Seven Dials (36 page)

Molloy said nothing, but his face seemed to get even more putty-coloured than it was and after a moment Brodie said quietly, ‘As I understand it, Dr Lackland, from what your father said before he – before his collapse – Mr Molloy had telephoned him and told him he should come.’

‘I had no idea he was so ill!’ Molloy said loudly and his voice seemed to ring a little in the big echoing room. ‘No idea! How was I to guess he’d be so foolish as to – as to send his man away and just come here on his own? I couldn’t know that, could I?’

‘Why did you send for him?’ Max’s voice was still quiet and controlled but they could all hear the rage in it and Molloy lifted his eyes for the first time to look at him and seemed to shrink inside himself at what he saw in his face.

‘I was worried!’ he said after a moment, trying to sound natural, relaxed even, but managing only to seem truculent. ‘I believe that there are things being done in Brodie’s department that are wrong and against the interests of the hospital and I couldn’t see any other way of sorting it all out. There you were all at the Governors’ meeting, lapping up every word he said and ignoring me when I could tell you, when I could – so I thought I must tell someone, and I knew Sir Lewis was the one. He’s the only one who cares about the place as it should be, the only one. Everyone else is after their own interests, him and – and the Board and –’

He spluttered into silence and Max stared at him, his face as expressionless as ever and then turned away to look at his father again. If he had spat his scorn at the man who stood there dithering in front of him it couldn’t have been more obvious and Charlie stirred uneasily at Sir Lewis’s side and said, ‘Dr Lackland? Is he fit to move, do you think? Or do we get a bed brought here and try to settle him first before moving him? I’d be glad of your opinion –’

Max leaned over his father again and with a simultaneous twist of her wrist and her head she disengaged her stethoscope from her neck and gave it to him and he glanced at her and nodded gratefully and took it and with steady fingers pulled back the old man’s shirt again and settled the stethoscope into his ears so that he could listen.

He straightened up at last and said shortly, ‘I’m not expert enough to agree to moving him. And anyway, he’s my father – it’s hard for me to – I can’t think as objectively as I should. Your opinion, Charlie. I’d be glad of it.’

He’d never called her that before and at the sound of her own familiar name on his lips she felt a sudden surge of pity for him, as well as for the old man who lay there between them. He looked, for all his grey hair and his lined face and the squareness of his shoulders, like a small boy, lost in his uncertainty and fear of the future, and she reached out and took her stethoscope from him and touched his hand briefly and said quietly, ‘Of course you can’t. I’ll decide for you.

Brocklesby –’ and she looked over her shoulder at the hovering porter. ‘Go and fetch a bed from Spruce. Tell Sister we’ll be on our way, and need the side ward to be ready. Nurse, you wait here and help us get Sir Lewis into the bed when we’ve got it. Dr Lackland –’ She looked at him again, swiftly, and once more touched his hand. ‘Max. Go and wait in the side ward, will you? We’ll be there as soon as we can. We’ll manage better, I think, on our own –’

Obediently he got to his feet, still with that indefinable air of lost childhood about him and she watched him go towards the door, and then returned her attention to her patient as Brocklesby went bustling in front of Max to hold the door open.

Max stopped when he got there and after a moment of standing with his head bent turned back and said loudly, ‘Molloy, Brodie, I’d be grateful if you remained at the hospital for a while. It’s important I talk to you both, I’m sure you’ll agree. Once my father is in bed and settled in the ward, I’ll be able to talk to you. Please wait for me in my office, if you’d be so kind.’ And they both nodded, as he stared bleakly at them and then left, closing the door quietly behind him.

For Charlie the next half hour was as intense a one as she had spent in all her medical career. Although she was now a surgical registrar she had done her share of a physician’s work and dealing with a coronary attack of this sort – and she was sure that this was what had happened to the old man – was not new to her; but she had never before had to deal with anyone quite as eminent as the chief of staff of her own hospital and she was painfully aware not only just of the responsibility she bore for the old man’s life – which was after all, always there, with every patient, and one she had grown accustomed to bearing – but also of the burden of Max’s fear.

This man who had made her so angry in the past, who had seemed to her to be all that she most disliked in a colleague, had displayed his vulnerability and his love for his father with so much simplicity and need that she had dissolved in the face of his distress. It was as though he was a different man, not at all the one who had baulked her request to help with Brin – she marvelled in a corner of her mind, as she helped the nurse to undress the comatose old man and get him safely into the bed that had been wheeled into the boardroom to collect him, that
that had ever really mattered to her – and who had seemed to taunt her that night in the medical common room. He was just a man fearing the loss of someone he loved. And she, who had suffered so many such losses herself, felt his pain as keenly as if it were her own.

They got Sir Lewis into bed, lying safely flat and with his head turned to one side to avoid the risk of his choking himself with his own lax tongue, and she leaned over him once more as the porters and the nurse stood poised to take him to the side ward of Spruce. His breathing was not so noisy and a little more even, she decided, and when she checked his pulse that too seemed to be holding its own. Perhaps, she told herself optimistically, he would survive? When she had first seen him, arriving hotfoot from the ward where she had been doing a dressing on one of her amputation patients, she had been deeply alarmed, doubting he would last more than another few minutes, but there was a toughness in this old man, a resilience that despite his age and his weakness seemed to linger and tie him to life, and she touched his papery old cheek and thought passionately, please, get well – please don’t die. She wanted him to live as much as she had wanted her own parents and Cousin Mary to have lived, felt a need for his survival, even though she hardly knew him except as a remote and important figure who was part of the hospital, just as she was, but not part of her own life in any way.

And for a while it seemed as if somewhere deep in his mind he had heard her appeal and made a conscious decision to live, for when they reached the side ward and Max saw him again he seemed a little less deep in his unconsciousness, seemed to be breathing more easily and they stood there on each side of him, she and Max Lackland, looking down at him with real hope in their spirits.

And then he opened his eyes suddenly and seemed to stare at her and then turned his head and looked at Max and frowned and brought his head back to stare up at the ceiling.

‘Miriam?’ he said loudly, ‘Miriam?’ And then closed his eyes again, and his face smoothed and lost its blank look, seeming just for a moment to be a younger more vigorous face altogether.

‘Miriam –’ he murmured, so softly that they barely heard him and then, with no fuss and no drama at all, simply stopped
breathing altogether. It was almost a minute before they realized that he had, in fact, died, so quietly and so elegantly had he done so.

At half past nine Max at last left the side ward to go back to his office and see Molloy and Brodie.

He had been quiet and controlled all the time, efficient and courteous in his dealings with everyone and especially gentle with Sister Spruce who very uncharacteristically burst into tears when she realized Sir Lewis had died. She had been nursing at Nellie’s for thirty-seven years and had worked with him for much of that time and his loss was a keen personal one, and watching Max comfort her Charlie felt her new liking for him deepen and grow. He seemed to be able to put aside his own distress in order to help others cope with theirs and that, she told herself, was remarkable.

And later, when his sister Johanna arrived, her face white and shocked and full of remorse because she had been at a theatre and for that reason hard to track down, he had soothed and comforted her too, and seen her on her way to Leinster Terrace where the family was to congregate, in the care of her daughter, who had come with her, promising to be there as soon as he could. He had spoken to his sons, telephoning them at the Surbiton branch, where they were both on three-month attachments, telling them of their grandfather’s death, and reassuring them that there was no need to come rushing back to London; he would let them know about the plans for the funeral, and then had phoned his brother Peter, and arranged to meet him at the Leinster Terrace house as soon as he could get there, asking him to take care of Johanna, who was on her way to him. And then, still calm, he had again turned his attention to the hospital staff.

Dr Tillotson had needed much reassurance, for the senior physician had arrived in a state of considerable agitation at having been so far away from Nellie’s when his own chief and good old friend had needed him. Brocklesby had to be told yet
again that he had behaved exactly as he should and no, no one was angry with him. And finally a procession of other Nellie’s people who wanted to say their own goodbyes to a man they had all known and liked for so long that they had regarded him as virtually indestructible had wanted to shake his son’s hand, and offer their condolences.

Throughout his face remained closed and unreadable and Charlie, busy though she was in dealing with the formal details that always had to be sorted out when any patient died in such circumstances – the old man’s death within so short a time of arriving at the hospital from his home might make it necessary for there to be a coroner’s inquest – found herself worrying about him. He had shown no emotion of his own, in spite of being surrounded by loud expressions of other people’s and that could not be good for him, she thought, and tried to say as much to him.

He stood there beside the bed in the side ward, now empty and crumpled, for Sir Lewis had been borne away on a rattling old trolley beneath a purple pall to the mortuary to await the last details of care that could be given to him before he was finally in his grave, his head bent as she spoke, not looking at her.

‘I do think you should – that you need to let go a little,’ she said, almost timidly, but emboldened by her concern for him. ‘I mean – when my parents died I thought the right thing to do was to be strong and private about how I felt, but it wasn’t – it was Cousin Mary who showed me that. She made me cry even though it was so long after, and I remember wishing I’d done it sooner. And when I lost her and that was awful too, at least I didn’t wait to show it. I cried a lot –’

‘Can you wait here for a while?’ he said abruptly, and now he did look at her, a sharp little glance from beneath his tightened brows.

‘How long?’ She was startled, and didn’t know quite what to say.

‘Not long.’ He sounded a little grim now. ‘I have to deal with Molloy and Brodie. I told them to wait in my office, remember? I must see them. It won’t take long at all, I do assure you.’

‘Well, yes – I mean, if you want me to.’

‘I rather think I do,’ he said and went away and she sat down
on the edge of the bed, staring out of the window at the rich indigo of the summer evening sky and marvelled a little at herself.

She had given no thought at all to her own very pressing dilemma for several hours; ever since Dr Forester had confirmed her fears she had been obsessed with herself, had walked through her work so abstractedly that it was amazing she had done no harm to any patients. All her thinking had seemed to be focused on her own body, and most specifically on that segment of it that lay between her umbilicus and her knees. There was a new life within her, a minuscule life that had an existence of its own, yet which was totally dependent on her for all its needs. Dr Forester had been glad, he said, that she had not considered the way out to avoid the demands that some in her situation and with her special knowledge and access to remedies, would have selected, and she had been adamant in her assurances to him that she would not think of it at all.

Yet, of course, she had; it had been impossible not to. When she contemplated the future when that new life was no longer minuscule and hidden but a separate lusty bawling thing that would make its presence very much felt to all around, it became a terrifying thing to be avoided at any cost. The thought of a quiet visit to one of the people she knew inhabited some of the glossier rooms in Harley Street, the passing over of a plump cheque and the end of the fear and the difficult future, had seemed a seductively attractive possibility.

Yet now, for several hours, she hadn’t thought at all about that possibility or any others, had actually forgotten what had happened to her, and she stared at the window and thought confusedly – but I’ve
got
to think, got to decide. I can’t just drift on. I’ve got to decide. I wish Dr Forester hadn’t even mentioned the idea. But she knew that he had been right in telling her that it would have come to her anyway, and however it had entered her mind, it needed to be dealt with. But she closed her eyes against that knowledge and tried to recapture the freedom from her self-obsession she had had ever since she had answered the emergency call to the boardroom.

She saw it all again; the old man lying crumpled on the floor, her own almost automatic reactions, the way she had so
urgently thumped his chest to restart a heart that had seemed to have stopped, the way he had at last begun to breathe again, the whole attempt to keep him alive. It had in the end failed, but at least she had tried; had there been anything more she could have done to save him? Reviewing all her own actions she was able to reassure herself that there had not and she relaxed her shoulders, sitting there on the old man’s empty bed, and whispered to the indigo sky, ‘I did my best –’