by Rebecca Tope
By some association, Thea thought of Donny’s blocked bowel and the probable remedies that would be called for. Had Donny assumed that Toby would nurse him at the end of his life, keeping it in the family and avoiding any need for doctors and hospitals that way? They seemed to share a common attitude to hospitals, at least.
‘I suppose they did their best for her?’ she ventured.
‘Who?’
‘The hospital. After the transplant. I assume they did everything they could?’
He slumped in his chair, his head dropping until it almost touched the table. She expected him to remain silent, unable to bear the memories, or the implications of another death in the family. But gradually, he straightened, and began to speak. ‘You know what? They used the heart of a sixty-nine-year-old man who’d smoked most of his life. They said her system was healthy and strong enough to make sure it worked, and it was only a muscle, after all. She wasn’t supposed to know where it came from, but somebody told her, and that sent her over the edge. She flipped. She wasn’t her usual self, anyway. Her brain was starved of oxygen in the operation, if you ask me, though they never admitted it. She tried to rip it out.’ He said the final sentence in a husky whisper, increasing the horror of the image. ‘I knew we’d lost her then.’
Thea remembered Donny’s flat report: They did a transplant and she died. Did he know the full story of what Cecilia and Toby had had to endure?
‘Surely the hospital … I mean, wouldn’t they have talked all that through with her beforehand?’
He made a gesture of despair at her lack of comprehension. ‘You’re not meant to talk about stuff like that. You have to be grateful and compliant. Not just the patients, either. The staff have to stick to the same line as well. They have to lie to people all the time, for their own good – or so they tell you. They use baby talk and smile all the time, when in fact there’s nothing at all to smile about. The patients know they’re being lied to, but they can’t get hold of what’s true. So they feel confused all the time, and that frightens them. The nurses won’t answer straight questions, because they worry the doctor will yell at them. When the doctor finally does tell you something important, it’ll be in language you can’t understand. So the patients make things up for themselves, trying to find some sense in what’s going on, asking each other all the time.’
‘It sounds nightmarish,’ said Thea, shocked by the powerful images being conjured. ‘But surely it isn’t generally like that? You must have been unlucky.’
‘Who knows? What difference would that make?’
‘You should have had somebody to talk your feelings through with. You and Cissie. Surely somebody must have noticed how scared and confused you were?’
‘It was always somebody else’s job. There was a ward sister, called Abigail Williams, who we both loathed. She was totally disorganised, always on the phone about something, or yelling at the nurses. She wasn’t cruel or mean, but just out of her depth. And you know something – that was worse, because you couldn’t complain about her. You just had to watch her trying to stay in control, and worry that she was going to make some terrible mistake. Cissie actually felt sorry for her to start with, and tried to make things easier for her. But she took that as criticism and turned nasty. She wouldn’t admit her failings. She never knew what was going to happen next, so it was no good trying to get anything out of her.
‘You know what it reminded me of? – and I realise this is going to sound crazy – a book I read when I was nineteen and never got out of my head. About the Nazi concentration camps. If This is a Man. When they first arrive, the prisoners do nothing but ask questions, all the time. They’re desperate to understand what’s going on, what will happen to them. And nobody ever answers them. The people who’ve been there a while are scornful of these pathetic efforts to find a bit of sense when there just isn’t any. Well, that was how I felt when I spent those weeks sitting with Cissie in that hospital.’ His voice had risen and increased in volume, until the end, which was little more than a whisper.
Thea swallowed down an urge to dismiss everything he’d said as pure paranoia, or at least some sort of avoidance strategy to dodge the anguish of his young wife’s death. The comparison between a hospital and a Nazi death camp went far beyond the rational, after all. But she could see no constructive way to respond, other than changing the subject. ‘It’s a shame you didn’t know Philippe,’ she remarked. ‘He’s a heart surgeon. He might have been able to explain everything to you.’
‘Philippe Ferrier, you mean?’ His face twisted again.
‘I suppose so. I haven’t heard his surname.’
Toby spoke over her. ‘I knew him all right.’
‘So? Wasn’t he any help?’
‘He might have been if we’d coughed up a small fortune for his services.’
‘He’s private?’ Somehow it fitted, she realised. The sleek, well-groomed appearance, the patronising manner. NHS doctors had learnt to modify the patrician tones and behaviour that most surgeons had once possessed. But those in the private sector might well retain the old-fashioned ways.
Toby nodded exaggeratedly. ‘You got it,’ he said.
‘What about Donny?’ she asked. ‘Was he there when all this was happening?’ She mentally traced the chain of relationships from Philippe to Cecilia, via Donny, Edwina and Thyrza. Not entirely surprising, she concluded, that the surgeon had failed to offer free care to the daughter of his aunt’s gentleman friend.
It was as if he hadn’t heard her. He drank his tepid coffee and stared blankly at the table. Finally, he said, in the same forced whisper, ‘Donny wanted to die. Cissie didn’t. It was all wrong.’
‘But he’s done it now,’ she said, trying to follow the logic. ‘And you can’t make that sort of comparison, can you? After all, it comes to everybody sooner or later.’
The twisted smile returned. ‘It’s the “sooner or later” that matters, though, isn’t it?’
She was suitably chastened. Ordinarily, that was the sort of thing she would have said, and she felt somehow trumped by this unhappy man. ‘It is, of course,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I was being glib.’
‘People are,’ he nodded, as if aware of the point he had scored. ‘Even Donny sometimes. And Edwina. She’s been a lot of trouble to us.’
‘Oh?’ She visualised the woman, who had appeared to be uncontroversial in most of the ways that mattered. ‘You mean because she said she’d assist his suicide, if he wanted her to?’
Toby’s eyes bulged. ‘What? No – that was just talk. She’d never have found the nerve. I mean about Cissie’s mum – Janet. It was Edwina who got her into the home, and persuaded Donny she didn’t need him to visit because she’d forgotten who he was.’
‘You think she did that because she wanted him all to herself?’
He nodded irritably, as if that was too obvious to warrant verbalising.
‘And what about Jemima? She seems to agree that her mother doesn’t need anybody now.’
‘They’re wrong. All of them. Alzheimer’s people don’t forget everything. It comes and goes. She knows she’s abandoned, and she’s heartbroken about it.’
‘Did you tell them that?’
‘They wouldn’t listen. It’s all down to me. I have to carry it all on my shoulders. I went to tell her when Cissie died, and she was much the same as she’d always been. She understood, and she cried, and asked why they never visit. I’m the only one who sees her now. They act as if she’s dead.’
‘But Donny couldn’t have got there on his own. Did you offer to take him?’
‘Once or twice. Edwina always sabotaged it. She’s good at that.’
‘And yet you seemed quite friendly with her when the two of you came here the other day.’
‘For his sake,’ he explained shortly.
‘So you don’t think she did help him? That in effect she killed him?’
‘Of course not.’ His voice came loud and harsh, close to anger. ‘Of course not.
He did it himself.’
‘You really think he could have done it all on his own? The tape and everything?’
‘He wanted to die,’ came the oblique reply. ‘Donny wanted to die when Cissie died. It was only Jemima that stopped him. And Harriet.’
‘Harriet? But—’ She wanted to quote from Harriet’s book, to reveal her assumption that Harriet was very much in favour of people controlling the manner and timing of their own death. That surely she’d have been in line as an assistant in the suicide, if it came to that. But she bit back the words. They were venturing onto dangerous ground, the shadowy figure of DI Higgins pushing itself forward in her mind.
‘She kept on about how much life there was left in him, how he had his grandchildren to enjoy, and the Ugly Sisters to amuse him, and all the events of the world to follow. She told him he had to stay alive just to see whether the climate change thing was true or not. He was really interested in all that.’ He gave her a penetrating look. ‘It wasn’t until she went away that he let himself go.’
‘Really? But that was only a couple of days before he died.’
Toby’s irritation was plain to see. ‘She was busy for that whole week. He wasn’t happy about it, that’s what I mean. She ought not to have gone while Edwina was at her daughter’s.’
A pang of startling remorse struck Thea. She had completely failed to fulfil Harriet’s commission to keep Donny going. Instead she had listened with sympathy to his litany of self-pity, and even suggested he speak to an undertaker about his own funeral. ‘Oh dear,’ she said faintly. Then, with an effort, she said, ‘Ugly Sisters? Is that Edwina and Thyrza?’
He nodded with a weak grin. ‘And Philippe. We had some fun with him and his dog, as well.’
Toby looked as if he hardly knew the meaning of the word fun. There was something inconsistent somewhere, between his words and his manner. ‘When did you last see him? Donny, I mean?’
He shifted on the wooden kitchen chair and turned to look out of the window at the view of the village church tucked amongst the trees. ‘A month ago. I saw him a month ago. April 30th, it was. Cissie’s birthday.’
‘I think quite a lot might have happened since then,’ she said gently. ‘It’s over five weeks.’
‘That’s what Edwina says,’ he nodded.
They had not heard Jemima come in through the open front door. Not until she spoke, in the kitchen doorway, did they realise she was there.
‘Well, this looks very cosy, I must say,’ she remarked, nastily. ‘I’ve been looking bloody everywhere for you, Toby. Can we get on with it, please? Now!’
Meekly he got up and followed her out of the house without a backward glance.
Chapter Fourteen
Jemima’s abrupt rudeness was a lot more unsettling than it ought to have been. After all, it wasn’t so very different from her manner on previous encounters – so why did Thea feel such a sense of injury? It had to do with the feeling of being sidelined, or, even worse, being regarded as a bad influence on Toby. That seemed unfair. So strong was her annoyance that she considered running after them, down to the Lodge, to remonstrate and demand an explanation.
But Jemima should be forgiven, Thea supposed, under the circumstances. After all, people did behave out of character when under the strain of a recent bereavement. Instead of following them she closed the front door with a decisive thump, and went down to the cellar to commune with the geckoes. Thoughts of Toby led her to wonder whether he might have used his expertise in marketing to help sell the creatures. He had, by his own account, two of Harriet’s reptiles, thereby perhaps forging a closer link between the owner of Hollywell Manor and himself. Did Thyrza or Philippe Hastings also have pet geckoes? Did Harriet give them away as Christmas presents? Did every house in the village have its perspex tank full of exotic foliage and timid nocturnal creatures?
There was little to see on this sunny June day, except for the residents of one tank, which was labelled ‘Gustave and Simonetta, 14th May’. This was presumably the date they were put in together, barely three weeks previously. There was definite activity on the floor of the cage, amongst a generous layer of woodchips. Two geckoes were apparently entwined, one considerably larger than the other. ‘Oops – sorry!’ Thea muttered, as she realised what was going on. Unable to see much in the way of erotic detail, it was still evident that gecko sex was taking place. Perhaps it had taken them three weeks to get to like each other, and this was the culmination of a long slow courtship.
‘Good luck to them,’ she said to the spaniel, who had followed her down to the cellar, only to stand aimlessly by the door, unable to detect anything of interest in the room. ‘Fancy giving them such daft names.’ The small labels had only come to her notice a few days into her time at Hollywell. They proclaimed geckoes by the names of Judith, Jezebel, Elijah, Bathsheba, Pandora, Panchouli, Norma, Mimi. When she paused to think about it, they seemed to fall into groupings: Biblical characters, names from classical literature and a scattering from opera. The great majority were female, which made good sense, she supposed. Somewhere there was probably a complex breeding programme planned out – although it was hard to believe that inbreeding would be much of a problem.
The morning sun beamed invitingly, and after a second mug of coffee, she went outside to consider her options for the day. There was still a vestige of regret for the weekends she had spent with Phil Hollis, when he would come and find her in whichever tucked-away little Cotswold village she was staying, and they would explore the byways together. It had not happened often, but there had been idyllic moments, for which she felt nostalgic.
Down at the Lodge, a little group of people had gathered. She could see Jemima, tall and somehow authoritative, with Toby submissively facing her, holding a large white bag. Another woman had joined them, it seemed, and was standing with her back to Thea, shoulders bowed. It took a moment to identify Edwina. As she watched, they separated. Toby went to a blue car, threw the bag onto the back seat and got behind the wheel. The two women watched him reverse and turn out into the road, but did not wave a farewell.
Then the women also parted company. At least, Jemima repeated Toby’s moves, getting into a dirty white car and driving off. Edwina was left alone, having been given a hearty pat on the shoulder by the departing Mimm. Even from a distance of three hundred yards, Thea could read its message: Pull yourself together, woman. There’s nothing to be gained from self-pity.
The view across Cranham Common, with the little chapel-like school and modest church to the south, was bathed in sunlight. At her back were the beech woods, all paths leading that way, as if ancient people had spent their time under the trees, gathering firewood or mushrooms or killing the wildlife. Scanning the entire vista, it was very clear to her that Cranham’s only real merit lay in the woods. The houses were mostly post-war, many of them bungalows that were uncomfortably suburban in appearance. There was an impression of a settlement hastily expanded at a time before stringent planning laws came into force, no sense of design or cooperation between the various builders. Something must have gone quite badly wrong in the century between the building of Hollywell Manor and the arrival of all these undistinguished little houses, scattered amongst the slopes and troughs and tumps of the area.
But she remembered her first sight of the place, the little winding road diving bravely down to the hollow containing older houses, which she had initially assumed to be the entire sum of the village. There had been real excitement at that moment, a feeling of discovery and possibilities. Only gradually had she worked out the chaotic nature of the place, the split between ‘north of the common’ and ‘south of the common’. And she had to wonder again how they coped in times of deep snow or torrential rain. There was something very vulnerable about Cranham, which made her feel uneasy.
She gave herself a shake. Edwina Satterthwaite was still standing forlornly outside the Lodge, obviously upset. With a brief sigh, Thea began to walk down to her. She did not regard herself as a re
scuer by nature; she did not compulsively collect waifs and strays and set their lives to rights. But here in Cranham the strays were too insistent to ignore. Like the dog in the woods, she remembered with a bitter pang. And the malfunctioning Toby. And Donny himself, who had so obviously needed something, even if she had thoughtlessly provided quite the wrong kind of assistance. She had done her best, but it had not helped any of the sufferers. Maybe it would go better this time.
‘Are you OK?’ she asked quietly, a few feet from the woman. ‘Tell me to go away if you like. I just thought—’
Without warning, Edwina broke into loud sobs. She did not, however, throw herself onto Thea’s breast, as Thea herself had done with Drew. Instead, she buried her face in her hands, and stood there, swaying slightly.
‘I’m sorry,’ she choked indistinctly. ‘I … I …’
‘Come up to the Manor,’ Thea urged. ‘You need to sit down.’
‘No, I have to stay here. The police want to talk to me again.’ She blew her nose determinedly, and gained some control over her emotions.
‘Here?’ Thea looked around for unnoticed policemen. ‘Now?’
‘In a few minutes. They want something explaining, they said. I don’t know why they don’t ask Jemima. She was his daughter. I’m just a friend.’
‘You said again? You’ve already been interviewed, then?’
Edwina nodded. ‘Three days ago, it must be now. All about Donny’s frame of mind and his wife. They were very kind, but it wasn’t very nice.’
‘No,’ said Thea thoughtfully. ‘They haven’t taped off the house, so they obviously don’t think it’s a crime scene. That probably means you’ve got nothing to worry about.’
Edwina blinked red-rimmed eyes. ‘Why should I be worried?’
‘Upset, then. Look at you,’ Thea corrected impatiently. ‘You’re clearly not happy about it.’
‘Oh, you don’t understand anything. All you can say is “probably” and “obviously”. There’s nothing obvious or probable about the way the police think. They just stick their noses into people’s feelings and manage to get everything wrong.’