She saw it all again; the old man lying crumpled on the floor, her own almost automatic reactions, the way she had so urgently thumped his chest to restart a heart that had seemed to have stopped, the way he had at last begun to breathe again, the whole attempt to keep him alive. It had in the end failed, but at least she had tried; had there been anything more she could have done to save him? Reviewing all her own actions she was able to reassure herself that there had not and she relaxed her shoulders, sitting there on the old man’s empty bed, and whispered to the indigo sky, ‘I did my best –’
And then a strange thing happened. She saw inside her head not the old man who had died in spite of her efforts, but a child, an infant, lying there on the floor in the boardroom. Sir Lewis had been eighty-three, full of years of living, some good, some bad, but busy living, yet when she tried to think of him all she could see in her mind’s eye was a baby who had experienced no life at all, lying on the heaped clothes that the old man had worn, and she shook her head angrily at her own absurdity. It was a ridiculous image, but all the same it wouldn’t go away and she closed her eyes once again to look at it more closely, trying in a confused way to understand what her own mind was trying to tell her, and hazily she began to understand.
In working so hard to save an old man’s life, she had stopped thinking about destroying another; he had been eighty-three years old and the baby within her wasn’t yet eighty-three days old, yet they had shared their dependence on her. She had done her best to save the old life, the well-lived one, the tired one; could she do less for the new untried one that lay there between her umbilicus and her knees, waiting for her to decide on its future, on whether it was to have one at all?
Behind her the side ward door opened and she drew a deep shuddering breath and turned to see who it was, and was almost surprised to see Max standing there. Absurd though it was, she had forgotten he had asked her to wait and she stared at him, her eyes wide and blank for a moment, and he came and sat down on the bed beside her.
‘Thank you for waiting,’ he said.
‘That’s all right.’ She knew she sounded inane. ‘Have you – ah – is it sorted out with Molloy and Brodie? I wasn’t quite clear about what had happened there. I mean, why Molloy sent for your father?’
‘Nor was I,’ Max said grimly. ‘I am now though –’ And he was silent, staring down at his hands which were loosely clasped in front of him.
‘Do you want to explain?’ she ventured, needing to say something and not sure what would be best.
He drew a deep breath. ‘Molloy – the man’s paranoid – I’m a psychiatrist and I didn’t see it. He’s paranoid. And that was why he sent for my father. And Pa, being Pa, came because he told him there was damage being done to Nellie’s. Nellie’s mattered more to my father, I think, than his own life did. After us, his own family, there was nothing so important –’
His voice drifted away again and she sat silent, still not knowing what to say to him. He was showing agitation now for the first time; she could feel it coming out of him with the heat from his arm which was so near hers as they sat side by side on the rumpled bed.
‘I still haven’t explained, have I?’ he said then, abruptly, and rubbed his face with one hand, as though he was trying to brush away his fatigue. ‘It was all to do with the raising of the money for the new wing. That Benefit Night – Molloy had it fixed in his head that Brodie, who is the Bursar and so handles a great deal of Nellie’s money, was misbehaving, and stealing from us. It’s all nonsense, of course. Brodie showed me all his ledgers, every one of them – I’m no financial wizard but I know real honesty when I meet it, and Brodie’s honest. He’s an enthusiast and he’s rather showy and glossy, and people like him always raise the ire of people like Molloy – the timid little men, thinking everyone’s trying to harm them, to rob them. They hate the energetic excited ones, the generous ones. They’re the sort who have to cut everyone down to their level, instead of trying to lift themselves to better ones.’
‘What’s going to happen to Molloy?’ she asked, not so much because she wanted to know – she was still rather hazy about what the whole affair was about – as because of her feelings that he needed to talk about it. ‘Has he apologized?’
‘For killing my father?’ Max said bitterly and then frowned. ‘Damn it, I have no right to say that. Pa was old and ill – he was likely to die anyway. I don’t suppose Molloy precipitated it by more than a few weeks or even days. And Pa would have wanted it this way, dying while he was busy with Nellie’s affairs – no, Molloy didn’t apologize. He’s chosen to go.’
‘Go? Where?’
Max shrugged. ‘I stopped being a caring doctor, Charlie, and didn’t ask him because I just don’t care what he does. He just said that under the circumstances he couldn’t stay here, that he was going to leave and that he’d send his resignation in the morning. And I agreed, for the Board. His deputy’ll have to manage until we find someone else.’ Again he rubbed his face. ‘Let’s not talk about it any more. I’ve had enough of it all – I want to talk about something different.’
She had been as taken aback this time by his use of her familiar name as she had been the first time he’d used it, and was sitting quietly, her own hands folded on her lap, unable to say anything. It wasn’t all that strange that he should speak to her so familiarly; in the medical common room at Nellie’s everyone was on first-name terms; however formal they were in the wards in the patients’ hearing, in their private lives they were well aware of their dependence on each other and knew how important it was to break down barriers; yet for all that, it was odd to hear this particular man speak so to her. They had, after all, been at such odds with each other – and she stirred uneasily, ashamed suddenly of the way she had behaved to him.
It was as though he had read her thoughts, because he said, ‘I wanted to tell you – I wanted to explain – I meant no harm the other evening. I wasn’t trying to – what was the word you used? I wasn’t trying to taunt you about Brin Lackland. I’m not like that. At least, I never have been and it’s been worrying me because you were so angry and so hurt and –’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and her throat tightened, making her a little breathless. ‘I’m so sorry – I shouldn’t have spoken so. It was unforgivable of me. I know now you were right. I think I knew it then, and it – I was hurt, too, you see. I just hit out I suppose, and you were there, so –’
‘I didn’t mean to hurt you.’ He looked at her and now she could see the distress in him clearly. It was as though all his grief over his father had been shifted to her, and to the little scene they had played out in the staff dining-room. ‘I truly didn’t –’
‘It wasn’t you who hurt me,’ she said. ‘It was just you who got the flak – it was Brin.’
She was never to understand why she did it, why she let the gates that guarded her from the world fall so easily, but the words were there in the air between them even before she had realized she was saying them.
‘He made love to me, and now he refuses to see me. He tells people to lie to me, to say he isn’t there in his flat when he is.’ She contemplated with a sort of calm surprise the fact that she was telling Max this and then added to her amazement by saying, ‘And I’m pregnant.’
He stared at her, his face quite smooth, and then said, ‘Oh, my dear, I am so sorry.’
‘Not as sorry as I am.’
‘He – I’m not surprised.’ He seemed to be picking his words. ‘He – it was what I think I tried to explain to you when I first saw him. A personality type which – I mean, it’s no reflection on you he behaved so. He’s just that sort of chap.’
She managed a smile. ‘You told me so?’
‘No, I’m not trying to say that –’ And then he stopped. ‘I’m sorry. I suppose I am.’
‘It doesn’t matter. You’re right. And I’m very much in the wrong.’ The smile widened and became a laugh, but there wasn’t any amusement in it. ‘A woman wronged – it’s a
charming phrase, isn’t it? Another way of describing a bad ’un – I’m a bad ’un –’
‘You don’t believe that.’
‘I don’t know what I believe.’ She wasn’t smiling now, just sitting with her head down and staring at the blank dark window. ‘I’m a bloody fool. I know that. To let myself be taken in by such a one –’
He shook his head. ‘You weren’t taken in. That implies he set out to – to ill-treat you. He didn’t, any more than I imagine you set out to be a victim. It happened because you’re the people you are, not as a result of any sort of premeditation. It was just that he’s the sort of man he is, and you’re the sort of woman you are. Rather warm and caring, I think, and with depths you probably didn’t know yourself that you had –’
‘Thank you. You’re very kind. I can see why you’re a psychiatrist.’ And she looked at him and again managed that small strained smile, not wanting him to think she was digging at him.
‘I’m not speaking as a psychiatrist,’ he said. ‘Just as a man. A rather lonely one who needs to be liked. It worried me a good deal that I had somehow forfeited your liking. That was why I wanted to talk to you. To get rid of that – I’m glad I have. I need that much comfort –’ And he looked over his shoulder at the empty bed behind them and said, ‘I’m going to miss him dreadfully. In lots of ways he was my best friend. We talked a lot – especially since Emilia died.’
‘He was a good man, everyone used to say –’ She tried to find words to comfort him, but he brushed them aside with an almost violent little gesture.
‘Good, bad – it doesn’t matter. He was my Pa –’ And then tears appeared in his eyes and lifted above the lids and trickled down his face and she reached out and touched him, feeling her initial embarrassment slip away as easily as his tears slipped down his cheeks and he bent his head so that she could put her arm across his shoulder and hold him, and he sat there quietly weeping, making no move to wipe away his tears.
How long it was they sat there she didn’t know. He wept quietly, with none of the harsh sounds that she herself had produced when she had at last cried for her own parents, and she felt there was a dignity in his grief that helped her to express some of her own for what had happened to her with Brin; and she was not surprised to discover that her own face was wet with tears or that they were as quiet and unforced as were his.
Eventually he moved and lifted his head and took a deep breath and got to his feet and went over to the washbasin in the corner and methodically washed his face, splashing cold water over it and drying it as though having to cope with a tearstained face was something he did every day of his life.
‘Thank you,’ he said after a moment and turned and smiled at her. He looked better now, much less pale and tight. ‘I’m grateful.’
‘You needn’t be.’ She held out her hand for the towel and he gave it to her and she in turn washed her face, glad to feel the cool water on her hot cheeks and eyes.
‘I haven’t felt so relaxed since – I don’t know when,’ she said, surprised. ‘I’m in this awful mess and I feel good –’
‘Of course you do. Crying is what we all need a great deal more than we allow ourselves. I try to make my patients cry as much as possible.’ He grinned fleetingly. ‘They don’t like it a lot at first, but once they discover how good it is, they become quite enthusiastic.’
She hung up the towel neatly, embarrassment creeping back into her. ‘I think I must go. I have an early list tomorrow –’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘What? Oh, a couple of appendices and a rather tricky cleft palate on a baby and -’
He laughed aloud. ‘No, my dear. Not about work. About yourself.’
‘About myself?’ She stopped and considered and then smiled at him. ‘Oh, I’m going to have a baby,’ she said. ‘Your father made that decision for me.’
‘My father?’
‘It’s hard to explain - but looking after him and trying to save him showed me how important it is to do the same for this baby. Whatever Brin did to me, this is a person -’ And she set her hand on her belly in an unconsciously protective movement. ‘So, I’ll be the same with it as I was with your father -’
He seemed to understand, for he just nodded. ‘Good. But don’t say it. Think of he or she - it’ll help you.’
‘He or she?’ She pondered that and then nodded. ‘Yes, he or she.’ She had reached the door now and she stopped and turned back to him. ‘I don’t need to say it, I know, but - you won’t tell anyone?’
He shook his head, unoffended. ‘No, I won’t tell anyone. But will you tell me? Will you come and tell me how you are, when things get difficult? I imagine they will from time to time. And I’d like to know how you are–how you’re coping.’
‘I’ll tell you,’ she said. ‘Goodnight. And my condolences.’
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Goodnight, Charlie’, and at the sound of her name again the warmth rose in her and she went to bed to sleep soundly for the first time since that night in Earlham Street when it had all started - and as she fell asleep she murmured to herself. ‘Not it - he or she. He or she -’
It was a good thought, better than she would have believed possible.
29
‘I rather think,’ David Lackland said to his brother as they arrived at St Paul’s Church in Covent Garden, ‘that Gran’pa would have enjoyed this.’
Andrew, always very literal in all his reactions, looked at him witheringly. ‘Ass! No one could possibly enjoy their own funeral. They’re dead.’
‘Gran’pa would have done.’ David took off his neat bowler and tucked it under his arm in the approved manner as they moved from the brilliantly lit churchyard into the dimness of the cool church. ‘Perhaps people ought to have their funerals before they die so that they could get the benefit of it - you could leave the burying bit till later, couldn’t you? It’d be nice to know who cared enough for you to turn out. They cared about Gran’pa, didn’t they? Will you just look at all the people there are here! Half London, I reckon - and isn’t that a newspaper cameraman over there? By that pillar? At a funeral - ye gods, but the old man’d have been tickled pink!’
Andrew was still arguing with him in whispers as the two of them made their way to the front where the family pews had been set aside, and watching them Letty thought - nice boys. But what a pity neither of them looks like Max - and she gazed about her to see if she could see their father. But there was no sign of him yet, though the church was filling rapidly.
A few rows to one side of her she saw Harry and she craned her neck a little hopefully, and then, as she got a clearer view, let her lips curve happily. To see Lee there was very gratifying; she looked as uneasy as she always did when she was in a church - with her Jewish upbringing Lee still found it somehow shocking even to set foot in a place of worship that was not her own (and after all, Sir Lewis’s wife, Miriam, had been Jewish too) but she was there, and that boded very well indeed. If those two weren’t on better terms, surely she wouldn’t have turned out, even for old Sir Lewis? Lee might have come to the churchyard to show him respect, but not inside the church. She must have done that to please her husband and Letty nodded to herself contentedly as she contemplated her nephew and his wife.
Harry seemed to become aware of her gaze then, because he turned his head directly towards her and smiled at her; a smile so wide and so full of - what? - relief, Letty decided, that it seemed as though he were sitting in their own private patch of sunlight. He inclined his head slightly, indicating, and Letty followed his direction and saw that Lee’s hand was held in his, on his lap, and she looked back at Harry’s face and returned his smile as widely as she could, putting on once more the necessary expression of funereal solemnity.
Across the aisle another uneasy group sat, clearly as Jewish as Lee, and Letty looked at them and then remembered; the Henriques clan, the ones who owned that great chain of chemists’ shops and who were so amazingly rich and successful. What were they
doing here? And then she remembered that they had been cousins by marriage of the Old Man and nodded approvingly. It was good and right to see so many people turning out to pay their respects to him.
Someone tapped her on the shoulder and she turned her head to see Peter just behind her and she smiled at him too, and then even more widely as she saw him stand back to make way for his companion, Sophie, to enter the pew before making his own way to the front of the church and the pew reserved for the chief mourners, where his sister Johanna sat with her children and David and Andrew. Really, she told herself, thinking about Sophie and Peter arriving together, things are looking up for this family; and then she grimaced a little at the irreverence of thinking such a thought at a funeral and she restored her own expression to a suitably melancholy one.
Not far from her, resting on its trestles, Sir Lewis’s coffin, rich with brass handles and gleaming wood and almost masked with flowers stood large and mute and she stared at it, remembering the Old Man with affection. Although they had shared the same surname their relationship had been far from close; though they had met at Lackland family affairs and been on polite dining terms, and she had become quite involved with them for a while in the long-ago days just after the Great War when she had first found Theo, the links between herself and Sir Lewis’s family had been tenuous, and as she sat there listening to the organist indulging himself luxuriously with a piece of sombre Bach she let her mind slip into genealogies, working out just how she had been related to Sir Lewis.
Her father hadn’t been a Lackland; he had been Wilfred Brotherton, but for some reason Letty had now quite forgotten he had changed his name to his wife’s when they had married; Sophie, her mother, had been born a Lackland, the daughter of old Bartholomew and therefore the granddaughter of the grand old man himself, the one who had founded Nellie’s so long ago, Abel Lackland. Now, Letty thought as the organ rumbled its long low notes all round her, how was Sir Lewis related to him? But she couldn’t remember who his parents had been and pushed the thought away. She and Lewis had been distant cousins; no more than that, and now she sat here in a cool dim church on a brilliant July day bidding him goodbye -
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