Night Visit (13 page)

All
these are excuses for what I saw next as I descended the rough track back to the main road.

As
clearly as I had earlier seen the print against the wall I saw the child, Melanie, standing beneath a tree. She was small, with frightened, smudged eyes, a red dress with huge, white spots. Thick, fair hair. She did not move as I passed but stood and stared at me without emotion. And I was so appalled at what I had seen that I accelerated out onto the road without a backward glance.

10

Rosie and I managed a couple of weeks away high in the mountains of the Basque country in the north of Spain. We took the holiday with my brother Simon and it served a double purpose. I knew he had worried about me all his life, particularly now I was alone. But then Simon always had felt responsible for me. It was only now, when we looked back over the complications of our childhood, that we could see why we had always felt so threatened. We had recognised it in our father and analysed his motives even as teenagers. That was the easy bit, a man to whom intellectual dominance was paramount and any show of independence intolerable. We were not allowed our own thoughts or opinions. More subtle was the fear our mother had tried to instil in us, fear of fairy stories when we were young, dark threats of the unknown as we grew. It had been our mother who had made the attempt on our minds. So Simon and I were abnormally close. We had needed to be able to rely on each other. Lonely, insecure, we had meandered through life knowing we could depend on each other.

The
holiday had been normality itself. Rosie, Simon and I had played on the beach, swam, taken sailing dinghies far out beyond the bay, walked, cycled and climbed through rough countryside. And in the evenings we had caroused the nights away at the everlasting fiestas.

Having
my brother around had minimised the effect on Rosie of a holiday without her father. We did all the things a family would do, enjoyed the freedom of the bars with their tapas, and talked.

And
I forgot about Melanie Carnforth.

But
we had to come to the end of the holiday, fly home and return to work. And my first booked patient of the morning was Pritchard, as though he had been waiting for me to come home. It was a rude awakening.

I
pressed the buzzer and waited.

I
don’t know how he did it. He was a heavy man. I would have thought he would have been clumsy on his feet. But although I strained to hear his approach the first I knew of his presence was the soft scrabble against the door. It was pointless calling him in. I already knew the drill. He would hesitate outside, shift his weight from one foot to the other, hover.

I
stood up and pulled the door open. It shocked him so much he jerked back.

I
felt a warm triumph. I had stolen a march on him. He was not invincible but a rather stupid, heavy man with a pedantic manner. I could now put him into perspective. The holiday had built my confidence. He had not followed me to the rugged terrain of the Basque country but was confined here, in this small town, folded into a forest.

‘
Good morning, Mr Pritchard.’ I was determined not to let him intimidate me. What the hell was there to be unnerved about? A podgy, sweaty, middle-aged man with BO and high blood pressure? ‘Come in, Mr Pritchard,’ I said. ‘Sit down.’

‘
Thank you, Harriet.’

It
is difficult for me to describe the effect those three words had. Like a spider’s web brushing your face in the dark. It was nothing. It was something. Already my bravado was evaporating. Cold fingers brushed me.

Pritchard
smiled, sat down, crossed his legs and the pantomime began with the removal of the jacket, the waft of body odour, the laboured breathing, pleased expectation lighting his face. ‘I believe you’ve had a holiday.’

I
said nothing.

He
pursued the subject. ‘Anywhere nice?’

‘
Just Spain with my brother.’

‘
Nice,’ he said. ‘I wish I had a brother.’ Again I said nothing but took in every detail

of
him. Today’s outfit was a suit, a dark green suit. Tight under the armpits, slight flares on the trousers. Tramline creases. There was a grease spot on his lapel and lots of tiny holes where pinholes might have been stuck. Pinholes? Had this once been a much-used wedding suit?

He
slid out of the jacket. He was being careful with this suit, his best, using the chair as a coat hanger. Even draped over the chair it kept Pritchard’s shape. Plump arms, a slightly hunched back. He sat and faced me.

I
made a feeble attempt to regain my equilibrium. ‘And how is your mother?’

He
didn’t answer until his sleeve had been methodically pleated up the white grub of an arm. ‘I don’t see what your interest is in my mother,’ he said.

‘
She’s one of my patients too,’ I replied. ‘As are you.’ I could have added, but older, more feeble, more vulnerable.

‘
She’s well,’ he said sourly. ‘She’s not fallen out of bed again if that’s what you’re worried about.’

Maybe
because you have not moved the commode, Mr Pritchard. ‘Good,’ I said.

He
briefly fingered the frayed tie. Orange today and thin enough to have belonged in the nineteen sixties. ‘I don’t neglect her,’ he said, ‘if that’s what you think.’

‘
No?’ I wound the cuff around his arm, pumped up the bladder and listened to the slow thump of his brachial pulse. ‘The drugs seem to be controlling your blood pressure remarkably well,’ I said. ‘Even on this low a dose.’

‘
That’s good,’ he said. ‘I’m relieved. But it’ll still need regular checks. Once a month.’

‘
The nurse can—’

‘But
I feel, Harriet...’ He uncrossed his legs and crossed them again. ‘I feel that it’s good for me to see you on a regular basis. I find you such pleasant company. I’m sure that you are as good for my blood pressure as the drugs.’

It
was on the tip of my tongue to ask him then what he really wanted from me but the eyes, magnified from behind the glasses, were unblinking. I didn’t want to ask him anything because his answer would prolong the consultation. I wanted him to go.

‘
I’m getting accustomed to seeing you on a regular basis.’ At last he stood up. ‘I shouldn’t like these appointments to stop.’ He paused and wiped beads of sweat away from his forehead before replacing his sleeve. Then his jacket. ‘I look forward to them, you see. And I’m silly enough to believe that if I missed a month of your healing my blood pressure would become dangerously high.’

To
any other patient I would have pointed out the facts, that his blood pressure was not ‘dangerously high’, that his visits to me had no effect—therapeutic or anything else. I was doing nothing for him. The very appointments were a waste of my time, manipulated by him. I did not want them. I did not want to see him. To him I said nothing.

He
held out his hand and gave me a bland smile. ‘I shall see you in one month, Harriet.’

I
knew that to argue would be futile. But the powerlessness was paralysing me.

*

Thankfully the last few weeks of the summer rolled on without further incident but in September the nights began to lengthen. There were more hours cloaked in darkness and Rosie returned to school. But now she was ten. She had moved up a class, had a new teacher. She was growing up.

She
had only been back a week when she asked her first question. ‘Mum,’ she said, ‘do some people really find girls’ conversation interesting? Or are they just pretending?’

I
was spooning gravy over her meal. Perhaps this is my excuse for not picking up on things. ‘I find you interesting,’ I said.

She
was toying with her knife and fork. ‘Not mums. I mean other people.’

‘
What sort of conversations?’

‘
Just about things,’ she said idly. ‘You know, the telly, clothes, pop music. Things.’

‘
Some people do seem to have the ability to relate to children better than others.’

‘
Oh,’ she said, picked up her plate and sat down with it in front of her.

I
was vaguely aware that I had given her the wrong kind of answer. But there was a reason. I had imagined she was referring to her new teacher because during the first two weeks of the new term she must have mentioned his name more than thirty times already, Jay Gordon. Mr Jay Gordon. Mr Gordon and lately, just Jay.

Two
nights later she was doing her homework in her customary untidy fashion with all the books sprawled across the kitchen table when it struck me how very hard she was trying.

‘
What are you doing?’

‘
An essay,’ she said, hardly looking up, ‘for Mr Gordon.’

Perhaps
it was the reverent way she spoke his name that alerted me. Or the pink tinge on both her cheeks. It might even have been a certain protectiveness in the way she coiled her arms around her homework book. It made me more curious than normal because she didn’t want me to see it.

‘
What’s it about?’

She
looked up now. ‘My family.’

‘
Oh.’ I bristled. I was angry. How crass to set children an essay on this subject, this emotional minefield.

She
chewed the top of her biro. ‘It’s hard to know what to write,’ she said. ‘I mean we’ve only got Tigger. And Daddy...’ The words hung in the air, a sad epitaph.

‘
So what have you put?’

‘
Just things,’ she said. ‘And by the way,’ she added casually, ‘there’s a parents’ night next Wednesday so you can meet Mr Gordon then.’

‘
Fine,’ I said.

*

I always feel like Alice in the tiny house when I visit a junior school. Everything’s so small. It starts with the building, a toy house. The doorways look abnormally tiny, hardly big enough for a full-grown human to squeeze through. The toilets are dwarf sized. And the classrooms are filled with miniature chairs that wedge your bottom in them, small desks, small books.

I
wasn’t too badly off. I’m not much bigger than the average ten-year-old anyway. But as I entered I noticed that some of the other parents looked uncomfortably giant like. I was late, a little after nine. Mine had been the last appointment of the evening, purposely.

I
had pulled the car into the playground and wandered towards the entrance before I saw it. But how common a car is a blue Lada? Not unique. I should not see him everywhere, behind the wheel of a common make and colour of car. And this one was not muck-splattered but clean. This reassured me. It was not his.

I
carried on walking into the school and turned into Rosie’s classroom. I glanced around, uncertain which was Rosie’s desk until I spotted her name, clumsily drawn on a piece of card standing up on the front desk. I might have known. Keen, under the teacher’s eye, close to the board. I headed in the general direction. Pairs of parents were poring over their offspring’s books. All looked up as I entered. I knew none of them.

I
could see Mr Gordon sitting at his desk, behind a plastic sign which bore his name, Jay Gordon. I thought him very nondescript, with brown hair that needed trimming, and a serious face. On closer inspection I picked up that he was casually dressed in jogging pants and an open-necked shirt. I sat down in Rosie’s desk and started reading through her exercise books.

It
seemed to me that while she had a flair for English with lots of ticks and ‘very goods’ her maths was sadly lacking. I could see depressing huge red crosses right the way through. And there were comments too. ‘Don’t forget your columns, Rosie’ and ‘I think you forgot about the decimal point’. I closed the book and glanced back at the desk.

He
was still talking to the woman in the red suit and the man in jeans. I bent my head again, found an awful poem she had written and then the story she had most recently done. The opening sentence was enough to grab me.

I
used
to
have
a
Dad
.

He
was
nice
but
he
left
me
and
now
I
don’t
love
him
anymore
.
I
love
someone
else
.
It
is
a
secret
who
.
We
don’t
tell
anyone
but
he
loves me
like
Daddy
used
to
do
.
He
told
me
that
he
loved
me
and
if
I
was
old
enough
he
would
marry
me
in
a
long
white
dress
and
lots
of
flowers
and
he
told
me
my
Mummy
would
cry
because
Mummys
should
cry
at
weddings
.
I
think
that’s
true
.