by Ruth Wade
Arnold plucked two pawns from the chessboard and held them behind his back. All she had to do was to choose sides. The game could be relied on to play itself out after that.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Light from the cottage windows beckoned through the gathering gloom. It had been a month since he’d walked down the chalk path to face whatever awaited him. The past two weeks plucking up courage to return had been amongst the worst he could ever remember having to endure. Whilst not engaged in seeing his clinic patients or delivering badly prepared lectures to bunches of eager-faced students, he’d been wallowing in a succession of brandy bottles.
Stephen knocked tentatively on the door. He never expected to feel an affinity with the despicable Gerald Potter but the words he’d read in the journal punched into his head: I am hardly able to sleep at nights knowing what rests on my actions and observations ... He rapped harder with his knuckles and called out Edith’s name. There was no answer. Helen had said she’d been under the weather the last time he’d been at Beddingham Hall; maybe a chill had developed into a chest cold and she was bed-ridden. He should have ascertained her state of health first – another omission – but he hadn’t wanted to subject himself to Peter’s knowing glances at his own debauched pallor. He was ashamed to admit how much he hoped she was incapacitated, before belatedly remembering he was still a doctor and should check on her welfare.
The room was warmer than he expected. Paraffin stoves were placed in front of the fireplace and table, purple flames dancing in the grilles. The air was laced with fumes. Would they be enough to overcome an invalid? But the Hargreaves wouldn’t have supplied them if they hadn’t considered it safe. Placing his briefcase beside the armchair, Stephen took off his outdoor things and hung them on the back of the door before shutting it with a bang to alert Edith to the fact she had a visitor. He called out her name once more then climbed the stairs. The door at the top was flung wide, the room empty, the bed made. Had she been taken so poorly she was in the infirmary? But then why would Helen be wasting fuel they could ill-afford on an empty cottage? Were the stoves in preparation for Edith’s imminent return? The thought plunged him into another agony of indecision: to go or stay? To flee back to London on the pretext of allowing his patient to make a full recovery, or to wait and see which of them was really too weak to face an encounter?
Back down in the living room, Stephen paced around to try to bring an end to his dithering. Pausing to warm his icy fingers he spotted a folded piece of paper on the table behind the top of the heater. He picked it up. A note written in the same hand he’d come across unexpectedly once before. A poem, rather; he thought he recognised the language of John Donne:
And since thou so desirously
Did’st long to die, that long before thou could’st,
And long since thou no more couldst die,
Thou in thy scatter’d mystic body wouldst
In Abel die, and ever since
In thine; let their blood come
To beg for us, a discreet patience
Of death, or of worse life: for Oh, to some
Not to be Martyrs, is a martyrdom.
He read it again, slower this time, the words bouncing in front of his eyes as the paper magnified the tremor in his hands. Then he noticed it. A trail of dots staining the floorboards red. He felt sick as his eyes followed them to the bathroom tucked away under the stairs.
Stephen lunged forward, knocking over the stove. Hungry yellow flames spat up from the slick of spilt paraffin. Christ! What to do, what to do? Whirling back around, he snatched open the front door before lifting up the heater and throwing it outside. He expected to hear the whoosh of an explosion but the rush of air must’ve extinguished the flame. However the fire in the centre of the room was still burning. The pounding in his ears made it feel as if the walls were pressing in on him; there was a frozen waste where his stomach should’ve been; tears of panic coursed down his cheeks. He needed a wet towel. He ran to the bathroom. The door was locked. A large pool of red was creeping out from underneath.
‘No! Please, God, no!’
With the strength of a madman he battered his shoulder again and again against the thick planks. His upper arm was numb before the catch gave way with a screech and splinter of wood. He dived inside, desperately wanting to close his eyes to the sight of Edith Potter with slashed wrists gaping as she oozed life at his feet. But the tiny space was empty. He grabbed a towel from the rail, soaked it under the basin taps, and dashed back to smother the flames.
He was on his hands and knees dabbing at the last remaining traces of unconsumed paraffin when he heard the front door open.
‘Dr Maynard! What are you doing? And why is one of my precious heaters smashed up on the grass?’
‘Edith ... You’re okay ... I thought ... I thought ...’
‘Not very clearly, evidently.’
Stephen felt disorientated by the waves of hysteria and nausea colliding in his chest. His trousers from the knees down were sodden – as was the entire front of his jacket – and the reek of paraffin was making his head spin. He hauled himself up using the table as support.
‘Excuse me; I won’t be a moment ...’
He staggered out into the cold drizzle and threw up violently until there was nothing left for him to give.
*
‘I was feeling cooped up and went for a walk.’
‘With the threat of an imminent storm?’
‘The weather was acceptable enough when I left.’
She had donated the armchair and he was sitting wrapped in his overcoat and a blanket from her bed; his trousers and jacket steaming in front of the remaining stove. The room was beginning to resemble the inside of a London bus during a downpour.
‘Did you forget it was Sunday? We have a standing arrangement for Sundays.’
‘Of course I didn’t; I’m not stupid. How was I to know you were going to bother to turn up seeing as you neglected so many others? I’m still waiting for an apology for the discourtesy of not even a word to release me from hanging around like a wallflower.’
She was being prickly and combative, her voice laced with a tone of contempt. He supposed he had it coming to him; she was right about his breaching the contract between them, and it must’ve been a shock to arrive back to witness the aftermath of him almost setting fire to her home. But not nearly such a shock as he’d had when he’d thought she’d killed herself.
‘I am truly sorry about that, but I did make it clear that I’m seeing you in my own time and that there will be occasions when work with my other patients makes my absence unavoidable.’
It would do her no harm to realise that the entire world didn’t revolve around Edith Potter. Besides, now wasn’t time for the truth of why he’d acted like such a coward; in the mood she was in he wouldn’t put it past her to take refuge in physically attacking him. She’d done it before when her anger hadn’t been anywhere so near the surface. He tried to remind himself that she was playing the victim/rescuer/persecutor game again and that he mustn’t allow his own raw emotions to suck him into the triangle.
‘Tell me about the blood on the floor, Edith; did you cut yourself, have a nosebleed?’
‘What? ... Oh, the red ink. That’s down to you, that is. Those watercolour pencils you gave me that time reawakened my interest in art. I’ve been taking drawing lessons from a very talented man up at the Hall. He wanted me to produce some pen and ink sketches but the nib kept getting blocked so I made a number of trips to wash it under the tap. Then decided to water down the bottle only to bang into the bathroom doorknob and drop it. At that point I decided some fresh air was called for ... And you assumed ... Got it into your head ...’
She began choking on her laughter. Then let it out in great peals that bounced off the walls. As if he didn’t feel humiliated enough sitting there without his trousers on. The look she gave him through her tears of mirth was triumphant. And vicious.
‘Well then, show me. Le
t’s see some of your artistic endeavours.’
‘I threw them away. Tore them up in little pieces and cast them to the wind. They weren’t good enough.’
Or had they been too revealing of her inner turmoil? He’d always believed that visual representations would be the key to circumventing her repression except now he knew the tenor of the horrors that might have resurfaced during the process. But he wouldn’t push her until he felt ready to deal with the consequences; he was still more than a little shaky and, much as he didn’t like to admit it, her antagonism was going way beyond making him irritated.
‘Why the poem; did that have anything to do with the pictures you were working on?’
‘It must be very tedious to have to try to force a connection between everything. Having nothing else better to do last weekend – for reasons you are very well aware of – I decided to see if I could sharpen my recall. You do remember I have problems with my memory, don’t you?’
Stephen knew to show he wasn’t immune to her goading would be a mistake so he bent forward to fiddle with the buckles on his briefcase. But as he pulled out the notepad, the blanket slipped from his knees and he ended up scrabbling to preserve his modesty like a maiden aunt mortified at revealing her bloomers. He was beginning to feel as if he hadn’t any self-control left. She must be having the time of her life at his expense.
‘So I flicked through the book of John Donne sonnets you so thoughtfully brought me from Fletching searching for one I might have memorised when I was going through one of the more romantic phases of my life – believe it or not I did have some. Death Be Not Proud had always been a particular favourite but when I sat down to write it out that other one flowed from my pen. More of that automatic writing from deep in my subconscious, no doubt. For which I owe you for planting the seed. Do you think it worth analysing for significance and portent?’
She’d finally done it. Laid the responsibility for everything – from his over-reaction, the accident with the stove, and each of the factors that had led him to draw his erroneous conclusion – firmly at his own door. Slammed shut with a hefty dose of mockery. She was grinning at him now with ...
Stephen leapt to his feet, his concern over cutting a ridiculous figure eclipsed by the feeling that at any moment he might erupt with fury. He covered the distance to the bathroom in three strides.
‘Just as I thought. No glass. You smashed the bottle, Edith, remember? So where’s the glass?’
‘I cleared it up.’
‘No you didn’t. You told me you went straight out for a walk.’
‘Maybe I implied that but it was after I picked up the shards.’
‘The wastepaper basket in here is empty so what did you do, put the pieces in your pocket and scatter them in the fields?’
‘Precisely.’
‘You’re a liar.’
He stepped back into the living room, his whole body shaking.
‘You heartless bitch; was it Helen who told you about Olive?’
‘Another of your unrequited love affairs?’
‘I bet she did. You set this up. You knew I was terrified of another patient committing suicide whilst under my care and you wanted me convinced I’d pushed you into taking your own life. How could you be so cruel? What have I ever done to make you hate me so much except try to help?’
She had been looking down at her feet but now she stared straight into his eyes, the inhuman coldness of her gaze evaporating his outrage. Then her mind disengaged and there was nothing. Edith was gone. This could be the beginning of her edging back into a catatonic stupor. He had to do something quickly. But what? Could he leave her even for a minute? Why hadn’t the Hargreaves thought of installing an alarm in the cottages; or he of arming himself with a sedative? That’s what he’d do, go and find Helen. With any luck she’d be starting the drugs round about now.
Stephen snatched up his trousers, blew out the stove flame, wrapped the blanket around Edith, briefly checked her pulse and breathing, then ran out into the rain.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
His feet slid from under him as he took a shortcut across the grassy slope. When he reached the Hall, six of the more able-bodied men were negotiating their way through the entrance with a large Norway Spruce. Stephen pushed past roughly and one of the troupe ended up face first in the needled branches. Obscenities tracked him up the stairs. Helen was emerging from a consulting room.
‘Do you have the dispensary key on you?’
She nodded. He grabbed her arm.
‘Hurry. Edith needs something to knock her out. Right out. Comatose. Insensible. Now!’
Something of his urgency got through Helen’s surprise and she ran with him down the corridor. She opened the door to the dispensary without breaking stride.
‘Okay, I’ll trust your clinical judgement on this one, Stephen, but I decide what to give her, right?’ Helen unlocked the drugs cupboard and pulled out a number of vials and a hypodermic syringe. ‘Vital signs?’
‘Thready pulse. Rapid, shallow breathing. Clammy skin. The sort of pallor you’d expect from shock ...’
‘What have you done to her?’
‘Nothing. Except maybe take that risk you were so keen on ...’
It wasn’t fair to blame Helen but he’d heaped so much of it on himself on the mad dash over that he couldn’t take any coming from another quarter.
‘... She did it to herself – or rather, he did. Look, I’ll explain at a more appropriate moment.’
‘Point taken. Has she eaten today?’
‘You’re in a better position to know something like that.’
Helen had picked out two vials and appeared to be weighing them up in either hand.
‘She was at the Hall all morning …’
‘So she didn’t go out for a walk?’
‘… playing chess with Arnold which means she’d have had a pretty good luncheon. This one then.’ She pocketed the drug. ‘What are you afraid of, self harm?’
‘No, not at this stage: that’ll she’ll become catatonic.’
‘Did she have a fugue?’
‘Not in the classic sense – no foaming at the mouth, drumming heels ...’
‘And the moment I administer this she’ll be in no state to. Let’s hope there were no seizures in the meantime. But if needs be I’ll get an ambulance out and the hospital can take it from there. Assuming everything’s okay, I’ll sit with her while it takes effect.’
They were on the terrace now.
‘Go and tell Peter what I’m up to and get him to lend you some dry clothes; I don’t fancy having to play nursemaid when you collapse in a fever.’
Helen ran down the slope and turned when she reached the sure footing of the path.
‘And a large slug of brandy. Doctor’s orders. Tell him I’ll batter his brains out if he raises so much as one eyebrow.’
Her voice had barely reached him through the wind funnelling off the Downs. The rain was coming off Stephen in rivulets before he dragged his heavy legs into the shelter of Beddingham Hall.
*
Two hours later, he let himself into the cottage. Helen was slumped in the armchair, her exhaustion making her look vulnerable and ethereally beautiful.
‘Edith’s all tucked up and out like a light. She’s fine, Stephen, no damage done.’
Stephen gave an account of the near-disaster with the stove and how Edith had walked in on him dousing the flames. He left out everything else.
‘Well, that explains everything then – her stunned withdrawal, the scorch marks on the floor, the ruined towel, and the irreparable heater.’
‘I was stupidly clumsy, and then I panicked. I’ll pay for a new one of course.’
‘Don’t be daft. These things happen. I’m only glad it was you knocked it over and not Edith. I should have considered that possibility when I offered them to her, but not having had the experience of children to alert me to the dangers.’
Her expression was so sad Stephen wanted to take
her in his arms and soothe it away.
‘Are you going back to London tonight or would you like to stay for supper? Your room’s made up and you could always catch the Lewes milk-train if you need to be at the clinic early.’
The way she made it sound as if he belonged up at the Hall, with her, made his blood tingle.
‘I won’t thanks. Only I will stay. Here with Edith.’
‘A bedside vigil is all very laudable but totally unnecessary. After what I’ve given her she will have no awareness of your presence, and probably no memory of anything that happened from the moment she finished her last chess match with Arnold. When she comes to, some time tomorrow afternoon, she’ll have slept through the effects of the shock and be no worse off than if she’d simply come down to her empty cottage. Edith Potter is upstairs dead to the world, Stephen; you don’t have to sit around playing the martyr because of something that could have happened, but didn’t.’
How could she possibly know that in trying to get him of the hook she’d just reminded him of everything he’d prefer to forget? It was more than a little tempting to ask her to stick one of her magic needles in his arm. He peeled off Peter’s oilskin cape.
‘Here, take this. It’s cats and dogs outside. Ask one of the farmhands to wake me when they round up the cows for milking, will you? I won’t say goodbye in the morning, but all being well, I’ll see you next Sunday.’