A Pocketful of Rye (11 page)

Incredulity had almost supplanted the bitterness in her expression. She gave me a short laugh.

‘My God, Carroll, I wouldn't have believed it possible! That you could hand me that line. You're more of a twister than ever. I'll swear you even succeed in deceiving yourself. Yes, I married Davigan.'

‘Then why blame me? He made you a good Catholic husband.'

‘You've said it, Carroll. He was the best Catholic husband the Pope ever invented.'

‘Meaning what?'

She took a cigarette from the pack in the pocket of her blouse and lit it.

‘Since we're letting our hair down let's not spare our blushes. You've got to hear it sooner or later.' She drew on her cigarette, eyes looking back in time. ‘You know what I'm like, how I'm made. At least you ought to.'

‘Yes, indeed I'll never forget how exciting …'

‘Cut it, Carroll. You gave me the first taste of honey. And it was the last. Daniel Davigan! That man! Well, because he'd been part of the town joke for the sixteen births in his own family he was compelled by a single monstrous obsession … to prevent me becoming pregnant. Not by means that would help me or meet my needs, but within the permitted canon law.'

‘But, surely, there was little Dan.'

‘The fact that he came early made everything worse. Nothing ever took place at the natural times when you wanted it. Only at the mid term when I was flat out. Timing it by the calendar! Have you counted the days? I wonder if it's safe? Then the quick get rid of it, followed immediately by the “get up and make your water, squeeze hard, that's not a douche, it's permitted and it'll help”. God, what a sacrifice of all fundamental decencies and dignity, and the wants of a woman's unsatisfied nature. Love according to the Catechism! Am I shocking your delicate feelings, Carroll, you're such a sweet man? Then for days after, the waiting and pestering, “have you not come on yet?” And his sickening look of relief when I had. No expression could be lower, more hideously hypocritical than that which greeted me when I was out of action. Actually he always knew, for the deprivation I suffered intensified the distress of my periods, especially when forced at such times to listen to the Reverend Francis in the pulpit extolling the scared bonds of matrimony. Even when I went to him in Confession all I got was some soulful advice at no cost to himself – prayer, proper feelings, and submission to the will of God. When I pointed out that desire cannot be summoned up by the calendar I didn't get an ounce of sympathy.'

These revelations, delivered with no sense of propriety, would have made tasty hearing as a demonstration of the farce of unsatisfactory conjugal performances had they not been so shamelessly bitter or so relevant to my present situation. Any temptation to laugh was stifled by my need to placate. I also already had in distant view the future possibilities in this dammed-up flood of desire. And when, after a decent pause, I thought fit to make a murmur of medical sympathy, suggesting that her tribulations were over and could be redressed, she fixed me with a look that would have chilled a polar bear.

‘None of that, doctor. After what I've been through I'm a different woman. The very mention of sex sickens me now.'

‘Well,' I sighed, ‘you must blame Davigan for that, poor fellow.'

‘Poor fellow! A low, sickly, priest-ridden coward. I came to regard him with as much disgust as the sediment in his own chamber pot.'

This was plain speaking. I felt myself justified in exploiting the situation.

‘It must,' I said tactfully, ‘have been a relief to find yourself free.'

‘A God-given relief.' She turned and faced me. ‘ I bless that gust of wind that blew him over.'

Blew him over, what
was
this? I had to know more. I said, thoughtfully:

‘Thinking it might distress you … I've been reluctant to press you as to how …?'

‘He fell off the top of the new tenement … just when they were finishing the upper storey. He was proud of it in a stupid sort of way, the tallest block of flats in Levenford with a view, God help it, of Ben Lomond. He'd had to do with the erecting of it and of course it was on land the Davigans once owned. So that Sunday afternoon he took the boy and me up to show us. I didn't want to go, it was so windy, but he insisted, was out cat-walking on the parapet, gassing away, when …' She shrugged indifferently.

So that was it. I felt like saying: a sort of Ibsen-ish ending, the Levenford Master Builder, but this was no moment to be smart.

‘He was killed?' I spoke with becoming seriousness.

‘On the spot.'

‘Well, he's gone beyond recriminations. What good did they ever do? For that matter, if I've offended you in any way …' I paused significantly.

‘Why don't I let you off too? No, no, Carroll. I have no malice towards you. Nevertheless …'

‘Yes?'

‘I have a use for you.'

My imagination jumped ahead of me. I smiled engagingly, with just a touch of disbelief.

‘After what you just said? You're kidding.'

‘Far from it.' She glanced at me in a manner that augured ill for my future. ‘If you want to keep your soft, cushy, useless, no-job here, to hold on to it by the skin of your teeth, you'll have to go along with me.'

What was she after? Obviously she hated me and wanted her own back. But what else? She went on:

‘I'm just as sick of Levenford as you ever were, Carroll. The only offer I got there was to keep the house for old Dr Ennis when his wife died last month. Cook, clean, scrub out the surgery. And he's so far gone on the bottle now he's hardly ever sober. No, no, I don't want to go back to that stinking, scandal-ridden hole, not ever. I like it here, I like it a lot, it's heaven after what I've been through. The Matron has taken to me and she's so short of help she needs me. To cut it short, I see a chance that I never expected, to remake my life. And you're going to help me to it.'

Suddenly it struck me. Could it be that after all these years she finally wanted to snaffle me. If so, what a hope.

‘That's impossible. They won't have a married doctor here. It's in the charter.'

She gave me a lethal stare.

‘Don't flatter yourself, Romeo. I'd sooner go to bed with a rattlesnake than you. All I need from you is your unwilling co-operation, a kind word to the committee, acceptance of the fact that I'm here for good. Otherwise,' she paused, ‘you're out on your ear.'

I glared at her.

‘You're crazy. I like it here too and I'm going to stay. You'll never get me out of the Maybelle.'

She looked me dead in the eye.

‘I knew there must be something fishy about your appointment, which is more than you were ever worth. And there is. Matron has copies of your testimonials. I've seen them and they're …'

‘That's enough!'

‘Yes, it would be a nasty word, wouldn't it? False pretences. Might even be forgery. And what a bother it might get you into with the General Medical Council.' While I listened with growing, deep-seated uneasiness, she went on. ‘Doctors have been struck off for less. I hope that won't be necessary. For you'd need your miserable little medical degree if I sent you back to general practice in Levenford. That's where you belong and that's where you will go if you don't toe the line. You're the one that'll go back to old Dr Ennis. He's losing his assistant and he'd take you, on my recommendation.' She gave me a thin, bitter smile. ‘ I'm going to get a lot of pleasure watching you sweat it out here with that hanging over you.'

I barged down the hill in a state of mind in which rage, resentment and apprehension prevailed over the suspicion that I was dealing with an unbalanced character. Naturally I had left her without a word. I had found it unprofitable at any time to argue with a woman; still less so now with one thrown off the beam by a prolonged stretch of marital frustration. Did she actually imagine I could be yanked out of the best, yes, if you prefer her word, the softest crib I had ever hoped to drop into? I was established at the Maybelle, I now spoke German fluently – there was no need to fake it – and on the two occasions when the committee had visited the clinic they had expressed themselves as fully satisfied with their choice. If the validity of the testimonials were questioned I could explain that I had lost the originals. And hadn't I been foreseeing enough to protect myself against just such a contingency, this threat to my security? The bold Caterina hadn't thought of that one. I was safe. No need to worry, Carroll, my boy. And yet I was worried. There remained with me a sense of something in the background, unspoken, unrevealed, retained, so to speak for the
Meisterstück.
Curse that German, I meant the
coup de grâce.
No, that was nonsense, yes, rot in any language. Get me back to Levenford? That noxious hole in Clydeside mud? Back to another G.P. Assistantship, stuffed with night calls and surgery grinds, with an old boozer as principal, who was more or less tight half the time. She was right – it would be hell. But, never. No, not on your bleeding life, Carroll. I would fight it to the last ditch.

Suddenly, as I approached the clinic, I heard someone calling me, the voice immediately recognizable as Matron's. Perched on the rear balcony like a moulting hen, she was flapping me in with a towel. Refusing to be hurried, I slowed to a walk, so that she had ample time to come down to the terrace to meet me.

‘Ver haf you been, Herr Doktor?' She was practically foaming at the mouth. ‘Eine Stunde almost I am seeking you.'

I permitted myself the liberty of a really dirty look, the first I had ever directed towards her.

‘Where the devil do you think I've been? I'm surely entitled to a little time off. I've been taking my exercise.'

I perceived with satisfaction that she was taken aback. In a modified tone, though still complaining, she declared:

‘Your patient is not so good. Much sickness. All his good
Mittagessen
thrown back.'

‘What! Sick again?'

‘Much.'

‘You did stop his codliver oil?'

She reddened uncomfortably.

‘But it is so goot for him …'

‘Damn it all, I told you, instructed you, to stop it.'

She was silent, giving me best.

‘Very well,' I said shortly. ‘ I'll have a look at him.'

‘
Jetzt?
Immediately?'

‘When I've had a wash. He won't harm just because he's had a vomit.'

This was merely to keep Hulda in her place. When she was out of sight I went across to the guest chalet.

He was lying fully dressed, on his bed, with his eyes on the ceiling. Beside him an enamel basin seemed to contain most of his lunch, but it gave out no stink of fish oil. One hand was placed protectively on his stomach. He removed it quickly as I came in, an action I did not fail to observe.

‘So you've been at it again, you little rat?'

As may be imagined my mood was not attuned to sympathy and loving kindness.

‘Sorry,' he said.

‘You may well be. Damned little nuisance. You knew I'd put you off the oil.'

‘Of course. And I didn't take it. When Matron wasn't looking I poured it down the wash basin.'

‘You did?' This shook my preconceived opinion. ‘ Come on then, pull up your shirt and let's have a look at you.'

‘It's all better now, Dr Laurence.' He half smiled. ‘ Let's let sleeping dogs lie.'

‘None of that smart guff, strip to the waist.'

I didn't altogether like the look of him and while he got ready I reassembled the evidence. His von Pirquet had proved negative, his temperature varied no more than a fraction of a point and beyond that cervical swelling I had found nothing specific to confirm the presence of T.B. or, indeed, to account for his obvious pallor, shortness of breath, palpitation and general asthenia. I began to suspect that the good Dr Moore before leaving for the wide open spaces had landed me with a stumour of a diagnosis. With this in mind I took a new look, considering that recurrent sickness, giving particular attention to the abdomen. As I had previously observed, his was somewhat distended, but this ‘big belly' was a not uncommon feature in the rundown children who came to the Maybelle, and I had rather taken it for granted. Now, however, I began carefully to palpate. Once again everything seemed in order, but suddenly there it was: I no more than caught the edge of it: a tender and slightly swollen spleen.

‘That hurts you?'

‘Somewhat … yes, a little,' he admitted, wincing despite the understatement.

‘Does it pain you when I don't press? I mean when you're up and around.'

‘Not really … just a sort of dragging feeling sometimes.'

So now what? A palpable, tender spleen, at that age, and instinctively my eyes went back to the inner surface of his arms on which I could just make out a faint purpuric staining of the skin. It had me puzzled.

‘Nothing bad I hope, Dr Laurence?'

My silence had worried him.

‘Don't be a toad. This probably means you don't have T.B. at all. Coming here with a false tag on you and all that rot about scrofula.'

He looked at me doubtfully.

‘That's a relief. Or isn't it?'

I ignored this and said: ‘ What else have you been hiding, you little coward? You've had these sick attacks for some time?'

‘For a little while. But when they pass off I'm quite hungry and can eat anything.'

‘What about these red blotches on your skin?'

‘Well, yes, I've had them off and on. But they fade very quickly. I thought they might be just an irritation.'

‘Naturally.' Then I took a shot in the dark. ‘ Have you had bleeding recently from the inside of your mouth, I mean from your gums?'

His eyes widened with surprise and, actually, admiration.