(1990) Sweet Heart (27 page)

Charley did not reply.

Laura looked into her coffee. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I don’t think either of us did. I don’t know how I can explain it.’ She rested a finger on the rim of her mug. ‘I’ve been so unhappy recently — the last few months — everything’s so bloody shitty. Bob’s been a bastard, and the boutique’s going badly.’ She sniffed. ‘I’ve made a real fool of myself. So’s Tom.’ She shrugged. ‘Not much of an excuse.’

‘Where is Tom?’ Charley eyed her coffee but did not feel like drinking any.

‘I don’t know. We spent two nights — Wednesday and Thursday — after he — left you.’ A smile crossed her face like a twitch. ‘It was pretty disastrous. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.’

Charley stood up; too much was whirring through her mind to cope with. She saw Laura looking at her neck, and turned away, examining a postcard of Tangiers clamped to the fridge door with a Snoopy magnet. She did not want Laura to think she could not cope, that she might have tried to — hang herself?

She stumbled on her own thoughts; could not think of anything to say. She did not want a row, not now, nor a confession. She felt a sense of relief that Tom was not here. Apart from that she was numb. ‘I’d better go,’ she said, and walked back down the passageway.

Laura followed her to the door and laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, Charley. I’m really sorry,’ she repeated.

Charley pulled up outside the nursing home and let Ben out of the car. They walked into the park opposite under the crimson veins of the breaking dawn.

Ben ran happily around and she sat on a dewy bench, closed her eyes and hugged her arms around herself. The air was mild, but she felt a deep coldness that would not melt away. Her head dropped and she dozed for a while, and woke to find Ben’s damp nose rubbing her hands.

Her feet were wet from the grass, her white slip-ons sodden through. She stroked Ben, lolled sideways and slept more. Someone walked by with a dog, but she kept her eyes shut, trying to rest, to savour the drowsiness which for the moment blotted out the fear and the pain.

At half past seven she stood up, clipped Ben’s lead on, put him back in the Citroën and crossed the road to the nursing home.

The night nurse was surprised to see her, and Charley smiled back lamely, knowing she must look a wreck, then climbed the stairs with an effort, walked down the landing and went into her mother’s room which was silent and dark, with the curtains still drawn.

She closed the door gently and stood listening to the quiet breathing, so quiet it sounded like the whisper of an air-conditioning duct.

She wished the bed was bigger so she could lie on it too and snuggle up to the old woman, the way she used to as a child when she was afraid of the dark, when she used to go into her room and sleep with her arms around her. Safe.

She sat in the chair beside the bed, breathed the familiar smells of freshly laundered linen and stale urine. Safe. She slept.

A tray clattered, Charley stared around, disoriented, coming awake slowly, her neck in agony, her back in
agony too, stiff, so stiff she could barely move.

Bugger. The stove. She had forgotten to fill the Aga with coke. It would go out and she’d have to relight it; it was a bitch to light.

A nurse was propping her mother up in bed, the breakfast tray on the table beside her. The nurse turned towards her. ‘You’ve come early,’ she said breezily. ‘Missing your mum?’

She nodded.

‘My mum was in a hospice. I used to sleep in the room with her sometimes.’ She smiled. ‘You never think that time’s going to run out until it happens. Would you like something to eat? I could get you some cereal, eggs.’

‘Juice,’ Charley said. ‘Juice would be nice.’

The nurse held the glass of orange whilst her mother drank, tiny little sips. ‘Nice having company for breakfast, isn’t it, Mrs Booth?’

She stared blankly ahead.

After the nurse had gone out, Charley went through into the small bathroom and looked at her face in the mirror. Christ. Like a ghost. Her colour was drained, her eyes yellowy and bloodshot. She raised her head and looked at her neck. There were red marks and bands of blue bruising. Somehow she had been hoping that it was a crazy dream. That she’d wake in the morning and the negligee would be back in the carrier bag and everything would be fine and there’d be no marks around her neck.

She washed her face with cold water, dabbed it dry and turned the collar of her blouse up. Elmwood. She had fled from the house. Fled because of — madness? All part of the madness?

Poor thing; of course she couldn’t cope with her husband leaving her; pushed her over the edge
.

Must be a terrible way to go, to hang herself in a room on your own, like that
.

Voices murmured inside her head, snatches of conversations as if she were sitting on a bus.

She went out and kissed her mother, stroked her downy white hair, tidied the loose strands. ‘Talk, Mum, talk to me. Let’s talk today, have a chat. It’s Sunday. Remember we used to go to the country on Sundays?’

The nurse brought in a tray. ‘I’ve popped some cereal and toast on, in case you’re hungry.’

Charley thanked her, and ate a little and felt a bit better. She drank her juice, sat beside her mother again and held her hand. ‘Who am I, Mum?’

There was no flicker of reaction.

‘Who am I?’

There was a yelp outside, then another. Ben in the car, maybe. She would have to let him out soon. ‘Who are my real parents?’

Silence. Another mournful yelp.

‘What did you mean,
Lies death! Truth. Go back?
Did you mean you haven’t told me the truth before?’

The old woman moved a fraction more upright. Her eyelids batted and her eyes widened. She opened her mouth, stared straight at Charley for a brief moment, then looked ahead again and closed her mouth, her jaw slackening, the way someone’s might after they have finished speaking. She sank back against the pillow as if she were exhausted by the effort.

Charley wondered what was going on inside her mother’s head. Did she in her confused state believe that she had actually spoken. ‘I didn’t hear what you said, Mum. Could you repeat it?’

But the old woman was still again, her eyes back to their normal intermittent blink; as if an aerial inside her had been unplugged.

‘I don’t have an appointment,’ Charley said. ‘Is there any chance Dr Ross could see me?’

‘I’m sure Dr Ross could fit you in, Mrs Witney.’ The receptionist was a well-preserved blonde in her forties who always reminded Charley of James Bond’s original Miss Moneypenny. She shook her wavy hair and gave Charley a warm smile. ‘He won’t keep you too long.’

Charley walked across the dark hall into the seedy opulence of the waiting room. A mother sat with a small boy just inside the door. The room had not been redecorated in all the years Tony Ross had been their doctor. The plaster moulding was chipped and cracked; an ugly chandelier hung above a mahogany dining table spread with magazines, and the walls, which needed a lick of paint, were ringed with a jumble of chairs that did not match. The open sash windows behind the grimy lace curtains let in the fumes and the clattering roar of the Redcliffe Road traffic.

‘No!’

‘Oh please!’ The boy punched his mother’s chest and she shushed him, giving Charley an embarrassed glance.

‘No!’

‘My friend Billy’s got a four-foot willy —’

‘That’s vulgar.’

The boy giggled and looked across at Charley for approval. But she only noticed him dimly, her thoughts
closing around her like a cocoon. She felt grungy, still in the same clothes she had put on early on Sunday morning. She had not been home. Her jeans felt heavy and prickly and stuck to her legs.

She had stayed at the nursing home all Sunday, too drained to drive back home, to face the emptiness of the house; to face whatever it was that was in her mind.

Or in the house.

She had to go back, she knew that. She had to be strong right now if she wanted Tom back. He hadn’t gone just because they only slept together once a month at the moment; maybe that was part of it, but there were other parts as important. Probably the most important was that he thought she was going nuts.

Her regressions irritated him, all her alternative treatments for infertility. Seeing the ghost of Viola Letters’s husband had tipped him further over the edge. The stables. The car in the barn. The locket. He even felt her increasing mental instability was in some way contributory to Viola’s dog being scalded to death.

If she moved out now and did not supervise the workmen it would be the last straw for him.
Sorry, Tom, had to move out, check into a hotel, because there’s a ghost in the house which tried to hang me
.

She had to go back, stay there and brazen it out. She had to prove it to herself as well as Tom.

The receptionist called in the child and his mother. The staff at the nursing home had been good about Ben, hadn’t minded him coming in, and the nurse had brought up a water bowl, then later some biscuits and a tin of food for him.

In the evening the night nurse had brought a camp bed into the room. It had been strange sleeping in the room, comforted by her mother’s breathing; she could have been a child again.

She had wondered, all yesterday and all last night,
whether Laura had been telling the truth. If Tom and Laura were not together, somehow it made Tom’s leaving her easier to accept.

She was glad he had not been in Laura’s flat when she had turned up, glad in retrospect. It had been a stupid, dumb thing to do. Wanting to seem strong to him, to show him you did not care — and then turn up on his doorstep in the middle of the night. She was going to be strong, however tough that would be. She felt almost more bitter at Laura than at Tom.

Outside in the hallway Tony Ross was saying goodbye to the boy and his mother, his rich caring voice inflected with interest and enthusiasm; he put much effort into making his patients feel a little bit special.

‘Charley! Great to see you! Come on in!’

He was wearing a grey Prince of Wales check suit, a tie with crossed squash racquets, and Adidas trainers on his feet. He had a lean face with twinkling grey-blue eyes and a mouth that almost permanently smiled. His hair was grizzly grey, cropped neat and short at the sides and almost bald on top, except for a light fuzz. He exuded fitness, energy, bonhomie.

‘How are you?’ He held her hand firmly for several seconds. ‘Good to see you! It’s really good! How’s Tom?’

‘Fine.’ She swallowed.

‘Great!’

She followed him across to his tiny office.

‘Thanks for seeing me,’ she said.

‘It’s been a while,’ he said.

‘We’ve moved to Sussex.’

‘Yes, I got your note. Country life, eh? Lucky you.’

‘We still want you to be our doctor.’

‘Of course, I’d be delighted to carry on — although you should register with someone local for emergencies. So Tom’s a squire now and you’re lady of the manor? How are you finding it?’

She shrugged. ‘OK.’

‘Only OK?’ His forehead crinkled and one eyebrow lifted.

‘What’s the problem?’

‘There are several things.’ She looked down at her lap. ‘One is that I keep noticing a couple of smells, either a very strong smell of perfume — as if someone’s come into a room wearing it — or a smell of burning, a really horrible smell of burning.’ She frowned. ‘I read somewhere smelling burning is a symptom of a brain tumour.’

His eyes studied her, giving her no hints. ‘Any particular times when you smell these things?’

‘It varies.’

‘Do you get any dizziness? Blurred vision? Headaches?’

‘Headaches.’

‘Sharp or dull?’

‘Dull. My head sort of stings.’

He took a silver fountain pen from his breast pocket and scribbled on an index card. ‘What else?’

‘It feels like my thermostat’s gone haywire. I’m freezing cold one moment, then boiling hot the next. It doesn’t seem to matter what the temperature is.’

He made a note.

‘I also feel queasy a lot of the time.’

‘Anything else?’

‘I’ve had some very odd feelings of
déjà vu
.’

‘Thinking you’ve been somewhere before?’

‘Yes.’ He had noticed the marks on her neck, and was leaning forward a fraction, studying them. ‘It’s quite strange. I’ve also been sleepwalking.’

‘Have you had any change of diet?’ he asked.

‘Not really.’

‘You haven’t wanted to eat different foods to normal?’

The raw steak she had taken a bite out of.

The Chinese box. Why yes, Tony. I wanted to bury a tin full of maggots and to dig it up in two weeks’ time and find one big maggot left. Yummy
.

‘Not especially. I go on and off tea and coffee a bit, I suppose.’

He made another note. His silver fountain pen glinted and a tiny white ball of reflected sunlight danced around the walls. ‘How often have you done this sleepwalking, Charley?’

‘I’m not sure. Three times, I think.’

‘And do you wake up?’

‘No.’

‘Does it wake Tom up?’

She hesitated. ‘No.’

He was silent for a moment. ‘It’s not in your imagination?’

‘No. Definitely not.’

‘How are you sleeping otherwise?’

‘Badly.’

‘Do you feel tired when you wake in the morning?’

She nodded.

‘Afraid?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you feel afraid in the daytime too?’

‘Yes.’

‘How are your bowels? Are they normal?’

‘They’re OK.’

‘Are you urinating any more than usual?’

She shrugged. ‘I’m not really sure.’

‘How about your weight?’

‘I’ve put on a little since we moved down. I haven’t been going to my exercise classes, and I haven’t bicycled at all.’

He smiled reassuringly at her. ‘How are your periods?’

‘The same.’

‘Still as irregular?’

‘Yes.’

‘When did you last have one?’

Charley tried to think back. ‘About a month ago.’

‘Weren’t you on pills at one time to regularise your periods?’