by Anne Morice
‘Oh, you’re still alive, are you? That’s good! About a ton of falling masonry, by the look of it. Lie still now, and try to relax. I’ll tell you about it later.’
‘Tell me now,’ I said, ‘and I’ll relax later.’
‘I don’t know the details yet, because he’d unburied you by the time I arrived, but all I can say is that it’s a wonder you’re here at all. Anyone else would have been blasted into oblivion.’
‘We Paulines are made of sterner stuff,’ I reminded him.
‘And what that old fool, Christabel, thought she was up to beats me entirely. Anyway, she’s another of the same breed, because she had to be dug out, too. Although, from what he told me, she must have had just enough warning to escape the worst of it.’
‘Well, that’s a relief. Who’s this “he” you keep on about?’
‘P.C. Jenner, who was on duty here this evening.’
‘Oh, he came back, did he? What happened to the sister?’
‘What sister?’
‘I don’t know, Robin. Some sister. I’ve forgotten which one. I’m terribly sorry.’
‘Oh, don’t worry; it’s not a thing to worry about. She’ll turn up, right as rain, you bet!’ Robin said, with the forced cheerfulness of a nanny, temporarily out of her depth. ‘Just lie still and we’ll soon have you out of here. If only that damned ambulance would get a bloody move on!’ he added, in less nannyish tones.
‘Tell me more about old P.C. Thing, while we’re waiting, Robin. He was quick off the mark, was he?’
‘Jenner? Yes, a live wire, if ever I saw one.’
‘If he’s the one I met, it’s my duty to tell you that this live wire has feet of clay.’
‘On the contrary, he has the feet of Mercury and the brain of Socrates.’
I started to shake my head, thought better of it and said, with great deliberation: ‘You have been sorrowfully misled, and I am very sorry.’
‘My darling girl, the last thing I intend to do, in your present state, is to argue, but you shouldn’t get these fixations about people. The fact is, it’s entirely due to Jenner that you are more or less in one piece. There wasn’t a chance of Christabel being able to dig you out single-handed, before you suffocated. It was quite tricky, even for a hale and hearty young man, and it was only the fact that he’d already rung us at the pub, too, for which I award extra marks, that won the day.’
‘No, Robin, that can’t be right. How could he telephone you, when there isn’t one?’
‘Not here, from the cottage; but, of course, you don’t know about that, do you. You see, dove, he guessed there was something fishy about you, but since your permit appeared to be in order he could hardly bar your way. So he nipped over to the gardener’s cottage, to check with Cole and me. By the time he got back, with instructions to put you in irons, half the barn was on top of you. But, as I say, he’d almost got you clear, by the time we arrived.’
‘You mean that bit about his sister was just a yarn?’
‘I’m not sure which sister you’re referring to, or how she got into the act, but never mind that now. Here’s the ambulance at last, I do declare.’
‘I don’t need an ambulance,’ I protested. ‘If you’ve got your car here, I can manage perfectly well.’
‘Well, I haven’t. Cole has taken it, to drive Christabel back to the hospital. He was all for our taking you, as well, but I wasn’t risking having you bumped over all those potholes. Furthermore, you’re going straight to the hospital yourself. I don’t think that tough little skull is fractured, but we won’t take any chances till it’s been X-rayed. Now, keep perfectly still while they put you on the stretcher. The trick is to leave everything to them.’
I did as he told me, but just as the two ambulance attendants were loading me aboard I let out a scream of alarm which paralysed them with terror and left me suspended upright, feeling like a papoose whose mother had suddenly lost interest.
‘My bag, Robin!’ I yelled. ‘I can’t go without my bag. The big brown one.’
‘What? Oh, was that yours? I didn’t recognise it. Never mind, you don’t need your mascara now, and it’s quite safe. We thought it belonged to Christabel and it went in the car with her.’
(iii)
I was allotted a neat little cell, just off one of the main wards, and whiled away the time before my X-ray by supplying a sympathetic Irishwoman with my full name, date of birth and next of kin. After which, we dwelt at more length on the subject of her pet movie-star, in one of whose fillums I had played a small part. However, being an avid fan, she knew far more about him than I did, including oddly enough, his full name, date of birth and next of kin.
During the second interval, the radiologist reported that my skull was relatively undamaged; but, due maybe to my tiresome obsession with the missing bag, prescribed twenty-four hours’ complete rest, with no over-excitement. This sounded to me like a perfect description of the average day at The Towers, but with the doctor’s connivance Robin arranged for me to spend this period in hospital.
He did not tell me of the arrangement until it had been accomplished and, in answer to my protests, pointed out that hectic sessions of Beggar My Neighbour would certainly be classed, in medical circles, as over-excitement in a big way. On the other hand, if I were to be treated as an invalid, it would put a lot of extra work on poor old Dolly.
I weighed up these two alternatives and was bound to confess that neither was half so enticing as another cosy session with darling Nurse O’Malley, adding:
‘In any case, I certainly don’t intend to leave this place until they give me back my bag.’
‘Oh, not that old bag again! What do you expect me to do about it? Tear the place apart with my bare hands?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I do.’
A few minutes later he returned and threw the bag down on my bed.
‘There you are! All that carry on, and it was just as I said. They found it in Christabel’s locker. Well? What now?’
‘What now what?’
‘Aren’t you going to look inside and make sure it’s all there?’
‘No, not yet. I may do that later, but we’ve both had enough over-excitement to be going on with. I expect your own temperature might start soaring, if you had to chase round the hospital looking for the missing lipstick.’
‘Too right, and it’s getting late, so I’ll leave you now, and you must try to sleep. I expect they’ll give you a pill, so mind you take it. I’ll look in first thing in the morning and see how you are. It’s a relief to know that you can’t get into mischief, at least for the next twelve hours.’
He was right, too, although my blameless night was not for want of trying. I made two determined sorties toward Christabel’s room, once during the night and again in the early hours of the morning; but the door of that particular stable had been firmly shut, and on each occasion I found a policewoman camped outside it. Whether she was there to keep intruders out, or to keep Christabel in, I could not tell, but her expression was so forbidding that I sailed past, pretending to be on my way to the bathroom.
Probably there was nothing lost either, for it is doubtful if the room would have yielded any clue to the whereabouts of the rolled-up canvas. It was even less likely that Christabel would have handed it over on demand, having first gone to the trouble of removing it from my bag.
Twelve
(i)
My first visitor of the day was Nancy Harper Barrington, who made a dramatic entrance soon after nine o’clock, having first flung wide the door and then bashed and bumped a double-decker, rubber-wheeled trolley into my room.
Having instantly worked myself into the belief that this heralded an imminent brain-operation, which no one had seen fit to tell me about, I fell back against the pillows again, quite faint with relief to discover that the top half contained nothing more alarming than a selection of the morning newspapers and some seedy-looking paperbacks. The lower shelf was stacked with cigarettes and confectionery.
The Lady Bountiful, herself, although pale, was evidently at peace with the world again, every hair in its correct position in the chignon, and looking very brisk and efficient in her natty white overall.
‘Well, my dear, how are you?’ she asked. ‘I was on my rounds and I thought I’d look in for a sec.’
‘How kind! I feel a little –’
‘Well, that’s good, my dear. I mustn’t stop because I’ve got two miles of wards to get round, and one hell of a day in front of me.’
‘Do you do this chore every morning.’
‘No, only once or twice a month. We have a rota system and about twenty of us take it in turns. It’s a frightful bind, but one feels one should do what one can.’
‘And it must be pretty laborious, just getting that cumbersome great thing in and out. They ought to give you a small trolley, or else knock down some of the walls.’
‘To be terribly candid, my dear, I’m not strictly supposed to go into the private rooms. So don’t let on, will you? One is only meant to push it round the wards. Shattering bore, of course, but it cheers them up. Anyway, I thought I’d just take a peep and see how you were feeling.’
‘That was sweet of you. I’m really not too bad now. Just a bit woolly, but . . .’
‘Oh, I’m so glad. And, quite honestly, my dear, I envy you being waited on hand and foot and not a thing to worry about, I literally do. Tell me what happened, though. I’m dying to hear.’
Naturally, I had prepared an answer for this one, having composed a little tale in anticipation of the question coming up fairly frequently in the next few days. Unfortunately, I did not get much chance to practice it on Nancy.
‘The snag is, I can’t remember very clearly,’ I began. ‘It’s still rather blurred. . . .’
‘I suppose you’ve heard Dolores has walked out on me?’ she interrupted.
‘No, I hadn’t. When?’
‘Day before yesterday. Just up and left, without a word. No notice, nothing! Isn’t it too positively sickening?’
‘And no explanation?’
‘Well, you know what these peasants are, my dear! Utterly superstitious about death and so on. She was a very tiresome girl, in many ways, though I simply can’t think how I shall manage without her. The Maltings is only a tiny little place, as you know, but it’s out of the question to try and run it without at least two servants, specially in the holidays. Jeremy will be arriving home from Yorkshire at any moment, with literally trunkloads of dirty clothes.’
‘Yorkshire? I thought he was staying with the King of Northumbria?’
‘Oh well, same thing. The point is, my dear, that if I don’t get somebody soon I shall be spending my entire life bending over the washing-machine.’
‘I hope it won’t come to that. What about a temporary?’
‘I’d rather not. Most of them are so careless and irresponsible. Dolores was bad enough and one wouldn’t want one’s few remaining treasures to be smashed to smithereens. As a matter of fact, I was hoping to get round Mrs Hankinson to lend me Dolly for an hour or two every morning. If you’re going back there today, do put in a word for me, will you?’
It was my private conviction that nothing less than a word from the Almighty would have engineered such a sacrifice and, shirking the issue, I said:
‘But you still have Maria. Can’t she rustle up a cousin or something?’
‘Oh, my faithful old Maria! She’s been with us for years. Honest as the day and utterly devoted; but, to be perfectly frank with you, my dear, I’m not too keen to take a recommendation from her. It was Maria who foisted Dolores on me, and she’s been nothing but a nuisance since the day she arrived.’
From the serious way in which she related all this, it was apparent that Nancy believed that no subject on earth could hold a greater fascination for me; but I am not easily swept off my feet by other people’s domestic tribulations. Moreover, even twelve hours in hospital was long enough to inflict one symptom which is common to most inmates, namely a profound detachment from the hurly-burly of life outside those cloistered walls, combined with an equally profound ennui towards visitors whose range of conversation did not restrict itself principally to the patient’s condition.
I endeavoured to smother my yawns and not allow my eyes to slide too often towards the book I had been reading before she came in, and I must have succeeded pretty well in concealing my indifference, for she sat on, gassing away interminably about employment agencies and temporary cooks, until Nurse O’Malley broke it up by entering as one pursued by a bear as she whisked a thermometer out of her starched bib.
When she had helped Nancy to reverse the trolley out into the corridor, she perched herself on the window ledge, saying:
‘She’s a good sort, that Mrs H.B. Really and truly. Just a bit nosey, that’s all it is. Still, she’d be a friend of yours, I dare say?’
I still had my jaws clamped on the thermometer, so the only way to deny it was to waggle my head and hum.
‘Oh, my hat, you can take it out now. Must have been in good two minutes, wouldn’t you say? And let’s hope you’re nice and normal. Yes, you are! You’re a good girl, you know. And she means well, I don’t doubt. She has a gorgeous house, so they tell me.’
‘It’s not bad,’ I said. ‘Not what I’d choose, but not bad. I could tell you a fascinating thing about that house, though, O’Malley, darling.’
‘Could you now? And what would that be?’
‘It’s becoming a very popular place for running away from.’
(ii)
Dolly was the next to arrive. She staggered in, loaded with half a ton of groceries, and told me I was looking peaky, before moving on to the even less welcome news that Robin had been summoned to a conference in London and would not be back until the evening.
‘And he says you’re to stay right where you are, dear, and not to dream of coming home till he gets back. Most emphatic about it, he was. ‘‘I shan’t have an easy moment”, he says to me, ‘‘unless I know that my darling wife was under lock and key.” Those were his words: “My darling wife,” he said. Oh, he is comical, that Robin! So mind you do what he says, else poor old Dolly is going to get it in the neck.’
‘I don’t mind staying,’ I said. ‘I feel a bit limp, as it happens.’
‘You look it, dear. White as a sheet. Gave me quite a turn. What a thing to do! No wonder your poor boy gets so het up about you!’
‘How did you get here?’ I asked. ‘Surely you didn’t lug all that lot on the bus?’
‘Oh no, dear; Bert brought me over in the car. He’s to take a few things down to the Treasure Trove and then come back for me.’
‘Aunt Moo sent you in the Princess?’ I asked in amazement. ‘My condition must be more serious than they’ve let on.’
‘Well, there were all these things to take to Mrs Zany, and then, you see, dear, your poor Auntie’s ever so worried about the hospital diet, so she wanted you to have all this patty and stuff. She said the hospital food might do all right, if you were really ill, but with this clump on the head what you need is building up. Not that a clump on the head is anything to be sneezed at, as I told her. I’ve known them turn very nasty.’
The pervasive smell of hospital disinfectant had gone to Dolly’s head like new wine and she prattled on, describing the numerous stricken friends and relatives she had visited, right here, in these very walls where she was talking to me now, many of whom had been clumped on the head, as they hadn’t thought anything about at the time. It was only weeks later that they’d experienced this burning agony, or found themselves paralysed from the waist down.
However, among the many sad anecdotes from the near and distant past, there were two to which I paid more than token attention, and the first concerned Christabel. Dolly informed me that she had been to see her, before coming to me, and had got the fright of her life.
‘Yes, she gave me the fright of my life, too. It was the last thing I remember, before I got my clump on th
e head. How is she?’
‘Oh, cheeky as you please! Told me she expected to be out in a day or two. She’s a card, that Miss Blake, she really is.’
‘How did you get past the gorgon on the door?”
‘The what, dear?’
‘The policewoman.’
‘Oh, her! Yes, Sister told me about her, but she went off duty at eight o’clock. They’ll be sending another one up, any minute, she seemed to think. Not best pleased about it, either. I could tell that, by the way she spoke. And what good they think they’ll do with that beats me, as I said to her. Miss Blake would just as likely jump out of the window as not, if the fit took her.’
The second item which aroused a spark of interest had occurred outside the hospital and the victim, in this case, was Anabel’s dog. He had suffered a clump on the head in the form of a bullet between the eyes and had been found, stiff and dead, in the paddock which separated Mill Cottage from the Haverford Court woods.
‘But, Dolly, who could have done such a thing?’
‘Oh, there’s plenty round here taking out guns as don’t know how to use them. Cousin of mine got shot in the leg once, by someone as was supposed to be aiming at a pheasant. Got off scot free, too. Some of these magistrates don’t give a hoot.’
‘But this is not the season for pheasants.’
‘Well, there’s this tale about a roe deer being on the move, and some of them taking a rifle to look for it. Might account for it.’
‘Yes, that sounds a bit more like it, but I still don’t see how they could mistake a dog for a deer, at that range.’
‘No, and it doesn’t do to believe everything you hear, as your Auntie’s so fond of saying. Now, what’s up with Bert, I wonder? Oh, there he is! Sitting out in the yard like Patience on a Monument. Never do to keep him waiting, or there won’t half be ructions. Okey doke, then, dear; take care of yourself and don’t go dancing about with that bad head.’
Dancing about with my bad head was precisely the programme I had in mind, for the news that Christabel’s guard had been removed had inspired me to have another shot at getting into her room, while the coast was clear. However, Dolly had no sooner left, and provided me with the chance for this excursion, than I found myself overcome by lassitude and a deep reluctance to move a muscle. As though this were not discouraging enough, I soon became infected with another form of hospital malaise. This one has something in common with the queasiness which overtakes me when circling round Kennedy airport in a thunderstorm, and it struck me that cabin crews have picked up a few tips from the nursing profession, in the secretive and preoccupied manner in which they turn away questions.