Pat pulled up under the trellis of yellow trumpet-shaped flowers positioned along one side of the car park. The tarmac gleamed in the March sunshine. The building served by the car park looked more like a grand private home than a convalescent unit for neurological patients; which of course was exactly what it must have been once upon a time – one of thousands of big gated properties all over the Cape, designed to keep the privileged safe.
Pat crossed the car park briskly, checking Eleanor Keating’s letter was still safely zipped inside her handbag and bracing herself for what would be the first face-to-face encounter with Dr Wharton since his accident. With the initial coma – the result of several minutes under water – the outlook had seemed bleak, but now, three months on, the reports filtering out were all about astonishing strides in his recovery. The turnaround had set Pat reading up about near-drowning cases on the internet, discovering in the process that, while the first six months were always crucial, recovery could in fact continue for years. Health, age, fitness, intelligence, as well as luck, played a part in it. ‘It’s also a hell of a battle,’ one of the Queen Elizabeth doctors had remarked grimly, ‘some patients simply aren’t up for it.’
Eleanor’s letter had arrived the previous week. A plump envelope, studded with English stamps and with the name of the sender on the back, it had stood out at once among the thinning pile of mostly junk mail. Recognising the name, Pat’s fingers had itched with curiosity. Yet there had been no doubting her conscience this time. The neurological centre was quite a drive away, but she had resolved at once to take an afternoon off to deliver the letter in person.
Inside the centre, the high-ceilinged circular reception area exuded the air of a luxury hotel. Tall terracotta vases of dried flowers stood in alcoves, skirting a ring of elegant curve-backed chairs set round a low glass table laid out with orderly lines of magazines and a bowl of polished red apples. Overhead, ceiling fans whirred quietly, rustling the fronds in the vases.
Pat signed in and was directed down a long corridor. Dr Wharton’s room was on the ground floor and easy to find since there was a name on the door. When there was no reply to her knock, Pat tried the handle and put her head inside. Double doors onto the garden were half open, the long white curtains at their corners lifting in the breeze. Through their folds, Pat glimpsed an empty private square of decking and a wheelchair ramp leading down to the terraced lawns.
‘Hello?’
Her voice echoed back at her. She guessed he was enjoying some afternoon sun, but it didn’t seem right to go through his room uninvited, so Pat withdrew into the corridor and made her way outside via a fire exit a few yards further on. If she was Dr Wharton she would have been in the gardens every chance she got, with the sun on her face. To have fought for his life in that cold sea, while his wife and friends took so long to appreciate what was going on, made her shudder every time she thought of it.
Pat found herself on a narrow path which snaked down the side of the building towards the main gardens. She set off at a quick walk but stopped abruptly as two voices came into range, very close by, one shrill and female, the other male, and harder to make out. Pat peered round the corner of the building, only to pull back again sharply. Not more than ten feet away, seated on a garden bench with their backs towards her, were Dr Wharton and his wife, Donna, arrestingly elegant in a long blue silk dress with panels that billowed round her slim legs. Dr Wharton looked painfully frail in comparison, a coat-hanger of a man compared to what he had been. His hair had got very long, Pat observed with a stab of tenderness, curling over the collar of his shirt in a way that would have been impossible to imagine when he was the spruce, smart doctor she had once worked for. What had to be his wheelchair was parked several yards away under a tree; which Pat hoped meant he had been able to walk unaided to the bench.
It took only a moment to realise they were arguing. Pat knew this meant she should retreat back up the path, leave them to their troubles. But the conversation was so compelling that she found herself pressing back against the wall instead, listening in mounting disbelief.
‘Of course I’m glad you are better. How could you accuse me of not being glad?’
‘I am not accusing you of anything,’ Dr Wharton replied, in a weary voice. ‘Though I do wish that over these last few months you had brought the girls more…’
‘It upset them to see you.’
A silence followed. Pat held her breath, her heart pounding on Dr Wharton’s behalf. There were so many possible responses to so terrible a statement.
‘And they have been staying with your parents,’ was all he said. ‘All this time. And only now you tell me.’
‘Well, yes. Daddy – and Mum – have been fantastic. I have needed their support… and I have been there a lot too. Look, Nick,’ she blurted, ‘your accident, it has happened to me too, you know. None of this has been easy for me.’
Pat shovelled her knuckles into her mouth, to stifle her gasp.
‘Yes,’ he said quietly, ‘yes, I see that.’
‘And Daddy has had to help out with money,’ Donna went on with some energy, ‘because paying for this place has got way beyond what was covered under our health scheme. And when not getting your full salary kicks in, it is going to be a real stretch… I mean, Christ, Nick, why did you never tell me we owed so much?’
‘I did tell you. Maybe you didn’t listen. And, anyway, it is not a question of “owing so much”. It’s just that we have a very high standard of living, substantial outgoings, all of which I have often tried to explain—’
‘You should have done more of the cosmetic clinic work that Dad got you, that’s the truth of it. Started it earlier, taken on more hours…’
‘You don’t love me.’
The sentence seemed to slice the air. Pat gripped the stone behind her with her fingernails.
Donna barely hesitated, countering, ‘Oh, don’t be so dramatic, Nick, and, if I may say so, in spite of what you have been through, a little bit childish. Of course I love you, you are my husband.’
‘That doesn’t mean you love me.’ His voice had gone hard and solid; a battering ram beating on a closed door.
‘Oh for god’s sake, Nick, now is not the time for this. We have some serious things to sort out.’
‘Love is serious.’
There was a whistle of what sounded to Pat’s straining ears like impatient disbelief.
‘Love between two people changes, okay?’ came Donna’s brittle voice. ‘Frankly, it would be weird if it didn’t. In the meantime, here’s the thing. Of course I am pleased you are getting better at last. Properly better. But going forwards, there are certain big issues that we have to get our heads round.’
‘You mean, money.’
‘Yes, Nick, I mean money.’ She sounded impatient now. Dr Wharton, in contrast, was sounding increasingly calm.
‘In the end money doesn’t matter, Donna. Not really.’
There was a whoop of exasperation. ‘Oh my god, that is just… so typical.’ And then a softening in the quietness that followed. At least Pat imagined it was softening. It had to be, surely. Love or no love, this was such a fragile man whom she was addressing, a man whose five minutes under water might well, by the uncharitable, be attributed to Donna’s own extraordinary tardiness in summoning help. ‘Nick, I am sorry. You have been through so much. None of this is fair on you.’
Pat exhaled. So there was softening. She readied herself to tiptoe away, but then Donna reverted to her theme.
‘This place costs the earth. It is the best there is. Which you deserve, obviously, but…’ Donna hesitated, adding in a tone that still sounded like one trying for patience rather than achieving it, ‘like I said, we are already well beyond the claim limit and I still can’t get a straight answer from the doctors. Have they said anything to you about when you can leave, when you might reasonably think about going back to work?’
A silence followed. Somewhere, a lone cicada clacked.
‘I’m not going back to work,’ he said at last. ‘The hospital, the clinic, I’m not going back to any of it. I am not up to it. Mentally or physically.’
There was an uncertain laugh. ‘But you’re already so much better. Surely… you can’t mean that, you simply can’t.’
‘I do mean it.’
‘Well, in that case, how do you propose we will manage?’ Her voice was growing shrill again.
‘We are going to have to rethink our lives—’
‘Give up, you mean.’ There was a clap of hands. ‘Oh, I get it. Yes, I should have seen this coming.’ She was sing-song now, full of scorn. ‘Instead of fighting back and trying properly to get better, you are going to use everything that’s happened as an excuse to carry out that crazy plan you had. Sure. Great. You want to drag us all off to England, sell our home, put the girls into some crap old-fashioned school—’
‘I have no intention… Donna… Hang on, what are you doing? Where are you going?’
‘I need to leave.’
‘Now?’
‘I need to be somewhere. And, frankly, I can’t take any more of this today – your negativity, your refusal to think properly about what is best for me and the girls. Maybe it is just too early for us to be having this conversation. Maybe you are just not ready. And trust me, Nick, when I say that upsets me on so many levels.’ Her voice receded during the course of the sentence, to the accompaniment of swishing and retreating footsteps.
‘Donna…’
There was more rustling and then her voice came back into focus, meeker-toned. ‘Would you like help getting back to your chair?’
‘No,’ he snapped, sounding properly angry for the first time. ‘I would not like your help getting back to my chair. In fact…’ An audible intake of breath fell into the hesitation. ‘In fact all I would like from you is a divorce.’
There was a short, harsh laugh. ‘Okay. I am going to pretend I didn’t hear that.’
‘You do not love me.’
‘I’ve told you, I do—’
‘You are not faithful to me.’
‘What? How dare you?’ The sentence began as a screech but was reined in, perhaps for fear of other patients out using the garden.
Pat pressed harder against the wall. Its gritty surface was starting to hurt the back of her head and her skin through her clothes.
‘Oh, I dare, Donna. I dare.’ There seemed to be real exhaustion in his voice now.
‘You have no right to talk to me like this. No right.’ The shrillness sounded close to tears. ‘Wait till I tell Daddy what you have just said to me.’
To Pat’s astonishment, Nick laughed. ‘Is that supposed to be a threat? Because threats only work if the party being threatened is afraid. And I have no fear left, Donna. Of anything. Not even death.’ He laughed again, more bitterly. ‘And certainly not your father either, who is a bully. Because if I have learnt anything from the last few months it is that life is brief and fragile. In the end not a lot matters. Trying to stay afloat in that fucking sea, all I could think about was… love… the girls. How I hope they know that I love them. Which I believe they do, in spite of your efforts.’
She tried to protest, but he bulldozed on. ‘And whatever happens between you and me, whatever you try, I will make damned sure they continue to know it. So go ahead, run along and tell that father of yours that I want to divorce you. He is the one you have always answered to anyway. While you’re at it why not mention that you have been having sex with Mike Scammell? That might make him sit up a bit…’
Pat had heard enough. She hurried away on trembling ankles, going straight back via a circuitous route to the car park. She crossed the tarmac swiftly, her head hung, her mind numb. It seemed that nothing in the world was as one wanted it to be.
‘Hi.’ It was a nurse, appearing from behind the cascades of yellow flowers. She waggled a cigarette packet by way of an explanation, smiling ruefully. ‘Good visit I hope?’
‘Yes… that is… I came to see Dr Wharton…’
‘How great is he? We are all of us so proud. It’s like… well, let’s just say it’s patients like him that make the job worthwhile.’
Pat nodded heavily in agreement, fumbling in her bag as she suddenly remembered Eleanor Keating’s letter. ‘I forgot to give him this. Would you mind?’ She handed the envelope over and hastily got into her car. Good intentions had been her starting point. She had wanted to keep Dr Wharton – his life, his beautiful family – on a pedestal; but it turned out brains, money, looks were no defence against anything.
A few hundred yards away, Nick floated in the space inside his head, a space that seemed to contract and expand, sometimes clear, sometimes dark. Donna had stormed off and he was glad. He could feel the sun beating against his eyelids. It brought vivid, flickering memories of being in the sea, the dryness in his mouth, the pulsing in his temples.
Nick brought the garden back into focus. He shivered with pleasure at the kiss of the light breeze and afternoon warmth on his bare skin, tingling the hairs on his arms and legs. It could be an English summer’s day, Nick mused, floating again, with no thoughts this time other than a sense of being. He had said what had to be said, done what had to be done. There would be consequences, waves and waves of them, but for now he was safe back on dry land. For he had been drowning anyway, long before he nearly died.