‘I have to. You let her get to you and hurt you and it’s that which makes me so — that I find so repellent. If she was just making life hell for you, I could sympathise totally, do all I could to help you cope, but it’s worse than that. You collude in her ill-treatment of you. You let her hurt you. You roll over and expose your underbelly to her so that she can shove the knife in, over and over again —’
‘Kate, I’ve asked you. Please don’t.’
She took a deep breath and opened her mouth and then looked at him and saw the expression on his face and closed it again. What was the point? She’d said it all before, and to say it again would be like putting on an old and cracked gramophone record so that it could grind out its tedious maddening repetitions; who needed that? She didn’t, he didn’t — where was the sense in it? And she sat and looked at him and waited.
‘It’s different this time,’ he said eventually, and his voice sounded different. Flatter and harsher. ‘This time she’s got a handful of trumps and she’s willing to play every damned one of them. Whatever I do, whatever I say, she’s the winner.’
‘You’ll have to explain,’ she said and her own voice sounded flat too, with exhaustion, with disappointment, with every bad feeling she could think of.
‘Andrew told me that she called him this morning. Him, not me.’ He managed a sort of grin then, strained and more of a rictus than a smile but at least it was an attempt. ‘I thought that would please you. Not to call me — it has to be a step in the right direction. At least, that was what I thought at first. Anyway, she phoned him at his home. He told me, after he told me about the case over the sergeant.’ Now he even managed a short laugh. ‘I didn’t even have time to feel relieved, you know that? I’ve been worried sick for God knows how long and the way Andrew gave it to me, I didn’t even have time to feel good about it. It would have been pleasant to feel good, just a little. Anyway, he said Sonia insisted on seeing him first thing this morning. She was waiting when he got to the office.’
‘Well?’ Once again he had lapsed into silence and she felt the anger rising in her and couldn’t risk being patient.
‘She — she saw last night’s programme.’
Now it was her turn to laugh. ‘Surprise, surprise! So did everyone else. I’ve heard of nothing but that damned programme most of the day. Not that it’s done me any harm — the reverse, since you were kind enough to ask. Clearly it’s made a big difference to all sorts of things. Life’ll be a little easier at Old East for a while.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I should have asked.’ He came to sit down beside her and took her hand and began to play with her fingers, smoothing each one in turn as though she was wearing crumpled gloves. ‘I’ve been obsessed with my own problems and I know that. You needn’t call me a selfish shit. I’m well aware of it.’
‘Oh, you’re not,’ she said a little wearily. ‘Not really, you poor devil,’ and bent her head to watch his hands on hers.
‘Thank you for that much. Well, the sooner I explain, I suppose, the sooner we’ll — the thing is she says that she could go to court and apply to have all my access to the children stopped on the grounds I live with you. That you are morally unreliable because of your attitudes on such matters as homosexuals and transsexuals — and that makes you an unsuitable contact and influence on young children. And she says, and Andrew agrees with her, that finding a judge who’ll agree won’t be at all difficult —’
Kate caught her breath. ‘She can’t —’
‘Oh, she can,’ Oliver said grimly. ‘She can do anything. Haven’t you realised that yet?’
There was a long silence as she digested it all and then she said sharply, ‘What was that you said? That she said she could go to court? Does that mean she isn’t going to unless — what is it she wants? More money? It won’t be easy, Oliver. We’re tight-pressed enough as it is —’
He shook his head. ‘No, not money. But you’re quite right. There’s a stick as well as a goad.’ He smiled bleakly. ‘She’s got something else on offer, and whichever I take is going to be hell. And I don’t think I have any other alternative. One of them I’m going to have to accept.’
‘What’s the other one?’
‘She’s met someone else.’ He leaned back then, letting go of her hand and linking both of his behind his head. ‘I thought that one day I’d have my prayers answered. That she’d fall for someone else and get off my back, and that somehow we’d sort it all out. I had this fantasy, you know? A decent sort of chap who’d make her happy enough to leave me in peace. Who’d make her see that sharing Melissa and Barney with me wouldn’t hurt her, and would be good for the kids. Who’d maybe give her another child or two to think about. That was the daydream. And now she’s gone and done it, but done it all wrong.’
‘How wrong?’ She knew she was walking on egg-shells; inside she was boiling with anger, with hurt, with the dog of fatigue that was now lifting its muzzle inside her and growling dangerously. It would take so little to make her lose her temper with him, with the miserable way he looked, the obvious pain he was in. She ought to be all sympathy and patience, but it was impossible. There was a thin skin of such virtuous feelings stretched over her, but it bulged with pressure from the bad ones, and especially with her fury at the way he let it happen to him, time and time again.
‘He’s an American. From Dakota or somewhere. Well-off I gather — something to do with newspapers.’ He tried to laugh. ‘Old habits seem to die hard with her. Anyway, she wants to marry him and take the kids to go and live in Dakota.’ And he pulled his hands from behind his head and set them over his face and sat there, hunched and hidden from her.
Oh, God, Kate thought, sitting staring at the cooling Horlicks in the beaker beside her, wrinkling under its thickening skin. Oh, God, I prayed for that. I thought of her going away, far away, thousands of miles away so that she’d leave him, leave us, in peace. And now, look what I’ve done — and as the sense of guilt added itself to the queasy mixture she was already filled with she had to bite her tongue to stop herself shouting at him.
‘I’ll hardly ever see them again,’ Oliver said, and his voice was muffled behind his hands. ‘They’ll grow up and when I do manage to get over there, or persuade her and her chap whoever he is to let them come here for a visit, we’ll be strangers. I can’t bear it. It’s like knowing they’re going to die —’
She managed somehow to school her voice, but she knew when she spoke that it came out cold and hard and accusing.
‘I see. So, what are you going to do? Look for a job in Dakota, I imagine?’
He took his hands away from his face and she looked at the red eyes and the smudges of tears and steeled herself not to feel pity. She couldn’t. She was feeling too much already.
‘Or are you going to assure her you’ll get rid of me, as long as she stays here and lets you see the children whenever you want? Is that it?’ She listened in a sort of vague surprise to her own voice, so icy and uncaring. ‘You’ll refuse to let her take the children away, which of course you have every right to do, but to make that possible and keep her away from the court, you’ll get rid of me so that she can go on driving you crazy dancing at the end of her string. You’ll stop her from marrying her Dakotan — which I strongly suspect you want to do anyway — and you’ll keep her and the children and I can go to hell —’
‘Kate, stop it.’ He was white now, and she looked at him with a sort of contempt and he saw it and shrank into himself.
She stood up and pulled her jacket closer around her. ‘I’m going back to the hospital,’ she said. ‘I’ll sleep there. You have to make your own decisions, Oliver. I can’t help and I can’t sit here while you try to make your choice. I’ll be back here tomorrow evening. By then I should know where I am, shouldn’t I? One way or the other. Because you’ll either be here. Or you won’t.’
‘Kate!’ He was on his feet, following her into the hall as she scooped up her bag and keys from the chair. ‘Kate, don’t do
this to me — I need you —’
‘I’m sure you do,’ she said, her hand on the front door. ‘I need to be here. But we have to sort this out for good and all. Sonia has to be dealt with, and you’re the only one who can do it. You have to choose, Oliver. The children or me. It’s as simple as that. And though I’m sick with anger I’m sorry for you — it’s a hell of a hole to be in —’
‘Kate,’ he said as she pulled the door open, and she looked back at him, standing there barefoot in his rumpled dressing gown, his hair tousled and his eyes red-rimmed. ‘Kate, I love you.’
‘I know,’ she said wearily. ‘I love you. That’s why I have to go and leave you on your own with this. You know that, don’t you? Good night, Oliver.’
And she went and got into the car and thought absurdly — I wonder why I didn’t put it away tonight? I must have known —
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Six a.m.
It is dark and very cold in the courtyard and the light spills out of the Accident and Emergency department entrance to make the wreaths of steam coming from the breaths of the ambulance men look lurid and theatrical. They are manhandling the big trolley out of the ambulance, and puffing a good deal and fussing as they go, and a tall stooped man, thin and gangly inside his oversized coat, watches them with dull eyes and seems not to be breathing at all, for no clouds can be seen coming from his mouth, standing as he is outside the main beam of the light. He follows the trolley into the department and it is noticeable how the ambulance men avoid looking at him, they who are usually amiable and indeed cheerful souls, jollying along the sick and their accompanying relations like so many burly nannies. But there is no jollying for this relation; or for the patient, who is either dead or deeply comatose.
The senior man, the driver, explains in a low voice to the staff nurse on duty about the patient and his distaste for the gangly man in the large overcoat is made clear as the man himself stands drooping and silent in the middle of the waiting room, paying no attention to anyone.
‘Tricky one ’ere, Staff. Sent for us, told us calm as you like ’e’d done ’er in and ’ad good reason. We called the police o’ course, they’re on their way, but we thought we’d better get ’ere fast, on account she was still breathing when we got to the flat. Not so sure now, mind you.’
She is still breathing, just, as the staff nurse finds when she uncovers the livid yet cadaverous face of the elderly woman on the stretcher. ‘But she won’t be much longer,’ she adds and slides her hand under the blanket to find a pulse on a flaccid wrist.
‘Said in the ambulance, he did, to my mate, “I’ll tell you all about it”, said as ’ow she was in such pain and begged ’im to ’elp ’er. Got cancer of the ovary, it seems. So ’e did. But when she was right down like this ’e couldn’t stand it no more and wanted ’er brought in. So there you are. The police’ll be ’ere I dare say, eventually —’
‘I dare say,’ says the staff nurse and peers more closely at the woman on the couch and adds, ‘She’s dead now, I think. I’ll get the casualty officer to confirm — oh, dear, I hate these cases. Nasty —’
‘Do you get a lot, Staff Nurse?’ asks the first-year student nurse who has been helping her, lifting the patient on to the couch, getting a set of notes out and now standing waiting for instructions, and she looks at him and makes a little face.
‘Enough,’ she says. ‘And half the time you can’t blame ’em. If it was your old mum who was dying and in pain, what would you do? You wouldn’t keep a dog alive the way some people have to be. You’d get taken to court for cruelty. But not when it’s people —’
‘But you can’t have people killing their relations just like that —’ The first year, who is David Engell and has just started in Accident and Emergency, having finished his first three months on Male Medical, looks a little shocked and Staff Nurse looks at him and raises an eyebrow and says, ‘Can’t you? This one did —’ and pulls the sheet over the dead woman’s face and goes to phone the casualty officer to get him out of bed.
There will be a good deal of discussion and trouble over this case she knows; she has had to deal with such before, and she does not relish this one. Her own grandmother has Alzheimer’s disease and her mother is going through hell on a plate looking after her. There have been occasions when Staff Nurse, her dangerous-drugs keys in her hand, has thought undiscussable thoughts about what she would like to do and how easy it would be. She has not done it, of course, but who can tell what may not happen one day?
Six-fifteen a.m.
Audrey cannot be said to have woken up, because she hasn’t really been asleep, or she doesn’t think so. She goes to bed, of course she does; a person needs her sleep and Audrey knows she has to take care of herself. But it is not easy to lie in the big old double bed on her own, trying to pretend that Joe never slept there.
Sometimes she drifts away into a sort of not-quite-there state and hears Joe telling her sternly that of course he was there beside her, that he still is, if she’ll just make the effort to turn over and look, but she is always paralysed when this happens and cannot move and she knows unless she does he will be disgusted with her and go away. And so he does, for she cannot move, ever, when it happens. And then she tries to cry when she knows she is awake but that is no help because crying just doesn’t happen. It would be good if it did, but God, she has decided, is angry with her and will not let her cry.
Now she gets out of bed in the dark wet cold morning, glad to feel the pain in her joints and the stiffness in her back. It proves to her she is awake and that the night is over. All she has to do now is live another day. That’s all.
Seven-thirty a.m.
The rain that started a while ago has settled in seriously now, and under the heavy indigo sky the courtyard is beginning to show blacker patches where the puddles are forming. Inside the wards the sound of the rain on the windows is agreeable, underlining the cosiness of being safely within doors, and the nurses bustle a little more noisily than they did when they started the day’s washes and treatments an hour ago, not caring whether they wake the patients or not. After all it is Christmas Eve tomorrow, and the wards’ decorations tinkle and whisper in the draught as the nurses bustle by: silvery strips of aluminium foil on all the lights on the Gynae ward and a tree decorated mainly with balloons which, Miss Buckland told Sister in her usual rough fashion, ‘look for all the world like so many multicoloured boobs. Was that why you did it that way?’; red and green streamers all over Male Medical, and a display of tastefully painted fir cones in gold and silver in Sister Sheward’s office, on top of the carefully padlocked cupboard where she keeps the whisky and sherry meant for tomorrow’s jollifications (mainly with the doctors; she still has great hopes of getting somewhere with Neville Carr, in spite of his bloody wife); and in the children’s wards, such a proliferation of paper chains, trees, balloons and streamers that the children lie and stare silently, overawed rather than excited.
Suba, happily washing the geriatric woman in the Neurology ward annexe, is very cheerful. She had been disappointed when they sent her here from Gynae, having hoped to go to one of the children’s wards, especially for Christmas, but the old ladies are as good as children, really, to look after. Helpless and smelly just as babies are, but less difficult, less likely to cry for their mummies. Though, she thinks with an indulgent smile as she scrubs old Mrs Renfrew’s dentures, some of them do that, even though they are great-grandmothers themselves. And she pops the teeth back into the old lady’s mouth and smiles at her as the old lady glares at her balefully. Only another hour to go and there will be breakfast, thinks Suba, and then I am off duty and Daddy’ll be waiting for me.
And she thinks again about the possibility of not going home and setting out instead for the West End to look at the Christmas shops. But she knows she will not. She thinks a lot about doing what she wants rather than what Daddy wants, but it rarely goes further than just thinking, and that is all right, because isn’t she here at Old Eas
t and doing what she wants in that way? Going home in all her off-duty time is a small price to pay for that amount of freedom.
Across the ward she sees Alice Abingdon sulkily dealing with her set of patients and feels a little less cheerful. Alice is not happy to be on this ward, and hates all the patients with a deep passion. She tells Suba over and over again that at this stage they ought to be put out of their misery, and when she does things for them is often rough and quick and even makes them cry sometimes. Suba had thought once about talking to someone about it, because she is so worried about the old ladies, but she only thought it, and then only once. Never again will Suba ever tell anyone anything about things she sees if she can help it, however much it might worry her and however wrong it might seem. It is the most important lesson she has learned since she came to Old East to train as a nurse. Do your own job and never mind what everyone else is doing.
Nine-thirty a.m.
Kate is throwing up in the small sluice at the top end of the Genito-Urinary ward and doesn’t mind a bit. It has been happening now for over a week and she has said nothing to anyone, not even Oliver, but he is no fool, she tells herself as she catches her breath and lifts her head slowly and carefully, not certain that the spasm of nausea has completely passed. He must have noticed the fact that her periods are haywire, but he has said nothing; and she knows why he has not. Like me, she thinks, and washes her face and powders it to cover the shadows under her eyes, like me, he wants to be sure, wants to make the delicious uncertainty last, wants to relish every moment of it.
And she draws a deep breath and tries not to think of how Oliver will be tomorrow which is not only Christmas Eve but also Melissa’s birthday. He sent her the most ridiculous pile of gifts weeks ago, and tomorrow, she knows, will slip away to the studios to phone her. He is very punctilious about never phoning Dakota on the phone at home, as though doing so would somehow pollute their life there in Finchley Road, and that worries Kate.
Clinical Judgements Page 42