Night Visit (5 page)

4

Easter was late that year, falling at the end of a cold April. Somewhere in the middle of the month Rosie asked me if I would go shopping with her on a Saturday afternoon. She wanted a new dress. And even though I knew we were buying it for her to win Robin’s approval I agreed to go with her.

After
the baking central heating of the store it was cold on the pavement. Spring seemed to be particularly late that year. Maybe it would not bother at all. Maybe this winter would extend to meet the next and there would be no bright, warm season in between. Merely grey and cold followed by more grey and cold. Even the few daffodils around in tubs along the pedestrian way were spindly, hot-house things. And the crocuses had spent just that bit too long buried beneath the snow and had lost their bloom.

Rosie
dawdled along the road then stopped in front of what looked like a bundle of rags. It was a beggar.

‘
Oh the poor thing,’ she said, fumbling for my hand which I had shoved deep into my coat pocket. ‘Mum, the poor thing.’

It
took me a minute or two to realise that she was not talking about the beggar, the heap of filthy rags tumbled across the pavement behind a sheet of cardboard:

PLEASE
HELP.
I’M
STARVING
.

He
’d got a manky kitten from somewhere and it was peeping out, wide-eyed, from the coat pocket.

And
then I recognised him. Danny was staring at the pavement, seeming oblivious to the passing people who in turn seemed oblivious to him. The cap on the floor held no more than four two-pence pieces.

Rosie
had dropped to her knees and was stroking the cat, murmuring sweet things. ‘Oh, you poor little thing. You lovely, lovely thing. Aren’t you?’ The kitten gave a soft mew and climbed weakly out of Danny’s coat. Danny himself was still staring at the pavement. I could not be sure he had recognised me.

Rosie
was holding the kitten now and it seemed to stir Danny. He looked up, eyed Rosie stroking the pathetic creature and spoke. ‘You like him, do you?’

She
nuzzled her face against the fur. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He’s lovely.’

‘
Would you like him?’

‘
I’d love him.’

‘
Then you can have him,’ he said, ‘for a fiver.’

Rosie
stood up and faced me, holding the kitten very tightly. ‘Please give him the money,’ she said.

‘But
Rosie...’

A
couple of fixes, a hit of cocaine, a day’s marijuana smokes?

So
would Danny get the money out of me one way or another? Using my daughter? I felt angry.

But
Rosie was pale and determined. ‘I think the kitten,’ she said, ‘will have a better life with me.’

Resentfully
I fumbled in my bag and drew out a five-pound note, handed it to Danny and knew whatever the sign said he would not buy food with it. He grasped it with a mittened hand, fingernails encrusted with filth, before giving me a hard stare. ‘Nice of you, Doctor,’ he sneered. ‘Look after it properly, won’t you?’

I
nodded, ignoring the dig. But at the same time I was looking at the placard. It struck me then that the apostrophe was in the right place. The spelling was correct. Danny should have been no down and out. He was literate at the very least. There were jobs in the town. Not for drug addicts.

The
future rumbled towards me.

Did
you
dislike
the
deceased
?
’

‘
No
.
I
did
not
dislike
the
deceased
but
I
resented
the
time
wasted
dealing
with
drug
addicts
.
’

And
the pompous words.

‘
We
are
trained
to
deal
with
genuine
sickness
.
Not
self
-
abuse
.
’

*

The kitten brought a new air of homeliness to the house, once we had taken it to the vet, had it treated for fleas, given it a couple of jabs and fed it. It was a sweet, playful animal which Rosie named Tigger. Its connection with Danny Small was soon forgotten.

So
the month passed a little more pleasantly, slowly warming to the promise of sunshine and summer until the week before Maundy Thursday. At the back of my mind I knew that at some time Anthony Pritchard would come back to have his blood pressure checked and his results explained. Normally I would be unaware of follow up dates, leaving the appointment-making to the patient—or client as we were encouraged to think of them.

Personally
I thought the word a bit of a climb down. Prostitutes had clients. Surely doctors had patients? But Anthony Pritchard felt more like a client than a patient.

It
is never a good idea to create a prejudice against the patient. Our job is not to like or dislike them but to treat them. As a rule I did not find that a difficult maxim to follow. I did not intend breaking good habits. That was the vow I made as I picked his notes out of the basket, pressed the buzzer and listened for his steps.

The
knock on the door startled me. I had not heard him approach. Like a ghost walking there had been no footsteps. I called out, ‘Come in.’

Pritchard
’s face appeared around the edge of the door, smiling, a comedy character, with me still directing the proceedings. ‘Come right in, Mr Pritchard. Sit down.’

The
humble smile never faltered and I formed the rogue thought: a man like this could really irritate you. What I had not yet learned was that a man like this could also intimidate you. Softness, hesitance and intrusion could, at times, feel as threatening as aggression.

He
had a strange, disconnected walk, heavy and untidy, knocking against the side of my desk as he sat down, blinking like an owl in the daylight. Even then it crossed my mind that I would almost have preferred it if he had done a Danny Small on me, shouted or sworn, demanded, threatened. At least I always knew what Danny wanted. Instead Pritchard peered at me through his thick glasses.

What
did he want?

I
put the blood results down in front of him to explain they were normal. He leaned forward, crossed his legs and I caught a waft of the familiar stale sweat smell.

His
trousers today were not tight but they were too short, displaying flabby ankles. His jacket was grubby brown Harris tweed, the kind that never goes out of date. So they say. I have my suspicions that it never was in date. His shirt was old fashioned, seventies flowers, the tie narrow and carelessly washed, its crumpled lining visible. And yet I had the uncomfortable feeling that he had dressed up to come and see me today. That these were his smart clothes. And that he was self-consciously proud of them, beaming at me, inviting comment and he was fingering the lapel of the jacket, deliberately drawing attention to it.

The
actions embarrassed me so I took my eyes off him to fix on the computer screen. ‘Your blood results are all right,’ I repeated, ‘although your cholesterol is a touch higher than we’d like.’

He
was still beaming at me, his eyes magnified through the thick lenses. Did he understand what I was saying?

I
tried again. ‘You could do with adopting a low-fat diet. Why don’t I make you an appointment to see our dietician?’

I
knew exactly what I was doing. I was deliberately trying to divert Pritchard’s care away from me. Call it superstition or call it instinct but I wanted to avoid him. No, that is too weak a phrase. Rather I knew I
must
avoid him.

The
trouble was that behind his glasses his eyes were penetrating both my actions and my motives. He knew exactly what I was up to. ‘I don’t think I really need to see the dietician,’ he said, ‘Harriet.’

I
stiffened.

It
may seem insignificant that a patient calls you by your Christian name. But the title ‘doctor’ is an amulet. It spins a magic web around you. You can ask a man intimate questions about his sex life, chat easily to him about extra marital affairs—all with impunity, while you have the title ‘doctor’ wrapped around you. Without it I was embarrassingly vulnerable.

And
how did he know my name was Harriet? My title throughout the surgery was Doctor H. Lamont. Only friends call me Harry or Harriet. Pritchard was not my friend. It felt an intrusion.

He
was already taking his jacket off, hanging it over the back of the chair, pleating his shirt sleeve. ‘You’ll be wanting to check my blood pressure again,’ he said, ‘I expect.’ The fat, white arm lay across my desk. I had no option.

So
for the second time I put the diaphragm of the stethoscope over the brachial pulse and pumped the cuff up. His blood pressure was still up. In fact it was slightly higher.

‘
You need medication,’ I said shortly, typing the script into the computer, struggling to ignore the smell of armpits. Did he ever wash?

His
arm was still lying across my desk like a grub. I instructed him how and when to take the tablets and told him to make an appointment to see the practice nurse. I even made a joke of it. ‘An excellent young woman by the name of Miriam.’ And for good measure I added, ‘You’ll like her.’

He
gave another of those quietly focused smiles. ‘I’d much rather come back and see you.’

‘
That isn’t necessary, Mr Pritchard.’ It was almost as brutal as physically pushing him away. ‘The nurse can easily deal with it. It’s just a minor problem.’

He
stood up then. ‘Then I’ll make another appointment,’ he said.

I
noticed he didn’t say who with.

He
had almost reached the door when he paused with his hand on the handle. ‘Oh by the way,’ he said. ‘You were asking about my poor father.’

‘
Only his cause of death,’ I said sharply.

‘
I felt I should question my mother as to the exact circumstances of my father’s death,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately it appeared to upset her.’

‘
I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean you to.’

‘But
you wanted to know.’

‘
I was only interested from a medical aspect.’

‘
I asked her anyway,’ he said.

‘
And?’

‘
Apparently,’ he said, ‘at the time, the coroner classed it as an accident.’

I
wasn’t surprised and didn’t feel the need to point out that coroners prefer accidents to suicides. It was kinder to the relatives. An intent to die is difficult to prove without an announcement, a letter or a history of depression.

He
hovered in the doorway. ‘There is another thing that my mother told me, in confidence, which I feel I should mention.’

‘
Yes?’ Despite myself I felt a salacious curiosity.

He
flicked his tongue over his lips, a lizard waiting for an insect. ‘Let’s just say she wasn’t sorry he didn’t come out of the hospital—except feet first.’

5

It was a month later, on a perfect spring day, when clouds billowed across a deep blue sky that I made my next move to exorcise the ghosts of New Year’s Eve. I had a particular reason for thinking about them today. It was Robin’s birthday and in a moment of weakness I had sent him a card. I came out of surgery, felt the sun on my face and believed that not only could I acknowledge Robin’s existence but also I could face Vera Carnforth again. And this time back at Cattle’s Byre.

I
drove through the town, turned off the main road and crossed a narrow causeway over twin pools. Locally they were known as the Heron Pools and today they looked particularly inviting, each cloud contrasting very distinctly in the dark glass of its surface. Ferns and rushes dipped into the water, breaking its surface so the cloud picture was not quite perfect but fringed and in the border colour was returning to the country with the vivid pinks and yellows of wild flowers and waving above them trees in bridal blossom. Once over the causeway I turned right, immediately climbing through the dense woodland until the lane flattened out and I reached the Carnforths’ small-holding. As I pulled up in the yard I reflected for a moment. It was just five months since I had last been here, glad to be summoned from the party and rescued from the role of pitied wife. It seemed in the distant past but to myself I could admit I still thought of Robin. And Rosie did too, often. I gripped the steering wheel in sudden tension. Had it been worth it? When five months later I longed to see him, even if only to reassure myself that I had shed that awful, mooning love. What had I done by throwing him out? Had I finally pushed him that extra distance into a relationship with Janina?

Robin
had severed connections a little too completely. He never even rang. Arrangements to see Rosie were invariably left on my answering machine and not even addressed to me. ‘Rosie, darling. It’s Daddy here. How about Saturday?’ His usual instructions. ‘Wear something decent. We’ll go out somewhere.’ Never even a mention of me. No ‘Love to Mummy’ or any other message.

I
had a sudden, strong impulse to know how Robin was. You can’t have a close relationship with someone for more than ten years and then let their place be a void. I took my key out of the ignition. Maybe coming here had rekindled my feeling for him. Maybe it was just too soon. And five months and a different season had not been enough after all.

To
try and bring back my negative feeling about him I concentrated hard on Rosie. He saw too little of her. He was neglectful.

I
closed my eyes, and wished things had turned out otherwise.

*

Irritated with myself I picked my Gladstone bag off the passenger seat and opened the car door to yet another doubt.

Why
had I really come here to see Vera? Had it merely been to lay a ghost? But what did I presume I had to offer her? She was not ill, as far as I knew. She didn’t need a doctor.

So
why did the doctor need her?

She
had not consulted me. So why had I really come? To offer bereavement counselling? I wished I could have told her, with conviction, that Reuben was smiling down on her, that he was happy, that he was out of pain and in a better place but I was a doctor, not a medium, not a quack and not a priest. My job was science, my tools access to hospitals, tests, diagnoses and prescription pads. I had nothing else to give her.

It
was only as I covered the few steps between the car and the front door that I confessed I had a less savoury admission to make. I had another reason for coming out here today. It wasn’t pure concerned, professional altruism but something else: voyeurism. I had read in the local paper that Reuben Carnforth had left instructions in his will detailing where he was to be buried. Not in the churchyard’s hallowed ground or the municipal cemetery but here on the farm, in Cattle Byre. And I wondered why because I knew Reuben Carnforth had been traditional in his beliefs, devout Church of England. He had mentioned Easter services to me, Harvest Festivals and Summer Fayres and I had seen him and Vera in the back pew one Christmas when I had attended the midnight service. He had been, at the very least, a Christian. So why did he not lie in the churchyard? For four months I had puzzled over this anomaly. Today I hoped I would find out why he had rejected traditional hallowed ground in favour of here. True, it was pretty, rural and near home but Reuben had been a traditionalist. He would not have rejected it without good reason. So why? I could not believe he had felt undeserving. was there then some sin of which he and Vera had known which he believed excluded him from hallowed ground? Had the ‘Help me, Doctor’ been a clue? But how could I help him when I didn’t know what he wanted?

I
stood on the Carnforths’ threshold and looked around me, at the sheds to the left where the cattle spent their winters, at the long green field which rolled towards the rim of trees. And there they stood, darkly shading the rest of the view. Even on this bright day there was a menace about those trees. I knew from my drive here that they were deceitful. They hid a sharp drop where the stone had been quarried and left rough and unguarded. This drop met the road as it curved round. It was a beautiful spot and I could understand the Carnforths’ affection for this wild and beautiful place, where the only sound was the baaing of new born lambs and the slap of the cows, chomping their way through the grass. Far away I could hear a dog barking, even distant traffic, but it seemed on another planet, not this one and I returned, with a jolt, to Reuben Carnforth. I would have sworn he would have trusted the protection of the church rather than the lone wilderness of the land they had battled with all their lives.

Carry
a paging device and it has the ability to intrude on even the most private thoughts. Before I’d lifted my hand to the knocker mine gave its insistent bleep. I fished it out of my pocket and flashed up the message.

Thanks
for
the
birthday
card
.
I’ll
buy
you
lunch
at
the
Lazy
Trout
.
One
o’clock
.

Almost
an afterthought was the word on the next line,
Please
, and a capital X.

I
read the message through twice before putting the pager back in my pocket and as he wasn’t there I couldn’t feed him the lie that after years of giving him a birthday card this one had been automatic.

It
had been deliberately chosen and I knew I would turn up at the Lazy Trout at one o’clock. I felt a sudden fury at his arrogant assumption, knowing that he would have interpreted the birthday card as a ruse to see him.

Had
it been? Even to myself I refused to answer the question.

I
knocked on the door.

I
could not be certain whether Vera was pleased to see me or not. A frozen expression masked her feelings as soon as she recognised me.

‘
Dr Lamont,’ she said. It seemed a very formal greeting.

‘
How are you, Vera?’

‘
I’m managing.’ She hesitated before offering me a cup of tea which I accepted enthusiastically.

I
followed her into the high-ceilinged kitchen with its racks of drying herbs and flowers, washing steaming on a pulley. Through the open door I could see the sitting room, tidy now. Reuben’s bed had been removed.

She
followed my gaze and closed the door firmly. ‘Yes, I miss him,’ she admitted. ‘It’s quiet here without him. He was someone I could share things with.’ Her face twisted. ‘Everything with.’ Her back was to me as she filled the kettle from the tap and plugged it in.

‘
Vera,’ I said awkwardly. ‘I know it’s probably not my business but this is a lonely spot.’

She
froze me out with a cold smile. ‘You’re going to try and persuade me to move, doctor?’ It was a challenge.

‘
Into the town, Vera. Surely you can’t manage the farm on your own?’

‘
With a bit of help,’ she said. ‘David Wilson comes in most mornings to help with the milking and he’ll be here to dip the sheep. It’s easily manageable so don’t ask me to move. It isn’t what I want. I don’t want to leave here. I can’t leave here. Whether I want to or not has nothing to do with it.’

I
had expected her to add something about how much she loved Cattle’s Byre but on reflection her words had held no pleasure—nothing but bitterness. And anger. Yet I felt compelled to ask, ‘Is that why Reuben requested he be buried here, because he loved it?’

Her
eyes were staring downwards. ‘No. It wasn’t. He had his own reasons.’

She
handed me a cup of tea and we sat and studied one another. She spoke first. ‘I’m not too grief-struck, you know. I had time to get used to it,’ she said, ‘Reuben’s death. I knew it was coming—thanks to you.’ The gratitude was awkward. ‘I had time to prepare.’

Again
that spectre of the cynical professor rose up to mock me. ‘Was that any real help?’

‘
A bit,’ she said, then drank deeply from her cup. ‘It gave us time to talk about things. Things we’d not covered before.’

I
thought she was referring to the rift with her son.
Listening
is
sometimes
of
more
value
than
talking
.
I
would
learn
more
if
I
said
nothing
.

She
drank without dropping her eyes. ‘I suppose you’ve been wondering why Reuben chose to be buried here.’

I
flushed, caught out.

She
gave me some excuse. ‘Most people must imagine there was a reason.’

‘
I thought it must be because he was so fond of it here.’ Already I knew that it was another one of my blunders.

Vera
gave a dry laugh. ‘It’s funny what people make up,’ she said, ‘when they don’t know the truth. They fill in bits.’

I
leaned across the table. ‘Then tell me,’ I said. ‘Tell me why you don’t want to leave here. Tell me why Reuben asked to be buried here. And why did you quarrel with your son? You don’t strike me as a quarrelsome woman.’

Vera
pressed her lips together. A habit of keeping quiet was hard to break. Her eyes were almost hostile. ‘What business is it of yours?’ she demanded. ‘This is family affairs. Nothing to do with a doctor.’

I
put my cup down. ‘Practically everything to do with your physical and mental wellbeing is to do with your doctor,’ I said. ‘And you haven’t got a family, Vera. You can trust me, I promise. If, on the other hand, you don’t want to tell me that’s OK. But I might be able to help you.’

‘
You won’t,’ she said sourly, but something in her must have melted because she started talking. ‘Something happened,’ she said slowly. ‘It was years ago now but it affected us, me and Reuben.’

I
took a deep, silent breath. ‘It’s still affecting you, Vera, isn’t it?’

‘
You can’t alter things from the past,’ she said. ‘You’re stuck with them. That’s the worst of it.’

More
of my training was surfacing. I knew how to prompt her further. I knew all the right words to say. But my motive for wanting to know was pure curiosity. There was nothing laudable or professional about that. Just my methods. Only that.

‘
Sometimes the help comes from simply talking. Not necessarily changing but putting a different light on events.’

She
seemed to recognise some logic in this. For a brief moment she sat and stared into space, her face mirroring her emotions as the sea reflects the weather, ripples of unhappiness followed by calm.

‘
Reuben asked me to help him,’ I said. ‘What did he mean?’

She
gave a cynic’s laugh. ‘He had great belief in you, Doctor. He believed you could work miracles. I used to tell him that doctors were ordinary mortals, just like us, but he never quite believed it.’

‘
Miracles?’ I frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

She
turned those tired eyes on me. ‘It was my granddaughter,’ she said finally. ‘She used to come and spend her summers with us,’ she said, ‘years ago. My son’s child. Their only daughter. She was six years old.’ She gave another of the dry laughs. ‘Melanie, her name was. Melanie Toadstool, Reuben used to call her on account that she used to be fond of wearing a red dress with great big white spots on it. Wear it all the time she would, the days it wasn’t in the wash.’

Now
she was smiling but I had stopped. Already I felt a chill superstition that this story would cast a shadow. I might be shedding my New Year’s Eve mischief but a new one was appearing. Already I knew this fairy tale had a bad ending. But my interest had been awakened and I was wondering what particular ending this story had. An accident, an illness, a tragedy?