forehead felt sweaty and hot. He wiped it with his sleeve, then went to wash his hands and splash cold water over his face. He was still drying it when the telephone rang and he froze, staring at himself in the mirror above the sink. He would have to answer it, would have to, but his footsteps dragged as he went towards the ledge in the cavernous hall where the instrument stood. ‘Hello! Am I talking to the new vicar? I hope I am!' ‘Yes,' said Cecil. His voice was a croak. ‘Who is this, please?' It was a hearty, booming Paul Barnes, ringing to wish him luck, glad he was at last in residence, pleased to find him at home, hoping he was settling in, and finally telling him he was a lucky chap, couldn't be a nicer, easier parish. Cecil hesitated and then decided that he had to take this chance to ask about Ida Yates, explaining about her husband's visit. ‘Oh, Martin's a lovely chap, salt of the earth, that's typical of him, typical, but of course he knows his wife, he knows what she's like, quite unhinged sometimes, but don't worry about it.' Cecil said he couldn't help it, he was worried, he felt very apprehensive at the thought of this woman perhaps arriving in a distressed state. ‘Part of the job, surely,'
said Paul Barnes. ‘Never come across it before? Ida wants reassurance, that's all. Say a prayer with her, give her a cup of tea, and she'll be on her way. She's an unhappy woman these days, can't face up to dealing with breast cancer, though I gather she's fine now. It's hard for Martin, wonderful chap. You'll like him.'

Cecil could find no food in the kitchen, but then he hadn't brought any with him and there was no reason why anyone else should have provisioned for his early arrival. There was tea, though, left by the two women, and he wasn't really hungry so much as thirsty. He sat in his study with a large mug of weak tea and tried to compose himself. He thought of Ida Yates and her possible hysteria, and of the woman who had run away from him in the church, and wondered if his mission here was to act as psychiatrist not vicar. But then the administering of religion, if it could be described like that, was a sort of psychiatry. The only problem was that he still needed psychiatric help himself. He was close to mad sometimes. Could the half-mad help the temporarily unstable? It sounded as though he would have to find out. It had all been in his head, to deliver as his first sermon, the confession of his weakness, but now he realised he couldn't deliver it. What would Ida Yates think? What would her solid husband think? What would the nervous woman who'd run away think? He could not publicly advertise his own frailty. He had to show how comfort and healing could be achieved through faith. Everyone wanted help of some sort and only God, working in his mysterious ways, could give it.

He found a can of oil in a cupboard in the kitchen. It was actually labelled ‘for troublesome front door'. Cecil went slowly to the door, opened it, and began applying oil to the hinges.

*

It took Edwina a while to recover – she couldn't think what had made her do such an unlikely thing. Churches were places she shunned, only entering them on the kind of occasions when not to do so would offend others. St James's was not like the Methodist chapel of her youth, it was an interesting and attractive building, but nevertheless it held no charm for her and she
had never in fact been inside it. But passing the church that afternoon she had paused near the gate into the churchyard and thought how pretty and well-kept it was. Graveyards were bits of history, and she was interested in history. She'd gone through the gate to look at the gravestones not in any morbid fashion but to see how old they were, and then it had suddenly seemed to her like a dare: could she overcome her aversion and enter the church itself?

There was no reason why not. Maybe, she'd thought, it would calm her. Her head seemed to throb with worry about Emma – where was she, was she safe? – and it was partly for that reason that she'd come out to walk. She couldn't read any more. When she most needed to, she couldn't concentrate on the words, they'd failed her. She pushed the door of the porch open and almost tiptoed inside. It was cold, as it always was in churches, cold and musty, a combination which made her shiver. For a moment, she had turned to go straight back into the sunshine but then she'd thought no, she must enter the church itself. The inner door was slightly ajar. Hesitantly, she slipped inside and stood beside a table laden with hymn books. The intense silence, instead of soothing her, agitated her. All the dreadful things that might be at this moment happening to Emma crowded in on her and she put a hand across her forehead as though to try to subdue them. It had been a mistake to imagine any kind of comfort could be found in St James's. But since she would never enter the church again she thought she should just look at its famous east window and then go, quickly. Crossing the stone flags, she glided towards the centre aisle and then, turning to face the window, she saw a man rise up and come towards her.

The shock was violent. Her heart raced and without pausing to reflect that this must of course be the vicar, she ran from the church and down the path to the gate, crashing it behind her and never looking back. Once home, she was mortified by her behaviour – what must the poor man have thought? She should have collected herself, at least nodded, said good afternoon, before leaving. Or she should have explained her presence, told him she was just admiring the window. She'd run away as though she were frightened, as though she'd thought him an ogre. It
was inexplicable, that leap of terror. She didn't need anyone to tell her she was getting everything out of proportion. Emma was young and healthy and even if she seemed dominated by Luke, she must surely have some notion of self-preservation within her. That was what Edwina told herself she had to hang on to: Emma's own resilience and her innate respect for her own life. She would not let Luke lead her into danger, she would
not.

THERE HAD BEEN
a little clutch of cards and notes, and a flurry of messages on her answer machine, but Chrissie had derived no comfort from them. Her misery about the whole awful business had wrapped itself round her like cling-film, sealing up every nook and cranny of feeling. She was numb with guilt, even though guilt was what she had been publicly absolved of and told not to feel. Again and again she replayed that day in the clinic, the day Mr Wallis wasn't there, the day Ben Cohen was ill, the day she and Andrew had struggled through that heavy load, but the dreadful thing was that she couldn't remember clearly what that poor young woman had looked like. She could vividly recall some of the patients she'd seen that day, though she couldn't remember their names, especially one rather striking, dark-haired younger woman, but she could not bring Carol Collins to mind. The newspaper had described her as red-haired and pretty, and her own notes had told her Ms Collins was twenty-six and single, but none of this information brought her to mind, which in itself was an indictment. Even looking at the photograph after the inquest hadn't helped. Carol Collins was a blank.

A blank. That was how she felt herself to be now, a faceless person, remote, unable to connect with anyone. A person who had been unable to provide reassurance at the right time for a vulnerable and needy young woman. No good excusing herself on the grounds of having been tired and overworked, no good
repeating that Carol Collins had a history of mental instability and had tried to kill herself before over another imagined fatal illness. She felt responsible, and was sure the young woman's family still blamed her. ‘Take time off,' Mr Wallis had said. He wanted to be rid of her, she was sure. Her drawn features, and her eyes red with lack of sleep, alarmed his patients. And so here she was, with time off, and it didn't help at all. What was she to do with herself? Fret and wonder endlessly why ever she had become a doctor, though the answer was simple: because her mother had wanted it. So many times, as a child, she'd heard her mother say, with conviction, ‘Chrissie is going to be a doctor, aren't you, Chrissie?' And she had never once replied, ‘Am I?' Instead, she'd been eager to agree, yes, yes, I am going to be a doctor. Her head had filled with romantic notions of saving lives and curing the sick; the white coat and stethoscope had been seductive badges of office. She was good at science, all the sciences, sailed through exams, had no trouble getting into medical school. But there, once the reality of doctoring impressed itself upon her, the doubts had begun. Did she want to be among all this blood and disease? It was sad, it was depressing, it was not as worthwhile and noble as she had envisaged, and worst of all was the fearful weight of the responsibility. But she'd gone too far, she couldn't bring herself to back out. Her mother's proudest day was when she saw her daughter entitled to put the magic word Doctor in front of her name.

But the next step, the one her mother had wanted her to take, she had not taken. She hadn't become a GP. Being a GP was all about personal involvement with people and the idea horrified her. It was better for her to be in a hospital environment and to keep the personal at a distance. She still had to deal with people but she didn't have to get to know patients. In the clinic, a body could be a body in a way it could not be in a GP's surgery, and it was bodies she could deal with, not people. But she'd dealt with Carol Collins as a body, couldn't remember her, face, couldn't even recall the red hair. Carol Collins had been just a few notes, until she became a dead young woman.

She wondered how she was ever going to go back to St Mary's, with everyone looking at her and whispering who-knew-what,
and feeling sorry for her. But she knew that to think like that was vanity. Memories were short. To her, and to Carol Collins's family, what had happened was overwhelmingly important, but to those others in a busy hospital it was not. Aunt Mary had pointed this out in her note. ‘Nobody blames you, dear,' she had written, ‘you did nothing wrong, and people here have more pressing things to worry about.' It was kind of her to write, but the letter was in itself an indication that Carol Collins's death
was
being talked about. Chrissie knew she hadn't bothered to stop and speak to her aunt for months, though she'd regularly seen her doing her duty as a Friend. She'd avoided her, always had done. Aunt Mary embarrassed her. Even referring to her as ‘aunt' embarrassed her, suggesting as it did a degree of affection and closeness which did not exist. ‘Aunt Mary' was the widow of her mother's only brother; she sent Christmas and birthday presents, letters of congratulation after exam successes, a card of commiseration after the death of Chrissie's father. And, of course, she came to the funeral of Chrissie's mother. It was the first time Chrissie could ever remember meeting the woman and it had not been a comfortable encounter. They had said hello in the entrance hall of the hospital over the years, but no more. Until now, and the note, which ended with the words ‘If there is anything you want, or anything I can do, please let me know.'

What do I want, Chrissie wondered, that a woman like Aunt Mary could possibly give me? A woman I hardly know, whose connection with me is an accident of marriage, a woman to whom I do not feel in the least drawn, who simply happens to do voluntary work in my hospital and about whom I know nothing else. I do not, Chrissie thought, want to be part of her good works. I don't want to be pitied or fussed over. And yet as the days passed, and she dragged herself around her little house, listlessly, she longed for someone, anyone, to pull her out of her apathy and break through the wall of indifference she seemed to have erected round herself. She didn't want another doctor. She didn't want the kindness of colleagues who had all experienced something similar in their professional lives (and without those colleagues she had precious few friends). Gradually, she began to play with the idea of taking Aunt Mary at her word, and summoning her,
saying ‘Help me', and then waiting to see what would transpire. She could pretend to be ill. Well, it would not exactly be a pretence – she
was
ill, but not in the way she would pretend to be. Something simple would do, some physical malady, which would mean she needed to be visited and perhaps looked after; and then, once Aunt Mary came, if she came, she could recover rapidly should the whole thing prove a disaster. She remembered her mother saying of Aunt Mary that whatever else, she was a sensible woman, dependable, loyal, and full of common sense.