Seven Dials (32 page)

She went to her room, still seeming composed and quiet and put on her white coat and then went directly to the admissions office.

‘Miss Burns? You can have that bed for Fitz. The patient has cancelled. I’m sorry to have wasted your time.’

‘Oh, that’s all right, Miss Lucas,’ Miss Burns said with great relief and smiled at her, gratefully. ‘I’ll just let them know –’

And she picked up the phone. ‘Wait a minute, and we’ll see if we can rebook a bed for you. I shan’t be a sec -’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Charlie said. ‘He’s decided not to come in at all. So I needn’t bother you.’ And she went back to Elm Ward to check how the ascites patient was getting on, and sat and talked to him for a while, soothingly, assuring him that the awful swelling in his belly would get easier once her treatment was complete, and managed to concentrate on what she was doing so well that later that evening during visiting hours he told his wife he had a really lovely doctor to look after him now, much better than any of the men.

She managed to finish her day in the same calm and competent fashion, dealing with dressings and drips and all the many odd jobs that fell to her usual work load and then went to the common room for supper, as though nothing at all out of the ordinary had happened that day, and she might well have managed to continue on that same cool level; if it hadn’t been for Max Lackland.

He was sitting in the common room too, drinking his own after-supper coffee when she got there rather late, and since there was only one other occupant of the small room, she had perforce to speak to him. But she kept her conversation as remote as she could, simply nodding at him as she did to Daniel Shaw, the casualty officer, and murmuring ‘Good evening’, before sitting and concentrating on eating her vegetable soup and dry bread, trying to pretend she was interested in it.

Max cocked an eye at her and said pleasantly, ‘I haven’t seen you about here at Nellie’s for some time, Miss Lucas! I thought you’d gone and left us.’

‘No,’ she said and managed to swallow some of the soup. It wasn’t easy, for her throat felt as though there was a taut wire rope around it.

‘Couldn’t stay away, could you, Charlie?’ Daniel Shaw said and reached for some bread. ‘Isn’t this cheese disgusting? Still, it’s better than nothing. Did they feed you as badly as this at East Grinstead?’

‘East Grinstead?’ Max said, and cocked an eyebrow at her. ‘You went there, did you? With McIndoe?’

‘Yes,’ she said, still not looking at him, wanting to behave normally and knowing she couldn’t.

‘Did very well, too,’ Daniel said heartily. ‘It’s amazing how good she is, sir. She’s giving me ideas, I can tell you. I was off sick with toothache a week or so ago, and this girl came in with a very nasty laceration of the cheek, so Sister Cas said, and Charlie here did as handsome a cosmetic job as any I’ve ever seen. She came back to Cas today for a check-up and I saw her - I really do congratulate you, Charlie. She was cock-a-hoop, she looked so good. It looked like no more than a scratch - and I gather it had been a real mess -’

‘Well done,’ Max said, and then spoke no more, sitting there quietly, to Charlie’s enormous relief, until Daniel Shaw finished his disgusting cheese with gusto and every sign of having enjoyed it and went away complaining loudly about having to be on duty until midnight. And then Max said quietly, ‘McIndoe -’

‘Mmm?’ Charlie was momentarily startled. His silence had given her the chance to retreat again into her own private world, where she was not thinking, not feeling. Just being. Every atom of her self-control was at work, keeping her mind blank of everything except her patient. She had been thinking about making one last round on Spruce Ward before going off for the night and Max’s voice brought her back to the present, almost with a thump.

‘You went off to do plastic surgery,’ Max said.

‘Oh. Yes.’ Don’t think, don’t react. Just one word at a time, her self-control instructed her.

‘Because of that young cousin of mine, Brin Lackland?’

‘Because I was interested.’ Careful, careful. Say as little as possible.

‘And you discovered you have a talent for the work?’

‘Yes.’

‘I hear there are some very severe disfigurements to be seen in his wards.’

‘Very.’

‘Then you no longer see any need for Brinsley to have surgery?’

‘I -’ She swallowed, and got to her feet. ‘He is no longer my patient.’

‘Really!’ Max lifted his brows. ‘Quite fit again, is he?’

‘As far as I know.’

‘Good. You took good care of him, then.’ He smiled at her,
and she looked away, not wanting to see that pleasant face. He looked too sympathetic in spite of the altercations they had had in the past and any sort of emotion like that was dangerous to her in her present state.

‘I try to take good care of all my patients.’

‘We all do, my dear. But we don’t always succeed, do we? I look back on some of my cases and I hang my head in shame and disappointment. That is something doctors have to live with, isn’t it? But you need have no such feelings about this patient. I’m told he gave a remarkable performance at the Benefit. Did you think so? I saw you there at the theatre, though you were too far away from me to speak to you, but I thought, when I heard what happened - you must have been very pleased. I hear he was a raging success. I didn’t see him, of course, because I was in the other poor chap’s dressing-room. He made the most dreadful mess of one of his hamstrings and now Fitz is trying to sort him out. But you must have been pleased to see Brin do so well without needing any further surgery.’

And then her control went, and her perception of him as sympathetic shattered as she took a long breath in through her nose, feeling the muscles of her nostrils pinch down with anger. ‘Are you sneering at me, Dr Lackland? Telling me you told me so and that I’m a fool?’

He looked at her with real amazement on his face, because she was standing up now, seeming unaware of how she was staring at him. Her face was white with fury and her eyes seemed to be very dark in their sockets.

‘Is that it?’ she blazed. ‘Are you sitting there mocking me because I’ve made a bloody fool of myself? Are you enjoying yourself, liking to see someone who once dared to disagree with you put down in the gutter where she belongs?’

‘My dear!’ He was on his feet, concern written all over his face. ‘My dear girl, what did I say? Whatever is the matter? Please, sit down, let me -’

‘Don’t patronize me!’ she flamed. ‘So I was wrong and you were right! I concede that. You were right. He didn’t need surgery and he isn’t going to have it. You were bloody well
right
. But do you have to rub it in? Is that supposed to be good psychiatric practice, making people feel so - feel so -’

It was no use. The words were sticking in her throat, refusing to come any further, and she gaped at him and moved
her lips, trying to speak again, and then choked, and he came round the table and took her across the shoulders, and half led her, half dragged her to the door.

‘You’re not well,’ he said firmly and his words seemed to come to her through a mist from a very long way away, echoing down long corridors. ‘You are not well at all - come on - we can get you there - just hold on -’

The door swung in front of her, distorted and threatening, and the passageway beyond reared up and she thought the floor was going to hit her in the face; but then that voice came again, from even further away.

‘Easy, easy does it. You can hold on - good girl - here we are - all right now, let it go. You’ll feel better -’

There was a hand across her forehead, dry and cool and blessedly secure and she let it take all the weight of her head, which was suddenly enormous as the feeling rose and rose in her and then erupted into the most painful of retching. She was being sick, dreadfully, appallingly sick, and as her body heaved with the shuddering of her chest and belly muscles a part of her mind, her doctor’s part, was saying conversationally; ‘Now, why? Why on earth are you doing this, you who never vomit? When everyone else gets gastro-enteritis or seasick or whatever, it never happens to you. But now you are, now you are, now you are -’

She was sitting on the floor, her head resting against the door jamb and he was squatting in front of her, one hand on her wrist, and she lifted her head from its drooping position and straightened her back and heard herself saying aloud, ‘Now you are, now you are -’, and he patted the wrist he held and sat back on his haunches.

‘Well, well! That was a nasty moment for you. It’s hateful to be sick, isn’t it? I loathe it when it happens to me. Bit better now? You passed out, too. All very vaso-vagal altogether - feel ready to get to your feet? I’ll see you back to your room and then you can -’

‘No,’ she said and managed to catch her breath, wiping the back of one hand across her lips, a little shakily. Her mouth tasted tinny and yet dry, and her head was aching now. ‘No. I can manage. I’ll go on my own -’

‘My dear, of course you need to be taken there! You’re not at all -’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Leave me be, for heaven’s sake! Just leave me be’, and she managed to look up at him as her vision at last cleared and lost the mistiness at the edges that had been so horrible. ‘Please. Go away.’

He was silent for a moment and then stood up, brushing his knees with his hands.

‘I’ll send one of the nurses from Cas to you. Stay where you are till she comes,’ he said curtly. ‘You’ll allow her to take care of you?’

She closed her eyes. ‘All right. Only you, please go away.’

‘I’m going. But I insist on a doctor’s right to offer at least one piece of advice, even though it’s obvious you don’t want me to be involved in your care. But care you need. See one of the physicians tomorrow. Because someone ought to be looking after you. I may only be a psychiatrist, but I suspect that there is something far from right with you at the moment. Ellen -’ He looked over his shoulder at the kitchen door. ‘Keep an eye on Miss Lucas till a nurse gets here -’

And he went, leaving her sitting with her back to the lavatory door, her eyes closed and the common room maid peering anxiously at her from the kitchen.

She too knew there was something far from right with her at the moment and she didn’t want to think about what it was.

Billy Brocklesby watched the last of the Governors go hurrying up the stairs to the boardroom, and chewed his lower lip thoughtfully. Trouble in the wind, he decided, that was what it was. Trouble in the wind. Every last one of ’em with faces as long as a fiddle and hardly a civil good morning for him among ’em, not even from Mrs Harry, who was usually as sweet as they came. She looked about the worst of them, come to think of it, white as your shirt and eyes like whatsit holes in the snow - and he shook his head and went back to his lodge and his cuppa feeling dispirited and irritable.

Upstairs the Governors were even more dispirited. One by one they settled themselves at the big table and arranged their papers as they talked in low tones to their immediate neighbours, lifting their heads sharply to look at each new arrival, and then going back to their conversations when they saw that it was not yet Sir Lewis.

Max arrived last and went directly to his father’s place at the head of the big old table, and tapped the gavel on its stand.

‘My father is far from well this morning,’ he said shortly. ‘I’m sorry to be late, but I had to see him first - he agreed to let the meeting go ahead without him.’ He looked round at them and lifted his brows. ‘You may imagine how he must be feeling to permit that,’ he added drily and they stared back at him and nodded like so many mandarins. ‘So, with your permission, as his deputy I shall take the chair.’

There was a murmur of assent and they settled to listen with an air of slight relief. Everyone was very attached to the Old Man of course, but doing business with him in charge was never as easy as it might be, for he was an irascible man, and getting hard of hearing. With Max sitting in his place there was every hope of getting this matter settled quickly.

‘We’ll get the routine business out of the way at once, I
suggest,’ Max said crisply, ‘so that we can have as much time as possible for the affairs that most concern us. Now, Mr Molloy, the minutes of the last meeting of the Board, if you please -’

They went through the minutes, through matters arising and through new appointments and routine financial reports so fast that it was still only ten thirty when Max leaned forwards and reached for the newspaper he had brought with him and had left lying to one side throughout the discussions.

‘Now,’ he said grimly. ‘To this. You’ve all seen it, I’m sure -’

‘Which paper have you got there?’ Molloy asked. ‘The
Graphic?
Have you seen the
Daily Sketch?
’

‘That one too?’ Max looked at him sharply. ‘Any others?’

‘Someone from
Picture Post
telephoned here yesterday,’ Molloy said. ‘I refused to talk to him, of course, and gave instructions no one else was to speak to the man, but you know what these gutter journalists are -’

‘Slanging the press because you don’t like what they say is no answer,’ Max said. ‘The
Graphic
is a respectable and responsible paper. We have to take what it says seriously -’

‘Well, what does it say, after all?’ Brodie spoke for the first time, leaning forwards in a relaxed and easy manner that still managed to obscure Molloy’s view of the head of the table. ‘That a lot of money was raised for the hospital. And so it was. There’s nothing in that to cause any -’

‘It’s what I warned you would happen!’ Molloy spoke sharply and leaned forwards too, so that the two men were sitting side by side in almost ludicrously matched postures. ‘I came to your office months ago and showed you the Ministry letter. I warned you then that -’

‘Now, gentlemen, gentlemen!’ Max held up his hand as Brodie began to expostulate. ‘Let’s keep our heads. Getting angry with each other helps no one. What letter, Molloy?’

The secretary riffled in his file and brought out with an air of triumph a sheet of paper which was passed from hand to hand up the table to Max, and he took it and smoothed it and read it carefully.