The wind had dropped by morning. There was even sunshine, slanting palely through the window of the breakfast room and onto the brushed crown of Patrick’s head. He sat straight at the table as his mother and his nursemaid Betty taught him with his hands and forearms well clear of the cloth. He ate his cereal automatically without looking up. His hair was so like his grandfather’s in the sun, thought Simmie, shot through with bronze like Robert’s. She wanted desperately to touch it, stroke it – stroke his hair and share the burden of his grief. It was all that she could think; all she dared to think of now.
‘Patrick, would you believe me if I told you that I think I understand a little of how you feel?’ she said gently. ‘I really do my darling. You see, when I was younger I lost everyone I cared for, all at once; and felt so miserable and lonely, just like you.’
He was looking at her now. Such a pathetic, swollen, mumpy little face! Simmie’s heart ached with pity, and it took a real effort to prevent herself from jumping up and throwing her arms round him there and then. But at the age of ten, little Patrick was already too defensive, too private a person to be forced; and if he came to her, he must come of his own accord.
‘But someone was very kind to me then, Patrick, when I was so unhappy,’ she continued. ‘An old lady, your Mummy’s Grannie; and oh, it did make such a difference!’
He was pushing back his chair, fumbling with his table napkin. In a minute he’d be in arm’s reach, waiting miserably for her to pull him to her…
‘Morning you two!’ Meriel’s voice – but younger, gayer than anyone had heard it for years. She stood poised in the doorway, dressed eccentrically in a striped summer blouse and ankle-length skirt, her hair untidily piled up and padded out in a crude imitation of the style she had affected in the days before the war.
‘Morning, I said’ she repeated. ‘Well come on, Simmie. When are you going to get round to introducing me to this young man, I’d like to know?’
‘Meriel, for pity’s sake!’
‘Don’t be such a humbug, Simmie. Anyone can see he’s simply dying to meet me!’
The sight of Patrick’s tearstained face struggling to replicate his mother’s artificial smile was altogether more than Simmie could bear.
‘Stop it, Meriel. Stop it!’ She was almost shouting, on her feet between them pushing at the strange rigidity of steel-boned stays – pushing Meriel backwards through the doorway and out into the hall.
‘What ever are you…? Simmie, are you mad? I’ll grant you are his brother’s landlady, but that doesn’t entitle you to hog the whole damn family,’ Meriel hissed at her furiously, returning shove for shove. ‘We wouldn’t be here, would we, if the old lady hadn’t invited us to stay the night? But now we are, I should jolly well suppose I’ve as much right as you have, Simmie, to hob-nob with that young man!’
‘Meriel, you don’t know what you’re saying.’ Simmie stared at her aghast, while the whole perspective of their tragedy shifted around her.
‘Well, I would have thought that was obvious to anyone but an idiot.’ Meriel’s eyes were challenging, dilated, darker than they’d ever looked before. ‘What I’m trying to tell you, woman, is that you’ve been playing the giddy-goat ever since we put our bikes into the guard’s van at Victoria – and I for one am getting sick of it! So be a dear will you, and introduce me properly to that nice child in there, before he thinks we’ve both gone off our rockers.’
Four days later the Ashby family doctor called in a private consulting physician from Eastbourne to examine Meriel, and afterwards to report his findings over tea to Mrs Ashby and Miss Sims.
‘Out of sight, out of mind.’ How often have we heard that said?’ the Eastbourne man enquired of the two ladies. ‘And in the unfortunate case of your grand-daughter-in-law, Mrs Ashby I fear that’s proved quite literally to be true.’
With an obvious effort Margaret Ashby braced herself up on the cushions of her drawing room armchair, to put the fellow in his place. ‘Under the circumstances, Doctor, there’s nothin’ to be gained by talking to us as if we’re a pair of your half-wit lunatics,’ she said caustically. ‘Miss Sims and I have been through a very great deal during the last few days. But we have retained our sanity, thank God, an’ we both speak the King’s English. So perhaps you would oblige us by dispensing with the penny-proverbs and gettin’ on with the prognosis?’
‘Well then, I can confirm that the young woman is suffering from a wilful dissociation, with a loss of memory that may be attributable to what is known as purposive hysteria,’ the physician told them in an altogether brisker tone of voice. ‘Her purpose being to escape from a reality she can’t accept.’
‘Mad as a hatter, in other words.’
‘No I wouldn’t put it that way, Mrs Ashby, not at all.’
‘How then?’ The melancholy, pale blue eyes considered him unwinkingly from behind the silver barricade of her tea tray.
‘Well, in my experience the capacity for dissociation varies considerably from one person to another. But in certain predisposed cases, and I believe your grand-daughter-in-law to be one of them, severe emotional shock can produce hysterical reactions, which may or may not prove temporary in their effect. I understand the younger Mrs Ashby’s grief for her lost husband was especially intense?’
‘Undoubtedly,’ said Margaret, ‘although she hid it pretty well.’
‘The point exactly; and now you see she’s hiding from it. Unhappily, the war has provided us with innumerable instances of this kind of thing. Our institutions are full of cases. We had a fellow at the East Sussex Asylum at Hellingly, who was found wandering between the lines at Lens with no memory of anything beyond the Bank Holiday weekend of 1914 – until he heard news of the Armistice, that is; at which point his amnesia was reversed. He remembered everything up to his discovery between the lines, but nothing after that.’
‘But surely Meriel isn’t… I mean, you wouldn’t judge it necessary to – to certify her, Doctor?’ Simmie had to interrupt him. She simply couldn’t bear to hear them talking so calmly about lunatics and insane asylums, without asking – without knowing the worst.
‘No indeed, Miss Sims.’ The consultant physician smiled. ‘I can see no grounds in this case for writing out a certificate. On the contrary, the important thing now is for the subject to remain with people she knows and trusts; although it might be wise to consider a temporary change of environment.’
‘But where could she go, Doctor?’ Simmie’s voice was weak with relief. Whatever happened though she must stay calm. She mustn’t cry now with the valiant old lady sitting like a rock beside her. Later there’d be time for tears.
‘And what about her little boy?’ she asked. ‘He’s only ten. He’s lost his father, and now his only brother, Doctor. It would be too cruel if he lost his mother too, just when he needs her most.’
‘But you see to all intents and purposes he has lost her, Miss Sims. Subconsciously he’s bound to be a constant reminder to her of her loss; and so long as she refuses to acknowledge that, then she’ll be genuinely unable to recognise him as her son. No, far better for both of them, I think, if you can get her right away from here during the inquest. She has a married sister, I believe?’
‘Yes she has, in Bedfordshire. But I really don’t think Meriel could go to her. They’ve never got on well, you see. She does have an aunt she likes though, up in London. She stayed with her only last week, as a matter of fact, on her way back from France.’
Only last week? Already it seemed an age away!
‘Capital.’ The consultant brushed a crumb from his knee with a brisk dismissive gesture and rose to his feet. ‘Well then, if Mrs Ashby is agreeable, I’d suggest that you arrange for her to stay with this aunt for a week or two. Maybe even longer if the change of scene proves beneficial. But at all costs avoid exciting the woman or increasing the stress on her in any way at all. There’s still a possibility that she could be adversely affected. On the one hand she could regain her memory of the past quite suddenly, like our man from Lens. But on the other she could withdraw from reality altogether, if she felt threatened.
‘Give her time, plenty of time, and try to keep things on an even keel,’ he concluded in the hallway, while Gladys produced his overcoat and Simmie herself attended to the door. ‘And don’t expect too much of her too soon, Miss Sims, that’s my advice to you. I may be wrong, indeed I hope I am. But I fear that it will prove a lengthy business.’