Dr. Rudge came by. “Lucky escape,” he said.
“If you say so, Doctor.”
“Oh, come come, Miss Sidney. You want your mother with you for some years yet.” As he coiled his stethoscope into his bag, Dr. Rudge looked sharply at her expression. He was a bald, tubby man, who prided himself on being humane; but really, there were no geriatric beds, and that was that.
Florence had run downstairs after him and followed him into the street. “I can’t go on,” she wailed. “Dr. Rudge, listen to me.”
Dr. Rudge stopped in surprise, bouncing his car keys on his palm. “But you’ve got the district nurse, Miss Sidney. Be thankful for small mercies.”
“But I can’t manage! The smell! And the way she wakes up and thinks she’s at Marlborough House! It frightens me!”
“You have domestic help, I understand.”
“She keeps abusing her! She says she’s the daughter of the woman who used to live next door. She accuses her of holding seances. It’s horrible. It’s worse than May of Teck. She’s totally and completely mad.”
“Really, pull yourself together,” said Dr. Rudge. “You know we’re promised a geriatric unit for 1990. Go in, Miss Sidney, it’s starting to rain. And I do have other calls to make.”
“But I can’t go on.” Florence’s voice rose into the damp afternoon. “Don’t you understand? We can’t take any more, any of us.” Two women, coming back from the Parade, rested their shopping baskets on a low wall and watched attentively. The Deakins, elderly people from down the road, were peeping out from their porch. Dr. Rudge cursed under his breath, and felt in his overcoat pockets for his prescription pad. He scribbled on it and ripped the page off.
“Try this to calm you down, Miss Sidney.” He thrust the prescription at her. Florence crumpled it in her fist and threw it after him. It struck him smartly on the neck as he jumped into his Volvo. He slammed the door and drove away.
“Old Aunt Flo,” said Suzanne now, coming into the kitchen. “Making a scene like that in the street. All the neighbours will be talking about it.”
“We’re beyond caring what the neighbours say,” Sylvia said. “We have to be.”
Suzanne manoeuvred herself into a chair. “I’ve come to tell you. I’m moving out when the baby’s born.”
Sylvia regarded her sadly. “I can’t stop you. Where are you planning to go?”
“I’ve got this friend, Edwina. She’s got this flat.”
“Unusual name,” Colin said.
“She’ll let me stay with her till Jim sorts himself out.”
“Jim will never be sorted out. You know that, Suzanne.”
“Don’t tell me what I know. Who are you to advise anybody?”
“How will Edwina like having a baby around?” Sylvia said. “She’ll soon get tired of it.”
“I’ve got other friends. I can move on.”
“You’re not a bloody gypsy. Babies can’t do with that sort of life. They have to be settled. They need a routine. They need to be kept warm.”
“Don’t think I’m staying here.” Suzanne’s voice quivered, on the edge of hysteria. “You’ve all let me down. This house is horrible. Nothing works. There’s no hot water. The lightbulb’s gone in my room and I daren’t stand on a chair. It’s like the Black Hole of Calcutta. If I stand on a chair I’ll go dizzy and I’ll fall off and have a miscarriage and then Jim will never marry me.”
“I think you’re getting things out of proportion,” Sylvia said, with a restraint that Colin could only commend. “You ought to calm down. Ask Aunt Florence to give you one of your grandmother’s pills.”
“I can’t have pills,” Suzanne said, blubbering. Colin handed her his handkerchief. “I’ll give birth to a monster. I suppose I will anyway. What can you expect, coming from a family like this?”
Colin and Sylvia exchanged a glance, each beaten and weary face eyeing the other. Colin understood that cleaning up the canal was a diversion for his wife, just as pining for the lost girl who was now Isabel Ryan was a diversion for him. They were like a pair of felons roped together, singing to pass the time on their trip to Tyburn. Suzanne blew her nose into his handkerchief and gave it back to him. Her chin drooped. She looked eleven months gone.
CHAPTER 8
Christmas was celebrated quietly at Buckingham Avenue. In the morning, Francis and Hermione called round between services to have a glass of sherry. Their general air was far from festive. Austin had turned down a place on the Youth Training Scheme, saying that he was self-employed as a satanist, and had failed that week to keep an appointment with his probation officer.
“Of course, young people must rebel,” Francis said. “But why Satanism? Why has this spirit of vicious irrationality got abroad? Tell me that, Colin.”
Sylvia went to and fro, carrying a wine box. She seemed dazed. A smell of burning carrots came from the kitchen. She had aged, Colin thought: deep lines from nose to chin.
“I asked you much the same,” he said to Francis. “I asked you why I found teeth in my front garden. Something’s happening round here. Did you see that advert in
“I don’t read
“I read it in the staff room. It said you have to have an interest in the way some individuals interacted with the
