The Poison Cupboard

by John Burke

  There would be so many of them.

  Charlotte had never been able to envisage the future beyond tomorrow, or perhaps the day after tomorrow. A week hence was a remote and improbable time. Now she was faced by inapprehensible months.

  At first she was sustained by anger. For two days she carried on a long argument with him, although he was not there. She rehearsed accusations and delivered them resoundingly, without saying a word aloud. She had often done this before. While he was out she would shuffle round the flat, working up some grievance until it was ready to explode. She anticipated his answers and twisted them to her own use. Sometimes the fury had abated by the time he got home; at other times, he would walk uncomprehendingly into a downpour of lamentation. He was skilled at dealing with this after a while. But now he was not here to answer, and would not be back for a long time.

  How could you have left me in this mess? Always the same, doing something stupid and saying nothing about it. Now what am I to do? It’s your responsibility. All of it’s your responsibility. I’m your wife, you ought to have thought of me. And don’t say I’m extravagant, because I’m not. What about those new shirts of yours, those ties you didn’t need, the painting you bought and the cuff-links? If I spend anything, it’s because you expect me to. If I’d known how difficult you were going to be, I wouldn’t have been such a fool as to marry you . . .

  She paced up and down, snatching up film magazines and dropping them again, so that when she walked back across the room she was treading on creased pages and kicking magazines ahead of her. A full-page photograph of a Hollywood star yearned up at her, half obscured by the smirking features of a coy face on the cover of a woman’s weekly.

  Charlotte kicked the woman’s paper aside and peered down into the soulful eyes below.

  Then her mood gradually changed. She visualised Peter staring out between bars, just as in an American film, and she longed to reach out and touch him. I’ll be waiting. We’ll begin a new life. All will be forgotten, and when you’re back with me we’ll both be different. I don’t mind being poor, so long as we’re together.

  They would walk off into the sunset.

  Slowly that mood, too, left her. She sat then for long stretches of time and stared into the gas fire. She was not now recalling old arguments or happiness: she was numb, remembering little, aware only of loss. She was cold. It was the sort of chill you couldn’t get rid of by turning up the fire or drawing the curtain across the door. It was just there. You didn’t do anything about it. You didn’t do anything about anything.

  In her more wakeful periods she cried sometimes, but not with any real fervour. She had cried more readily and with more enthusiasm when she and Peter had been fighting, and then recovered quickly.

  What she missed most was his dependence on her. No one could have said she mothered him. That wasn’t what he wanted; he would have shied away from it. She had been, rather, the irritation which kept him going, giving him purpose and vitality — vexing him out of his laziness, so that even when he was shouting at her she knew that he relied on her.

  She wanted him back. She wanted to hear him making a fuss about something, going off into one of his petulant rages.

  One morning she could no longer be bothered to get out of bed. She lay there till noon, got up for an hour, and then went back. She did not sleep but she was not truly awake. Soon she would have to make decisions; but now she wanted to postpone them. All their decisions had, until now, somehow made themselves: she and Peter had talked at cross-purposes, or spat abuse at one another, or made love, and somehow in the end they had known what they proposed to do. Now she had no one to rasp against.

  She was waiting. She had no idea what she was waiting for.

  Then Mrs. Swanton arrived.

  Charlotte never analysed people. She liked them or she didn’t like them. ‘I can tell at first sight whether I’ll get on with them,’ was her boast. It took a lot to make her change her mind about anyone after that first sight.

  She liked Mrs. Swanton.

  She saw her as a plump, faded woman with a funny little mouth. Her feet were remarkably small — too small for her podgy body, so that she did a quick, jerky waddle as she moved along. She seemed to be on the verge of falling over as she came into the room, rather like a dog whose hind paws rush out of control and threaten to catch up with its forepaws.

  ‘So you’re Charlotte,’ said Mrs. Swanton, and kissed her.

  At once Charlotte sat down and cried.

  ‘There, now,’ said Mrs. Swanton, delighted.

  She did not look round the room as her daughter had done. The litter, which had certainly increased since Laura’s visit, left her quite unperturbed: indeed, her first reaction was that this was such a cosy little place. She stood over Charlotte and patted her head, and felt that this was all just as it should be.

  ‘Oh, I’m so ashamed,’ sobbed Charlotte when at last she could speak. ‘I don’t know what you must think of me.’

  Mrs. Swanton’s thoughts were in fact pleasant ones. She said:

  ‘I just had to come and see you, my dear. I’m so sorry Peter never brought you down to visit us.’

  ‘He never would. He was . . . scared.’

  Mrs. Swanton nodded, jerkily, like a bird. ‘Of Laura. Yes, of course. I know just how he felt.’ She had reason to know how he felt, poor boy.

  ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do,’ said Charlotte.

  It was not often that Mrs. Swanton was in a position to make decisions. Usually they were made for her. Her son had gone away, and her daughter gave instructions instead of taking them. Now, here, at last, was someone who needed help.

  She said: ‘You’re coming back with me.’

  ‘Oh, but I couldn’t.’

  ‘It’ll be lovely having you.’

  ‘But I can’t leave here.’

  ‘Can’t you?’ said Mrs. Swanton happily.

  Charlotte rubbed her eyes and saw the room through a blur that made it foreign and unreal. Of course she could not stay here. But she said:

  ‘Well, I can’t just come down and stay with you. What would I do?’

  ‘We’ll find something. What you need first of all is a good rest. And when you’re ready for a good long talk, we can have one. Now you get packed up right away’ — once she was started, there was no limit to her daring — ‘and just come away and leave everything. We can always decide what to do about this place later.’

  That was what they did. If Mrs. Swanton began to have misgivings on the train and to wonder how on earth she had managed to do so much in such a short time, she did not convey this to Charlotte. Charlotte sat looking out of the window, watching London peter out against a hillside as the train entered a tunnel. On the other side was a broad valley into which they raced with gathering speed, and then another tunnel. She began to feel that she was a long, long way from Peter by now.

  She and Mrs. Swanton talked without saying anything of any consequence. They both derived a great deal of pleasure from it.

  And so Charlotte came to Brookchurch.

  ‘Just you take everything easy for a few days,’ said Mrs. Swanton. ‘Then we can talk things over and get it all settled.’

  Laura used a similar phrase. ‘When you feel a little better, we can see about getting things settled.’ But there was something more ominous in her voice than there had been in her mother’s

  Charlotte decided not to think too much about this. She would heed the part about taking things easy and waiting until she felt better.

  Chapter Six

  She took things easy. She stayed in bed late in the morning, listening to the wind that blew in from the sea or the rain against her bedroom window. Mrs. Swanton insisted on her staying as late as she liked, and obviously derived intense enjoyment from running up and down stairs to her, although she was out of breath each time when she reached the landing.

  The bedroom looked down the garden to where, beyond the fence, the level fields unrolled toward
s the sea. At this time of year they looked grey under the sullen sky, and the thin line of water a few miles away was cold grey in keeping with them.

  ‘Wait until we really get the spring,’ said Mrs. Swanton. ‘Signs of it already. You wait and see. It’s such a bright room, this one — lovely and bright.’

  Charlotte sat propped against the pillows, contemplating the striped and flowered wallpaper with warm satisfaction.

  ‘Was this Peter’s room?’ she asked.

  ‘No. Laura’s got that. It’s at the front,’ she added, as though that explained Laura’s need for it.

  Charlotte said: ‘Is it nicer at the front than it is here?’

  ‘No. Laura just . . . well, she just insisted on moving into it when Peter went away. She still keeps all their old toys and books and things. It’s funny. But there, that’s her way . . .’

  In this room there were none of the odds and ends to which Charlotte was accustomed. The furniture was straight and square, lined up in rather military fashion. The lace mats on the dressing-table — a heavy old piece with side mirrors that swung slightly, creakingly towards you if you pulled out the top drawer — were set out with mathematical accuracy, and were not stained and crumpled as Charlotte’s had been. There was nothing here like her collection of pots, tubes and bottles. Of course, when all her things came down from London she could make the place look different. There was no pouffe, and no thick rug. There was no gas or electric fire; the fireplace was an ornate iron one, the grate itself being filled with logs and fronted by a neat paper frill. It was austere, and could have been depressing. But Charlotte liked it.

  ‘This is . . . the real thing,’ she said on her second morning, not knowing exactly what she meant.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Mrs. Swanton, as though she understood.

  When Charlotte got up in the morning, she could hear voices downstairs. At intervals there would be the thump of the front door. That was, explained Mrs. Swanton, the sound of patients coming into the waiting-room.

  Their voices would buzz or grumble as Charlotte went downstairs and past the door of the consulting-room. Sometimes she would hear a baby whimpering or someone coughing persistently.

  On the fifth morning, Laura was waiting at the foot of the stairs as Charlotte came down. She was wearing her coat loosely and carrying a doctor’s bag. The intersection of light from the hall and from her open consulting-room door struck shadows across her face. It was so like Peter’s, that face: odd that it should be so like it and yet so plain. Charlotte knew that Laura must be thirty-two, because Peter was thirty-two and they were twins; but she looked forty if she was a day. Her hair all plastered down on her head, and grey in that miserable light. And where her face wasn’t streaked with shadow, it was shiny and well-scrubbed.

  Charlotte said: ‘Hello, Laura. I haven’t seen much of you.’

  ‘I didn’t think your case was serious enough to warrant medical attention.’

  ‘No, of course not. I didn’t mean that. Really, I know it’s dreadful, the way I’ve just been —’

  ‘One thing I wanted to ask you,’ said Laura, buttoning up her coat with one hand. ‘Do you think you could be a bit quieter when you get up in the mornings?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know —’

  ‘I like the place to be reasonably quiet when I’m doing surgery. Patients don’t like people clumping up and down when they’re telling me things in confidence.’

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry. I will try.’

  Laura went out. The door slammed behind her, so that the whole house seemed to quiver for a moment. Charlotte was sure that this was a sign of bad temper; but in the course of the next few days she realised that Laura always twitched the door behind her and let it slam in that way.

  She was glad that Laura was so busy. There were morning and evening surgeries, and during the day she was out most of the time on visits. In the evening there were nearly always telephone calls, and out she would go again. It was rarely that Laura spent an hour in the company of her mother and sister-in-law. Charlotte was sure that one day soon she would get a lecture from Laura, full of stern advice and awkward questions, but it would not come until Laura had more time to spare. Charlotte and Mrs. Swanton could get along very well without her. They made innumerable cups of tea, and Mrs. Swanton told Charlotte all there was to know about the people of the district.

  In the afternoons she occasionally went out for a walk. But not far.

  She would close the heavy front door quietly behind her. Only Laura was allowed to slam it. Then she would stand there for a moment with her back to it. Once she felt suddenly guilty, realising that she was obliterating the two brass plates on the door, and she moved hastily to one side so that anyone who was coming looking for the doctor would be able to recognise the house.

  The plate on the left was rubbed and worn, the lettering almost illegible from constant polishing. That on the right was still new — so new that you didn’t take it quite as seriously.

  REGINALD SWANTONLAURA SWANTON

  M.B., F.R.C.S.M.B., B.S.

  ‘Of course, it was hard lines on the old man.’ She could hear Peter saying it as clearly as though he stood beside her; as though the house itself contained so many echoes of his voice that his remembered words were at once amplified and revitalised. ‘He wanted me to follow in his footsteps, but . . . well, I was never any good at that sort of thing. Couldn’t stand it.’ Peter could not stand the sight of other people’s injuries. Although he had not done more than wince when he cut his hand on one occasion, and had been stoical over the pain when he had trapped his finger in a closing door, he would turn pale at the sight of blood on anyone else. When one of Charlotte’s nails had broken off he had almost been sick. ‘Poor old Dad — in the end he had to make do with Laura. But I suppose he’d be proud of her now: she’s certainly carrying on the old tradition.’ He had expressed no regret: until now, this house and the sister who was a doctor had been rather unreal to Charlotte — the sister a bit of an ogre, from whom Peter had fled, and the house just a house. Now it was all imposing and real, set down solidly in the middle of this alien landscape.

  Brookchurch stood in the heart of marshland reclaimed from the sea so many centuries ago that there seemed no reason why the name of marsh should have stuck to it. Two roads met at Brookchurch, one swerving away to the east, the other making its way towards the sea in a vague south-westerly direction. Ditches squeezed themselves into narrow pipes under the roadway and emerged on the other side to spread out around tall sibilant reeds. They converged on small sluices and separated again; they marked out fields, taking on the function of hedges. In summer they were choked with a luxuriance of mallow; in winter there was a glow of heliotrope above the cold black and green water. Up and down the low humped backs of the dykes scrambled sheep innumerable, cropping away insatiably at the grass, adding the sound of crisp moist crunching to the other small unceasing noises — the persistent lark, the melancholy plover, the occasional heavy flapping of swan’s wings, a chattering in the grasses, a plopping and restlessness in the ditches — that somehow all added up to an impression of clear, spacious silence.

  At first Charlotte found the marsh hostile. It was too flat and went on for too long. She felt that if she walked too far out on it the whole thing would tilt and tip her off into the sky. When the clouds parted to allow a wintry brightness into the afternoon, the sky was so remote that it made her dizzy. There was nothing to protect one, nothing along the edge of the world to prevent a fall over that edge.

  Then, gradually, it began to appeal to her. The indeterminacy of the roads suited her: she hated dead, straight roads that went on and on, bullying and powerful in their decisiveness. Here, everything was leisurely and, in a way, pleasantly stubborn. In summer it would be a lazy world. She could feel it. They had a foretaste of summer one afternoon when the sun flooded the marsh and filled the house with brightness from all sides. The face of the church clock shone. In high summer it would b
e wonderful. Charlotte yawned and stretched in warm anticipation.

  But something would surely happen before summer came. Laura would surely have a word with her — drop hints about getting a job, or something. No, not drop hints: Laura would come right out with it.

  Charlotte began to rehearse arguments, working herself up into an anger. It was difficult. She did not know the workings of Laura’s mind as she had known Peter’s.

  One morning she came downstairs to find Laura drinking a cup of coffee before going out on her rounds. For once she did not appear to be in any hurry. It was impossible to retreat, although Charlotte felt an immediate urge to do so.

  Instead, she found herself anticipating the challenge which was certain to come now.

  ‘Hello, Laura. I suppose I ought to be thinking of getting a job.’

  Laura’s thin eyebrows rose quizzically. ‘Oh. Why?’

  ‘Well, because . . . I can’t just hang about here like this.’

  ‘Can’t you?’ There was something insulting in Laura’s indifference.

  ‘It won’t do,’ Charlotte rushed on. ‘I mean, I can’t eat your food and just do nothing. There must be some work I can do.’

  ‘I understood you were helping Mother about the house.’

  ‘Oh, yes, but I ought to do something else as well.’

  ‘There’s no need.’

  Charlotte sat down at the kitchen table, not sure what to say next.

  ‘Coffee?’ said Laura.

  She got up, and while Charlotte was saying, ‘No, you sit down, it’s all right, let me get it,’ she had poured more coffee into a cup and set it in front of Charlotte.

  ‘There must be something I can do to help you,’ said Charlotte at random.

  ‘You wouldn’t by any chance be a qualified dispenser?’

  ‘No.’