‘Sorry. No.’
‘As I thought.’
I thought he’d ask my home county. When he didn’t I realized why and wondered uneasily how much I had told him. One could do a lot of talking in five days and particularly with a quiet listener.
I had no idea of my real origins or even the name of the organization from whom my parents had adopted me when I was a few weeks old. A year later they adopted my brother. At that time they had both been schoolteachers in their thirties and married for eight childless years before they decided to adopt. They were good, kind people and raised us with love and more understanding than we ever realized in their lifetime. Forearmed, we dealt with the inevitable cracks at school with smug bellows, ‘Huh! Your Mums and Dads just had to have you! Our Mummy and Daddy chose us specially out of all the babies in the world ‒ so there! Up yours, mate!’
We were adults before we properly appreciated our blessed good luck in having them as our adoptive parents. At their funeral, my brother said, ‘I wish we’d told them. Do you think they knew?’ I didn’t know. I just hoped.
They had died together in a suburban rail crash shortly before I met Dave. Not a notorious crash with television cameras, floodlights, and firemen working through the night. Just a headline in the London evening papers. ‘Three passengers killed, four injured …’ They had travelled that line thousands of times having always lived in the same London suburb, and only left it for the war. Our adoptive father had been in the army, our mother a Wren. They had met at the local tennis club in their teens.
My brother ‒ and we never thought of each other as adopted ‒ was now married. I liked his wife and saw them fairly often. She came from a large family and was slightly amazed by my brother’s pleasure in his hordes of in-laws.
He never mentioned this to me. We had always got on very well, always avoided two subjects; the initial parental rejection and the passionate secret longing to belong in our own right. I outgrew my bitter fury with my natural parents, if not my curiosity about them, in my early teens. I only outgrew the second long after Dave’s death. When we were engaged, then married, I used to look at him in joyous wonder. I belonged to him and he to me. I was his real fiancée, real wife, Anne Dorland was my real name.
I wasn’t ashamed of any of this. I wasn’t ashamed of my body. But I wouldn’t have enjoyed meeting again some stranger in front of whom I had stripped four years ago no matter how kindly he had lent me his overcoat. That I couldn’t remember how far I had stripped and was now aware the experience had probably been as painful as embarrassing for him, made the present no easier.
‘Like the radio, Anne?’
‘If it doesn’t disturb you?’
‘Not at all.’ He switched on. ‘Pop? Homespun? Music? Gently educational?’
‘Music, please.’
‘Good.’ He pressed the right button. ‘Drive much?’
‘Not a lot. My brother lends me his car when he and his wife are selling their firm’s computers round Europe. I haven’t one of my own. If you want a break any time ‒’
‘Dislike being driven?’
‘Much prefer it.’
‘That’s useful.’ He smiled briefly. ‘I loathe it. So does Alistair. We sweated in turn on the drive up.’
‘Traumatic experience for you both.’
‘Very,’ he said and we ran out of small talk.
He had told Hamish he thought the drive should take seven to eight hours ‒ that included twenty minute stops every two hours or so. I suspected we were equally appalled by the prospect of those stops, but accepted them as preferable to our ending the night on some Accident Unit table or morgue fridge. Driving fatigue on a journey this length, and at night, could make that alternative a probability rather than a possibility, as our mutual trainings had shown us. Mrs Mackenzie and Elspeth had packed us massive picnic suppers. Perhaps we could talk about the sandwiches. No sandwiches in that Spanish hotel; no No Entry signs stuck in the cold turkey and ham. The coffee we’d have to drink in silence.
From the start of the drive we had behaved outwardly as if our decision to ignore the past had blotted it out. It wasn’t as simple as that and we both knew it, since the past had made us what we were in the present and might well be as responsible, in his case as in mine, for the fact that we were in that car in that moment of time. With others around it hadn’t been too easy, but at least we hadn’t had to talk to each other after that one dance. On our own, with so many conversational openings hedged off, our strained silence seemed the only bearable solution.
If only he had worked in another hospital we could have taken hours of refuge in hospital ‘shop’. Being now as eager as himself to keep our professional lives separate ‒ if possible ‒ I didn’t think that subject a good idea for more than one reason. As he was both a post-grad and outsider, I doubted he yet realized how closely Heart-Lung and Coronary Care could work together on occasions. Every hospital had its own methods and probably Benedict’s differed from Martha’s on this. In any event, in any teaching hospital, the medic and post-grad students ‒ unless the latter qualified and were at some period on the resident staff ‒ knew less about the actual workings of the place than the newest junior porter. In a hospital, as in a factory, shop, office, school, or any other similar establishment, one needs to be one of the working staff as opposed to one of the academic spectators watching, learning, and sometimes partaking part-time, first to discover the inner wheels exist and then how they turn round. Start talking ‘shop’ and I might unintentionally let fall enough to show him how lucky he had been since November and the odds against that luck holding. Personally, I’d face that when I had to, and the present atmosphere was thick enough without the prospect.
He wore glasses to drive. He had worn dark glasses on our last drive, but not when painting, presumably as he didn’t want the colours distorted. Of course, he had that straw hat.
The thought of that damned hat was a big mistake. I told myself to stop wallowing in self-pity and remember this was as tough, if not tougher, on him. Not just lumbered with me again, but this time with a girl he’d have to appease. I wondered, without real interest, when they had got together, suspected after Spain and that his solitary holiday then had been some kind of anti-hell therapy. Then the poor guy walked straight into mine.
I took another grip, wondered what Ruth Hawkins saw in him and studied his profile as if for the first time. Not so odd, that was how it seemed. Previously I’d never noticed his profile was so good, the humour and intelligence in his face, the rather nice way his hair grew and its faint tendency to curl at the back. Not bad, I thought. Not a knock-out like Alistair, but not bad.
I glanced absently at his bare hands on the wheel. They were disproportionally small for his height, very fine-boned and neat-fingered. Sevens, in theatre gloves, at the most. Suddenly I recalled thinking he had the right hands for an artist. Even better for a surgeon; very small, very strong, very gentle ‒ and how in hell did I know that? Then I remembered and had to look out of my window.
I had wept and wept in his arms. He had been sweet. He had stroked my hair till I calmed, dried my face, told me to sit down and he’d be back, directly. I had sat in a cane chair on the patio and there must have been a lemon tree near as I could still smell it. It had been the sort of dark blue velvet night of a Mediterranean travel poster, only it had been real. Whilst I waited I saw a star fall into the black sea. I couldn’t remember his return; just the way the brandy burnt my throat.
The radio was a blessed anodyne. We crossed the border to a Mozart piano concerto, and sighed simultaneously when it ended.
‘You like Mozart, Anne?’
‘Very much. You?’
‘Second only to Beethoven about whom I’m a bit unbalanced.’
‘And me.’
‘Really?’ He smiled with a relief I shared to have hit a safe topic. ‘I’ve often thought how wonderful to have had the genius to evoke for centuries what with me amounts to instant euphoria. Yo
u play anything?’
‘No. Wish I did. Do you?’
‘Not now. Once, for two years, I played the flute in our school orchestra. I enjoyed it, but the music master didn’t. “Don’t play well enough, boy. Out!” ’
I smiled. ‘Aristotle would’ve approved. Every gentleman should play the flute, but not too well!’
‘And the only way to learn to play the harp is to play the harp. Didn’t work on my flute. Even Homer sometimes nods.’
‘If he-she does,’ I said, ‘I prefer him-her to Aristotle. Never fancied him at all. Come to that, I wouldn’t have fancied being a woman in any strata in Ancient Greece.’
‘Not all that amusing in rural areas of modern Greece.’ He paused suddenly, as if he hadn’t meant to say that. I couldn’t think why not. ‘Did you read classics?’
It was a shot in the arm to find there were some things he didn’t know about my past. ‘Lord, no. My education stopped with the six Os and two As I needed to get into Martha’s. My adoptive father taught classics. Bits rubbed off at home.’
‘Much as with Alistair. His mother could’ve been a professional pianist had she not chucked her training to marry. She taught him soon as he could sit at a piano. For an amateur he’s first-class. Ruth’s quite good on the cello. She and Alistair used to accompany each other when she lived in London. I thought very well ‒’ his voice was amused, affectionate ‒ ‘when they weren’t fighting over the beat. Those two are so alike that ever since they first met inside of five seconds someone’s drawing blood.’ He turned up the radio volume as the programme was interrupted by a weather flash. ‘And someone, somewhere, is about to chill ours.’
The temperature in London had dropped seven degrees in the last hour and was still falling. It had begun snowing heavily in the coastal areas of East Anglia, Kent and Sussex. There was a Force 10 gale imminent in the North Sea, a Force 9 already blowing in the Channel. The entire eastern half of Britain could expect heavy driving snow in the next few hours.
‘One hesitates,’ added the duty announcer, ‘to emulate Cassandra, but one would advise listeners to avoid the roads of eastern Britain tonight.’
‘Now he tells us.’ George turned down the sound. ‘I was going to suggest a hot meal somewhere before the motorway, but as we’re heading into a Night of White Horror ‒ sorry, Alistair always leaves me thinking in banner headlines ‒ I think we’d better keep going whilst it’s clear, then knock off for snacks in the car. Suit you?’
I hadn’t understood his remarks on Alistair and Ruth, but his changed mood I did. Very British. ‘Fine!’ I said.
We were on the motorway about an hour later when the hail started. I switched off the wildly crackling radio as the stones hammered the car like machine-gun fire, piled up on the windows and windscreen and made the wipers grunt as they cleared increasingly smaller triangles.
We were crawling in the slow lane.
‘Sorry, Anne, this is too dodgy. Shout soon as you see a turning off. We’ll have to sit this out. Shouldn’t be long. Too violent.’
The hail turned off as abruptly as a tap a few minutes after we stopped in a side road lay-by. George took off his glasses, put on gloves, got out to clean off the frozen hail, then check the engine. ‘My God, I could use skates!’ He slithered back, and when he tested, the wipers weren’t working. He rootled in the dashboard shelf for a screwdriver and old throat torch. ‘One day I’m going to pressure someone into giving me a grant whilst I produce my thesis on why running repairs to one’s car are invariably only necessary when it’s pitch dark, miles from a garage and the temp’s sub-Arctic.’
‘At least, the hail’s stopped.’
‘After that ‒ stand by for Jehovah’s thunderbolt!’
I laughed. ‘Want any help?’
‘Not sure, thanks, but if so I’ll shout.’ A minute or so later, he called, ‘Can you hold the torch? I need both hands and if I stick it in my mouth my chattering teeth’ll probably drop it.’
‘Coming!’ I leapt out.
‘Watch it, Mrs Dorland! This ground’s an ice-rink!’
I doubted he noticed his slip. At face value it didn’t bother me, though I could have done without this evidence of the thoughts at the back of his mind.
I held the torch from across the bonnet. ‘Right?’
‘Not quite.’ He altered its position without touching my gloved numbed hand. It was so cold, my chest was tight. ‘That’s it ‒ I think. Hey ‒ they’re off!’ The warning was too late as already the suddenly galvanized wipers had swept the torch out of my hand, over the bonnet and on to the road by his feet.
‘George, I’m terribly sorry! Bulb smashed?’
‘It’s gone out. Doesn’t matter as I’ve a spare bulb. Where’s the bloody thing got to?’ He stepped back and, from his immediate skid, stood on it. He went down in the darkness with such a crack that for an ugly moment I thought he had hit the road with his head. I skated round the car and was about to exclaim with relief when I saw that was premature.
He was sitting on the ground gripping his crooked left knee and rocking slightly with pain. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered between his teeth, ‘get back in and put on the engine and heater. Won’t be a minute.’
I didn’t argue as we needed more light. I backed the car and got him in the full headlights. He had to close his eyes as the beams hit him. He was grimacing with pain and the sweat was freezing on his forehead and upper lip.
Bad knee injuries cause a peculiarly agonizing pain and from his appearance, he had done some real damage when he fell.
I dipped the lights and hurried back to him, but carefully. ‘Think you’ve put it out?’
‘No. Just a clout. Done this in rugger,’ he grunted. ‘Pass off in a tick.’
I touched his temporal pulse. He was in a lot of pain.
‘It’s too cold out here, George. Let’s get you into the back of the car and see in the warm what you’ve done.’
‘Just a bloody clout. Get in. Don’t fuss!’
I ignored that. It was neither the time, place, nor temperature for a gentle approach. ‘Don’t be such a damned hero, George. You sit out here much longer, you’ll pass out, I can’t lift your dead weight unaided and don’t fancy leaving you to get exposure as well whilst I go for help ‒ and you will in this cold.’ I stood over him, scraped the ice from under my feet for a sure foothold, then hooked my arms through his armpits. ‘Hang on to your bad knee with one hand, get your other arm round my neck, hold tight and I’ll lever you on to your good foot with my back. Come on, dear,’ I used my firmest nanny-knows-best voice, ‘I’ve done this for heavier men than you and I’ve never dropped one yet.’
Slowly he reached for the back of my neck. ‘And how many discs have you slipped, dear?’
‘I’ve tempted providence enough for one night. Ready?’
Once he was on his good foot it wasn’t too difficult as he used the car and myself as crutches. He stifled a sharp intake of breath as I lifted his injured leg whilst he eased himself on to the back seat. ‘Thanks. You all right? I’m fourteen stone.’
‘I’m fine. My record’s seventeen in a mid-thigh plaster.’
I got into the back and pushed forward the front seats.
‘May I see?’
He was sweating more and the colour of pain, but smiled slightly. ‘You’re wrecking my ego, but, thanks.’
His knee was badly bruised and swelling visibly. ‘Some clout.’ I examined the swelling very gently. ‘I think you may’ve cracked it, but I don’t think it’s out.’
‘It’s not.’ He moved the leg to prove his point and winced. ‘See?’
‘Yes. Don’t hurt yourself more.’ I felt a bit peculiar. ‘I wish I had a scarf. Have you anything we can use as a make-do crepe bandage?’
‘I’ve got crepes in the boot.’ He gave me the spare car keys. ‘That one. Black tin, back, right.’
‘George, you’re a genius.’
He sat back wearily. ‘I could put that another way.’
/> I found an old walking-stick in the back. ‘Can I use this as a splint? You should have that leg fully extended.’ I hesitated as he looked doubtful. ‘You should, you know.’
‘Yes. Sorry. I was just wondering how my uncle’s stick got into my boot. Can’t think.’
I felt his radial pulse. ‘You’re a bit shocked, George. Why not close your eyes and try and switch off whilst I fix this? I hope I don’t hurt too much, but I’m afraid I may.’
He closed his eyes. ‘I’ll spit teeth, holler and curse.’
‘You do that.’
He didn’t make a sound or move, but he looked ghastly when I finished. I mopped my own forehead, worked out the distance to the nearest midland general hospital, calculated it was unfortunately far enough for coffee now not to matter overmuch by the time we got there and he needed a warm, but not hot drink.
Fifteen minutes later the coffee had brought back his colour and self-impatience. ‘I could kick myself with my good leg!’
‘You didn’t drop the torch ‒’
‘You didn’t make my wipers seize up, make it hail, force me to take to the road tonight with or without you. But for you more than probably I’d still be out on it! I assume you’ve a current licence? Right.’ His jaw set. ‘Will you take us on to London?’
‘Yes, of course, though I think,’ I added soberly, ‘we should first make for a hospital.’
‘For God’s sake, why?’
I had to smile. ‘For starters, a query cracked patella.’
‘I doubt that’s right, but what if it is? It won’t hurt to wait a few hours in a good position ‒ and you’ve got it in a very good one.’ I was silent. ‘I’m not bothering some poor sod of an Accident Officer with nothing worse than a bit of swelling, a bit of a haematoma, a bit of discomfort. I’ve no visible signs of a fracture, and no displacement. I know I can’t drive with it, but if any A.O. tonight were fool enough to suggest doing more than taking a picture and resting it till morning, I’d tell him what he could do with his advice. If it’s still playing up tomorrow, I’ll have it looked at in Martha’s.’ Again he waited expectantly and I stayed silent. ‘You’re oozing disapproval.’
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