Marie-Céleste’s surgery was nothing like his father’s, either in Wimbledon or in Brighton. There was linoleum on the floor and the walls were painted a sunshine yellow. There were more posters. This time to do with ‘When to call your doctor’ and family planning. The familiar pale blue back numbers of the British Medical Journal were stacked in bookcases round the walls (Ernest, he presumed, wouldn’t have them in the flat) and there was a white-painted trolley with tongue depressors and the usual instruments for inspecting the usual orifices. It was practical rather than sterile or luxurious. The most elegant thing about the room, which wasn’t large, was Marie-Céleste herself. She sat at the desk in a green wool skirt and sweater and dark brown snakeskin shoes. She was putting down the phone, which must have been the intercom, as he came in. She did not look at him for a moment.
“Come in Mr Johnson, I understand you want to see me privat… Oscar! What are you doing here?”
He sat down on one of the two worn, vinyl-seated chairs.
“It’s me ’eart, doctor. It won’t stop banging.”
She leaned back. “You’re very naughty.”
“I like being naughty.”
“Is anything wrong? I mean why did you come?”
“Can’t come this afternoon. Wanted to see you.”
“What’s happened?”
“Going to Dr Adler.”
She looked concerned. “Nothing wrong?”
“Just need to talk. Seem to be getting myself in a mess.”
“Every afternoon?”
He shook his head. “Just today. How was Ernest?” He had to know.
“As usual.”
“Did you sleep with him?”
She shook her head.
“Did you tell him?”
She shook it again.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. He’ll go mad; want me to stop working. Wrap me in cotton wool.”
“You’ll have to tell him.”
“I know. Did you sleep with Karen?”
“No. She wanted me to.”
“I don’t want to know.”
“You asked me.”
“I’m sorry. Never tell me. Lie to me if you must.”
“Too many lies. It’s getting worse.”
“Do they worry you?”
“Yes. You?”
“Not really. It’s easy to lie to Ernest.”
He looked at the worn, red leather examination couch. Her eyes followed his.
She laughed. “You must be crazy!”
“Can’t lie to you, can I? Don’t you want to examine me?”
“It would take too long. Far too long.”
“What about all the poor souls out there?”
“F— them.”
“Really?”
“If you ever dared I’d murder you. Oscar John Heath. Come here.”
She came round from behind the desk. He stood up and took her in his arms.
“That’s better.” He lost count of place, time. His hand was up her skirt, caressing her. They didn’t hear the door open.
“Dr Burns, I…” The receptionist, with a letter in her hand, stood transfixed at the door.
Marie-Céleste released herself, smoothing her skirt.
“Yes, Mrs Wilson?”
“I, I er…it can wait.” She beat a hasty retreat and shut the door.
“Will you get struck off?”
“I shall probably have to revive poor Mrs Wilson from the shock.”
“Will she…?”
“Say anything? Good lord no. She’s worked for me ever since I’ve been in practice. I didn’t particularly want her to know but now that she does you can trust her.”
“How can you be sure?”
“You can take my word.”
“Phew! I feel like a naughty schoolboy caught in the act. I suppose I am now meant to walk through the waiting room with my prescription clutched in my sticky little hand.”
“You haven’t a prescription.”
“Well, give me one.”
She went to the desk and scribbled something on her pad. “Not to be opened until you get outside.”
“I hope it’s not too unpleasant.”
“I assure you.”
“Tomorrow?”
She nodded.
“How does one survive?”
“One survives.”
Why were women always so much stronger?
He did not touch her again. He stopped at the door to regain his composure, then strode through the waiting room, avoiding the eye of Mrs Wilson.
In the car he unfolded the prescription. Above her name and Health Service number was written: ‘Je t’adore’.
“I love her,” he told the ceiling of Dr Adler’s room at two minutes past three. “It is affecting my sanity, for what it’s worth.”
“Love has been described as a state of temporary insanity.”
“I can think of nothing else. Can’t work. I shout at Karen, the children. I only exist when I’m with her.”
“Your family seem real enough when you talk about them.”
“My entire existence and happiness are embodied in Marie-Céleste…”
“For the moment perhaps?”
“…why do you interrupt? Either you say nothing for hours or interrupt when I’m in the middle of saying something. I was about to add my child too.”
“Is the child yours?”
“Yes.” He lied.
Silence.
“I don’t want to leave Karen, the children. I am totally confused.”
“You are prone, Oscar, to ‘falling in love’.”
“You must be out of your mind. When have I ever…?”
“The girl at Benthorpe’s, Rosy’s English teacher, the woman on the beach in Yugoslavia… You don’t remember?”
“Fantasies. Marie-Céleste is real.”
“You are acting out your fantasies, for the first time perhaps.”
“You know it’s the first time. She doesn’t mind what I do; in or out of bed.”
“Who else didn’t mind what you did? As an infant.”
“Marie-Céleste is not my mother.”
“Perhaps your unconscious recognizes in her qualities which remind you of the primary love object.”
“According to you my feelings towards my mother were ambivalent, unresolved…remember the Mars bars…for Marie-Céleste these is no hostility; only love.”
“For the moment.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just now she is ‘idealized’. She appears to have all the qualities you would have chosen in your mother, had you been given the opportunity.”
“I told you. There are only positive feelings.”
“You have excluded the negative ones.”
“They do not exist.”
“Yet.”
“They never will.”
“That is not possible. You know it. Doesn’t she want to leave her husband?”
“I haven’t asked her.”
“Why not? Perhaps you don’t really want to resolve the mixed feelings you have not yet resolved towards your own mother in this surrogate mother.”
“Marie-Céleste is not my mother. Tell me what to do.”
“We can’t work through it in one session.”
“Nor in a thousand. Coming up here is like Sisyphus. He spends years rolling his ball up to the top of the ruddy hill and just as he thinks he’s got there down it rolls again. It’s a giant hoax perpetrated by the analysts.”
“You don’t have to come.”
“I have to come. Benthorpe are expecting the book in two months. I haven’t written a word in weeks. Can’t seem to concentrate. There are no books in Marie-Céleste’s flat. I’ve suddenly realized. Not a book. Neither hers nor Ernest’s. Country Life, Financial Times… There were BMJs in her surgery, hundreds of them. She says the baby is Ernest’s.”
Silence.
“I don’t want it to be Ernest’s. More than Rosy, more than Daisy, this one I want to be mine. I cannot believe Ernest is his father.”
“What makes you so sure it’s a boy?”
“It’s a boy.”
“We shall have to wait and see.”
“You may have to. I know. I want to stay with her while it is born, right to the end, not like with Rosy and Daisy, coming back when it’s all cleaned up. I want to see her giant orgasm… I want to share it; more than anything. It has nothing to do with Ernest. He can wait outside if he likes. Once I went with my father to deliver a baby. He didn’t know it was that so he took me in the car. He was a long time and the car windows were open and so were the windows of the house which were right on the street. This woman was screaming and screaming. I think she was Irish, she kept saying things like ‘Mitherogod!’ It was horrible. I thought my father was killing her. Then it was quiet and a baby cried. A nurse went in and my father came out beaming, with his case. I said, ‘Why did you hurt her?’ and he laughed and said ‘Naughty Mrs Dogherty thought she was putting on weight and has nine already and should have known better.’ Then he said he was sorry to have been so long and did I know what was for dinner. When I was very small I thought he actually took the babies in his case, then my cousin Lois said don’t be stupid he pulls them out on a long string through your tummy button. I imagined the string like a skipping rope. I still think of it when I see a skipping rope. Those games they play and the ryhmes ‘salt, mustard, vinegar, pepper’. Children are better informed these days, Rosy and Daisy can quote precise anatomical details chapter and verse. They are lucky.”
“The information may help them intellectually; not emotionally.”
“I still envy them their ability to talk about things which were taboo in my days; their freedom. I heard Daisy ask Rosy the other day how old she was going to be when she first ‘did it’.”
“What did Rosy say?”
“Fourteen. When they try our door and it’s locked they say, ‘Oh they’re at it again’. I never imagined my parents doing anything so outrageous except once, to conceive me; that was hard.”
“Perhaps you don’t want to imagine it.”
“Come to think of it I don’t think they ever did…”
“Come now!”
“Honestly. I’ve never seen my mother and father do anything that could have the slightest possible sexual connotation. It was different in those days.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“Yes. My father was too busy.”
“You like to think he was. Then you could have your mother all to yourself.”
“No. He was busy from the moment he woke up until he went to bed at night. With his patients.”
“He was too tired. He often had to get up in the night and go out, remember?”
“Did they sleep in a double bed?”
“Yes. Still do.”
Silence.
“They just lived; side by side.”
“Now perhaps.”
“Always did. I’m sure.” He tried to imagine his mother, grey haired and aging rapidly, lying with her legs spreadeagled, his plump little father with an erection.
“Yes?”
Silence.
“Well, we shall have to leave it for another time.”
“F— you,” Oscar said and angrily got off the couch.
“We have to decide about the summer,” Karen said. “I have to let Boyd know when I want to take my holiday.”
“I don’t particularly want to go away.”
“Why not? That’s not like you. Besides, I think you need a holiday more than ever.”
“I’ve just had one.”
“That was work. It doesn’t count.” She took out her diary. “Rosy and Daisy are going away with the school in June. Daisy’s class is going to the country and Rosy’s to Brittany; so I thought probably about the middle of August to spread things out a bit.”
“Whatever you like.”
“I can’t fix it without you. Where do you want to go? France, Italy, Greece, Spain, touring…?”
“I told you I don’t want to go away.”
“Well, I do; and the girls. They enjoy holidays with us.”
“Fix it up then. It’ll be OK with me.”
“Sure you won’t consider France?”
“I don’t mind.”
“But you said…”
“Not that end. Not Villefranche. It’s too…busy in August. So much traffic. You can hardly move. I don’t mind the other end.”
“The girls can practise their French. Shall we take the car?”
He shrugged.
“Oh, come on, Oscar!” She wrote in her diary. “We’ll make it about the twentieth then and drive down, if that’s all right with you. I’ll find a little place we haven’t been to.” She flipped over the pages of the diary. “Oh yes, June the sixteenth I have to go to Edinburgh with Boyd. He’s giving a lecture. It works out quite well because both the girls will be away.” She looked at him. “You don’t mind?”
He smiled. “Live a little.”
“My God, with Boyd!”
“What did Mrs Wilson say?” he asked Marie-Céleste next afternoon in her flat.
“Nothing. It’s not her business.”
“Come off it, M-C. Don’t expect me to believe you talked about the morning visits as if nothing at all happened.” They were in the flat drinking tea and eating Fortnum’s chocolate almond biscuits.
She poured more water into the silver pot and stirred it.
“We did have a heart to heart over coffee.”
“Thought so. What did she say?”
“She told me about how she went to Rimini on a package for ten days without her husband and met this gorgeous man from Manchester. She had one wild week before the bottom fell out of her world and she had to go home to the old man and the kids. It took her a year to get over it.”
“I meant about me.” He was not interested in Mrs Wilson’s tawdry love life. “What did she say about me?”
“Nothing. I just told her how it was.”
“You keep telling people.”
“Only Mrs Wilson. We’ve known each other for years. She’s the soul of discretion.”
“And Marie-Claire.”
“You said you didn’t mind about Marie-Claire.”
“No.”
“That’s all then.”
“I’d like to tell the whole world. I don’t like all this secrecy.”
“What did Dr Adler say?”
“F— all, as usual. ‘Love is a state of temporary insanity’, if I understood him correctly. I hope I never regain my sanity.” He did not tell her she represented the good mother. He didn’t think she’d be very flattered. He didn’t believe it anyway.
“I told Ernest. About the child.”
“I’m sorry you did. I wanted to keep it to ourselves a bit longer.”
“It’s his child.”
“Debatable.”
“You won’t give up, will you?”
“No.”
She hadn’t intended to tell him just then. He had taken her to dinner at the White Elephant; homecoming celebration; he had missed her while she was in France. They’d had a drink at the bar, recognizing one or two acquaintances and a stoned disc jockey who was draped on a stool over a Buck’s Fizz.
When their table was ready Marie-Céleste said she’d start with consommé. Ernest looked surprised and suggested pâté, avocado pear with shrimps, smoked salmon. She stuck to consommé and Ernest ordered giant Mediterranean prawns, his favourite. When they came they arched obscenely pink over their silver, ice-filled goblet. He took one in his finger and cracked it.
“I always think…” he said.
“Excuse me,” Marie-Céleste said and made off in the direction of the ladies’ room.
When she came back Ernest, solicitous as always, had made the waiter put the soup back to warm on the little spirit stove on the serving trolley. He’d made no progress with the prawns.
She sat back next to him on the banquette. The waiter laid her napkin across her lap and put a fresh bowl in front of her into which he ladled the soup.
Ernest said: “Are you all right, darling? You look a bit pale.”
“I’m going to have a baby,” she said stupidly. “It’s the Mediterranean prawns.”
Ernest’s first reaction was to call the waiter, who came running, to remove the prawns. His second was to cancel the wine he had ordered, and to ask for a bottle of Château Latour 1962, Premier cru Pauillac.
Turning to Marie-Céleste he said: “I think you’ll like this. I know you don’t care for champagne.”
She waited for him to kiss her, take her hand.
He said: “You must stop work immediately, and we must get the finest gynaecologist.”
“Ernest, I’m having a baby, not the drawing-room re-decorated.”
“What on earth’s that got to do with it?”
“Don’t you care?”
“My God, you know I care. That’s why we must have the top man.”
It was useless.
“I’ve no intention of giving up work and Dr Boyd will look after me.”
“There’s no question of you working. You can get a locum tomorrow.”
“It’s good for me.”
“Besides there will be things to do. You’d better go and stay with Mother while we make a nursery out of the second bedroom. What about the nurse? Where will she sleep? With the child or do you think that we should move?”
“Ernest, I’m pregnant, not ill, and I haven’t the slightest intention of giving up work or going to stay with your mother; and there’s absolutely no need to move; it’s only one. Not twins or triplets.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t. But I can take a pretty good guess.”
“What’s the feller’s name who delivers the royal family?”
“I’ve no idea but he’s about ninety. I’m going to ask Alan Boyd to look after me. I did my midwifery with him and I like him. I’ve already made an appointment,” she lied.
“I’m not happy about it.”
“But then you’re not having the baby.”
“I’ll have to make some enquiries.”
“I’ve made up my mind. You’ll be wasting your time. Ernest, do we have to argue?”
He was immediately concerned. “Oh I’m sorry, darling. It’s just that we’ve waited a long time. I don’t want anything to go wrong.”
She felt sorry for him.
“It won’t go wrong.”
“I’d never forgive myself. What shall we call him?”
“Him?”
“Bound to be a boy. What about Warnford, after my father?”
“Not exactly my favourite name,” Marie-Céleste said. “Will you love me when I grow fat and hideous?”
Oscar looked at her, and put out his hand. “Come into the bedroom.”
The telephone started to ring. She tried to pull away. “Leave it!” he said masterfully.
It was still ringing when they’d got undressed.
“I’m supposed to be on duty,” Marie-Céleste said.
“They can always phone someone else or call the police.” He pulled her towards him. “…before you get hideous and fat.”
She leaned over to the telephone and switched off the bell.
When they made love he was careful not to hurt the baby although she said it didn’t matter, couldn’t possibly come to any harm. He was surprised at the new depths of tenderness he found within himself provoked by her condition. In all his married life love had never been like this. He did not want to leave her. She did not want him to. They had more tea and chocolate biscuits. Mrs Hubble would be gone; Rosy and Daisy home. He did not care. What was it Dr Adler had said about losing touch with reality? She was wearing the white negligée.
“I would like to be married.”
“You are.”
“To you. Newly weds expecting our first child.”
“You already have two; and a wife. You can’t expunge them. You don’t want to. Do you?”
“Only when I’m with you. It’s as if they did not exist. Have never existed.”
“Cuckoo-cloud land.”
He smiled.
“What are you smiling at?”
“Occasionally, just occasionally you betray your origins. It doesn’t happen very often. ‘Cuckoo-cloud land’. I like it.”
“It’s what my mother always called it. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. It’s perfect.”
“Tell me?”
“No.”
“I insist.”
“You can go on insisting.”
“I shall make you.”
“Try!”
She put down her tea cup and hurled herself at him. He pulled apart the two sides of the negligée so that her naked body fell against him.
“Oh Oscar.”
He held her tightly.
“Marie-Céleste.”
It was almost dark when he got home. He felt exhausted, relaxed and happy all at once. He whistled as he leaped up the steps.
He took out his key but before he had a chance to use it the door opened and Araminta, a purple feather boa slung around her neck, was framed in the doorway.
“You again!”
“You poor lamb!” she said dramatically, holding out both hands.
“What on earth are you talking about? Where is everybody?”
“Come inside and sit down.” She took hold of his arms, pulling him.
“Take it easy. Why do I have to sit down?” He grew suspicious. “Is anything wrong?”
“I’ll pour you a brandy.”
He put his hands on her shoulders and shook her. “Look now, Araminta, this is my house and my family. I don’t know what you’re doing here or what you’re talking about so kindly expain; pronto!”
She dropped the melodramatics.
“It’s Daisy,” she said, her voice quivering slightly despite her apparent composure. “It’s Rosy’s dancing day and they just couldn’t leave you a note so they got me and your wife is there now…”
“Where?”
“At the hospital.”
“What hospital?”
“I was just going to tell you.” She was almost in tears. “It started at school and she had this terrible pain and Miss Jupp got your wife and we came home in a taxi. I carried her books. We tried and tried to ring the doctor but there was no answer and Daisy was screaming the place down and I thought she was going to…then when we couldn’t get the doctor the ambulance came with its bell ringing and everyone in the street…”
He shook her. “Which hospital? What’s the matter?”
“St George’s. I don’t know. Your wife said to come straight away.”
He hurled himself down the steps, ricking his ankle, and into the car. His hands trembled as he fumbled with the ignition. He did a clumsy three point turn, mounting the pavement recklessly. Every car he passed flashed lights at him angrily. He realized that he’d forgotten to put his on.
It was rush hour and he decided to avoid the main roads. Every side street was solid with traffic. It started to rain and he turned on the windscreen wipers…we tried and tried to ring the doctor but there was no answer and Daisy was screaming the place down…will you love me when I grow fat and hideous… come into the bedroom…come into the bedroom…it was then that the telephone had started to ring. ‘Let it ring,’ he’d said, no that wasn’t right. ‘Leave it. They can always phone someone else or get the police…’ What a damned stupid thing to say, as if the police could do anything. My daughter died M’lud while I was f— the doctor. But Daisy wasn’t dead. The long crawl. Every light was red. When there was a green the driver in front left his car to adjust his windscreen wipers, huddled against the rain, he waved cheerfully to Oscar as he got back into his car by which time the lights were again red. He tried to ignore the zebra crossings. On one a woman with a dozen small children waited tentatively with her pram; she thanked him politely. On another a blind man held his white stick in the air. It simply could not be true. A building lorry turned in the road; there was an accident at a bollard, reducing the traffic to single file; he found himself behind a learner…why the bloody hell did they have to learn at this time of the night on busy roads…he waved his arm importantly, indicating a left turn…bloody well get on with it then if you’re going to f— well turn. In town the traffic was solid, people standing abortively in the wet gutters waiting for taxis. A traffic warden with fat legs stepped into the road in front of him, motioning him to stop while a flurry of pedestrians crossed. He wondered if he should ask for a police escort. No journey had ever taken so long. If Daisy died…it was probably something she had eaten. What had they had for dinner the night before? Roast lamb; he had never heard of anyone getting food poisoning from roast lamb. Hamburgers or sausages, yes, even fish fingers…but roast lamb! You never know what rubbish they gave them to eat at school but then the whole class, the whole school would have…not just Daisy…of course she was a great dramatist, they all were at nine, a proper little actress, exaggerated everything. He remembered when she’d been stung by a wasp in the summer the noise had been heard to the end of the street as if she’d been murdered, screamed and screamed, probably nothing at all. Araminta dramatized even more, squeezing everything possible out of every situation; it was his fault of course for being with Marie-Céleste, his punishment had arrived swiftly but surely; you have a punishing conscience Dr Adler said, what ever you do or say there will be retribution you wait for it expect it load yourself with guilt for which you punish yourself become depressed…
There was a tap on his windscreen. He lowered the window and a policeman put his head through.
“Didn’t you see the red light, sir?”
Sir. Always polite. Did they call you Sir when you’d just murdered someone, wiping the blood off your hands with a towel? Excuse me, Sir, I wondered whether you realized you just killed…
“Amber.”
“No, sir. The light was red as you approached the white line.” He reached for his top pocket. A car behind hooted. “If you’d just pull into the side there, sir.”
“Look, officer…” They always liked it if you called them officer. Silly little pip-squeak, couldn’t have been more than nineteen, twenty at most.
“Over to the side there, sir, by the lamp-post…” He was already walking off, slowly, they never hurried, not even when there had been an accident, part of their training. Keep calm and everyone will keep calm. Panic was infectious. He wondered what would happen if he drove on, explained afterwards… obstructing the police in their duty…really make them angry…couldn’t afford an endorsement…better stop and explain…he pulled into the side of the road, his heart pounding from frustration that wasn’t any good either, didn’t want to precipitate a coronary from aggression; there’d been a programme on the television where they linked drivers to ECG machines and changes were quite clearly visible particularly in men, he was a candidate anyway according to the programme, never took any exercise to speak of; afterwards he’d decided to get one of those static bicycles and knock up a few miles each day, hadn’t bothered of course then smoking and three spoons of sugar in his coffee and milk and butter and eggs and the fat off the meat he’d be lucky if he saw fifty…
“Now, sir…” the policeman said. “Have you got your driving licence on you?” He straightened up and signalled the traffic to pass on behind them.
Oscar got out of the car. He had no raincoat. The policeman, notebook in hand, waited patiently beside him.
Oscar took a deep breath. “Look, officer, I’m terribly sorry about the lights if I did cross them but my daughter is extremely ill and I’m trying to get to St George’s hospital. It’s already taken me three quarters of an hour from Hampstead…”
“I’m sorry to hear that, sir. I won’t keep you any longer than necessary. If you could just show me your driving licence and insurance certificate.”
“Look, I haven’t got anything on me, I’ll bring it round to the police station in the morning. Just let me get on…”
He was writing in his notebook. “Does the car belong to you, sir?” Silly young c—. “Yes, it does,” Oscar shouted, “and I’m bloody well going to the hospital and if anything happens to my daughter because of you…”
He got into the car and slammed the door. The policeman put his head through the window and handed him a slip of paper. “Report here, please, sir, with all the necessary documents within thirty-six hours. I’m charging you with dangerous driving…”
“I’ve explained,” Oscar said. “I’m trying…” Oh what the bloody hell. He hadn’t even noticed the bloody light. He was soaked to the skin. He pulled out into the traffic causing the driver behind to slam on his brakes and flash him angrily. Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. Give a dog a bad name… He gritted his teeth and drove dangerously, cutting in and out of the steaming traffic.
He was wet both with rain and with sweat by the time he pulled up in front of the hospital. He got out of the car and slammed the door in one fluid motion. A man with a peaked cap appeared.
“You can’t park there,” he said. “Can’t you see the sign ‘Ambulances Only’? It’s writ big enough. Car park’s round to your…”
“F— you!” Oscar said and ran towards where it said ‘Out Patients’. Inside there was an enquiry desk. An Indian girl with long black hair and a red caste mark above her nose was writing laboriously.
“Look, my daughter’s been admitted urgently. Where do I find her?”
She finished her word.
“You want the Casualty Department.” She pointed her biro. “Outside, first turning on the left, second entrance. You’ll see the notice, ‘Casualty’.”
He didn’t want to go outside again to where he had left his car. There must be a way through the hospital. He made for X-Ray and Pathology.
“Not that way, please…” the girl called.
He ran along the corridors until he was well away from the entrance through which he had come. When he’d gone far enough he tapped a white coat on the back. A black face, serious in glasses, turned to him.
“My daughter’s been admitted urgently,” he panted. “I’m trying to find out where she’d be.”
“Why don’t you try Casualty…?”
“I would if I could find it.”
“You’ll have to go back to Out Patients…”
“Is there no other way?”
“Terribly sorry. It’s a separate building, you see. Up here are only the wards and if you don’t know…”
He ducked past his car with his head down and his collar up, inventing a limp at the same time as he ran to avoid recognition. In Casualty he stopped the first nurse he saw.
“I wonder if you could help me find my daughter…”
“I’m sorry. I’m from Haematology. Why don’t you find Sister Casualty?”
“I’d like to. Where is she?”
She smiled at him. “She’ll be around, somewhere.” She hurried off with a rustle of apron.
It took him another ten minutes to find Karen. She was waiting in a small alcove in which there were two armchairs, two upright chairs and a table with three magazines, off a polished corridor.
She was standing up and threw herself at him.
“Thank God. Where have you been?”
“Where is she? Where’s Daisy?”
Karen, who had been dry-eyed, let the tears flow. “She’s in the operating theatre. She’s been there for hours. I’ve been going crazy. They rang me from school and I brought her home and tried to get Marie-Céleste. The phone rang and rang. It wasn’t on transfer or anything. I checked with the operator. I kept ringing for at least half an hour then Daisy was screaming the place down so I called an ambulance, at least Araminta did, she’s absolutely marvellous in an emergency. They didn’t want to come without a doctor’s letter and all that but I said I’d sue them if they didn’t come immediately and they came and Daisy didn’t stop screaming all the way and the ambulance man said she wasn’t putting it on, her pulse was very thin and rapid but he couldn’t give her anything because it seemed to be her abdomen. They’ve been absolutely wonderful here. The casualty officer was about twelve but the consultant happened to be in the wards and he saw her almost immediately and said take her up to the theatre and before I knew she was on a trolley and whipped away…he thinks she’s perforated her appendix.”
“She’ll be all right…?”
“He said so. Not to worry and all that, but they can be very tricky.” She looked at her watch. “I can’t imagine how it can take so long. Everyone’s been very kind and Sister brought me a cup of tea but I didn’t know where you were and Araminta offered to stay…”
Oscar held her close. “I’m here now.”
“You’re soaking.”
“It’s raining. Cats and dogs.”
“I don’t know why she didn’t answer the phone!”
“Poor darling,” Oscar said
If Daisy dies I’ll never see Marie-Céleste again.