‘Of course it’s possible. You’re divorced, I’m single.’
‘I mean that it wasn’t something I’ve ever considered. From the beginning our relationship was never on that footing.’
‘What footing exactly did you think it was on? I’m speaking of when we first became lovers – eight years ago, in case you’ve forgotten. On what footing was it then?’
‘I suppose sexual attraction, respect, affection. I know I felt all those things. I never said I loved you. I never mentioned marriage. I wasn’t looking for marriage. One failure is enough.’
‘No, you were always honest – honest or careful. And you couldn’t even give me fidelity, could you? An attractive man, a distinguished surgeon, divorced, eligible. Do you think I don’t know how often you’ve relied on me – on my ruthlessness, if you like – to get rid of those avaricious little gold-diggers who were trying to get their claws into you? And I’m not talking about a casual affair. For me it was never that. I’m talking about eight years of commitment. Tell me, when we’re apart, do I ever enter your mind? Do you ever picture me except gowned and masked in the theatre, anticipating your every need, knowing what you like and what you don’t like, what music you want played while you work, available when wanted, discreetly on the margin of your life? Not so very different from being in bed, is it? But at least in the operating theatre there was no easy substitute.’
His voice was calm but he knew with some shame that Flavia wouldn’t miss the clear note of insincerity. ‘Flavia, I’m sorry. I’m sure I’ve been thoughtless and unintentionally unkind. I had no idea you felt like this.’
‘I’m not asking for pity. Spare me that. I’m not even asking for love. You haven’t got it to give. I’m asking for justice. I want marriage. The status of being a wife, the hope of children. I’m thirty-six. I don’t want to work until I retire. And what then? Using my retirement lump sum to buy a cottage in the country, hoping the villagers will accept me? Or a one-bedded flat in London when I’ll never be able to afford a decent address? I have no siblings. I’ve neglected friends to be with you, to be available when you have time for me.’
He said, ‘I never asked you to sacrifice your life for me. That is, if you say it’s a sacrifice.’
But now she went on as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘In eight years we’ve never had a holiday together, in this country or abroad. How often have we been to a show, a film, dined in a restaurant except one where there’ll be no risk of meeting someone you know? I want these ordinary companionable things that other people enjoy.’
He said again, and with some sincerity, ‘I’m sorry. Obviously I’ve been selfish and unthinking. I think in time you’ll be able to look back on these eight years more positively. And it isn’t too late. You’re very attractive and you’re still young. It’s sensible to recognise when a stage of life has come to an end, when it’s time to move on.’
And now, even in the darkness, he thought he could see her contempt. ‘You mean to throw me over?’
‘Not that. To move on. Isn’t that what you’ve been saying, what this talk is all about?’
‘And you won’t marry me? You won’t change your mind?’
‘No, Flavia, I won’t change my mind.’
She said, ‘It’s the Manor, isn’t it? It isn’t another woman who’s come between us, it’s this house. You’ve never made love to me here, ever, have you? You don’t want me here. Not permanently. Not as your wife.’
‘Flavia, that’s ridiculous. I’m not looking for a chatelaine.’
‘If you lived in London, in the Barbican flat, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. We could be happy there. But here at the Manor I don’t belong, I can see it in your eyes. Everything about this place is against me. And don’t think that the people here don’t know that we’re lovers – Helena, Lettie, the Bostocks, even Mog. They’re probably wondering when you’re going to chuck me. And if you do, I’ll have to endure the humiliation of their pity. I’m asking you again, will you marry me?’
‘No, Flavia. I’m sorry but I won’t. We wouldn’t be happy and I’m not going to risk a second failure. You have to accept that this is the end.’
And suddenly, to his horror, she was crying. She grasped his jacket and leaned against him and he could hear the great gasping sobs, feel the pulse of her body against him, the soft wool of her scarf brushing his cheek, sense the familiar smell of her, of her breath. Taking her by the shoulders, he said, ‘Flavia, don’t cry. This is a liberation. I’m setting you free.’
She drew apart, making a pathetic attempt at dignity. Controlling her sobs, she said, ‘It’ll look odd if I disappear suddenly, and there’s Mrs Skeffington to be operated on tomorrow, Miss Gradwyn here to be cared for. So I’ll stay until you leave for the Christmas break, but when you return I won’t be here. But promise me one thing. I’ve never asked for anything, have I? Your presents on birthdays and Christmases were chosen by your secretary or posted from a shop, I always knew that. Come to me tonight, come to my room. It’ll be for the first and last time, I promise. Come late, about eleven. It can’t end like this.’
And now he was desperate to get rid of her. He said, ‘Of course I’ll come.’
She murmured a thank you and, turning, began walking quickly back towards the house. From time to time she half-stumbled and he had to resist the urge to catch her up, to find some final word which could assuage her. But there was none. He knew that already he was turning his mind to find a replacement as theatre sister. He knew, too, that he had been seduced into a disastrous promise, but it was one he had to keep.
He waited until her figure became faint, then merged into the darkness. And still he waited. Looking up at the west wing, he saw the faint blur of two lights, one in Mrs Skeffington’s room, one next door in Rhoda Gradwyn’s. So her bedside lamp must be on and she was not yet settled for sleep. He thought back to that night just over two weeks ago when he had sat on the stones and watched her face at the window. He wondered what it was about this particular patient that had so caught his imagination. Perhaps it was that enigmatic, still unexplained response when, in his Harley Street consulting room, he had asked her why she had waited so long to get rid of her scar. Because I no longer have need of it.
14
Four hours earlier Rhoda Gradwyn had slowly drifted back to consciousness. The first object she saw on opening her eyes was a small circle. It hung suspended in air immediately in front of her, like a floating full moon. Her mind, puzzled but transfixed, tried to make sense of it. It couldn’t, she thought, be the moon. It was too solid and unmoving. And then the circle became clear and she saw that it was a wall clock with a wooden frame and a narrow inner rim of brass. Although the hands and numerals were becoming clearer she couldn’t read the time; deciding that it didn’t matter, she quickly gave up the attempt. She became aware that she was lying on a bed in an unfamiliar room and that other people were with her, moving like pale shadows on silent feet. And then she remembered. She was to have her scar removed and they must have prepared her for the operation. She wondered when it would take place.
And then she became aware that something had happened to the left side of her face. She felt a soreness and an aching heaviness, like a thick plaster. It was partly obscuring the edge of her mouth and dragging at the corner of her left eye. Tentatively she raised her hand, uncertain whether she had the power to move, and carefully touched her face. The left cheek was no longer there. Her exploring fingers found only a solid mass, a little rough to the touch and criss-crossed with something that felt like tape. Someone was gently lowering her arm. A reassuring familiar voice said, ‘I shouldn’t touch the dressing for a time.’ And then she knew that she was in the recovery room and the two figures taking shape by her bed must be Mr Chandler-Powell and Sister Holland.
She looked up and tried to form words from her impeded mouth. ‘How did it go? Are you pleased?’
The words were a croak but Mr Chandler-Powell seemed to understand. She heard
his voice, calm, authoritative, reassuring. ‘Very well. I hope that in a little time you will be pleased too. Now you must rest here for a while and then Sister will wheel you up to your room.’
She lay unmoving as objects solidified round her. How many hours, she wondered, had the operation taken? One hour, two, three? However long, time had been lost to her in a semblance of death. It must be as like death as any human imagining could be, a total annihilation of time. She pondered the difference between this temporary death and sleep. To wake after sleeping, even a deep sleep, was always to be aware that time had passed. The mind grasped at the tatters of waking dreams before they faded beyond recall. She tried to test memory by reliving the previous day. She was sitting in a rain-lashed car, then arriving at the Manor, entering the great hall for the first time, unpacking in her room, talking to Sharon. But that surely had all been on her first visit over two weeks ago. The recent past began to come back. Yesterday had been different, a pleasant uncomplicated drive, the winter sunlight interspersed with brief and sudden showers. And this time she had brought with her to the Manor some patiently acquired knowledge which she could make use of or could let go. Now in sleepy contentment she thought she would let it go as she was letting go of her own past. It couldn’t be relived, none of it could be changed. It had done its worst but its power would soon be over.
Closing her eyes and drifting into sleep, she thought of the peaceful night ahead and of the morning which she would never live to see.
15
Seven hours later, back in her bedroom, Rhoda stirred into drowsy wakefulness. She lay for a few seconds, motionless in that brief confusion which attends the sudden awakening from sleep. She was aware of the comfort of the bed and the weight of her head against the raised pillows, of the smell of the air – different from that in her London bedroom – fresh but faintly pungent, more autumnal than wintry, a smell of earth and grass borne to her on the erratic wind. The darkness was absolute. Before finally accepting Sister Holland’s advice that she should settle herself for the night, she had asked for the curtains to be pulled back and the lattice window slightly opened; even in winter she disliked sleeping without fresh air. But perhaps it had been unwise. Gazing fixedly at the window, she could see that the room was darker than the night outside and that high constellations were patterning the faintly luminous sky. The wind was gusting more strongly and she could hear its hiss in the chimney and feel its breath on her right cheek.
Perhaps she should stir herself from this unwonted lassitude and get up to close the window. The effort seemed beyond her. She had declined the offer of a sedative and found it strange, but not worrying, that she should feel this heaviness, this urge to stay where she was, cocooned in warmth and comfort, awaiting the soft boom of the next gust of wind, her eyes fixed on that narrow oblong of starlight. She felt no pain and, putting up her left hand, gently touched the padded dressing and the adhesive tape which secured it. She was used now to the weight and stiffness of the dressing, and would find herself touching it with something like a caress, as if it were becoming as much a part of her as the imagined wound which it covered.
And now, in a lull in the wind, she heard a sound so faint that only the stillness of the room could have made it audible. She sensed rather than heard a presence moving round the sitting room. At first, in her sleepy half-consciousness, she felt no fear, only a vague curiosity. It must be early morning. Perhaps it was seven o’clock and the arrival of her tea. And now there was another sound, no more than a gentle squeak but unmistakable. Someone was closing the bedroom door. Curiosity gave way to the first cold clutch of unease. No one spoke. No light was turned on. She tried to call out in a cracked voice made ineffectual by the obstructive dressing, ‘Who are you? What are you doing? Who is it?’ There was no reply. And now she knew with certainty that this was no friendly visitor, that she was in the presence of someone or something whose purpose was malignant.
As she lay rigid the pale figure, white-clad and masked, was at her bedside. Arms moved above her head in a ritual gesture like an obscene parody of a benediction. With an effort she tried to struggle up – the bedclothes seemed suddenly to weigh her down – and stretched out a hand for the bell pull and the lamp. The bell pull wasn’t there. Her hand found the light switch and clicked it on, but there was no light. Someone must have hooked the bell pull out of reach and taken the bulb from the lamp. She didn’t cry out. All those early years of self-control against betraying fear, against finding relief in shouting and yelling, had inhibited her power to scream. And she knew screaming would be ineffective; the dressing made even speech difficult. She struggled to get out of bed but found herself unable to move.
In the darkness she could vaguely make out the whiteness of the figure, the covered head, the masked face. A hand was passing across the pane of the half-open window – but it was not a human hand. No blood had ever flowed in those boneless veins. The hand, so pinkly white that it might have been severed from the arm, was moving slowly through space on its mysterious purpose. Soundlessly it closed the window latch and, with a gesture delicate and elegant in its controlled motion, it slowly drew the curtain across the window. The darkness in the room intensified, no longer just the shutting out of light, but an occluding thickening of the air which made it difficult to breathe. She told herself that it must be a hallucination conjured from her half-sleeping state and for one blessed moment she gazed at it, all terror past, waiting for the vision to fade into the surrounding darkness. And then all hope faded.
The figure was at the bedside, looking down on her. She could discern nothing but a white formless shape, the eyes looking into hers might be merciless but all she could make out was a black slit. She heard words, quietly spoken but she could make no sense of them. With an effort she raised her head from the pillow and tried to croak out a protest. Immediately time was suspended and in her vortex of terror she was aware only of smell, the faintest smell of starched linen. Out of the darkness, leaning over her, was her father’s face. Not as she had remembered him for over thirty years, but the face she had briefly known in early childhood, young, happy, bending over her bed. She lifted her arm to touch the dressing but the arm was too weighty and fell back. She tried to speak, to move. She wanted to say, ‘Look at me, I’ve got rid of it.’ Her limbs felt encased in iron, but now she managed, trembling, to lift her right hand and touched the dressing over the scar.
She knew that this was death, and with the knowledge came an unsought peace, a letting go. And then the strong hand, skinless and inhuman, closed round her throat, forcing her head back against the pillows and the apparition flung its weight forward. She wouldn’t shut her eyes in the face of death, nor did she struggle. The darkness of the room closed in on her and became the final blackness in which all feeling ceased.
16
At twelve minutes past seven, in the kitchen Kimberley was becoming anxious. She had been told by Sister Holland that Miss Gradwyn had asked for her early morning tea tray to be brought up at seven o’clock. That was earlier than the first morning she had been at the Manor, but seven o’clock was the time Sister had told Kim to be ready to make it, and she had set the tray by six forty-five and placed the teapot on top of the Aga to warm.
And now it was twelve minutes after seven, and no ring. Kim knew that Dean needed her help with the breakfast, which was proving unexpectedly aggravating. Mr Chandler-Powell had asked for his to be served in his apartment, which was unusual, and Miss Cressett, who usually prepared what she wanted in her own small kitchen and rarely ate a cooked breakfast, had rung to say that she would join the household in the dining room at seven thirty and had been unusually fussy about the required crispness of the bacon and the freshness of the egg – as if, thought Kim, any egg served at the Manor would be other than free range and fresh, and Miss Cressett knew that as well as she. An added irritation was the nonappearance of Sharon, whose duty it was to lay the breakfast table and turn on the hotplates. Kim was reluctant to go upstai
rs and rouse her in case Miss Gradwyn rang her bell.
Fretting once again over the exact alignment of the cup, saucer and milk jug on the tray, she turned to Dean, her face puckered with anxiety. ‘Perhaps I ought to take it up. Sister said seven. Perhaps she meant that I needn’t wait for the ring, that Miss Gradwyn would expect it promptly at seven.’
Her face, looking like that of a troubled child, induced as always Dean’s love and pity tinged with irritation. He moved to the telephone. ‘Sister, this is Dean. Miss Gradwyn hasn’t rung for her tea. Shall we wait or do you want Kim to make it now and take it up?’
The call took less than a minute. Replacing the receiver, Dean said, ‘You’re to take it up. Sister says to knock on her door before you go in. She’ll take it in to Miss Gradwyn.’
‘I suppose she’ll have the Darjeeling as she did before, and the biscuits. Sister didn’t say any different.’
Dean, busy at the Aga frying eggs, said shortly, ‘If she doesn’t want the biscuits she’ll leave them.’
The kettle boiled quickly and within minutes the tea was made. Dean, as usual, came to the lift with her and, holding the door open, pressed the button so that she had both hands free to carry the tray. Emerging from the lift, Kim saw Sister Holland coming out of her sitting room. She expected the tray to be taken from her, but instead Sister, after a cursory glance, opened the door to Miss Gradwyn’s suite, obviously expecting Kim to follow. Perhaps, Kim thought, that wasn’t surprising; it wasn’t Sister’s job to carry early morning tea to the patients. She was carrying her torch so it wouldn’t in any case have been easy.