CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The cab that had brought Mark from Leeds station drove away. The driver had followed Dr Martha’s map without difficulty and dropped him off where it instructed, at the specified time. So far, so straightforward.
Mark now stood at the head of a long drive. Lined with impressive trees, it stretched away in a green tunnel towards a large building of dark stone topped with turrets. While obviously Victorian, it had medieval fortress overtones that made Mark feel nervous.
Possibly because of Dr Martha’s being an American therapist, he had imagined a building in the tradition of the celebrity drying-out clinics in various American deserts. Large, blocklike, modern and with a pared-down funky adobe look, as if some simple Mexican peasant folk had just got together and decided to build an all-singing, all-dancing state-of-the-art multi-purpose therapy and treatment centre. But The School For Husbands was nothing like this. It looked, oddly enough, exactly like a school. A forbidding, old-fashioned, boarding school.
He forced himself into a lighter frame of mind. He had wanted so desperately to come here. Now that the law had failed him it was his last hope of reconciliation. Whatever it looked like, it was the gateway back to happiness, to the land of lost content. He picked up his bag and walked towards the front door.
Inside the hall, it took a few seconds to see in the gloom. What eventually emerged from the shadows was a room of the sort one might expect a tweedy colonel with a salt-and-pepper moustache to stride through swinging a brace of recently shot partridge. It smelt of furniture polish. It had wood-panelled walls, a wide wooden staircase, a mock-Tudor fireplace and stained-glass windows.
‘Name?’
Mark turned around in surprise to find himself looking at an old man in a battered petrol-blue jacket and an ancient tweed cap rammed over clumps of grey hair. His eyes glistened in the gloom. One hand dangled a vast clump of keys, like the ghost of Jacob Marley.
‘I’m Briggs.’ He flashed some twisted teeth.
‘Hello,’ said Mark firmly. ‘I’m Mark Brown.’
‘Aye, we’ve been expecting thee.’ A chill went down Mark’s spine at the words. ‘Thee room’s ready.’ Briggs bent with evident difficulty towards Mark’s bag.
‘Oh, no. Let me do that,’ Mark protested.
But the old man had gripped the handles with a skeletal yet iron fist. ‘This way,’ he ordered through a throat choked with phlegm. Mark followed, half scared, half wondering what a Gothic relic like this was doing in Dr Martha’s employ. He seemed to have wandered in from Wuthering Heights.
He longed for a stiff drink and a lie-down. He had been told by Dr Martha, however, that alcohol was strictly forbidden at The School for Husbands. Along with any reading matter not directly supplied by the school itself.
They passed a grandfather clock that struck him as having a sinister tick. Ahead was a gloomy corridor with a stained-glass window glowing dimly at the end. There was a feeling of faded grandeur. Very, very faded grandeur.
‘What was this place?’ Mark asked curiously. ‘It looks a bit like a school from outside.’
The cadaverous servant gave another of his hideous grins. ‘It were school. A boys’ school.’
Mark was struck by the aptness of this. From boy’s school to School for Husbands. ‘That must have been a long time ago,’ he remarked pleasantly. About a hundred years at least by the look of it. As they passed a wide fireplace set into the corridor wall, he imagined Tom Brown being held against it by the bullying Flashman.
‘I used to be t’caretaker,’ Briggs croaked through the phlegm. ‘I’ve lived ’ere ever since.’
As he coughed long and horribly, Mark looked at him in astonishment. Caretaker? How the hell old was he?
‘So when,’ Briggs gasped, having partially recovered, ‘yon doctor took t’place on a short lease, I were thrown in as a job lot, like. This is thee room,’ he added abruptly, shuffling to a halt before the last door next to the stained-glass window. He extracted the keys from his pocket with a deafening roar of metal and fitted one into the lock. The door creaked and shuddered open with apparent resentment and reluctance.
Dumping the bag on the floor like a sack of potatoes, Briggs now disappeared.
Mark looked around. The room continued the theme of the cheerless Victorian decor outside. It was tiny and its main features were an iron bedstead covered with a dun blanket, a long, narrow window and a small oak desk with an oak chair.
Mark sat glumly down on the chair. Of course, he was here to learn and improve, not enjoy himself. And while sybaritic it wasn’t, clean and tidy it was, which was more than could be said for home at the moment. Mark recalled the scene of devastation he had left in Verona Road and reflected that the washing-up alone would have by now grown enough penicillin to supply the NHS for a year.
There were, anyway, he noticed with a lifting heart, some books at the back of the desk. He stared at the titles and his heart sank again. But he was in a relationships clinic and so should not be especially surprised to see Why Men Drink Beer and Women Clean Bathrooms by Dr Arnhem J. Fossum. Or Find the Love You Want by Cindee Z. Strumpfhosen, Ph.D., with its companion volume, Keep the Love You’ve Found. As Cindee Z. Strumpfhosen, Ph.D., was billed on the second book as Cindee Z. Strumpfhosen-Cruse, Ph.D., it seemed she’d found some love herself in the interim.
Others offered for his perusal were Coupleteamhood by Dr Diddley Squat and Men Are From Arse, Women Are From Penis: It’s All About Sex so Let’s Face It by Dr Terence T. Goole. And, of course, was Be So There for Each Other: Marriage Management Made Easy by Dr Martha Krankenhaus.
Mark sighed, and looked around the room again. He opened the plain wooden cupboard that was presumably a wardrobe. Inside, folded neatly on a shelf, was a pile of dark blue T-shirts and a matching baseball cap. Mark shook out the shirts. They each had a white heart printed on them, with the logo ‘Hey! I’m One of Martha’s Marriage-Mending Miracles™ arranged round it in a circle. The same logo appeared on the cap.
A sheet of paper was lying on the bed. ‘IMPORTANT INFORMATION’, it announced. Besides details about bathrooms, meals and laundry facilities, Mark learnt the following. Daily Marriage-Mending Miracle™ classes were to be held in the Great Hall. Evenings were to be spent on what were described mysteriously as ‘Interactive Pursuits’. Uniforms were to be worn at all times and cost £50 for the cap and £75 for the T-shirt. All the books in the rooms were also for sale at £20 each; if not bought, grubby copies would have to be replaced by the room’s occupier. Cheques were acceptable and to be made payable to Dr Martha Krankenhaus Enterprises Inc.
Mark looked out of the window. He had expected some sort of view but as there was a tree pressing into the pane, all he could see was a mass of leaves. He listened. There was none of the accustomed hum of London. Rather, a stillness he found ominous, punctuated by the occasional wail of a dejected-sounding bird.
He had just pulled on the T-shirt and fixed the baseball cap on his head when there came a knock at his door. He jumped at the unexpected sound. Opening the door, he found himself peering, not into the expected, grizzled visage of the ancient retainer, but The bronzed and smooth complexion of someone he vaguely recognised. Another few seconds, and he’d placed him.
‘You!’ Mark exclaimed in astonishment. ‘You’re the bloke from that hotel. What was it called - Winterton something or other?’
‘Hall,’ Jeremy Hetherington-Spence confirmed. He looked wistful. ‘Paradise lost. How I wish I was back there now.’
Mark was still absorbing the surprise. To find him in the School for Husbands was a double shock. He had not for one moment supposed Jeremy to be straight.
The hotel manager was peering into Mark’s room. ‘Gosh, your room’s actually worse than mine,’ he remarked in awe. ‘I really didn’t think that was possible.’
Mark stood aside as Jeremy minced in, his bronzed arms goosepimpled where the sleeves of his Dr Martha T-shirt ended. ‘Isn’t it freezing?’ the hotel manager exclaimed. ‘This place isn’t a school. It’s a gulag.’
‘I was trying to think of it as bracing,’ Mark confessed.
‘And the décor. Well!’ Jeremy flicked a disgusted hand at the cotton curtains. ‘You can tell Philippe Starck has been nowhere near here.’
Mark hid a smile. ‘No Lord Linley cigar boxes either,’ he added teasingly.
‘No,’ Jeremy agreed mournfully.
‘As for the fluff factor of the towels.’ Mark looked at some piled on a shelf. ‘Minus one, I’d say.’
‘Oh don’t. Don’t remind me. Have you seen those communal bathrooms?’ Jeremy looked as if he might burst into tears. ‘And I am literally quaking at the thought of what the food’s going to be like. Free of Gordon Ramsay’s personal involvement, that much is certain.’ He looked disconsolately around. ‘You’d have thought, at the prices we’re paying, there might be a minibar in the rooms at least.’
‘No alcohol,’ Mark reminded him, ‘It’s the clinic’s most important rule, remember. It said so on all the enrolment stuff.’
‘Quite the goody-two-shoes, aren’t we?’ Jeremy looked rebellious for a moment. Then his face fell. ‘It’s just that,’ he added pathetically, ‘a glass of pink Roederer would make things so much more bearable.’
‘Look.’ Mark could contain his curiosity no longer. ‘I mean, I’m sorry if it’s a rude question and of course you don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to, but.’
‘Why Roederer and not Moët?’
‘No!’
‘What am I doing here?’
‘Well, yes.’
Jeremy sighed. ‘It’s a long story. Basically, my wife thinks I’ve become over-obsessed with work. The hotel. The quest for excellence in general.’ He raised his chin and flared his nostrils. ‘I could never persuade her that the pursuit of the perfect is the most noble pastime to which Man can aspire.’
Mark remembered the tour round Don Juan and Jeremy’s obsessive drawing of his attention to the thread count and the minibar coasters. He remembered, too, the unavoidable family emergency that had made it impossible for Jeremy to disentangle the room reservations fiasco. And which, indirectly, had led to the disintegration of his marriage and his being here. As it had for Jeremy, as it turned out.
‘Yes, the unavoidable emergency was my wife threatening to leave me,’ Jeremy confessed. ‘I’d just, rather helpfully I thought, pointed out that her tights were a different black to her dress and she suddenly announced that she was sick of me criticising her and was it right that I had more beauty products in the bathroom cabinet than she did?’
‘Oh dear,’ Mark sympathised.
‘But actually, I don’t want Julia to leave me. She helps run the Hall with me, for a start, and is awfully good with the business side of things, which isn’t my strong point at all. Anyway, my solicitor had heard about this place and I accepted that a bit of suffering might be necessary to get back into Julia’s good books. Although I never expected suffering like this’. Jeremy looked down at his front, his face twisted with repulsion. ‘This T-shirt! Such a bad cut.’
‘I didn’t realise T-shirts had cuts,’ Mark confessed. ‘I thought they were, well, T-shaped, I suppose.’
Jeremy regarded him in amazement. ‘Yes, but there are an infinite number of T-shapes. Big Ts, small Ts. Loose, flowing Ts, Tight, shape-defining Ts.’ He brushed a manicured hand down his front in disgust. ‘And horrible, unflattering Ts in bad material, like this one. And these baseball caps. So unstylish. But one can never take them off because of the state of one’s hair underneath if one did. One is caught between a rock and a hard place, stylistically speaking. And frequently,’ he sighed, ‘A Hard Rock place, to judge by all the tragic fiftysomethings who come into my hotel wearing headgear from that infernal establishment.’
‘I thought your type of clients wouldn’t wear baseball caps,’ Mark remarked.
‘My dear boy, the richer they are, the worse taste they have. I considered at one time having a no-baseball cap rule until I realised we wouldn’t have any customers.’
There was a short silence. ‘Oh well,’ Mark said. ‘It’ll all be worth it if Dr Martha can help us.’
Jeremy picked up the sheet of instructions. ‘What are these Interactive Pursuits we’re supposed to spend each night doing anyway? I’ve brought the whole of Upstairs Downstairs to watch on my portable DVD.’
‘Hey, you guys!’ Both men gasped as Dr Martha suddenly appeared at the door.
Dr Martha looked as brisk and businesslike as ever. Her big, very bright, very wide brown eyes looked enquiringly over half-moon spectacles. Beneath her short dark crop swung a pair of large silver hoop earrings. Her small, wiry figure, as usual, was entirely clothed in black.
‘I hope you’ve settled into the campus,’ she cried enthusiastically. ‘Great place, isn’t it?’
‘Great,’ Mark lied. After all, Dr Martha was the key to his whole future. It would be silly not to be polite to her.
‘Couldn’t be better - if you’re a deathwatch beetle,’ muttered Jeremy.
Dr Martha heard this. ‘Sure,’ she said, smiling. ‘The facilities are simple. And that’s deliberate. Simple is good. Simple is calm and uncomplicated. Simple gives you space to reflect on what really matters in your life. Like the place you are in and the place you want to go to.’
Jeremy folded his arms. The gesture implied that the place he wanted to go was one with minibars and a towel fluff factor well over forty. ‘But everywhere’s so dark,’ he complained. ‘The corridors are absolutely pitch-black.’
‘Jeremy!’ Dr Martha shook a smiling head. ‘Jeremy. Half the darkness you see is in yourself, you know. The darkness of despair. You may think you want more light in the corridors, but the light you really want is that which enables you to see your way back to your relationship. And that’s one bulb we’re definitely gonna switch on, don’t worry.’
Dr Martha extended her arms out. ‘And have you looked round the grounds? Have you seen what a fantastic setting this place is in? You know, you’re all going to draw such incredible strength from the view. From the grace, the power, the amazing amazingness of Nature, all around you.’
Mark felt concerned. The view was obviously a crucial part of the therapy and he could hardly see a thing. He raised his hand. ‘There’s a tree in front of my window.’
Dr Martha beamed disarmingly at him. ‘I know. It’s there for a reason. You see, Mark, you’ve got issues blocking your relationships vision. That tree is a visual metaphor for the state of stuckness you are in.’
‘Oh. I see.’
‘No, Mark, you don’t see. That’s the point. Not yet, at least. But, Mark, I want to promise you something. As the Marriage-Mending Miracle gets to work on you, you’ll notice that you’ll be noticing that tree less and less.’ She finished the speech with another brilliant beam.