The movie wasn’t just bad; it made no sense at all. The doctor wished it would divert him. He thought, If it were half bad it would stop me thinking about their forbidding me to see my daughter. Thought, If it were a really good movie, if it were maybe High Noon or Sweet Smell of Success or even Shane it would also stop me thinking about the interview that lies ahead. It’s years since I saw a movie. I used to go with Lilian. But now they have to put a message in. The doctor had an appointment at his son-in-law’s club. His son-in-law was a fifth-generation Merchant Banker. He was very successful. He was called Mike Angel and he was a power in this club.
The doctor was funking the meeting. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been sitting in an empty movie-house at 3.45 p.m. on a Sunday; he knew that. Now Lilian was the doctor’s only daughter. For eighteen years out of her total twenty she had lived with him, at home, lovingly.
There is no mystery. People think of mental illness as something beyond their comprehension, to do with words like id and complex; to do with longer words than that. They listen to the drugstore analysts and feel incapable of arguing. They throw away the usual disciplines of thought. If you put someone under sedation, which only means that you help them more or less insistently to sleep, they do not then go berserk. The doctor thought, If I pass someone in the street and pretend not to recognise him it means that I do not want to speak to him. If I pass a good friend to avoid him, or even unwittingly cut him, it means, nearly always, that I am feeling guilty about him.
The doctor thought, therefore, that Lilian must herself have done something very bad; so shameful that she couldn’t even confess it to him. How strange and tidy she looked, through the glass panelling: how already like a wife.
The doctor had paused beside the Sister’s office, which was only a glass booth set in a carpeted corridor. It was a very expensive nursing home.
The doctor said, ‘She didn’t recognise me.’
He was in his tweed overcoat. He half turned away, then looked back over his shoulders. He wasn’t a big man but he had a good sharp face and remarkable eyes.
The Sister said, ‘It only happened last night, she’s been under sedation ever since.’
The doctor never interrupted other people. He watched and waited until they had finished speaking, then either did or did not reply. In this case he did not. It takes intelligence to listen the way the doctor did.
The Sister said, ‘She spoke with her husband this morning. She told him most of what had happened. You’ve just come at a bad moment. You’re sure you won’t have a little coffee? You do look rather pale.’
The doctor still watched the Sister’s mouth. Then he noticed that the Sister was really quite pretty, which is the way good nurses should be. She wasn’t as pretty as Lilian, but she was pretty enough for her trade. The doctor thanked her and refused the coffee. He didn’t make any excuses. He just said, ‘No thanks’, and took the elevator.
He wished the movie amused him more. He wished he could have seen Gunfight or Shane. The movie-house stank. The doctor buttoned up his coat and left. Outside it was terribly cold. He thought: Maybe Lilian is really asleep lying flat on her back with her yellow hair trailing over the side of her bed; my daughter Lilian; her face a little freckled and now very pale.
‘Really, Mr Angel,’ the Sister had told Mike. ‘If you give me your home number, I’ll call you as soon as she wakes.’ She referred to his wife, Lilian.
He wasn’t listening to her too closely. He looked preoccupied; not quite distracted. His collar was unbuttoned and at four in the morning his chin was a shadowy blue. He was half leaning against the Sister’s glass booth in the corridor and standing there, cross-legged, drinking his fifth cup of coffee, he somehow still looked rich. He wasn’t a big man but he was springy and fit; almost suspiciously so, as if he felt he had a long, long way to go.
‘The doses have been exceptionally strong,’ the Sister said. She was quite a nice-looking, solid sort of girl.
Mike nodded. He was staring blankly at the carpet which had an infuriatingly asymmetrical pattern in yellow and orange and brown and blue.
The Sister wore the face of her watch on the inside of her wrist. As she raised it, something clicked; her cuffs were starched.
She said, ‘Under such heavy sedation I’d say it would be eleven o’clock or twelve noon before we hear a peep from her.’
Then Lilian screamed. Mike moved like lightning.
‘Darling, Lilian, Lilian, it’s me.’
She was screaming and yelling indistinctly, ‘Get away, get away.’ She was more or less on her feet on the bed and stumbling back towards the wall. But the bed was on castors and it slipped a foot or two. She half fell, then, between wall and bed.
As the Sister reached across towards her she upset the low bedside light which had an expensive shade. Lilian’s voice rose a pitch. Her nightie was short and white. She kept pulling it away from her body. Her blonde hair looked paradoxically tidy and orderly. Somebody must have brushed it as she went off to sleep; Mike had brushed it. Her eyes were smoky and pale blue.
‘It’s Mike.’
‘No.’
‘It’s Mike, Lilian, darling.’
She stopped screaming. ‘Oh, Michael,’ she said suddenly, without emphasis or feeling. He reached out.
She took his hand, and sat down in the bed. Mike dismissed the Sister; said he’d deal with it, thank you; thank you, Sister. She went.
Lilian sat quite rigidly. She said, ‘I know exactly where I am.’
‘You’ve had a bad dream.’
‘I remember everything.’ Her lower lip began to tremble. Then she took in a gulp of air and steadied. She talked swiftly, almost like an English girl. There was money in her voice. She said, ‘You promise not to do anything about it. Not anything.’
‘Forget it, darling,’ he reassured her. ‘It never happened.’
She still sat quite rigidly. He persuaded her to lie back on the pillows. He didn’t touch her shoulders or face, but kept a firm grip on her small white hand.
After a moment, she said, ‘There’s a difference between a girl being spoilt and not knowing it and a girl knowing she’s spoilt.’ Then very suddenly she sat up again and threw her arms round his neck. She said, ‘Don’t go away, Michael.’
‘I’m right here.’
‘Michael, I thought it was all over—’
‘Forget it.’
‘I don’t mean I thought, I’ll die, he’ll kill me, I thought, It’ll be all over with Michael, Michael won’t touch me now.’
‘Steady, darling, steady, don’t go back.’ But she had already retired too far, recalled too much. The edge of the cliff began to crumble. She didn’t scream, this time, but let out a low, very frightening drone; almost a buzz.
‘It’s all over, my darling Lilian, don’t think about it, it’s over—’
But the buzz grew harder; the drone, louder. She started pulling her nightie away from her body; started to yell that she wanted a bath. ‘Run a bath.’ Next she was coughing, trying to make herself vomit. She withdrew from Mike again. She tore off her nightie, screaming, and lashed out with her arms and legs. She was twenty, Lilian, and her figure was perfection.
The Sister returned. She had a hypodermic syringe. Mike held his wife down and she screamed until the veins stood out in her neck.
The drug, whatever it was, worked almost instantaneously. Lilian was laid out naked, almost with that frightening, ageless calm of the dead. The nurse tucked up the bedclothes, Mike stepped out of the room. He went as far as the staircase; walked down to the landing below. He didn’t want the Sister to see his red eyes or to witness his trembling like this.
He didn’t smoke. He breathed deeply then he ran upstairs lightly and walked straight past the Sister’s booth. He re-entered the little, single private ward. He looked at his wife’s angelic face. He believed her to be the most beautiful girl on earth. He thought, Maybe she’ll never be right again. Never. He didn’t dare kiss her cheek lest that d
isturbed her. With his finger-tip he touched her hair, just where it shone, in the dim light.
Stepping back into the corridor, he gave the Sister two numbers. He wrote a note to be given to Lilian in the event of her coming round again. It was a comfortable, relaxed kind of note; composed carefully that way. He had already arranged to meet her old man for drinks at the club. In the note he casually added, ‘… and I’m not going to tell him a word about what we’re both going to forget; have forgotten. Love, my darling, my forever one – Mike.’
He asked for an envelope, then he found his coat which had a smart velvet collar. He looked, now, completely composed. As he handed over the note, he warned the Sister not to give information to anybody about Lilian. She was sure about that.
‘You’re very kind,’ he said briefly and took the stairs, not the elevator. He ran lightly down four flights and stepped into the street. The temperature was sixteen below zero and the wind was blowing hard across the frozen lake. He set his teeth against it and half bowed his head. He had some calls to make.
On Sunday afternoons, in the wintertime, the club orga-nised concerts. They had good people, even great people, who came and played or sang. They played Bach or sang Schubert or sent things up, like Victor Borge. The concerts were a signal, not a confirmation, of the contention that members and their wives weren’t altogether philistine. And now the concert was over, the huge premises were filled with well-dressed men and women taking cocktails and telling less or more than all. Some of the past presidents – senators, bankers and railroad millionaires, portrayed within massive gilt frames themselves – looked pained by the chatter. The rooms were very high and lit only with wall lights and standard lamps with red shades. It was as if the dark area above were filled with humming-birds and rooks and the occasional wild parakeet.
The doctor had green, penetrating eyes. Even in the crowded lobby, the porter recognised him again. As he stepped across to the bar, which was what he thought of as Angel’s club, he had to take a couple of deep breaths in order to try and be calm. He told himself, don’t be a fool, know yourself better, you were bound to disapprove of anyone Lilian married; but he knew too, that he didn’t believe that. Thought, maybe I hate the rich. Why? Because they see nothing, that’s why; because they’re blind. Money protects, which is to say blunts truth.
The doctor had been there before but this afternoon he found the atmosphere unusual. It was far less noisy than the anterooms, but that was not what struck him. The difference lay in the light. The room, which was the best part of seventy feet long, had no windows. Daylight was afforded by a flat glass roof with red margins. Today the bar seemed darker because the glass was covered with two or three inches of newly fallen snow.
Michael Angel was the youngest director in the firm for which Lawrence Junior now worked. The doctor couldn’t remember the name of the boy in the nursery rhyme who sold his sister for a pair of shoes, but he thought Lawrence Junior maybe sold his sister for the promise of a place on the board. But Angel, the son-in-law, was not so bad as he seemed. He looked very beautiful, brown, athletic, with bright dark eyes and very, very expensive clothes. He looked like the candidate, so to speak; the candidate for anything. But he really wasn’t so bad. For instance he hadn’t yet given Lawrence Junior a place on the board; which was smart of him, the doctor thought.
Now Lawrence Junior kept saying ‘Literally’. He said, ‘Dad, I am not talking metaphorically. No wonder Lilian’s where she is. He pissed on her. Dad. Literally. Dad. Literally pissed on Lilian. Doesn’t that do something to you? He pissed on her. He failed to seduce her. Failed to rape her. He drove her to this place. He drove her right there down the darkest street, just by the lake. Dad, he literally pissed on her. Or doesn’t that penetrate your head?’
The doctor’s son Lawrence Junior was talking with more than usual intensity, and he was often forceful and intense. He had sweat on his brow. His eyes were a little pink, maybe from the cold wind that blew outside. Junior was already fatter than the doctor. Both men needed spectacles to read the list of special Sunday cocktails in the window-less club bar. The doctor wore gold wire-rimmed spectacles: his son’s were heavy, in tortoiseshell.
‘She’s under sedation,’ the doctor said.
‘You’ve seen her?’
‘They wouldn’t allow me to see her.’
‘Of course they’d allow you to see her. Jesus, who’s paying? You’re a doctor, aren’t you? Oh Dad. Why didn’t you go in? Sometimes I think you like being pushed around.’
‘No. I don’t like being pushed around,’ the doctor said, and Angel rescued him, then:
‘Maybe Doc was right, Lawrence. It’s good Lilian gets sleep.’
They brought the second round of Bloody Marys. Or was it the third? The boys had been there for a while, discussing things, deciding what to say to the doc.
The bar and panelling were of oak, also the few tables at the end of the room. All the fittings including the dozen or so chairs were solid and Ivy League and big. The floor was polished and red.
Because the doctor had said he did not like being pushed around Lawrence Junior waited a little before coming back into the attack. The doctor could see his game. We read our children indifferently, we do not know their hearts, but we perceive their methods, just as we recognise their lies. The doctor thought, the Bloody Marys only seem stronger because it is so cold, so very cold outside, with that wind blowing across the icy lake. The warmth of the club bar itself made him feel a little light-headed, at half past four that Sunday afternoon.
Angel said, ‘Well, the long and the short of it, Doc, is that Lawrence has a plan of action and while I am not a retributive kind of man …’
The doctor thought, Why does he use words like ‘retributive’? Really, he should be a politician.
‘ … far from it, I hate the idea of vendetta – but in this case I think Lawrence is right. This is an extreme case. And sooner or later a man must stand up and be called.’
Some of these phrases, the doctor thought, roll off his tongue too easily. Maybe John F. Kennedy said that about standing up and being called. Angel saw himself as a Kennedy type. His suits demonstrated that to the doctor.
Angel went on, ‘In the end, we’re the children of the pioneers, and even if we’ve gotten a little soft, we can’t be that soft. We can’t let somebody do that to Lilian, then just walk away.’ He took a sip of the club’s blood, which is what they called their Bloody Marys in Angel’s club, and added, ‘Or I can’t. Nor can Lawrence.’
The doctor hesitated.
‘Would you like some cheese, Doc? The crackers are highly recommended.’
The doctor said, ‘Sister told me you were down there this morning.’
‘Certainly I was.’
‘She seemed a competent kind of girl. The Sister.’
‘Fuck her,’ Angel said, eating a couple of crackers. ‘How was it with Lilian?’
‘She seemed badly disturbed.’
‘Right.’
‘Did she make any sense to you?’
‘A little,’ Angel said.
‘Did you find out how it happened to her?’ the doctor asked.
Angel tipped back in his chair. He looked round at his friends’ faces. The very blond one, Bob Dunn, said, ‘Angel has a pretty good idea.’
Angel said, ‘Bill, would you ask these gentlemen to stop hogging the cheese? We have a guest in the club.’
‘Not for me,’ the doctor said.
Angel brushed some crumbs off his lapel. The doctor screwed up his eyes.
‘She was on her way back from a dance.’
‘With you?’
Mike shook his head. So Hansen asked, ‘What kind of dance?’
‘Down at the Lakeside Youth Centre,’ which was a downtown club run by uptown people.
Mike said, ‘He hitched a lift with her from the club after their Saturday dance. He failed to seduce her. He hit her. He failed to rape her.’ He had grown very pale. He seemed incapable of
going on.
‘Do you know who he is?’
‘Yes I do.’
Bob Dunn said, ‘Then there is something we can do, for Christ’s sake. You two are not going down there on your own.’ He looked round at the others, and they were with him, everyone except Walter and Tom Shaw.
Mike said, ‘I’m not going anywhere. I promised Lilian that.’
‘Did he hit her bad?’ Dunn asked.
Mike shook his head. Then he said quickly, ‘He literally pissed on her. Shoved her out of the car. Dumped her. And blew. It was about ten below zero last night, but she got to a phone. I picked her up.’
‘Oh for Christ’s sake,’ someone else said.
The doctor said, ‘Aren’t the police involved?’ The doctor wasn’t a big man. When he asked a good question he looked a little short-sighted, looked very much like a professor who would be pushed around. Which drove his son mad.
‘No, thank God. And they’re not going to be. This is one of these cases when it is necessary for the husband to act privately. If you involve the police you involve the press. We don’t want that.’ Angel finished his Bloody Mary. One of the others persuaded the doctor to finish his drink. He was thinking, My son is very much like a guilty German; he is handsome and forceful and something hurt him, early on. Maybe he didn’t like it that I never went to the army. He’s right. That was one of the real reasons I studied medicine. My old man decided that. He frog-marched me to the medical school, in 1940. I felt bad because I knew it was a dodge for me, not a vocation at all. Maybe some of my guilt is visited upon this aggressive young man who is so certain that he is always right. But I haven’t made too bad a doctor; my patients know that.
One of the men by the cheeseboard, in the adjoining group, said, ‘Angel, it’s ten of five.’
Angel nodded. He said, ‘Bob, could you get them to fill a couple of flasks of this stuff?’ and the doctor began to see that the plans were already laid.
Household Ghosts Page 40