Night Visit (2 page)

But
Mr Carnforth does not have piles. He has an inoperable carcinoma of the rectum which I daily expect to perforate. And besides—I may as well stare at his rear end as at the arsehole I’m married to.

The
blonde gave me a beatific smile when I told Robin I had to leave. Her I ignored. She reminded me a little too much of the cat that got the cream. And Robin knew better than to try and introduce us. Behind Robin’s visage as he met my gaze there was not a trace of responsibility. His smile was bland and friendly and his big hands cradled the beer glass as I knew he would be cradling the anatomy of the blonde later on. My eyes flickered over the big breasts. Oh maybe not tonight but at some time in the future, in this year that had just begun so badly.

I
smiled goodbye to him. Somewhere, deep down, because I felt I understood him, I even forgave Robin. Infidelity was so much part of his make up. It was not a deliberate act. He simply lacked something, an understanding of how his actions affected those around him. I suppose it was as I left the party and walked back down the drive that I really formulated my New Year’s resolution. Robin and I had spent our last New Year together. By this time next year we would be divorced.

My
car was reluctant to start. Buy a big, boring box of a car that screams reliability at you from the showroom and three years later it’ll let you down on just such a cold, January night. It coughed and failed and coughed again but eventually like a good, doctor’s vehicle it burst into life and I turned around to head south towards the hills, the forest and the Carnforths’ smallholding.

It
sat on the edge of a forest, mixed deciduous with swathes of forestry pines, a rugged, beautiful place with an eerie cold stillness, especially tonight, in the first hour of a new year, one which already promised so little. As I drove slowly along the narrow lane which led to the farm I took the time to stare upwards, at the holes punched through the black sky allowing the stars to illuminate far hills iced with snow. The car slipped once or twice on frozen patches but the gritters had done their work. It wasn’t until I turned up the Carnforths’ lane that the car really began to have problems. I slid towards the yellow lights, drove through the open gate and pulled up on the concrete flagstones. I flicked the headlights off and reached in the back for my Gladstone bag. It was only then that I realised Vera Carnforth was standing in the doorway, holding a storm lantern and peering across the field, towards the edge of the meadow, as though she was straining to see something out there.

She
didn’t know I was here. For some reason I found the sight disturbing, her standing so still on this freezing night, staring. Curious, I followed her gaze but the night was black and silent. I could not even make out the outline of the trees.

There
was nothing there.

I
climbed out of the car, approached her as softly as though she was sleep-walking and touched her shoulder. ‘Vera?’

‘
Aagh.’ She started and swung the lantern towards me, her face white as the snow, lips bloodless.

‘
Did you hear something? An owl?’

How
we struggle for rational explanations.

‘
No,’ she said. ‘No. I heard nothing.’ Her voice cracked with disappointment. I peered through the night. ‘Then what are you doing out...?’

She
interrupted me, normality returned. ‘I’m glad you’ve come, Doctor.’ She started towards the door. ‘I’m so sorry to call you out. New Year’s Eve too. But he’s in agony.’

Her
face was angled with worry. ‘Don’t tell him,’ she begged. ‘Please, don’t tell him.’

‘
Vera, I...’

‘
I don’t want him knowing.’ Her eyes were frightened. ‘He’s terrible bad.’ The anticipated had happened. I should have either driven here faster or called an ambulance direct from the party. I should have used my brain but the blonde had addled it. These weren’t unthinking folk, but stalwarts. They would not have called tonight except in an emergency. And this obviously was. It sounded as though ‘his evil friend’ as his wife called it had finally eroded a blood vessel. More work for the ambulance crew. Still, I was working on New Year’s Eve. Why not them too? I would not let this brave old man bleed to death in his own home without trying everything in the medical textbook starting with a blood transfusion and a night shift of trained staff to replace his exhausted wife.

I
followed her into the tiny, square sitting room which now doubled up as a bedroom and could smell the gore from the moment I entered. Carnforth was lying flat on the bed, pale-faced and shocked and in this squalid room in the second hour of the new year I sensed all our despairs, hers that he would finally ‘know’ and give up hope, his that he was dying, mine that I had finally failed. An old essay set during my first year at medical school rose up to leer at me. ‘The function of a doctor is to tell his patients when they can expect to die and what of.’ Discuss.

Young,
idealistic and naive, my hackles had risen at such a cynical approach to the subject but now, after eight years of general practice, I could have dealt with the subject too well.

I
met Carnforth’s exhausted eyes and felt a sudden flood of exasperation. For goodness’ sake. He must know the diagnosis. What could he conceivably think was wrong with him? Not piles. I peered closely at his face, pale now as a wax death mask.

He
managed a feeble smile. ‘Hello there, Doc. Sorry to drag you away from your party.’

I
continued the banter. ‘No loss. It was awful anyway.’ I wrapped the sphygmo cuff around his arm. ‘I was glad of the opportunity to leave.’ I smiled. ‘Not much of a party animal.’

His
blood pressure was well below legal limits, his radial pulse fluttering away like a butterfly. I lifted the quilt to peer beneath and quickly dropped it again.

Carnforth
closed his eyes in pained embarrassment. ‘Bit of a mess, Doc.’

I
nodded. I was finding it difficult to speak. I had watched Reuben for the last six months, from the moment of diagnosis, through invasive tests, gradually getting thinner and weaker, knowing all the time that it led inexorably to this. I had even anticipated the time scale, muttering to myself that he would be lucky to see the New Year in. But he had, just. I touched his hand. ‘Some people will do anything to get a nice, warm hospital bed.’ Carnforth gave me a steady stare. He knew what his wife didn’t want him to know. Misguidedly she wanted to spare him the anguish. The whole thing was as much a game of charades as the pantomime I had left at Ruth’s house and I suddenly realised how very far away that all seemed, how very false. This was reality. And the year promised plenty of both.

I
stared back at Carnforth to wait for his answer. ‘You’re the boss,’ he said and I left to use the phone in the kitchen. I had an ambulance to arrange and a junior hospital doctor to drag away from his mess party as I had been dragged from mine.

When
I returned to the room Vera Carnforth was sitting on her husband’s bed and I had the feeling they had been talking seriously about something. I was deceived into thinking she had at last shared her burden of knowledge with him. Tears were streaming down the old man’s face and he was clutching his wife’s hand. I felt an intruder.

Vera
turned and I realised they had not even mentioned his illness. They had been talking about something else, something they didn’t want to share with me.

‘
He doesn’t want to leave here.’ Vera gave a pathetic attempt at a smile. ‘Silly, isn’t he?’ She kissed his sweating forehead. ‘Silly old baby.’

Reuben
was angry. ‘You know why I don’t like leaving here,’ he said.

Vera
gave a great sigh, moved her face close to his. ‘Will you wait all your life, Reuben?’

Carnforth
lifted his head with great effort but dignity too. ‘If that’s what it takes. Yes.’ And he added, ‘however long that may be.’

‘
Hush, Reuben,’ his wife said softly and exhausted he dropped back onto the pillow.

The
three of us watched for the ambulance together, easy to pick out as it climbed the valley, its great, blue arc light sweeping through the night. Even Reuben smiled as he watched it flicker across the ceiling like pixie lights. He took a last look around the farm as we wheeled him through the kitchen. He knew he wouldn’t be back. As the trolley reached the kitchen door he grabbed my hand. ‘Help me, Doc, please. Help me.’ I had the odd feeling he did not mean his disease.

*

I threw Robin out one month later after finding every single cliché in the book, from long blonde hairs on his suits to lipstick on his collar.

And
so my year began.

2

It had not occurred to me that I would feel vulnerable without Robin. If I had thought at all about life without him, considering him my weakness, surely his absence would bring nothing but benefit.

I
was wrong.

I
felt anxious about minor problems, missed having someone to reassure me I had done the right thing at work and lay awake at night wondering where I had gone wrong in my marriage. And besides increased personal vulnerability I had changed in another way. I felt hugely, almost ridiculously responsible towards my daughter, Rosie. Not doubly protective—that would have been logical. It was far more unbalanced than that, more like twenty times more protective, and this responsibility combined with a guilty desperation to shield her from hurt.

Two
weeks after he had gone she went on her first access visit, prettily dressed, I thought, in a scarlet anorak and jeans, scarlet gloves and a skiing hat. I had expected her home sometime during the evening. But halfway through the afternoon I heard a car draw up, its door slam, and the front door open, followed by running steps. It didn’t take much deduction to know something had gone badly wrong. The car drew away with a sudden burst of loud pop music and the house was silent. I put my book down to listen. Soft sobs, stifled by a pillow.

I
climbed the stairs and agonised outside her door for many minutes before plucking up the courage to knock.

‘
Rosie, Rosie...’ Nothing but a wounded sniff.

I
tried again, louder this time. ‘Rosie.’

Another
loud sniff. She peered through a half-inch crack in the door, her face mournful and tear stained.

‘
Can I help?’

Her
face was pale and I felt a guilty, selfish beast. She brushed her eyes with her sleeve. ‘He says next time can I wear a dress. He doesn’t like jeans.’

My
hatred of Robin made me dig my nails into the palm of my hand.

We
sat glumly together on the bed, side by side, two dejected, rejected women.

‘
I don’t like her, Mum,’ she said. ‘It was her who said we couldn’t go to a restaurant because I was wearing jeans.’ Then with sudden, forceful insight she burst out, ‘I don’t believe we ever were going to go to a restaurant. I think she tells lies. Daddy’s never minded me wearing jeans before, has he?’

Rosie
could be, at times, a very perceptive child.

So
we sat like conspirators, shutting out the common enemy. We dialled a takeaway pizza that night and pigged out in front of the television, watched a childish Disney video while slurping coke straight from the can.

We
revert to juvenile comforts when we are distressed.

*

A comfort to me was that although home was altered irrevocably, bruised and damaged beyond mere healing, work was unchanged. My two partners were kind, in their differing ways, when I finally confessed that Robin had gone. On the surface it seemed to make no difference.

Duncan
was gruff, embarrassed and for some reason apologetic as though he had been party to Robin’s defection merely by having been around on New Year’s Eve to witness the conquest of the blonde.

But
when he touched my hand and said, ‘He’ll be back, Harriet,’ in a meant-to-be reassuring, professional tone, I knew it would be better if I came clean.

‘
I sincerely hope not, Duncan,’ I said, more sharply than I’d meant to.

But
if Duncan was embarrassed by my newfound single state, Neil was far more pragmatic. But then Neil and Duncan were as far apart as the two poles. He was a dapper man, slim, slight, dark haired, always impeccably dressed in a sombre suit, polished shoes, plain ties. As a man he could have been considered cold, lacking emotion. I had rarely seen him rattled, except when his wife, and later his son, had left him. He gave me a faintly quizzical look when I blurted out my news and something of his cynical nature reached me.

‘
You’re quite right, Harriet,’ he said. ‘There isn’t any point struggling on. If one partner decides it’s time to split the other has no option but to swim along with the tide.’

I
tried the vague smile but underneath I had temporarily abandoned my own problems to wonder again. Why had Petra gone without a word to anyone?

Robin
and I had dined with them at a restaurant two nights before she left. They had seemed perfectly comfortable together. There had been no hint of disharmony between them. Yet less than forty-eight hours later she had, apparently, packed her bags and walked out and ever since that day Neil had habitually worn this cynical, world-weary expression. I had heard nothing from Petra since and had, at first, been hurt. I had thought we were close friends yet she had not confided in me. It had seemed to rub in the fact that sometimes I lacked empathy. I had not known she was unhappy, and as a doctor I felt I should have. We were supposed to be able to see things that lie beneath the surface, to understand people’s motives for their behaviour. I had picked up nothing and ever since then had felt in this instance at least I had missed something significant. The feeling had faded since then. Now, facing Neil, it returned, as strongly as ever.

Since
she had gone I had asked Neil twice for her address or telephone number but he had, it seemed to me, been deliberately vague and I had not pursued the matter. As a salve to my conscience I had said to myself, he was my partner, therefore it was to him that I owed my loyalty. The lecture had not stopped me wondering. I seemed to remember her telling me that she had family in Birmingham. So I guessed she was there—somewhere. But Birmingham is a big city and she had never mentioned any specific district.

The
whole thing had puzzled me for the last three years, especially when Sandy, their only son, had followed his mother. He had been fourteen years old when he had left, almost a year to the day after his mother. Neil had muttered something about him missing Petra and wanting to join her. That had been his sole explanation. But he never even visited although father and son had been skin close. And I had watched as Neil’s face grew more lined and preoccupied. He never even talked about them now.

‘
Things do get better, Harriet.’ It seemed that his brown eyes were telling me much more than just a simple sentence. They still contained emptiness, loneliness and puzzlement too. I was tempted to pat his shoulder back. Instead I smiled my thanks, picked up my consultation notes and escaped to my morning’s surgery.

*

I invariably felt a vague pleasure on entering my consulting room. It was so different from Duncan’s homely, shabby room strewn with photographs, books and medical journals or Neil’s clinical atmosphere, empty: white surfaces, surgical instruments. Their desks were different too, Duncan’s a shabby, oak roll top, 1920s, Neil’s a wide expanse of grey formica, equipment contained in cupboards. Mine was a modern piece of pine, books and equipment neatly ordered. My room reflected my own tastes. It was small and square with a window which overlooked the back garden—when it was open. Closed it was covered with regulation frosted glass. Naked people do not like an audience.

*

There was the obligatory computer, two chairs and an examination couch as well as a red plastic table and some toys planted to entertain children while I spoke to their mothers. The carpet was beige, the curtains a riot of yellows, greens and orange, tropical flowers meant to distract the patient while I interviewed or examined them. There were pictures of Rosie, one of myself on an early walking holiday with Robin. The overall effect was of warmth and empathy but order too. In fact, the atmosphere of clinical order was something I yearned for, even, occasionally, at home.

Before
pressing the buzzer to summon my first patient I logged on to the computer, leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes, suddenly apprehensive about my long-term future. The New Year had beckoned darkly. There were still months to go before the fates would change. And then what? Was there just to be me and Rosie? And when she grew up would there then be just me, alone? A wave of sadness hovered over my head. I was wishing now that I had not lost my baby, my son, Robin’s child.

Physician,
I whispered, heal thyself. Never mind the others. I eyed the toppling pile of notes in my basket. How could I hope to heal them when sick at heart myself?

And
for me there was no one to listen.

I
pressed the buzzer for my first patient. It was Vera Carnforth, looking years older since the funeral, leathered pouches underneath both her eyes. She looked tired, worn out. Reuben had lasted less than forty-eight hours in hospital. Blood transfusions, medical care, the attentions of nurses. He had descended into unconsciousness. Nothing had saved him as we had both known as we had watched him being loaded into the bright yawn of the ambulance.

But
had he known?

It
was that memory that haunted me now. I had failed in my duty to Reuben Carnforth. I should have respected him as a man, discussed his shortening future, planned for the final hours. It was part of my duty as a doctor, part of the programme of continuing care, cradle to grave. I watched her fingers knot through the handles of an old fashioned, brown plastic shopping bag and realised that however well she blended against the backdrop of Cattle’s Byre she looked out of place here. Shabby and worn, tired, muddy. And there clung to her the faint scent of the cowshed even though she was wearing her town clothes.

As
I studied her my initial instinct was to print out a prescription for Prozac. It would have put a thick sheet of opaque glass between her and her unhappiness but she forestalled me.

‘
I don’t want none of your happy pills, Doctor. There’s no answers there.’

I
felt scolded and guilty, empty handed and powerless with nothing better to trot out than the tired old cliché, that he’d had a good life.

It
provoked a fierce reaction. The bag was put on the floor to leave both hands free to clench into fists. ‘You think that? That my Reuben had had a good life?’

‘
But surely—the farm, the animals.’ I was floundering. ‘You always seemed so contented together. I thought...’ I was at a loss for words. The truth was, I had not thought anything.

‘
Help
me
,
Doctor
.
’

Vera
was finding it difficult to continue. ‘We had a cursed life, Doctor,’ she said at last. ‘True. We could have been happy. We had a lot once, a farm stocked with healthy animals, each other.’

‘
Children?’

A
frozen expression set her face hard as a night frost. ‘One son,’ she said, ‘but we don’t see him anymore.’

I
was surprised. Vera had always struck me as a calm, peaceable woman, not the sort to quarrel with her only son. Yet on reflection I realised she was telling the truth. She did not see her son. I had never seen anyone visit Reuben either at home or in hospital. There had only ever been her, sitting at his bedside, holding his hand. So the family rift had been both deep and permanent.

Unless.
‘Abroad?’

She
swallowed painfully. ‘We haven’t had anything to do with our son for nearly ten years,’ she said. ‘We posted him Christmas cards. Birthday cards too. But he doesn’t send one back.’

‘
Surely he came to his father’s funeral?’

She
shook her head and tried to hide her glistening eyes by rubbing her fingers across her eyebrows.

‘
You quarrelled?’

‘
In a way. He entrusted something to us.’ The sentence hung in the air but I had learned not to prompt people too hard. If they wanted to confide in you they would.

I
waited but her lips were pressed tightly together. I would probably find out later. Not now. I risked a swift glance firstly at my watch and then at the thick batch of notes. ‘Look,’ I said finally, ‘I can’t bring Reuben back from the dead, Vera. Neither can I heal family rifts. I’m just a doctor. I can offer you one of three things, a prescription, referral to a counselling agency or a chat.’ My computer flashed at me. Another patient had arrived in surgery. ‘But I haven’t got much time this morning. I’m sorry.’ Another failed consultation. It was her cue to leave but she ignored it.

‘
Make a longer appointment one afternoon.’

I
tried to blot out the fact that her mouth was still twisted with grief and tried another tack. ‘I think a break from the farm would help. You have some friends you could stay with?’

Her
jaw tightened with determination. ‘We got into the habit years ago of never leaving the place for long.’ Her eyes, hurt with the rejection, met mine. ‘I still don’t like to.’

‘
Come and see me,’ I urged, ‘when I have more time.’

Without
either a word or a glance she left.