Is There Anything You Want?

by Margaret Forster

  The shock was violent. Her heart raced and without pausing to reflect that this must of course be the vicar, she ran from the church and down the path to the gate, crashing it behind her and never looking back. Once home, she was mortified by her behaviour – what must the poor man have thought? She should have collected herself, at least nodded, said good afternoon, before leaving. Or she should have explained her presence, told him she was just admiring the window. She’d run away as though she were frightened, as though she’d thought him an ogre. It was inexplicable, that leap of terror. She didn’t need anyone to tell her she was getting everything out of proportion. Emma was young and healthy and even if she seemed dominated by Luke, she must surely have some notion of self-preservation within her. That was what Edwina told herself she had to hang on to: Emma’s own resilience and her innate respect for her own life. She would not let Luke lead her into danger, she would not.

  7

  Think about Your Life

  THERE HAD BEEN a little clutch of cards and notes, and a flurry of messages on her answer machine, but Chrissie had derived no comfort from them. Her misery about the whole awful business had wrapped itself round her like cling-film, sealing up every nook and cranny of feeling. She was numb with guilt, even though guilt was what she had been publicly absolved of and told not to feel. Again and again she replayed that day in the clinic, the day Mr Wallis wasn’t there, the day Ben Cohen was ill, the day she and Andrew had struggled through that heavy load, but the dreadful thing was that she couldn’t remember clearly what that poor young woman had looked like. She could vividly recall some of the patients she’d seen that day, though she couldn’t remember their names, especially one rather striking, dark-haired younger woman, but she could not bring Carol Collins to mind. The newspaper had described her as red-haired and pretty, and her own notes had told her Ms Collins was twenty-six and single, but none of this information brought her to mind, which in itself was an indictment. Even looking at the photograph after the inquest hadn’t helped. Carol Collins was a blank.

  A blank. That was how she felt herself to be now, a faceless person, remote, unable to connect with anyone. A person who had been unable to provide reassurance at the right time for a vulnerable and needy young woman. No good excusing herself on the grounds of having been tired and overworked, no good repeating that Carol Collins had a history of mental instability and had tried to kill herself before over another imagined fatal illness. She felt responsible, and was sure the young woman’s family still blamed her. ‘Take time off,’ Mr Wallis had said. He wanted to be rid of her, she was sure. Her drawn features, and her eyes red with lack of sleep, alarmed his patients. And so here she was, with time off, and it didn’t help at all. What was she to do with herself? Fret and wonder endlessly why ever she had become a doctor, though the answer was simple: because her mother had wanted it. So many times, as a child, she’d heard her mother say, with conviction, ‘Chrissie is going to be a doctor, aren’t you, Chrissie?’ And she had never once replied, ‘Am I?’ Instead, she’d been eager to agree, yes, yes, I am going to be a doctor. Her head had filled with romantic notions of saving lives and curing the sick; the white coat and stethoscope had been seductive badges of office. She was good at science, all the sciences, sailed through exams, had no trouble getting into medical school. But there, once the reality of doctoring impressed itself upon her, the doubts had begun. Did she want to be among all this blood and disease? It was sad, it was depressing, it was not as worthwhile and noble as she had envisaged, and worst of all was the fearful weight of the responsibility. But she’d gone too far, she couldn’t bring herself to back out. Her mother’s proudest day was when she saw her daughter entitled to put the magic word Doctor in front of her name.

  But the next step, the one her mother had wanted her to take, she had not taken. She hadn’t become a GP. Being a GP was all about personal involvement with people and the idea horrified her. It was better for her to be in a hospital environment and to keep the personal at a distance. She still had to deal with people but she didn’t have to get to know patients. In the clinic, a body could be a body in a way it could not be in a GP’s surgery, and it was bodies she could deal with, not people. But she’d dealt with Carol Collins as a body, couldn’t remember her, face, couldn’t even recall the red hair. Carol Collins had been just a few notes, until she became a dead young woman.

  She wondered how she was ever going to go back to St Mary’s, with everyone looking at her and whispering who-knew-what, and feeling sorry for her. But she knew that to think like that was vanity. Memories were short. To her, and to Carol Collins’s family, what had happened was overwhelmingly important, but to those others in a busy hospital it was not. Aunt Mary had pointed this out in her note. ‘Nobody blames you, dear,’ she had written, ‘you did nothing wrong, and people here have more pressing things to worry about.’ It was kind of her to write, but the letter was in itself an indication that Carol Collins’s death was being talked about. Chrissie knew she hadn’t bothered to stop and speak to her aunt for months, though she’d regularly seen her doing her duty as a Friend. She’d avoided her, always had done. Aunt Mary embarrassed her. Even referring to her as ‘aunt’ embarrassed her, suggesting as it did a degree of affection and closeness which did not exist. ‘Aunt Mary’ was the widow of her mother’s only brother; she sent Christmas and birthday presents, letters of congratulation after exam successes, a card of commiseration after the death of Chrissie’s father. And, of course, she came to the funeral of Chrissie’s mother. It was the first time Chrissie could ever remember meeting the woman and it had not been a comfortable encounter. They had said hello in the entrance hall of the hospital over the years, but no more. Until now, and the note, which ended with the words ‘If there is anything you want, or anything I can do, please let me know.’

  What do I want, Chrissie wondered, that a woman like Aunt Mary could possibly give me? A woman I hardly know, whose connection with me is an accident of marriage, a woman to whom I do not feel in the least drawn, who simply happens to do voluntary work in my hospital and about whom I know nothing else. I do not, Chrissie thought, want to be part of her good works. I don’t want to be pitied or fussed over. And yet as the days passed, and she dragged herself around her little house, listlessly, she longed for someone, anyone, to pull her out of her apathy and break through the wall of indifference she seemed to have erected round herself. She didn’t want another doctor. She didn’t want the kindness of colleagues who had all experienced something similar in their professional lives (and without those colleagues she had precious few friends). Gradually, she began to play with the idea of taking Aunt Mary at her word, and summoning her, saying ‘Help me’, and then waiting to see what would transpire. She could pretend to be ill. Well, it would not exactly be a pretence – she was ill, but not in the way she would pretend to be. Something simple would do, some physical malady, which would mean she needed to be visited and perhaps looked after; and then, once Aunt Mary came, if she came, she could recover rapidly should the whole thing prove a disaster. She remembered her mother saying of Aunt Mary that whatever else, she was a sensible woman, dependable, loyal, and full of common sense.

  Sitting down and forcing herself to summon up the required energy to write the short letter, Chrissie suddenly wondered what her mother had meant by that ‘whatever else’.

  *

  It was true, she had said that if there was anything Chrissie wanted, just to let her know. Holding the letter in her hand, Mrs Hibbert remembered writing this, and meaning it. Meaning it, but not expecting a response of this sort. She remembered, too, that other occasion, five years ago (or was it four?) when she had said the same thing in person to the girl, at her mother’s funeral. She had looked so forlorn, so utterly pathetic, her thin face so pale, her great brown eyes swamped in tears which somehow never quite spilled over, just remained there, lakes of sorrow. Mrs Hibbert had been shocked at the evidence of such raw grief, she had been unprepared to di
scover that a 25-year-old woman, and a doctor too, could be so overwhelmed by the death of her mother. It must mean, she had concluded, that Chrissie and Sandra had been very close indeed. She hadn’t known this, but then she hardly knew Sandra – four times they’d met, while Francis was alive – and could not claim to know Chrissie in the slightest. She’d been surprised to be invited to the funeral and had only gone out of loyalty to Francis. And when she’d offered to help, Chrissie had touched her briefly on her arm, a little pat of gratitude (or so she’d judged it), and tried to smile.

  What she wanted at this moment was a calming cup of tea, because Chrissie’s letter had made her agitated, there was no denying this. The tea made, Mrs Hibbert wished for the hundredth time that she had someone with whom she could discuss what she should do. It was the worst part of being on her own. She’d never got used to it. Friends were no substitute for Francis, to whom she had been able to confess her meanest thoughts, knowing he would understand. Telling friends things she would later regret was fatal to friendship, whereas telling Francis had no repercussions. He’d listened and sorted her out and never made her feel ashamed. She knew that what she would have been saying to him now was that, although of course she had meant what she had written to Chrissie, she had never envisaged being put to this kind of test. She would have asked Francis why on earth the girl had asked her, of all people, a virtual stranger, to come and stay with her. He would surely have agreed that it was peculiar and that Chrissie must be desperate to suggest it.

  In the silence of her tidy kitchen, Mrs Hibbert could clearly hear in her head that Francis was saying ‘Exactly’. He was saying something else too. You must go to her at once, he was telling her, his voice very firm. ‘Oh, really!’ Mrs Hibbert said aloud, and got up, scraping the legs of her chair on the floor in the way she hated others doing, and washing her mug noisily at the sink using an unnecessarily large amount of water. She felt rebellious. Liberties were being taken, surely. She wasn’t a nurse, Chrissie must know enough real nurses who would oblige. ‘I am not well at the moment,’ she had written, ‘and feel in need of someone to help, just for a little while, and I wondered, after your kind note, whether there was any chance of your coming to stay?’ It was polite enough, but why didn’t the girl say what was wrong with her? Mrs Hibbert suddenly wondered if Chrissie’s ailment was of the nervous kind, a breakdown, if long delayed, after the inquest of that young woman. It would explain why she hadn’t specified what she was suffering from.

  She had to make up her mind how to respond. There were several convincing excuses which immediately presented themselves, but she knew she would not use them. It would be despicable. Hadn’t she said ‘If there is anything you want’? And hadn’t she now been told it was her presence that was wanted? The alarm and anxiety she experienced as she faced up to this was mixed with a weird feeling of something like excitement – she had been chosen, sent for, she would be answering what could only be described as an emergency call. Francis would have been proud of her. And in fact she could not help feeling quite proud herself as she wrote to Chrissie, saying how sorry she was to hear that she was not well, and telling her she would come at once, the very next day (that is, the day after her letter arrived – she made that clear). She could have telephoned, but as Chrissie had written, she thought she should reply in kind.

  It worried her that she knew nothing about Chrissie’s house, never having visited her. Would it be cold? Sandra’s house had been horribly cold. The only time she and Francis had stayed there, she’d been so cold she’d had to get up in the middle of the night and put a cardigan on. She decided to pack her warmest clothes even though it was still summer, just in case. It was enjoyable to get her suitcase out again and begin selecting items to put in it – she’d always liked this part of going away, the pleasures of preparing. Years since she’d indulged it. She’d lost the habit of holidays. Once, she’d been quite adventurous, valuing her own independent spirit, never minding that she had no one to accompany her. She’d toured Scotland and then Ireland after Francis died, perfectly comfortable to stay in bed-and-breakfast places. The driving had given her great satisfaction, and she’d been a skilled navigator, expert at reading maps. But then the urge to travel had mysteriously left her. She preferred to stay at home, where she was comfortable. The last holiday she’d taken, seven years ago, had been to Cornwall, and every bed she’d slept in had seemed either too hard or too soft and she’d ended up with a sore back.

  But, she reminded herself, she was not going on holiday. She was going to stay with a young woman she hardly knew who was unwell in some unspecified way and needed help. She would very likely be going to spend her time indoors doing a lot of listening and looking after. It would be like her role as a Friend, and yet unlike it. Chrissie was a doctor, a professional woman, who would not want advice or guidance in the same way as patients coming in a state of confusion to the hospital. And she was not like Dot, craving direction, or even Emma, looking for a substitute mother. The more she tried to decide what exactly Chrissie would want of her, the more Mrs Hibbert was overcome with the awkwardness of the situation. At least she wasn’t going far – the drive to Chrissie’s house was not much longer than her weekly drive to St Mary’s. She would be there in under an hour.

  Chrissie’s house was a new one, on the other side of the river from St Mary’s. Mrs Hibbert knew the area because she frequently drove that way on her visits to a garden centre specialising in azaleas. She’d seen these houses being built, a row of them, screened from the road by conifers. They were advertised as town houses, though they were a mile at least out of the town, and looked odd to her, standing where they did, a terrace more suited to a street than the bank of a river. She expected them to be poky inside, though their external appearance was attractive enough. The narrow balconies, she’d noticed, had pretty wrought-iron railings and in summer there were window boxes on them full of petunias and geraniums. The front doors were painted black and had brass knockers and letter-boxes (hell to clean, she’d reflected). All this she’d glimpsed as she’d driven to and from the garden centre. It rather pleased her to think of going inside one of them and she looked forward to comparing Chrissie’s accommodation with her own. She’d often thought that she herself should perhaps move to some smaller dwelling, easier to look after, in preparation for her old age, but the prospect of giving up her garden had squashed that idea.

  Pulling up outside Chrissie’s house, Mrs Hibbert reflected that this was a good place for a single woman to live. There were neighbours either side – Chrissie’s house was in the middle of the twelve houses – and though it was a quiet spot the road was near. There was space for her to park without any trouble, which was a relief (parking was not her strong point these days). She got out of the car, locked it after removing her suitcase, and began to walk up the short, paved path to the front door. As she did so, a movement at one of the first-floor windows caught her eye. The windows were covered by white Venetian blinds – several houses had them – and she had seen the slats in the middle widen, as though someone was peering through. Convinced that Chrissie had seen her arrive and would be coming to open the door, Mrs Hibbert did not at first ring the bell, but then, when the door didn’t open, and she could hear no movement inside, she pressed it lightly. Silence. She shifted uncomfortably on the step – really, one felt like a travelling salesman, standing like this with a suitcase on a doorstep – and rang the bell again, harder. She was just becoming exasperated, and ready to march back to her car, when she heard sounds of footsteps inside and at last the door began to inch open, but so slowly the effect was creepy. Mrs Hibbert coughed nervously, and said, ‘Chrissie? It’s me, Aunt Mary, dear.’ The door opened a little wider, pulled back by the fingers of a delicate white hand. Mrs Hibbert stepped inside, leaving her suitcase for the moment, and repeated, ‘Chrissie?’ Behind the door she saw a young woman in a white nightdress whom she knew to be Chrissie, but who bore little resemblance to the person she had last seen
some weeks ago in St Mary’s. She seemed to be trembling, her hair was unbrushed, and her complexion was putty-coloured. ‘Dear me, Chrissie,’ Mrs Hibbert said, and Chrissie began to weep.

  *

  Two days later, Mrs Hibbert was in control. Chrissie had been put to bed with a hot drink, and there she was going to stay until this supposed ‘fever’ had passed. She hadn’t tried to argue with the girl, who had diagnosed herself as having a fever, but frankly she didn’t believe it. If this was a fever, it was of the mind, not the body, but Chrissie was the doctor and so it was best to accept her word. But the young woman was happy enough to stay in her bed and be brought tea and toast the first day then soup the next day. She sat up nicely and let her hands and face be washed and obediently lay down again when the tray was taken away after she’d drunk the soup. She said thank you all the time, and tried to smile. It seemed a relief to her to be cossetted and it was a relief to Mrs Hibbert to do the cossetting.