Dr Shivershev leaned forward on his chair, emerging from the gloom like a spirit at a séance, which startled me all over again.
‘It was a pigeon. They fly into the windows here all the time. I don’t know why, for the windows are filthy. I try to stop her having them cleaned – I thought that would help the birds understand what they were, but it doesn’t. It’s a great shame. The city has developed too fast for some species to cope with; it’s as if they cannot perceive the building at all. They cannot adapt fast enough to avoid the new obstacles we build that harm them. If only I knew how to stop them from destroying themselves. Won’t you sit down, Mrs Lancaster.’
‘Are you sure it’s not merely stunned? My grandfather saved a bird once. He put it in a box, in the dark, and the next morning it flew away. I’d thought it dead.’
‘My clerk has never retrieved a live one.’
‘Your clerk retrieves them?’
‘Yes. They are always dead, necks broken. But a tragedy for one species often means another thrives. My housekeeper will throw it to the cat that comes by the back. He will be grateful at least.’
The doctor himself looked like a rumpled piece of old cloth. One that had been cleaned and pressed long ago, and had since been dragged over bushes, trodden on repeatedly, wrung out and reused time and again. His hair, eyes and complexion were all dark. I thought he might be French or Spanish, or Italian. He had that ambiguous colour that Englishmen have a passion to classify but out of ignorance grudgingly characterise as ‘foreign’ or ‘exotic’. His accent, on the other hand, screamed English boarding school. His eyes had dark shadows, his black hair, which was long and beginning to curl at the neck, shot out in all directions, like a hedgehog. He needed a shave. He wasn’t wearing a jacket and there were spots on his shirt. He looked more like an alcoholic than a reputable surgeon. I began to think I might have made a pig-headed mistake.
‘So, you are my dear old friend from the hospital. Forgive me, I have forgotten how we came to be so familiar,’ he said, tipping back in his chair and smirking as my cheeks burned. ‘I had to laugh when my clerk described you. I thought I knew who it might be, but I wasn’t sure. I would never have guessed you’d be the type to talk your way into my diary. I was intrigued. The question is, why didn’t you come and speak to me at the hospital?’
I was red as a berry and squirmed at being trapped by my own lie.
‘I’m not at the hospital any more, Dr Shivershev. I married.’
‘Now why on earth would you do that?’ he asked, his face screwed up as if he really couldn’t understand.
I picked at the stitching of my gloves and stared at the floor. I’d thought I would be in there ten minutes at most, that I would blather on about my health and be on my way. Now I wasn’t sure what to say at all.
‘My husband has a practice further down Harley Street. Though I’ve never been there, as he doesn’t like to be disturbed at work. You should know him from the hospital, he’s a surgeon at the London too. Thomas Lancaster.’
As soon as I mentioned Thomas’s name, Dr Shivershev froze. He seemed to be making every effort not to betray what he was thinking. He looked about his desk and shuffled things around, pushing an inkpot an inch to the side and some papers to the edge of the desk. Then he interlaced his fingers as if he couldn’t trust them either.
‘I see,’ he said after an unnatural pause. ‘Well, Sister Chapman, now Mrs Lancaster, there has to be a reason why you have made such efforts to consult me and not… discuss whatever it is with your own husband. I’m curious, if nothing else.’
The hot blood had reached my chest and burned like a furnace. ‘My husband has concerns that there may be… My husband is a little younger than myself. Do you think…? Is there an opinion, a modern scientific one, on the ideal age for a woman…? I want to make sure I am in good health. I have been worrying… about my health.’ I had made a hole in the finger where I’d pulled at the loose cotton on my glove. I wished I could crawl into it.
He asked the obligatory questions about my age, Thomas’s age, my history – which was amusing, since I knew only half of it – and my general health, the answers to which he scribbled down on a piece of paper snatched from one of the piles strewn around his desk. There was already writing on the other side and I was sure his scrawling was all an act, for my benefit. He could have been compiling a shopping list for all I knew.
‘Mrs Lancaster, you are well within childbearing age, if that’s what you are trying to ascertain.’
‘I am older than my husband,’ I said. ‘What can I tell him that may reassure him?’
I had the idea that if Dr Shivershev said something scientific, then the next time Thomas accused me of having something wrong with me I could quote him and not be held responsible.
‘Tell him that there are many women who have children at the age you are now. That my own mother was forty when I was born. I can’t honestly think of any scientifically based medical intervention that would help. Although I’m sure I could invent something and charge you for it, but your husband would know better, or should. Unless there is something else? Are there any other irregularities you wish to tell me about?’
I wondered what would happen if I were to ask him in plain English if it was
