A Time to Heal

by Claire Rayner

  She looked at herself in the mirror as the girl went to work with rollers and comb and hairspray, and marveled; the lines painted on her lids, the smudges of white on her cheekbones and below her eyes; they made her look quite extraordinary. Pleasantly extraordinary, she decided. I really must try to see if I can do that myself sometime.

  Someone came into the room behind her, and she tried to peer sideways at the sound of her name being called, but the makeup girl held her head firmly, and the speaker came to stand behind her and talk to her in the mirror.

  “Dr. Berry?” he said, and looking at his fair head and bright gaze, Harriet was reminded immediately of John Caister, and had a sudden vision of him, with Catherine, sitting in front of the television set in the staff common room at Brookbank, waiting to watch her, and for the first time felt a thick chill of apprehension seeping into her.

  “Dr. Berry, I’m so sorry to bother you—I’m the floor manager, Jerry, remember? We met in the hospitality room a while back—so sorry, but could I just verify? There’s a young lady—very charming, and that—at reception. Says she’s your daughter, and wants to come in to the program—she and her young man with her. And really, much as we’d like to accommodate everyone who walks in off the street, you know how it is! Space, you see, so limited! But of course if she is, then of course we can find room for both of them. Did you arrange for her to come along?”

  “I didn’t precisely arrange—well, I told her about it, of course, but it never occurred to me that—oh, dear, it’s just the sort of thing she’d do! She’s fairly tall, dark curly hair? Looks a bit like me, they say. Oh, and she’s probably wearing a sheepskin coat—”

  “That’s it—oh, well, that’s settled then. I’ll tell them both they can come in.” He turned to go, and Harriet called, “Er—just a moment—the young man with her—what’s he like?”

  “Ah, well, yes. Hard to say. Wears his hair very long and has the most enormous quantity of beard spreading about. Too beautiful to be true, I assure you! To tell you the truth, Dr. Berry, it was because of that the reception people were so cagy and asked me to check. Ever since that time we had a young invasion on the program our doorman’s been positively allergic to hairy young men. Makes his life very difficult—most of the staff go for the hairy look themselves, to be honest! However! I’ll go and see they have a couple of seats near the front. We’ll be on in fifteen minutes, girls, so move it, will you? J.J. been in yet, Dodie?”

  “Not yet,” a girl on the far side of the big room said. “If you see him, try and rush him in, will you, Jerry? I hate a last-minute push—”

  The room seemed to take on an air of greater purpose now, as more people came in to perch on the barber’s-type chairs, and Harriet felt a little flustered as her own girl took off the cape, and said coolly, “I think that should look fine. I haven’t seen you on the monitors, of course, but if there’s anything wrong I’ll have time to come down before the off. Oh, Dr. Ross-Craigie? Could you come and sit here, please?”

  Harriet turned and raised her eyebrows in recognition.

  “Well, William! Hello! And my congratulations.”

  “Harriet Berry! They told me you’d be here, and I can’t tell you how delighted I was to hear it. It’s so much pleasanter having old familiar faces about on these occasions, don’t you agree?”

  He was wearing a very pale gray suit and a vivid pink shirt with a tie to match, and very carefully arranged the plastic cape to cover every bit of his collar before taking off his heavy square-rimmed glasses and leaning back in the chair. “No, don’t go, Harriet. I’m dying to ask you some questions—ah, no—no, my dear girl, not that color. I know from bitter experience I look quite green without a good deal of brown in the foundation. Try this—”

  As he fiddled among the sticks of makeup on the girl’s table, Harriet looked at him, and took stock. He’d put on a little weight, had a sleek well-fed look that was quite new. In his Brookbank days he had always looked as though his clothes were a size too large for him, well cared for and neat though they had been; he had been considered a dapper young man even then. Now he was positively glowing with good health, good grooming and good taste.

  “Now, Harriet, do tell me. How is Oscar? I thought the poor guy looked far from well when I saw him a little while back. We met in the States, you know? I was really concerned for him when I saw him at a party—no, honey, a little more highlighter there, if you’ll allow me to say so. I’ve done so much television these past few months, I feel I could almost do my own makeup—”

  It hasn’t taken him long to pick up an American accent, Harriet thought, amused. Not much, but enough to be just noticeable.

  “—so I wondered if he was sick, when he behaved so—well, even for Oscar, and we all know how short a fuse he has—he behaved very oddly. But I guess I managed to cover up for him, and so many Americans expect Englishmen to be oddballs that he got away with it. But I worried, I must say.”

  “Oscar is very well, thank you, William. Overworked, of course, and underpaid like the rest of us, but he’s used to it.”

  He slid his eyes sideways at her and produced a wicked little grin. “There—I’d forgotten. You and Oscar—I should have known better than to go shooting my mouth off about him to you, hmm? But there was no criticism meant, believe me, Harriet. Just normal concern, I promise you—”

  Harriet opened her mouth to speak but he went on, watching the girl’s hands in the mirror as they moved busily across his face.

  “As for being underpaid—well, not much longer for you, from all I hear.”

  “How do you mean?” Harriet knew she sounded guarded and could do nothing about it.

  “Oh, oh, oh! Sorry! The last thing I want to do is go off before the gun’s fired! Not a word more. What I’m not supposed to know about, I don’t know about. Yes—thank you, dear. Very nice. It’s a tough job making up a man whose tan has begun to fade, hmm? That’s one thing I know I’ll miss by coming back to the U.K. Those American summers! Too much …”

  There was a flurry at the door, and the people in the room moved and swayed as though a wind had blown over them, and J. J. Gerrard, the anchorman of “Probe,” came in followed by a man with a clipboard in one hand and a coffee mug in the other.

  “You’ve got three minutes flat to perform your usual miracle, Dodie, my darling, so get to it—my coffee! Where the hell is my coffee? Ah, there it is—bless you, Tony. What would I do without you to follow me about with my drug—ah! Dr. Ross-Craigie. William—here, take this bloody mug, somebody”—he thrust the mug back at Tony, who fielded it with the obvious ease of long practice, and advanced toward Harriet and Ross-Craigie, his hand outstretched.

  “Hi, J.J. Good to see you again. Seems barely a day since we did this for your New York program, doesn’t it? Have you met Dr. Berry yet, J.J.? I can’t tell you how good it was to see her again. Old friends, you know, old friends—”

  “Dr. Berry, I am really grateful to you for agreeing to come on the program. I know how shy you scientists are—well, most of you, anyway”—he thumped Ross-Craigie on the shoulder, and Ross-Craigie grinned—“and my researchers told me they had quite a job persuading you. But I know you won’t be sorry—sure of it. You’ll do nothing but good, you’ll see, coming here to tell people about your marvelous work. Marvelous. This time next year, you’ll be the new Nobel, of that I’m sure. Our William here’ll be as passé as last year’s Miss World, what do you say, William?”

  “Miss World! I should be so lucky,” Ross-Craigie said promptly, and J. J. Gerrard threw his head back and laughed, and Tony and Dodie laughed and looked up at the clock on the wall, and moved in to urge J. J. Gerrard toward a makeup chair.

  “Don’t worry about a thing, Dr. Berry,” he called over his shoulder, as the girl wrapped him in his cape. “I’ve done my homework very well, and I’ve got all the right questions lined up. William will tell you—he’s done a couple of shows with me in the States, he’ll tell you it’s all easy. Real co
ol and easy—I’m the one that does all the work! You just have to follow my lead. So have fun! See you on the green—okay, okay, so get on with it instead of nagging, Dodie! Where’s that bloody coffee—?”

  She was beginning to feel a numbness creeping into her, quite destroying the sense of peace and comfort the day had built up. Someone took her arm, and led her out of the makeup room, and she was aware of Ross-Craigie chattering busily as he followed her out along the corridors toward a heavy door at the far end. Someone pushed the door open, and then another inner door, and she went through to find herself in a vast studio, with lights blazing at her from all directions, wires and cables strewing the floor at her feet, and a confused impression of heat and noise and the smell of people. Suddenly, she felt very frightened.

  8

  THE MAN who was holding her elbow so firmly urged her forward, up onto a dais, and settled her in a swivel chair, chattering busily all the time.

  “Comfortable? Fine—now, just ignore this—it’s only a mike. If you could just hang it round your neck and fasten it, so—shall I? I’m used to it—that’s it—just like a necklace, hmm? We like to use a neck mike for people on the dais—releases the others—the ones on the booms, see? Up there—we keep those for people who have to move about, like J.J., and then of course we need a couple for the audience. We always get lots of great audience participation, though I’m sure you know that.”

  “I’m sorry—I don’t see the program very often, actually, though I think I’ve managed it a few times—” she murmured.

  “Don’t you? Oh, good for you! So much intrusion, isn’t there, with that great box brooding over one’s living room? Never watch myself, I promise you, except in the fine of duty, of course. Now, just relax, hmm? Nothing to worry about at all. The shape’s pretty easy, pretty easy.”

  He peered at a clipboard he was holding. “There’s just you and J.J. and Dr. Ross-Craigie here on the platform”—William leaned forward from his chair on the other side of the dais, and smiled brilliantly at her—“and an assortment of people in the audience who will probably join in later.” He moved then from his position in front of her to go away toward the camera on her right, and now she could see the audience clearly.

  They were perched in a dozen or so rows, raked steeply toward the back, with a small flight of steps separating them into two blocks. At first she had only a confused impression of color and movement, but then as she concentrated faces came out of the blur to be recognized.

  Theo was sitting foursquare and calm in the second row, his arms folded, and as she caught his eye, he grimaced faintly, raising his eyebrows, and involuntarily she smiled. He moved his chin slightly forward, and following this indication, she let her gaze move along the front row. Patty was sitting there, looking curiously remote, and she thought, “How odd! She looks so different sitting there. So separate—” and was puzzled at the reaction.

  Of course she was separate. Ever since going up to university eight years ago, she had lived her own life, only visiting the cottage occasionally, yet now, as though for the first time, Harriet could see her as a unique person, someone who existed and operated on her own level without any real reference to her family, to Harriet and Gordon and George. But then, as Patty caught her glance and smiled widely at her mother, the strangeness went away, and there was her own Patty again, looking just as she always did, always had since she had been a bouncy infant and a lumpy schoolgirl; a vigorous and rather large young woman full of ideas and ideals and immense and exhausting energy. “Dear Patty,” Harriet thought gratefully, “come to hold my hand—nice child.”

  Patty leaned forward and mouthed something at her, and Harriet, her head to one side and a frown on her face, tried to understand. “I brought Ben. Ben—” and she turned to the man beside her, and he too leaned forward.

  Squinting a little at the hair-encircled face and the very dark eyes that were looking solemnly at her, Harriet remembered. Ben–what was it?—Shoeman. The Canadian boy Patty had brought home in the summer. Was that still going on? Was Patty going to marry at last? And Harriet was amused at this very maternal response and smiled at Ben, who immediately responded with a wide grin of his own that lifted his beard so that the strong nose seemed almost to disappear. A pleasant boy, she thought, and was again amused at the pattern of her thoughts—thinking of him as a boy simply because he was a couple of years younger than Patty, when he was so very much a man in his heavy solidity.

  Then she remembered the fiery way he had of talking, the violent enthusiasms and antagonisms he had displayed, particularly when talking to Gordon and his gentle little Jean; that had been very boyish. And that had been quite a summer weekend, when they had all sat in the garden, and Ben had shocked Gordon so profoundly with his exposition of his Marxist revolutionary principles, and Patty had so heatedly defended him.

  Looking at them now, sitting so close together yet not actually touching each other, she realized why the thought of marriage had come into her mind. They were wrapped in the same aura, somehow, seemed to be intertwined.

  “They’re sleeping together,” she thought, and felt bleak for a moment. It was sad to think of Patty starting her life with the sort of semidetached relationship she herself had with Oscar and for which she had settled as a second best: why couldn’t she recognize the need for emotional security that marriage, and only marriage, could satisfy?

  “Oh, God,” she thought. “This is a hell of a time to get overtaken by maternal concern and my blasted puritanism—” and smiled and nodded at them both, and looked away.

  She frowned then, as she saw a little farther along the row the neat and elegant Sir Daniel Sefton. “What the hell is he doing here?” she wondered, and glanced swiftly at Ross-Craigie. But he was sitting with his head bent, reading with an almost ostentatious concentration a little wad of paper covered with typescript. Yet she knew he was very aware of the people in front of him, could recognize the tension in him, and again felt it rising in her, felt apprehension swim into her belly, and she wanted to get up and run. Too many people, too much noise, too much heat, too much tension everywhere. It was almost intolerable.

  She moved in her chair, almost stood up, and then a man broke away from the knot of people clustered round the cameras on her right and came into the big pool of light that spilled across the front of the dais. He signaled toward the back, and a microphone boom high in the roof swooped and swung, and came to stop just above him.

  “Good evening, ladies, gentlemen, and assorted whatever the rest of you may be—” he called loudly, and there was a ripple of giggles, and faces turned forward, and she felt the weight of their attention as an almost tangible thing.

  “I’m Peter Lister, general dogsbody on ‘Probe,’ and I’m here to tell you it’s great to have you all here tonight. And I hope you’ve all brought plenty of intelligence and anger and involvement and the rest of it with you. We’re here to hear you, to hear what you think about the big issues we bring out on this program. Not that I have to tell you—do I?—that the J. J. Gerrard program isn’t the great J.J. himself, but you, the audience, the people who really matter, because you’re here to put the point of view of the millions who watch this show every Friday night—mind you, don’t tell J.J., will you?”

  He looked from side to side of the studio with exaggerated caution, and then, in a careful caricature of a conspirator, hissed, “—he thinks he’s the most important person on this program—”

  Again, the ripple of laughter slid through the audience, and Peter Lister grinned and said, “And to tell you the truth, we, the program staff, we think so quite a lot of the time, much as we know how much the real success of the show depends on all of you. He’s a great guy, our J.J. So let’s hear it for J.J.! Come on, let’s see just what you think of our peripatetic polemicist—traveling gasbag to you ignorant lot.” Again the laughter rose, more sure this time. “—Let’s see what you can do to show what you think of the man himself—J. J. Gerrard—let’s hear it�
��” And he began to clap his hands with wide expansive gestures, and the audience took it up, and the applause grew, doubled and redoubled as the man in front of them made wide rotary gestures with his arms. And then, he held up both hands and abruptly the clapping stopped, and there was an attentive silence again.

  “Oh, boy!” Lister cried admiringly. “Oh, boy—we’ve done it again! Who are you lot? Rent-an-audience? Trained to the last inch, that’s what you are! That was just beautiful! But prove it wasn’t a fluke. Try it again—start when I do, build as I wind you up like this”—again the rotary movements—“and kill it as soon as I put my hands up like this—”

  Obediently, the audience responded, and again and once again he put them through the routine, and then stood there, shaking his head from side to side in a sketch of amazed approval.

  “You are the greatest we’ve had yet, take it from me. The gereatest! Just sing out and chip in with the same sort of spontaneous spirit, and I tell you, we’ll have the greatest ‘Probe’ program of the season. Okay—Jerry?—”

  He peered into the shadows round the camera, and someone there waved, looked at his watch and held up two fingers. “Okay, then. In about a minute and a half, we’ll start the music. Don’t, perlease, try to watch the monitors—those screens above your heads—too much. You’ll hate seeing yourselves anyway. People always do! And when I give you all the go, start the applause, just like we’ve rehearsed it. Okay? And keep it going until I give you the sign—and after that it’s up to you and J.J. Enjoy, enjoy, and join in!” And waving widely at the audience, a few of whom waved perkily back, he moved back toward the camera group, wiping his forehead with a big handkerchief as he conferred with Jerry, the floor manager.