Seven Dials (5 page)

‘If we are to agree that we are to try to raise this money,’ Brodie said loudly, ‘we really must do it all constitutionally. We’re all delighted, of course, that the family feels able to do so much, but all the same we really must have a proper subcommittee and plan it all as it should be planned. I dare say you could all do it on your own - ’ And he managed another forced little laugh. ‘You have a long history in the family of
making things happen, this very hospital for a start, but all the same - a subcommittee, I’d venture to suggest, Sir Lewis - ’

‘Yes, well, as you wish, Brodie. Just propose the motion, put it to the vote, we’ll do it all as it should be done. I’ll give you five thousand for the fund, Mrs Harry here will set about starting a Benefit Night and you can get on with your usual appeals and flag days and so forth. Who’s to sit on this subcommittee then -’

The remainder of the members of the Board who had clearly felt somewhat excluded from the discussion of ways and means into which the Lacklands had launched themselves now became very animated and Max leaned back in his chair and watched them a little sardonically as they began to jockey for places on the subcommittee, all trying to get themselves nominated without actually offering so that they could put on a show of polite diffidence and be coaxed to accept, and thought about his father’s scheme for Peter.

It was an excellent one, and he only hoped it would work. Because if it didn’t, and Peter refused to be pulled out of his clearly desperately deep slough of despond, something more active would have to be done, whether Peter liked it or not. It was one thing to leave a man who had clearly suffered a great deal in peace to lick his wounds and recover; quite another to allow him to crawl into a hole and rot. If he refuses this, Max thought, I’ll have to start to bully him. One way or another we’ll get Peter sorted out, and he sketched a faint wink at his father and then looked at his watch.

‘I’ll have to go, I’m afraid,’ he announced as the talk sagged for a moment. ‘I’m not available for the subcommittee so you don’t need me, and I do have to go to a special Board for a patient, so if you’ll excuse me - ’ And he collected his papers together and made for the door.

‘Dine tonight, m’boy?’ Sir Lewis grunted at him as he passed his chair and Max nodded.

‘If I can, Father, I’ll telephone. Depends on how the day goes.’

‘Good. You’re looking better -’ And Max realized suddenly that for the past hour he had thought of many things, but never once of Emilia and a great wash of guilt filled him and he nodded sharply at the old man and made for the door as fast as he could.

Damn him, damn him, damn him for a stupid old fool. Why had he had to say that, to remind him? And the guilt flooded up again, this time for his anger at his father and as he closed the door behind him he managed a wry grin. He really was becoming fit to be one of his own cases, with such waves of absurd and irrational feeling overwhelming him and he shook his head at himself and then turned to make his way to the stairs. He had work to do, thank God, and that would sort him out -

His secretary came panting up the stairs towards him as he reached the end of them, her face quite puffed up with the importance of her message and he looked at her with his usual mixture of irritation and gratitude. She really was incredibly efficient and helpful; if only she wasn’t also so doggedly adoring and pompous, and he schooled his face carefully and said as colourlessly as he could, ‘Yes, Miss Curtis? A message?’

‘That Board, sir-they’ve had to postpone for an hour. I told them they’d be ruining your entire day, that you had a great many appointments all carefully slotted in, but they were adamant, really adamant. They have to wait for this wretched man from the War Office, it seems, and he’s tied up, so there’s nothing they can do - I was very terse with them, I can tell you. Very terse. But there it is - ’

‘Have I got so many appointments?’ he asked and she pursed her mouth and smirked slightly. ‘Well, actually, sir, it’s not as bad as it might be. Your next is a call out to Friern for Dr Samuelson, who wants a second opinion on that schizophrenic child, so it could be worse. But still, it’s not right to mess you about that way -’

‘Then I could go back to the boardroom I suppose - ’ Max said, hesitating. To go and sit in his office and do his letters, as he would have to do some time in the next week, was possible, but suddenly the thought of being confined up there with Miss Curtis fussing round him was more than he could bear.

‘Well, one of the registrars wanted to talk to you,’ Miss Curtis said unwillingly, finding it going deeply against the grain to oblige Miss Lucas but knowing Max’s moods well enough to realize that there was no way she would get him to come and do his letters, as she wanted. ‘She’s in Spruce, I believe – said she wanted to talk to you about one of her
patients -’

‘Miss Lucas?’ Max brightened. ‘Oh, well, that’s settled then. I won’t go back to the boardroom. I’ll be in Spruce till it’s time for the Board, Miss Curtis, and then there’ll be lunch and then I’ll be on my way to Friern and Dr Samuelson. You can leave as early as you like. I won’t be back here till Monday morning.’ And he went away towards Spruce leaving Miss Curtis alone and yearning at the top of the stairs.

One of these days I’ll have to replace her, he was thinking. Poor soul sees my widowed state as altogether too interesting and I can’t cope with that for long. And again the guilt rose in him as he thought of Emilia and irritably he pushed the ward doors open and went in search of the surgical registrar.

‘I see,’ Max said at length, and put down the chart, centring it neatly on Sister’s desk. ‘I see. A reactive depression following injury - not unusual. I’ve dealt with a great many similar cases this past few years, Miss Lucas.’ Including myself, he thought, looking down at the chart. Isn’t that my problem? A reactive depression after the appalling injury of losing Emilia? ‘I doubt you need worry unduly. He’ll recover in time. There’s little I or any other psychiatrist can do to hasten that recovery, I’m afraid. Patience has to be the only prescription.’

‘I haven’t given you the whole picture, I think, sir,’ Charlie said carefully, and reached for the notes. ‘Perhaps I didn’t write it as clearly as I might have done, and -’

He put out his hand and stopped her before she could reach them. ‘Never mind the notes, Miss Lucas. You tell me, in your own words, why it is that you’re so worried about this young man. His case doesn’t seem to me to be so severe, nor is his injury sufficient to justify the significance you give it, unless that photograph is a particularly poor one. I thought it seemed clear enough. Of course I’ll look at the man myself in a moment, but meanwhile -
is
the injury so very disfiguring, do you believe?’

‘Perhaps not to you or to me, sir,’ Charlie said and pushed her hands into the pockets of her white coat, so that he wouldn’t notice how tightly she had them clenched. It was getting more and more difficult to get the importance of the situation across without telling him why she was so worried; yet she’d promised Brin she wouldn’t do that; it had been medically wrong to make such a promise, but it was understandable that he should demand it and - she took a deep breath and looked up at Max.

‘The thing is, sir, that he’s an actor. You must know quite a lot about him actually - after all, he is a relation of yours and -’

Max laughed suddenly. ‘We’re a large clan, my dear, and I sometimes think that half London is related to us! Let me see, who is this chap? I know his name of course, but not all his links with the family - ’

‘I think he’s a distant cousin of yours, sir. His sister is Katy Lackland, the actress, you know? His home is in Yorkshire - I mean, that’s where his father lives, and he has another sister and brothers there, but now he lives in London, or has since he started on his career as an actor. That was just before the War. Well, he was in that flying bomb raid that did so much damage to the Regent Palace Hotel. Do you remember? It caused rather more fuss than usual because there was a direct hit and - ’

‘I remember,’ Max said, his voice expressionless. Emilia, he thought, his voice screaming inside his head. Emilia, buying me a shirt. ‘Well, he was in that raid. And then what?’

‘A piece of shrapnel of some kind, sir. Caught his cheek on the right. There was a good deal of contamination with brick dust and other debris and though the wound was carefully cleaned at the time - once they got him out, that is, and that took several hours - and it was tolerably well stitched, there is a degree of keloid about the scar. He’s got some shrinkage of the musculature so that his smile has been altered - the corner of the mouth on the right lifts slightly - ’

And when it does, a little voice deep in her mind whispered, when it does, your belly turns over.

‘- and there’s a slight pull on the eye on that side. You may not think it all that bad, and it wouldn’t be perhaps if he were anything but what he is. Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief - their faces don’t matter so much. But an actor?’

‘I’ve seen some actors with less than perfect faces,’ Max said drily. ‘And I believe that there are some who make an excellent living mainly because they have rather odd faces, rather than because they have perfect ones.’

‘Perhaps they were born with such looks and learned to get used to them,’ Charlie said. ‘Brin - Mr Lackland - started out with considerable good looks and regarded them as a definite asset to his career. He’s now lost them because of this injury and the effect has been to make him very - to cause considerable disturbance.’

Max looked at her shrewdly. ‘Tried to do some damage to
himself, has he?’

She went scarlet. ‘How did you - I mean, I really can’t -’

Max shook his head, amused at her naivety. ‘My dear girl, you really must give me some credit for having experience in my own speciality! I’ve been called in by more surgeons and dermatologists and what-have-yous because their depressed patients have made a suicide bid and listened to them waffling around the issue in a state of sheer funk, terrified I’m going to call in the police and have them hauled off to court. But do be reasonable, my dear! I’m a psychiatrist, one who is concerned with the psychological well-being of my patients. I’m the last person to help the police uphold a law I consider appalling! I’ve kept the police at arms’ length in more attempted suicide cases than you’ve removed appendices. So let’s stop making silly evasions and get this story sorted out properly. What did he do?’

‘He swallowed a handful of Nembutal.’

‘How many?’

‘I’m not sure. He was rather vague about it. I was on duty late one night and I went to do a ward round and - ’

Went to do a ward round? jeered the little voice inside her mind. Went to see him, you mean. You’re besotted with him and that was why you were on duty late, just for the chance of seeing him.

‘I was doing a late round,’ she said more loudly, looking very directly at Max, aware of her still heightened colour and furious with herself because of it. ‘And I went to the ward to see him. I’d been trying to do a neatening of the mucous membrane inside the mouth and was going to see if we could reassess the possibility of excising the keloid to tidy his scar, and that was why he was in the ward. I found him very dozy and - ’ She swallowed. ‘He was flushed and agitated and I asked him why he was in such a state and he told me he’d been saving up his Nembutal because he was so unhappy and - ’ She stopped and stared down at the floor. How could she tell the hard-faced man sitting there looking at her so coolly how she had felt when it had all happened? How there had been that lurch of sheer terror as she had looked down on that flushed face she loved so much and seen the tears in those dark eyes, and how her hands had shaken as she had pulled back the covers and unbuttoned his pyjama jacket so that she could set
the bell of her stethoscope to his chest?

His heart had been pounding strongly but dreadfully fast, and she had stood there listening, trying to remember all she had learned about how to treat people who swallowed overdoses, aware all the time of the trouble there would be if anyone knew what he had done. Attempted suicide was a crime. How often had she seen patients in Nellie’s wards with policemen sitting stolidly beside their beds, watching them in case they tried to commit their pathetic little crime again? How often had she heard of people being discharged from hospital to be taken to stand in the box at court to trot out their pathetic little tales of desolation and despair to a bored magistrate? Far too often, and she wasn’t going to let it happen to Brin.

She had told the night nurse on duty - happily a rather foolish girl, not given to thinking much about what she was told to do - that she was taking Mr Lackland down to the theatre for some special dressings she wanted to do, and had demanded a wheelchair for him, and with the nurse’s help had got him out of bed and safely out of the ward. And then had spent the rest of the night walking him up and down to keep him awake, feeding him with stimulants and doing all she could to make him see how unnecessary it was to be so desperate. His face wasn’t so dreadful, really it wasn’t, she had told him over and over again till she was hoarse with saying it, as she dragged his weary drooping body from one side of the small operating theatre to the other, praying all the time that no one would come and see them, no one would push the door open and demand to know what she was doing there. ‘- really, your face is a splendid face. No need to be so despairing about it. No need at all -’

And at last he had emerged from his dazed sleepiness and she had been able to take him back to his bed in Spruce Ward to sleep off his exhaustion, while she had had to spend the day walking through her usual work in a state of total confusion about her patient. What was she to do with and for him? She just didn’t know, and that had been when she had decided that the time had come to call in an expert - but not to tell him why. Brin had begged her, with tears in his eyes again, to keep his foolish behaviour a secret and she had of course promised - but now this man with the direct gaze had got it out of her and - it
took every atom of control she had not to let her own eyes fill with tears.