From Higher Places Read online

  ‘Meaning you, sweetheart, if you insist.’

  ‘It’s been a sad day for all of us.’

  ‘I’d have thought more a red letter day.’

  ‘Tom!’ Pauline looked horrified.

  An innocent remark – or had he given too much away to score a point?

  ‘I’ll get some more tea,’ Betty Potter said, walking away, confused.

  ‘Look, Pauline,’ Tom said, ‘you know they never got on, so let’s not pretend. Hurt by that, Albert was, after all he’d done for her.’

  ‘Like what?’ Sarah asked; but cautiously, afraid of where these exchanges might be leading.

  ‘Like keeping you on the straight and narrow. Getting you into medical school. My wild child, he used to call you. True, isn’t it, Pauline?’

  ‘I’m sure he didn’t mean it that way.’

  Sarah had never credited her father with any positive contribution to her career. If she’d strayed into dissolute ways in her sixth form years she’d got out of it unaided. Getting into medical school with mediocre grades had been fortunate, just that; and, God knows, hadn’t she made up for it since? Did Tom and Pauline not know how her dancing lessons had been stopped to make her study, how she had the longest and dowdiest skirt in the class, how her friends were selectively barred from Laurel Cottage? And then the most galling thing of all, when he’d torn up her photoshoot pictures after she’d been talent-spotted on Brighton beach that last summer holiday before medical school; and that he’d only managed by getting her out of the house to search her room.

  She was on the point of asking what business this was of Tom’s. But that would only prolong the acrimony. Besides, a look at Tom’s pursed lips told her he knew he’d gone too far. There were things afoot that didn’t quite make sense and somehow they concerned her; she would need time to think them through. So she said, ‘I’m tired and we’ve been here before. Let’s just call a truce, shall we?’

  ‘Ah, here’s Betty with the tea,’ Tom said. ‘A cuppa should put us all back on track.’

  She flinched as he put his arm around her shoulders.

  The house had emptied. Down the lane the last of the cars was drawing away. In the living room Sarah sat listening to the bustle in the kitchen, where two elderly aunts were helping Betty with the washing up. She had volunteered but been ushered away, probably to allow them to catch up on several years’ worth of gossip. In that, she was sure, her exploits would figure prominently.

  Her mother appeared at the door, as if pitying her daughter’s isolation. She crossed the carpet to sit in the chair opposite. This was the point reached sooner or later in every visit home, when they would sit staring at one another, having exhausted common ground, clutching at things to say.

  ‘Enid and Margaret have decided to keep me company tonight, Sarah. Enid was wondering if she could have your room.’

  It had been Sarah’s intention to stay for a couple of nights. A tutorial had been cancelled and her clinical sessions swopped with Alice’s. That didn’t matter now. Her spirits rose. She could use the time for revision instead; but she knew that was not the reason.

  ‘Are you sure you won’t need me? Aren’t there things to sort out?’

  ‘Like what, Sarah?’

  Sarah had rung the family solicitors before she left London. Were there issues to be sorted? Nothing that we know of, Sarah, beyond what we’ve discussed, but should you come across a will you might let us know. She hadn’t, neither had Betty, though both had looked. She would be back anyway at the weekend, so there seemed no compelling reason to stay.

  Driving away from the house she fought off an urge to return to Elizabeth’s grave. She’d thought of removing flowers from one of the arrangements that had found their way to the house and taking them there, as an apology for the desecration. But the connection with her father rendered the idea useless. In any case, what other traps might have been laid for her in the churchyard? She would go secretly next time she was near the village, with no one the wiser.

  She knew that, once across the bridge, her mind would again flood with thoughts of student and hospital life. There was a fleeting moment of not wanting to leave the village because, for all the hostility, there were issues that held grim fascination. Was there really a tangible line passing through the bridge that separated her two worlds so absolutely?

  She had long been attracted to the theory that within an individual there are separate entities corresponding to different parts of the psyche: one for thinking, the other for allowing an autopilot to assume control. As the car approached the bottom of the hill her will to cross the bridge, strong as it was, faltered. The robotic entity took charge, pulling at her hands on the wheel and lifting her foot from the accelerator. The car slewed into the lay-by. She got out and walked the twenty yards to the centre of the bridge.

  A fan of yellow luminosity had begun to penetrate a lightening sky that an hour earlier had delivered rain. Slowly the oncoming clouds parted, giving way to washed blue. Another minute and the bridge was in sunlight of that strange and uplifting quality peculiar to the month. Below her the fast scintillating water swirled around the central piers. It was as it had been one other April evening, lodged in her memory because, in a niggling way, it still troubled her. Was this why she had stopped?

  Julie had been beside her, leaning on the parapet. Both wore the red and grey uniform of St Peter’s Primary School, still covered, at that moment, by hooded plastic macs so that only their faces showed. There was a feeling of carefree expectation, the school day forgotten; above all they were friends, equals. They had picked twigs from the willow tree on the bank and now pruned and selected them, one each, for their dynamic potential. They shouted ready, steady, go in unison and dropped the sticks into the water, then ran to the opposite parapet and looked down.

  The two sticks emerged exactly together. Sarah remembered how Julie’s face had lit up, delighted because their friendship had been symbolically cemented, in need of nothing more. But for Sarah it was not enough, there had to be a result. That bush down there, that’s the finishing line, she cried, leaving the bridge and running alone along the bank. Finding her stick ahead, exalted by the gain, she looked back, shouting I’ve won, I’ve won. There were now two figures there on the bridge: Julie, still staring at her, and her brother Jonathan, sent to take her home. Without sign or word the pair turned and walked from the bridge, back up the hill.

  Her dalliance at the bridge had resolved nothing.

  Traffic on the Oxford road was heavy. Sarah waited impatiently at the junction, ready to squeeze into the London flow. Almost opposite was the black waste of the car park where, that morning, she had contemplated the potential traumas of the day ahead. Something was worrying her, holding her back, but she couldn’t quite identify what it was. Wouldn’t it be sensible to stop there now, to reflect a little, before leaving this place that troubled her so? Gaps appeared simultaneously in the flows in both directions, making her mind up for her. She put her foot hard down, shot across the road and pulled up in her usual position facing the village across the valley. There, the lights of the houses shone faintly through the trees. The lamp set to illuminate the church tower came on. Instinctively she looked at the dashboard clock. It was the time, exactly, when her mother would be switching on the television to look at the news. Wasn’t that once a time in happier days when the family would gather together, the four of them, with trays on their laps and soup and bread, maybe, and her mother alive to the events of the day, years before the dementia had set in and their relationships had begun to crumble? There was love and mutual affection then, and she remembered cuddling up to her mother before they went upstairs to bed to read a story. Had it all gone – what she had felt then? She knew today that she had acted as if it had, and to her shame had done for a very long time. But if that was so why were there tears streaming down her cheeks and a lu
mp enlarging in her throat. How could she have used her aunt’s commandeering of her room to justify her premature flight back to London? Could these two ancient aunts possibly give her mother – who in daylight she’d thought indifferent to her husband’s demise – the comfort she most likely needed in the darker hours? She could sleep on the sofa, or in the great chair in her father’s old office; tomorrow’s boring lecture on jurisprudence could be safely missed. She put the car into gear, re-crossed the road and descended the hill to the old bridge and on into the village.

  3

  A shaft of sunlight impaled the pillow next to her face. Sarah rolled her naked body away from it into the hollow beside her. For a moment she was confused. Then she explored the depression with her hand. But the sheet was cold and yielded no more than her memory.

  She had not even bothered to ask his name. Perhaps she would see him at next week’s gig. Perhaps not. She didn’t really care about that. What she did care about was the voice in her head – her mother’s voice – telling her to be careful. She thought she had been.

  Beside the defiantly mute alarm clock was a sheet of paper headed Consultants’ Rounds, where she had placed it the evening before when still in control. She glanced from one to the other in disbelief, then leapt out of bed. How could it be one of Stricker’s? He’d had it in for her last time she was late and grilled her unmercifully. Did she not think the patient was jaundiced – just a little, perhaps? Look carefully, Miss Potter, and don’t speak again until you are sure. But she’d held her ground and said quietly, no. It had earned her, if not the respect of the surgeon, then at least the admiration of her fellow students. They had all been coerced into pronouncing otherwise. She had vowed to herself never to risk being late again. So much, then, for her resolve.

  She skipped her usual toast and margarine and her customary descent to the front door three floors below to pick up the Mail ahead of her flatmates. But she didn’t skimp on her make-up, discreet as it was, and no-one seeing her emerge from the front door and swing confidently down the steps to the street would have suspected the pain in her head or the void in her stomach. Two labourers on the building site across the road whistled in unison. She waved back at them.

  Through the glass doors to the ward the others were gathering around the first bed, stethoscopes dangling from their necks like the proboscises of alien insects. Their long white coats looked grubby even at this distance. She put on her own freshly laundered one, thrust her instrument into her pocket and walked purposefully towards the group to stand behind the slender figure of her friend Alice.

  ‘Stricker not arrived yet?’ she whispered.

  Alice put her finger to her lips and rolled her eyes. Then Sarah saw him – and he her.

  ‘Sir Edwin is unfortunately indisposed. I’m Brian Davison, senior registrar in maxillofacial surgery.’

  She had taken him to be just another student. No logic in that, of course; surgeons did not have to be vertically advantaged, though most seemed larger than life. He was neither. Nor had he renounced the white coat. But when she looked at him there was no doubting what he was destined to become. The deep-set eyes were fired with endeavour and conviction, moving precisely from one object of attention to another. Sarah wondered which avian species he most resembled and settled on a crow. He was much as Alice had described him.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m late, Mr Davison,’ she said.

  ‘No matter. We’ve only just started. So let me ask you, Miss Potter, what do you make of this patient?’

  She was surprised he knew her name, but set the thought aside.

  She already knew the history. ‘A forty-five year old male, heavy smoker, with a swelling of the left mandible, firm, probably bony, developing steadily over the past nine months, as yet painless but already impeding mastication and swallowing.’ She smiled at the patient, whose eyes had not left her since she entered the ward. ‘That’s right, isn’t it, Mr Gordon?’ As he mumbled agreement the lump on his jaw was plain for all to see.

  ‘And your diagnosis?’

  ‘Probably osteosarcoma.’

  ‘And what are the consequences for the patient? You can speak freely. The patient is aware of the situation.’

  ‘Operable but with a strong likelihood of recurrence, depending on local spread. Burns and Stavin have reported that only forty-five per cent of cases survive to beyond two years.’

  Brian Davison did not look overly pleased. ‘That’s good, very good, but haven’t you forgotten something?’ The hostile eyes scanned her face, as if for some sign of contrition.

  Sarah blushed, searching her mind for information unsaid. ‘There is a possibility of certain immune factors influencing the outcome.’ It was the best she could do.

  ‘Immune factors? What immune factors?’ He was angry now. ‘What I was expecting, Miss Potter, was a proper and thorough examination of the patient, not a rehash of his notes.’ He turned to Alice. ‘Miss Pardoe, may we please have your assessment of this case?’

  Sarah stepped backwards, hurt and angry. She had not examined the patient because she had been present when the history was taken and had done so then, thoroughly, to her satisfaction. Eric Gordon looked at her in astonishment, seeming to tell her to stand up for herself. But she had learned enough to avoid a dispute in front of a patient and held her tongue.

  She did not speak again for the duration of the round. When it was over she waited until the others had left before approaching him.

  ‘Mr Davison, I should tell you that…’

  ‘Yes, I am aware. But that doesn’t absolve you from observing the niceties of the ward round.’

  ‘Did Mr Gordon tell you?’

  ‘Miss Pardoe whispered it to me. We know each other slightly through her friend, Dr Ellis. So she was brave enough to speak up for you. I share a flat with him.’ A shadow of concern – or was it embarrassment? – crossed his face. ‘Since we were students, you see. We hardly ever bump into one another these days.’

  It was not Sarah’s nature to bear a grudge. She let her smile descend on Brian Davison, just as it had upon the luckless Mr Gordon. ‘Then thank you for an interesting round.’

  She had gone only half a dozen paces when he called after her.

  ‘Miss Potter. That paper by Burns and Stavin. You know that there are demographic differences between their study and our situation here?’

  ‘I know,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘I would have told you if you’d given me the chance. Goodbye, Mr Davison.’

  She caught up with Alice at the door to the tea-room. ‘Some friend you are! You didn’t tell me you had a relationship with Jeff Ellis.’

  ‘Did Davison tell you that?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  Alice bit her lip. ‘Look, I don’t want to talk about it, right? It’s getting a bit messy.’

  ‘Right then. Changing the subject, how did you get on after we split up last night? If it’s any consolation mine wasn’t up to much.’

  Alice looked full into Sarah’s face. ‘That’s the problem. Mine was.’

  Sarah went ahead in the queue and paid for their teas. They sat opposite each other at a window table. Sarah rested her chin in her cupped hands, waiting for the information she considered was now rightfully hers. She knew Alice couldn’t keep a secret for long.

  Someone had once said, in a quiet and not unmotivated aside, that there was something of the cat and mouse about their relationship. Sarah had denied it, but the incident came back to her now. She looked around to see if anyone was watching them at the table together. Sarah was conscious that Alice, although intelligent and attractive enough in her own right, to others always seemed the lesser figure, whatever the criterion.

  They had got to know one another when both had elected to do a BSc course after the second year and had joined forces at the bench. Alice had done most of th
e work, but it was Sarah who had the better commendations at the end. When they resumed their clinical studies Sarah had cultivated the relationship, needing a foil for her own critical and capricious nature, and Alice did not have the strength of character to break away. It was not that there was no affection, or even mutual respect, between them; but Alice, as if to keep her end up, did not always allow Sarah access to her private life. This, she surmised, was why Alice had put off telling her about Jeff Ellis.

  ‘It’s a funny thing,’ Sarah mused, ‘that after five sterile years – socially I mean – here you are, just before finals, tossed into a whirlpool of conflicting desire.’ Suddenly she felt earnest and caring. ‘Are you sure you can handle it?’

  ‘And you, I suppose, never get committed.’

  ‘I try not to.’

  ‘A predatory she-wolf, biding her time.’

  ‘Alice!’

  ‘I’m sorry. It just got to me. But don’t you think it’s time you became serious about someone?’

  Sarah leaned back in her chair. ‘You might just have a point. I don’t exactly see myself as a spinster-surgeon either.’

  Alice stared gloomily out of the window. Opposite, the lights in the library were coming on, illuminating rows of students cramming for finals. ‘I can already feel the post-qualification depression coming on. It’ll be like being launched into space, not knowing where you’re going to fall.’

  Sarah knew that Alice had never really thought hard about doing medicine. It had been a simple matter to follow in her father’s footsteps and overcome the academic obstacles as and when they arose. Mindful of her own complex reasons for making the choice she was sympathetic. ‘Maybe you do need the strong arm of Jeff Ellis.’

  ‘And always be looking beyond the next hill?’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be permanent. You’re not committed to anything.’

  Alice looked aghast. ‘You mean string him along?’

  ‘At least till finals are behind you. It just needs a bit of discretion, that’s all. By the way, what does he do, the other one?’