“All right, now—let’s use a bit of common, shall we?” the policeman said good-humoredly. “Make a bit of a way through for an ill lady, now—come on, make a way—”
“It’s her—” the wager woman shrilled. “Her that invented the cure—”
“Yes, I know,” the policeman said cheerfully. “And badly in need of a cure for herself at the moment, so make way there—”
And then, at last, they were out, the three of them, there in the bustle at the edge of the pavement as curious faces peered at her and a self-important little man in the black and white uniform of the St. John’s Ambulance Brigade who had appeared from out of the paving stones, or so it seemed to Harriet, was leading her away toward an ambulance across the road, officiously holding up one hand at the traffic as they went.
“I’m all right—” Harriet protested weakly. “Really, I’m all right—I just got a bit scared. The crowd was too much.”
“Of course, of course,” the policeman said soothingly, and she wanted to giggle again; he sounded exactly like one of the nurses at Brookbank coaxing a recalcitrant patient to submit to unwanted treatment. “But we’ll just have the ambulance people check on you—just to be sure. Er—” he looked down at her, his face now less wooden as a ripple of curiosity moved across it. “Was she right, that woman back there? Are you the—er—?”
“Yes,” Harriet said. “Yes, I’m Dr. Berry. I shouldn’t have come.”
“You’re right there, madam. I don’t think you should have, neither. Well, we’ll get the boys to check you’re okay, and then I’ll see you well out of the way. Just to be on the safe side. They’re stirring ’em up a bit back there—” And he jerked his head toward Nelson’s column.
She stood at the steps leading to the ambulance door and listened to the booming voices, to the confused shouting, and felt as much as heard the anger and frustration and aggression that were there and nodded.
“I was frightened,” she said. “That’s all that was the matter with me. I was just frightened.”
“You still are,” Catherine said flatly. “I am too, now. But we had to know, didn’t we?”
“Yes. I suppose so,” Harriet said, and climbed wearily into the ambulance.
12
“FOR GOD’S SAKE, Patty, haven’t you any influence with him? You’re as good as married to him, and I would have thought—”.
“Then you thought wrong,” Patty said sulkily, and moved awkwardly on the lumpy old couch to sit hugging her knees and glowering across the room at her mother. “I don’t own him any more than he owns me. We don’t dig any of that sort of—people belong to themselves. No one else—except the state, of course. And what Ben wants to do and what Ben believes in are his affair. I can’t try and make him be different just because—well, I can’t.”
“You mean you won’t.”
“Same difference.”
Harriet stood up, partly because, as always when she was anxious, she felt the need to move about, and partly because of the extreme discomfort of the chair she had been sitting in; why did squalor and discomfort so often go hand in hand with left-wing thinking and advanced ideas? she wondered briefly, looking with distaste at the dirty floor, the unwashed dishes on the table, the general griminess of the big room, twilit now as the afternoon dwindled away.
“Look, Patty, I’m not asking all that much of you, am I? I’m not doing one of those To-your-mother-and-after-all-I’ve-done-for-you scenes,’ but—”
“Aren’t you?”
“No I’m not! Damn it, why are you so hostile? What’s happened to you? You’ve always gone your own way and followed your own ideas, but you’ve never been quite so—”
“Oh—I’m sorry.” Patty relaxed a little, and leaned back against the wall, shoving a pillow behind her back. “You could be right–in fact, to be honest, I know you are. I mean, I’ve—well, you might as well know. I’ve already tried.”
“Tried?”
“Yes! Do you think I like seeing Ben stirring up trouble that involves you? I want him to stir up trouble, of course—I’m as revolutionary as he is—and I’m with him most of the time, but I don’t want you to be involved! I know what it must be like for you, and I know how you must feel about it. But he just says—well, it doesn’t matter.”
“You might as well tell me.”
Patty looked at her, miserably, and after a moment made a face and to Harriet it was as though she were a gawky eleven-year-old again; that was the way she had always looked when something got too complicated for her to handle.
“What is it, love? Isn’t it working out properly for you? When I saw you together at that TV thing I thought—you looked right, you know? I certainly wasn’t particularly surprised when Ben said you were living together. Has it gone sour already?”
“No—not really. Only because of you. All this.”
Harriet frowned. “You’re arguing over me? That’s stupid! I never saw myself as the sort of mother who caused—”
“Oh, it’s nothing to do with you personally That’s the whole thing! Ben—he’s very advanced politically. Very. He’s working hard for revolution and he’s right of course—I know that. But I’m—I’m not as political an animal as I thought I was. I don’t want him involving you and your work in his—in what he’s doing. But he says that personalities don’t come into it. Revolution and social change—they can’t take notice of private feelings and bourgeois relationships, and—so that’s why I’m here and not with him there in the middle of it all. I can’t shout the odds about what you’re doing, and the way your work’ll be used. Not the way Ben’s doing it.”
“But how can he go on building his whole argument on what he knows isn’t true? You did tell him I’d turned down Sefton?”
“Oh, of course I told him, but until it’s public knowledge he’s going to assume you are going to Whyborne. And there’s nothing I can do to stop him.” There was a pause. “Nothing I will do. He can’t make me join in, but I’m not going to fight with him any more over you. You might as well know it, Ma. When you have to make choices—” she shrugged.
“What’s he going to do after this? Are there going to be more of these meetings? More fuss in the Clarion?”
“I can’t say,” Patty slid off the couch to cross the room to the cluttered sink and cooker in the far corner. “Can I make something for you? Tea or something?”
“No thanks. Patty—”
“He’ll be back fairly soon, I imagine. Are you—are you going to wait and talk to him yourself?” Patty said over her shoulder, with a studiedly casual air.
“You’re asking me not to?”
Patty looked at her briefly, and then her glance slid away and she shrugged again. “it’s up to you. I’ve told you, I’ve refused to have anything more to do with it. I won’t argue with Ben about you.”
“Or with me about him? Well, that’s reasonable enough. And I don’t suppose there’d be much point in it if I did talk to him, would there?”
There was a pause and then Patty said, “No. I don’t think there would.”
“Then I’ll go. I don’t particularly want to make things any more difficult for you than they are just for the sake of it. And I’m too tired for an argument. I’m just sorry that—oh, well. What’s the use of talking? Where did I put my coat?”
“You’ll be all right?” Patty crossed the room to take Harriet’s coat from the back of the door. “You’re sure you’ve got over it all? I hate to think of you—I mean, you’re sure Catherine’ll be waiting to see you home?”
“For God’s sake, Patty, I know I’m your mother, but I’m hardly decrepit yet! Don’t be so solicitous all of a sudden! It’s insulting.”
Patty laughed awkwardly. “Well, yes. Sorry again! All right, then. Er—we’ll be in touch.”
Harriet nodded, and Patty opened the door for her, and then followed her from the almost dark room to the head of the stairs, dingy with grimy paint, and smelling faintly of unwashed lavatories.
&n
bsp; “Anyway, you know where you can reach me when you want me, don’t you? You’ve got the laboratory number. I’m there most evenings till seven or so.”
“Yes.” Harriet started down the stairs.
“And there’s Gordon, of course, he’ll cope if you need anything.”
“Stop apologizing!” Harriet said lightly and stopped and looked back at Patty, standing there in the dimness with her face almost hidden by the hair falling over her cheeks. “I told you, I’m not decrepit. And I know how it is.”
“I suppose you do. We’re very much alike in some ways, they say. Not in others, though. Look, Ma—”
“Yes?”
“Oh—nothing. Take care. The bottom step’s a bit shaky. It’s an old house—”
“Yes. I’ll take care. Goodbye, Patty.”
She sat beside Catherine in the rattling train, swaying with the movement and watching her own reflection in the black window, and tried not to be irritated by the knowledge that Catherine’s anxious gaze was fixed on the back of her head. Catherine had always been strongly partisan toward Harriet in her absurdly feminist fashion, but now it seemed to have crystallized into an intensity of concern for her as a person rather than for her work that was embarrassing at best, alarming at worst. Life was complicated enough, heaven knew, without having to cope with doglike devotion from one of her staff. She moved irritably in her corner, and closed her eyes.
“Did it help, going to see Patty?” Catherine said.
Without opening her eyes Harriet said shortly, “No,” and then felt guilty about being so peremptory and opened her eyes to look at Catherine and smile at her.
“No,” she said more easily. “The poor girl’s in love. What can she do? You were right, of course. He is a revolutionary and he’s very thorough about it. So there’s nothing Patty can do to persuade him to find another way to stir up trouble—foment unrest, isn’t that what they call it when they’re talking about strike leaders? Anyway, that’s the way it is. This meeting won’t be the last, by any manner of means. He’s going to get all the mileage he can out of it all.”
“So now what?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Catherine! Why ask me? I should have stuck to my original decision and laid low and done nothing. What good has it done, going to that blasted meeting and then going to see Patty? None at all. So please don’t ask me. I just don’t know.”
She reached home with a deep sense of gratitude that made her feel very old indeed. She stood just inside the front door hearing Catherine’s car hiccupping away into the silence of the East Anglian winter’s night, and looked at the last flickers of firelight crawling busily on the ceiling and furniture, listened to the hiss of the burning wood, absorbed the smell of floor polish and wood ash and coffee and almost wept with need of it all. Security and the comfort of known things—she had never before realized on so keen a conscious level just how much they meant to her.
Mrs. Davies was sitting sprawled in the armchair in front of the fire, her heavy legs stuck out awkwardly in front of her, fast asleep. As Harriet moved into the room and took off her coat to put it down on the big polished table, she stirred and then woke fully and jumped stiffly to her feet in alarm.
“Oh. Dr. Berry, you gave me that much of a fright! I didn’t hear you come in, my dear. I must have been right out of this world, that I must! Not that I’m to be blamed for it if I was, I’ll tell you that, my dear! A proper old devil he’s been tonight and you might as well know it. Run me ragged he has. Worse nor any babe, but there, these old ‘uns—all the same, aren’t they? I remember my old aunty—she looked after her man’s dad—must have been ninety, and he—”
“Oh dear, Mrs. Davies, has he been tiresome? I am sorry.”
“Well, not altogether his fault, I daresay. Not feeling too proud, I’d say, in hisself. Looked quite pale and peaky, he did for a while there. Not that he didn’t work hisself up to it—I’d be a liar if I said otherwise. Got into a right paddy there, he did. Wanted you here, and was very put out when he heard you was up to London. Reckons you’re plotting to put him away, you know, but I said to him, the doctor won’t do no such wicked thing so you stop your soft talk—but it made no nevermind to him. Went on and on about it, he did, so by the time I got him up to his bed he wasn’t reeling so proud in hisself. Anyways—”
“Well, you’d better be on your way, Mrs. Davies. I’ll go up and take a quick look at him but I daresay he’s all right. And thank you for waiting so late.”
“That’s all right, my dear. Makes no nevermind to me, not of a Saturday. By the time my old chap gets back from his darts and the rest of it, it’s long gone midnight, so not to fret yourself. Ill see you on Monday, then, as usual. Good night to you—”
He was lying hunched up in his bed, the light on the bedside table still burning, and as soon as she opened his door, quiet as she was, his eyes snapped open and he stared at her malevolently.
“I’m not going!” he shrilled at her. “Not going, and you can’t make me—do you hear me?”
“No one’s going anywhere,” she said wearily. “No one at all, so stop worrying. I just came in to see how you were. Mrs. Davies said you hadn’t been too well.”
“Had a pain, I did,” he said, pathos immediately taking the place of his suspicious anger. “Nasty it was. But that old bitch–she don’t care. I could die, here on my own with her, and she wouldn’t care, and you’d be glad, wouldn’t you? Rid of me then, you’d be.”
“Oh, don’t start that again now. Not tonight. I’m tired out—absolutely exhausted right the way through to my middle, and I can’t face your damned—” She stopped and took a deep breath, seeing the narrowing of his eyes, the sideways look of suspicion that had crept across his face, and was immediately furious with herself. To treat the old man with anything that sounded like anger was asking for trouble; it might be self-indulgent to let herself say what she really wanted to say to him, but it was a shortsighted self-indulgence. Inevitably such episodes led to hours, if not days, of difficulty with him.
“I’m sure Mrs. Davies meant no harm. She told me you got into a bit of a temper with her, and that upset you, but you know she means well, and she likes you—” she said carefully, and went to the bed to tuck the covers in on each side of him.
“No she doesn’t! Wants me out of the way, like the rest of you.” Petulantly he twitched the covers out of her hands, and his voice rose shrilly. “She’s in league with you, and don’t you think I don’t know it—I’m not as daft as you think I am, and don’t you think it I may not have been a fancy doctor like you, but I made my son into a doctor, good enough to marry you, fancy though you may be. I told his mother at the time, I said to her, our David, only the best’d be good enough for him, and doctor she may be, but is she the best, that’s what I want to know.”
He grimaced suddenly, and raised his left shoulder awkwardly against the pillow, and his mouth opened wider as he gasped noisily, and arched his back slightly. Then, clumsily he lifted his right hand to reach for his other shoulder and arm and held on to it.
For a long moment they remained very still, he clutching his upper arm and breathing with obviously painful effort, his mouth stretched to a caricature of a grin, his eyes screwed so tightly closed that a tear was pushed out of one comer to slide across the bridge of his nose; and she, just standing and looking at him.
Her tiredness was so much a part of her now, so deeply bitten into her that her very bones ached, and she felt curiously remote from what was happening—aware of herself standing there, watching the old man in his pain, counting each painful breath he took, but not in any way involved with him.
And then, he relaxed, and his grip on his upper arm lessened so that his hand slid down the sleeve of his pajamas, incongruously gay in yellow and white stripes, and his head rolled a little to one side, and she thought, “Resuscitation—if he’s stopped breathing I ought to do the kiss of life.”
But even as she thought of it, her gorge rose, and she knew s
he couldn’t. She could no more bend over that old body, no more open her mouth and fix her lips round his to breathe air into his lungs than she could lift her feet from the ground and fly around the room. She actually retched as she thought of it, as she looked at the flecks of spittle on the lax bluish lips, the wrinkled yellow skin around them.
And then he moved his head again and turned it on the pillow until he was looking up at her, his eyes blank with surprise, and after a moment he said hoarsely, “Pain. I told her … pain. Keeps coming …”
The reaction in her was so immediate and so sharp that her legs felt as though they weren’t there, and she let herself fold a little at the knees and hips, not knowing how she was controlling her own muscles but letting it happen; and she was sitting on the bed beside him, staring down at him, one hand on his wrist as automatically she counted his pulse. She did not know how she had brought herself to put her hand on him, to actually touch him, didn’t know how she had been able to control the wave of revulsion that had climbed into her throat, for she was still filled with a violence of feeling that she could not even name, could not fully recognize for what it was. And she did not want to name it, for she knew, somewhere deep inside the exhaustion that was coloring everything she did, that it was an emotion that she had always had but had always hidden from.
He was cold and clammy to the touch; his pallor had given way to a tightly localized flush, high on his cheeks, that looked as though it had been painted there. She felt his pulse chattering against her fingertips, noting the thin reediness of it, the uneven hurrying speed, and automatically estimated its rate; a hundred and forty or thereabouts. “He’s in shock,” she thought, staring down at him. “He’s really ill.”
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