Deliver Them From Evil

by Andrew Puckett

  ‘We’ll look at another urine sample and I’ll decide when I see the lab result. But yes, I think it’ll be tonight.’ She replaced the sensor, gently wiped the lubricant from my belly, then dropped the tissues into the bin. ‘Now, turn over and I’ll give you today’s Humegon injection.’

  Glad to hide my face, I did so while she prepared the syringe, holding it up to the light while she expelled the air.

  ‘My God, they must have some butchers at St Michael’s, your poor botty’s quite blue.’

  ‘I thought it was in the nature of the thing,’ I said, panic jostling with acute distaste at her choice of wording.

  ‘Not at all. Now, try to relax…’

  She slapped one cheek and an instant later, sank the needle into the other. An old trick, but for all her fulsome expression, she did it very well and I hardly felt a thing.

  ‘There,’ she said, ‘finished. Now, if you could get dressed and produce a urine sample for me, that’ll be all for now. I’ll tell you my decision as soon as I’ve seen the lab result.’

  Tom had finished unpacking and was staring out of the window when I got back to the suite.

  ‘Any news?’

  ‘They’re probably going to give me the Pregnyl at midnight tonight.’

  ‘Tonight!’ He crossed from the window and said quietly, ‘So they’ll be taking the eggs from you…midday Monday?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Which cuts down on our time here. ‘He looked up. ‘And the Pregnyl could make you feel as had as the Nafarelin did?’

  ‘So the Professor said.’

  His mouth tightened. ‘In that case, we’ll have to go snooping tonight.’

  ‘You can’t! Not just after we’ve got here.’

  ‘Keep your voice down!’ He nibbled at his lower lip. ‘Our just having got here doesn’t make any difference, but I will need to take another look at the layout downstairs before…’ He took out his packet of cheroots.

  ‘Not in here,’ I said. ‘She was on at me about smoking again just now, and the smell of those things is so obvious.’ He grunted and put them away.

  ‘We can go for a drive after lunch,’ I said, ‘or a walk in the grounds, perhaps. I’m dying for a smoke as well.’

  ‘All right.’ He grinned nervily. ‘It’s like being back at school, isn’t it?’ He looked at his watch. ‘Ten to one. We might as well go down for lunch now.’

  Leila showed us to the dining room, which was at the corner of the manor, so that the light came in from two sides. We were the first there.

  ‘If you’d like to sit down,’ she said in her efficient, and increasingly irritating manner, ‘lunch will be served in just a few minutes.’

  ‘Is that a commonroom for guests through there?’ Tom asked, indicating a connecting door. ‘Can we have a look?’

  ‘Be my guests,’ she said, laughing at her own joke.

  I followed Tom through. It was about twice the size of the dining room, also with two windows, but on the same side. There was a snooker table, an expensive-looking chess set and what looked like computer games, besides a well-stocked bookcase and several comfortable-looking armchairs.

  ‘Obviously designed with the male uppermost in mind,’ I observed dryly.

  ‘We’re the one’s with damn all to do.’

  ‘Not quite damn all,’ I murmured.

  ‘Oh, the nifty fifty in the cubicle, you mean?’

  ‘I do so love your powers of expression.’

  He gave me a quick grin before going over to one of the windows. These were lead latticed, with panels about six inches across. He looked out and down, then carefully studied the catches and frames, before moving to the other window and repeating the process.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I whispered as he came back over to me. He put a finger to his lips and went to the door which led to the corridor. He opened it, glanced casually in each direction, then closed it again. He looked slowly round once more before returning to the dining room.

  I followed him. It was still empty. He repeated his scrutiny of the windows and was gazing up at the ceiling when the door opened and a man and a woman came in.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Jones, right?’ said the man in a loud and hearty voice. He had an open, rather flabby face, thinning hair and a gut that was beginning to spill over his belt.

  ‘That’s right,’ Tom said.

  ‘Boyton. Geoff and Denny, as in Denise. That’s Denny, I’m Geoff.’ Denny smiled, with considerable effort. I thought. ‘Just got here, then?’

  ‘An hour or so ago,’ Tom replied.

  ‘We’ve been here three days. Denny had the final jab last night, which is why she’s a hit below par. Let’s sit down, shall we, er…I absolutely refuse to call you Mr Jones.’

  ‘Tom,’ said Tom.

  ‘Jo,’ I said.

  ‘As in Josephine, right?’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said, fighting down the beginnings of a strong dislike. We sat down at one of the larger tables.

  ‘You a snooker man, Tom? My last snooker partner left yesterday.’

  ‘I have been known…’

  I turned to Denny. ‘Are you really not feeling well?’

  She smiled, rather wanly. ‘You know what it’s like.’ She had long auburn hair and blue eyes and would have been pretty, but for the effect of the drugs.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ I replied. ‘Why didn’t you stay in your room?’

  She glanced at her husband. ‘If it gets any worse. I will. The things we go through, eh?’

  I smiled back at her. ‘I know. My turn soon.’

  Geoff was telling Tom he was a salesman for an engineering company, and with a sudden perception, I realised that he was almost exactly the same type that Tom had modelled himself on, down to the macho defensiveness, which probably meant it was he who had the problem.

  ‘When are you for the midnight stick-up?’ Denny was asking me.

  ‘Probably tonight,’ I said, laughing.

  A girl came in with a tray of soup. It was pea, and very good.

  ‘How long have you been trying?’ Denny asked.

  ‘Three years. How about you?’

  ‘Five. Five,’ she said again, then abruptly put her spoon down and closed her eyes. A tear welled up and ran down the side of her nose. I glanced at Geoff, but he was still talking to Tom.

  I put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Shall I take you up to your room?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ she said in a low voice. Then, more loudly, ‘Geoff, I’m going up to the suite.’

  ‘Oh. D’you want me to…?’

  ‘It’s all right, Mrs Jones is coming with me.’

  ‘Oh, right. I’ll be up later, then.’

  She composed her face as we went into the hall and started up the stairs.

  ‘It’s very good of you…after all, I hardly know you.’

  ‘Put it down to female solidarity.’ I said. ‘Which is your room?’

  ‘Four.’

  Next to ours and directly opposite the door from the upper landing. As soon as we were inside, she sank on to her bed and started weeping again, this time holding nothing back.

  ‘D’you want a nurse?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’

  I sat beside her, put an arm round her and said nothing, just let her cry it out.

  After a while, the tears subsided and she wiped her eyes.

  ‘I had no right to inflict that on you,’ she said shakily.

  ‘You have every right. Why don’t you tell me about it?’

  ‘That would be a further affliction.’

  ‘So I’m a masochist.’

  She blinked and smiled. ‘You must be.’ She looked down at her hands on her lap. ‘It’s very simple. We’ve been trying for a child for so long. Geoff…’ she looked quickly up at me, ‘I’m not blaming him.’

  ‘It’s the same for us,’ I said.

  She gave a twisted, tearful smile. ‘Geoff must have sensed it. Anyway, six months ago, he was on the point of accepting donor inseminati
on, when someone told him about this place. This is my second time here, and…I—I can’t bear it.’ She swallowed. ‘You see, I actually became pregnant last time, and then, after ten weeks, I miscarried. I’d already had three cycles of IVF, and I can’t take any more. But Geoff, he so wants a child of his own. He’s not a secure person anyway, and this—’

  ‘But it would he his own child, in all but biology…’

  ‘I know it, and you know it, but we’re still both here, aren’t we?’

  A key rattled in the door and, assuming it was Geoff, I stood up.

  A nurse came in and came over to the bed.

  ‘Mrs Boyton, your husband has just told me how you’re feeling. Why didn’t you come to me? That’s what we’re here for.’

  ‘Mrs Jones kindly helped me.’

  The nurse turned to me. ‘You should have brought her to me,’ she said, a reproving edge to her voice. ‘I’m sure you meant well, but it might have been something serious.’ She was about thirty, small, with a pretty, yet rather hard face. Her name badge said she was Jenni Lavington.

  ‘Mrs Boyton just wanted a shoulder to cry on,’ I said.

  ‘Even so…’

  ‘There are times, nurse, when—’ I stopped, aware I was overstepping my role.

  Her lips tightened momentarily, but she didn’t pursue it.

  ‘All right, but you can leave her with me now.’ She turned back to Denny. ‘A nice cup of tea, Mrs Boyton?’

  I moved to the door.

  ‘Thank you, Jo,’ Denny called.

  ‘Any time,’ I said, and left.

  Geoff looked up as I re-joined them in the dining room.

  ‘The nurse found you all right, then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Denny’s all right, is she?’

  ‘She’s fine now. It all got a bit much for her.’

  ‘I know how she feels,’ Geoff said.

  I was saved from having to think of a reply to this by the waitress.

  ‘Are you ready for your second course now, Mrs Jones?’

  ‘Please.’

  It was salmon, oven baked with tarragon, served with the newest of new potatoes and an excellent salad. It was delicious. Just the thing to take your mind off the misery, the little restrictions, the oppressive watchfulness, the velvet strait-jacket that was Catcott Manor.

  13

  Lunch was finished and Dr Kent had confirmed that I was to have the Pregnyl that night. Tom and I were walking in the walled garden behind the manor. The hedges, lawns and bushes weren’t exactly immaculate, but they were quite well maintained and we could see someone working near the wall at the bottom. Tom had brought his binoculars with him.

  ‘I’m feeling lousy enough as it is, now,’ I said. ‘If it was my fifth time, like poor Denny, I’d be feeling suicidal. That selfish boor, Geoff—’

  ‘Yes, he is,’ Tom agreed, ‘but he does have a point of view.’

  ‘Like what?’ I demanded, turning on him. I was still smarting from the injustice of Denny’s plight.

  By now, we were approaching the gardener. ‘All right if we go through?’ Tom asked him, indicating the wrought-iron gate in the wall.

  ‘Sure.’ He was in his thirties and rather tough-looking for a gardener, with pale-blue eyes and very short dark hair. ‘You can go as far as the wooden gate at the bottom, but don’t go any further. Army land.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Tom said, opening the gate for me. The path leading from it joined the track which came round from the front of the manor and ran on through parkland studded with trees and bushes.

  ‘Did you notice the bleep on his belt?’ Tom murmured. ‘I’ll bet he’s the other security guard, so watch what you’re saying when he’s around.’

  ‘All right, but what point does Geoff have?’ I said again as soon as I was sure we were out of earshot.

  Tom glanced quickly behind, then veered off the track behind a clump of rhododendron. A moment later, he had a cheroot in his mouth and was inhaling greedily.

  ‘I needed that.’ He took another drag.

  ‘Tom, what point—?’

  ‘I gave up once, you know, but then it was just me I had to deal with. Being told I can’t smoke by the likes of Kent—that’s different.’

  ‘You were right, we are like a couple of school kids,’ I said. By this time I had a cigarette going myself. ‘And you still haven’t answered my question—what point, or excuse, could Geoff possibly have for his treatment of Denny?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about it. I know that people say a child conceived by AID is no different from having one of your own, but I’ll bet the people who say that the loudest are those who don’t have to do it. I’ve just become a father, and my feelings before and after the birth were very different. I wouldn’t be without Harry for the world now, but my feelings were very mixed before he was born. I just didn’t think I was cut out for fatherhood. What I’d have felt like if I’d known it wasn’t even my own child, I don’t know.’

  ‘But that’s just selfishness. What about your wife’s feelings, her needs?’

  ‘It’s not that simple with AID. You’re going to have to tell that child, or children at some time—’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they’ll find out for themselves if you don’t. Blood groups, tissue types and so on. And then, when they’re being difficult teenagers, they can say: “You can’t tell me what to do, you aren’t even my real father.”’

  ‘Tom, it isn’t like that.’

  ‘I know it isn’t, not necessarily, but if you’re an insecure bloke like Geoff, that’s what you’d be thinking. Your ego’s already taken one bashing, and you’re on the look out for others. It’s no wonder he jumped at microinjection when he heard of it, and so will plenty of others. Like Marcus said, it’s a gold mine.’

  ‘Is that what you think now?’ I said slowly, ‘that this is simply about fleecing people with that particular problem? But as you said yourself, how does that explain the Murrells?’

  ‘I don’t know what’s going on, Jo, yet. What I am saying is save your anger for whatever it is. Geoff’s just another victim.’

  ‘All right,’ I said unwillingly, after lighting another cigarette. ‘He’s still a selfish boor, though.’

  ‘I know. I had to listen to him while you were with Denny, remember?’

  A distant report made us look round.

  ‘Tanks,’ said Tom. ‘Over there, look.’ He pointed, then fumbled for his binoculars.

  I could just make out something crawling like an insect across the horizon. Then, like us, it seemed to puff smoke, although it must have been ten seconds later that we heard the report.

  ‘It’s a Challenger,’ Tom said. ‘Two miles away.’

  ‘Isn’t it dangerous, firing so close to the manor?’

  ‘No, it’s very strictly regulated.’ He dropped his cheroot and trod on it. ‘Let’s see where this track goes, shall we?’

  We followed it down through more rhododendron clumps until it ended at a wooden gate, presumably the one the gardener meant. The track was quite well used up to the gate, probably because of the heap of garden rubbish next to it, but fainter thereafter. A notice attached to it read:

  DANGER. DO NOT PROCEED BEYOND THIS POINT.

  ‘Probably some ancient right of way,’ Tom mused as we reached it. ‘It must be used occasionally or it wouldn’t be visible at all by now.’ He leaned against the gate, then quickly drew back as it creaked rather alarmingly. ‘It’s rotten right through. They probably can’t agree on whose job it is to repair it.’

  More reports of gunfire reached us, louder now, but out of sight.

  ‘Well, you can see why they double glazed the bedroom windows,’ Tom observed. ‘Or do I mean hear why?’ He raised the binoculars again. ‘Good Lord!’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Look, over there.’ He handed me the binoculars and showed me how to adjust them.

  Amid the scrub in the distance lay three derelict tanks—you cou
ld see they were derelict by the rust on their sides and their broken tracks. But they were in formation, their barrels held high, and they looked for all the world like ghostly sentinels saying, ‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here.’

  I shivered suddenly. ‘Can we go back, please, Tom?’ I handed him the binoculars.

  ‘All right.’ He took another quick look himself, then we turned and walked back up the track.

  ‘They are a hit spooky, aren’t they?’ he said quietly.

  ‘When are you going to contact Marcus?’ I said after a pause. ‘You’ll need to tell him about Monday. The sperm.’ I reminded him.

  ‘Oh yes.’ He looked at his watch. ‘He should be at the Pheasant by now. I might as well drive over and see him.’

  ‘Shall I come?’

  ‘Probably better not. Do what the doctor ordered—relax!’

  ‘Ha ha.’

  The garden wall came into view, the stonework lit by the sun.

  ‘Might as well go straight round to the car,’ Tom said.

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  We followed the track up as it skirted the side of the wall until it reached a garage and some sheds, besides which was the gravelled car park.

  ‘Give Marcus my regards,’ I said as he got into the car. He shot me a frown which said, Shut up.

  I smiled an apology and inwardly kicked myself. Could anyone have heard? Where was the gardener-cum-heavy?

  Tom started the car, turned it and drove off. I waved, then made my way slowly round to the front of the manor.

  Dr Kent was in the main hall, saying something to Leila. She looked up as I came in.

  ‘Your husband deserted you for the afternoon, Mrs Jones?’

  I thought quickly. ‘He’s gone to look up an old friend in Devizes. I decided not to go with him.’ I made for the stairs as I spoke, not wanting her to get too close in case she smelt the tobacco smoke.

  ‘Good. Relaxation, Mrs Jones. I can’t emphasise it enough.’ I smiled as I started up the stairs. She spoke to Leila again, but her eyes flicked back to me.

  When I got to the patients’ corridor, I knocked on Denny’s door. After a pause it opened.

  ‘Jo, hello,’ she said. She was wearing a bathrobe.

  ‘Just wanted to see how you were.’