thought, he might tell them to go out for a walk.
‘I feel as my husband does,’ Emily said. ‘I feel the Allenbys have given you their answer,’
‘I mean, madam, how do you feel about the people I wish to help? I do not mean the Allenbys, Mrs Mansor; I mean of course those who would one day be my patients in Luffnell Lodge.’
‘You heard what my wife said last night, Dr Golkorn,’ Hugh interjected quickly.’she is sympathetic towards such people.’
‘You would not yourself object to these patients in your village, Mrs Mansor? Did I understand you correctly when you spoke last night?’
‘That is what I said. I would personally not object.’
‘With respect, madam, you feel a certain guilt? Well, I assure you it is natural to feel a certain guilt. By that I mean it is natural for some people.’ He laughed. ‘Not Colin Rhodes of course, or Mr Mottershead, or Mr and Mrs Tilzey, or Miss Cogings. Not your clergyman, Mr Feare, even though he is keen to show his concern for the unwell. I think you’re different, madam.’
‘My wife –’
‘Let us perhaps hear your wife, eh? Mrs Mansor, you do not believe the village would be a bear garden if a handful of unhappy women were added to it: that was what you implied last night?’
‘Yes.’
‘But the vote went against you.’
‘No vote was taken,’ Hugh said sharply. ‘The meeting was simply to explain to you why the Allenbys had decided not to sell.’
‘But there had been other meetings, eh? At which I naturally was not present. There have been six months of meetings, I think I’m correct in stating. You’ve argued back and forth among yourselves, and sides have naturally been taken. In the end, you know, the question we have to ask is should our elderly friends not be allowed to do what is best for them since they have done so much for the village in the past? The other question we have to ask is would it be the end of the universe to have a handful of mentally ill women in Luffnell Lodge? With respect, madam, you feel guilty now because you did not fight hard enough for justice and humanity. And you, sir, because in your efforts to see everyone’s point of view you permitted yourself to be bulldozed by the majority and to become their tool.’
‘Now look here, Dr Golkorn –’
‘With respect, you misinformed the vendors, sir. They’ll be in Luffnell Lodge till they die now.’
‘The house will be sold to another buyer. It’s only a matter of time.’
‘It’s what you call a white elephant, sir.’
‘I think we’d rather you went, Dr Golkorn.’
Golkorn leaned back in his chair. He crossed one leg over the other. He smiled, turning his head a little so that the smile was directed first at Hugh and then at Emily. He said:
‘You are both of you upset. In my profession, Mr Mansor, which has to do with the human heart as much as the human mind, I could sense last night that you were both upset. You were saying to yourself, sir, that you had made an error of judgement. Mrs Mansor was wanting to weep.’
‘I admit to no error of judgement –’
‘Shall we refer to it as a mistake then, sir? You have made a mistake with which you will live until the white elephant is sold. And even then, if ever it is sold in the lifetime of the vendors, the mistake will still be there because of the amount they will have forfeited. In good faith they called you in, sir, taking you to be an honest man –’
‘You’re being offensive, Dr Golkorn.’
‘I apologize for that, sir. I was purely making a point. Let me make another one. Your wife, as long as she has breath to keep her alive, will never forgive herself.’
Emily tried not to look at him. She looked at the sweet-peas she’d arranged. Through her shoes she could feel the warmth of the Sealyham, who had a way of hugging her feet. She felt there was nothing she could say.
Hugh rose and crossed the room. He noticed that Emily hadn’t touched her sherry. He shook the little bottle of Angostura bitters over his own glass, and added gin and water.
‘Actually, sir,’ Golkorn said, ‘all I am suggesting you should do is to pick up the telephone. And you, madam, all that is necessary is to say how you feel to Mrs Allenby. She, too, has humanitarian instincts.’
His beadiness had discovered that they were the weak links in the chain. When he’d argued with the others the night before, trying to make them see his point of view, opinion had hardened immediately. And when he’d persisted, anger had developed. ‘In blunt terms,’ Golin Rhodes had shouted at him, ‘we don’t want you here. If you’re going to be a blot on the landscape, we’d be obliged if you could be it somewhere else.’ And Colin Rhodes would say it even more forcibly now: there’d have been no point in Golkorn’s insinuating his way into the Rhodes’s sitting-room, or the sitting-room of the Reverend Feare, or the sitting-room of Mr Mottershead or Miss Cogings. There’d have been no point in tackling the Poudards, or taking on the Tilzeys, or making a fuss with Mr and Mrs Blennerhassett in the Village Stores.
‘My trouble is,’ Golkorn said softly, laughing as if to dress the words with delicacy, ‘I cannot accept no for an answer.’
She imagined telling him now that she had dreamed of butterflies in mourning. She imagined his cropped head carefully nodding, going slowly up and down in unspoken delight. Eventually he would explain the dream, relishing the terms he employed, telling her nothing she did not already know. He was a master of the obvious. He took ordinary, blunt facts and gave them a weapon’s edge.
‘Which comes first,’ he inquired quite casually, ‘the beauty of an English village, like a picture on a calendar, or the happiness of the wretched?’ He went on talking, going over the same ground, mentioning again by name the Poudards and the Tilzeys and the Blennerhassetts, Mr Mottershead, Miss Cogings, Colin Rhodes and the Reverend
