An Unsuitable Job for a Woman

  “And then Mark was born?”

  “Yes, on the 25th April 1951, nine years after they were married. He was born in Italy. Mr. Bottley was that pleased when she became pregnant that he increased the allowance and they used to spend a lot of holidays in Tuscany. My lady loved Italy, always had, and I think she wanted the child to be born there. Otherwise she wouldn’t have gone on holiday in the last month of her pregnancy. I went to visit her about a month after she came home with the baby and I’ve never seen a woman so happy. Oh, he was a lovely little boy!”

  “But why did you visit her? Weren’t you living and working there?”

  “No, my dear. Not for some months. She wasn’t well in the early days of her pregnancy. I could see that she was strained and unhappy and then one day Mr. Callender sent for me and told me that she had taken against me and that I’d have to leave. I wouldn’t have believed it, but when I went to her she just put out her hand and said: ‘I’m sorry, Nanny, I think it would be better if you went.’

  “Pregnant women have strange fancies, I know, and the baby was so important to them both. I thought she might have asked me to come back afterwards and so she did, but not living in. I took a bed-sitting room in the village with the postmistress and used to give four mornings a week to my lady and the rest to other ladies in the village. It worked very well, really, but I missed the baby when I wasn’t with him. I hadn’t seen her often during her pregnancy but once we met in Cambridge. She must have been near the end of her time. She was very heavy, poor dear, dragging herself along. At first she pretended that she hadn’t noticed me and then she thought better of it and came across the road. ‘We’re off to Italy next week, Nanny,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it lovely?’ I said: ‘If you’re not careful, my dear, that baby will be a little Italian,’ and she laughed. It seemed as though she couldn’t wait to get back to the sun.”

  “And what happened after she came home?”

  “She died after nine months, my dear. She was never strong, as I said, and she caught influenza. I helped look after her and I’d have done more but Mr. Callender took over the nursing himself. He couldn’t bear anyone else to be near her. We only had a few minutes together just before she died and it was then that she asked me to give her prayer book to Mark on his twenty-first birthday. I can hear her now: ‘Give it to Mark when he’s twenty-one, Nanny. Wrap it up carefully and take it to him when he comes of age. You won’t forget, will you?’ I said: ‘I’ll not forget, my darling, you know that.’ Then she said a strange thing. ‘If you do, or if you die before then, or if he doesn’t understand, it won’t really matter. It will mean that God wants it that way.’ “

  “What do you think she meant?”

  “Who’s to say, my dear? She was very religious, was Miss Evie, too religious for her own good, I sometimes thought. I believe we should accept our own responsibilities, solve our own problems, not leave it all to God as if He hadn’t enough to be thinking about with the world in the state it is. But that’s what she said not three hours before she died and that’s what I promised. So when Mr. Mark was twenty-one, I found out what college he was at and went to see him.”

  “What happened?”

  “Oh, we had a very happy time together. Do you know, his father had never spoken about his mother. That sometimes happens when a wife dies but I think a son ought to know about his mother. He was full of questions, things that I thought his father would have told him.

  “He was glad to get the prayer book. It was a few days later that he came to see me. He asked the name of the doctor who had treated his mother. I told him that it was old Dr. Gladwin. Mr. Callender and she had never had any other doctor. I used to think it a pity sometimes, Miss Evie being so frail. Dr. Gladwin must have been seventy then, and although there were people who wouldn’t say a word against him, I never thought much of him myself. Drink, you know, my dear; he was never really reliable. But I expect he’s gone to his rest long since, poor man. Anyway, I told Mr. Mark the name and he wrote it down. Then we had tea and a little chat and he left. I never saw him again.”

  “And no one else knows about the prayer book?”

  “No one in the world, my dear. Miss Leaming saw the florist’s name on my card and asked them for my address. She came here the day after the funeral to thank me for attending but I could see it was only curiosity. If she and Sir Ronald were so pleased to see me, what was to stop them from coming over and shaking hands? She as good as suggested that I was there without an invitation. An invitation to a funeral! Who ever heard of such a thing?”

  “So you told her nothing?” asked Cordelia.

  “I’ve told no one but you, my dear, and I’m not sure why I’ve told you. But no, I didn’t tell her. I never liked her, to tell you the truth. I’m not saying there was anything between her and Sir Ronald, not while Miss Evie was alive anyway. There was never any gossip and she lived in a flat in Cambridge and kept herself to herself, I’ll give her that. Mr. Callender met her when he was teaching science at one of the village schools. She was the English mistress. It wasn’t until after Miss Evie died that he set up his own laboratory.”

  “Do you mean that Miss Leaming has a degree in English?”

  “Oh, yes, my dear! She wasn’t trained as a secretary. Of course she gave up the teaching when she started working for Mr. Callender.”

  “So you left Garforth House after Mrs. Callender died? You didn’t stay on to care for the baby?”

  “I wasn’t wanted. Mr. Callender employed one of those new college-trained girls and then, when Mark was still only a baby, he was sent away to school. His father made it plain that he didn’t like me to see the child and after all, a father has his rights. I wouldn’t have gone on seeing Mr. Mark knowing that his father didn’t approve. It would have only put the boy in a false position. But now he’s dead and we’ve all lost him. The coroner said that he killed himself, and he may have been right.”

  Cordelia said: “I don’t think he killed himself.”

  “Don’t you, my dear? That’s kind of you. But he’s dead, isn’t he, so what does it matter now? I think it’s time for me to go home. If you don’t mind, I won’t ask you to tea, my dear, I’m a little tired today. But you know where to find me, and if ever you want to see me again, you’ll always be welcome.”

  They made their way out of the burial ground together. At the gates, they parted. Mrs. Goddard patted Cordelia on the shoulder with the clumsy affection she might have shown to an animal, then walked off slowly towards the village.

  As Cordelia drove round the curve of the road, the level-crossing came into sight. A train had just passed and the barriers were being raised. Three vehicles had been caught at the crossing and the last in line was quickest away, accelerating past the first two cars as they bumped slowly over the rails. Cordelia saw that it was a small black van.

  Later Cordelia remembered little of the journey back to the cottage. She drove fast, concentrating on the road ahead, trying to control her rising excitement by meticulous attention to gears and brakes. She drove the Mini hard against the front hedge, careless of whether it were seen. The cottage looked and smelt just as she had left it. She had almost expected to find it ransacked and the prayer book gone. Sighing with relief, she saw that the white spine was still there among the taller and darker covers. Cordelia opened it. She hardly knew what she expected to find; an inscription perhaps, or a message, cryptic or plain, a letter folded between the leaves. But the only inscription could have no possible relevance to the case. It was written in a shaky, old-fashioned hand; the steel nib had crawled spider-like over the page. “To Evelyn Mary on the occasion of her Confirmation, with love from her Godmother, 5th August 1934.”

  Cordelia shook the book. No slip of paper fluttered out. She skimmed through the pages. Nothing.

  She sat on the bed, drooping with disappointment. Had it been unreasonable to imagine that there was something significant in the bequest of the prayer book; had she fabricated a promising edifice of c
onjecture and mystery on an old woman’s confused recollections of a perfectly ordinary and understandable action—a devout and dying mother leaving a prayer book to her son? And even if she hadn’t been wrong, why should the message still be there? If Mark had found a note from his mother, placed between the leaves, he might well have destroyed it after reading. And if he hadn’t destroyed it, someone else might have done so. The note, if it ever existed, was now probably part of the shifting heap of white ash and charred debris in the cottage grate.

  She shook herself out of her despondency. There was still a line of inquiry to pursue; she would try to trace Dr. Gladwin. After a second’s thought she put the prayer book in her bag. Looking at her watch, she saw that it was nearly one o’clock. She decided to have a picnic lunch of cheese and fruit in the garden and then set off again for Cambridge to visit the central library and consult a medical directory.

  Less than an hour later she found the information she wanted. There was only one Dr. Gladwin still on the register who could have attended Mrs. Callender as an old man of over seventy, twenty years ago. He was Emlyn Thomas Gladwin who had qualified at St. Thomas’s Hospital in 1904. She wrote down the address in her notebook: 4 Pratts Way, Ixworth Road, Bury St. Edmunds. Edmunds town! The town which Isabelle had said that she and Mark had visited on their way to the sea.

  So the day hadn’t been wasted after all—she was following in Mark Callender’s footsteps. Impatient to consult a map, she went over to the atlas section of the library. It was now 2.15. If she took the A45 road direct through Newmarket she could be in Bury St. Edmunds in about an hour. Allow an hour for the visit to the doctor and another for the return journey. She could be home at the cottage before half past five.

  She was driving through the gentle unemphatic countryside just outside Newmarket when she noticed the black van following her. It was too far away to see who was driving but she thought it was Lunn and that he was alone. She accelerated, trying to keep the distance between them, but the van drew a little nearer. There was no reason, of course, why Lunn shouldn’t be driving to Newmarket on Sir Ronald Callender’s business, but the sight of the squat little van perpetually in her driving mirror was disconcerting. Cordelia decided to throw him off. There were few side turns on the road she was travelling and the country was unfamiliar to her. She decided to wait until she reached Newmarket and seize what opportunity offered.

  The main through street of the town was a tangle of traffic and every turn seemed to be blocked. It was only at the second set of traffic lights that Cordelia saw her chance. The black van was caught at the intersection about fifty yards behind. As the light turned green, she accelerated quickly and swung round to the left. There was another turn to the left and she took it, then one to the right. She drove on through unfamiliar streets, then after about five minutes, stopped at an intersection and waited. The black van did not appear. It looked as if she had succeeded in shaking him off. She waited for another five minutes, then made her way slowly back to the main road and joined in the flow of eastward traffic. Half an hour later she had passed through Bury St. Edmunds and was driving very slowly down the Ixworth Road, watching for Pratts Way. Fifty yards farther on she came to it, a row of six small stucco houses standing back from a lay-by. She stopped the car outside number four, remembering Isabelle, biddable and docile, who had obviously been told to drive further on and wait in the car. Was that because Mark thought the white Renault too conspicuous? Even the arrival of the Mini had provoked interest. There were faces at upper windows and a small group of children had mysteriously appeared, clustered around a neighbouring gate and watching her with wide and expressionless eyes.

  Number four was a depressing house; the front garden was unweeded and the fence had gaps where the planks had rotted or been wrenched apart. The external paint had flaked away to the bare wood and the brown front door had peeled and blistered in the sun. But Cordelia saw that the bottom windows were shining and that the white net curtains were clean. Mrs. Gladwin was probably a careful housewife, struggling to keep up her standards but too old for the heavy work and too poor to afford help. Cordelia felt benevolent towards her. But the woman, who, after some minutes, finally opened to her knock—the bell was out of order—was a disconcerting antidote to her sentimental pity. Compassion died before those hard, distrustful eyes, that mouth tight as a trap, the thin arms clasped in a bony barrier across her chest as if to repel human contact. It was difficult to guess her age. Her hair, screwed back into a small tight bun, was still black but her face was deeply lined and the sinews and veins stood out in the thin neck like cords. She was wearing carpet slippers and a gaudy cotton overall.

  Cordelia said: “My name is Cordelia Gray. I wondered if I could talk to Dr. Gladwin, if he’s in. It’s about an old patient.”

  “He’s in, where else would he be? He’s in the garden. You’d better go through.”

  The house smelt horrible, an amalgam of extreme old age, the sour taint of excreta and stale food, with an overlay of strong disinfectant. Cordelia went through to the garden, carefully avoiding looking at the hall or kitchen since curiosity might seem impertinent.

  Dr. Gladwin was sitting in a high Windsor chair placed in the sun. Cordelia had never seen a man so old. He seemed to be wearing a woollen tracksuit, his swollen legs were encased in immense felt slippers, and there was a knitted patchwork shawl across his knees. His two hands hung over the arms of the chair as if too heavy for the frail wrists, hands stained and brittle as autumn leaves which trembled with a gentle insistence. The high-domed skull, spiked with a few grey bristles, looked as small and vulnerable as a child’s. The eyes were pale yolks swimming in their glutinous blue-veined whites.

  Cordelia went to him and called him gently by his name. There was no response. She knelt on the grass at his feet and looked up into his face.

  “Dr. Gladwin, I wanted to talk to you about a patient. It was a long time ago. Mrs. Callender. Do you remember Mrs. Callender of Garforth House?”

  There was no reply. Cordelia knew that there wouldn’t be. Even to ask again seemed an outrage. Mrs. Gladwin was standing beside him as if displaying him to a wondering world.

  “Go on, ask him! It’s all in his head, you know. That’s what he used to tell me: ‘I’m not one for records and notes. It’s all in my head.’ ”

  Cordelia said: “What happened to his medical records when he gave up practice? Did anyone take them over?”

  “That’s what I’ve just told you. There never were any records. And it’s no use asking me. I told the boy that too. The doctor was glad enough to marry me when he wanted a nurse, but he didn’t discuss his patients. Oh, dear no! He was drinking all the practice profits away, but he could still talk about medical ethics.”

  The bitterness in her voice was horrible. Cordelia could not meet her eyes. Just then she thought she saw the old man’s lips move. She bent down her head and caught the one word. “Cold.”

  “I think he’s trying to say that he’s cold. Is there another shawl perhaps that he could have round his shoulders?”

  “Cold! In this sun! He’s always cold.”

  “But perhaps another blanket would help. Shall I fetch it for you?”

  “You let him be, Miss. If you want to look after him, then look after him. See how you enjoy keeping him clean like a baby, washing his nappies, changing the bed every morning. I’ll get him another shawl, but in two minutes he’ll be pushing it off. He doesn’t know what he wants.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Cordelia helplessly. She wondered whether Mrs. Gladwin was getting all the help available, whether the District Nurse called, whether she had asked her doctor to try to find a hospital bed. But these were useless questions. Even she could recognize the hopeless rejection of help, the despair which no longer had energy even to look for relief. She said: “I’m sorry; I won’t trouble either of you any further.”

  They walked back together through the house. But there was one question Cordelia had to ask. W
hen they reached the front gate she said: “You talked about a boy who visited. Was his name Mark?”

  “Mark Callender. He was asking about his mother. And then about ten days later we get the other one calling.”

  “What other one?”

  “He was a gentleman all right. Walked in as if he owned the place. He wouldn’t give a name but I’ve seen his face somewhere. He asked to see Dr. Gladwin and I showed him in. We were sitting in the back parlour that day as there was a breeze. He went up to the doctor and said ‘Good afternoon, Gladwin’ loudly as if talking to a servant. Then he bent down and looked at him. Eye to eye they were. Then he straightened up, wished me good day and left. Oh, we’re getting popular, we are! Any more of you and I’ll have to charge for the show.”

  They stood together at the gate. Cordelia wondered whether to hold out her hand but sensed that Mrs. Gladwin was willing her not to go. Suddenly the woman spoke in a loud and gruff voice, looking straight ahead.

  “That friend of yours, the boy who came here. He left his address. He said he wouldn’t mind sitting with the doctor on a Sunday if I wanted a break; he said he could get them both a bit of dinner. I have a fancy to see my sister at Haverhill this Sunday. Tell him he can come over if he wants to.”