Cover Her Face (4 page)

There were advantages in not being lovers. If they had been having a love affair it would have seemed necessary to spend the afternoon together in his Greenwich house since the opportunity offered and an irregular union imposes conventions as rigid and compelling as those of marriage. And while the love-making would no doubt have been pleasant enough, the easy undemanding companionship which they had enjoyed was more to her taste.

She did not want to fall in love again. Months of annihilating misery and despair had cured her of that particular folly. She had married young and Edward Riscoe had died of poliomyelitis less than a year later. But a marriage based on companionship, compatible tastes and the satisfactory exchange of sexual pleasure seemed to her a reasonable basis for life and one which could be achieved without too much disturbing emotion. Felix, she suspected, was enough in love with her to be interesting without being boring and she was only spasmodically tempted to consider seriously the expected offer of marriage. It was, nevertheless, beginning to be slightly odd that the offer was not made.

It was not, she knew, that he disliked women. Certainly most of their friends considered him to be a natural bachelor, eccentric, slightly pedantic and perennially amusing. They might have been unkinder, but there was the inescapable fact of his war record to be explained away. A man cannot be either effeminate or a fool who holds both French and British decorations for his part in the Resistance Movement. He was one of those whose physical courage, that most respected and most glamorous of virtues, had been tried in the punishment cells of the Gestapo and could never again be challenged. It was less fashionable now to think of those things but they were not yet quite forgotten. What those months in France had done to Felix Hearne was anybody’s guess, but he was allowed his eccentricities and presumably he enjoyed them. Deborah liked him because he was intelligent and amusing and the most diverting gossip she knew. He had a woman’s interest in the small change of life and an intuitive concern for the minutiae of human relationships. Nothing was too trivial for him and he sat now listening with every appearance of amused sympathy to Deborah’s report on Martingale.

“So you see, it’s bliss to have some free time again, but I really can’t see it lasting. Martha will have her out in time. And I don’t really blame her. She doesn’t like Sally and neither do I.”

“Why? Is she chasing Stephen?”

“Don’t be vulgar, Felix. You might give me the benefit of a more subtle reason than that. Actually, though, she does seem to have impressed him and I think it’s deliberate. She asks his advice about the baby whenever he’s at home, although I have tried to point out that he’s supposed to be a surgeon not a paediatrician. And poor old Martha can’t breathe a word of criticism without his rushing to Sally’s defence. You’ll see for yourself when you come on Saturday.”

“Who else will be there apart from this intriguing Sally Jupp?”

“Stephen, of course. And Catherine Bowers. You met her the last time you were at Martingale.”

“So I did. Rather poached-egg eyes but an agreeable figure and more intelligence than you or Stephen were willing to allow her.”

“If she impressed you so much,” retorted Deborah easily, “you can demonstrate your admiration this weekend and give Stephen a respite. He was rather taken with her once and now she sticks to him like a limpet and it bores him horribly.”

“How incredibly ruthless pretty women are to plain ones! And by ‘rather taken with her’ I suppose you mean that Stephen seduced her. Well, that usually does lead to complications and he must find his own way out as better men have done before him. But I shall come. I love Martingale and I appreciate good cooking. Besides, I have a feeling that the weekend will be interesting. A house full of people all disliking each other is bound to be explosive.”

“Oh, it isn’t as bad as that!”

“Very nearly. Stephen dislikes me. He has never bothered to hide it. You dislike Catherine Bowers. She dislikes you and will probably extend the emotion to me. Martha and you dislike Sally Jupp and she, poor girl, probably loathes you all. And that pathetic creature, Miss Liddell, will be there, and your mother dislikes her. It will be a perfect orgy of suppressed emotion.”

“You needn’t come. In fact, I think it would be better if you didn’t.”

“But, Deborah, your mother has already asked me and I’ve accepted. I wrote to her last week in my nice formal way, and I shall now make a note in my little black book to settle it beyond doubt.” He bent his sleek fair head over his engagement diary. His face, with the pale skin which made the hairline almost indistinguishable, was turned away from her. She noticed how sparse were the eyebrows against the pallid forehead and the intricate folds and crinkles around his eyes. Deborah thought that he must once have had beautiful hands before the Gestapo played about with them. The nails had never fully grown again.

She tried to picture those hands moving about the intricacies of a gun, curled into the cords of a parachute, clenched in defiance or endurance. But it was no good. There seemed no point of contact between that Felix who had apparently once known a cause worth suffering for and the facile, sophisticated, sardonic Felix Hearne of Hearne and Illingworth, publishers, just as there was none between the girl who had married Edward Riscoe and the woman she was today. Suddenly Deborah felt again the familiar
malaise
of nostalgia and regret. In this mood she watched Felix writing under Saturday’s date in his cramped meticulous hand as if he were making a date with death.

After tea Deborah decided to visit Stephen, partly to avoid the rush-hour crowds but chiefly because she seldom came up to London without calling at St. Luke’s Hospital. She invited Felix to accompany her but he excused himself on the grounds that the smell of disinfectant made him sick, and sent her off in a taxi with formal expressions of thanks for her company. He was punctilious about these matters. Deborah fought against the unflattering suspicion that he had tired of her conversation and was relieved to see her borne away in comfort and with speed, and concentrated on the pleasure of seeing Stephen.

It was all the more disconcerting to find that he was not in the hospital. It was unusual too. Colley, the hall porter, explained that Mr. Maxie had had a telephone call and had gone out to meet someone saying that he wouldn’t be long. Mr. Donwell was on duty for him. But Mr. Maxie would certainly not be long now. He had been gone nearly an hour. Perhaps Mrs. Riscoe would like to go up to the residents’ sitting-room? Deborah stayed for a few minutes’ chat with Colley whom she liked and then took the lift to the fourth floor.

Mr. Donwell, a shy and spotty young registrar, mumbled a greeting and made a speedy escape to the wards leaving Deborah in sole possession of four grubby armchairs, an untidy heap of medical periodicals and the half-cleared remnants of the residents’ tea. It appeared that they had had Swiss roll again and, as usual, someone had used his saucer as an ashtray. Deborah began to pile up the plates, but, realizing that this was a somewhat pointless activity since she did not know what to do with them, she took up one of the papers and moved to the window where she could divide her interest between waiting for Stephen and scanning the more intriguing or comprehensible of the medical articles.

The window gave a view of the main hospital entrance farther along the street. In the distance she could discern the shining curve of the river and the towers of Westminster. The ceaseless rumbling of traffic was muted, an unobtrusive background to the occasional noises of the hospital, the clang of the lift gates, the ringing of telephone bells, the passing of brisk feet along the corridor. An old woman was being helped into an ambulance at the front door. From a height of four floors the figures below seemed curiously foreshortened. The ambulance door was shut without a sound and it slid away noiselessly. Suddenly she saw them. It was Stephen she noticed first, but the flaming red-gold head almost level with his shoulder was unmistakable. They paused at the corner of the building. They seemed to be talking. The black head was bent towards the gold. After a moment she saw him shake hands and then Sally turned in a flash of sunlight and walked swiftly away without a backward glance. Deborah missed nothing. Sally was wearing her grey suit. It was mass-produced and bought off the peg, but it fitted well and was a foil for the shining cascade of hair, released now from the restraint of cap and pins.

She was clever, thought Deborah. Clever to know that you had to dress simply if you wanted to wear your hair loose like that. Clever to avoid the greens for which most redheads had a predilection. Clever to have said “good-bye” outside the hospital and to have resisted the certain invitation to a hospital supper with its inevitable openings for embarrassment or regret. Afterwards Deborah was surprised that she should have noticed so keenly what Sally was wearing. It was as if she saw her for the first time through Stephen’s eyes, and seeing her was afraid. It seemed a long time before she heard the drone of the lift and his quick footsteps along the corridor. Then he was by her side. She did not move away from the window so that he should know at once she had seen. She felt that she could not bear it if he did not tell her and it was easier that way. She did not know what she expected but when he spoke it was a surprise.

“Have you seen these before?” he asked. In his outstretched palm was a rough bag made from a man’s handkerchief tied together at the corners. He lifted one of the knots, gave a little jerk, and spilled out three or four of the tiny tablets. Their grey-brown colour was unmistakable.

“Aren’t they some of Father’s tablets?” It seemed as if he were accusing her of something. “Where did you get them?”

“Sally found them and brought them up to me. I expect you saw us from the window.”

“What did she do with the baby?” The silly irrelevant question was out before she had time to think.

“The baby? Oh, Jimmy, I don’t know. Sally left him with someone in the village I suppose or with Mother or Martha. She came up to bring me these and ’phoned from Liverpool Street to ask me to meet her. She found them in Father’s bed.”

“But how, in his bed?”

“Between the mattress cover and the mattress. Down the side. His draw-sheet was rucked and she was smoothing it and pulling the mackintosh tight when she noticed a little bulge in the corner of the mattress underneath the fitted cover. She found this. Father must have been saving them over several weeks, perhaps months. I can guess why.”

“Does he know she found them?”

“Sally doesn’t think so. He was lying on his side with his face away from her as she attended to the draw-sheet. She just put the handkerchief and the tablets in her pocket and went on as if nothing had happened. Of course they may have been there for a long time—he’s been on Sommeil for eighteen months or more—and he may have forgotten about them. He may have lost the power to get at them and use them. We can’t tell what goes on in his mind. The trouble is that we haven’t bothered even to try. Except Sally.”

“But Stephen, that isn’t true. We do try. We sit with him and nurse him and try to make him feel that we’re there. But he just lies, not moving, not speaking, not even seeming to notice people any more. He isn’t really Father. There isn’t any contact between us. I have tried, I swear I have, but it isn’t any use. He can’t really have meant to take those tablets. I can’t think how he even managed to collect them, to plan it all.”

“When it’s your turn to give him his tablets, do you watch him while he swallows them?”

“No, not really. You know how he used to hate us to help him too much. Now I don’t think he minds, but we still give him the tablets and then pour out the water and hold it up to his lips if he seems to want it. He must have secreted these away months ago. I can’t believe he could manage it now, not without Martha knowing. She does most of the lifting and the heavier nursing.”

“Well, apparently he managed to deceive Martha. But, by God, Deborah, I ought to have guessed, ought to have known. I call myself a doctor. This is the kind of thing which makes me feel like a specialized carpenter, good enough to carve patients up as long as I’m not expected to bother with them as people. At least Sally treated him as a human being.”

Deborah was momentarily tempted to point out that she, her mother and Martha were at least managing to keep Simon Maxie comfortable, clean and fed at no small cost and that it was difficult to see where Sally had done more. But if Stephen wanted to indulge in remorse there was little to be gained by stopping him. He usually felt better afterwards, even if other people felt worse. She watched in silence as he rummaged about in the drawer of the desk, found a small bottle which had apparently once held aspirin, carefully counted the tablets—there were ten of them—into the bottle and labelled it with the name of the drug and the dose. They were the almost automatic actions of a man trained to keep medicines properly labelled.

Deborah’s mind was busy with questions she dared not ask. “Why did Sally come to you? Why not Mother? Did she really find those tablets or was it just a convenient ruse to see you alone? But she must have found them. No one could make up a story like that. Poor Father. What has Sally been saying? Why should I mind so much about this, about Sally? I hate her because she has a child and I haven’t. Now I’ve said it, but admitting it doesn’t make it any easier. That handkerchief bag. It must have taken him hours to tie it together. It looked like something made by a child. Poor Father. He was so tall when I was a child. Was I really rather afraid of him? Oh God, please help me to feel pity. I want to be sorry for him. What is Sally thinking now? What did Stephen say to her?”

He turned back from the desk and held out the bottle. “I think you had better take this home. Put it in the medicine cupboard in his room. Don’t say anything to Mother yet or to Dr. Epps. I think it would be wiser if we stopped the tablets for Father. I’ll get you a prescription made up in the dispensary before you leave, the same kind of drug only in solution. Give him a tablespoonful at night in water. I should see to it yourself. Just tell Martha that I have stopped the tablets. When does Dr. Epps see him again?”