The Various Haunts of Men (3 page)

She got up. ‘I think we could both do with some tea. Do you mind me rooting about in your kitchen?’

Iris Chater started from the chair. ‘Goodness, I can’t have you doing that, Doctor, I’ll get it.’

‘No,’ Cat said gently, ‘you stay with Harry.
He knows you’re there, you know. He’ll want you to stay beside him.’

She went out to the small kitchen. Every shelf, every flat surface was crowded not only with the usual china and utensils but with decorative objects, ornaments, calendars, figurines, pictures, framed words of wisdom, honey pots shaped like beehives, eggcups with smiley faces, thermometers set in brass holders and clocks like
floral plates. On the window ledge a plastic bird bobbed down to drink from a glass of water when Cat touched its head. She could imagine how much Hannah would adore that – almost as much as she would covet the pink crochet doll whose skirt covered the sugar basin.

She lit the gas and filled the kettle. Outside, the wind
slammed a gate. This house fitted its occupants and they the house – like
hands fitted gloves. How could others sneer at sets of royal family mugs and tea towels printed with ‘Home Sweet Home’ and ‘Desiderata’?

She prayed that her phone would not ring. Spending some time now with a dying patient – doing something so ordinary as making tea in this kitchen, helping an ordinary couple through the most momentous and distressing parting of all – put the hassle and increasing
administrative burden of general practice in its place. Medicine was changing, or being changed, by the grey men who managed but did not understand it. A lot of Cat and Chris Deerbon’s colleagues were becoming cynical, burned out and demoralised. It would be easy to give in, to process people through the surgery like cans on a conveyor belt and palm the out-of-hours stuff on to locums. That
way you got a good night’s sleep – and precious little job satisfaction. Cat was having none of it. What she was doing now was not cost-effective and no one could put a price on it. Helping Harry Chater through his dying, and looking after his wife as well as she could, were the jobs that mattered and as important to her as to them.

She filled the teapot and picked up the tray.

Half an hour
later, his wife holding one hand and his doctor the other, Harry took a last, uncertain breath, and died.

The silence in the stifling room was immense, a silence which had the particular quality Cat always noticed at a death, as though the earth had momentarily stopped turning and the world was drained of triviality and urgency about anything at all.

‘Thank you for staying, Doctor. I’m glad
you were here.’

‘So am I.’

‘There’s everything to do now, isn’t there? I don’t know where I should start.’

Cat took the woman’s hand. ‘There is no hurry at all. Sit with him for as long as you need to. Talk to him. Say goodbye in your own way. That’s the important thing now. The rest can wait.’

When she left, the gale had died down. It was just beginning to break light. Cat stood by the car
cooling her face after the heat of the Chaters’ sitting room. The undertaker was on his way now and Iris Chater’s neighbour was with her. The peace had been broken into and all the dreary, necessary business that attends on death was under way.

Her own job was done.

From Nelson Street at this hour on a Sunday morning it was a two-minute drive to Cathedral Close. There was a seven o’clock service
of Communion which Cat decided to slip into, after checking home.

‘Hi. You’re awake.’

‘Ha ha.’ Chris Deerbon held the receiver away from him so that Cat could hear the familiar sound of her children fighting.

‘You?’

‘OK. Harry Chater died. I stayed with them. If it’s all right with you, I’ll go to the seven o’clock, and then take a coffee off my brother.’

‘Simon’s back?’

‘He should have
flown in last night.’

‘You go. I’ll take these two out on the ponies. You need to catch up with Si.’

‘Yes, there’s the subject of Dad’s seventieth birthday …’

‘You’ll need some spiritual top-up first then.’ Chris was an unbeliever, generally respectful of Cat’s beliefs but not above the occasional sharp remark. ‘I’m sorry about old Harry Chater. Salt of the earth, those two.’

‘Yes, but he’d
had enough. I’m just glad I was there.’

‘You’re a good doctor, did you know that?

Cat smiled. Chris was her husband but he was also her medical partner and, she thought, a better clinician than she would ever be. Professional praise from him meant something.

The side door of the Cathedral Church of St Michael and All Angels closed almost soundlessly. Much of the great building was in shadow,
but the lights were on, and candles lit, in the side chapel. Cat paused and looked up into the space that seemed to billow out up to the fan-vaulted roof. Being inside the body of the cathedral in this semi-dark was like being Jonah inside the belly of the whale. How different from the last time she had been here, when it had been packed full of civic dignitaries and a congregation dressed in its
finery for a royal service. Then, it had echoed with music and been bright with banners and ceremonial vestments. This quiet, private time early in the morning suited her better.

She took her place among the couple of dozen people already kneeling as the verger led the priest up to the altar.

She would have found it impossible to function as a doctor without the strength she derived from her
belief. Most of the others she knew and worked with seemed
to manage perfectly well and she was the odd one out in her family – though Simon, she thought, came close to sharing her conviction.

As she went up to the Communion rail, there came vividly into her mind the last time she and her brother had been here side by side. It had been at the funeral of three young brothers murdered by their
uncle. Simon had been in the cathedral officially, as the officer in charge of the police investigation, Cat as the family GP. It had been a heart-breaking service. On her other side had been Paula Osgood, forensic pathologist at the murder scene and at the post-mortem, and who had later confided to Cat that she was pregnant with her second child. How had she coped, Cat still wondered, with professional
detachment and calm when examining those three small bodies, killed with an axe and a butcher’s knife? People like that, policemen like Simon – they were the ones who needed all the strength and support they could get. Beside their jobs, that of a GP in a pleasant town like Lafferton was a doddle.

The short service ended and the ribbon of smoke from the snuffed-out candles drifted down to her
… She stood. A woman already making her way down the aisle caught Cat’s eye, and immediately after her so did another. Both smiled.

Cat stayed back for a few seconds, letting them get ahead, before slipping out and making quickly for the door on the other side of the centre aisle. From here, she could make a getaway across Cathedral Green and down the path that led into the close before anyone
managed to waylay her for an apologetic, unofficial consultation.

Apart from some cathedral clergy, few people now lived in the fine Georgian houses of the small close, most of which had long ago become offices.

Simon Serrailler’s building was at the far end, with windows both on to the close and, at the back, overlooking the River Gleen, a quiet stretch of which flowed through this part of
Lafferton. The entrance to 6 St Michael’s was here beside a curved iron bridge leading to the opposite towpath. A posse of mallards was swirling about beneath it. Higher up, a swan trod water. In the spring it was possible to sit at Simon’s window and watch kingfishers flash between the banks.

Case and Chaundy. Solicitors

Diocesan Outreach

Parker, Phipps, Burns. Chartered Accountants

Davies,
Davies, Coop. Solicitors
.

Cat pressed the bell at the top of the stepping stones of brass plates, beside a narrow wood strip elegantly lettered.
Serrailler
.

Knowing her brother as she did – as well as anyone could be said to know Simon – she had never been surprised at his choosing to live alone at the top of a building surrounded by offices which were empty for most of the time he was at home
and with only the ducks, the dark water slipping below the windows and the cathedral bells for company.

Si was different – different from either of his triplet siblings, Cat and Ivo, even more different from their parents and the extended Serrailler family. He had been the odd one out from as early in their childhood as Cat could remember, never fitting easily into a family of
loudly argumentative,
practical-joking medics. How such a quiet, self-contained man fitted, and fitted extremely well, into the police force was another mystery.

The building was dim and silent. Cat’s footsteps echoed on the wooden stairs, up and up, four narrow flights. At each landing she pushed the timed light switch, which always clicked off just before she made it to the next.
Serrailler
. The same lettering on
the plate beside the bell.

‘Cat, Hi!’ Her brother bent from his six feet four to envelop her in a bear hug.

‘I had an early call and then went to the seven o’clock service.’

‘So you’re here for breakfast.’

‘Coffee anyway. I shouldn’t think you’ve got any food in. How was Italy?’

Simon went into the kitchen but Cat did not follow, not yet, she wanted to luxuriate in this room. It ran the length
of the house and had long windows. From the kitchen there was a glimpse of the Hill.

The white-painted wooden shutters were folded back. The polished old elm floorboards had two large good rugs. Light poured in, on to Simon’s pictures and his few carefully chosen pieces of furniture which mixed antiques and contemporary classics with confident success. Beyond this one huge room, he had a small
bedroom and bathroom tucked out of the way, and then the galley kitchen. Everything centred here, in this one calm room, where Cat came, she thought, for almost the same reasons she went to church – peace, quiet, beauty and spiritual and visual recharging of her batteries. Nothing about her brother’s flat bore any relation to her own hugger-mugger farmhouse, always noisy and untidy,
spilling over
with children, dogs, wellington boots, bridles and medical journals. She loved it, that was where her heart was, where she had deep roots. But a small, vital nugget of herself belonged here, in this sanctuary of light and tranquillity. She thought it was probably what kept Simon sane and able to do his often stressful and distressing job as well as he did.

He brought in a tray with the cafetière
of coffee and took it over to the beechwood table in the window that overlooked the close and the back of the cathedral. Cat sat cupping her hands round the warm pottery mug, listening to her brother describe Siena, Verona and Florence, in each of which he had just spent four days.

‘Was it still warmish?’

‘Golden days, chilly nights. Perfect for working outside every day.’

‘Can I see anything?’

‘Still packed.’

‘OK.’

She knew better than to push Simon into showing her any of his drawings before he had selected what he considered the best and fit to be looked at by anyone else.

When he had finished school, Simon had gone to art college, against the wishes, advice and above all the ambitions of their parents. He had never shown the slightest interest in medicine, unlike every other Serrailler
for generations, and no amount of pressure had persuaded him even to continue sciences beyond O level. He had drawn. He had always drawn. He had gone to art school to draw – not to take photographs, design clothes or do computer graphics, and certainly not to study installation or conceptual art. He drew beautifully, people, animals, plants, buildings and odd corners of
everyday life, in streets,
markets, all manner of public places. Cat loved his inspired line and cross-hatching, his rapid sketches, the wonderfully observed and executed detail. Twice a year and for some snatched weekends in between, he went to Italy, Spain, France, Greece or further afield to draw. He had spent weeks in Russia, a month in Latin America.

But he had not completed his art school course. He had been disappointed
and disillusioned. No one, he said, wanted him to draw or was in the slightest bit interested in teaching or promoting drawing. He had gone instead to King’s College, London, and read law, got a first and immediately joined the police force, his other passion since childhood. He had been fast-tracked into the CID and up the ranks to become a DCI, aged thirty-two.

In the force, the artist who
signed his work Simon Osler – Osler was his middle name – was unknown, as was DCI Simon Serrailler to those who went to his sellout exhibitions in places far from Bevham and Lafferton.

Cat refilled her mug. They had caught up with Simon’s holiday, her family and oddments of local gossip. The next bit would be more difficult.

‘Si – there is one thing.’

He glanced up, catching her tone, his face
wary. How strange it is, Cat thought, that he and Ivo are two men of triplets and yet so unlike they might not even be brothers. Simon was the only one for generations to have fair hair, though his eyes were the Serrailler eyes, and dark as sloes. She herself was recognisably Ivo’s sister, though none of them saw much of him now. Ivo had worked as a flying doctor in the Australian outback, happy
as Larry, for the past six years. Cat doubted if he would ever come back home.

‘It’s Dad’s birthday next Sunday.’

Simon looked out at the shifting cloudscape above the cathedral. He said nothing.

‘Mum’s doing lunch. You will come, won’t you?’

‘Yes.’ His voice gave away nothing.

‘It’ll mean a lot to him.’

‘I doubt it.’

‘Don’t be childish. Let it go. You know you can get lost in the throng
– God knows there’ll be enough of us.’

She went to rinse her coffee mug in the steel sink. Simon’s kitchen, in which little more than coffee and toast were ever made, had cost a lot of trouble and a small fortune. Cat often wondered why.