Burn Out (Dr. Anne Vernon Book 1)

by Alan Scholefield

  ‘And her back was broken?’

  ‘One of the lumbar vertebrae.’

  ‘You can hardly imagine someone doing that, can you? I had bull terriers in Africa. Someone poisoned one of them. Did the police ever catch your burglar?’

  Tom shook his head. ‘I have a feeling he was an exprisoner. Occasionally they appear out of the past expecting to continue with the treatment or the therapy or just for a bed or money. I haven’t mentioned that to Anne though; she’s got enough on her plate as it is.’

  ‘She seems to have.’

  Tom paused then said, ‘Has she mentioned Jason Newman to you?’

  ‘Yes, she has. I think she’s sorry for him.’

  ‘I wish she wasn’t.’

  ‘She’s known him since she was a teenager. Anyway she’s always had strong feelings about people. And society for that matter. She was a marcher when she was younger. Apartheid . . . Homelessness . . .’

  ‘I wonder if she’ll enjoy the prison service. It’s not a place for strong feelings. Not a place to become involved. Tea’s ready. I’ll call Hilly.’

  *

  ‘Who would like some tea?’ Mrs Parker asked.

  ‘We’ve just had coffee,’ Clive said.

  ‘Thanks, but I—’ Anne began.

  But Mrs Parker cut across her. ‘Oh, we must have tea.’

  ‘I should be getting back,’ Anne said.

  ‘Tea first,’ Mrs Parker said.

  They were in her flat in Richmond. Except it wasn’t quite Richmond, more like Isleworth. They were in the actual sitting-room which had ‘captivated’ her with its view of the Thames so that she had simply had to own the flat. Since then Anne had looked at this view several times and had come to the conclusion that the faint intermittent flash of silver between the gasometer and the tower blocks must be the river.

  It was mid-afternoon. They had arrived around twelve, had had a glass of sweet sherry, and then lunched off tinned grapefruit pieces, tinned steak-and-kidney pie and creamed rice pudding. Anne was feeling slightly queasy.

  Mrs Parker said to Clive, ‘I’ll put the kettle on and you can go down to the shop and buy some tea cakes.’

  Clive was dressed expensively in designer jeans, boots, and an Italian cashmere sweater which, Anne thought, might have cost what she made in a fortnight.

  ‘For heaven’s sake we don’t want tea cakes.’ He turned to Anne. ‘Do you want tea cakes?’

  ‘I really couldn’t eat another thing.’

  Mrs Parker adjusted her wig. It reminded Anne of one of the beehive huts built by the Ovambo people up near the Kunene River just south of Angola. She turned to Anne, ‘What an argumentative man he is. I hope you’ll forgive the way he talks to his mother.’

  Anne smiled palely.

  The silence was broken by Clive’s watch which went bleep, bleep. It was a gold digital watch which bleeped on the hour. Anne realised it must be three o’clock. He left to buy the tea cakes. Mrs Parker tottered into the kitchen on her stick legs; Anne followed.

  ‘How are you getting on at the prison?’

  ‘I’m kept pretty busy.’

  ‘I think we’ll have the Worcester.’

  She said it as though she possessed not only Worcester but Royal Doulton and Wedgwood and Spode as well. The Worcester had been a present to Mr Parker on his retirement from the chutney and pickles factory. Anne got out the plates and the teaspoons with their civic badges.

  As she waited for the kettle to boil Mrs Parker said, ‘How is your little girl?’

  She rarely called her Hilary, mostly your little girl. It seemed a way of distancing the Parkers from Anne’s earlier breeding programme.

  ‘She’s fine.’

  ‘I always hoped Clive would have a son. I think he would make a good father.’

  The question mark hung in the air and Anne said, ‘He probably will.’

  ‘Probably?’

  ‘I’m sure he will.’

  ‘You’re young enough to have more children.’

  Anne began to realise why Clive had been sent out for tea cakes. This was a ‘talk’. She felt irritated. Be nice to her, she told herself. She’s a lonely old woman.

  ‘Clive needs a family. I can’t live forever and he needs someone.’

  ‘The milk?’ Anne said.

  ‘Top shelf of the fridge. He needs someone to give him a background, someone at home to look after the entertaining. I used to do that for Mr Parker. He had important business contacts. One customer used to come all the way from the Isle of Man.’

  Anne said, ‘I think Clive usually does his entertaining in restaurants.’

  ‘Poison; pure poison.’

  ‘I’ll take the tray through.’

  Mrs Parker blocked the doorway. ‘He wants to marry you.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘Why won’t you marry him?’

  Her wig had slipped to one side and she looked demented. This was worse than Anne could have imagined.

  ‘The time isn’t right,’ she said.

  ‘That’s what people always say about things.’

  ‘Well, it just happens to be true at the moment.’

  Mrs Parker burst out: ‘I want grandchildren before I die! Why won’t you give me grandchildren?’

  ‘Here I am,’ Clive said. ‘Tea cakes.’

  They left as soon after tea as they decently could. In the Mercedes Clive said, ‘Jesus Christ, tea cakes!’ As he started the engine, his watch went bleep, bleep. ‘I suppose you want to be getting home,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry, Clive.’

  *

  ‘Three guesses, Jason. Jason?’

  ‘I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.’

  ‘Three guesses.’

  ‘Okay. What’s the clue?’

  ‘It’s brown.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘It’s brown and hot.’

  ‘What sort of hot?’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ Billy said.

  ‘Could be a woman. Jamaican. Indian.’

  ‘You’re a sexual maniac, Jason, you know that?’

  He giggled.

  ‘Brown and hot and sweet.’

  ‘Could still be a woman.’

  ‘It’s a drink, you big, randy tennisplayer.’

  ‘Coffee.’

  ‘It’s tea, Jason. That’s what I’d really like. A cuppa. Plenty of milk and sugar.’

  ‘You want me to get you one?’

  ‘Would you?’

  Jason got up and went out onto the landing. It was Sunday evening and they wouldn’t be banged up till eight. The tea urn was at the far end of the wing. Other remand prisoners were watching tv or playing ping-pong.

  He fetched two mugs and took them back to the cell.

  ‘Ugh.’ Billy made a face.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Too much sugar. How many did you put in?’

  ‘Three. You said you liked it sweet.’

  ‘Not that sweet. Sweete by name but not by nature.’

  ‘I’ll get you another one if you like.’

  ‘Yeah. I’d like that. That would be very nice, Jason.’

  Chapter Twenty

  Henry Vernon took two hours to reach Bath and almost half that again to find the house where Jason’s grandfather lived. At one time the lanes were so narrow and the growth so dense that he had become lost and almost immobile. His grasp of African topography had been equally elusive, but there he’d had Watch to guide him.

  The house was about eight miles from Bath on a bluff above the River Avon. He came suddenly on the property behind a high stone wall. He parked and walked along the wall but there seemed to be no entrance and he realised there must be one on the other side. He was about to turn back when he saw a small iron gate let into the wall near the edge of the bluff. He went through it and into a different world.

  He was reminded of Kew with its lawns and shrubs, its paths and greenhouses. Everything was as neat as a garden could be in late autum
n. He was no botanist but he identified a palm tree, several eucalypts, and a group of Japanese maples still with some of their red leaves. The house was eighteenth century and built of Bath stone.

  In front of him was a belvedere perched on the very edge of the bluff with magnificent views of the river and the far hills. Part of it had been glassed in. Behind the glass and facing the view was a woman in a wheelchair who might have come out of Ibsen’s Ghosts. She was wearing a fur coat and her face was turned to the sun. For a moment Henry thought she was inanimate, a piece of eccentric garden statuary. Then she moved slightly. She was almost bald and her skin was the colour and texture of candle wax.

  An elderly, bearded man straightened up from a shrubbery almost at Henry’s feet. ‘What the hell d’you think you’re playing at?’ he said.

  Henry was suddenly weary of people appearing out of the foliage and demanding to know his business. The only good thing about the gardener was that, unlike Harry Joyce, he wasn’t armed.

  ‘I’m looking for Dr Thorpe. Will you fetch him, please?’

  ‘I am Dr Thorpe and this is private property. If you’re not off it in one minute I shall call the police.’

  ‘There’s no need to do that.’ Henry introduced himself and explained his presence. While the exchange was taking place he noticed that the woman did not move, yet they were not more than a few yards from her and their voices were loud.

  ‘Why the hell should I talk to you?’ Dr Thorpe said and waved a pair of secateurs in front of Henry’s nose.

  ‘Because it is what any reasonable man might do.’

  It was difficult to guess whether he was going to be reasonable or not. He was a Crusoe-like figure with his beard and a woollen beanie pulled down over his ears. His top half was covered in an old dark blue Shetland jersey with leather elbow patches, and his lower half was encased in a pair of battered golf overtrousers. Altogether Henry approved of this ensemble.

  ‘How dare you barge in here and talk of reasonableness,’ Thorpe said. ‘You’re a bloody trespasser, no more no less.’

  ‘I would ask you not to take such a hectic tone, sir. We are much of an age. You have grandchildren, so have I. One anyway. All I ask is that you listen for a few moments to someone who has driven half a day to see you. It is simple courtesy.’ He realised he was beginning to sound a bit like Dr Johnson.

  Thorpe sucked at his beard and said, ‘All right. Five minutes.’ He leaned over to the woman in the wheelchair. ‘I’ll be back in a little while, darling, and then we’ll go for our walk.’ The woman did not react.

  ‘Come along,’ he said to Henry. ‘We’ll go into the house.’

  Henry followed him along the paths. As he passed the front windows he saw that the furniture was covered in dust sheets and the walls were patterned by rectangular patches where paintings had been removed.

  They entered a kitchen. It was a large room in which even an eight-foot pine table seemed unobtrusive. In one corner was a screen that did not quite hide a bed. Henry saw another bed in what had been a big larder or butler’s pantry which led off the kitchen.

  ‘Sit down,’ Dr Thorpe said grudgingly and pointed to a kitchen chair. ‘Please be brief.’

  ‘It’s not a question of my being brief but of your being co-operative about your grandson,’ Henry said.

  ‘Why the hell should I? I hate the little sod.’

  ‘Little is clearly not applicable now. I have no way of defining sod.’

  ‘You sound just like a lawyer. I would have guessed even if you hadn’t told me.’

  ‘Dr Thorpe, your grandson has been abandoned by everyone including his wife and sister. The only person who hasn’t given up on him is my daughter Anne, who had met him briefly years ago. Doesn’t that seem shameful to you?’

  ‘Did you get a good look at Elizabeth?’

  ‘I saw enough.’

  ‘She’s Jason’s mother; my daughter; my only child. What you see is his creation; his and that bloody father of his. And to a lesser extent Clare’s. God, what a family. Now, why should I co-operate?’

  ‘Apart from being your son’s only supporter my daughter believes he’s probably innocent.’

  This was going it a bit strong, Henry thought, but what the hell; you put your best foot forward. ‘And I think I probably do myself.’ Dr Thorpe was fretting a piece of green garden twine, dropping the pieces on the table. ‘He may be guilty of all sorts of things,’ Henry waved his arm in the general direction of Elizabeth, ‘which I don’t know of – yet. But that still doesn’t take away from the fact that he may be innocent of attempted rape and go to prison because of a lack of will by his relatives. That’s not justice!’

  ‘What about Margaret?’

  ‘She’s gone home to Mum and wants a divorce.’

  Dr Thorpe was silent for a moment then said, ‘I wrote to him, you know, telling him not to expect any help from me. I shouldn’t have done it and I regret it. But . . . well, I didn’t want someone appearing on my doorstep and involving us.’

  ‘Now someone has.’

  ‘Yes.’ He rose. ‘It’s time for Elizabeth’s walk.’ He did not indicate that the interview was over so Henry accompanied him and discovered the reason for such well-kept paths was to enable Dr Thorpe to wheel Elizabeth from one to another without bumping the chair.

  ‘God knows how long I’ll be able to keep this up,’ Thorpe said. ‘And that’s a worry.’

  They were criss-crossing the garden at a brisk pace, as though on rails. Elizabeth Newman sat still, staring ahead of her, and Henry found himself looking everywhere except at the patchwork of skin that covered her head where hair should have been.

  ‘I used to be able to get her up to her bedroom on the first floor but I’m not strong enough any longer,’ Thorpe said. ‘Sometimes she walks a little, sometimes not, so I can’t take the chance and we sleep downstairs in the kitchen where it’s warm.’

  ‘Can’t anything be done?’ Henry asked. ‘Might it not be better for you both if she was in hospital?’

  ‘We tried that. She hated it. Didn’t say anything, but when I visited her she used to cry. Silent tears. My God, they’re the worst. Wrenched my heart to pieces. So I thought, this is no good, and brought her home.’

  ‘And medically?’

  ‘Pain killers, that’s about all. She had two-thirds burns but even so she might have had some sort of life if it hadn’t been for the alcohol. She was already ruined. Now she’s kaput.’ He spoke as though she wasn’t there. ‘She’s got Alzheimer’s. She’s young to get it but people do, at least that’s what the consultants say. To me it’s what used to be called melancholia. It wasn’t only her flesh that burned. Something inside her died the night of the fire – her soul, if that’s not too fanciful for a doctor. She’s only an empty husk now but as long as she lives she’s my daughter and my responsibility and the recipient of my love. So you see it’s a race: who dies first. Fortunately, and I say that advisedly, I don’t think she can last more than a year or so. Could go at any moment. The problem is me: will I last. If she was a patient I might consider an injection. Potassium perhaps. Stop the suffering. But your own flesh – that’s different.’

  They were going round the garden at quite a lick, the wheels of the chair hissing on the gravel.

  ‘Does Jason know how bad she is?’

  ‘Oh, yes, he used to come to see her but that just upset her. And he used to send money but I wouldn’t touch it.’

  ‘Cutting off your nose to spite your face?’

  ‘One does these things. Life isn’t rational. He treated his mother so badly. All right, she drank, she was weak . . . but with a husband like Lajos, who wouldn’t? Clare was much the same. A selfish little bitch. Brats, both of them!’

  He pushed the chair in silence for a while, stopping once to adjust the rug on his daughter’s lap. As he started up again he said, ‘If only . . . one goes on saying it . . . If there hadn’t been a Hungarian uprising he wouldn’t have fled to the West . . . But y
ou can’t think like that can you? Once she met him she was finished. Wouldn’t look at another man. I tried to warn her. I said, Elizabeth, he’s just escaped from Hungary. He can hardly speak English. He has no money. But that only made him seem more romantic. I’ve got money, she said. And she had. Her grandfather left her some; not a fortune but a decent amount. All of it went on the club.’

  ‘Weren’t they ever happy?’

  ‘At the beginning when Lajos still thought he was going to be a new Hoad or Laver. But after a couple of years he was getting nowhere. Remember that in those days there wasn’t very much professional tennis. You had to be a coach at a top club to make a decent living. So he decided to set up his own club with Elizabeth’s money. And after the children were born he had another opportunity – with Jason. Poor little sod. I don’t suppose he had a chance really.’

  ‘Lajos was his Svengali?’

  ‘It was more like Dr Frankenstein and his monster. And my poor Elizabeth couldn’t cope. So she began to drink and that made everything worse. I once pleaded with her to leave him and she told me to mind my own business!’

  They walked in silence for a while then Dr Thorpe said, ‘Tiger! Tiger! burning bright. In the forests of the night . . . That’s what Lajos used to call him. Tiger. If anyone was ever programmed, it was Jason. I remember him when he was a gentle little boy. But he became a sort of monster. His behaviour on court was appalling. You must have read about it, or seen it on tv, especially the Diamond Challenge in South Africa. I often think of that Blake poem. That’s where my Elizabeth is . . . wandering somewhere in the forests of the night . . .’

  Clouds were beginning to build up and the wind was increasing. ‘Time to go in,’ he said to Elizabeth.

  He turned the chair away and wheeled her towards the kitchen. He manoeuvred her up a wooden ramp and started the process of getting her out of the chair. It was then that Henry saw she had been strapped in. She did nothing to help, her limbs were flaccid.

  ‘Can I—?’ Henry began.

  ‘No. Leave it to me.’

  Dr Thorpe got her out and began to walk her slowly up and down the room. ‘She must have exercise. I won’t be able to manage her if she becomes helpless. God knows what’ll happen then. I try not to think about it.’