Oh – love. What was that kind of hopeless fantasy love? Jealousy? Regret? Humiliation? You could think yourself into or out of it. But she said, ‘Yes, I think so.’ to avoid telling Robbie that she did not love him.
She had never seen Peter except at the old rectory. She had not expected that he would come to the hospital. Except for Sarah, who had worked for him, he did not see any of the Samaritans outside the Centre.
Victoria had been dozing when he wandered in, as he had in the dream when she thought he had said, ‘I am the angel of God...’, and stood with his hands in his trouser pockets, holding them up because they were baggy and old.
He told her that he had seen Michael. ‘They’ve got him down at the Chater Home. He seems all right. Whether he fell or was knocked down, he was too drunk to get hurt. When I told him you saved his life, he said, “Victoria – who’s she?” ‘
Smiling was still painful. Laughing was impossible. ‘I always have to tell him.’
‘And I came to tell you that at last night’s meeting, the Companions decided to ask you to join them.’
‘Me? Because of Mike? But that was nothing. I stumbled into it. I wasn’t brave or anything. All I did was get knocked out.’
Peter said, ‘Not because of what you did. Companions aren’t chosen that way. It’s because of what you are.’
‘Oh no, not me. Why me?’
‘Yes.’ He nodded his tawny rough head from which the barber thinned ‘enough to stuff a sofa’ without any appreciable difference. ‘You.’
‘... and so I rang Dr Strong and told him. “Mrs Potter is extremely ill,” I told him. “I believe it’s a heart attack.” ‘
Paul had come to see Alice, but Mrs Laidlaw, grinning behind her desk, had snared him on the way in.
‘ “How old is she?” he asks. I tell him, “Ninety.” “Then she’ll probably die anyway,” says this good Doctor Strong of whom they think so highly. Two hours later, I ring him back and tell him, “Mrs Potter has expired,” and he says, “I told you so.”’ Paul could not detect whether she thought this was funny or not.
He went to the room where Alice sat with a piece of blue ribbon tied round her hair, which seemed to get whiter each time they washed it. On the way, he passed Tim’s girl Felicity, arm in arm with a rather sprightly old man on a cane.
She stopped and said, ‘Hullo, Mr H.’ in her vaguely insulting way, jaw tipped, as if inviting you to sock it. ‘Meet Mr Sissons.’ The old gentleman was wearing a fairly decent light-grey suit with a flower in his buttonhole and a shine on his shoes. A soft grey hat was arranged over the wens and brown patches of his head at a carefully rakish angle. They were going for a walk.
‘Mr Sissons is my very special patient,’ Felicity said, giving his arm a little squeeze.
‘And she’s my special girlfriend,’ the old gentleman said, a white moustache covering his upper lip, the lower one impotently lascivious. ‘You know this felicitous young lady?’
‘Oh yes, she takes care of my wife.’
‘I take care of everybody, don’t I?’ Felicity led Mr Sissons away, cackling and besotted.
Alice had not changed in the weeks she had been here, but when Felicity came into the room after the walk, she began the finger clicking and the winking. She told Alice something that the old gentleman had said, and she told her a story about another patient who had fallen out of bed. Alice stared, her sad face unmoved.
‘You see?’ Felicity said. ‘She knows. She understands everything I say.’
What if she could? What if Alice was still Alice behind that dribbling mask, suffering without succour the torment of hearing without being able to speak, of not even being able to tell them that she heard?
If that could possibly be so, then Paul’s ‘I don’t think so’ would be another nail driven.
‘Listen, Alice.’ He bent to look full into her faded, meaningless eyes. ‘If you can understand, forgive me for not understanding. How can I know? I want to help you. Don’t be afraid.’
The girl Felicity was standing just behind him. He felt aware that she was laughing at him, but when he turned, her face was only bored.
His car was parked in the side street at the back of the building. Barbara had got out and was walking with the leggy puppy, trying to teach him not to drag on the leash. He was pulling ahead of her, legs spread and striving, choking himself. Paul picked him up. ‘Don’t torture him. He’ll come to it.’
‘He’s got to learn if he’s going with me to London.’
‘He’s not. Don’t start that, darling. You’re not going away. You can’t go away. Stay with me. It will be all right. Everything will come out all right.’
She shook her head. She was a lovely and gentle and patient woman, but the events of her life had not taught her optimism.
‘Don’t be sad.’ Paul put down the dog and kissed her as he pushed her gently towards the car. He went round to the other side and opened the door. Before he got in, he looked up for some reason. Felicity was at the window of Alice’s room, watching him.
He had not seen Tim for quite a long time, so on his way back to town, Paul stopped at the village where the boy lived in one of a group of white cottages built for High-field patients who could take care of themselves.
Tim was in the garden at the back, ‘hoeing his salads’, the old lady who opened the door told Paul, but he found Tim sitting on the ground, with his back supported in an upturned wheelbarrow. He did not get up. Paul sat on the ground beside him, and they smoked without saying much. Tim had not seemed particularly pleased to see Paul, but did not want him to leave.
‘It’s getting cold,’ Paul said. ‘If you’re not going to work out here any more, let’s go inside.’
‘Nah.’ The wheelbarrow was like a turtle’s shell. Tim sat inside it and plucked bits of grass and chewed them dry.
After a while, Paul went into the cottage and talked to old Mrs Tolliver, who was sensible enough in a slapdash way.
‘Is Tim all right? He looks a bit—’
‘He’s off his food. Don’t look at me. They all complain about the meals, I don’t pay no attention.’
She and two other men and a tiny pinched woman like a fieldmouse were in the front room watching television and sucking peppermints.
‘He don’t like the telly.’ From a rocking chair, Mrs Tolliver looked up at Paul, her slippered feet taking a flight off the floor as she tipped back. ‘That’s why he likes to be outside. Someone was reading the News, and old Timmy starts fancying they’re saying something about him. Daft, innit? He’s no trouble.’ The commercials came on with a blaring shout and she lowered the slippers on to the floor and gave the set her whole attention.
All of a sudden, Felicity wanted to go out with Tim again. When he got back from the garage late one evening after a gruelling day of extra deliveries before the bank holiday weekend, she had written him a letter. It was in the middle of the dining-room table, propped against the old man’s white cat. It had been opened and licked shut again.
‘Meet me Friday night,’ it said, so since this was Friday, Tim went out again without supper and trudged the mile and a half to whistle under Felicity’s window.
The room was dark. The light did not go on. The blind did not go up. He waited almost half an hour, and was turning to go when a wild beast leaped on him from out of the syringa bushes and bore him to the ground.
They rolled over and over and she moaned and whimpered and said, ‘Yes-yes,’ but he had only got his hand inside her blouse when she pushed him away and jumped up, brushing down her skirt in a very prissy way, and tuttutting at him.
‘Men are all the same.’ she said. ‘Disgusting.’
Tim raised his eyebrows, waiting for her to make sense.
She said that she was hungry, so they walked down the hill and went into the narrow café like a railway carriage, where the bacon had bits of string in it and the iron feet of the tables were crusted thick with dirt, like castors.
‘I saw your
friend yesterday,’ Felicity said.
‘Who?’
‘Paul.’
‘I seen him too. He come to the house.’
‘He came to see his wife. I suppose as he was out this way, he thought he might as well drop in and see if you were still alive.’
‘He likes me,’ Tim said. ‘He comes to see me. He helped get me put on the mobile.’
‘Some treat,’ Felicity said;
‘It’s all right.’
‘For those that know no better. There’s people out at Rowton works making twenty pounds a week.’
Tim stared. What would you do with such money? Tonight he had all he wanted. A home, food, clothes, Felicity. He fidgeted on the bench. In a bit, he was going to say, ‘Come on down the boats then?’
‘There’s blood on your coat.’ she said.
He looked down. He had not had time to change his working jacket and trousers. ‘Bloody sow broke a bottle of ketchup.’ In that last house at the end of the lane, not worth the bumpy trip for a packet of matches and two wholemeal. And then she had said, ‘You’d better clean that up, young man, before Ted cleans you.’
‘Come on down the boats, Fliss,’ he said urgently.
‘Not tonight.’ But she was smiling. ‘I’m too tired.’ But the yawn was artificial.
‘Tomorrow?’
‘If I don’t work late. I have more on my back now that I have everything to do for Mr Sissons. He won’t let anyone else near him, not even Mrs L. “I want Felicity,” he grumbles. “She’s the only one I can stand near me.” He’s dreadfully particular, you see, on account of always having been looked after, on account of his money.’
‘Tomorrow?’ Tim stuck to that thought.
‘Do you know what he said to me the other day?’ Felicity went on as if he had not spoken. Perhaps he hadn’t? ‘He said, “If I can get out of this hell hole will you come and take care of me, oh felicitous one?” ‘
‘They wouldn’t let you.’
Tim sucked the last of his sticky drink up through the straw. His fair hair flopped in his eyes. He bubbled up air as she said, ‘I can do what I like now. No one can stop me.’
No one could stop her going out the next night, although she was not supposed to go out without permission. ‘If I don’t work late,’ she had said, finishing her artificial yawn with a smile.
Her light was on. The blind was up. Tim whistled and waited. He waited for a long time. Then he saw her come to the window. She did not lean out with her long plaits hanging down. She pulled down the blind, and he stood in the garden and watched her undress behind it, moving slowly back and forth behind the blind with nothing on at all.
Paul was back to see him in a week. They sat in the dining-room and looked at the fan of paper in the grate. Tim did not think he said very much. Sometimes there was no way of knowing whether he was speaking or thinking, because thoughts that were in his head could be heard out loud.
Paul began to ask him questions, as he used to do long ago when they first met and Tim had to be so careful. He was very careful now. When Paul asked after Felicity, he looked into the corners of the room before he said, ‘All right, I suppose.’ Paul knew how Felicity was. He saw her at the place where she worked.
‘Don’t you like her any more?’
When Paul looked at him like that with his kind and serious eyes, Tim’s hands began to tremble. ‘I – I—’ He could not have spoken if he wanted to. His mouth was going like a baby. He got up and spun out of the room, stumbled up the stairs and on to his bed under the slanted ceiling.
Paul came and knocked at the door, but he had bolted it. That was the best thing about Diddlecot. No one locked you in. You could do it for yourself.
‘Could you come out of the room for a minute?’ Paul asked. ‘I want to talk to you.’
‘I’m busy with my patient.’ Felicity fiddled and fussed with the curled-up old lady, tucking in the sheet and untucking it, so Paul said curtly, ‘Come outside,’ and she left the bed and came quite meekly.
‘It’s about Tim.’ It was very hard to talk to this girl. She changed moods rapidly from belligerent to sly to malleable to pert, and swiftly back to belligerent if you said anything she could interpret as an affront.
‘Tim Shaw?’ she asked innocently, all eyes and ripe mouth.
‘I think he likes you very much. Don’t tease him. He’s a very sensitive boy, you know. He’s been through a rough time. You can help him so much by being his friend.’
‘What’s in it for you?’ The innocence was quickly gone, the eyes long and scheming, the mouth twenty years older, and shrewd.
‘I’m his friend too. I like him. I’m interested in what happens to him.’
‘Because you saved his life? He told me that. And he told me, “Sometimes I wish he hadn’t interfered.”’
‘He asked for help.’
‘He won’t next time,’ Felicity said, watching him.
‘There won’t be a next time.’
‘What’s the matter?’ Felicity leaned against the wall and rubbed the back of her head against the paint. ‘Afraid of losing a customer?’
‘You watch your step.’ Paul was infuriated with her. ‘Or you’re going to find yourself in a lot of trouble.’
For the next few weeks when he came to see Alice, Felicity kept out of his way. He sat in front of Alice and dried her slow tears, and wondered how long it would go on like this. In the end, if she was never going to come alive, would he stop visiting her?
If divorce was never possible and Barbara agreed that they should live together, perhaps abroad, how would he manage to live without the Samaritans?
Being a Samaritan was his hold on hope, his clutch of treasure. The Samaritans was an obsession, a disease for which there was no cure.
‘Why does my wife weep so much?’ he asked Mrs Laidlaw.
‘I told you, it’s because there is no control of the emotional mechanisms,’ she said. ‘Of course, we can’t know whether Mrs Hammond is suffering or not, since she cannot tell us.’
Paul was distressed enough by this pleasant shaft to ask Felicity, when she came nonchalantly into the room with sheets, ‘Do you think it means anything when she cries?’
‘Poor Alice.’ Clutching the sheets, Felicity came and stood thoughtfully in front of the chair with her head on one side and her flat stomach thrust forward. ‘It’s hard for her, of course, but it’s better she knows the truth. I think she’s sort of glad for you, in a way.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Well, I asked her if she wanted to know something and she winked once. That means Yes.’
‘She can’t wink.’
‘She can for me. So I told her not to worry about you. Because you were very well taken care of. “Do you mind that, Alice?” I asked, and she winked twice, didn’t you dear? That’s a clever girl.’
Paul went quickly out of the room, to keep his hands off her throat. He did not go to Mrs Laidlaw. He went to Highfield, since the girl was still under their supervision.
‘If the sick woman can speak, and be proved to understand what is being said to her, then it could be possible for divorce proceedings to be instigated.’
If Felicity was right about Alice, then he and Barbara...
If Felicity was right about Alice, the cruelty was already unbearable.
When Paul left the solicitor’s office, he went up to the rectory on Church Avenue to find Peter.
‘What am I going to do? For God’s sake tell me what to do!’
Felicity had left the nursing home.
‘Got fed up,’ she told Tim on the telephone. ‘Got browned off cleaning up all those shitty old women.’
‘Where are you?’ She would not say. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Oh – I don’t know. Might get married one of these days.’
‘Fliss!’ They had talked about marriage sometimes. It had been their secret dream when they were at Highfield, clinging together in the broom cupboard,
planning what they would have to eat and what colour the curtains would be. ‘I’m getting a raise next—’ he began, and her laughter cackled through the wire like static.
‘Be able to give me a nice wedding present then, won’t you? Not that I’d want you to spend your money if I’m going to be so well fixed.’
‘What are – what—’
‘He’s asked me before, as I told you.’ Her voice was airy and ladylike, teasing him, as so often before, to make him say, ‘Come off it’ and grab her where it mattered. ‘He shouldn’t be in that place, and he won’t be much longer, because I’m going to take him out of there, poor old gentleman, and live with him for the rest of his life, if it doesn’t kill him sooner.’
‘Fliss, you—’ He could think of only one thing. ‘You mean you’d do it with him?’
‘Well ...’ Her laugh was a silver bell. ‘I’ll be his wife, won’tl?’
‘I want to speak to Paul. 401, Paul. Is he there?’
‘He was here earlier. I think he’s gone. Wait a minute, and I’ll see.’
Tim leaned against the glass of the telephone box. He felt sick and faint. He could hardly stand. Sagging, he waited for the strength of Paul’s voice to shore him up.
‘I’m sorry he’s gone. Shall I try and get hold of him and ask him to ring you?’
‘Yes.’ Tim hardly knew whether he was speaking or not. ‘Tell him—’
‘What? Sorry, I can’t hear you.’
‘Tim.’
‘Does he know the number?’
‘Yes. No. I’m not at home. Here’s the number. I’ll wait here.’
‘I’ll miss you, my Sarah.’
‘I’ll miss you too.’
‘You won’t. You love that place so much, you’ve got to be there all night now, as well as half the day.’
‘It’s my first night duty. I can’t help being excited. Do you think that’s childish?’
‘It’s a funny thing.’ Brian held her off and looked at her, making a face as if she were revolting. ‘I think you’re growing up.’
‘I think perhaps we both might be?’
‘That’s a pity.’ Brian’s beautiful face became grave, as if he were going to say something serious. ‘I’d much rather stay childish and spoiled.’
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