Deathline

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  By the time she had got Beatrice settled for the night, the day had begun to seem endless. There were all kinds of things she ought to be doing, but the idea of bed was irresistible. She found it comfortable, meant to read a chapter of Phineas Finn, fell fast asleep.

  She woke, late for her, to a grey morning and a cold house. She had left both their doors open, urging Beatrice to ring for her if she needed help in the night, looked in reproachfully on the way to the bathroom to say, ‘You never called me.’

  ‘I crawled.’ Was it the first time Beatrice had smiled at her? ‘You needed your sleep. And I feel much better. But it’s cold.’

  ‘I think the heating must be off.’ Helen had noticed a blow-heater in the corner of the room and brought it out. ‘You said you were having trouble with it?’

  ‘Yes. Three Star card by the telephone, but I sometimes wonder if Wendy doesn’t fool around with it. She does tend to know best.’

  ‘I’ll have a look when I get down. After breakfast, if you can bear it.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere. Did you sleep?’

  ‘Yes. Do you realize it’s Christmas Day on Saturday?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose it does. Except I’d better get some food into the house.’

  ‘Mr Patel will be open all hours.’

  ‘Yes, but you must have a butcher somewhere in Old Leyning. I prefer my food real.’

  ‘Oh, so do I. Steven in the covered market. He’s your man. Tell him I sent you. I always kept fillet steak in the deep freeze for Paul. And there’s a vegetable stall across from him. Not Brussels sprouts.’

  Downstairs, Helen found the heating controls at off, switched them on and was relieved to hear the roar of a boiler switching on. From below? A cellar? Investigating, she found the cellar door at the garden end of the hall, and went down to find the boiler rumbling away and, on the far wall, serried ranks of loaded wine racks. Now she understood the faint look of disappointment she had caught on Beatrice’s face when she had taken up her tray the night before. She found a bottle of Burgundy, took it up to breathe, and set about making their breakfast.

  No newspaper had come, and only one piece of mail, an obvious Christmas card. It reminded her that she had never checked through the pile of junk mail she had picked up the day before, and she collected it to work through with her second cup of coffee. Most of it was advertising of one kind or another, but she found two more Christmas cards and what looked like two bills, one from British Telecom, with a final look to it. The telephone had not rung once since she had arrived. She checked the phone in the hall and was relieved to hear the familiar ringing tone. But it made her realize that it was more than time that the two of them talked about money. She heated up the rest of the coffee and took the pot and the mail upstairs with her.

  Beatrice accepted more coffee with enthusiasm and made a face at the mail. ‘Christmas cards! Idiotic business. Thought they’d stopped coming. Throw them away. Difficult about the bills. Lost touch with the bank, rather. Used to do it by telephone. Mother’s maiden name or something. Nice girls, kind, helpful. Then I got a letter full of numbers to use. And a – what do they call it? PIN code? It’s around somewhere. I can’t remember numbers, Helen. I meant to go into the bank, explain, but then I had the fall. Maybe if you could find the letter, take it in, they might tell you how much there is.’ She was beginning to look sleepy again.

  ‘Which bank?’ asked Helen.

  ‘Barclays in Leyning. That’s the trouble. Up the hill, too far to walk, taxis can’t park. Paul always banked at Barclays … My pension goes in there … Might be something in by now. Can’t have you paying for everything. Must talk about it.’ Her head fell back against the pillow.

  Helen put the breakfast tray out on the hall table and began quietly searching the room, tidying as she went.

  It was a bit like being an archaeologist, she thought, as she worked her way through layers of abandoned clothing, newspapers, books and mail. Beatrice Tresikker must have been very far from well for some time, just managing to keep chaos at bay with the weekly help of Wendy, who should come tomorrow. Then there had come the fall and the pace of confusion had accelerated. No mail had been opened for over two weeks, and Helen was glad to find a bank statement among this batch, as well as a couple more bills.

  ‘Been busy, haven’t you? Anything interesting?’ Beatrice’s eyes sparkled as she pulled herself up a little in the bed. Each time she woke from one of her short sleeps, she looked a little better.

  ‘Yes, a bank statement. Unopened.’ She held it out. ‘And I found their letter, too, about telephone banking.’

  ‘Splendid, then you had better go and sort them out. No, no.’ She waved the envelopes away. ‘I don’t want them. You’re in charge now. Open it up, Helen, and tell me how we stand. Red or black?’

  ‘Black, but not very.’ Helen was studying the brief statement. No money had come in at all in the month it covered, and only two cheques were recorded, each for fifty pounds, but several sums had gone out on standing orders – two, she noticed, to the British Red Cross, one for twenty and the other for fifty pounds. ‘Your balance is only £250,’ she said. ‘And that was a while ago.’

  ‘Not much riotous living in that,’ said Beatrice. ‘Better move something from deposit. My trust money goes straight in there.’

  ‘Trust?’

  ‘That was the joke on me. On Paul and me. Father left a mean will. I never for a moment imagined he’d do such a thing. He said I had acted irresponsibly. Not fit to handle money. Left most of it to Ben and her financier, set up a trust for me. Quarterly payments and the capital to go to my children, or if not, Ben’s, when I died. What a laugh. Not much chance of it being children of mine!’

  ‘Has your sister got children?’

  ‘I don’t know. How should I? I cut the connection, didn’t I? Anyway, I shan’t be here to care. But it made Paul terribly angry. He thought he and Pa had got on at that terrible engagement party. Well, Ben’s Richard Norton was such a visible old Bostonian drip, it stood to reason Paul would shine by comparison. A long time ago.’ She was beginning to drift again.

  Helen had been studying the instructions for the new telephone banking system. ‘I can see why you boggled at remembering all these numbers,’ she said. ‘If I got you a piece of writing paper do you think you could do me a note to your bank manager? I think we need an up to date statement of your accounts and a note of all these standing orders you seem to have authorized.’

  ‘Not a bank manager any more,’ said Beatrice sleepily. ‘A personal banker, such nice girls. Yes, do go and see one of them. Explain …’

  The doorbell rang, making them both start. ‘I’m not at home,’ Beatrice said as Helen left the room.

  It was Dr Braddock, black bag in hand, into the house already. ‘I thought I’d just come and make sure she was going along all right,’ he said, starting up the stairs.

  ‘I’m glad you did,’ said Helen following him. ‘And can we have a quick word afterwards?’

  ‘If it is quick.’ He was in the upstairs hall, knocking on the open door of Beatrice’s room. ‘It’s Hugh Braddock, Mrs Tresikker.’ He went in and shut the door gently but firmly behind him.

  Helen fought down unreasonable fury. Of course he was in a hurry. Doctors always were. Naturally he had every right to see his patient alone. She stood in the hall, fuming, trying to sort out the questions she wanted to ask him.

  ‘Much better,’ he said, emerging from the room five minutes later. ‘But you’re no fool, you know that. Tell me, how long can you stay?’

  Helen opened the door of the front parlour, glad she had dusted it. ‘As long as she needs me,’ she told him curtly. ‘I lost my job. She advertised. It’s a life-saver for me. Badly needed board and lodging. But I’m glad you brought it up, Dr Braddock, because I’m a little anxious about the way she is trusting me, taking me for granted. Someone needs to take up my references.’

  �
�Well, she’s not going to.’

  ‘I can see that. I’m really glad you came. She seems to have nobody, nobody at all.’

  ‘It happens. If you’re worried, you had better go and see her solicitors, Finch & Finch in the High Street.’

  ‘Old Leyning or New?’

  ‘Old. They’ll be in the book.’

  ‘Yes. She really is better, isn’t she?’

  ‘Much. Whatever you’ve been doing, go on. Painkillers when she wants them. Let her do just as much or as little as she pleases. She has a lot of sense. Feed her up, let her rest, let me know if there is any change.’ He moved to go.

  ‘But the fall,’ she protested. ‘Has she been X-rayed? Is she going to be able to walk?’

  ‘Oh, I think so; she says it’s much easier today. I was afraid at first it might mean a hip replacement, and I very much doubt if she is up to that. Or to the hassle of an X-ray, come to that. All that waiting around. Anyway, she’d have refused to go, she made that clear enough from the start. I do try to listen to my patients, Miss Wesley.’

  ‘Westley,’ she said. ‘Helen Westley.’

  ‘Good,’ he said, as if that settled something, and left.

  ‘Maddening man.’ She returned, still bristling, to Beatrice’s room. ‘Surely even a doctor should have time for basic good manners.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Beatrice. ‘No one else has. It’s not a mannerly world. Anyway, he did me good, and I’m the patient. He says what I need is a stick and some courage. I chipped the bone, he thinks, so it’ll hurt, but it doesn’t matter. Not a sinister sign of anything. Funny thing, at my time of life, you are always looking out for sinister signs, and yet what you really long for is death. Or do we? It’s been a long morning, Helen. I don’t know about you, but I fancy a glass of sherry before lunch.’

  ‘Lunch?’ Helen looked at her watch. ‘Goodness gracious. And I meant to go out shopping.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll manage another miracle meal for us. The shopping will just have to wait; I really need that sherry.’

  Taking her first sip, she looked at Helen. ‘He said a dreadful thing to me, that fool doctor. He told me I was good for years yet, if I was careful. I don’t want years yet! Why should I? What am I to do with them? What have I ever done?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Helen gave up all thought of the shopping and poured herself a glass of sherry too. ‘You tell me.’ She pulled up a comfortable chair and sat down by the bed.

  ‘Wasted my life, that’s what I’ve done. Sat around waiting for Paul to come back when I should have been out in the world doing something. Being someone. Helping someone.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  ‘Every time I got started on something, he came back. Wanting me. Needing me.’ She put down her glass with a click on the bedside table. ‘Or needing my money? All this talk about bank accounts has made me think.’ She looked cheerlessly at Helen. ‘My father was right, you know. The last time Paul came back I had to tell him my capital was used up. Gone. Finished. We were down to the quarterly stipend. Not Paul’s scene at all. He loved the large gesture, did Paul.’

  What in the world to say? ‘Was that long ago?’

  ‘Ages. Let me see; time gets so muddly when you are my age. Ten years, fifteen… something like that. It was after I had started to get old. I remember that. He looked just the same, but I could see him thinking I had changed. Everything had changed. What with the money being tight and all, I suppose I had let myself go a bit. No fun dressing just for yourself. And after that time, not even a postcard. I thought it meant he had given up on the epic. I didn’t realize for a long time that he had given up on me.’

  ‘Do you think he is dead? You talk as if he were.’

  ‘Yes, I had noticed that. Do you know that would be a relief, I think. I’d know where I stood: a proper widow …’ She was falling asleep again, and Helen went quietly downstairs, seething with rage at Paul Tresikker, and made bowls of soup for them both. Too late today to do anything about the bank in Leyning. It was lucky she had drawn so much from the Mortlake cash machine on her way. She must find the shops and start laying in food for the long Christmas weekend which began to loom alarmingly near.

  She found a stick in the downstairs cupboard and after lunch suggested that Beatrice try to use it to get to the loo while she was there to help. ‘I never did like walking with a stick,’ protested Beatrice, and the experiment would have been a disaster if Helen had not been there. It made her crosser than ever with Dr Braddock, but, ‘Nothing wrong with crawling,’ said Beatrice cheerfully. ‘It’s how we started after all, on all fours. You must read my book sometime when you aren’t so busy.’

  ‘Your book?’

  ‘I’ve been writing it for years. About how the human race went wrong. Walking instead of crawling; men in charge instead of women. All a terrible mistake. Have a look at it some time. It’s all in that cupboard, along with what I tried to write about Paul. A proper mess, I’m afraid. Longhand and pencil. Idiotic. Now, off you go and shop, and don’t fret about me. I’ll crawl if I must. That’s the trouble about sherry, but it’s worth it. Take the key with you, Helen. Hugh Braddock’s been and I don’t want anyone else.’

  Before she went out, Helen telephoned Finch & Finch and was told by a brisk receptionist that Mrs Tresikker’s affairs were handled by Mr Finch Junior, but he was tied up until after New Year’s. Something about her tone suggested palatial offices, large bills and little interest in impecunious old ladies. Helen refused her grudging offer of an appointment in January and rang off. She and Beatrice would just sort things out between themselves, without expensive help from Mr Finch Junior. After all, she considered herself trustworthy. Why not let Beatrice trust her?

  She found Steven the butcher lurking behind a mountain of turkeys. ‘Old Ma Tresikker!’ he exclaimed. ‘I am glad to hear she’s still with us. Yes, fillet steak, of course, and what about an order for Friday?’

  ‘Isn’t it too late?’

  ‘Not for Mrs Tresikker. And I’m closed right through the weekend. I’ve a capon somebody cancelled. And she likes my sausages …’ She found herself being talked through what seemed like a sensible, if extravagant, order. But, ‘Feed her up,’ Dr Braddock had said. They would worry about money in the new year. ‘I don’t suppose you deliver?’ she asked hopefully.

  ‘ ’Fraid not. Used to. Hopeless these days with the traffic the way it is. No one does except Patel. Sorry, love.’ He sounded as if he meant it.

  By the time she had bought all the vegetables and fruit she could carry it was black dark. She had come by the lanes Mr Patel had told her about, a series of narrow passages and steps that led directly down from the High House, cutting across the zigzagging road. Now, heavily loaded, she stood on the pavement looking doubtfully at the first flight of steps. It was not just that it was steep, it was also very badly lit, just the place for a mugger. She sighed and started up the long slope of the road.

  Four

  Steak and a glass of burgundy were a success. By some shuffling of furniture and a good deal of running up and down stairs, Helen contrived to eat sociably in Beatrice’s bedroom, and felt the shared food and wine a step forward in the acquaintance that was rapidly becoming friendship. ‘Here’s to Paul,’ said Beatrice, raising her glass. ‘And I hope he is either happy or dead.’

  ‘How old would he be?’ Helen had wondered about this.

  ‘Older than me. Goodness, he’d be nearly ninety.’

  ‘And nothing ever published?’ Was it heartless to ask?

  ‘Not that I know of. Not in book form. Lots of poems in magazines before the war: Time and Tide, The Weekend Review, The Spectator, that kind of thing.’ She took a sip of wine. ‘He used to write me sonnets, one a day at first. A Garland for Beatrice, he called it. Some of them made me cry for sheer joy. It was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me.’

  ‘But they weren’t published?’

  ‘At first he didn’t want to. Said they were too pe
rsonal, too private … And then there was the war, and it was all different after that. Looking back, I think Portugal was a mistake.’

  ‘Portugal?’

  ‘We went there, early in 1940. Paul had this rich friend from Cambridge. A bit older, he’d met him through the Apostles, a port wine family from Oporto. A lot of their English staff left to join up, and he offered Paul a job at a Quinta – a farm of his upriver on the Douro. It seemed the obvious answer when the authorities were being so foul to him here, but looking back, I think it was a mistake. It cut him off, you see. No conversation; not with anyone who could stand up to him. And he hated the work. Luckily I managed to do most of it for him, on the quiet. I enjoyed it, learned a lot, even managed to learn Portuguese; I liked them so much. It was all wonderful for me. I loved the place, too. It was so beautiful, Helen: an old white farmhouse, set among vineyards, on the slope up from that amazing river. I’m afraid I was having such a fine time myself I didn’t realize what was happening to Paul.’

  ‘What was?’

  ‘He was bored, I think. The Soul’s Journey wasn’t going well.’

  ‘The Soul’s Journey?’

  ‘His long poem. It had a Greek name. Psycho-something-or-other. Greek to me. I never could remember it. The trouble was, he needed someone to discuss his ideas with, cut his teeth on, and I was no use. Besides, I was so busy, so happy … Happiness is very selfish, Helen. I just didn’t notice. Give me a little more wine.’

  ‘Notice?’

  ‘That he was drinking too much. We were surrounded by the stuff, you see. It was too easy. It began with port wine tastings, but it didn’t end there. I think half the time when I imagined him wrestling with his blank verse he was dead to the world, sleeping off his lunchtime vinho verde. I only really noticed when the war ended and we got back to England. And then it was all so wrong. His friends who had gone to the States had work to show for it; the ones who had stayed had been part of the war effort; we were out of it, sidelined, rejected. Worst of all, Virginia Woolf was dead. I hadn’t realized that it was she who drew Paul into that circle, not Leonard. Myself, I had always liked him best; you could talk to him about anything. I felt she was always looking down her elegant aristocratic nose at me. So mostly I used to let Paul go off to Monk’s House to see them on his own, it seemed easier. But when we got back, he didn’t feel welcome any more. It was all change there and he wasn’t part of it.’