‘Poor Mrs B,’ said Annie, who, as she had run to raise the alarm, had hoped that the registrar had somehow survived. ‘And poor Mr B, too.’
‘You should of seen our boss, though!’ Gwennan continued. ‘Pale as a ghost ’e went and started shakin’ and throwin’ up!’
‘Throwin’ up?’ Rose asked sharply, the tea pot poised over a cup. ‘Why would he be throwin’ up?’
‘I dunno, do I!’ Gwennan countered. ‘The policeman said it were most likely the shock. And maybe the blood. There was ever such a lot of blood, see.’ Several of the girls flinched.
‘Mr Bayliss ’as seen plenty of blood in ’is time,’ Rose protested. ‘’E be a farmer for goodness sake!’ Gwennan ignored this interruption to her flow of information. ‘It were like that time the Eyetie POW got his arm smashed when the barn fell in on ’im. You remember? Mr Bayliss went funny then, too! Took himself off and sat in his truck, he did! Pass the marge, Annie … And could I have a drop more soup, Mrs Crocker? Ta … Anyhow, Mrs Todd said to say she’d be back as soon as she could. Eileen was to phone for the doctor to come and see to Mr Bayliss, he were that bad!’
Alice had knelt down in the roadway in front of Roger and had taken his clammy, shaking hands in both of hers. She had tried to engage his eyes and attract his attention to words which she hoped might soothe and reassure him. But although his gaze seemed to be fixed on her he was obviously not seeing her or hearing her. It seemed to Alice as though he was, in some curious way, under attack. He flinched, almost cowering, from an unseen onslaught and his grip on her hands was crushing her bones. When she tried to withdraw them, his fingers tightened and he seemed not to hear her when she cried out in pain. She moved closer to him, the stones of the roadway biting into her knees, her hands in his, which, when she stopped pulling away from him, lessened their grip. And so they remained for some time while the twilight thickened around them, and the only sound was the shallow water moving over the stones below the bridge.
After a while Alice sensed that Roger’s tension was lessening. Slowly she slid her hands from his and got to her feet, drew him up beside her and walked him to his car, put him into the passenger’s seat and took the wheel. She was unfamiliar with the car, and the space between the parapet of the bridge and the wreckage of Margery Brewster’s car was restricted. Roger did not speak as she took the car carefully through the gap and then, still in first gear, slowly on, up the hill. She could not locate the switch for the headlamps and was grateful for the luminous light of the evening as she reached and entered the yard where the doctor, having approached from the opposite end of the valley, had already arrived.
Robert Talbot was of the same generation as Roger. He had opened his practice when both men were in their late thirties. His surgery and his family home were in a nearby village. It had been he who had diagnosed the disease that had killed Roger’s wife, seen Christopher through the usual childhood illnesses and been the first medic on the scene of the accident that had maimed Ferdie Vallance. In all those years he had not attended Roger who, apart from the odd bout of influenza, had never been unwell enough to call on his services.
Eileen, who, when Annie’s news of the accident had reached her, had been about to leave for her home in the village in time for evensong, had remained at the farmhouse until her employer was safely returned to it.
Eileen had already shown the doctor into the drawing room and provided him with a cup of tea by the time Roger had joined him. Alice, not wishing to intrude on the consultation, remained in the hallway, sitting on an upright chair and holding the cup of tea that Eileen had brought her.
‘I’ll be off home now, Mrs Todd,’ Eileen had said, in a lowered voice, ‘if that’s all right? Only they’ll be wondering where I’m to, see, on account of I’d said I’d be at church for evensong. If the master needs anything I reckon you’ll see to him, won’t you?’ Alice had nodded and was soon alone with the noisy ticking of the grandfather clock, which was more immediate than the muted voices which reached her from the drawing room. She sat sipping the tea, the doctor and his patient visible through the glazed doors.
Talbot had pulled up a low chair and was sitting in front of Roger. His fingers were on Roger’s wrist, examining, Alice assumed, his pulse. The two men were talking quietly. Alice could not hear their words. From time to time the doctor nodded his head.
Alice, although she did not realise it, was herself in a mild state of shock. The upsetting details of the registrar’s death lingered in her mind’s eye, and the light cardigan she had thrown round her shoulders when she left the lower farm with her son to make the short journey into Ledburton in Roger’s car was not warm enough for the cool summer evening. She shivered slightly as she swallowed the lukewarm tea. Then Talbot was approaching her.
‘How is he?’ she asked him, getting to her feet, the cup and saucer noisy in her hands. Talbot looked puzzled.
‘Physically all seems well,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘Pulse slightly raised – but his colour has improved and his breathing is normal now.’ He paused and had almost forgotten that this was not a wife with whom he was discussing his patient’s symptoms, but a woman who was, in fact, his employee. He had encountered Alice Todd on several occasions when one or other of the land girls in her charge had been unwell and knew her to be a sensible woman. He smiled and cleared his throat before continuing. ‘I’ve given him something for the shock, which should relax him, and advised him not to take any alcohol tonight. The incident has clearly upset him …’ He paused again and Alice, understanding his reticence, told him that although she understood that he could not breach his Hippocratic oath by revealing any conclusions he might have reached as a result of his examination of his patient, she needed to know how to care for the man whom circumstances had placed in her charge. Talbot was impressed, both by her sensitivity and her accurate grasp of the situation. ‘A hot drink, a quiet evening and an early night would be the best thing for him,’ he told her.
‘His housekeeper doesn’t arrive until seven-thirty in the mornings. Will he need someone in the house with him overnight?’ Alice asked, and while the doctor considered this she explored the possibility of sending for Christopher.
‘I’ll leave that to you, Mrs Todd,’ Talbot said, possibly sensing that Alice was more than capable of handling the situation, while he himself was eager to drive home and, if the light was strong enough, to resume the game of tennis which Eileen’s telephone call had interrupted.
As he took his car smoothly along the familiar lanes that ran between his patient’s home and his, Talbot pondered on his analysis of Roger’s symptoms. The unpleasantness on the bridge, which involved the sudden and horrendous death of a woman he had known most of his adult life, had undoubtedly shocked him. But it seemed, to his doctor, to have set off a more severe reaction than one would normally expect. Talbot’s medical experience, centred as it was on general practice, had polished his skills in the treatment of minor illnesses and developed in him a keen eye for symptoms of the more serious ones. As a student he had been fascinated by psychology and had considered specialising in that area of medicine until he was made aware of the fact that the prospect of being a country doctor’s wife and raising a family in rural England had strongly appealed to the girl he was in love with. He had now been happily married for the past twenty-five years, during which he had satisfied his earlier interest by studying any papers on psychology which were published in The Lancet and other medical journals. He was, of course, familiar with the effects of trauma and understood how symptoms of extreme anxiety could be triggered by events similar to those which had caused the initial damage. As a young man he had read extensively on the effect of what was then referred to as ‘shell shock’, a condition suffered with varying degrees of severity by soldiers who had endured the atrocities of the First World War. Less severe after-effects of this damage were recurring nightmares and a tendency for the victim’s nervous system to break down under pressure, rather as Roger Ba
yliss appeared to have done that evening. The same symptoms, Talbot knew, were being experienced by survivors of the worst disasters of the recent hostilities. Dunkirk had produced its own crop of psychologically wounded men. Survivors of torpedoed ships experienced problems, as did RAF pilots who had been shot down or put under constant and extreme pressure. All these men had to some extent broken down and many were still suffering the effects of their various traumas. Present-day casualties were, Talbot knew, being better cared for – now that the condition was recognised and understood – than their First World War counterparts had been, many of whom, accused of desertion, had been executed by firing squad. But, Talbot reflected, as he turned his car onto the long driveway that approached his house, Roger Bayliss was too young to have been damaged by the first war, nor had he been personally involved in the second.
The doctor’s wife, who had been hoping her husband might return in time for the pair of them to finish their game, was collecting the scattered tennis balls from the court and looping up the net. Through the gathering dusk he saw her smile and shrug as she waved her Slazenger racket in a wry greeting.
In Roger’s kitchen Alice assembled a tray of hot buttered toast and cups of milky Horlicks. He watched her as she entered the drawing room and set the tray on a low table beside his chair.
‘Might help to eat something, your doctor said,’ she murmured as she sat down in the chair the doctor had used when he examined his patient. Roger’s hands were hanging limply. She took one in both of hers.
‘You’re cold!’ he said, looking at her with some concern. The drawing room fire, which Roger sometimes lit on the cooler summer evenings, was laid. He crossed the room to it, struck a match and stooped to hold it to the crumpled newspaper under the kindling. As the flames caught, Alice joined him and they knelt, side by side, watching the fire take hold, throwing its warmth and light towards them. She shuddered. ‘But you’re still shivering, Alice!’ he said, and he fetched a tartan rug from a fireside armchair, shook it out and draped it round her shoulders. Then he knelt in front of her, his eyes scanning her face.
‘Ah,’ she said gently, ‘you can see me, now.’
‘What?’ he asked, vaguely.
‘Before … on the bridge. After the … accident. You couldn’t.’
‘Couldn’t? Couldn’t what?’
‘Couldn’t see me. You were looking at me, Roger, but …’ Alice paused. She was confused. The shock of Margery’s death and then Roger’s extreme reaction to it was, perhaps, beginning to affect her. ‘It was as though you were somewhere else. Somewhere so dreadful that you couldn’t see or hear me. You seemed to be experiencing things that … sort of … dislocated you from what was happening. It was as though you were being attacked. And I wanted …’ Her voice had thickened, her throat was closing on the words and tears began to roll down her face. ‘I wanted, so much, to help. To protect you, and I couldn’t. Because you were … not there. Oh, my darling man … Where were you?’
Afterwards, when, either together or separately, they tried to remember the sequence of events that followed, each recalled them differently. She remembered feeling overwhelmed with the shock of what had happened to Margery and with its effect on Roger. She remembered him wrapping her in the warmth of the tartan rug and drawing her tentatively towards him. Then he had put his arms carefully around her, held her closely against him and rocked her as tenderly as he might have rocked a distressed child. She remembered his voice, almost a whisper, in her ear, but could never precisely recall the words he used.
He remembered seeing her white face and streaming eyes. Then he had eased her towards him, held her and become suffused by an overwhelming sensation of protective intimacy that was new to him. He had intended to apologise for frightening her and he wanted, somehow, to prevent her from becoming infected with the curious malaise of his own complex personality. Instead he was overtaken by a succession of emotions that he had never before experienced. Emotions that had not been part of his relationship with his first wife. Between him and her there had been affection, trust and restraint rather than the sense of passion that he felt lay at the root of his relationship with Alice Todd. Although he and Frances had lain together and conceived their son, there had been an inhibition on Roger’s part, a deference to her delicate health, that had, he now began to understand, denied him the pleasures of unrestrained lovemaking.
Alice’s concern for him was in sharp contrast to that of his parents when, long ago, they had assumed responsibility for him when he had got into difficulties, like a swimmer in a violent sea. They had meant well and had been, on his behalf, both defensive and secretive in their attempt to protect him from the consequences of a foolish and potentially tragic act on his part. But they had been determined that he should deal with the difficult situation not in his way but in theirs, and because he had been young and injured by what he had done, he had obeyed them. The consequences of this had been far-reaching and dangerous, colouring not only his relationship with Frances, the girl he probably should not have married, but, much later, his role as father to a son whom he had failed to unconditionally support at a time when the boy most needed to be accepted and nurtured. When Christopher had cracked, Roger had seen his breakdown as evidence of a flawed character and had reacted inappropriately, just as his own parents had reacted to him, applying the same damaging solution.
Alice Todd, unlike Roger’s first wife, was neither insecure nor fragile. She had learnt, since the failure of her own marriage, to be independent. Although neither insensitive nor invulnerable, Alice had not needed Roger’s protection or sought his indulgence. Yet now, because of him, she was shivering, shocked, and responding to him as he endeavoured to comfort and warm her. For each of them the status quo was subtly shifting.
They had gone up the stairs and into Roger’s bedroom, reacting to an impulse neither of them questioned or resisted. The room, lit by a summer sky which was hesitating between twilight and early darkness, discreetly welcomed them.
Later, lying in the bed and watching her dress, Roger, adopting an ironic formality, said that he blamed her for what he called ‘this delightful indiscretion’.
‘Me? And how is it my fault?’ she queried, smiling and slipping her arms into the sleeves of her cardigan. ‘You seduced me!’
‘True. But it was always my intention to do things in the proper order.’
‘The proper order?’
‘Yes. Declaration. Proposal. Nuptials. Bed. Twice I got perilously close to the proposal bit.’
‘Did you?’
‘Yes! But you are always so damned busy, Alice!’
‘Am I?’
‘Yes! With your duties as warden, I mean. And to Edward John as a mother and … well … to yourself … if you understand what I mean. You don’t give a fellow a fighting chance!’ She looked at him in surprise and then, after a moment, smiled. He watched, overwhelmed with tenderness, as she faced the mirror on his dressing table and, using one of his pair of tortoiseshell brushes, attempted to tidy her hair, her eyes on his via the silvery looking glass.
As he took the car down through the lanes to the lower farm he felt almost overwhelmed by a sense of release that he could not at first identify. He felt able to be not only protective but joyously confident and possessive. His mind was uncluttered and focused. All of his five senses were acutely aware of Alice, beside him. His subconscious was responding to her. At some level he was astonished that he had come so far in his life before understanding how complex and yet how sublimely simple being overwhelmingly in love with someone could be.
‘Are you all right?’ he kept asking her. ‘I so much want to be certain you are all right!’
‘Of course I am!’ she laughed, happily infected by his mood. They had, she realised, with a feeling of relief, declared themselves. They had not only admitted but successfully demonstrated their feelings for one another.
‘There is so much I have to tell you!’ he said. ‘I need to explain to you why I co
uldn’t … Why it seemed to be so important not to tell you, or anyone, certain things … Why I believed that the best line of defence against disaster is denial!’
‘Denial?’ Alice echoed, and then asked what disaster he was referring to, but he went on quickly, almost as though he was thinking aloud.
‘I’ve been locked into that denial ever since. You have been pushing at it, of course.’
‘Pushing? Have I? Pushing at what?’
‘You, and to a lesser degree, the Webster girl.’
‘Georgina?’
‘Yes. She was the first to challenge me on the Christopher situation.’ The lane levelled and the dark shape of the lower farm lay just ahead of them. He brought the car quietly to a stop and they sat for a long moment without speaking.
‘Roger,’ Alice said, a sudden note of urgency in her voice. ‘Do you have a key to the hostel door?’
It was, they both realised suddenly, almost midnight. The low building was in total darkness, the wind-up gramophone silent in the empty recreation room. Rose’s cottage, too, stood, a familiar shape in the darkness.
In the light from his dashboard Roger searched through his bunch of keys for the one that fitted the Lower Post Stone lock and detached it from his keyring. He heard Alice sigh with relief. And then she was laughing, smothering the sound and, as Roger’s shoulders, too, began to shake, begging him to be quiet. But the laughter, an accumulated effect of the night’s extraordinary events, proved uncontrollable. If it had been free to sweep over them and run its noisy course, it would, eventually, have eased them. Instead they were forced to suppress it or run the risk of waking everyone within earshot.
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