I’d eaten an early lunch on the boat: just a sandwich, but I wasn’t hungry. I wondered how to get through the rest of the day, and I thought of visiting the Harries, but when I rang there was no reply; even the answerphone had been disconnected. I read for a while, made a bowl of pasta for my dinner, and went to bed early. There had been no reply from France. Perhaps they were pleased to be on their own again, free of their awkward guest.
Very early the next morning it was my phone bleeping, signalling an incoming text, that woke me.
“Hello Rachel, So sorry not to reply sooner, lost my phone, hunted for hours, just found it and your message in Dulcie’s basket. We miss you and are thinking of you. M and J xx.”
Tough times I could withstand, just about. Through the years I had hardened myself to keep my feet whatever happened, and even now, when things had altered so much inside my head, I could meet challenges with chin up – more or less. It was kindness that did for me, and as I read Michael’s words over and over tears poured down my cheeks unchecked.
Rachel, you have become a soft, soggy, useless mess. Just imagine what your mother would say, if she were in her right mind. Get a grip.
I was in my mother’s ward promptly at ten, and greatly to my surprise Dr Abadi arrived five minutes later. I’d been prepared for a long wait. He was a small man with black hair and a neatly clipped moustache, wearing a white coat that was dazzling in its freshly laundered brilliance and beneath it a pair of pin-striped trousers with a crease that could have sliced pizza. He introduced himself and reverently shook my hand. His voice was deep and rich; it didn’t seem to belong to his body.
“May I ask, Ms Keyte, is Mrs Chester your biological mother?”
“So she tells me.” I laughed weakly.
“She does not use the family name, I see. Just so we know.”
“She likes to use her stage name.”
Dr Abadi frowned. “Stage? Please explain.”
“Decades ago my mother was a minor star of stage and screen,” I told him. “Made a few films, some of which were well known at the time.”
His eyes widened. “I see – a lady of talent.”
“How is she, Dr Abadi? When I visited yesterday, she didn’t seem to be doing very well.”
“I’m afraid that is so.” His English was impeccable, but all the more quaint for that. “I am hoping that in the next twenty-four hours we will see some definite improvement as the antibiotics start to work. Of course we are monitoring her closely. Sepsis is always to be feared.”
“Indeed it is,” I said grimly. “Are you worried she might have to lose the leg?”
He looked shocked. “That would be a most extreme solution, Ms Keyte. One I will strive to avoid, but cannot rule out.”
“To be honest with you, Dr Abadi, I think she’d rather die than lose her leg.”
“You must be jesting with me, Ms Keyte!”
“I assure you I’m not. Please do your best to save her leg. I’ll go and see her now. Good to have met you.”
Dr Abadi called after me as I made my way to my mother’s bedside. “I am fearful she may not be quite as lucid as we might wish.”
I said over my shoulder, “Well, she recognized me yesterday.”
He almost ran to catch up with me. “But that is excellent! That is progress! When I tried to examine her a few minutes ago she was unresponsive.”
I couldn’t help but smile inwardly. “My mother never actually gave up acting, Dr Abadi. She probably didn’t want to have to speak to you.”
I tapped on the metal frame of the curtains screening my mother’s bed. “Mother, it’s Rachel. Are you decent?”
Her voice was much stronger today and I heard her typical haughty and dismissive tones through the rough crustiness of her voice. “Has that perfectly ridiculous doctor departed?”
“No, he’s right here.”
I heard an unrepeatable expletive and some muttering. “I don’t want to be poked and prodded. You can come in.”
I slipped through the curtain, leaving Dr Abadi outside, shaking his head in evident bewilderment. A moment later I heard his retreating footsteps.
I folded my arms and looked down at my mother. “Are you feeling better?”
“Better than what?”
“Than yesterday. You look better, and I assume your brain is functioning normally again, seeing as you are being difficult and making yourself unpopular.”
There was a definite gleam in her eye. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Dr Abadi seems a good man,” I said. “Skilful and attentive. Worried you might develop septicaemia.”
“What nonsense.”
“So it would seem.” I sat down at her bedside. She still looked bad: her skin had a grey tinge and her eyes were red-rimmed. I felt her forehead, and she flinched. “Please, Mother. I am being a doctor.” I felt her pulse; it wasn’t strong, but it was steady. “Looks like you might live after all.”
“I have every intention of surviving. Things might be a little more bearable if I could get my hair done. Could you arrange it?”
I smiled and shook my head. “Not today, I’m afraid.”
I heard footsteps approaching, and a polite cough. Dr Abadi appeared, with the nurse I’d met the day before.
“Please excuse, Ms Keyte.”
I got up. “Look, Mother, I’ll come and see you at the proper visiting time this afternoon. Do your best to cooperate – it’ll be the quickest way out of here.”
“Ha!” She glowered, then relented. “All right. Until this afternoon.”
I decided to see if Malcolm Harries was in the hospital. From my mother’s ward to the cardiothoracic suite was a long trudge down corridor after corridor, lift after lift. I’d forgotten just how big a hospital Porton West was, especially as I’d rarely visited any part of it but the operating theatres. His door was ajar. I tapped and put my head round. Sefton Chalmers leapt up from Malcolm’s chair behind the desk. “Rachel! What a surprise! Are you back?”
“Yes and no, Sef,” I said. “At the moment I’m just visiting my mother in Gladstone Ward. Who’s this?” A dark, gloomy-looking man, tall and bald, occupied the other chair. He got up and shook my hand. “Oliver Jacobs,” he said, his smile revealing over-large teeth. “You must be Ms Keyte. I’m your replacement – temporary, of course.”
“Ah. You must be the person who left this note under my windscreen.” I produced it and waved it at him. “Sorry for stealing your space. I was in a hurry to see how my mother was. And old habits die hard.”
“Oh! I didn’t realize it was your car,” he said, a slow red stain creeping up his long neck. “Sorry – if I’d known…”
“Not a problem.” Despite my former resolve to apologize, my gracious demeanour would have fooled no one. I decided I didn’t like Oliver Jacobs. Perhaps I wouldn’t have liked anyone who’d got my job and my parking space, and was making free with my boss’s office. “So, where’s Malcolm?”
“On a cruise,” Sefton said. “He and Bridget left last Friday.”
“In that case I’ll leave you in peace,” I said. I turned to my supplanter. “I’ll make sure I find a different place to park, Mr Jacobs.”
As I made my way down to ground level, I thought about this little interchange, and I realized that I was probably not missed at my old place of work. Sefton was making the most of Malcolm’s absence, and I supposed Oliver Jacobs was performing the surgery that would have been mine. More and more I felt like some kind of alien – an interloper, a non-person, already discarded. How did this square with my years of hard work and study and self-denial? Had it all been for nothing?
I’d just got to the revolving exit doors when I heard my name called. I turned to see Sefton running after me, red-faced and panting. “I’m sorry, Rachel,” he said. “That Jacobs fellow is a bit lacking in social skills. I didn’t have a chance to ask you how you are – after that awful attack.”
“I’m a lot better, thanks.”
“No, I’m signed off sick for now.”
“So will you be…” he coughed apologetically, apparently unable to find the right words.
“What? Able to operate?” My voice was cold. “I don’t know. I haven’t tried. And I don’t know where I’ll be working. But you’re fully staffed here, aren’t you? I must be going. See you, Sef.”
I left him standing in the doorway, looking embarrassed, with people going in and out around him. Seems Oliver Jacobs isn’t the only one lacking in social skills.
I changed my mind about leaving the hospital, and found the little garden space again, and sat on the bench. It was a small area, damp and hemmed in by tall buildings. Little light seeped down to ground level; it was just the sort of place to make a depressed person ten times worse, but at least I had it to myself. I looked at the sun-starved saplings and straggly bushes, and I thought they looked as miserable as I was feeling.
Sitting there alone, I asked myself the same question as I had when I first realized how damaged my hands were: What am I good for? Unexpectedly an image dropped into my mind, of Letty Wetherly in the Bowmans’ pool, and being tenderly pulled out by her father. What was Letty good for? My spirit revolted at the notion of Letty being good for nothing much, and yet it was the standard I applied to myself. Ah, but Letty is much loved. By her parents, by her friends at St Luke’s. She doesn’t need to be useful. But who loves me?
One gleam of light during those dreary, doubt-filled days was the continuing improvement in my mother’s health. Defying all the odds – which really shouldn’t have surprised me – when I visited her towards the end of the week she was beginning to look and sound like her old self. Much as I had, at times, dreaded my monthly visits to Mother, I always thought she was nothing less than invincible. But seeing her in such a weakened state had shaken me – maybe even made me think about Dad in his final days – and I knew that there were some things I needed to say. So when I sat by her bedside that Friday I tried to swallow my pride and remember that she was, for better or worse, my mother. And I had grown up enough in recent months to be able to speak to her honestly, as an adult.
“Ah,” she began. “Tomorrow’s a significant day – did you know?” I said nothing, merely raised an enquiring eyebrow. “The birthday of one of your father’s idols: Leonard Bernstein. I could never see what he saw in his music, myself. But your father had all sorts of unaccountable passions.”
“Presumably one of them was you,” I said, and even I could hear in my acid remark an echo of her own voice.
“Excuse me,” she said in mock-disgust. “It was hardly unaccountable!”
She was obviously in a good mood – perhaps something to do with having confounded the expectations of her doctors – so I stuck my neck out. “Mother, if you don’t mind me asking, do you regret getting married? You were very career-minded, after all.”
“I was,” she said thoughtfully, after a moment. “Just like you, eh? But no, I don’t regret it, on the whole. There were moments when I did, of course, but overall, no. Your father and I had some good times.” She closed her eyes, remembering. She looked much more like her old self. Someone must have combed her hair and helped her freshen up, because some colour had returned to her face.
“And all that was ruined by having children?”
She smiled knowingly. “Yes, sometimes it felt like that. I think that many women feel the same, but they don’t dare admit it. Whatever else I was – indeed am – it was honest. Perhaps you have had experience of that too – people don’t much like honesty. It makes them uncomfortable. But, my dear, it may surprise you to know that now I am getting older, and clearly not invincible, as I once thought, I am quite pleased that I have adult children.” She looked at me sideways, a definite gleam in her eyes. “Even if one of them is usually on the other side of the world and the other regards her parent as nothing but a tiresome duty.” She pressed a button on the side of the bed, raising it up slightly so that she was sitting more upright.
I opened my mouth to protest, and closed it again. What she’d said was true. Oddly, though, it was beginning to be less true. “As it happens,” I said slowly, wondering how she would respond – if, as would so often have been the case, she would shoot me down with scornful words disguised as humour – “I have changed a lot over the last few months. I wonder if we, you and I, could start again somehow. Not so much as mother and daughter, with all the baggage that goes with it, but just as two women. You never know – in time we might actually be friendly.”
My mother threw back her head and laughed uproariously, slapping her hand against the bedsheets, till her eyes dripped. “Oh, Rachel,” she said, “do try not to be so rash.” I bit my lip, but inside I was laughing too.
“Pass me a tissue, will you,” she said. She dabbed her eyes and sighed. “So, what has caused this change, if I am not being too nosy?”
“Maybe,” I said hesitatingly, “it started with the attack. No, it must have been before that, when I had to leave here after all her – Eve Rawlins’ – threatening behaviour.”
“Wait.” She held up a hand. “I only know you were attacked. It was all over the papers, as I told you. I don’t know about the rest.”
I told her what had gone before, and she listened, sometimes shaking her head, or sucking in her breath. “Good grief. How ghastly.”
“Yes, it wasn’t great. But as you might imagine, my main worry was whether I’d be able to work, or whether she’d damaged my hands too badly. That was the worst of it: my career threatened. You might understand that.”
She paused. “Hm, sort of, but I don’t think I was ever quite as obsessed as you.”
“Really? That’s news to me! I remember you as never being there, always at auditions, or chasing some plum part. I always thought of work being your focus, with children, especially me, coming a very poor third after Dad.”
“It’s odd, isn’t it?” she mused. “The same set of circumstances, yet so different depending on who is looking at them. Perhaps my memory is at fault.” She looked at me keenly. “So what you are saying is that you felt unwanted, is that it?”
“By you, yes. Not by Dad.”
She was silent for a moment. “He wasn’t perfect, you know.”
“Maybe not. But at least he didn’t want to abort me.” I had to say it.
Her eyes flew wide. “Did I say that?”
“Yes. I was nine.”
“My dear, how awful.” She sighed. “And you’ve held it against me ever since.”
“I’m trying not to, but it’s a tough call.”
She tapped her teeth with one long fingernail. “I think it’s time to forget it, Rachel,” she said softly. “I shouldn’t have said it, and I certainly didn’t mean it. I expect I spoke in a moment of anger. I’m sorry.”
I’d expected her to wipe the floor with me. Once she would have done just that. “Maybe you’ve changed too, Mother.”
“Well, being potentially at death’s door does rather concentrate the mind,” she said. “Speaking of which, I gather I have you to thank for the fact that I still have two legs.” She wiggled them slightly beneath the sheet.
“Pardon?”
“Did you not say to that strange little doctor that I’d rather die than have my leg amputated?”
“Oh, yes. Was I right?”
“Absolutely.”
“Actually, though,” I said, “to be fair to Dr Abadi, he was horrified by the very idea, and was committed to saving the leg if it was at all possible. He’s done well by you, you know. You shouldn’t be so dismissive.”
“I expect you’re right.” She pursed her lips. “Mind you, he did say the leg might never go back to normal. It might always be fatter than the other one.”
“You’ll just have to spearhead a fashion for long flowing skirts,” I said. “All the other ladies will follow you slavishly.”
“Such sarcasm!” She smiled. “I wonder where y
ou get it from? But enough about me… What about you – your career? Will you be able to resume it?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I’m still signed off sick.”
“Hm. And is that all there is to it – this change in you that you mentioned?”
“No, there’s more.” I paused, steeling myself to carry on what I’d started. There was no turning back now. “And maybe you won’t like this,” I continued, “but Dad instilled something in me when I was very young, and I think, tentatively, I am coming back to the faith that he taught me.” I watched for her reaction, but she was impassive. “I haven’t told anyone about that till today,” I said. “I’ve barely admitted it to myself.”
She frowned. “I don’t know why you think I wouldn’t like it,” she said. “I may not share it, but your beliefs are your own. Did this result from what that wretched woman did to you as well?”
“Not entirely,” I said, feeling my way. “Not being able to work made me rethink my life. I saw how poor it actually was, how few friends I had, and how little I prioritized time with the ones I did have. Yes, I was focused on saving lives, but I think I lost some of my humanity in the process.”
She sighed. “And yet you have done what many people might dream of,” she said, straightening up in her hospital bed. “You have made a difference to a lot of sick people. I don’t suppose it’s been easy.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Crikey, Mother, you almost sound sympathetic! And to think you laughed when I told you I wanted to be a heart surgeon!”
“Me, sympathetic? Perish the thought,” she said. She spoke in jest, but it sounded so like the old mother that I hooted with laughter.
“So, you’ve been examining your life,” she said. “Not something you’ve had much time for before, I imagine.”
“Not something I wanted to think about, I guess.”
“Nor, I suppose,” she continued, a twinkle in her eye, “have you had much time for any kind of love life.”
The Healing Knife Page 29