On Robert’s face, there was the sort of irritation a man wears when he feels he’s spent hours chasing about after some vital piece of missing information, such as why I had left him to catch a bus this morning on his own. It was mingling with concern, and there was also a remnant of the steadiness of our farewell last night, where his remark about being my assistant had seemed to be a signpost for beginning to be my friend.
He said by way of a greeting, ‘Did you oversleep? I’ve just been to Stow and back. I nearly pressed on without you, but then I remembered your uncle’s workload, so it seemed sensible to turn back at the first available town. Inevitably, I managed to pick the time of day when there was a long wait between buses for the return trip.’
I watched him fold his damp coat over the back of my guest chair and set down his hat upon the top. It was a peculiarly vivid experience to see him so thoroughly at home in this space around my desk after what had just passed between me and the other man.
I wasn’t sure I could even speak without betraying the new secret of my parting from Doctor Bates. I didn’t want this memory. It meant straying into that difficult place of imagining that for a moment I’d reciprocated in the surprise of that near-kiss.
I hadn’t. I absolutely hadn’t. But, all the while, I was sitting here in my chair while Robert waited for me to give some cheery excuse that made everything all right, and as I did so I knew that it had been for his sake that Doctor Bates had gone roaming about this office last night. And now the doctor had entangled himself even further with me this morning, and for some ridiculous reason the only detail I was certain about was that I was feeling personally responsible for the lot.
I managed to find my voice after all. ‘I thought you would go to the meeting with Jacqueline on your own.’
‘No.’ Robert’s hair was dark and ruffled where his hat had been. This was the moment when he noticed the bandage about my hand. The injured limb was resting in my lap with my chair drawn in close in an attempt to hide it. He was beginning to stare when my other hand lightly moved to drape itself artfully along the edge of the desk.
I seemed to release him to remember what he had been about to say. He said, ‘It’s your project now; you might as well finish it. What happened to your wrist?’
He knew I couldn’t reasonably ignore a direct question. ‘It’s fine,’ I told him quickly. ‘Doctor Bates has already looked at it.’
I thought for a disconcerting moment I had slipped into using the doctor’s first name, Terry. But I hadn’t. I added, ‘Anyway, it’s my hand, not my wrist. I caught it between the door and the doorframe on the stairs last night. And it isn’t broken. It’s just bruised.’
Robert had already moved around the corner of my desk and now he was easing himself into a crouch in the space there.
I turned in my seat towards him. I believe I tried to say something crisp and orderly but he didn’t even hesitate. He was saying, ‘Will you show me that you can make a fist?’
The space behind my desk was very small when he crouched before me like this. His voice was different. It was suddenly more focussed, like a medical man getting to work.
I stirred uneasily. He was the second man to ignore my protest about my hand today. At the same time, his manner prompted me to remember everything I knew about his experiences at that awful camp. I didn’t want this injury to be the one that made him revisit them. My fierce effort to avoid this latest pitfall came out as a defensive, ‘Don’t you ever listen to a single thing I say?’
Clearly, he didn’t. First he got me to prove that I could still grip with the hand. Then he made me perform various movements with it. He didn’t take hold of it even once, or attempt to unwind the bandage. It was a very different method from the examination Doctor Bates had given me. I wouldn’t like to say which was the more medically correct, but this one preyed less upon the poor hand’s aversion to being touched. It didn’t make me feel as if he was affecting its increasing tendency to swell either.
And, very clearly, despite the running theory that life in a prison camp had given Robert a profound aversion to doctoring, he was able to use those skills readily enough now.
Now I was truly restless. The doctor’s accusations were prying into every thought of mine – the hints about the path that had brought Robert here and the pressure that might drive him away. All that remained was to risk everything by explaining how much had been exposed.
I drew back as I told him, ‘Doctor Bates knows all about your stock of paper.’
A wiser person might have finished the confession there, but an impatient urge to speak the angry truth rushed in with the ache of finding this man caring about that hated bandage like this.
I made his attention lift from my hand when I added, ‘In fact, the doctor thinks you asked me to lead him aside as a distraction while you got away with the hired van. And that little insult has led me to realise something very strange about you.’
‘It has?’
From his mild manner of asking, I might have believed he had nothing to hide at all.
‘Yes,’ I said firmly. ‘When you questioned me over dinner yesterday about Doctor Bates’ references to Nuneham’s, you must have at least suspected that his hints meant he’d uncovered your plan. Only, instead of worrying about that, all you wanted to know was what else he might have told me. So then I began to wonder what other secrets you might be guarding. Doctor Bates is convinced that you’re using my uncle to hide a habit of black market trading.’
‘And is that what you think?’
‘Not in the slightest,’ I replied flatly. ‘But it has finally occurred to me that yesterday, when you met me in Bourton, it wasn’t a matter of convenience or kindness. You were tasked with keeping me away from the office.’
There was a pause while Robert adjusted to the agitation in my tone.
He had his right forearm laid along the rim of my desk by way of support while he crouched before me. He considered the drape of his hand over the edge for a moment, then he replied, ‘I didn’t keep you away from the office.’
‘Yes, you did. You—’
‘You caught the same bus home from Bourton that you had always intended to catch.’ His insistence made my brows lower. He remarked, ‘I even told you about the paper.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Yes, you did tell me about the paper. And once you had successfully coaxed me into making light of the shady deals you’ve been making in my uncle’s name, you made an awful lot of references to the state of this company’s finances. So what I want to know is whose idea was it to leave you in Bourton to meet me? And what have you really been up to, if telling me about the trip to Nuneham’s was the easy part?’
I didn’t say it out loud, but I very nearly added that I particularly wanted to know why it was acceptable that my uncle should be involved, Mr Lock and the print room boy, and even Doctor Bates. But not me.
The colour in my cheeks was the pain of exclusion again. Not of myself but of him. I had been struggling all morning on the cusp of some unpleasant conflict. I had battled my own fear, and I’d tiptoed around the effort of defending this man while the doctor weighed up the risks of doing his civic duty.
In the process, I had been left trying to answer the disturbing question of how on earth I had spent the past minutes feeling terribly responsible for misleading Doctor Bates, when I ought to have been asking how it had happened that a trained medical professional should have visited a woman for the purpose of inspecting the injury he had caused, only to find himself contemplating romance.
I was increasingly angry with the doctor. And frustrated with him for deciding I was keen.
Now I was disturbing myself all over again with the effort of trying to guess what Robert might be reading in my distress at this moment – because if nothing else, the misunderstanding with Doctor Bates had taught me that what I thought I was saying and how my actions were interpreted appeared to be two very different things.
The simple solution was to withdraw, to busy myself with my work, to pretend that I didn’t care to hear anything this man had to say at all.
Robert’s manner wasn’t exactly warm any more, anyway. He was watching me from the nearness of that crouched position by my chair. His forearm was still claiming the support of the rim of my desk.
Then, while I reached for a sheet of paper to feed into the typewriter, there was the brief turn of his head away from me towards my uncle’s closed door. The act was followed by the short nod of a decision being made.
It was the smallest acknowledgement of the hurt beneath my temper. Then he rose to his feet.
I watched in silence while he walked to my uncle’s door. I heard the light rap and his muted request for permission to enter. My mouth went dry.
If this was capitulation, it left behind a very peculiar feeling.