Besides, while Mrs Muller was upstairs, he might manage another delicious encounter with Magda,—might even go into her bedroom and kiss her there. The risk inflamed his passion. If only someone would smother that horrible boy! His feelings towards Hugo were becoming quite murderous, when both Mrs Muller and Magda came up from the basement. Mrs Muller went straight on ahead. Magda turned round for a moment, gave him a nervous smile and then followed her mother. Five minutes later he heard Dr Jamieson’s step on the threshold and opened the door, and, as soon as the old man was in the hall, took his coat and hat and told him what had happened. He concluded by saying, ‘I noticed that when she held the telephone, though her hand was trembling, her grip was quite firm. Mrs Muller and Magda are upstairs with her now. I’ll be about when you come down, in case there’s anything I can do to help. And we’ll be most happy to give you a cup of tea, or something stronger, if you fancy it.’
Dr Jamieson, who looked not only sleepy but rather ill, gave a tired smile and said, ‘That’s very good of you. If coffee wouldn’t put you to too much trouble——’ Robert said, ‘Not at all,’ and followed him as he climbed the stairs. When they reached the first landing, Dorothy came out, but Robert pushed her gently back into the sitting-room, went in after her and shut the door.
As he anticipated, she was agog. ‘Oh, Robert, what do you make of it all? Is she really ill? What did Dr Jamieson say?’
‘He said he’d like some coffee when he comes down. I’ll go and get it ready.’
Despite the precautions which Robert and Miss Tredennick had taken that Justin’s sleep should not be broken by the ringing of bells, he was awake. Though he hadn’t heard the cry from Miss Tredennick’s bedroom, he had heard steps on the stairs, voices below him in the basement, more steps, then the opening and shutting of the front door and voices in the hall. His first thought had been that he ought to get up and investigate. Had something gone wrong with the plumbing? Was a cascade of water pouring down from the top of the house? Or was someone ill? But he shrank from stirring, partly from laziness and partly because he felt sure that he would be useless, whatever form the crisis might be taking. (Besides, he would have to put in his teeth and brush his hair.) Then he recognised Robert’s firm voice and was greatly relieved. There was a lot to be said for having a real man about the house. It didn’t occur to him to put himself in such a category.
‘Milk?’
‘Yes, please, half and half.’
‘And sugar?’
‘Yes, three lumps, if I may.’
‘Well, Doctor, how is she?’
Dr Jamieson looked at Dorothy reproachfully. (Must have been quite a pretty woman in her day. A bit faded now, and nervy, and much too excited. She ought to have known better, at her age, than to start questioning him about a patient.)
He sipped his coffee reflectively, and said at length, ‘Oh, I’ve every hope that she’ll soon be quite all right.’
‘You’re sure you wouldn’t like me to sit up with her?’
‘Oh no. I’ve given her something to make her sleep, and Magda’s going to sleep on the sofa, in the drawing-room, just in case of need.’
‘But, Doctor,—this sudden attack of blindness—has she really gone blind?’
He took another sip and said, ‘I hope when I’ve seen her to-morrow morning, I shall be able to issue a favourable bulletin.’ He smiled, yawned, apologised for yawning, and went on, ‘These things make one feel one’s age. I’ve got quite out of the way of sudden calls like this. I suppose it’s a sign that I ought to be handing over my practice to a younger man. But no young man would want it. It’s dying as fast as my patients, and even if some of them survive me, my practice can’t hope to, if we’re going to have another Labour Government.’
Dorothy gave Robert a quick glance of apprehension; for she knew that Tory talk nearly always made him truculent. But instead of reacting, he said, ‘Dorothy, do you think we could offer the doctor a drop of brandy? There used to be a bottle.’ Then he added, for Dr Jamieson’s benefit, ‘In this house, it’s my wife who has charge of the wine-cellar.’
Dr Jamieson was protesting unconvincingly, when Dorothy jumped up from her chair and said, ‘Oh, Robert, how clever of you to think of it. I got a bottle this morning—for our small party next Monday. It’s in the cupboard in the bedroom. I’ll go and fetch it.’ While she was out of the room, the doctor leant confidentially towards Robert and said, ‘Of course, I shall call in a second opinion.’ Robert nodded and said, ‘Yes, of course,’ while he thought what a ramp private practice could be.
Just as Dorothy was coming back with the bottle, three small glasses and a corkscrew, there was a tap on the door. It was Mrs Muller, surprisingly followed by Hugo, with his hair neatly brushed, and wearing a blue silk dressing-gown and blue bedroom-slippers. Mrs Muller said, ‘I do beg your pardon, I’m sure, for intruding like this, but Hugo has told me something he thinks the doctor ought to hear. May he come in?’
Robert said, rather stiffly, ‘Yes, of course he may. But don’t you think he had better speak to the doctor alone?’ However, Dr Jamieson seemed far too comfortably settled in his chair, to wish to move from it there and then, and Dorothy said, giving Hugo a smile, ‘Yes, of course,—come in, Hugo—and you too, Mrs Muller. That is, if the doctor doesn’t mind such an audience. Or would it be better if Robert and I went into our bedroom, just for a minute? I promise you, I’ll do my best not to listen through the door!’
She smiled again. (Really, this beat any party!) Mrs Muller said, ‘It’s very good of you, Madam, but I think I’ll wait for Hugo downstairs,’ went out and shut the door. Dr Jamieson said ponderously, ‘Well, I hardly think there can be any harm in your hearing whatever disclosure this young man has to make. Now, Hugo, what’s this about?’
After giving Dorothy a look of gratitude and Robert a much more complex look, Hugo began, with complete self-possession.
‘I know what woke up Miss Tredennick to-night. It was a car radio in the street, and it played the same tune as it played that night in September when she was ill before. I heard it both times. The tune is called, Will you do the doodle ’em with me? It’s very vulgar.’
The doctor turned towards Hugo with new interest and asked, ‘But what do you think was specially upsetting about this tune? You must have a lot of—er—vulgar music in this street. I know we do in the Crescent.’
Hugo looked at the old man cautiously and said, ‘I don’t suppose it was so much the tune, as the car that played it. You see, it was the same car that played it in September.’
‘Hm, most inconsiderate. If I had my way, there’d be a curfew for all street-noises from midnight to seven a.m. But I fail to see——’
Then Dorothy interposed. ‘Tell me, Hugo, where did the car stop?’
‘Outside Number Seven. That’s where it stopped before. You know the woman who lives there,—the young one, not Mrs O’Blahoney or one of the other three old ones—some man brought her back. The first time, they danced on the pavement. This time, they just sat in the car and talked—at least I suppose they talked—for quite a long time. Then the woman got out alone and went indoors.’
Dorothy said, ‘Oh yes, I know the woman Hugo means. She’s one of our rather flashier neighbours, Doctor, if you understand me.’ Meanwhile, Robert was blushing, half ashamed to remember that there had been days when the mere sight of the culprit had represented the sum-total of his sex-life.
Hugo said, ‘I don’t think Miss Tredennick likes the woman very much. I don’t like her either.’ As he spoke the last words, he looked straight at Robert, who blushed still more deeply. There was a short silence. Then Dr Jamieson said, ‘Thank you, Hugo. You were quite right to tell me this. It certainly might explain things up to a point, though of course—hm, hm,—well, it’s nearly four o’clock and to-morrow’s Christmas Eve, so the sooner you get back to bed the better, my boy.’
Hugo got up, gave the three adults a comprehensive bow, and said, ‘Good night, M
rs Fawley. Good night, Dr Jamieson. Good night, Mr Fawley.’ Once more he looked straight at Robert, baring his teeth a little, while his eyes radiated contempt, unwilling admiration and hatred.
When he was out of the room, Dorothy said, ‘What a very strange child he is. He somehow makes you feel as if he could read your thoughts.’
XIV
CHRISTMAS EVE
Christmas Eve began with a breakfast of bread and milk for Miss Tredennick. Dr Jamieson had said to Mrs Muller, ‘Unless her sight has come back to her by the morning—and it may—don’t give her an ordinary breakfast. She’d either have to fumble about for things on a tray—and make a mess of it—or Magda would have to feed her, which would be rather trying for both of them. Of course, in time, it would be different. But for the moment, I recommend bread and milk, which she can eat without help. Say I ordered it.’
He came round at a quarter past nine and found his patient perfectly well, except that she was still unable to see. She said, ‘Have I had a stroke?’ and he answered, ‘If you have, it was a stroke of a most peculiar kind, and the B.M.J. will have lots to say about it.’ She went on, ‘How am I to get through the day? It was bad enough getting through them before, but now—I can’t read, I can’t do embroidery, I can’t even look out of the window. I can’t do anything but listen to the wireless, which I hate. I think I’ll have Hugo to sit up with me and tell me what’s happening outside in the street. My body’s like a coffin. I need taking out of it.’
Dr Jamieson said, ‘You’ll be much too busy for that. Sir Claudius Catchpole is coming at half-past ten, and I’ve asked Mr Julius Augenblick, the ophthalmologist, to stand by for half-past eleven, in case he’s needed. I’ve also booked Sir Willoughby Wakenot, who’s one of our leading neurologists, for half-past one—it was his only free time—and at a quarter past three, I’d like you to have a talk with Fortescue Faring, a young psychiatrist who is highly thought of. So you see, you’ve a very full day ahead of you.’
He went, and Magda came in to prepare the room for the specialist’s visit. Miss Tredennick said, ‘Magda, I want to see Hugo for a moment. Will you fetch him? I don’t suppose he’s going to Mr Middleton to-day.’ Magda said, ‘No, Madam, he isn’t, but after last night he’s having breakfast in bed. Mother said he was very tired.’
‘What do you mean, when you say “after last night”? Was he awakened? Yes, poor boy, I suppose he was bound to be. Well, send him up as soon as there’s a gap between all these visitors. Don’t forget. It’s important.’
Sir Claudius Catchpole came and examined her and conferred at length with Dr Jamieson in the entrance-hall. ‘Quite so,—no sign at all,—subject of course to what Augenblick has to say—and Willoughby Wakenot. . . . My dear fellow, in such a case, one can’t take too many precautions. In the end—as you suggest—we may have to rely on Fortescue Faring, though to my old-fashioned way of thinking that would be a sad comedown for British medicine.’
Dorothy, who was watching from the window above, saw him leave the house, and thought, ‘What a handsome man! He looks every inch a genius.’ She thought much less of Julius Augenblick, a drab little man in a snuff-coloured overcoat and without a hat. His head was redeemed from baldness by scattered, irregular patches of thin black hair, which made it look like a map. He carried a very large and shabby brown bag. Forty minutes later, when he left the house, her opinion of him was even lower. He looked like a punctured balloon, as if his professional ego had been deflated.
She was still watching, when a nurse arrived. She was a smart, cheerful little body, but Dorothy wondered how long her resilience would maintain itself against Miss Tredennick’s barbed arrows. The nurse’s reception was certainly inauspicious; for Hugo had anticipated her upstairs by hardly more than a minute, and when Magda tapped on the bedroom door to announce her, Miss Tredennick called out, ‘I’m busy. Please ask her to wait in my sitting-room till I send for her.’ Then turning her sightless eyes towards Hugo’s voice, she continued, ‘So you heard the music too. Did you see anything?’
‘Yes, Madam, I saw the woman get out.’
‘And the man,—what did he do?’
‘The man stayed in the car. She shook her fist at it as it drove away and went indoors.’
‘Did you notice what time that was?’
‘Yes, a quarter past two.’ He paused, then went on with a trace of embarrassment, ‘You know, Madam, I spoke to Dr Jamieson last night and told him I knew what had upset you. Was that wrong of me? I thought it might help in your cure.’
She said, almost angrily, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t have done that. I wish you hadn’t. However, I suppose it makes no difference now. But I should have liked it to be a secret between us. If you notice anything else—you know what I mean—don’t tell them—just tell me. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Madam. I didn’t tell them about her waving her fist at the car. I kept that for you.’
‘Keep everything for me. Oh, my dear Hugo, you’ll have to lend me your eyes till mine recover. Keep a good watch, and write down everything you see in a private book and come up and read it to me. Oh dear, now I’ve got to face this new woman. Will you send her in?’
‘Yes, Madam. Goodbye for now.’
‘Goodbye, Hugo.’
He went out on to the landing, then opened the sitting-room door and found the nurse bridling by the back window. He gave her a condescending little nod, said, ‘Miss Tredennick is ready for you, Nurse,’ and went downstairs.
When Dorothy got back from her lunch with Susan at Garrows, she met Sir Willoughby Wakenot leaving Number Ten. He was big and sleek, with a bushy ginger moustache. She tried to read a diagnosis in his expression. It was slightly peevish, despite the artificial smile he gave her as he made way for her to go in. ‘It’s really too bad,’ she thought. ‘We ought to be told something definite by now. After all, it is Christmas-time and we have our plans to consider.’ And she wondered again whether she ought to cancel her Boxing Day party. Of course, she wouldn’t think of giving it, if Miss Tredennick turned out to be seriously ill. She made a resolve to ring up Dr Jamieson late that evening and ask him for his advice.
Justin, whose problem was even more urgent than Dorothy’s since his party was to take place that very afternoon, had done so already. The reply had been, ‘Go ahead, by all means.’ As a next step, he consulted Mrs Muller. Would she think it inconsiderate of him to inflict so much washing-up on a household already burdened with extra work? But she assured him that they could take it in their stride. Besides, she had already sent Hugo out to buy the refreshments. He loved shopping and was so clever at it. So Justin began to make his small preparations. What a pity it was that his guests were going to be such a very dull lot!
Mr Fortescue Faring, the psychiatrist, arrived a few minutes before he was due. It was one of his principles to catch his patients off their guard when he could. He didn’t realise that if Miss Tredennick had been able to see the time, she would have been quite capable of keeping him waiting, so as to give him a lesson in true punctuality. He had only been talking to her for five minutes when he said, ‘As you’ve never been treated in this way before, I ought to warn you that you’ll probably find yourself falling in love with me. If you do, it’ll be of no consequence at all. It’s merely a stage which we call a transference.’
She answered tartly. ‘I hardly think that’s likely,—at least, until I can see you. You have a nice voice and I like the type of eau-de-Cologne you use, but for all I know, you may be hideous.’ Faring, whom some of his more romantic patients compared to pictures of the youthful Shelley, and who didn’t dislike the comparison, said wittily, ‘Well, that remains to be seen’, but his expression was not very amiable.
Then he started to probe, very delicately at first, into the depths of her mind, but he soon found that his caution was quite unnecessary. It was amazing how many intimate things came pouring out during the next half-hour. At the age of twelve she had seen her father relieving one of nature�
�s innocent needs—she didn’t put it in this mealy-mouthed way—behind the potting-shed in their garden in Warwickshire, and she volunteered that she had rather enjoyed it. Indeed, Faring had to admit that never before had he come across a patient with so few inhibitions. It was only when (in accordance with Dr Jamieson’s priming) he approached the subject of the car belonging to Miss Varioli’s admirer, that he came upon a certain evasiveness,—an unwillingness to co-operate, the breaking-down of which might be, in two senses, not unlucrative. When the session was over, she said, ‘Well,—how soon shall I know whether you’re ugly or not?’, and he answered, ‘I hope it won’t be so very long now. But we must have patience. Any attempt to hurry things too much only makes them worse, and might enlarge the area of psychotic trauma. Tell me, frankly, have you enjoyed our talk?’ ‘Yes and no, Mr Faring.’ ‘I hope it didn’t distress you?’ ‘Not in the least. I hope it didn’t shock you.’ He gave her a smile of pity, then recollecting that she couldn’t see it, transformed it into a slightly forced little laugh.
Dr Jamieson paid another visit at half-past six. Miss Tredennick said, ‘Well, Doctor, this has been an expensive day. What’s the verdict?’
‘There isn’t one. None of us—and when I say us, I don’t of course include Mr Faring—can find anything wrong with you. Faring seems pretty confident that given time he can cure you completely,—but I’m hoping you’ll cure yourself long before that. Of course, if the symptom persists, you’ll have to go to a clinic after Christmas and be properly investigated. Quite possibly a course of shock-treatment would do the trick. Meanwhile——’
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