Seven Dials (2 page)

But it had started off a bad day. He had woken to a sense of desolation that was even greater, it seemed, than it had been at the beginning of his private hell, dragging himself out of the rags of his sleep with a conscious effort, trying not to remember that today was their wedding anniversary. But it had not been a memory he had been able to evade and he had stood there in his bathroom, the tears for Emilia coursing down his cheeks and the hard racking sobs tearing his chest as he contemplated, yet again, the agony of the long years that lay ahead without her. His life had been destroyed that afternoon in 1944 when a late V2 rocket, weaving its erratic way across the West End of London, had coughed and died just above the Regent Palace Hotel and the nearby shop where Emilia had been trying to buy a new shirt for him, and now he had to go on living that destroyed life, breathing, working, eating and sleeping while inside he was shrieking his pain and his loss, hour after impossible hour.

And today was no better. It was still only nine o’clock; there was the rest of the day to get through somehow, another twelve hours to exist before he could again claim the temporary respite of sleep, which even though it brought such agonizing dreams, at least passed the time quickly.

Behind him the door rattled and he turned away from the window, grateful for the interruption, and saw his father standing there leaning on his stick and staring at him from beneath eyebrows that seemed to go on getting more and more shaggy with every year that passed, as though they had a vigorous and personal life of their own and had chosen out of some quirk of ridiculous humour to grow on this wreck of an old face, as moss grows on old walls.

‘Well, m’boy?’ the old man said and set his head on one side as he stared at the hard-faced man with the thick grey hair who was standing there looking at him. ‘Well?’

‘Well enough,’ Max said, not ungently, and came over to lead him to the chair at the head of the table as Victor came in behind him.

‘That man down there don’t deserve to wear that uniform,’ he grunted, and came and slid a practised hand under old Sir Lewis’s other elbow so that both the younger men could lead the shaky old figure to his place. ‘If I’ve told him once I’ve told him a hundred times - it don’t do to sit there drinking tea for all and sundry to see you, not when you’re Head Porter! Got to have a bit of dignity.’

The old man turned his head towards his son and gave him a sketch of a wink and Max, without thinking, smiled back, almost hearing his face creak at the rarity of the experience and felt, just for a moment, a lift of his spirits. In the old days, they had all laughed at dear old Victor, he and Emilia and Father, laughed at the constant rivalry that existed between him and the man who had taken over his job at Nellie’s when he had agreed to become old Sir Lewis’s housekeeper, nurse and general factotum after Lady Lackland had died back in ’41. To laugh now, without Emilia to share it, felt odd; wicked, almost. But that was a thought that had to be dismissed, and the psychiatrist part of his mind lectured the personal part of it, as it so often did these days. It was normal to feel guilt, but not necessary. It was not healthy to wallow in his loss, he must work at restructuring his life, make a new pattern for himself,
make it possible to live without Emilia. Bereavement was a commonplace experience -

‘Big agenda today,’ Sir Lewis said, and waved away Victor’s fussing with the rug he was wrapping round his thin knees. ‘I just hope they don’t make too much of a meal of it. Women -’ And he sniffed noisily and rubbed at his nose with a flourish of a large white handkerchief. ‘You got any special business for us today?’

‘Nothing special,’ Max said and sat down beside him, opening his briefcase to spread his papers neatly in front of him. ‘I can’t stay longer than eleven anyway. I’ve got a Board at twelve - chap’s been refused his job back because he was diagnosed as an anxiety neurosis, and I’m not letting them get away with that. Anxiety neurosis - ’, and he half sniffed, half snorted. ‘Poor chap was trapped on Sword Beach with a broken leg on D-Day and once they got him out had a few bad dreams for a few weeks. Entitled to! Any sensible man would, but some half-wit of an army psychiatrist labels him as an anxiety neurosis. I ask you!’

‘What job are they trying to do him out of?’ The Old Man squinted up at him. ‘Does it matter what his war record was?’

‘You’ve got it in one. Librarian, for pity’s sake, librarian! A good peaceful life, ideal for a chap who’s had a bad war, and they’re trying to say he’s not fit. Bloody bureaucrats - ’

‘You might as well get used to ’em,’ Sir Lewis said. ‘The way they’re trying to run things now, we’re all going to have bureaucrats livin’ in our pockets. Nationalizing everything that isn’t bolted down, they are: Bank of England, coalmines, civil aeroplanes - bloody everything. Can’t stop ’em doing it to us as well, much longer -’

‘I don’t care what they do,’ Max said. ‘Nationalizing isn’t such a bad idea in itself. I quite approve of it. It’s time the people who make the money had a share of it, and as for the health service - well, you know my views. No, it’s the individuals who get up my nose. Jumped up little Hitlers, some of’em. And this Board is a whole bunch of little Hitlers and I’m not letting them refuse this chap his job back. So, I can’t stay after eleven. D’you mind?’

Sir Lewis laughed, an agreeable cracked old sound that made Max’s lips quirk again. ‘Mind? Why should I? I’ve nothing else to do than sit here today, so I might as well do
what has to be done and let you young ones go about your business. Of course I don’t – ah, here we are! The only reason I come here at all these days! Pretty ladies, pretty ladies! Hello, my dear! How are you? How’s that lucky husband of yours?’

Lee Lackland, neat and charming in a green tailored suit and a frilled cream-coloured blouse that looked as though it had been made from a saved-up length of parachute silk smiled widely at him as she came in, and pulled off her froth of a hat, clearly a precious pre-1939 relic, as she came over to bend down and kiss his papery old cheek.

‘Very well, thank you,’ she said and smiled at him, and her face fell into soft and rather endearing lines. She had been a good-looking girl always, but now, as she moved into her middle forties, her looks seemed to be ripening and improving. Remembering how she had appeared on her wedding day, a dozen years ago, all snow and frost and floating gossamer hair, and seeing her now in the full glow of her maturity, Lewis approved. This was how a woman was supposed to look; so much more interesting than these worried bloodless girls one saw about these days. And he peered back down the long corridor of his memory to seek out his Miriam, seeing her as she had looked in the ‘nineties as a giddy girl, when he had first found her - or rather, she had found him – and how she had looked in those later years, with her rich creamy roundness and her soft-cheeked sweetness, and his old eyes filled with tears. Not that anyone paid any attention, for that often happened to the Old Man these days.

‘And the children?’ he said gruffly and at once Lee became animated.

‘Oh, splendid, really splendid! Michael is working
so
well at school – they say he has the makings of a really fine scientist, you know, and he says already he wants to be a surgeon like his Daddy, and the girls are so sweet! Sally can read really well now, and Stella is trying so hard to be as clever as she is, and pretends she can read too – it truly is so sweet to see them together, and of course the way Michael lords it over the girls when he’s home – it’s too funny, and – ’

‘Hello, Papa.’ Again the door swung and there was Lady Collingbourne, her head on one side in unconscious parody of her father’s most familiar posture and Sir Lewis peered across the room at her and greeted her with relief. Delightful though
it was to talk to Lee, she did become rather boring on the subject of her children.

‘My dear Johanna!’ he said and held out both hands towards her. ‘Why didn’t you come to see me last night? I made sure you would.’

‘I’m sorry, Papa.’ She came and kissed his cheek and sat down beside him as Lee settled herself a couple of chairs farther along the huge round leather-covered table. ‘But Claudia wanted me to go with her to choose some clothes for her trousseau and to see what we could do to get some more clothing coupons for her wedding-dress and by the time we were finished I was beyond anything but a bath and an early night.’

And she did indeed look tired, with violet-grey smudges under her eyes and her cheeks a rather sallow colour over the black dress and coat she was wearing. It had been four years now since Jonty had died at the battle of Tobruk, but still she wore mourning for him, seeming quite unable to bring herself to show any signs of recovering from her grief. Looking at his sister now, Max felt a sharp stab of anxiety. Was she at risk of sinking into chronic grief? Was this a family tendency that he would have to watch for in himself? And he stared at his sister and thought confusedly - are we a blighted family? First one of us killed in the Great War, and now two of us widowed in the Second and Peter so changed - a blighted family.

And then he shook his head at himself, angry at such fanciful thinking. He was a sensible man, a psychiatrist, a man of science, not a mystic; he should be ashamed to think such stupid negative thoughts. Yet all the same, it did seem that they were uniquely cursed, in a sense, and he too looked back down the long pathways of his memories to their joyous childhood, he and Johanna and Peter and Timothy who had been so young, so very young, when the trenches of Flanders had claimed him - and again he shook his head and tried to concentrate on what was being said.

Johanna was talking now about Jolly, having exhausted her discussion of her daughter’s coming wedding, and the Old Man was listening with every sign of interest; talk about children might become boring when they were other people’s children, but these were his own grandchildren and that was quite different. Always a family man, deeply absorbed in the
care of his brood, Sir Lewis enjoyed nothing more than to hear of his young people’s doings, and Max looked at him and once again managed a smile. It was good to see the old man so animated and happy. He would have to find some news to give him of his own sons, David and Andrew. He’d enjoy that.

But now he turned his attention to the newest arrivals for the meeting of the Governors: James Brodie, the Bursar, and William Molloy, the Administrative Secretary. They always arrived together, not because they were in any sense good friends – indeed, they were often at daggers drawn, since Brodie was the most parsimonious of bursars and Molloy the most ambitious of secretaries who believed that the spending of money on the hospital greatly enhanced his own importance - but because when faced with a committee of Lacklands they tended to draw together for mutual support. And Max couldn’t blame them.

To run a hospital that was on the one hand meant to be an independent body, but which on the other still employed so many of the descendants of the original founder of the place among its staff, was no easy matter. The Lackland clan - and how many of us are there here now? Max asked himself, and rapidly did a mental count; apart from the Old Man there was himself and Harry Lackland, and Herbert Lewis and George Croxley and both David and Jolly now medical students and walking the wards – the Lackland clan was indeed a formidable force. Poor old Molloy and Brodie, he thought and nodded at them and they nodded back, jerkily, for all the world like a pair of mandarin dolls, and for the fourth time that morning Max found himself smiling, albeit briefly.

Perhaps, after all, today wouldn’t be as bad as he had feared when he had stood there in the steam of his bathroom, weeping for his lost wife. Perhaps there was some left-over life worth living. At least he could be useful here at the meeting this morning - and as the Old Man rapped his gavel on the table as the last handful of members of the Board of Governors took their places, he took a deep breath and pulled the Agenda sheet in front of him. There was work to be done, and thank God for it. Work never let you down, no matter how bad you were feeling inside.

Charlie finished her round of Bluebell Ward, wrote up her notes carefully, and refusing Sister’s magnanimous offer of a cup of tea - a rare treat in these days of ever more stringent rationing - on the plea of extra patients over in Spruce, made her way as slowly as she could towards Spruce and her male surgical duties.

Maybe if she timed it right she could catch Max on his way out of his meeting? His secretary had certainly been unhelpful in the extreme about her request to see him when she had put her head round Max’s office door this morning.

‘Board of Governors’ meeting,’ she had said in a tone of shocked awe, making it clear that she was deeply unimpressed by any member of Nellie’s medical staff who hadn’t realized it was the second Friday in October. ‘I can’t possibly interrupt him before he goes to that, not on any account! And he’s got an important Board to go to after that, so all you can do is try to catch him on the wing - ’

Max’s secretary nurtured a fond image of her chief as being a man of such huge importance as well as superhuman ability that he had literally to fly everywhere he went, and enjoyed nothing more than blocking any and every attempt by other people to talk to him, and Charlie had tightened her jaw at the sight of the woman’s self-important face and said nothing. But she’d made up her mind that catch him she would, and now, lingering on the first-floor landing looking down into the chequered hallway beneath and the foreshortened figure of Brocklesby - another self-important Nellie’s employee who irritated her profoundly - she sighed suddenly, and resting her arms on the balustrade leaned over so that she was looking down directly onto the head of the Founder’s statue.

What would Brocklesby do, she wondered dreamily, if I spat on those bronze curls? Would he explode or collapse? And
for a moment she felt like a naughty ten-year-old child again, sitting in the front row of the balcony at the movie house in downtown Baltimore, her parents on each side of her, yearning to lean over and spit on the people beneath in their feathery hats and round black derbies. She had never dared to do it then, and she didn’t suppose she’d dare to do it now, but it was amusing to think of it, and to imagine the effect such behaviour would have on these stuffy Britishers if she, an outsider, a foreigner, a pushy
American
, did anything so outrageous.