by Carol Smith
“You look absolutely stunning,” she said impetuously. “Are you an actress or something? Should I be asking for your autograph?”
Vivienne smiled wanly. She was attracted to this warm and genuine stranger, and in other circumstances would have liked her as a friend. She was the sort you could rely on, definitely not one to stab you in the back.
“Just a woman of little importance,” she said softly. “A woman without a name.”
Polly drove Beth back to her own bed—they were an unruly lot, these patients—and closed the curtains to allow Vivienne a bit of privacy. Beth returned to her book but she was thinking. She felt real sympathy for the lonely beauty in the next bed. Entering an operating theater could not be fun, though up till this moment, she had not allowed herself to dwell upon it. Now she did. Like going to the Tower of London to have your head chopped off, without a friend beside you to hold your hand and let you know you were loved. This beautiful woman must have a husband or lover. Where was he? What sort of man let his wife go though an ordeal like this all alone? She didn’t even have flowers beside her bed.
“Are you all right over there?” called Beth, cuddling her daughter’s teddy bear. After a short pause a soft voice replied:
“Yes, thank you. I’m feeling fine.”
“Who is she, anyhow?” asked Beth as they watched the porters wheel Vivienne away. “She looks and acts like something out of Hollywood yet she’s quite shy and retiring.”
“Greta Garbo maybe?”
Sally was still up and about although the nurses had now bullied her out of her jeans and cowboy boots and into a voluminous dress shirt, filched from Jeremy’s wardrobe while he was out of town. Only Sam knew where she was and she had let him into the secret solely to stop them from going ape if she went missing without an alibi. On the strictest instructions, mind, that he was not to tell the others, and that no one—that meant NO ONE—was even to think about visiting, upon pain of death. They were like that, her boys, and although at times she found their protectiveness sweet, on the whole it irritated her. Why couldn’t they leave her alone? The last thing she needed was an audience when there was nothing really wrong and it was her business anyhow. She imagined all the questions if they ever found out, and shuddered.
She was now at the foot of Vivienne’s empty bed, studying her chart.
“Mrs. Vivienne Nugent,” she read out. “Age, forty-three. Weight . . .”
“Sally!” shrieked Georgy, who was much recovered, from the other end of the room. “That’s AWFUL. You should never, ever do that. Nurse, turn my chart over immediately. I can’t have her snooping on me too.”
Everyone laughed, except Beth.
Vivienne Nugent—whoever would have thought it? Oliver’s wife. What a small world, to be sure. First Georgy, now her. The one positive thing in a potentially explosive situation was that Oliver was away and not likely to visit. And how come she was in here while he was whooping it up in Singapore? What, come to think of it, was she doing here at all? With money like that, she should have been in the London Clinic at the very least, even in a private nursing home in Lausanne.
Beth was aroused from her reverie by whoops of laughter from Georgy’s cubicle where Sally was making herself very much at home, helping herself to Georgy’s chocolates and examining the few possessions she had ranged along the top of her bedside cabinet. She was holding a silver-framed photograph and staring at it intently.
“Speaking of film stars, who’s this guy? He looks dead familiar. Where have I seen him before?”
“Nowhere. That’s my father. He lives in southern California.”
Sally wrinkled her pretty nose.
“Where I’ve not yet been. But I could swear I’ve seen him before. You’re certain he’s not in the movies? Or television, perhaps?”
Georgy was sure. But she was flattered.
“Positive, not a chance. He’s a psychologist. Nothing particularly glamorous about that.”
“Oh,” said Sally, “how interesting. Mine was a lawyer.”
Beth strolled over to join them. Georgy had recognized her immediately, of course, but up till now had been in no state for socializing.
“Hi,” she said, and took the photograph out of Sally’s hands. “Mmm, he’s certainly gorgeous. Will he be visiting you while you’re here . . . I hope.”
“’Fraid not. He’s tied up in court on a major murder case and hardly even has time to see his wife.”
“Shame. Just my luck. For one glorious moment I thought I’d hit the jackpot.” Beth gave her a brilliant smile and carefully replaced the photograph. If Georgy was going to be embarrassed at seeing her so soon at such close quarters, she was anxious to clear the air. What went on in Gus’s life was no longer her business, but she hoped the younger woman would take care.
Sally was still puzzling, trying to get a fix on the stern, handsome face.
“So he’s not married to your mother?”
“Not anymore.”
“What happened?”
“Oh, the usual thing.” Georgy was growing tense, unwilling to go on with the interrogation. Sally seemed unstoppable, though it was clear to Beth that she was simply bored and meant no harm. “He traded us all in for a younger model. And then a younger model still. You know how it is these days.”
She made light of it but was clearly hurting. Beth leaned over and took her hand.
“That must have been tough,” she said. “It’s hard to lose a father, particularly when you are a child. How old were you?”
“Twelve.”
“That’s the age my daughter is now, only her dad left us when she was just a baby so she’s sort of grown up accepting it. And so many kids these days are from one-parent families that it’s becoming the norm. My kid’s got the best of it, or so she says. Two doting parents who vie with each other to spoil her rotten.”
Sally, unusually for her, had sunk into a brooding silence.
“What about you, Sal?” asked Beth. “Do you have family?”
There was a pause.
“No,” she said. “Not now. Not a one, thank Christ, and that’s the way I like it!” The words were lighthearted but there was real emphasis in the tone. “Travel light and travel fast, that’s my motto.”
Beth laughed and wandered back to her own bed. She very much liked the wild colonial who went through life with a laugh and a song and looked remarkably chirpy for someone on the eve of surgery. Whatever her problem was, she was clearly not going to discuss it, and that, so far as Beth was concerned, was her own business. Good for her. She admired that sort of spirit.
Once they were out of this hellhole she hoped they’d all keep in touch. Vivienne might prove to be a problem but she liked the other two. Especially Sally.
• • •
Catherine was slowly coming round though she did look unnaturally pale. She lay silently in her corner bed, as still and straight as a corpse, and responded only faintly to the sympathetic inquiries from the other inmates. In the afternoon, Duncan Ross was due to visit her and Polly helped Catherine sit up against a pile of fluffed-up pillows. She combed Catherine’s fine, straight hair and tied it back with a ribbon, then searched through her possessions to see if she could find a lipstick and some blusher. Catherine gave a watery smile and waved her away.
“Don’t bother. It doesn’t matter.”
“Don’t you want to look your best? A bit of color might help to brighten you up.”
“Don’t worry. He’s not that sort of a friend.”
When Duncan arrived every eye in the ward was on him. No one else had had visitors yet. Vivienne was still down in the theater so was spared the embarrassment of his discovering her guilty secret. Duncan wore jeans and a big white sweater and carried a great armful of lilies, which he dropped onto the foot of Catherine’s bed.
Now that’s pretty tasty, thought Beth, seeing him for the first time and gazing approvingly over the edge of her book.
Sitting up, with her hair brushe
d, Catherine was looking altogether healthier, and Duncan gave her a bear hug and a kiss on the forehead.
“How’s it going today, old love? Feeling any better?”
He picked up a chair from the other side of the ward and swung himself astride it as he spoke. He’d tried to get the old lady to come but she said she could never abide hospitals. Germ-ridden places, she said. Dangerous for her voice.
Catherine’s own voice was so faint the others couldn’t hear what she was saying, but Sally pulled off her earphones for a closer inspection. There was something about this woman, returning Lazarus-like to life after all these days, like a piece of frozen veal straight out of the freezer, that was vaguely familiar, though she could swear she had never seen her before.
Only when Duncan was leaving did the wires begin to connect. His powerful Australian voice filled the room with his cheery good-byes and one of the little locked doors in Sally’s brain flew open.
Jesus Christ, she said to herself, diving for safety under the covers. It’s that anemic Pommy nurse from Sydney.
Who ever would have thought it? After all these years.
• • •
Addison was just finishing his ward round and this time he did have students in tow. He’d sort them out, finish here, and then, if he was quick, could still make it down to Bucks for a late lunch and perhaps a game of backgammon. Then he’d join Phoebe and the boys for the rest of the week before they went back to school. He gathered together his medical notes and led the way out of the gyn ward and along the corridor to his private consulting room, the students following in his wake like baby ducks.
Once there, he wasted no time. He was weary of the inside of hospitals and often wished he need never see one again. All those sick people, many without hope, each awaiting his pronouncement and sometimes a miracle to make them recover. But miracles were not that commonplace. Occasionally even Addison Harvey—senior consultant in gynecology—had to let them down. He’d learned that a long time ago, when he was not much older than this bunch of pimply young hopefuls. Looking at their eager faces, with the dark circles under their eyes caused by too little sleep, he remembered as clearly as if it were yesterday. But barren remembering did no one any good; they were here for a purpose, and that was to learn. He would give them what he could and very soon they would be out there on their own. Facing up to life, finding out about the real world, watching their dreams, their ideals, crumble into chalk before their eyes.
He couldn’t warn them, and anyway why would they listen? Once he too had been an idealist with the arrogant belief that he could change the world. Now he saw only too clearly that in the eyes of this new generation of bright young doctors he was nothing more than just another overpaid old fart gone soft with age.
He switched on the overhead light box and slotted a couple of X-rays onto it for easy viewing by the whole group. The students gathered round. Diagnosis, they had been taught, was vital to this profession they were hoping to enter, and Addison Harvey was legendary for his intuition and accuracy, one of the best doctors in the country. Tuition of this caliber was not easily come by and each one of them fervently hoped one day to follow in the consultant’s revered footsteps.
The X-rays were clear to see but Harvey was still absorbed in the case notes. A distant memory was nagging at the back of his mind, and had been for some days now, but he shoved it away impatiently, keen to get on with the business in hand. Five new patients, most of them straightforward, a useful sampling for this group of students. But one case stood out, something he had never encountered before, not outside a textbook.
“Well, I’ll be blowed,” he muttered, looking up from the notes in his hand to peer more closely at the X-ray on the right.
“She’s not going to make it, is she, sir?” asked one of the students, close beside him.
Harvey glanced at the left-hand X-ray without a lot of interest.
“Probably not. But it’s this other one that is particularly intriguing. Gather around all of you and take a look at that.”
Part
Three
Chapter Fourteen
The figure on the doorstep was little more than an outline, silhouetted against the brilliance of the afternoon sun.
“You don’t remember me, do you?”
She squinted into the glare but her eyes were not as good as they had been; how embarrassing. She fumbled round her neck for her glasses but had left them in the other room.
“I’m afraid I can’t quite see you. Come a little closer, will you, so that I can take a proper look.”
For a moment the stranger paused, then stepped into the porch and stood beside her on the mat.
“Come inside. It’s hot out here and I’m sure you’d like to get into the shade.”
She led the way along the passage into the comfortable room at the rear, overflowing with newspapers and books and a pile of legal textbooks she was in the process of using, all the time trying to gather her scattered wits. After a long, hard day in court, following an exhausting weekend with the grandchildren, all she longed to do was take off her shoes and settle down with a nice cup of tea and the evening paper before she started again and had to change for dinner at the club.
Now who on earth could this be? Perhaps the voice would provide a clue.
“There’s no real reason why you should remember.”
It was a soft voice, well modulated, and rather pleasant.
“It was, after all, a long time ago, and I’m sure more important things have happened in your life since then—even if they haven’t in mine.”
“Would you like a cup of tea?” The all-time panacea. “Sit down over there and take the weight off your feet.”
She bustled into the tiny kitchen, still wondering, but her mind remained a blank. Oh dear. They’d warned her about this, her daughters, when they joked and told her she was overworking and detailed the early symptoms of Alzheimer’s; maybe there was more truth in it than she had realized. She made the tea, then opened the cake tin on the side and levered her daughter’s fresh walnut cake onto a silver platter. No harm in being hospitable even if her memory was no great shakes. She piled cups and saucers onto a tray, stuck a knife on the side of the platter, and carried the whole lot back into the room where the stranger was standing, examining the photographs of the boys.
The smile was bright. “We’re talking sixteen years here. Long before these little fellows were even thought of. Almost a generation ago.”
In the shady room, without the light in her eyes, an image was definitely beginning to form, the echo of a face long-forgotten, once part of every moment of her waking and nighttime consciousness.
“You said I was beyond redemption.”
Now she remembered. The laugh had not changed. Transfixed with shock, she poured the tea and handed her visitor a cup.
“Cake?” She indicated the platter but the visitor was already holding the knife.
“I knew you’d remember, once you’d had a few minutes to think about it. Sixteen years is a long time, especially when there’s nothing else going on in your life. You’ve had it all”—indicating the pleasant room, the framed photographs on the mantelpiece of her daughters and their sons—“and now it’s my turn.
“My plan is to make up for all the life I have missed,” said the stranger pleasantly, still playing with the knife. “But first I’m here to make sure you never, ever forget me again. That’s only fair, don’t you think?”
That smile. However could she have forgotten the smile?
Chapter Fifteen
Beth awoke slowly to the sound of howling wind and the rattle of hailstones against the windowpanes. One of the cozy things about this house, she thought as she snuggled deeper into the duvet, was the illusion it gave her of living in a lighthouse. The scream as the gust forced itself round the eaves and down the chimneys was positively bansheelike. Or, Beth thought, like a witch on a broomstick circling the house, trying to get in. Nice, she thought, snuggling de
eper, then, Christ, whatever time is it? as she jerked awake in a reflex of panic. She reached across and switched on the bedside radio, in time to catch the end of the weather report. Blustery showers and snow flurries, with gale warnings and reports of canceled ferries and airports in chaos.
Then she remembered. It was Good Friday and the start of a four-day holiday weekend with customary British Easter weather. The rattle of hailstones stirred her again so she shuffled out of bed and across the room to the bathroom, where she splashed cold water on her face and brushed her hair, before pulling on a wrap and descending to the kitchen, warm and welcoming from the quietly slumbering Aga.
“Gone to live with Dad. Don’t wait up” read a note on the table, propped up against a jam jar of freesias. Beth scratched her head and filled the kettle, then set about putting together the rough rudiments of breakfast.
“April Fool!” screeched a human banshee, dodging out from behind the pantry door to give her a mammoth hug. “Were you scared? Did you think I’d really gone?”
Imogen, a crumpled fawn in blue and white striped boy’s pajamas, looked enchanting, even with her long hair unbrushed and that awful steel brace which detracted not at all from her prettiness.
“Some chance,” Beth grunted as she filled a pan with water then set it on the stove to boil eggs. Good Friday, and for once she did not have to race around getting her act in order, as for the next four days, the world—or at any rate London—would be closed.
“What do you want to do today, hon?” she asked, smoothing the silky head as she placed the eggs on the table. Then she slid open the knife drawer and extracted a chocolate bunny holding a foil-wrapped basket in one paw.
“Correctly you shouldn’t really have this till Sunday,” she said. “But what the hell. Who’s to know?”
And at least I’m one ahead of the Old Man, she thought with satisfaction, as she settled down with a cup of black coffee to read the paper, knowing only too well how profligate Gus was inclined to be, especially where his only child was concerned. Love and guilt, those were his motivations. Imogen, crunching a piece of toast and marmalade, was scanning the columns of the Radio Times.