by John Burke
‘I didn’t think so.’
‘But there must be something.’ Why was she insisting? She couldn’t stop herself. Laura’s indifference was drawing it out out of her.
‘You needn’t worry.’ Laura looked down into her cup with narrowed eyes, as though squinting at a microscope slide. ‘You’re Peter’s wife. You can stay as long as you like.’
Charlotte felt herself flushing. Her eyes stung. She wanted to spit back, to lead Laura into a fight as she had so often led Peter into one. But it would not, could not be the same. She felt baffled and impotent. There would be no satisfaction, no final resolution of an argument with Laura: Laura was somehow not human.
‘If you’re bored,’ said Laura slowly, ‘you can come out with me in the car, while I do my visits. I could leave you down at Tapton Harbour while I run along the coast road. I’ve got to see old Drysdale about his leg, for one thing. An hour is just about enough for a visit to Tapton Harbour.’
‘It’s not that I’m bored.’
‘It’ll do you good to have a run.’ Now she was sounding professional — dictatorial, even. ‘It’s not going to be a bad morning. Come along.’
‘But my clothes —’
‘Are perfectly all right. This isn’t Piccadilly.’
If the remark implied anything, it was best left alone. Charlotte looked down at her blue slacks and sweater. ‘At any rate these are warm.’
‘Of course they are. Get your coat, and we’ll go.’
They went.
At the end of the main street the road turned at a sharp angle below the Norman tower of the church and ran almost parallel with the coastline. There were no hedges; only an occasional outcrop of black and white fencing to mark a dangerous corner. The marsh roads were level but not straight. The one which they were on now followed an old dyke: prodded aside by old boundaries, it pursued an erratic course, turning and meandering with a perverse indifference to destinations.
‘The ranges are over there,’ said Laura, nodding towards a yellow line of shingle in the distance. ‘They still do some firing.’
‘Is that where we’re going?’
‘Not today.’
The sensation of dream-like infinity settled down once again on Charlotte. The humped towers of the lonely churches turned slowly and incessantly, maintaining an exasperatingly even distance from the car, which seemed to be getting nowhere. The earth revolved, the land began to rock, and the whole landscape tilted dizzily under the vast sky.
Laura said: ‘Nasty roads at night. Quite a lot of accidents during the war. Army drivers on the way to the ranges used to overshoot these corners and finish up in the ditch. It’s easily done.’
‘Do you have to go out a lot at night?’
‘Sometimes. I know the district pretty well by now.’ Laura drew up outside a farmhouse, and cut off the engine. Silence rushed down on them. ‘Even if you’re only walking, you need to be careful.’ she said, reaching for her bag from the back seat. ‘People have been known to walk into a ditch and get tangled in the weeds.’
The wind began to hum in the telegraph wires. Charlotte watched Laura walk up to the side door of the farmhouse and knock. It opened, and she went in.
The bonnet of the car creaked as it cooled.
If this was a dream — and the landscape was as strange and expansive as that in a dream — there was something frightening in it. Charlotte wanted to run away. Her fear was a nameless one, nagging at the back of her mind. But the desire to escape was a lazy desire, without much conviction behind it; and besides, how could you run across those endless fields? On and on, until you reached the edge . . . and turned to find someone close behind you.
She blinked and made an effort to wake up. But she was already awake, and nothing altered.
She wondered what she was doing here and why Laura had troubled to bring her out. There was no way of telling. You couldn’t begin to understand Laura. Like so many doctors, she had a glazed surface. That was it: a glazed surface.
Laura came out and slid back into the car.
‘Everything all right?’ asked Charlotte timidly.
‘He’s got about three months,’ said Laura, flicking the ignition key. ‘Or less, if he’s lucky.’
‘Oh. How dreadful.’
‘It’s amazing,’ said Laura conversationally, ‘how people ignore things they’ve been told about so often. Goodness knows it’s been dinned in often enough, even in the popular papers — if you’ve got a small lump that doesn’t hurt, go and see a doctor about it. But they won’t. They pretend it’s not that sort of a lump. And by the time they do call you in . . .’ She shrugged.
‘Will it be painful?’
‘It’s painful already. It won’t get any better.’
‘Couldn’t they do anything for him in hospital?’
‘I’ll get on to them as soon as I get back to see when they can admit him. But there’s precious little hope for him.’
Charlotte trembled. She was like Peter, afraid of other people’s pain. She glanced back at the house as they drove away, and the eroded brickwork on the seaward side looked harsh and raw.
Laura went on talking. She spoke in generalisations, and then threw in casual remarks about cases she had had which bore out her generalisations. Charlotte, leaving the pain behind in the isolated farmhouse, was flattered, and tried to nod and look as though she understood what she was being told. Then she realised that there was no need for this. Laura was not anxious to communicate anything to her. Personal feelings and relationships did not come into it: Laura was thinking aloud, and Charlotte was merely someone receptive, someone to talk at.
Had she, Charlotte wondered, any personal feelings at all, except where Peter was concerned?
They approached the sea. The wind freshened, and thumped against the windows of the car. The road was running alongside a river, which met the sea near a cluster of buildings and slanting masts.
‘Tapton Harbour,’ said Laura, breaking off some long story and then omitting to take it up again.
They were close to the ranges now. While Laura drove off along a narrowing road to some scattered houses below the sea wall, Charlotte got out and walked to the river bank. On the farther bank, above the mud which glinted like fishes’ scales, was a tall wire fence with a gate in it. A notice said something about ranges, firing, and a red flag flying: the remaining words were too small for her to read from this distance. Some way off along the shore, a spindly tower rose some forty feet into the air. Beyond that again, so far away that they looked like boxes littering the shingle, were rows of huts.
It was cold. Charlotte moved into the shelter of a public house which stood a little way back from the water’s edge. Inside there was a murmur of voices, broken by an occasional laugh. She thought of going in. But she was not used to entering a pub alone. It was one of her quirks that had always amused Peter. She would never meet him in a pub, not even the most respectable sort. He used to laugh at her about that.
Two soldiers came through the gate on the other side. One of them stood by a wooden post and hammered a bell with a beater that hung beside it. Someone inside the pub cursed. The soldier hammered again. A man in a dirty blue jersey, and trousers that were tucked into piratical knee-boots, came out of the bar, stumped across to the bank, and disappeared over the edge.
Charlotte watched without curiosity. In this bleak landscape, one watched anything that moved. She felt quite detached. If Laura had come back at this moment and started up the car, Charlotte would have got in and let herself be driven somewhere else, and would have seen perhaps another village or a farmhouse, and none of it would have meant anything at all.
She watched as a rowing-boat appeared from under the shelter of the harbour wall and made its way across the narrow stretch of water. The two soldiers clambered in and were rowed over. In a few moments they appeared above the bank on this side.
Followed by the ferryman, they walked towards the pub.
One of them noticed
Charlotte. He said something to his companion, and they both stared at her. The one who had spoken pursed his lips in a soundless whistle.
And Charlotte was suddenly awake.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, she was herself again. Her hand went up automatically to her hair. She pulled her sweater down over her breasts, and looked remotely out to sea, smiling to herself.
Yet in some odd way she wished Laura would come back now so that they could drive off.
The soldier who had first noticed her hesitated. She heard his companion say: ‘Come on.’
‘All right, there’s no hurry.’
‘I’m going in, anyway.’
‘You go in. I’m not stopping you.’
The ferryman also went inside. There was the faint tinkle of a cash register.
The soldier said: ‘It’s cold to be hanging about out here.’
Slowly she turned to look at him.
‘All right, all right,’ he said; ‘I only said it was cold.’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘Waiting for someone?’
‘A friend,’ said Charlotte.
‘Is he going to keep you long?’
‘She’s a doctor. She’s seeing a patient.’ Charlotte turned away, but did not move off.
‘Come and have a drink while you’re waiting.’
She had been wanting to go in, but now that she had been asked by this stranger she was not so sure. He had a bright, impertinent face. He took it for granted, she could tell, that most young women would say yes to him. But she could also tell that if she said no he would shrug, grin, and walk inside. And Laura would come, and they would drive away.
She said: ‘It’s not a bad idea.’
Her sense of time had been restored. She was alive, and this was a real place instead of a dream scene. She wanted to celebrate, wanted to tell someone, because it was important; but the next best thing was just talking to someone — anyone, about anything.
‘Come on, then. Time for a quick one.’
The buzz of conversation slackened as they entered the bar, and then was renewed. The soldier, swaggering slightly, laughably like a pouter pigeon, said:
‘What’s yours?’
‘Half of bitter, please.’
‘Really? If you’d like something else — a short —’
‘I like drinking beer.’
‘Good for you.’
He brought the tankards to a small table near the window. They raised them and drank. Charlotte sighed and leaned back. The soldier cleared his throat and, for the first time, looked shy.
He said: ‘Er — I’m Walter.’
‘I’m Mrs. Swanton.’
‘Oh, are you.’ He looked dubiously into his beer.
‘Charlotte Swanton,’ she said.
‘I haven’t seen you in these parts before.’
‘I haven’t been here long.’
‘Oh, I see.’
There was a long silence. At last Walter cleared his throat again, after a quick and angry glance at his friend, who was standing at the bar, grinning.
He said: ‘There’s a Doctor Swanton not far from here. Woman doctor.’
‘My sister-in-law.’
‘She came down to the camp once.’ His tone warmed. She had talked to so many soldiers in her time, and recognised the quickening of interest in his voice — that earnestness that always came into their voices when they talked about their army life, the only true reality, the standard by which everything else was measured. ‘Came down once,’ he said with relish, ‘when the M.O. was off sick. But the boys wouldn’t wear it.’
‘Wouldn’t they?’
‘Not a woman doctor, they wouldn’t.’
It was nice, thought Charlotte comfortably. Nice to hear all the voices about her, rising and falling, all mixed up. She relaxed. Walter went on talking, and she nodded and smiled. The smell of the sea, faintly acrid with harbour mud, blew in through the open door.
She said idly: ‘It’s a long way from anywhere, on those ranges.’
‘You’re telling me,’ said Walter with a grimace. ‘In the winter! I tell you, in the winter!’
And then Laura was standing in the doorway.
She said: ‘When you’re ready.’
There was a hush. Charlotte stared for a moment, then finished her drink. She smiled at Walter, got up, and went out with Laura. They got into the car. Laura said nothing.
‘It was so cold outside,’ said Charlotte.
They headed inland, and the church towers gyrated once more. Laura stared straight ahead and drove fast.
Slowing for a corner, she said: ‘If you like that sort of company, you could always get a job in the canteen down at the camp.’
‘You don’t have to be horrid.’
‘Oh, great heavens,’ said Laura inconsequentially.
‘I was just having a drink, that’s all. Anyone would think —’
‘I merely suggested that if you were bored, you could get a job in the canteen,’ said Laura.
‘I’ve never done anything like that,’ said Charlotte stiffly. ‘I’ve never in my life done a job of that sort.’
‘No, I don’t suppose you have.’ They were approaching Brookchurch. Laura added: ‘And perhaps it would be dangerous, anyway. We wouldn’t want to have to report to Peter that you’d been blown up.’
‘Blown up?’ Charlotte laughed uncertainly.
‘Wandering about on those ranges, you’re liable to tread on unexploded shells. It has been known to happen.’
There was something vicious in Laura’s manner. It was as though she could say more, and was on the verge of doing so. But they were nearly home.
As they turned into Church Street, Laura said: ‘When will you be going to see Peter, or don’t you know yet?’
‘I . . . I haven’t thought about it.’
‘Haven’t you?’
‘I don’t know that I want to. I don’t think I could bear it. You know I didn’t go to the . . . the trial.’
‘If he asks for a visit from you —’
‘He won’t. I’m sure he won’t. I know Peter.’
Laura’s lips tightened. But now they were home, and nothing else was said.
Charlotte felt different, and knew that Laura had noticed the difference. Laura was, in some indefinable way, aware of her as a person again, as she had been aware when they first met. The early days of Charlotte’s stay here had been a lull. It was as though — the thought was absurd — the two of them were preparing for a struggle, and Laura had been coldly, correctly allowing her opponent to recover from an illness before attacking.
I can always go back to town, thought Charlotte. I can go back. I don’t have to stay here, in this sort of atmosphere.
She could go back whenever she chose.
But she stayed. She stayed because the household routine here was so smooth; it provided her with a pattern for her days — a pattern which she knew only too well would be lacking once she returned to London. It was easier to put off such a decision; easier to stay than to go.
After all, Laura couldn’t do her any harm. Laura didn’t like her, but that was just unfortunate.
It wasn’t as though Laura could do anything dreadful.
Chapter Seven
The telephone rang. There was only one shrill note before Laura had reached out and lifted the receiver.
‘Is that Doctor Swanton?’
‘It is.’
‘It’s the school here, Doctor. The grammar school.’
‘Hello, Miss Jones. What is it this time — falling off the wallbars, broken legs, a split head . . .?’
‘A nasty bang on the arm. It’s swollen up horribly. One of your patients.’
‘Which one?’
‘Gilbert Drysdale.’
Laura gave a slight start. She glanced at her watch.
‘Gilbert Drysdale,’ repeated the voice in the receiver.
‘I’ll be over right away.’
‘Sorry to bring you all this way, but he
is one of your patients.’
‘Quite,’ said Laura, knowing the inflection and seeing in her mind’s eye the headmaster of the school smirking his approval beside Miss Jones. ‘I’m starting at once.’
She drove in towards the hills, and in ten minutes was drawing up outside the large school on the outskirts of Jury. Girls were singing loudly and inaccurately in one of the upper rooms. As she opened the front door and went in, the thump of feet from the gymnasium resounded along the corridor.
The headmaster had evidently been watching for her from his study window. He came out into the corridor, twitching his gown and bowing slightly.
‘I’m so glad you could come, Doctor Swanton. It must be a nuisance for you to have to come all this way.’
‘No nuisance at all,’ said Laura curtly. ‘Where is he?’
‘In the headmaster’s study,’ said Mr. Cartwright impressively. He always referred to himself in the third person: the effect was one of detached admiration. ‘The headmaster’s study is not always the quietest place in the school’ — he allowed a suitable interval for Laura to smile, then smiled himself — ‘but in the absence of a sick bay it is not too dreadfully inadequate.’ He held the door open and followed Laura in. ‘There’s little enough space for our new entry this coming year, without building sick bays and heaven only knows what else. I think people fuss too much these days. They would rather have canteens and clinics than classrooms.’
Gilbert Drysdale was sitting in an armchair with his left elbow resting on the arm. His narrow face was white, but he did not protest when Laura probed his arm with careful fingers.
Mr. Cartwright stood over them, watching with a distant, tolerant smile.
He said: ‘I remember that once I broke two fingers on my right hand. I didn’t say a word about it. Not a word. Boys in those days didn’t make a fuss about trifles. I went to school as though nothing had happened.’
‘A very stupid thing to do,’ said Laura, without looking up.
Mr. Cartwright giggled. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘how bad is this young man’s injury?’
He bent down from his great height over the boy in the chair, curling like a question mark. His face might have been considered ascetic but for the wide, restless eyes.