The Little Stranger

  But then I gazed at the things that were near her, the coals in the hearth, the pokers, the tongs, the glass tumblers, the mirrors, the ornaments … Everything seemed brutal or brittle, suddenly, and capable of harm. I rang the bell for Betty. The lever moved uselessly in my hand, and I remembered that Caroline had cut the wire. So I went out to the top of the staircase and called and called into the silence, and eventually Betty came.

  ‘Don’t be frightened,’ I said, before she could speak. ‘I want you to keep Mrs Ayres company, that’s all.’ I set down a chair and led her to it. ‘I want you to sit right here and make sure she has everything she needs, while I—’

  But the fact is, having got Mrs Ayres this far I didn’t know what to do with her. I kept thinking of the snow on the ground outside; of the isolation of the house. If even Mrs Bazeley had been there, I think I should have felt calmer. But with only Betty to help me—! I hadn’t even brought my doctor’s bag from the car. I had no instruments, no drugs. I stood dithering, almost panicking, while the two women watched.

  Then I heard footsteps on the marble floor of the hall downstairs. I went to the door and looked out, and with a rush of relief I saw Caroline, just beginning to mount the stairs. She was unwinding her scarf and drawing off her hat, her brown hair falling down untidily around her shoulders. I called out to her. Startled, she looked up, then came on more hastily.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  I said, ‘It’s your mother. I—Just a moment.’

  I hurried back into the bedroom, to Mrs Ayres’s side. I took her hand, and spoke as I would to a child or an invalid.

  ‘I’m just going to talk with Caroline for a minute or two, Mrs Ayres. I shall leave the door open, and you must call me—you must call me at once, if anything frightens you. You understand?’

  She seemed weary now, and didn’t answer. I looked meaningfully at Betty, then went out, and caught hold of Caroline, and took her around the landing to her own room. I left her door ajar, too, and stood with her just inside it.

  She said, ‘What’s happened?’

  I put my finger to my lips. ‘Speak softly … Caroline, my dear, it’s your mother. God help me, but I fear I’ve misjudged her case, misjudged it badly. I’d supposed her showing signs of real improvement. Hadn’t you? But what she’s just told me—Oh, Caroline. You haven’t noticed any changes in her, since I was last here? She hasn’t seemed especially troubled, or nervous or afraid?’

  She looked bewildered. She saw me moving back to the door to gaze across the landing to her mother’s room, and said, ‘What is it? Can’t I go to her?’

  I put my hands on her shoulders. ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I think she’s hurt.’

  ‘Hurt, how?’

  ‘I think she’s … hurting herself.’

  And I told her, as briefly as I could, what had passed between her mother and me out in the walled garden. I said, ‘She thinks your sister is with her all the time, Caroline. She sounded terrified! Tormented! She said—she said your sister harms her. I saw a scratch,’ I gestured, ‘just here, on her collarbone. I don’t know how she did it, what she used. But then I looked at her arms, and saw what might have been other cuts and bruises. Have you noticed anything? You must have seen something. Haven’t you?’

  ‘Cuts and bruises,’ she said, struggling to take the idea in. ‘I’m not sure. Mother has always bruised rather easily, I think. And I know the Veronal makes her clumsy.’

  ‘This isn’t clumsiness. This is—I’m sorry, my darling. Her mind has gone.’

  She looked at me, and her face seemed to close. She turned away. ‘Let me see her.’

  ‘Wait,’ I said, drawing her back.

  She shook me off, suddenly angry. ‘You promised me! I told you, weeks ago. I warned you that there was something in this house. You laughed at me! And you said that if I did what you told me to do, she’d be all right. Well, I’ve watched and watched her. I’ve sat with her, day after day. I’ve made her take those hateful pills. You promised.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Caroline. I did my best. Her condition was worse than I knew. If we can just watch her a little longer, just for tonight.’

  ‘And what about tomorrow? And the days after that?’

  ‘Your mother has moved beyond ordinary help now. I’ll make all the arrangements myself, I promise you that. I’ll do it this evening. And tomorrow I’ll take her.’

  She didn’t understand. She shook her head, impatient. ‘Take her where? What do you mean?’

  ‘She can’t stay here.’

  ‘You mean, like Roddie?’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s the only way.’

  She put a hand to her forehead and her face convulsed. I thought she was crying. But she’d she started to laugh. The laughter was mirthless, terrible. She said, ‘Dear God! How long till it’s my turn?’

  I took her hand. ‘Don’t say things like that!’

  She moved my fingers to the pulse in her wrist. She said, ‘I mean it. Go on, tell me. You’re the doctor, aren’t you? How long do I have?’

  I shook her off. ‘Well, not long at all, perhaps, if your mother stays here and something terrible happens! And that’s exactly what I’m worried about. Look at the state of you now! How can you possibly cope, you and Betty? It’s the only solution.’

  ‘The only solution. Another clinic.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We can’t afford it.’

  ‘I’ll help with that. I’ll find a way. Once we are married—’

  ‘We aren’t married yet. God!’ She put her hands together. ‘Aren’t you afraid?’

  ‘Afraid of what?’

  ‘Of the Ayres family taint.’

  ‘Caroline.’

  ‘That’s the sort of thing people will say, isn’t it? I know there’s already talk about Roddie.’

  ‘We’re past the point, surely, of minding what people will say!’

  ‘Oh, it can’t matter, of course, to someone like you.’

  She spoke almost savagely. I said, in surprise, ‘What do you mean?’

  She turned away, confused. ‘I just mean that what you’re planning, what you want to do to my mother—she would hate it. If she were herself again, I mean. Don’t you see? When we were children, whenever we were ill, she’d barely let us make a murmur. She said families like ours, they had a—a responsibility, they had to set an example. She said, if we couldn’t do that, if we couldn’t be better and braver than ordinary people, then what was the point of us? The shame of your taking my brother was bad enough. If you try and take her, too—I don’t think she’ll let you.’

  I said grimly, ‘Well, I’m sorry to say she won’t have much choice. I’ll bring Graham in again. If she acts with him in the way she’s acted with me this afternoon, there’ll be no question.’

  ‘She’d rather die.’

  ‘Well, it may kill her, to leave her here! And on top of that—which worries me more, if I’m brutal about it—it might kill you. I won’t put you through it. I hesitated over Roderick and I’ve always regretted it. I won’t make the same mistake again. If I could, I’d take her right now.’

  And as I spoke, I gazed over at the windows. The white ground had kept the day light, but the sky was now a darkening zinc grey. Still, I thought seriously of taking her, right there and then. I said, talking it through, ‘It could be done, I suppose. I could sedate her. We could manage her, you and I. The snow would hold us up, but we need only get her as far as Hatton, in the first place—’

  She said, appalled, ‘The county asylum?’

  ‘Just for tonight. Just while I make the arrangements. There are one or two private clinics I think will take her, but they’ll want a day’s notice at least. She needs to be kept under close observation now. That will complicate things.’

  She was looking at me in horror, understanding at last how serious I was. She said, ‘You’re talking as if she were dangerous.’

  ‘I think she’s a danger to herself.’

  ‘If you had l
et me take her away when I wanted to, weeks ago, none of this would have happened. Now you want to bundle her off to the madhouse, like a lunatic on the street!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Caroline. But I know what she told me. I know what I saw. You can’t expect me to leave her untreated, surely? You don’t actually think I should abandon her to her delusions, purely for the sake of keeping intact some sort of … class pride?’

  She had put her hands to her face again, her fingers were steepled over her mouth and nose, the tips of them pressing into the inner corners of her eyes. For a moment she gazed at me without speaking. I saw her draw in her breath, and as she released it she seemed to come to some decision. She dropped her hands.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think that. But I won’t let you take her to Hatton, for everyone to see. She would never forgive me. You may take her tomorrow, privately. I’ll—I’ll be used to the idea then.’

  I hadn’t seen her so certain and determined since the days before Gyp’s death. Slightly abashed, I said, ‘Very well. But in that case, I’ll stay here with you tonight.’

  ‘You needn’t do that.’

  ‘I’ll be easier in my mind. I’m due on the wards at eight, but for once I’ll cancel. I’ll say an emergency’s come up. For God’s sake, this is an emergency.’ I looked at my watch. ‘I can make my evening surgery and then come back, spend the night here.’

  She shook her head. ‘I’d rather you didn’t.’

  ‘Your mother needs watching, Caroline. Right through the night.’

  ‘I can watch her, can’t I? Won’t she be safest, with me?’

  I opened my mouth to reply, but her question had rung some sort of alarm bell in me, and I realised with a shock that I was thinking of that conversation I’d had with Seeley. I felt a touch of the sick suspicion that had risen in me then. The idea was impossible, grotesque … But other grotesque and impossible things had happened, there at Hundreds; and suppose Caroline was somehow to blame for them? Suppose, unconsciously, she had given birth to some violent shadowy creature, that was effectively haunting the house? Ought I to leave Mrs Ayres unprotected there, for even one more night?

  She was looking at me, waiting, confused by my hesitation. I saw a suspicion begin to creep into her clear, brown eyes.

  I shook the madness away. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘She can stay here with you. But don’t leave her alone—that’s all I ask. And you must telephone me at once if anything happens. Anything at all.’

  She said she would. I put my arms around her for a second, then took her across the landing to her mother’s room. Mrs Ayres and Betty were sitting exactly as I’d left them, in the thickening gloom. I tried a light-switch, then remembered the silent generator, so took a flame from the fire to a couple of oil-lamps, and drew the curtains. The room at once grew cheerier. Caroline went to her mother’s side.

  ‘Dr Faraday tells me you’re not very well, Mother,’ she said, almost awkwardly. She reached, and tucked back a lock of her mother’s greying hair. ‘Are you unwell?’

  Mrs Ayres turned up her tired face. ‘I suppose I must be,’ she said, ‘if Doctor says I am.’

  ‘Well, I’ve come to keep you company. What shall we do? Shall I read to you?’

  She caught my eye, and gave me a nod. I left her taking Betty’s place in the second armchair. Betty herself I took downstairs. I asked her, as I had asked Caroline, if she hadn’t noticed any recent changes in Mrs Ayres’s behaviour, and if she hadn’t seen any small injuries, scratches, or cuts?

  She shook her head, looking frightened. She said, ‘Is Mrs Ayres took bad again? Is it—is it starting off again?’

  ‘Nothing’s “starting again”,’ I said. ‘I know what you’re thinking, and I don’t want you saying those things in this house. And you needn’t be frit—’ I used the Warwickshire word, almost unconsciously. ‘This is nothing like what happened before. I just need you to be a good girl for Mrs Ayres, and keep your head, and do everything you’re told. And, Betty—’ She’d begun to move away. I touched her arm and added quietly, ‘Look after Miss Caroline too, won’t you? I’m relying on you now. Call me, if things don’t seem quite right?’

  She nodded, her lips pressed tight, some of her childishness fallen away.

  Outside, the snow had lost its dazzle with the darkening of the sky, and the day was even colder, only the energetic trek back up the drive kept the warmth in my limbs, and once I was in my car the chill began to tell on me and I started to shake. The engine, thank God, turned at the first try, and the journey back to Lidcote was slow but uneventful. But I was still shaking as I let myself into my house, still shaking as I stood at the stove, hearing my evening patients gather on the other side of the wall. Only by holding my hands in a stream of what felt like nearly boiling water at the dispensary sink could I draw the cold from them at last and make them steady.

  Dealing with a string of routine winter ailments brought me back to myself. As soon as the surgery was over I put through a telephone call to the Hall; and hearing Caroline’s clear, strong voice assuring me that all was well calmed me further.

  After that I made two more calls.

  The first was to a woman I knew up at Rugby, a retired district nurse to whom I occasionally sent private patients as paying guests. She was more used to physical cases than to nervous ones, but she was a capable woman and, after listening to my guarded account of Mrs Ayres’s case, said she’d be very willing to take her for the day or two I would need to set up more appropriate care. I told her that, assuming the roads were clear, I would bring the lady to her tomorrow, and we made the appropriate arrangements.

  The second call I hesitated over, for I wanted simply to talk the thing through, and by rights I should have turned to Graham for that. But it was Seeley I rang in the end. He was the only man who knew all the details of the case. And it was a great relief to me now to tell him what had happened, mentioning no names on the open line, but making everything clear enough, and hearing his usual genial tone grow very much graver as he took in what I was saying.

  ‘That’s bad news,’ he said. ‘And just as you supposed the whole thing blown over.’

  ‘And you don’t,’ I asked, ‘think I’m acting too hastily?’

  ‘Not at all! Haste is what’s needed, by the sound of it.’

  ‘I didn’t see much actual evidence that physical harm’s been taking place.’

  ‘Did you really need to? The mental aspect is clearly worrying enough. Let’s face it, no one wants to take this sort of step with people like that, least of all when there are—well, other involvements. But what’s the alternative? Let the delusions run on, get an even stronger hold? Want me to come and back you up in the morning? I will, if you like.’

  ‘No, no,’ I said. ‘Graham will do it. I just wanted reassurance … But Seeley, listen.’ He’d been about to ring off. ‘There’s one more thing. The last time we met. You remember what we talked about?’

  He was silent for a second, then said, ‘You mean, that guff about Myers?’

  ‘Was it guff? You don’t think—I have this feeling, Seeley, of danger. I—’

  He was waiting. And when I didn’t finish, he said firmly, ‘You’ve done everything you can. Don’t go troubling yourself now with crazy ideas. Remember what I said to you once before: what’s being asked for here, essentially, is attention. It’s as simple as that. Our patient may dig in her heels tomorrow when it comes to the crunch. But you’ll be giving her what, in her heart, she craves. Get a good night’s sleep now, and don’t brood on it.’

  Had our situations been reversed, I would have said exactly the same to him. But I went upstairs, not quite convinced, and had a drink and a cigarette. I ate my supper without appetite, then headed gloomily off to Leamington.

  I got through my hours at the hospital in a state of distraction, and when I drove home, at just before midnight, I was still unhappy. As if the thought of Caroline and her mother were exerting some sort of magnetic pull over me, I inadver
tently took the turning away from Lidcote, and was a mile along the Hundreds road before I saw what I had done. The weird pallor of the snowy landscape only added to my unease. I felt odd and conspicuous in my black car. For a moment I actually considered carrying on, going out to the Hall; then I realised that to upset the house by arriving late like that would do no good to anyone. So I turned the car around—looking across the bleached fields as I did it, as if searching for a light or some other impossible signal from Hundreds that all was well.

  The telephone call came through next morning, just as I was sitting down to my breakfast after a broken night’s sleep. There was nothing at all unusual in my being called at that sort of time; patients often rang me then, wanting to be added to my round. But I was already in a keyed-up state, thinking of the difficult day ahead of me, and I sat tensely, straining to hear, as my housekeeper answered. She came back through to me almost at once, looking puzzled and anxious.

  ‘Excuse me, Doctor,’ she said, ‘but it’s someone wanting to speak to you. I can hardly make her out. But I think she said she was calling from over at Hundreds—’

  I threw down my knife and fork and ran into the hall.

  ‘Caroline,’ I said breathlessly, as I picked up the receiver. ‘Caroline, is it you?’

  ‘Doctor?’ The line was bad because of the snow, but I could tell at once that the voice was not hers. It was high as a child’s, and pinched, with weeping and with panic. ‘Oh, Doctor, can you come? I’m to say, will you come? I’m to tell you—’

  It was Betty, I realised at last. But her voice reached me as if from an impossible distance, broken up by puffs and squeals. I heard her say again, ‘I’m to tell you … an accident …’

  ‘An accident?’ My heart contracted. ‘Who’s hurt? Is it Caroline? What’s happened?’