Night Visit (4 page)

‘
Unfortunately,’ he said, ‘my father died from taking some poison.’

Now
I was curious. ‘You mean he swallowed something accidentally?’

Pritchard
pursed his lips together primly. ‘I couldn’t really tell you that.’ He gave another irritating smile. ‘I was only six years old at the time. My mother doesn’t like to talk about it,’ he said apologetically. ‘And you can’t really blame her, can you? It’s a skeleton in the cupboard sort of thing. So I tend not to ask her such a personal detail.’ He beamed at me, pleased at his sensitivity.

But
there was a potential risk factor, though not of heart disease. The offspring of suicides have a higher incidence of following suit than the general population.

‘
Did your father take the poison deliberately?’

‘
I’ve told you,’ he said. ‘I really couldn’t say. He might have.’ He must have picked up some of my concern because he leaned forward anxiously. ‘Is my blood pressure all right?’

I
shrugged. ‘It’s a bit high. Look—I think we’d better run a few tests, cholesterol and a couple more. Book in with the nurse and I’ll recheck it in a month’s time. Is that all right?’

I
was ready for him to put his jacket back on as another waft of BO caught me but, like Vera, he too seemed reluctant to leave. ‘Are there any implications to my blood pressure being slightly high?’

I
stood up. ‘Let’s talk about that when we have the results of your tests. In the meantime you might try and lose a bit of weight. Take some exercise, a good, brisk walk.’

I
might have added, ‘with a dog’, but I remembered the dog bite and the tetanus jab, ten years ago. It had been a long time since he had visited a doctor. So why had he really come today? Surely not for a routine blood pressure check?

Another
waft of BO as he slotted his arms back into the jacket. ‘Thank you, Doctor.’ He held out his hand for me to shake it.

It
would have been rude not to.

3

Duncan, Neil and myself usually met after our morning surgery, ostensibly to share out the visits but really for a cup of coffee and a chat. At least Neil and I found plenty to talk about. Duncan was more taciturn. Usually he would sit with his hands wrapped around the mug, staring moodily into his coffee, miles away. Sometimes he would interject but I had the feeling that he only threw in an argument to be controversial. An intensely private man, it could be hard to know what he was thinking.

This
morning I opened the conversation with my grouse about Danny Small. ‘He’s getting a real nuisance. Came in demanding extra methadone. Said he’d lent some of his to a friend.’

The
three of us gave the same smile, cynical, disbelieving. And that was the trouble. We never believed them, never trusted them. Even when sometimes they were telling the truth.

‘
They never learn, do they?’ Neil’s deep voice displayed intense anger. ‘I usually refuse to see them at all. Bloody pests.’

Duncan
spoke quietly from the corner. ‘We can’t refuse to see them as long as they’re on our list.’

‘
Then get rid of the lot of them. Let some other doctor shoulder the problem.’

‘
Not while I’m here,’ Duncan said slowly. ‘We have an obligation.’

Neil
’s ‘Pah’ expressed his sentiments forcefully.

Duncan
spoke again. ‘Anyway, Neil,’ he said, even more quietly. ‘For all your fine words you do see them. I saw Danny coming out of your room a week or so ago. And I didn’t notice a flea in his ear.’

Neil
covered his discomfort with a smile. ‘Well, he is one of our patients, Duncan. What else can I do? As you’ve so rightly pointed out. We do have an obligation to see them.’

Duncan
continued to watch Neil with one of his quizzical looks but this time he said nothing.

It
was up to me to halt the sparring. ‘I honestly thought once they all realised they’d get nothing out of us that they’d stop drifting in and making such nuisances of themselves.’ Neil frowned. ‘They never stop.’

But
again Duncan made a quiet challenge. ‘You think not one of them reforms?’

‘
No.’ Neil’s jaw was clenched so tightly I could see his masseter muscles twitching.

‘
That’s just not true.’ Duncan finished his coffee. ‘You are such a cynic, Neil. I think sometimes you forget that we’re doctors. We aren’t the police and we’re not the politicians. We have a duty to help people.’

‘
If they want to be helped.’

Duncan
stood up then. ‘Our work is to maintain contact and hold their trust in the hope that we can eventually influence them to kick the habit.’

Neil
snorted. ‘And if you believe that.’

They
were still glaring at one another. Again it fell to me to play peacemaker. ‘I had a strange character in today,’ I said. ‘A guy in his fifties named Pritchard, Anthony Pritchard.’

They
both looked blank.

‘
Name doesn’t ring a bell.’

‘
I didn’t think you’d know him. He hasn’t been near the place for years.’

We
all smiled, the tension melting, knowing we depended on such sparers of the overstretched Health Service. Without them the system would collapse.

‘
So what brought him in today?’

The
honest answer would have been, ‘I don’t know.’ Instead I said, ‘He wanted his blood pressure checked.’

I
had all their attention now.

Duncan
spoke first. ‘And was it high?’

‘
Yes, a bit.’ I drank some more of my coffee. ‘But he couldn’t have known that. Not enough to justify his first visit for ten years. It seemed a flimsy excuse.’

‘
So what’s strange about him, Harriet?’

It
was typical of Duncan that he took my comment seriously.

Neil
’s face creased. ‘Sometimes I think there’s something strange about all our patients.’

It
was Duncan’s comment that I answered. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘He was dishevelled and sat uncomfortably close. Apart from that there wasn’t really anything I could put my finger on, except one rather odd statement he made.’

They
were both watching me. ‘It’s probably nothing,’ I said, ‘but when I asked him about the health of his parents do you know what he said?’ I didn’t even wait for them to shake their heads. ‘He told me his father was poisoned. Or at least...’ I frowned. ‘What he actually said was that his father died after taking poison. He didn’t specify whether it was an accident or suicide.’

‘
Maybe there is something in his strangeness,’ Duncan commented.

‘
Psychologists do advise us to delve into childhood for problems in an adult.’

‘
I know.’

He
pressed his fingers together. ‘But I don’t remember any cases of poisoning except a two-year-old who drank some bleach, do you, Neil?’

Neil
shook his head. ‘When was this?’

‘
Before your time. He said it was when he was six years old. That would have been about 1950. Years before either of you two came here.’

Duncan,
always humanitarian, murmured, ‘An unpleasant death, poor thing.’

But
Neil was more interested in the medical aspect. ‘What poison was it?’

I
shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

‘
Must have been something pretty strong to have killed him.’ Neil had a love of surgical precision.

‘
And the coroners always err on the side of accidental death anyway. Spares the family. So it could have been a suicide.’

Neil
cleared his throat with a dry cough. ‘So what is so strange about this Pritchard person?’

‘
Do you remember the creepy Uriah Heep?’ I asked.

‘
Dickens?’

‘
Yes. You know what a slime ball he was?’

Neil
laughed. ‘I think I’m getting the picture.’

Duncan
stood up to go, ‘Well you have had a morning, Harriet,’ he said. ‘Uriah Heep and Danny Small all in one morning.’

‘
I only hope my visits are less bothersome,’ I said. ‘It’s half term and I’ve promised to take Rosie swimming. Besides the babysitter wants to go somewhere this afternoon. She’ll be itching to leave.’

‘
Swimming?’ Neil looked surprised. ‘In February?’

‘
I have to do something with her,’ I said and followed Duncan out of the room.

Neil
caught up with me as I was walking down the stairs. ‘Look, Harriet,’ he said. ‘I haven’t liked to intrude before but is child care a problem?’

‘
Sometimes,’ I admitted.

‘
I can keep an eye on Rosie for you occasionally.’ He gave an awkward laugh. ‘I always was fond of kids. I could manage a couple of evenings, or I could pick her up from school on my half day.’

Like
a flood I realised how much he missed his son. ‘Thanks, Neil,’ I said. ‘That’d be great. A real help. Robin...’ I was floundering.

He
grinned. ‘No problem.’ I caught a waft of soapy cleanliness as he passed me on the stairs.

*

The visit took longer than I’d anticipated, an unexpected admission to hospital for a child with an asthmatic attack. When I arrived he was pale, wheezing, exhausted, hardly able to string two words together. And there was an ugly acceptance of losing the struggle. I nebulised him, gave him some intravenous steroids and clamped the oxygen mask over his face while his mother dialled the ambulance.

I
arrived home an hour after the promised one o’clock and Rosie was cross. She was standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips, her mouth puckered partly in disapproval, partly in distress. I had never had it brought home so clearly to me that the extra burden of responsibility and vulnerability was not all carried on my shoulders. Rosie suffered it too.

‘
Sylvie wants to go.’

Even
in the few minutes it took to sort out Sylvie’s money I could sense the atmosphere. The boyfriend was lounging against the door, obviously ready to leave and I noticed that she didn’t ask whether I needed her the following morning. It was left to me to prompt, ‘Tomorrow then,’ which provoked a swift, warning glance from the boyfriend. He shrugged and she said, ‘May as well,’ with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.

This
was only half term. There were lots of school holidays in a year. She would not come for much longer. And then what?

I
watched them go down the path with a feeling of resentment. I had difficulties enough without Sylvie playing hard to get. It wasn’t until I started to prepare lunch with Rosie peering over my shoulder resentfully, that I was struck by a revelation.

Maybe
it wasn’t just the boyfriend who was putting Sylvie off my daughter. Maybe it was something to do with the new and difficult Rosie.

I
had known she would change when Robin went but she was only nine years old, an innocent and so far sheltered child. Yet even with my blind, maternal love I could not deny that she was shedding her innocence and visibly changing, outwardly toughening to conceal the fact that inwardly she was doubly vulnerable.

There
were other clues. Her school friends were different. Gone were all the middle class kids whose mothers had dropped them off leaving their fathers to pick them up in their Mercs and BMWs exactly three hours later, always on time.

In
their place was a new breed, kids who wore designer clothes and had their ears pierced, kids who wolfed down beef burgers in spite of the BSE/CJD scare and constantly complained that they were bored.

K
ids who sneered when I suggested they play Monopoly on a rainy afternoon. And there were no parents in sight—these kids walked home through the rain without coats unless I offered to drive them.

Rosie
did not really blend with these new, streetwise friends. She was too naive.

So
it was essential I did things with her, took her to the pictures, swimming, walking, cycling, anything to stop her from realising that although her father could claim access to her every single weekend he rarely did. In two months he had seen her twice. And then just for Saturday afternoons. Robin had dropped right out of her life leaving an unfillable hole. Damn him. Rosie was not a toy but a real, suffering child. His daughter. But of course Robin was as oblivious to her hurt as he had always been to mine.