Sylvia tugged at my pyjama sleeve. “Go to sleep. You know perfectly well that had it been the slightest bit important she would have phoned again. Not once but three times. You can go tomorrow.”
I lay down.
Five minutes later I was up again and struggling into my trousers.
“Where are you going?”
“Barbara Basildon.”
“She only had a headache!”
“I know.”
Nineteen
Afterwards Sylvia said: “I never meant it. Honestly, I never meant it. She was a dreadful trial but I never wished the poor girl any harm.”
I suppose I should not really have been surprised at my own seemingly irrational decision to leave my bed in order to visit Barbara Basildon. It was the kind of sixth sense or intuition that had dictated my actions on many previous occasions over the years in general practice, and the promptings of which I knew better than to ignore. Not that it really did any good but then there was nothing, under the circumstances, that could have.
A surprised Herbert Basildon answered the door in his pyjamas.
“Did Barbara ring you?”
“This morning. I’m terribly sorry. I had an exceedingly busy day and completely forgot to call.”
Herbert looked embarrassed. “You really shouldn’t have turned out at this hour, Doctor. Barbara just had one of her heads this morning. The children have been getting on her nerves lately. I think she needs a holiday.”
“May I have a look at her?”
“Well, she’s asleep actually. Ingrid says she’s been resting all afternoon. She refused dinner and has settled for the night. She’s really exhausted and I shouldn’t like to disturb her. I’ll let you know in the morning if she still feels under the weather.”
I stepped into the hall. “I’ll have a look at her now if you don’t mind.”
“But she’s asleep; I told you.”
“Then we shall have to wake her up.”
It was easier to say than do. Barbara Basildon was excessively drowsy.
“Perhaps she took a sleeping pill,” Herbert said, anxious to get back to bed. “She sometimes does.”
“Mmm.” I examined her eyes and her central nervous system as well as I could and did not like what I saw.
“Is this really necessary, Doctor, in the middle of the night? I mean generally, if you don’t mind me saying so, you’re quite abrupt with Barbara’s aches and pains. Last month she was absolutely screaming the house down and you didn’t bother to come…”
“She had a period pain and hadn’t taken her tablets…” I closed my case.
“Can we all go to bed now?”
“I’m afraid not. I’m a bit worried about Barbara and I’d like to get her into hospital for some investigations.”
“In the morning, you mean?”
“I mean now.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Let me just make a telephone call to see if they have a bed for her then I’ll try to explain.”
I explained as tactfully as I could. I had no desire to commit myself at this stage, but I suspected that Barbara Basildon had some sort of tumour on her brain. I agreed with Herbert that all she had complained of was headache, but it was the other symptoms, and the way she had described them which must have been at the back of my mind all day, which forced me to get out of bed that night.
Three weeks later Barbara Basildon, aged twenty-six, was dead.
Sylvia cried.
“I said such terrible things about her.”
“That couldn’t possibly have made any difference as you know very well. She had a fast growing inoperable cerebellar neoplasm which no one could do anything about.”
“Those poor little kids; and Herbert. Perhaps if you’d gone in the morning…?”
“No matter how many mornings earlier I’d gone the outcome would have been the same. It’s just one of those things. You mustn’t feel guilty…”
“I called her my bête noire. I’ll never say things about any of the patients again no matter how much of a nuisance they are.”
“Look, Sweetie, stop crying. It’s terribly sad about Barbara Basildon. I feel more than badly about her myself. But as you know very well, nothing that we can say or do will bring her back. Dry your tears or you’ll look an absolute mess for tonight. Have you forgotten what day it is?”
“For a moment,” Sylvia said, “I had. I’ve waited for so long and didn’t think there was anything on this earth that could make me forget, let alone Barbara Basildon.”
It was publication day. The day to which Sylvia had looked forward for so many months on which her very first novel would appear in the bookshops in print.
I kissed her. “Come on now, Sweetie; you’re famous. Don’t forget we’re touring the bookshops after surgery this morning before I go to the hospital…”
“…and Caroline’s party tonight!” Sylvia said, brightening up. “I’m to dash down and buy all the newspapers to see what sort of reviews I’ve got…” She swung her legs out of bed.
“You stay right there!”
I went out into the corridor and returned, with my arms loaded with every newspaper the newsagent and I had been able to think of.
“Surprise, surprise!” I said, putting them on her stomach. “That should keep you quiet for a bit. Cut them all out and if there’s time I’ll read them when I come out of the bath.”
“Just tell me that you’re quite sure nothing could have been done,” Sylvia said.
“About what?”
“Barbara Basildon.”
“Have I ever lied to you?”
“No.”
I handed her a newspaper and kissed the top of her head.
“Come on, you’ve been a doctor’s wife for an awfully long time. You should be used to it.”
“Are you?”
“No.”
“Well, then!”
“I still have a day’s work to do though; that’s life.”
“Life,” Sylvia said. “We don’t appreciate it enough, do we?”
“Well, start now,” I said, “or you’ll never get through those reviews.”
I bathed, thinking of Barbara Basildon. I didn’t want to admit it to Sylvia but her death at such an early age had affected me almost as much as it had her. Of course I was accustomed to the inevitability of death but the frequency with which I encountered it by no means reduced its sting. Here and there, as with young children, men in the prime of life, and Barbara Basildon, the sadness was particularly acute. One accepted, it was true, but one did not become as many thought one did, either “hardened” or “immune”. What was inevitable was by no means always acceptable. Looking back over the years during which I had treated some thousands of patients I did not always recall exactly each and every one, but those that had died pinpointed the cavalcade and remained as too frequent but necessary reminders of the limited scope of my craft.
These humbling thoughts occupied my mind until the bathwater grew cold and wrinkles formed on my finger tips. Coming back into the bedroom in my bathrobe I held out my hand for the pile of reviews.
“Well? What do they say?”
Sylvia handed me a scrap of newspaper which measured half an inch by an inch. It dismissed her great effort in four words as “a harmless little tale”.
“Where are the others?”
“There are no others. That is it.”
“Which of those newspapers is this from?”
“None. There are several pages of book reviews and I’m not mentioned at all.”
“Where did this come from then?”
“That, which I shall frame, came from the Middlesbrough Evening Gazette and was sent by the Press Cuttings Agency I was foolish enough to join.”
I searched for words of consolation.
“They probably don’t review them actually on publication day,” I said. “Not first novels anyway.”
Sylvia looked at me scornfully and picked up our national daily.
“Quote. ‘With THE TEMPERATE TIGER a strange and stylistically striking first novel by Michael Moat, we are led into the tangled depths…curious pastoral charm…etc. etc.’ ‘The hero of Stella Langley’s grittily witty first novel is…etc. etc.…’ ‘Frank Robert’s MY COUSIN GEORGE is another first novel distinguished by an eminently satisfactory conclusion. It is a tale told laconically to striking effect.’ Unquote.”
“Perhaps it’s the sort of thing that appeals more in Middlesbrough.”
“Thanks.”
“I didn’t mean that.”
“What did you mean?”
“Nothing. I don’t know. I was trying to console you. Some people take a while to catch on. I mean not everyone can be an overnight success. It’s an achievement to have a novel published at all; I never could write a single chapter let alone a whole book. I think you’re terribly clever…”
“Fan club of one!”
“Oh, Sweetie, cheer up.” I handed her the prepublication copy of her book in its glossy jacket with her photograph on the back.
“You must admit it looks super.”
“What’s the use if nobody wants to read it?”
“Look, I’m sure the publisher knows what he’s doing. It’s a very reputable firm. You couldn’t really expect to be splashed all over the National Press, I suppose, not just like that.”
“Well, I did,” Sylvia said. “I really did.” She held up the tiny slip of paper bearing testimony to her “harmless little tale” and said: “You know what you can do with this!”
I held her hand as she was about to destroy it. “No, don’t,” I said. “Wait! I’ve bought you a little publication present.”
I put the square parcel on the bed and she unwrapped it. It was a press cuttings book, one hundred pages thick, bound in green leather.
For the second time that morning Sylvia cried. This time it was with tears of laughter.
“What’s so terribly funny?” I said, affronted. “It was very expensive. Don’t you like it?”
“I think it’s absolutely gorgeous,” she said, “and marvellously clever of you to think of it, Sweetie. It’s just that my ‘harmless little tale’ is going to look so terribly lost in all this impressive green leather.”
“There’ll be others. Hundreds of others, you mark my words.”
“I hope you’re right,” Sylvia said, drying her eyes. “When I think of all those hours I spent in the bathroom writing the damned thing. I must go and ask Penny for her glue.”
Before she had a chance Penny came in. “There’s a man at the door,” she said. “He wants to talk to Doctor Nightshade.”
“Doctor who?”
“Nightshade.”
“Never heard of him.”
Sylvia for some unknown reason was dancing round the bed in her nightdress. “The book! The book!” she said, putting her dressing-gown on back to front.
“Yes, I know, Sweetie. You’re hysterical. It’s all the excitement.”
“Dr Nightshade,” she said. “He’s the doctor in my book. I must go and see who it is.”
“Well, you’re not going like that. You look like the wild woman of Borneo. I’ll go.”
At the door a pimply youth slid the glasses up his nose.
“Dr Nightshade?” he said.
“No, it’s not.”
“Well, I’m a reporter from the Mercury. Is it your wife who has…?”
“It’s me! It’s me!” Sylvia’s voice came from the stairs. “He wants to interview me!”
It was the local newspaper it was true, the reporter could not write shorthand, and I suspected this was his first assignment. It was, however, better than ignominy and it cheered Sylvia up no end. I left the two of them over coffee in the kitchen while she regaled him with tales of how she had locked herself in the bathroom to write the book, how she kept her activities secret from the family, how she bought herself contact lenses and put down a deposit on Bay Tree House in anticipation of her success.
Relieved to see her happy again after Barbara Basildon and the disappointment over the reviews, I sneaked off to the surgery.
To my surprise I was greeted, no sooner than I had set foot in the waiting-room, by an ecstatic Lulu who, the minute she set eyes on me, flung her arms round my neck.
“Lulu!” I said, embarrassed by the watching patients who sat silently round the walls. “Lulu. What’s the matter?”
“I’m so happy!”
“Yes, I can see that.” I attempted to disentangle her. “But why?”
“It’s Fred!”
I groaned inwardly. “What’s Fred been up to now?”
She tightened her grip and waltzed me round the table. “He’s got me pregnant!”
There was an audible gasp from the walls.
“I’m going to have a baby! It’s Fred. Wonderful, wonderful, Fred!”
“Disgraceful! I call it,” Mrs Parkins said to her neighbour, “she’s a married woman i’nt she?”
At that moment Fred came in to fetch his first patient and Lulu transferred her attentions to him. He was grinning all over his face and put his arms round Lulu’s waist.
“I gather you’ve heard the news?”
“I certainly have.” I looked round the waiting-room. “So has the entire district.”
“Aren’t you going to congratulate us?”
I swallowed and led the way to my consulting room. “Come somewhere a bit less public and I might.”
In the sanctuary of the four walls I said:
“Look, what you do in private is one thing but you don’t have to make a song and dance out of your sordid affairs.” I glared at Fred. “This time you’ve gone a bit too far. I demand an explanation.”
They looked at each other, their arms still round each other’s waists and then at me.
“Explanation, man?”
“Look, Fred, you may look stupid but I know damn well you aren’t. You get Lulu in the family way and then proceed to announce it to the entire practice. There are limits and you have reached them.”
“Listen, man…”
“And don’t ‘man’ me. I’ve had enough. I’ve put up with your turning my house into a psychedelic doss-house, I’ve put up with your ghastly clothes and your purple taxi and your pop and your pot and your pills and your yoga and your other half-baked ideas. I’ve put up with it all for a long time and I’ve said nothing at all, not even when we had a deputation from the other practitioners in the district, respectable men all, whose desire it was to have you removed. I put up with this and a lot more, but I will not put up with you having it off with my secretary just because her husband happens to travel…”
The next thing I knew was a stinging slap round my face.
“How dare you!” Lulu said, her sapphire eyes ablaze. “How dare you!”
“I’m fed up with you young people and your phoney morality,” I went on, rubbing my cheek. “You haven’t even any shame, just go round announcing it to all and sundry…”
“Lulu,” Fred said, leaning in his favourite position against the Van Gogh. “Just exactly what have you been telling everyone?”
The blue eyes widened. “That you got me pregnant. You did, didn’t you?”
I waited for Fred.
“I sure did, man.”
Twenty
By the time we arrived at Caroline’s for Sylvia’s celebration party, it had been quite a day, starting with Sylvia’s excitement and Lulu’s extraordinary announcement and ending with my unexpected and nerve-wracking session at the hospital.
It did not take me long to wrench from an irate Lulu the reason for her physical attack upon my presence, the mark of which I still bore, but it was too long to prevent the lightning fork of scandal making its speedy way around the district. Lulu’s pregnancy had indeed been made possible by Fred, but only indirectly; it was the turn of phrase that had been unfortunate. Knowing of her pathetic and burning desire for maternity, Fred had given her a course of treatment designed to i
ncrease her fertility. The treatment had been successful and Lulu had become pregnant. It was as simple as that. The charge I had brought against Fred disturbed his equilibrium not one iota; Lulu was not so easy. I apologised and cajoled, I pleaded and cajoled, I congratulated and cajoled. For the duration of the surgery she refused to show my patients in, declared she was unable to find their notes as it was bad for her to stretch, and when she had to speak to me on the telephone did so in frigid tones.
By ten-thirty all was forgiven. I came out of my consulting room, weary from the extra work she had given me and prepared to do battle with her when, for the second time that day, in front of Grandpa Tolley who waited patiently to see Fred, she flung her arms round my neck.
“I’m sorry, then,” she said, rubbing my cheek. “I really am. Does it hurt awfully much? I didn’t mean to, but you did make me awfully mad. Fancy thinking such things about me…”
“It wasn’t about you.”
“Or about Fred. He’s the most wonderful, kindest, super, dolly, switched-on pal I’ve ever had. If it wasn’t for him…”
“OK. OK,” I said, kissing her. “All is forgiven, I’m terribly happy for you and your buzzer’s going.”
“It’s for you, Mr Tolley,” she said, dreamily. “Fred’s ready.”
Over elevenses, for which Lulu ostentatiously had half a pint of milk and a multivitamin tablet, we discussed the happy event.
“I suppose that means a new secretary,” I sighed.
“Don’t you want me any more?” Lulu looked shocked.
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re the most marvellous secretary I’ve ever had. I just thought…the baby…your husband mightn’t like…too much for you…”
“Where do you think I come from?” Lulu said. “Out of the ark? I shall need the money now more than ever and when I’m in the hospital you can put the letters on the dictating machine and I’ll do them in bed…”
“…between feeds?”
“…and don’t you dare to get anyone else. Of course you might have to enlarge my cubby-hole,” she said, looking at the minute office where she had to work and keep some thousands of files.
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