The Scold's Bridle (26 page)

"You got born, didn't you?"

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

"Birth and death, Hughes. They happen at random. Your mother didn't know your father but you still got born. The not-knowing is irrelevant. You were there that day, you were using her granddaughter to steal from her and Mrs. Gillespie knew it. You had to shut her up before she talked to us."

"I don't work it that way."

"How do you work it then?"

But Hughes refused to say another word.

Jane Marriott marched into Sarah's office in the I Fontwell surgery the following morning after the last "patient had left and deposited herself firmly in a chair. Sarah glanced at her. "You're looking very cross," she remarked as she signed off some paperwork.

"I feel cross."

"What about?"

"You."

Sarah folded her arms. "What have I done?"

"You've lost your compassion." Jane tapped a stern finger against her watch. "I know I used to wig you about the length of time you spent on your patients, but I admired you for the trouble you took. Now, suddenly, they're in and out like express trains. Poor old Mrs. Henderson was almost in tears. 'What have I done to upset Doctor?' she asked me. 'She hardly had a kind word for me.' You really mustn't let this business over Mathilda get to you, Sarah. It's not fair on other people." She drew an admonishing breath. "And don't tell me I'm only the receptionist and you're the doctor. Doctors are fallible, just like the rest of us."

Sarah pushed some papers about her desk with the point of her pencil. "Do you know what Mrs. Henderson's first words to me were when she came in? 'I reckon it's safe to come back to you, Doctor, seeing as how it was that bitch of a daughter what done it.' And she lied to you. I didn't have a
single
kind word for her. I told her the truth for once, that the only thing wrong with her is an acidulated spleen which could be cured immediately if she looked for the good in people instead of the bad." She wagged the pencil under Jane's nose. "I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that Mathilda was right. This village is one of the nastiest places on earth, peopled entirely by ignorant, evil-minded bigots with nothing better to do in their lives than sit and pass judgement on anyone who doesn't conform to their commonplace, petty-minded stereotypes. It's not compassion I've lost, it's my blinkers."

Jane removed the pencil from Sarah's grasp before it could lodge itself in her nostril. "She's a lonely old widow, with little or no education, and she was trying in her very ham-fisted way to say sorry for ever having doubted you. If you haven't the generosity of spirit to make allowances for her clumsy diplomacy then you are not the woman I thought you were. And for your information, she now thinks she is suffering from a very severe condition, namely acidulated spleen, which you are refusing to treat. And she's put that down to the cuts in the Health Service and the fact that, as an old woman, she is now considered expendable."

Sarah sighed. "She wasn't the only one. They're all cock-a-hoop because they think Joanna did it and I resent them using me and my surgery to score points off her." She pulled her fingers through her hair. "Because that's what today was all about, Jane, a sort of childish yah-boo-sucks at their latest victim, and if Jack hadn't decided to play silly buggers, then there wouldn't have been so much for them to gossip about."

"Don't you believe it," said Jane tartly. "What they can't get any other way they make up."

"Hah! And you have the nerve to haul me over the coals for cynicism!"

"Oh, don't assume I'm not just as irritated as you are by their silliness. Of course I am, but then I don't expect anything else. They haven't changed just because Mathilda's died, you know, and I must say it's a bit rich accusing Mrs. Henderson of only seeing the bad in people when the greatest exponent of that has just left you a small fortune. Mrs. Henderson's view of people is positively saintly compared with Mathilda's.
She
really did have an acidulated spleen."

"All right. Point taken. I'll drop in on Mrs. H. on my way home."

"Well, I hope you'll be gracious enough to apologize to her. Perhaps I'm being over-sensitive but she did seem so upset, and it's not like you to be cruel, Sarah."

"I feel cruel," she growled. "As a matter of interest, do you talk to the male doctors like this?"

"No."

"I see."

Jane bridled. "You don't see anything. I'm fond of you. If your mother were here she would be saying the same things. You should never allow events to sour your nature, Sarah. You leave that particular weakness to the Mathildas of this world."

Sarah felt a surge of affection for the elderly woman, whose apple cheeks had grown rosy with indignation. Her mother, of course, would say no such thing, merely purse her lips and declare that she had always known Sarah was sour at heart. It took someone with Jane's generosity to see that other people were diplomatically inept, or weak, or disillusioned. "You're asking me to betray my principles," she said mildly.

"No, my dear, I'm asking you to stand by them."

"Why should I condone Mrs. Henderson calling Joanna a murderess? There's no more evidence against her than there was against me, and if I apologize it's a tacit acceptance."

"Nonsense," said Jane stoutly. "It's courtesy towards an old lady. How you deal with Joanna is a different matter altogether. If you don't approve of the way the village is treating her then you must demonstrate it in a very public way so that no one is in any doubt of where your sympathies lie. But," her old eyes softened as they rested on the younger woman, "don'f take your annoyance out on poor Dolly Henderson, my dear. She can't be expected to see things as you and I do. She never enjoyed our liberal education."

"I will apologize."

"Thank you."

Sarah suddenly leaned forward and planted a kiss on the other's cheek.

Jane looked surprised. "What was that for?"

"Oh, I don't know." Sarah smiled. "Standing in for my mother, perhaps. I wonder sometimes if the stand-ins aren't rather better at the job than the real thing. Mathilda did it, too, you know. She wasn't
all
acidulated spleen. She could be just as sweet as you when she wanted to be."

"Is that why you're looking after Ruth? As a sort of quid pro quo?"

"Don't you approve?"

Jane sighed. "I don't approve or disapprove. I just feel it's a little provocative in the circumstances. Whatever your reasons for doing it, the village has put the worst interpretation on those reasons. You do know they're saying that Joanna's about to be arrested for the murder of her mother, and that's why Ruth has gone to live with you?"

"I hadn't realized it was quite that bad." Sarah frowned. "God, they're absurd. Where do they get this rubbish from?"

"They put two and two together and make twenty."

"The trouble is"-she paused-"there's nothing much I can do about it."

"But, my dear, all that's required is an explanation of why Ruth is with you," Jane suggested, "and then you can knock these rumours on the head. There must be one, after all."

Sarah sighed. "It's up to Ruth to explain, and at the moment she's not in a position to do that."

"Then invent one," said Jane bluntly. "Give it to Mrs. Henderson when you see her this afternoon and it'll be all round the village by tomorrow evening. Fight fire with fire, Sarah. It's the only way."

Mrs. Henderson was touched by Dr. Blakeney's apology for her bad temper in the surgery, thought it very handsome of her to take the trouble to come out to her cottage, and quite agreed that if you'd been up all night looking after a seventeen-year-old showing all the symptoms of glandular fever, you were bound to be shirty the next day. Mind, she didn't quite understand why Ruth had to stay with Dr. Blakeney and her husband in the circumstances. Wouldn't it be more fitting for her to remain with her mother? Much more fitting, agreed Sarah firmly, and Ruth would prefer it too, of course, but, as Mrs. Henderson knew, glandular fever was an extremely painful and debilitating viral infection, and because of the likelihood of its recurring if the patient wasn't cared for properly and bearing in mind this was Ruth's A level year, Joanna had asked Sarah to take her in and get her back on her feet again as quickly as possible. In the circumstances, what with Mrs. Gillespie's will and all (Sarah looked suitably embarrassed), she could hardly refuse, could she?

"Not when you're the one what's got all the money," was Mrs. Henderson's considered retort, but her rheumy eyes clouded in puzzlement. "Ruth going back to Southcliffe then, when she's better, like?"

"Where else would she go?" murmured Sarah un-blushingly. "As I said, it's her A level year."

"Well, I never! There's some lies being told and no mistake. Who killed Mrs. Gillespie, then, if it weren't you and it weren't the daughter?"

"God knows, Mrs. Henderson."

"Happen He does, too, so it's a shame He doesn't pass it on. He's causing a lot of bother by keeping the information to Hisself."

"Perhaps she killed herself."

"No," said the old woman decidedly. "That I'll never believe. I don't say as I liked her very much but Mrs. Gillespie was no coward."

Sarah knew Joanna was in Cedar House, despite the stubborn silence that greeted her ringing of the doorbell. She'd seen the set white face in the shadows at the back of the dining-room and the brief flicker of recognition before Joanna slipped into the hall and out of sight. Rather more than her refusal to answer the door, it was her flicker of recognition that fuelled Sarah's anger. Ruth was the issue here, not Mathilda's will or Jack's shenanigans, and while she might have sympathized with Joanna's reluctance to open the door to the police, she could not forgive the barricading of it against the person Joanna knew was sheltering her daughter. Sarah set off grimly down the path that skirted the house. What kind of woman, she wondered, put personal enmity before concern for her daughter's welfare?

In her mind's eye, she pictured the portrait Jack was working on. He had trapped Joanna inside a triangular prism of mirrors, with her personality split like refracted light. It was an extraordinary depiction of confused identity, the more so because for each image there was a single image reflected back from the huge encompassing mirror that bordered the canvas. Sarah had asked him what the single image represented. "Joanna as she wants to be seen. Admired, adored, beautiful."

She pointed to the prism images. "And what are they?"

"That's the Joanna she's suppressing with drugs," he said. "The ugly, unloved woman who was rejected by mother, husband and daughter. Everything in her life is illusion, hence the mirror theme."

"That's sad."

"Don't go sentimental on me, Sarah, or on her either for that matter. Joanna is the most self-centered woman I have ever met. I guess most addicts are. She says Ruth rejected her. That's baloney. It was Joanna who rejected her because Ruth cried whenever Joanna picked her up. It was a vicious circle. The more her baby cried the less mclined she was to love it. She claimed Steven rejected her because he was revolted by the pregnancy, but in the next sentence she admitted she couldn't stand the way he fussed over Ruth. It was she, I think, who rejected him."

'But why? There must be a reason for it."

"I suspect it's very simple. The only person she loves or is capable of loving is herself and because her swollen belly made her less attractive in her own eyes, she resented the two people responsible for it, namely her husband and her baby. I'll put money on the fact that she's the one who found the pregnancy repulsive."

"Nothing's ever that simple, Jack. It could be something quite serious. Untreated post-natal depression. Narcissistic personality disorder. Schizophrenia even. Perhaps Mathilda was right, and she
is
unstable."

"Maybe, but if she is, then Mathilda was entirely to blame. From what I can gather, she kowtowed to Joanna and Joanna's histrionics from day one." He gestured towards the painting. "When I said that everything in her life is illusion, what I meant was: everything is false. This is the fantasy she wants you to believe, but I'm ninety-nine per cent certain she doesn't believe it herself." He laid his forefinger on the central triangle of the prism, which as yet contained nothing. "That's where the real Joanna will be, in the only mirror that can't reflect her stylized image of herself."

Clever stuff, thought Sarah, but was it true? "And what is the real Joanna?"

He stared at the painting. "Utterly ruthless, I think," he said slowly, "utterly and completely ruthless about getting her own way." The kitchen door was locked but the key that Mathilda had hidden under the third flowerpot to the right was still there and, with an exclamation of triumph, Sarah pounced on it and inserted it into the Yale lock. It was only after she'd opened the door and was removing the key to lay it on the kitchen table that she wondered if anyone had told the police that entry into Cedar House was that easy if you knew what was under the flowerpot.
She
certainly hadn't, but then she had forgotten all about it until the need to get in had jogged her memory. She had used it once, months ago, when Mathilda's arthritis was so bad that she hadn't been able to get out of her chair to open the front door.