Night Visit (10 page)

I
can be short too, especially halfway through the night. ‘I’m the doctor,’ I said, snapping the window shut. ‘Let’s have a look at you.’ I pulled the quilt from her, lifted her nightie, felt her limbs. She groaned a little but there were no bones displaced and she had full movement in two arms and two legs. Added to that her conscious state was all it should be. She might be bruised and cold but there appeared to be nothing worse.

‘
Shall we get her back to bed?’ I said to Pritchard.

Instantly
he was behind me, breathing down my neck, polluting the air with his stale scent.

‘
I didn’t like to move her,’ he said, ‘not until you’d checked her over. I might have done further damage.’ He had a very slight speech impediment, a faint whistle through a gap between his two top incisors and the smell of stale sweat was even more overpowering than it had been in my surgery. I shifted away.

Pritchard
and I manhandled the protesting old lady back into the high bed and I had a slightly better look at her, a quick palpation of her limbs. I could find nothing wrong. This time she’d been lucky. With relief I turned to leave but the old lady grabbed my arm with a maniac’s iron grip. ‘It was in the wrong place,’ she said. ‘Someone must have moved it.’ She was looking at the corner of the room where she had fallen. I took little notice. I had met this before, many times: old lady, confused but always right. They’re never wrong. It’s everyone else who is mistaken.

Heaven
help
me
.
How
often
do
we
read
more
into
grey
hair
than
we
should
?
Because
she
was
old
I
assumed
she
was
confused
.
Purely
because
she
was
old
.
I
thought
she
was
rambling
.

‘
Now, mother.’ Pritchard was fussing over her, tucking the quilt around her thin shoulders. There was calm sympathy in his voice with the vaguest hint of patronage. I ignored it. I wanted to escape.

And
Amelia didn’t seem that impressed with me. She was working her jaw to spit venom at her son. ‘I told you not to get someone out.’ Her voice was querulous and miserable. ‘I warned you. What good’s she done?’

Great,
I thought, folding my stethoscope and snapping my bag shut. So appreciated. Feeling less than benevolent I returned the sour look. She might have been able to speak better if she had had her false teeth in.

She
stuck her face close to mine and I could almost smell its meanness. ‘We don’t like people coming here.’ Her venom was wasted on me. ‘Why do you think we chose to live in this spot in the first place?’ She looked at neither of us as she muttered, ‘Gossips.’

For
the first time ever I felt some sympathy towards Pritchard Junior. He had his work cut out here. ‘It’s a good job he did call me, Mrs Pritchard,’ I said crisply. ‘Otherwise you would have frozen on the floor.’

She
lowered her baggy eyelids and swallowed. She didn’t like that, being grateful to him. The old lady was still shouting after me as I left the room. ‘It was in the wrong place, you stupid girl,’ she called out.

I
wasn’t listening.

As
I left the bedroom I heard Pritchard’s voice. ‘Mother’. And I glanced back. This time his voice was even softer. Yet, paradoxically, the old lady looked even more cowed, with her head dropped on to her chest. I would have to call back in the morning.

8

I returned to a sleepy, confused Rosie and decided in future I must ask Sylvie to stay with her overnight when I was on call. So far I had been lucky. Nothing had happened, but Rosie was only nine years old. It wasn’t even legal to leave her alone. And while she understood that occasionally I needed to go out to visit sick people in the middle of the night it didn’t stop her from being frightened. Until this year Robin had almost always been around but now he wasn’t and I could not afford to leave her with anyone else.

That
was only one of my worries. For the rest of that night I could not sleep because every time I closed my eyes I could see the interior of that shabby cottage, smell Pritchard’s scent and feel the fright of the old woman. As I had felt disturbed by the atmosphere there part, at least, of that atmosphere had been the old lady herself, querulous, intimidated. I could not forget her calling out to me even though she had disliked me, resented my presence and certainly had not trusted me. Yet she had tried to call me back. There had been a pathetic desperation in her voice. Something was wrong there and I had to go back. Night visits were risky. No matter how much common sense told me Pritchard was not a threat it didn’t help me get over my revulsion for him, because instinct was telling me something else. He was an unsavoury character and he wanted to be close to me. On a warm night I was shivering.

I
was showered and dressed a full hour before it was time to wake Rosie and in the dull light of a rainy morning I could almost convince myself that I had dreamed the whole thing.
Almost
convince myself. And then I drove Rosie to school.

A
dark blue Lada is not such an uncommon car, is it? Surely it must be coincidence that I watched Rosie skip past one in the school car park?

The
thought occupied my mind until I pulled up outside the surgery and met Neil in the car park.

He
waited for me to lock my car. ‘Good morning, Harry. Busy night last night?’

The
bond between us was strengthening. After all, we had common ground. We were both discarded partners, in a way. The age gap wasn’t enormous, and we worked together, so we had fallen into the habit of giving each other lifts to the local medical meetings and once or twice he had come round in the evening to play draughts with Rosie, while I cooked. I felt much more comfortable in Neil’s presence than Duncan’s, for while Duncan studiously avoided all mention of Robin, Neil had the ability to throw his name, quite casually, into the conversation without it causing me hurt. It all helped.

‘
I got called out at eleven.’

He
looked unsympathetic.

‘But
I couldn’t sleep afterwards.’

‘
That’s the trouble sometimes. Mind races, doesn’t it?’ He gave one of his straight-lipped smiles. ‘I sometimes think my mind only starts working after I’ve left the patient’s house. At the time all I’m really thinking of is getting back home again to a nice, warm bed.’

‘
Neil,’ I began tentatively.

‘
Mm?’

‘
Have you ever felt… uncomfortable in someone’s house?’

‘
Frequently.’

‘
I—I mean really uncomfortable. Frightened?’

Neil
looked serious. ‘Once or twice,’ he said. ‘Druggies mainly.’

‘
What about…’

He
interrupted. ‘And the odd schizophrenic who’s been discharged into the community straight from a locked ward. That happened once. He had a knife. I was pretty scared then.’ He gave me a hard stare. ‘Why? Something like that happen to you last night?’

I
shook my head. It had been nothing to compare with either of those experiences. It had been a
feeling
. No more.

Neil
seemed more interested in the medical aspect. ‘Anything complicated?’

‘
No,’ I said. ‘Only an old lady who fell out of bed.’

He
shrugged. We both knew it happened all the time. ‘Send her into hospital?’

‘
No.’ I paused. ‘It wasn’t necessary. She was OK. A bit grumpy and eccentric. Confused, maybe, but there was no indication to send her in. Nothing broken. Besides—her son was more than willing to look after her. Damned lucky really when offspring turn nursemaid.’

A
spasm crossed his face and I cursed myself. I had not meant to hurt his feelings. To cover my embarrassment I gabbled a bit more than I had meant to about the visit.

‘
It was a dump of a place.’

‘
Plenty of those around. On the Dune’s Estate?’

‘
No, along Gordon’s Lane.’

But
I could tell he was still abstracted by my comment and I cursed myself again. How could I have been so insensitive when the silence from his son must be so painful?

Neil
was giving me such a strange look that for one dreadful minute I believed he was reading my mind. Instead he said, ‘I didn’t know there was a house along Gordon’s Road. I thought it was a dead end.’

And
it brought me back to the present. ‘If you can call it a house,’ I said. ‘It’s a tin shack, not much bigger than a chicken coop.’ I made a face. ‘Not much cleaner either.’ Memories of the fusty atmosphere returned to nauseate me.

Neil
was perceptive. ‘I can see it made quite an impression on you.’

‘
Unfavourable,’ I said, and recalled his lack of sympathy when I had complained about Anthony Pritchard. I decided to close the subject.

The
trouble was Neil seemed to want to pursue the matter. ‘I can’t recall ever visiting anyone there. You do mean turn left after the pool?’

‘
The Heron Pool.’ That vague vision of the child clasping the toadstool flicked in front of my eyes.

And
the name seemed to mean something to Neil too. A spasm crossed his face. ‘Is that what you call it?’

‘
There’s a sign there,’ I said. ‘Heronry.’

‘
Mmm.’ There was an awful, haunting sadness about his face. He was struggling to keep the conversation light and rational. ‘And you say they’re patients of ours?’

‘
That’s right.’

‘
Been on the list long?’ His laugh was almost back to normal. ‘They must be an undemanding family.’

‘
Years,’ I said. ‘Don’t you remember that creep Pritchard who kept coming to see me about his blood pressure?’

‘
The one with the dubious family history?’ It was Neil’s pleasure to mock me.

But
I could laugh too. Oh yes. In the light of day and the comfort of the surgery, tales of poisoned fathers, unease at a sordid home visit, a patient who was overfamiliar with my Christian name and pestered to have his blood pressure taken. All these things could seem funny.

‘
It was his mother I saw and she’s a bad tempered old biddy.’ My detachment was growing by the minute. Even the memory of the old woman, waving stick-arms into the air, failed to disturb me. ‘And no less peculiar than the son.’

Neil
laughed and turned his key in the door. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I still don’t recall her even from your description.’

‘
I thought I’d go back today and take a better look at her. She is in her eighties and it was so dim there last night I couldn’t examine her properly.’

Maybe
Neil did sense my unease. Or perhaps he had another motive, but he offered to go for me anyway.

I
appreciated the gesture but knew it had to be me who returned. ‘No, no. It’s OK. Really. Don’t worry. I just need to pop in. I should check her out a bit more thoroughly. With a bit of luck Weirdo Pritchard won’t even be there.’

‘
Well.’ He hesitated, his box of notes under his arm. ‘If you want anything...’

*

Patients’ notes were filed in the reception area, in brown folders known as Lloyd George envelopes. The promise of care from cradle to grave was never more ably displayed than here, where National Health milk records, ancient letters describing outdated treatments, inoculations and examinations were all here, for professional eyes to read. Clues to a person’s entire life were contained in these envelopes.

I
was curious about Mr Pritchard, Senior. I found the letter P on the rack then took out the two, thin folders that belonged to the sole inhabitants of Gordon’s Lane. I had already read Anthony’s recent notes and there was little to add from his childhood besides club feet when he was a toddler. And judging by the letter from the orthopaedic surgeon the treatment had been braces. Two-year-old Anthony Pritchard had, it seemed, screamed for the entire period of wearing them.

Now
for his mother. I shook Amelia’s notes out onto the desk. She had been born in the year the First World War had broken out, surely an ill omen to begin with. But her medical notes only extended as far back as the 1930s when she had joined the Silk workers’ Union so had bought health cover years before the National Health Service had taken over. In 1934 she had married and after ten years young Anthony arrived on the scene when his mother was thirty years old. He was born during the Second World War, in 1944, a year or two before the birth rate had bulged. Maybe his father had not been in the forces. Or maybe he had been granted leave to visit his wife. Who knows? The child had been conceived and as the National Health Service had been born Amelia Pritchard had visited her doctor frequently, on average once a month.

The
doctor’s writing was dreadful. I could hardly read some of the early entries except to make out odd injuries, fractures. The sign was the same now as it had always been: #. Ribs, a wrist, plus bruises and black eyes... It was a familiar picture of marital violence. And the young Anthony must have witnessed everything. He hadn’t had a good start. Until he was six.

In
1950 the injuries had stopped abruptly. Husband died. I stared at the next word, clearly written in capitals and red ink. POISON. Underneath the doctor had scrawled two words. I took the first one to be a woman’s name,
Anita
. The
A
was quite plain, the rest of the word illegible but certainly contained a crossed
T
. The second word began with a V. Beyond that I could not read. I imagined it was a woman’s name and wondered whether Pritchard Senior had had a mistress. Underneath that the doctor had pencilled in,
I
wonder
.

I
did too. Doctors in the 1940s had never thought anyone except other doctors would ever read their notes. Hence they had ventured dangerous, sometimes libellous opinions. What a long time ago it had all been. Pritchard was dead and forgotten. Until I had asked his son about his cause of death.

And
what did it have to do with the present? Probably nothing except that I knew that her husband’s death had brought Amelia Pritchard a pleasanter, safer life. But like the doctor whose words and signature I could not read, I wondered.

The
coroner’s verdict, plainly copied out in red ink and capital letters, was unequivocal, Accidental Death. Perhaps, I reasoned, as well as being an accidental death it had been a convenient death.

So
the
steps
of
the
jig
became
more
complicated
.

*

I spent the rest of the morning ploughing through a very average surgery with no worse pathology than a nasty case of bronchitis before leaving at eleven. The picture from the antique shop had stayed at the back of my mind. I wanted to take another look at it, maybe even buy it. To myself I could admit that to hang it in the house would be a dangerous move. It would be like giving in, like letting the events invade my own home. But they were already implanted, I argued. What would be the difference? I didn’t know but some vague instinct told me this. That for the child to assume a more tangible form, even if it was through the medium of a rather cheap, 1920s print, would remove some of the mystical quality of the story that had no ending. As I drove through the narrow streets of the town I found myself pondering another angle. Maybe absorbing the picture I would be able to convince myself that the child had not been murdered but had vanished somewhere, protected by the magic of a poisonous toadstool. And then maybe the dreams would stop because there had been something about the innocence of the child clinging to the thick stalk that reminded me too much of Rosie. She had the same hurt, clear stare.

Old
habits die hard. I parked in the same car park as before, but this time safely between a Renault caravanette and a pink Mini. I wouldn’t be long. Then again I climbed the narrow street towards the antiques shop, thoughts still fixed on Melanie Carnforth. Something must have happened to her. She couldn’t really have vanished. There had to be an answer. But in a 1920s print?