Night Visit (9 page)

‘But
I always thought...’ I couldn’t go on blundering through these boundaries of delusion and as usual when in a dilemma I hid behind the shield of medicine. ‘Do you know what you’re asking?’

‘
I think I’ve an idea.’

‘
Even being generous I’d say your chances are slim.’ I paused. ‘Why now when it’s so much more difficult? If you had maternal feelings why wait until now?’

‘
Because I didn’t know.’ She leaned forward. ‘I’ve been a headmistress for fifteen years,’ she said bitterly. ‘I became a teacher because I really like children and I enjoy teaching them. Not just teaching them. Being with them.’ Ruth’s hand was on my arm. ‘Just tell me, Harry,’ she said tensely, ‘is it possible? Am I capable of bearing a child?’

‘
Theoretically,’ I said in a professional, cautious voice, ‘if you have regular periods and are ovulating regularly there should be no problem.’

‘
But?’

‘
Let’s get down to basics, Ruth.’

She
looked embarrassed. ‘I shouldn’t have dragged you out for lunch only to spring this on you.’

‘
It’s OK.’ I watched the waiter pour a second coffee and made a joke of it. ‘Yearning for a family does happen,’ I said, ‘especially with middle-aged, nulliparous professional women.’

She
burst out laughing. ‘Nulliparous,’ she said. ‘Harry, are you insulting me?’

I
joined her laughing, at long last feeling the desired good. This was nothing to do with bereavement, sickness or disease. This was an appeal to aid life itself. Surely that was at the heart of our profession? Not illness, suffering, death? Life. I wanted more than anything to help her. ‘Have you ever been pregnant?’

‘
No.’ She gave a frank smile. ‘Not even a tucked-away teenage abortion to confess to.’

‘
Hmm.’

‘
Don’t give me one of your “mms”,’ she said, her face still tense. ‘What are you going to do for me?’

‘
We’ll start with some serum hormone levels,’ I said. ‘And I need to take a proper history. The chances aren’t particularly good but it is possible—theoretically.’

She
stood up then and hugged me. ‘Thank you, Harry, thank you enormously.’

‘
But Ruth,’ I said awkwardly, ‘it isn’t just conceiving. That’s tricky enough. It’s hanging on to the pregnancy. And you have a much greater chance of having a baby born with some sort of defect.’

‘
I know that,’ she said, her chin firm and square. ‘Arthur and I have discussed all this.’

‘
Then first,’ I said, ‘you have to stop the HRT. And the best of luck.’

*

And so my patients twirled a grotesque jig around me, Pritchard, Danny Small, Vera Carnforth. And now Ruth had joined them. I was in the centre, part yet not part of the slow dance. And I did not know which one to face.

*

We left the café soon after and went our separate ways, me to wander back down the narrow, cobbled street which returned me to the car park, leaving behind the crowds of the town. It was quiet yet I dawdled. There was no hurry. Rosie was playing with a friend all afternoon. I could pick her up at any time. And so I found myself in front of the three shops again, gazing into the butcher’s shop window, focusing on every single object in turn. It was with a sick feeling of relief that I recognised no quickening of my pulse or that unhappy, uncomfortable feeling. It was not here in the bloody lumps of meat or the butcher’s knife that I had picked up my disquiet. I moved on.

Surely
Ruth was right. It must be here? The splash of colour in the children’s clothes shop was bold and cheerful. The clothes were expensive and old-fashioned, plaster models playing on the beach. A summer scene and it had been in the summer, on just such a hot day, that the child had vanished. I stared into the window for ages, willing it to tell me what had given me such an uneasy feeling. But it didn’t come back.

I
saw nothing but the beach scene, the plaster models, the plastic ducks, the sandcastles. It was not here either.

So,
puzzled, I returned to the antique shop. But it seemed unlikely. At first I saw nothing but the Edwardian picnic set, the polished writing boxes, a coffer with carved legs displaying a jumble of porcelain. It was as my eyes wandered towards the back of the shop that I felt a bang of recognition. I knew. It was on the far wall, not part of the window display at all. It was surprising I had noticed it, less surprising that it had been my subconscious which had absorbed it enough to plague my mind during lunch. It was a 1920s print, poor quality, in an oak frame and showed a girl sitting with her arms around a fly agaric, the red and white spotted toadstool so beloved of fairy illustrators. It was a strange combination. A child embracing a poisonous fungus? I stared at it for a long time, shielding my eyes against the glare of the sun reflected in the shop window and stupidly I convinced myself that there was a connection between the disappearance of a little girl ten years ago and the cheap, mass produced picture.

Surely
the title of the print must be ‘The Enigma of Melanie Toadstool’?

I
tried the door of the shop. Frustratingly it was closed. Today was the traditional early closing day for Larkdale. But so few shopkeepers actually put the shutters up I had forgotten the town still had such a thing. Only quiet shops in empty backstreets closed on a Wednesday. I turned away and headed back to the car. It was gone three.

I
had left my car facing forwards between two empty spaces, not being one of those who fanatically reverses into parking areas. Though the car park was still almost empty the space next to mine had been filled by a dark blue Lada. But the driver had parked too close for me to open my door. I glanced around, annoyed. It was so unnecessary. The bloody car park was empty because the steep climb over cobbles made it an unpopular place from which to shop, especially on such a hot day, tricky to use a pushchair, hazardous for the elderly, too far for the lazy. Most people would rather pay the extra charge and chance the town car parks than climb the hill. I stared at the two cars for a moment, muttering. Then I squeezed between them. I even managed to insert my key in the car door but I could only open it a fraction. There was no chance of me climbing in that way, thin though I was. And once I had got in the car it would take a steady hand on the wheel to pull away without marking the Lada. Oh well, it would serve him right if I scraped his side. I didn’t care about his car. Mine was a different matter. I didn’t want a scratch or a dent. For now I would have to clamber in through the passenger side.

But
even here there was a problem. Like many people who habitually drove alone my passenger seat was cluttered with papers, sets of notes, my Gladstone bag and a town map. There was also a yellow plastic box in which I discarded used syringes and broken glass ampoules. I didn’t fancy climbing over it. Still furious, I rounded my car and peered inside the blue Lada. It was an old car, scruffy and muck-splattered. The driver was either a farmer or someone who habitually drove through the country. That made me even more intrigued. Country people usually kept their distance. It was the townies who crowded one, people who were chronically used to having too little space, people from small rooms and overcrowded dwellings. This country person had strange manners.

Maybe
he would return. I glanced around me but the car park was deserted. There was no sign of an apologetic driver returning. I banged the car roof with my fist in a fit of pique, tempted to finger a rude message across the dust. But one of the penalties of being a doctor in a medium-sized town was the terror of being seen doing something unworthy of your status. Headlines read so well, and local papers can be merciless to fallen angels. ‘Doctor vandalises car’ sounded a suitable headline, especially if they quoted some of my choice language. So I gave up, threw my passenger door wide open, flipped the top on the sharps box, pricking myself with a needle, moved the stuff off the seat and clambered clumsily across before reaching the driving seat. I’d also caught my skirt on the gear stick. Hot, sweaty and cross I eased the Carlton out of the parking lot, somehow managing to avoid scraping the Lada. Then I slipped the car into gear and moved off.

It
was Rosie with her sharp, little-girl’s eyes who drew my attention to the mark on the side of my door.

Someone
had drawn a crude cartoon of a heart pierced by an arrow.

7

The print gave my dreams a vivid form. It haunted me. The child now always appeared with her arms clasped around the toadstool, before she moved towards the mound of red-brown earth and sat, stroking. And sometimes, in these dreams, she would hum as she climbed the rotting tree stump.

*

It was the Sunday following my lunch with Ruth. The weather had broken and turned dull and wet, cold even. The weather had seemed to keep everyone on the estate indoors. The day was quiet with few emergency visits and my pager was mercifully silent. After a typically unsettled day Rosie and I sat down in the evening to watch a video. At nine o’clock, yawning, she went to bed and I sat and fidgeted in the lounge, trying to read a book, one ear cocked for the sound of the bleep. After the undisturbed day I anticipated a quiet night. I was wrong.

At
eleven, just when I was considering going to bed, my pager gave a feeble bleep and displayed a message:

84
-
year
-
old
woman
fallen
out
of
bed
.

There
was a telephone number and an address which meant nothing to me.

I
picked up the telephone and dialled the number unenthusiastically. ‘Doctor Lamont here.’

‘
I think you should come and look at my mother, Amelia.’ It was a soft, clinging voice, yet at the time I failed to recognise it.

‘
What seems to be the trouble?’

‘
She’s fallen out of bed.’ The soft voice paused. ‘I presume you got the message.’

I
bit my tongue against the inevitable reply. At eighty-four I knew the likelihood was that she had broken something.

‘
Can you see any obvious injury?’

There
was a pause before a hesitant, ‘No.’

‘
Is she in pain?’

Again
there was a pause, shorter this time, as though the person on the other end needed to consider his answer carefully.

Eventually
it came. ‘Yes. She has hurt herself. Not badly but she is undoubtedly hurt and shocked.’

It
wasn’t quite what I had asked. Nevertheless... ‘Whereabouts?’

‘
In her leg. She’s hurt her leg.’ There was a deliberation in his manner that made me resentful. Or maybe it was that I knew I would have to turn out.

I
had only one available cop-out. ‘Who’s her doctor?’

‘
You are, Harriet.’

Then
I knew who it was. He had summoned me and I knew I must go as he had always meant me to. It was with an awful sense of fatalism that I asked my next question. ‘Where do you live?’

‘
In the cottage at the end of Gordon’s Lane.’

I
knew Gordon’s Lane. It was a narrow, little-used road to the south of the town following a left turn towards the forest and across the causeway over the Heron Pool. But instead of turning right, to Vera Carnforth’s, you turn sharp left. ‘I didn’t know there was a cottage there.’

‘
There is,’ the soft, polite voice answered, ‘and that’s where you’ll find us. Me and my mother. Just turn left at the Heron Pool and climb the hill in the direction of the trees. I’ll leave the outside light on to guide you.’ He put the phone down.

I
had no option but to go.

I
peeped in on Rosie. She was asleep, arms flailing, her pale hair strewn across the pillow like ghostly seaweed. I closed the door gently without waking her. If you enjoy your sleep, my darling, don’t be a doctor.

I
hated leaving her. Every time I vowed would be the last. I would sort something out—somehow.

I
knew it was a silly, superstitious thing to do even as I scribbled the note and left it by the phone?
‘Eleven
o
five
.
I
have
been
called
out
to
see
Mrs
Pritchard
,
Gordon’s
Lane
.
’

I
propped it up against the phone as insurance even though I knew that the pager service would have logged the call. Then I pulled on a cardigan over my shirt and locked the door behind me, crunching over the gravel to the car. It seemed much later than eleven ten.

After
such a dull day the clouds must have cleared. It was a beautiful night, one I might have wasted indoors had I not been forced to visit this woman. A star-spangled, navy canopied night, silent apart from a dog who was giving short, staccato barks from the other side of the estate. Maybe it was I who was disturbing him. No one else was around. For once there was no sound of traffic, no screaming police cars, no bustle, no people. The entire estate slept or was inside, enjoying the evening as I was not able to. I turned the engine on, tuned in to Classic FM, and pulled out of the drive to a haunting, Chopin nocturne, E minor. The headlights seemed obscenely bright as I swung out of the road and headed south.

I
drove through the town to where the forest rose to the left and the Cheshire plain was a blank expanse on my right. Two miles along the main road I turned into the forest and passed the Heron Pool. Tonight it had been magicked into black glass which shattered my headlights into shards as the wind blew across the water and smashed the moon into yet more silvery shapes. It was so beautiful I could almost feel grateful to my patient for luring me out into the night instead of letting me shelter from it.

Had
it not been that the summoning patient was Pritchard.

With
a paralysing air of fatalism I crossed the causeway and turned left into the narrow lane where Rosie and I had wandered during the heat wave. Then I took a sharp right turn up Gordon’s Lane. This was the remoter side of the forest, a confusing area where a myriad of tiny lanes formed a maze which could be tricky to navigate. It would be easy to get lost. On the radio the announcer confirmed the Chopin nocturne was E minor before switching to a tidy drawing room piano piece. I didn’t recognise it and contemplated doing Theseus’ trick with a ball of red string to make sure I found my way back home again. But it felt like a one-way journey.

I
opened my car window to breathe in scented air and draw in the private shrieks of the night and then I heard another distant bark. But a fox this time. I was tingling alive now, my nerves raw, seeming to hear everything the night had to offer and I consoled myself. Maybe turning out at this time wasn’t so bad after all and my mind shifted to wonder in what state I would find this old lady. I eyed my Gladstone bag on the passenger seat. I carried some analgesia in there. Nothing too strong. I didn’t want to tempt Danny Small to raid my car. Just some Fortral, a syringe, a few needles. If she was bruised but not badly harmed a shot in the leg should relieve any pain. But if there was even a suspicion that something was broken I would simply send her into hospital. For a brief second my sympathy was not with the fallen geriatric but the poor sod of a houseman who would have to spend half an hour taking a history, organising X-Rays and drawing blood.

I
picked up my A-Z, just to check the route although I knew where to go. The only thing I didn’t know was where Pritchard’s cottage was.

I
bumped through the black void towards a faint gleam of light slightly to my left. The hedges were tall and untrimmed, high enough to form a tunnel through which my car passed, meeting gleams of moonlight when the branches thinned, but the faint light stood out like a yellow beacon at the end. This was a quiet spot. There must be no other houses along this lane and virtually no traffic. Grass grew up the centre, softly grazing the bottom of my car.

It
wasn’t so much a cottage as a corrugated tin shack and Pritchard was standing outside, watching for me. My car headlights picked out his portly shape but I couldn’t see all of his face as his hand was shielding his eyes from the glare. I turned the engine and lights off, opened the door and stepped out.

‘
Hello, Mr Pritchard.’

He
gave me one of his strange smiles. ‘I’m so glad you came. My mother is very upset.’

I
eyed the dimly lit shack. I didn’t want to go in. ‘Where is she?’ I must do my job, treat the old lady and get back to Rosie. Mentally I added a please.

The
night seemed too still and Pritchard was staring too intently. His mouth quivered. ‘You seem on edge if I might say so.’

‘
It’s eleven o’clock,’ I snapped. ‘I’m anxious to get home to my daughter.’

He
opened his mouth to say something. For one awful moment I thought he was going to put a hand on my shoulder but he changed his mind, backing into a dingy room filled with stale air and lumpy, brown utility furniture. I followed him. Above us a forty-watt bulb was swinging in a yellow shade shaped like a Chinese coolie hat. In the corner stood an ancient TV set and through a half-open door to the right I caught a glimpse of a kettle standing on a Belling cooker. I might have known Pritchard would live in such squalor.

He
stood in the centre of the room making no move, studying me. ‘It is nice to see you here,’ he said, ‘in my home. I’ve had visions of you coming here.’

‘
Mr Pritchard,’ I said. My voice sounded hollow, thin, reedy and frightened. It’s late. Let me see your...’ But I was already aware that there was no sign or sound of any other person in the house. What if there was no mother? What if... I fixed on a door, ajar, on the left. A bedroom door? ‘Where’s the patient?’

He
didn’t move. Behind the owlish glasses he didn’t even blink.

‘
The patient,’ I repeated hoarsely.

He
still stared at me. ‘Before you see her,’ he said, hesitating, ‘I think I should explain something.’ I waited rigidly, listening to the sound of my chest rising and falling.

‘
My mother.’ He cleared his throat. ‘My mother is a sick woman although she pretends she isn’t.’

I
bit back the retort that that was why I was here. I was a doctor, for goodness’ sake. Let me see the patient and go.

He
cleared his throat again. ‘Sometimes she thinks. No,’ he corrected himself,
‘imagines
is the word. She imagines things.’

I
was relieved there
was
a mother. It made me brave. ‘What do you mean, Mr Pritchard, imagines things?’

He
took a short step towards me. ‘She suffers,’ he said with the air of a magician producing a rabbit from a hat, ‘from delusions.’

‘
Is it a delusion then that she fell out of bed?’ I stepped towards him. ‘Is she deluded that she is hurt?’

‘
No, no nothing like that. Nothing.’ He laughed through his nose. ‘Other things.’ He was keeping his secrets to himself.

‘
She did fall and she has hurt herself. But...’ He pondered the point. ‘Yes—indeed she has.’

‘
Then let me see her.’ I spotted a door to the left. ‘Is she in there?’

He
gave another of his strange, patronising smiles. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t go out except rarely.’

The
bedroom was almost filled by a huge, high bed with bars at its top and bottom. A satin quilt had slipped to one side. She was at the far end of the room, on the floor, a crumpled, groaning heap. And it was cold. I was wearing a cardigan and I was cold. A billowing curtain confirmed that the window was open. And from what I could see beneath another dingy light, the old woman was twisted on the floor; I could see white hair, frightened eyes, lips blue from the cold. But she was real, no figment of Pritchard’s imagination.

I
could guess what had happened. There was a commode just behind the door. She had obviously got muddled, thought it was the other side, had tried to climb out to use it, squatted, grabbed the counterpane and it had let her down, sliding to the floor with her. It had probably cushioned her fall and saved her from serious injury. But in ancient, osteoporotic old women like this even a soft fall could be enough to snap fragile bones. And she did seem in agony, her fingers knotting the quilt.

She
was typical of her generation of war-survivors, iron grey hair in skinny plaits and a long flannelette nightie that gave out only the faintest odour of stale urine. Maybe she was unclean, but almost certainly not incontinent. I approached beneath another swinging forty-watt bulb dressed in a yellowed, Chinese coolie lampshade. They must have been selling them cheaply one day in the 1940s.

Amelia
Pritchard wasn’t exactly delighted to see me. Her sharp little eyes stared at me with hostility. ‘Who are you?’ Her voice was thin and reedy, cutting as a paper’s edge.