The Citadel (36 page)

‘Darling, I want to go home.’

Andrew gazed apologetically at the dark young woman who now regarded him with restrained yet singular interest.

‘Sorry,’ he muttered. ‘It was the only way. Bad hysteria – carpopedal spasms. She might have harmed herself – I hadn’t an anaesthetic or anything. And anyway – it worked.’

‘Yes – it worked.’

‘Let her cry this out,’ Andrew said. ‘Good safety valve. She’ll be all right in a few minutes.’

‘Wait, though’ – quickly – ‘you must see her home.’

‘Very well,’ Andrew said, in his busiest professional tone.

In five minutes’ time Toppy le Roy was able to make good her face, a lengthy operation punctuated by a few desultory sobs.

‘I don’t look too foul, do I, darling,’ she inquired of her friend. Of Andrew she took no notice whatsoever.

They left the fitting-room thereafter, and their progress through the long showroom was sheer sensation. Wonder and relief left Mr Winch almost speechless. He did not know, he would never know, how this had come about, how the writhing paralytic had been made to walk. He followed, babbling deferential words. As Andrew passed through the main entrance behind the two women he wrung him fervently with a spongy hand.

The taxi took them along Bayswater Road in the direction of Marble Arch. There was not even pretence of speech. Miss le Roy was sulking now, like a spoiled child who had been punished and she was still jumpy – from time to time, her hands and the muscles of her face gave slight involuntary twitches. She was, now that she could be seen more normally, very thin and almost pretty in a scrawny little way. Her clothes were beautiful yet, despite them, she seemed to Andrew exactly like a young pulled chicken, through which traces of electric current periodically passed. He was himself nervous, conscious of the awkward situation, yet he was determined in his own interests to take advantage of it to the full.

The taxi rounded the Marble Arch, ran alongside Hyde Park, and, wheeling to the left they drew up before a house in Green Street. Then, almost immediately, they were inside. The house took Andrew’s breath away, he had never imagined anything so luxurious – the wide soft-pinewood hall, the cabinet gorgeous with jade, the strange single painting set in a costly panel, the reddish-gold lacquer chairs, the wide settees, the skin-thin faded rugs.

Toppy le Roy flung herself down on a satin-cushioned sofa, still ignoring Andrew, and tugged off her little hat which she flung on the floor.

‘Press the bell, darling, I must have a drink. Thank God, father isn’t home.’

Quickly, a manservant brought cocktails. When he had gone Toppy’s friend considered Andrew thoughtfully, almost, but not quite, smiling.

‘I think we ought to explain ourselves to you, doctor. It’s all been rather hurried. I’m Mrs Lawrence. Toppy here – Miss le Roy – had rather a row over a dress she’s having specially designed for the Arts Charity Ball and – well! she’s been doing too much lately, she’s a very nervy little person – and the long and the short of it is that although Toppy’s very cross with you we’re frightfully indebted to you for getting us back here. And I’m going to have another cocktail.’

‘Me too,’ said Toppy peevishly. ‘That bloody Laurier woman. I’ll tell father to ring up and get her sacked! Oh, no I won’t!’ As she tilted her second cocktail a smile of gratification slowly overspread her face. ‘I did give them something to think about, though, didn’t I, Frances? I simply went
wild
! That look on old Mamma Winch’s face was too, too funny.’ Her scraggy little frame shook with laughter. She met Andrew’s eyes without ill-will. ‘Go on, doctor. Laugh! It was priceless.’

‘No, I don’t think it was so amusing.’ He spoke quickly, anxious to explain himself, establish his position, convince her she was ill. ‘You really had a bad attack. I’m sorry I had to treat you as I did. If I’d had an anaesthetic I’d have given you that. Much less – less annoying for you. And please don’t imagine that I think you tried to bring on that attack. Hysteria – well, that’s what it was – is a definite syndrome. People oughtn’t to be unsympathetic about it. It’s a condition of the nervous system. You see, you’re extremely run down, Miss le Roy, all your reflexes are on edge, you’re in a very nervous state.’

‘That’s perfectly true,’ Frances Lawrence nodded. ‘ You’ve been doing far too much lately, Toppy.’

‘Would you really have given me chloroform?’ Toppy asked Andrew in childish wonder. ‘That would have been fun.’

‘But seriously, Toppy,’ Mrs Lawrence said, ‘I wish you’d take yourself up.’

‘You sound like father,’ Toppy said, losing her good humour.

There was a pause. Andrew had finished his cocktail. He put the glass down on the carved pine mantelpiece behind him. There seemed nothing more for him to do.

‘Well!’ he said effectively, ‘ I must get on with my work. Please take my advice, Miss le Roy. Have a light meal, go to bed, and – since I cannot be of any further service to you – call in your own doctor tomorrow. Good-bye.’

Mrs Lawrence accompanied him into the hall, her manner so unhurried that he was obliged to restrain the busy briskness of his exit. She was tall and slim, with rather high shoulders and a small elegant head. In her dark beautifully waved hair a few iron-grey strands gave her a curious distinction. Yet she was quite young, not more than twenty-seven, he was sure. Despite her height she had fine bones, her wrists especially were small and fine, indeed her whole figure seemed flexible, exquisitely tempered, like a fencer’s. She gave him her hand, her greenish hazel eyes fixed upon him in that faint, friendly, unhurried smile.

‘I only wished to tell you how I admired your new line of treatment.’ Her lips twitched. ‘ Don’t give it up on any account. I foresee you making it a crashing success.’

Walking down Green Street to pick up a bus he saw to his amazement that it was nearly five o’clock. He had spent three hours in the company of these two women. He ought to be able to charge a really big fee for that! And yet, despite this elevating thought – so symptomatic of his brave new outlook – he felt confused, strangely dissatisfied. Had he really made the most of his chance? Mrs Lawrence had seemed to like him. But you never could tell with people like that. What a marvellous house, too! Suddenly he gritted his teeth in angry exasperation. Not only had he omitted to leave his card, he had forgotten even to tell them who he was. As he took his seat in the crowded bus beside an old workman in soiled overalls he blamed himself bitterly for missing a golden opportunity.

The following morning at a quarter past eleven, as he was on the point of taking his departure on a round of cheap visits centred about the Mussleburgh Market, the telephone rang. A manservant’s voice, gravely solicitous, purred at him.

‘Doctor Manson, sir! Ah! Miss le Roy wishes to know, sir, what time you will be calling on her today. Ah! Excuse me, sir, hold on – Mrs Lawrence will speak to you herself.’

Andrew hung on, with a quick throbbing excitement while Mrs Lawrence talked to him in friendly fashion, explaining that they were expecting him to call, without fail.

As he came away from the phone he told himself exultantly that he hadn’t missed the opportunity yesterday, he hadn’t, no, he hadn’t missed it after all.

He dropped all his other calls, urgent or otherwise, and went straight to the house in Green Street. And here, for the first time, he met Joseph le Roy. He found le Roy impatiently awaiting him in the jade-bedizened hall, a bald thick-set figure, downright and bejowled, who abused his cigar like a man who has no time to lose. In one second his eyes bored into Andrew, a swift surgical operation which ended to his satisfaction. He then spoke forcibly in a colonial tongue.

‘See here, doc, I’m in a hurry. Mrs Lawrence had a hell of a bother tracking you down this morning. I understand you’re a clever young fellow and you don’t stand any nonsense. You’re married too, aren’t you? That’s good. Now you take my girl in hand. Get her right, get her strong, get all this damn hysteria out of her system. Don’t spare anything, I can pay. Good-bye.’

Joseph le Roy was a New Zealander. And despite his money, his Green Street house, and his exotic little Toppy it was not difficult to believe the truth – that his great-grandfather was one Michael Cleary, an illiterate farm hand on the lands around Greymouth Harbour, who was known colloquially to his fellow ‘ scrubbies’ as Leary. Joseph le Roy had certainly faced up to life as Joe Leary, a boy whose first job was that of ‘milker’ on the great Greymouth farms. But Joe was born, as he said himself, to milk more than cows. And thirty years later, in the top-floor office of the first Auckland skyscraper, it was Joseph le Roy who put his signature to the deal unifying the Island dairy farms into a great dried milk combine.

It was a magic scheme – the Cremogen Combine. At this time dried milk goods were unknown, commercially unorganised. It was le Roy who saw their possibility, who led their attack on the world market, advertising them as God-given nourishment for infants and invalids. The cream of the achievement lay, not in Joe’s products, but in his own rich audacity. The surplus skim milk, which had been poured down the drain or given to the pigs in hundreds of New Zealand farms, was now sold in the cities of the world in Joe’s neat brightly papered tins as Cremogen, Cremax, and Cremafat at three times the price of pure fresh milk.

Co-director in the le Roy Combine, and manager of the English interests, was Jack Lawrence, who had been, illogically enough, a Guards officer before he went into business in the city. Yet it was more than the bare association of commerce which drew Mrs Lawrence and Toppy together. Frances, rich in her own right and far more at home in the smart society of London than Toppy – who occasionally betrayed her brushwood antecedents – had an amused affection for the
enfant gâté.
When Andrew went upstairs after his interview with le Roy she was waiting for him outside Toppy’s room.

Indeed, on subsequent days Frances Lawrence was usually present at the time of his visit, helping with his exacting, wilful patient, ready to see an improvement in Toppy, insistent that she continue with the treatment, asking when they might expect his next call.

Grateful to Mrs Lawrence, he was still diffident enough to feel it strange that this patrician, self-admittedly selective person whom, before he came to see her photographs in the illustrated weeklies, he knew to be exclusive, should have even this mild interest in him. Her wide and rather sulky mouth usually expressed hostility towards people who were not her intimates, yet for some reason she was never hostile to him. He had an extraordinary desire, greater than curiosity, to fathom her character, her personality. He seemed to know nothing of the real Mrs Lawrence. It was a delight to watch the controlled actions of her limbs, as she moved about the room. She was always at ease, watchful in everything she did with a mind behind her friendly guarded eyes, despite the graceful casualness of her speech.

He hardly realised that the suggestion was hers yet – though he said nothing to Christine, who still contentedly balanced her housekeeping budget in shillings and pence – he began to ask himself impatiently how any doctor could develop a high-class practice without a smart car? It was ridiculous to think of him stepping along Green Street, carrying his own bag, with dust on his shoes, facing the slightly superior manservant without a car. He had the brick garage at the back of his house, which would considerably reduce the cost of upkeep and there were firms who specialised in supplying cars to doctors, admirable firms who did not mind graciously deferring the terms of payment.

Three weeks later a brown folding-roof coupé, brand new and darkly glittering, drew up at 9 Chesborough Terrace. Easing himself from the driving-seat Andrew ran up the stairs of his house.

‘Christine!’ he called out, trying to suppress the gloating excitement in his voice. ‘Christine! Come and see something!’

He had meant to stagger her. And he succeeded.

‘Goodness!’ She clutched his arm. ‘Is it
ours?
Oh! what a beauty!’

‘Isn’t she! Look
out
, dear, don’t handle the paintwork! It’s – it’s liable to mark the varnish!’ He smiled at her in quite his old way. ‘Pretty good surprise, eh, Chris? Me getting it and licensing it and everything and never saying a word to you. Different from the old Morris. Step in, lady, and I’ll demonstrate. She goes like a bird.’

She could not admire the little car enough as he took her, bare-headed, on an easy spin round the Square. Four minutes later they were back, standing on the pavement, while he still feasted his eyes upon the treasure. Their moments of intimacy, of understanding and happiness together, were so rare now that she was loath to relinquish this one. She murmured:

‘It’ll be so easy for you to get about now, dear.’ Then, again, diffidently, ‘And if we could get out a little bit into the country, say on Sundays, into the woods – oh, it would be
wonderful.’

‘Of course,’ he answered absently. ‘But it’s really for the practice. We can’t go gadding about, getting mud all over it!’ He was thinking of the effect this dashing little coupé would have upon his patients.

The main effect, however, was beyond his expectation. On Thursday of the following week as he came out of the heavy glass and iron-grilled door of 17a Green Street he ran straight into Freddie Hamson.

‘Hello, Hamson,’ he said casually. He could not repress a thrill of satisfaction at the sight of Hamson’s face. At first Hamson had barely recognised him, and as he did so, his expression, falling through various degrees of surprise, was still frankly nonplussed.

‘Why, hello!’ said Freddie. ‘ What are you doing here?’

‘Patient,’ Andrew answered, jerking his head backwards in the direction of 17a. ‘I’ve got Joe le Roy’s daughter on my hands.’

‘Joe le Roy!’

That exclamation alone was worth much to Manson. He put a proprietary hand on the floor of his beautiful new coupé.

‘Which way are you going? Can I drop you anywhere?’

Freddie recovered himself quickly. He was seldom at a loss, and never for any length of time. Indeed, in thirty seconds, his opinion of Manson, his whole idea of Manson’s usefulness to him, had undergone a swift and unexpected revolution.