‘It’s still very kind.’ Sarah paused, before adding, ‘And to travel in such style, too.’
‘You like the car?’
‘How could anyone not like it? It’s beautiful.’
‘It was my father’s pride and joy, he thought he had really arrived when he purchased a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost. My mother used to protest he treated the car better than he did her, and maybe he did at that. I only use it occasionally, I wouldn’t trust to parking it outside the surgery every night and my brother has ample room to keep it in his garage, besides which, with the economic crisis as it is, I can’t justify the fuel intake. I have a little Morris Minor as my workhorse.’
Sarah’s eyes searched the enigmatic profile before she said, ‘Is your father . . . ?’
‘He was killed in the war.’ It was abrupt, and Rodney seemed to be aware of this as he added almost immediately, his voice softer, ‘My parents and my brother were travelling home from the surgery one night when there was an air-raid, and the shelter they took refuge in sustained a direct hit. My parents were killed outright, my brother was badly hurt but he survived, although he lost a leg and has severe facial injuries. My mother had only gone into the surgery that afternoon to stand in for my father’s receptionist who had gone home sick. Ironic, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, yes it is.’
‘But that’s life, or death in this case.’ He must have sensed her discomfiture, because in the next breath he said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Sarah, really. Don’t take any notice of me, I have an unfortunate way of putting things sometimes.’
But it wasn’t his way of expressing himself that had bothered her. Before she allowed herself to think further she grabbed at the first thing that came into her mind. ‘Your brother? Is he older than you?’
‘By four years.’ His chin jerked and she wondered why, but then he continued, ‘It was my father’s plan that Richard and I would join him in the practice once we qualified, he always said that family partners were the best partners.’
‘But you didn’t want to?’
‘No, I didn’t. You think that strange?’
‘Strange?’ She stared at him in surprise. ‘Why should I think it strange? Everyone should be able to make their own decisions on such matters.’
‘One would think so.’
She didn’t like to ask anything more, there had been something in his voice that went far beyond the actual words, and it was all part and parcel of this new Dr Mallard who looked the same - exactly the same in spite of the intervening ten years - as she remembered, but that was all. And yet that wasn’t quite true. When they had met at the tearooms in Baxter Street a few days ago for a chat about old times, as the doctor had put it when he’d invited her, there had been glimpses of the man she had known ten years ago. He had spoken kindly, he had looked kindly, and he had even laughed once or twice when she had regaled him with stories from her days in Hatfield’s laundry and at the Roberts establishment, searching her mind for anything that would amuse him and take away the serious expression from his face.
And he had been genuinely interested to hear all about Maggie and Florrie, and Rebecca, she knew that, and it had been when she had confided how much she was missing them all that the old Dr Mallard of her childhood had said at once, ‘I’m going up that way next weekend, perhaps Lady Harris could spare you for a day or two?’
And Lady Harris had spared her - partly, she suspected, because Lady Margaret had paved the way and reminded her mother-in-law that Sarah had put in a lot of extra hours over the last little while without taking any of the days owing to her. Lady Margaret, Sarah was finding, was a much softer character than her forthright mother-in-law, and in spite of Lady Harris’s philanthropic declarations about the working class in general, and women in particular, much more inclined to informality - at least with her. The two of them had had some interesting conversations over the last week or so, and she was finding she liked the older woman very much.
After a few minutes, it was Rodney who broke the silence which was becoming increasingly strained, when he said, ‘At least the practice gives my brother a reason to get up in the morning, and once our father had gone he took on two juniors to see new patients and a section of the established ones, so he has plenty of back-up. He has to go into hospital for periodic skin grafts to his face, you see, which isn’t easy for him, added to which it was suggested to him that patients of a nervous disposition might find his injuries too distressing.’
‘Oh surely not.’ Sarah’s voice was indignant. ‘I mean, with the war and all, people aren’t so shallow, are they?’
‘It would take more than a war to change some people, Sarah.’
‘He’s not married or anything then?’
It should have been perfectly easy for him to say, ‘Yes, he has been married for over ten years now,’ but it wasn’t, and he could hear the flat sound to the words as he spoke them.
‘Oh.’ A pause, and then Sarah said, but uncomfortably, ‘At least he’s got his wife then.’
‘Yes, he’s got Vanessa.’
Why was that note in his voice? Sarah asked herself as she stared a moment longer at the straight profile before turning to look out of the window at the familiar northern landscape. Was his brother’s wife one of those people who was ‘distressed’ by his changed countenance? Whatever, there was clearly something wrong somewhere, but it wasn’t any of her business, and she had better remember that.
She knew Dr Mallard had been surprised at the change in her when he had realized who she was at the Coles’ house; and of course he would be, she had only been a child when he had left Sunderland - and the invitation to the tearooms, and this trip, had been generous of him, but there was no likelihood of renewing their acquaintance further once this weekend was over. She knew that. He was very well-to-do, the social circles he moved in were as much out of her reach as the man in the moon.
‘You would like Richard.’ Rodney’s voice was reflective now, his eyes narrowed as he concentrated on the icy road ahead. The December day was raw, with a biting wind that cut across the bleak northern landscape with a ferocity unknown in the gentle south. ‘He’s an incredibly good-natured soul, philosophical I suppose.’
What did that mean? Sarah asked herself with a touch of Maggie’s cynicism. She had seen plenty of the middle and upper classes who were ‘philosophical’. They were philosophical about what they had, and others didn’t, about hungry little bairns running about with bare backsides and no shoes. Eeh . . . Her thoughts shocked her. She shouldn’t be thinking this way about the doctor’s brother, he was probably very nice. He had to be if he was Rodney’s flesh and blood.
Her use of his Christian name, if only in her mind, made Sarah sit up straighter. He had told her to drop the Dr Mallard at that first meeting in Whitechapel, but as yet she hadn’t been able to bring herself to do so, although after his request the more formal address hadn’t seemed right either. Consequently, she had avoided any use of his name whatsoever.
Her thoughts troubled her, and more to banish them than anything else, she said, ‘I’m sure your brother is very kind, but it must have taken some strong moral fibre on your part to leave a ready-made career in London, and come to Sunderland when you qualified.’
‘Strong moral fibre.’ He echoed her words in a voice that brought her eyes swinging to his face, the movement of her head bringing a faint whiff of her flowery perfume to his nostrils. ‘That sounds almost noble, Sarah, and I’m afraid I’m not noble, far from it. There were several reasons I didn’t want to take a job with my father I suppose, most of them self ish.’
As Vanessa had reminded him again only the night before. Why did she do it? If he’d asked himself that question once, he’d asked it a hundred times, but he was still no nearer finding an answer. Why did she put them all through the torture time and time again? And torture wasn’t too strong a word.
‘Oh, darling, you’re so selfish.’ The light tinkling laugh had rung out, although the sting in t
he words was quite intentional, and she had fluttered her white, beautifully manicured hands at her husband. ‘Say something, Richard, for goodness’ sake. It’s so silly that Rodney lives in that dreadful old house that just reeks of disinfectant and disease when you need him here.’
‘It’s a doctor’s surgery, Vanessa, that’s all, and I prefer to live on the premises. It would be false economy to think of renting or buying something else, when most of the house is unoccupied.’
‘But it’s such an unpleasant district, Rodney, it really is, and there’s no need. You know your father wanted you and Richard to take over the practice together when he retired.’
‘And you know I had no intention of doing that even before the war changed things.’ Rodney had kept his voice level and quiet, and his face pleasant, even as his fingers had itched to wring her long graceful neck. She knew all right; if anyone knew, Vanessa did. And yet she had the gall to fling it in his face, not once, but every time the partnership with Richard was brought up.
What would his life have been like if he had never met her? he thought now, drawing the air in between his teeth, his eyes narrowed on the windscreen. Happier, a damn sight happier. The silent groan inside him twisted his bowels. So why couldn’t he let go of her, here, in his mind, where it really mattered? How many times had he told himself she was a conniving, gold-digging little bitch, that he was well rid of her, that any woman who could get engaged to one brother, and then marry the other when she found out her fiancé’s lifestyle wasn’t going to be all caviare and champagne, was no good?
She had called him a communist that night eleven years ago, when she had finally realized she wasn’t going to be able to sweet-talk him out of what she called his ridiculous affinity towards the working class. He hadn’t known that up to that point she had believed she could persuade him to join his father and Richard in his father’s practice in Windsor - or at least if he had, he hadn’t admitted it to himself. He’d wanted her so badly, that had been the trouble, and even when he’d found out that other men had been there before him it hadn’t mattered, not really. What did he mean, he had wanted her so badly? he asked himself with bitter cynicism. He still only had to look at her long slim body and cool beautiful face for his loins to ache. And she knew, dammit. She’d always known. But lately, in the last twelve months or so, her subtle overtures had grown more blatant. She couldn’t bear Richard the way he was now, that was part of the trouble. The separate bedrooms hadn’t been his brother’s idea, he dared bet, but although Vanessa didn’t want Richard near her that would have caused its own set of problems, because Vanessa had appetites.
He had been amazed, in those months after he had first met her, how uninhibited, how hungry, she was in bed. She looked so cool and languid, so ladylike, and yet the things she had wanted him to do to her . . . It had tormented him constantly, in the early days of Richard and Vanessa’s marriage, when he had imagined the two of them together. And then she had let him know, in that mocking, faintly patronizing way of hers, that her marriage didn’t have to signal the end of their intimacy.
He had run then. First to the north, and then further afield when the war had started, but it had been a long time before he could admit to himself that he was running more from his own weakness where she was concerned than from Vanessa herself. She had laughed at him when he had protested he loved his brother and that he would never betray Richard by taking his wife. She’d laughed, and then she had looked at him with those great knowing eyes.
Oh, it was his own fault - he should have been honest with Richard when Vanessa had first returned his ring, along with a brief note to say the engagement was over. But he had played the big man, hadn’t he, even to his own family. He had told them the parting of the ways had been a mutual decision, that they wanted different things out of life, and it was better to find out before they tied the knot - all the normal rubbish, to save face. And Vanessa had played him at his own game, seeking out Richard at the tennis club within weeks and casting her net.
They had been married with what constituted indecent haste - certainly more than one of his mother’s friends had watched Vanessa’s flat stomach for months afterwards - but Vanessa had just wanted to make sure of her life of ease as a rich doctor’s wife, and one brother would do as well as the other for that, it seemed.
He swallowed hard, then turned his head for a moment as Sarah’s voice brought him out of the dark reflections. ‘I’m sorry, what did you say?’
‘Have your brother and his wife any children?’
‘No, no children.’ He forced a light note into his voice as he added, ‘I’ve got to wait a little longer to be an uncle.’ How had they got on to this anyway? In an effort to change the subject without appearing rude, he said now, ‘How on earth did you think you would manage with all that on the train, by the way?’ He inclined his head towards the back seat, stacked high with gaily wrapped parcels, without taking his eyes off the road.
‘I wouldn’t have attempted to bring all this if I had been travelling by myself,’ Sarah said quickly, ‘but when you offered me a lift . . .’
‘You must have been saving your rations all year for that lot.’ His smile was warmer now, what Sarah would term a real smile. ‘Perhaps I didn’t do you such a favour after all in offering you a ride?’
‘You certainly did,’ Sarah said indignantly, before adding, ‘I would have spent the same but some of it would have been monetary gifts, but they aren’t so nice, are they? There’s no . . . cosiness with them.’
It was a strange choice of words, but he remembered this about her. Even as a child she had expressed herself differently to anyone else, but although initially her phraseology might seem odd, when analysed, it was not. She had been a truly enchanting child. He was surprised by the sudden pull on his heartstrings, and to cover his emotion his voice was brisk when he said, ‘Quite right.’
Quite right? He could do better than that, couldn’t he? The poor girl hadn’t asked to travel with him, he had suggested it, after all, although he wasn’t quite sure why, if he thought about it. Maybe it had been the spur he had needed to answer Martin and Ruth’s repeated invitations to visit them again? He’d had a guilty conscience about them for months now. Or perhaps the fact that the hour or so in the little tearoom with Sarah, when they had chatted about old times and Sarah had brought him up-to-date with her life, had been like a ray of sunshine on a winter’s day. The simile faintly embarrassed him. He didn’t consider himself a poetical man, or even aesthetic.
And he had been trying to save her an arduous journey. The rational, logical side took over. The trains were bad enough at the best of times, but near Christmas, and with the bad weather, she could have been standing about on cold platforms for hour after miserable hour. Trains, railways, he hated them - they would ever be synonymous with the living hell of the Japanese camps. How many executions and atrocities had he witnessed in those years on the Burma railway? Hundreds, thousands . . .
It did no good to indulge in such reminiscences, and now he wetted his lips and swallowed before he said, ‘I’m glad Maggie isn’t still at Hatfield, although I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to some surprise at Florrie’s benevolence. She didn’t strike me as a charitable sort.’
There was more than a touch of cynicism in his tone, and Sarah stiffened defensively before she told herself she really couldn’t blame him for thinking the worst. Perhaps in his place she would have thought the same. But he didn’t know, he didn’t understand, what Sarah’s nearly dying had done to Florrie.
‘Actually, that’s exactly what Florrie is.’ It was firm, and suggested further comments on the same lines would not be appreciated.
Rodney took the hint. ‘And Matron Cox?’ he asked quietly. ‘She’s still locked away where she can do no harm, I hope?’
‘As far as I’m aware.’ Oh, this was difficult. He wasn’t at all like she remembered, but then she had changed too.
‘She was quite mad, you know, dangerously so.
It was a wonder she hadn’t cracked before.’
‘It was probably because she was able to do virtually what she wanted at Hatfield. It was only later, when I was a bit older, that I realized how many of the children were confined to the infirmary for weeks at a time after they had been sent to the Matron for punishment. Everyone, children and staff alike, was petrified of her.’
‘Except Maggie.’
‘And you,’ she returned quickly.
She smiled at him, and he glanced at her and smiled back, before saying, ‘You are determined to see me in a good light, aren’t you?’ But it was the first time for a long long while that he had felt good about himself. It was the feeling of helplessness that had eaten into him in the camp. There he’d been, a doctor, someone who was supposed to save lives, and all around him men - walking skeletons of men - had been dying like flies. He’d been beaten almost to the point of death one time in that first month in Burma, when he’d argued with the camp commander for more medicines, the meagre supplies of antiseptic and quinine useless against the disease and malnutrition which had been rife amongst the prisoners.
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