Seven Dials Read online

  And why? He sat there in the surgeon’s room amidst its sagging armchairs and scratched linoleum and piles of old Lancets and coffee cups and listening to the distant rattle of instruments and the anaesthetist’s booming voice as he soothed his patient into acceptance of mask and ether, and shook his head at his own behaviour, not finding himself at all an attractive person. Though it isn’t all my fault, is it? he asked himself, self-pity rising in a comforting tide. If Lee hadn’t been so - well, the way she had been those first years after we married, it would have been different. If she hadn’t been so obsessed with her own longing for children that she had shut him out, if she had been all a new wife should have been instead of sending him, as she undoubtedly had, headfirst into Katy Lackland’s arms - but now he refused to think of himself and his affairs another moment. With Katy Lackland back in London and likely to fall under his feet at some family function or other any day now such thinking was dangerous. As dangerous as thinking about Charlotte Lucas, so he would think instead about something else.

  Like the difficult bypass of the duodenum he was about to do. A jejunal anastomosis demanded great skill and concentration; he had plenty of the first, and it was now up to him to make sure he supplied enough of the latter. And he pulled his cotton theatre suit into more comfortable creases, tied his mask over his mouth and nose, and went into the anteroom to scrub up. Later today he would come back to the matter of Charlotte Lucas. One way or another he’d find a way through that young woman’s absurd defences. One way or another.

  3

  In the boardroom cigarette smoke was beginning to wreathe around the ceiling, wrapping its tendrils round the handsome plaster work and muffling the fading colours even more than the long years of the War had done, when no one could possibly justify spending time and money and effort on mere repainting. Lee tried not to cough, not wanting to seem to be criticizing the smokers, but it wasn’t easy, and she blinked down at the papers in front of her, trying to concentrate. But it was hard because Brodie’s voice was so very soporific. He was droning on still about the costs the hospital had had to meet in the past three months, since the last meeting of the Governors; about the price of drugs and bandages and sheets and blankets, when, that was, they were able to get them, for the Ministry of Supply had been less than helpful – and now a note of indignation crept into his voice – in spite of the fact that they had lost so much of their stock when the flying bomb had made such a mess of the pathology and pharmacy block.

  ‘We shall have to find more money, I’m afraid, a lot more money, if we’re to avoid the need to close down a ward, or even two. I do all I can to make ends meet, but even I can’t manage the impossible. With most of our original legacies running out - after all it’s over a hundred years since we were founded and excellent as some of our benefactors were, and their gifts well administered, nothing lasts for ever – well, money is hard to come by. Unless we get a sizable injection of new funds the patient, poor old Nellie’s, you know - the patient is liable to take a very nasty turn for the worse.’

  And rather incongruously he giggled at his own joke and then sat and stared lugubriously at them as they stared back or shuffled their papers and tried to absorb what all the numbers he had thrown at them actually meant.

  ‘Closing wards is, of course, out of the question,’ Max said after a while, as no one else seemed inclined to say anything. ‘We have waiting lists for operations, I’m told, and that is something I can’t imagine we can possibly tolerate for longer than we must. It’s high time the old block was rebuilt anyway - we lost the whole of our isolation unit with that bomb, didn’t we? - so it’s really a matter of some urgency, if our finances are as parlous as Brodie tells us they are.’

  ‘I’m not prone to exaggerating, Dr Lackland.’ Brodie seemed to bridle, and Max shook his head at once.

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting you are, Brodie. I’m just saying – look, have you a total of our needs? How much must we have to rebuild the pathology block? And how much to replace the missing linen and so forth? Tell me that and I’ll have a go at the Ministry about it - I’ve one or two friends there - and add on a moiety for some redecorating. The War’s been over long enough now – no more excuses. So, how much, Brodie? Err on the side of extravagance so that we really know what we’re up against.’

  Brodie sniffed, consideringly, clearly enjoying the attention he was getting and Molloy threw a look of pure hatred at him and said loudly, ‘I venture to suggest that whatever Mr Brodie considers enough we add at least fifteen per cent. I personally know of all sorts of expenses still outstanding that he hasn’t even mentioned. There are some new types of trolleys we could use very well here, and some developments in the surgical instrument line that Mr Harry Lackland has been telling me about, and that I’d like to see us getting. After all, this is Nellie’s, not one of your tuppeny ha’penny establishments! We ought to be at the forefront of modern ideas, not equipped like some second-rate cottage hospital – ’

  ‘Of course I can’t be made responsible for every – ah – exaggerated notion of justifiable expense that other people round the hospital think reasonable. I’m just a simple bursar, concerned with the realities of day-to-day costs in these hard times –’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Sir Lewis said irritably, rousing himself at last from what had seemed to be a light sleep. ‘Let’s have some hard numbers, man, some hard numbers. We’re well capable of deciding for ourselves what we need and what we don’t need to buy. So, how much?’

  ‘You’ll not get much change out of twenty-five thousand pounds,’ Brodie said baldly and leaned back in his chair, well satisfied with the effect he had had, knowing he had shocked them as they stared at him, even Molloy, blankly.

  ‘Twenty-five thousand pounds?’ Lee said after a long silence. ‘My dear man, where on earth are we to get that sort of money?’

  ‘You asked me what we needed,’ Brodie said. ‘That is what we need. With the fifteen per cent addition Mr Molloy here suggested. And even then, as I say, it won’t go as far as it might - even without any crackpot spending of the sort that so often afflicts us.’ And he shot a malicious grin at Molloy.

  A little hubbub broke out as the Governors assured each other that it was quite out of the question to attempt to raise so enormous an amount, until Sir Lewis banged his gavel again and they subsided and he sat and glared at them from beneath his hedge of eyebrows.

  ‘Twenty-five thousand pounds,’ he said consideringly. ‘Hmm. A lot. But not impossible.’

  ‘Not impossible, Father?’ Max said, startled. ‘Of course it is! Where on earth are we to - ’

  ‘Pooh,’ Sir Lewis said airily. ‘I’ve a few pounds of my own I’ve not much to do with. Nothing to do with people’s inheritances, of course –’ And he coughed, embarrassed, and looked at his son briefly and then at Johanna and then down at the gavel in his twisted old hand. ‘That’s all settled, d’you see, trusts and so forth. No, I’ve some left over from income. I live low on the hog, don’t you know. Abstemious, that’s me, and I’ve more cash around than I need. I’ll give five thousand to any pathology block fund. As long as we can see how to get the rest of it - ’

  There was another little hubbub as the Governors, with the exception of Max and Johanna, broke into another rattle of talk, this time of thanks and admiration for their Chairman, and the old man shook his head and said irritably, ‘I said, it’s only there if we can raise the rest. I’m not about to throw money away - never was. But it’s there for you if you can find the other twenty thousand - so it’s up to you. What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m not sure what we can do - ’ Max began and then Lee coughed, a little shyly, and said, ‘I went to the theatre last night.’

  Max turned and stared at her, puzzled, and she went a little pink and said quickly, ‘That’s not as silly as it sounds - let me explain. It was for the war orphans - you know that charity my friend Hannah Lammeck does some work for? It’s to find homes and so forth for children whose parent
s were killed in the War, especially those in the Blitz. Her husband was killed, you see, and - well, anyway, she gave me tickets for a benefit night last night. It was rather good - singers and comedians mostly, but very agreeable. And I’m told that it raised almost eight thousand pounds! Well, if we could do something like that, only perhaps bigger, and raise ten thousand, say, then we could do the other things we do - flag days and appeals and so on and perhaps manage the rest of it. Didn’t someone say that the year before the War the appeals we had made fifteen thousand pounds and that was enough to keep them ticking over for the next two years, until we got those special wartime allowances from the Government? Well, couldn’t we do that again?’

  ‘It sounds a good idea, Lee, but really, it’s enormously difficult,’ Johanna said dubiously. ‘I heard about that show you saw last night. Any number of people were trying to get me to buy tickets and I did contribute. I paid for a page in the programme – you know the sort of thing – but they all said that it was taking ages to get the work done and that poor Letty was run off her feet with it and - ’

  ‘Letty?’ Max said, lifting his head.

  ‘Letty Lackland produced it, did all the direction and so forth,’ Lee said. ‘I should have said that, I suppose. I’m sorry. Anyway, she did, and that was another thing I thought about - I mean, I know she’s not a Nellie’s person, but she is a Lackland and - ’ And then, as she caught a look exchanged between Molloy and Brodie, she reddened and stopped.

  ‘I doubt she’d do another show all on her own again,’ Johanna said. ‘I’m sorry to sound dreary, Lee darling, but I do know she was so exhausted and she’s getting on a bit, after all. She was almost retired, wasn’t she? To ask her to do this for us, so soon after the one you saw last night – ’

  ‘She wouldn’t have to do it on her own,’ Sir Lewis said and they turned to look at him. He was sitting much more upright than he had been all morning, and staring down the table with his old eyes glittering a little and Max thought - he’s not looked as excited as that for years – and was puzzled. Until the old man said, in a rather high voice, ‘I dare say Peter’d be glad enough to help her, hey Max? If we asked him, explained the problems?’ And then Max understood.

  ‘It’s possible, Father,’ he said cautiously. ‘You can’t be sure of course. But it might be worth a try -’ And his father looked at him with a sudden watery glint in his eye and Max felt his throat tighten. Dear old man, who loved all his children so very much, and was so distressed about Peter -

  Not that they weren’t all distressed about Peter. He had gone off to Europe just before the War had started, and disappeared into silence. A few letters and cards had arrived for the first few months, and then, just before the Germans marched into Poland, there had been a terse postcard to Sir Lewis that had said only that he was well, that he wouldn’t be able to write for some time, and please not to worry, he’d come back when he could, but for heaven’s sake to make no searches for him and do nothing till they heard from him.

  And then nothing, not a whisper, not a message, never a letter, and the years had drifted away as the War had gone grinding on its course and the old man had grieved and fretted and seemed physically to diminish as he obeyed his youngest son’s command and did nothing about making enquiries about him. But he had been convinced throughout even the very darkest days of the War when it seemed that the whole of Europe was overrun by the German armies, like a byre full of plague rats, that Peter was alive and would come home. One day.

  And so he had, walking almost casually into his father’s house in Leinster Terrace late in the autumn of 1945, as though he had never gone away. But he had gone away, and come back a very different Peter. Taciturn to the point of surliness, thin and grey and a little stooped, he looked not much younger than his own father and certainly a great deal older than his brother Max, who was in fact his senior by some four years, and flatly refused to say anything at all about what he had been doing.

  That it had something to do with the German persecution of the Jews they knew; Lee had been able to tell them that much, for she and Peter had worked together to rescue just one of them the year before the War, the child who was now her much loved adopted son Michael, but even she had not been able to tell them much. That Peter had probably been helping to get Jews out via some sort of underground was her surmise, and that was all they had, Sir Lewis and Max and Johanna, to help them when they looked at the wreck of the youngest member of their family; the knowledge that he had done some incredible work, performed some unbelievable actions and was now in need of love and peace and - what else they could not know.

  But Sir Lewis fretted and worried over that question and looking at his eager face at the head of the Board of Governors’ table at Nellie’s this morning Max could see that he believed he had an answer. Well, he thought, maybe he has. Peter does need to do something, anything to keep him occupied. For the past months, since he had returned to London, he had sat around the Leinster Terrace house, reading, playing interminable Patience but mostly just staring into the distance, silent and alone. To get him out of that was essential, and the psychiatrist in Max lifted with hope as he grasped his father’s train of thought and he nodded vigorously.

  ‘I agree. We’ll talk to Letty about the possibility of a Benefit of some sort, and suggest to her that she’ll need help and see what we can do to see she gets it. Will you talk to her, Lee? You saw last night’s affair, so you’ll know better than any one of us what it is we’re asking - ’

  ‘Tell her it’s got to include Peter, won’t you, Lee?’ Sir Lewis said urgently and his voice was sharper than it had been all morning. ‘It’s important, that - ’

  ‘Of course I will,’ Lee said, gently, as aware as any of the family of Peter and his needs, and the amount of distress the old man felt about him. ‘And I’m sure Letty will be delighted. She’s very fond of Peter, and of course she knows as well as we do - anyway, I’ll telephone her tonight. And I’ll let you know what she says - ’

  ‘If we are to agree that we are to try to raise this money,’ Brodie said loudly, ‘we really must do it all constitutionally. We’re all delighted, of course, that the family feels able to do so much, but all the same we really must have a proper subcommittee and plan it all as it should be planned. I dare say you could all do it on your own - ’ And he managed another forced little laugh. ‘You have a long history in the family of making things happen, this very hospital for a start, but all the same - a subcommittee, I’d venture to suggest, Sir Lewis - ’

  ‘Yes, well, as you wish, Brodie. Just propose the motion, put it to the vote, we’ll do it all as it should be done. I’ll give you five thousand for the fund, Mrs Harry here will set about starting a Benefit Night and you can get on with your usual appeals and flag days and so forth. Who’s to sit on this subcommittee then -’

  The remainder of the members of the Board who had clearly felt somewhat excluded from the discussion of ways and means into which the Lacklands had launched themselves now became very animated and Max leaned back in his chair and watched them a little sardonically as they began to jockey for places on the subcommittee, all trying to get themselves nominated without actually offering so that they could put on a show of polite diffidence and be coaxed to accept, and thought about his father’s scheme for Peter.

  It was an excellent one, and he only hoped it would work. Because if it didn’t, and Peter refused to be pulled out of his clearly desperately deep slough of despond, something more active would have to be done, whether Peter liked it or not. It was one thing to leave a man who had clearly suffered a great deal in peace to lick his wounds and recover; quite another to allow him to crawl into a hole and rot. If he refuses this, Max thought, I’ll have to start to bully him. One way or another we’ll get Peter sorted out, and he sketched a faint wink at his father and then looked at his watch.

  ‘I’ll have to go, I’m afraid,’ he announced as the talk sagged for a moment. ‘I’m not available for the subcommittee
so you don’t need me, and I do have to go to a special Board for a patient, so if you’ll excuse me - ’ And he collected his papers together and made for the door.

  ‘Dine tonight, m’boy?’ Sir Lewis grunted at him as he passed his chair and Max nodded.

  ‘If I can, Father, I’ll telephone. Depends on how the day goes.’

  ‘Good. You’re looking better -’ And Max realized suddenly that for the past hour he had thought of many things, but never once of Emilia and a great wash of guilt filled him and he nodded sharply at the old man and made for the door as fast as he could.

  Damn him, damn him, damn him for a stupid old fool. Why had he had to say that, to remind him? And the guilt flooded up again, this time for his anger at his father and as he closed the door behind him he managed a wry grin. He really was becoming fit to be one of his own cases, with such waves of absurd and irrational feeling overwhelming him and he shook his head at himself and then turned to make his way to the stairs. He had work to do, thank God, and that would sort him out -

  His secretary came panting up the stairs towards him as he reached the end of them, her face quite puffed up with the importance of her message and he looked at her with his usual mixture of irritation and gratitude. She really was incredibly efficient and helpful; if only she wasn’t also so doggedly adoring and pompous, and he schooled his face carefully and said as colourlessly as he could, ‘Yes, Miss Curtis? A message?’