A Rather English Marriage (34 page)

She knelt beside his bed wearing the white dress.

‘Will you be all right? Poor love – we both feel rotten. I'll give you a ring later, sweetheart. But I really
ought
to go home now.' She kissed his throbbing, darkened forehead and Reggie smiled weakly and closed his eyes and let her go.

Reginald was still in bed when Roy arrived several hours later. He clutched his chest and tried to say that it hurt, but the words came out oddly. Roy looked at him in terror. Reginald's face was twisted, his right eye drooped, and that side of his mouth was rigid. His speech was slurred.

‘Are you all right, sir? Should I call an ambulance?'

Reginald shook his head and tried to sit up. Roy leaned across the bed to lever him up from the pillows, but the Squadron Leader was too heavy for him, and his limbs seemed slack. His hot, sweating body fell back against the pillows.

‘I'm sorry, sir, but you're too heavy. You don't look right. I ought to call a doctor, or else the ambulance. You don't look right at all.'

‘Do-er,' Reggie mumbled through twisted lips.

Roy stumbled panic-stricken from the room and half fell down the stairs. There was a telephone in the hall, but where was the local directory? He went into the study and pulled out a leather-bound book of names and addresses. With trembling fingers he turned to D for doctor and there it was, in Madam's looping handwriting: ‘Doctor Duncan', and a
number. Roy dialled and hurriedly explained what had happened. ‘It's urgent,' he pleaded, ‘it's urgent. Oh doctor, you'd best come quickly!'

‘Keep him warm and the nasal passages clear,' said the doctor in a calm voice. He repeated more simply, ‘Make sure he can breathe freely. Don't give him anything to eat or drink. I'll be with you in ten minutes. It's The Cedars, Nevill Park, isn't it?'

‘Yes … His breathing's very rough, doctor –'

‘Don't waste time talking,' the doctor interrupted. ‘Stay by him. I'm on my way.'

When Liz rang Reginald that afternoon, there was no reply. Funny, she thought. She tried again an hour later, but there was still no reply. By eight o'clock that evening she began to be alarmed. He wouldn't have gone out without telling her, surely? Could something have happened? He hadn't looked at all well in the morning. She rang every ten minutes and then broke off to watch the news. John McCarthy had been released, but they hadn't shown any pictures of him or his girlfriend after the initial press conference. In any case she couldn't concentrate for worrying about Reginald.

In the end, remembering the name of Reginald's manservant, Southgate, she looked him up in the telephone directory and, on the off chance, rang his number.

‘Oh, Madam,' said his agitated voice, ‘I'm afraid Doctor says he thinks the Squadron Leader's had a stroke. I didn't know where to get hold of you. I'm ever so sorry, Madam! Oh, he did look bad. I would have rung you, Madam, but I had no idea who you was. Your surname.'

‘Franks. Mrs Franks. Never mind that, Southgate,' she said crisply, thinking, Silly old fool not to know my
name!
‘Just tell me where he is now.'

‘He's in the Kent & Sussex, Madam. The hospital. The same one where his wife died, and my Grace.'

‘In a private ward?'

‘No, Madam, he's in Men's Casualty. At least, he was.
They said they might have to move him to Cardiac or even Intensive Care. It depends how he gets on.'

‘Will you be back at the house tomorrow?' she asked. ‘Can I get in touch with you there?'

‘Oh no, Madam,' said Roy. ‘I've left Sir. I left yesterday. I'll look in and keep an eye on things, but we're not living together any more. I've gone back to my own home.'

‘What about Mrs Simpson?' she asked, bewildered.

‘Mrs Simpson?'

‘The cook.'

‘She doesn't live in, Madam. She was just outside-catering.'

‘Who is there, then?' asked Liz irritably.

‘There's no one, Madam. Just the Squadron Leader and me. And Fred, the gardener, he comes in a day and a half a week. But he's not due now till Wednesday. That's all there is.'

‘Oh,' said Liz. ‘I see. Thank you, Southgate.'

She put the receiver down and dialled the hospital.

Liz overruled the hesitation of the nurse who picked up the phone by her crisply authoritative manner, and the Sister by her genuine concern. Sister was eventually convinced that Liz was the fiancée of Mr Conynghame-Jervis in bed number four, but said she would have to talk to the doctor, and the doctor was busy. Eventually Liz learned what had happened. The patient had had a CVA, the doctor explained – a cerebrovascular accident. The circulation of blood to the brain had been interrupted. He must have had an excruciating headache immediately beforehand: hadn't he mentioned it? (And I thought he was just hungover, thought Liz, fool that I was.) There had been some degree of cerebral haemorrhage – hopefully relatively minor – and speech and movement were impaired – on his right side, as luck would have it. They would do a lumbar puncture and a CAT scan in the morning to determine the site and extent of the damage. Meanwhile the patient was reasonably comfortable.

In plain words Reggie had suffered a stroke. Not, they thought at this stage, a major stroke, though one was often
followed by another. Quiet and rest and skilful nursing were crucial for the time being. It would be a few days before any long-term prognosis was possible. She was not advised to visit him yet. Excitement must be avoided at all costs.

It was close to midnight, and Liz was exhausted. It had been an exceptionally long day, but she had to know the implications of Reggie's stroke. She took out a medical dictionary.
Among the many possible effects
, it said,
are visual and speech disturbances, incontinence and weakness of the affected parts of the body. There may be severe vertigo, vomiting and double vision
. Dear God! thought Liz. Reginald was not, at least not for the foreseeable future, going to offer a bluff, cheery refuge from her financial crisis, his house a comfortable shelter in which she would be cosseted by a large staff. He was not even going to be the tender, considerate, devoted elderly husband she would have settled for. Reginald was going to be an invalid, wetting and shitting himself, mumbling and staggering, and
she
would become his unpaid nurse. Liz's hopes had been pricked one by one, like so many brightly coloured balloons, and Reggie himself had burst with the biggest pop! of all. She hadn't even, she reflected glumly, got the ring.

Roy was overcome with pity for the mumbling, frightened, sedated and stretcher-borne figure that was his last view of the Squadron Leader; but, however genuine, his pity was overlaid with relief that it was not going to be
his
job to minister to his needs. He had cared for Grace willingly, tenderly, happy to nurse her and see to her most intimate physical functions until almost the very end. But Reginald was a different kettle offish entirely. Roy's conscience was quite clear on that score. It seemed improbable that the glamorous lady-friend would step in, either, but his first duty was to his grandsons.

June and the boys were noisy, disruptive, unpredictable, high-spirited and demanding – but, above all,
noisy
. The radio blared in the kitchen, June singing the songs she knew and commenting on the disc jockey's ineptitude when she did not. The boys' waking hours were a continuous, animated
soundtrack played at top volume. It might be the stutter of simulated gunfire or the shriller whine of laser beams issuing from a starship; the shattering recreation of the last seconds of a head-on car crash or, in their quieter moments, the grunt and thump of straightforward hand-to-hand combat. They moderated their language for Roy's benefit, at least within his earshot, but he felt he should not curb what were, he assumed, the ordinary background noises of two healthy lads at play.

They ate mounds of hamburgers laced with HP sauce and chutney, followed by ice-cream embellished with sweet, sticky juices squeezed out in loops and whorls from plastic tubes. Their appetites were a source of pride to Roy, and an impetus to get back to the allotment.

‘I'll have to get going before it's too late to plant,' he told June. ‘I let it go this summer, had my hands full with the Squadron Leader, and never seemed to find the time to get up there. Fresh vegetables will do them a power of good: dug straight from the earth, no pesticide sprays, and none of that tasteless out-of-season produce.'

‘Don't overdo it, Dad,' she said. ‘Take Billy up with you. He's a big lad, he can help with the digging, and it'd be an education for him, watching you plant and weed. He don't know nothing about all that.'

It was true. They were the product of urban streets, their only controls those of threat or immediate punishment. They lacked the moral sense that had been drummed in to Roy as a child by his parents, his teachers and his Sunday school. Old-fashioned and stultifying it may have been, but he had lived his life by those early precepts: honour, decency, hard work, good manners and consideration towards those weaker than yourself. Such concepts were entirely alien to Billy and Joe. They laughed when he tried to explain. Their attitude was simple: you made the most of your advantage where you could, cheated where you could not, and lied your way out of trouble. Their contempt for authority was already evident. Teachers were wankers, policemen pigs.

The figures they admired and imitated were comic or intergalactic
villains, whose vocabulary of violence, revenge and pain they copied. Their father's death seemed not to have affected their fantasies of brutality. Or had it perhaps caused them? Roy wondered. His grandsons thought themselves invincible like their screen models and, although the two brothers were close, Billy often wrestled savagely with little Joe and reduced him to tears of pain and humiliation. June, despite her efforts to control herself, would have sudden outbursts of rage. She would hit out savagely at them both, and then clutch them to her, begging forgiveness. ‘You know Mum never
means
to hurt you!' she would say, and then apologize shamefacedly to Roy.

In the midst of the chaos that had transformed his orderly little house he had no time to be concerned about Reggie. Several days passed before he visited him at the hospital. He was appalled at the total change which the stroke had brought about.

Reginald recognized him, that was obvious, and struggled to express himself. His twisted mouth fought to shape words; his bulbous eyes yearned and pleaded for comprehension.

‘He's doing ever so well!' a buxom physiotherapist told Roy. ‘We walked four … five …
six
steps yesterday, didn't we, Mr Jervis?'

Reginald turned his head petulantly away from her.

‘Is there anything I can bring you, sir?' Roy asked.

‘Ith-an,' said Reggie.

‘Television?' Roy tried.

‘Ith-
anne
,' Reggie repeated.

‘Lizanne?'

Reginald nodded and shook his head. Comprehension dawned.

‘Liz!' Roy said. ‘Your lady-friend! Hasn't she been to see you, sir?'

Reginald shook his head and, to Roy's horror, tears formed in the corners of his eyes and ran down the edges of his cheeks into the pillow.

‘Ith-
anne
,' said Reggie again. A nurse came to Roy's rescue, beckoning him aside, out of earshot.

‘He must be asking for Mrs Franks again,' she said in an undertone. ‘That's his fiancée, isn't it? The lady who telephoned a few days ago. She said her name was Liz Franks. I think he'd like her to come and see him. Do you know her whereabouts?'

‘No,' said Roy, ‘but I'll find out. She rang me Sunday, the day he was brought in. I didn't know she was his fiancée. I'll get her number and say that he wants her to come and see him, if you think that would cheer him up.'

Reginald had closed his eyes. Roy patted his shoulder uncertainly, said he would look in again soon, and left the ward. The hospital reminded him poignantly of Grace's last weeks. He hadn't entered it since her death, and now the linoleum-covered corridors, the plastic chairs for visitors, the identical lockers beside each curtained bed, the get-well cards, the flowers – all made hope and grief surge once again, as they had done during those final weeks.

On his way out, the Sister intercepted him. ‘I wonder if I might have a word?' she asked, guiding him into her small, cluttered office. A poster on the wall instructed, ‘For Your Heart's Sake Get Off Your Butt.' The stout, seated character depicted, cigarette in hand, looked disconcertingly like Reggie. ‘Forgive me, but you are Mr Conynghame-Jervis's first visitor. Do you know, does he have any close family? Children?'

‘No, no children,' said Roy. ‘He has a nephew, Lord Somebody-or-other – wait, it's coming back to me: could it be Lord Glenmorangie?'

Sister smiled and shook her head. ‘Somehow I doubt it,' she said.

‘Well, there was a Lord and Lady Someone who came to his wife's funeral last year; they were family. But they've never visited him at home, as far as I know. Apart from them and his lady-friend – fiancée, she says, though it's the first
I've
heard of it – he doesn't have any friends that I know of.'

How strange this was, Roy reflected, given that Reginald was so gregarious. He had often gone to the pub for meals and
must have had drinking companions there, but he hardly ever had any telephone calls or letters, except on business. Few if any visitors had come to The Cedars. Those who did were professional people – the vicar, Mandy Hope, the doctor. Reginald had even been reduced to booking a table at the Spa Hotel for his Christmas lunch. The first Christmas after his wife died, and no one had invited him. It was worse than strange: it was disgraceful. And then of course there had been Liz.

‘Does she telephone regularly, this
fiancée?'
Roy inquired.