Seven Dials (24 page)

‘Protection?’

‘Aye - protection!’ Sophie slammed her bowl and wooden spoon down on the table and looked hard at Charlie. ‘Can’t you see how much that scar helps him? It gives him something to blame when owt goes wrong. If he can’t get what he wants because he doesn’t have the wit to get it, or the talent, or he’s too airy fairy in his notions to stick at working for it, then he can blame his injury and feel better for it.’ Her Yorkshire accent seemed to increase as she became more intense, though her voice stayed equable and she seemed as composed as ever; but Charlie was aware of a great deal of strong feeling in that compact little body and found it more than a little disturbing.

‘But it’s a handicap to him,’ Charlie said, needing to explain to this silly woman what the problem was, even though it ought to be obvious even to her. ‘He’s an actor - an actor with a damaged face. How can he get decent parts looking like that and -’

‘Ah, such stuff!’ Sophie said, and suddenly, oddly, laughed. ‘Eh, but he’s a clever lad, that brother o’ mine. He’s even got you believing it, hasn’t he? Well, he could always charm the birds off the trees, let alone the girls into the bushes. He hasn’t changed from the time he turned twelve and found out what he had that the lasses liked so well. He’s not handicapped from his acting by his face, Miss Lucas! He’s handicapped because he doesn’t have a great deal of talent. He’s got a great deal of charm and fun in him and that always works wonders, but talent is something else again. My sister Katy, now,
she’s
got talent. Too much. If it’s not used, the way it hasn’t been lately, it turns sour in her like milk and makes everything about her go all wrong. The sooner she gets back to some real work and can think about that instead of her own silly face the better off she’ll be. But Brin, now, he’s different. Our Brin is a good sweet lad in many ways, but he was always the same. Fancied more than he could have, do you see? He fancied this business
of being an actor when he was a lad and saw Katy’s pictures in all the papers, and there was nothing for it but he must go and try it too. I told him he’d be better off doing something else, and he wouldn’t have it, but I wasn’t far wrong. He never did get anywhere much - Katy was working as an actress in no time, but he? Not he. They saw he was no more than a good-looking lad with a lot of charm and they didn’t give him the parts he wanted. Well, they still don’t, but now he’s got a scar to blame for it, and that helps. And here’s you trying to take it away from him.’

She shook her head and returned to her bowl of sugar and margarine, slapping her wooden spoon noisily against its sides as she blended her ingredients together.

‘You’ll be doing him no service if you do that. So I’ll not deliver your message, and I’m hoping you’ll go away and not deliver it yourself either. It’ll all come to no good if you do.’

Charlie sat there, not knowing what to do, and suddenly it was as though she could hear Max Lackland’s voice. ‘I looked at that scar carefully,’ he had said in that cool spare voice of his. ‘- It’s nothing like as hideous as he maintains it is -’ And she had pushed her hands more deeply into the pockets of her white coat and hated him for being so dispassionate about Brin, when Brin was so full of life and excitement and pain and need - and she had refused to think of her own doubts about the severity of his injury, the way that the wrinkling of his eye and the puckering of his lip added to his attraction when he grinned at her.

None of that mattered, she had told herself, and she repeated it inside her head now. Other people’s opinions of Brin’s need didn’t matter. All that was important was how Brin himself felt; and if he wanted his scar operated on then she was going to do it for him. She, who had spent these long months learning and practising, working all the hours God sent to be ready to do it for him, was going to operate and make him happy again. No matter what his sister said.

‘Do you like your brother, Mrs Priestly?’ she said abruptly, and Sophie looked up at her consideringly.

‘He’s my brother,’ she said after a moment, and returned her attention to her bowl, to which she was now adding flour from a sifter, making clouds of white dust through which the sun slanted from the little window on the far side of the small
kitchen. ‘Of course I love him.’

‘I didn’t ask you that,’ Charlie said, her own voice as controlled as she could make it. ‘I asked if you liked him.’

Sophie seemed to contemplate the question for a while, her hands still busy and then she said calmly, ‘Parts of him are very likeable. Parts are not and need changing. I’ve done my best since my mother died to watch over him, grown man though he was at the time. She was the only one who might have made him see how daft he can be and made him change. I’m still trying to teach him, but I’m not too good at it. I’m beginning to doubt I ever will manage it. But I have to go on trying.’

Charlie’s lip lifted at the corner in a small gesture of distaste. ‘I see. So you see him as someone who has to be cared for. Someone to be taught like a helpless child. Not a man in his own right -’

‘I would if he were a man. His brother George, now - he was a man before he reached seventeen. Grew up as fine and sensible as any could wish. But Brin - eldest son, d’you see, and a bit spoiled, I think. I’ve done my best, but there it is. He’s not grown up yet. He’ll have to be sooner or later. I’m hoping he can do it without too much hurt to himself or others - and he’ll not be helped by having operations on his face.’

‘I think he will,’ Charlie said levelly. ‘I’m his doctor. I have a training in these matters -’

And what do you know? You with no training at all? The question hung unspoken in the air between them and Sophie smiled at it.

‘Oh, I know I’m just a country woman, never did owt much but stay home and mind an ailing mother and an old dad and watch over my brothers and sisters. Didn’t even manage to stay married long, did I? But for all that, I’ve learned a little in my small world, Miss Lucas. And I’ve learned my brother’s ways and needs and -’

‘Learned your own!’ Charlie said and stood up, unable to control her anger any longer. ‘You’ve said it all, you know, even if you don’t realize it. You’ve never done anything but look after people, and now, with no husband - and I do of course offer my sympathies there, that was very sad - and your parents dead - what is there for you to do? You’ve got to find someone else to look after, and you’ve chosen Brin - and if keeping him in his mutilated state keeps him helpless, well
that’s the way it’ll have to be. And never mind what Brin needs. It’s what
you
need you’re concerned about.’

‘I thought about that,’ Sophie said, amazingly, and smiled at Charlie. ‘Oh, I thought about that a lot. There, that’s the buns ready.’ She looked down in satisfaction at the tray of buns she had set ready for baking. ‘I’ll pop those in the oven and then I’ll make us a cup of tea.’

She turned to the oven and with a practised twist of her wrist set her baking tray on the top shelf and clicked it shut. She was smiling as she straightened her back and turned to look at Charlie again.

‘Oh, yes, I thought about that. Was I making him worse coming here to take care of him? Laid awake at night thinking of that, and talked to Letty - she’s my aunt - d’you know her? She’s a wise woman, is Letty. Knows more than she realizes, and I put a lot of store by what she says. And she says as I do. He’s got a potential, has Brin, but not till he finds out he can’t get by, all the time, on charm and smirks. He’s got to do some growing up like I said, and I’m going to teach him. I’ve plans for myself, one day, but I couldn’t live with my conscience if I left him to stew in his own juice, now, could I? No, Miss Lucas, believe me - I’m not holding the lad back for my own ends. My ends are different. But I have my responsibilities too and I can’t shirk them, now, can I?’

She spoke with such an air of sweet reason that for a moment Charlie was beguiled by her and she thought suddenly - Brin isn’t the only one in his family with charm. She’s got it too, and that thought hardened her mind against Sophie.

‘You wouldn’t be the first person to hide an ulterior motive behind apparently high-minded behaviour,’ she said. ‘The sort of people who maintain this-will-hurt-you-more-than-it-hurts-me, and I-have-to-be-cruel-to-be-kind and all the rest of those silly clichés - everyone that I’ve ever come across is seeking comfort for themselves in what they’re doing. I don’t see anything in you that makes me think you’re any different. Brin is an adult in every way. He knows what he wants and he has every right to do what he thinks is best for himself. He doesn’t have to defer to you in a matter that is, frankly, none of your concern.’

‘Oh, I’m sure I do look like a meddling old woman to you,’

Sophie said. ‘Though I’m not that old. Nearly forty, I grant you, but that’s not so old. I’ve plenty of good living to do yet.’ And a small smile hovered over the corners of her mouth for a moment and she looked down at the kettle she had just set on the stove top. ‘But I assure you I’m not. I’ve thought of every criticism of myself that you have and a good many more. And I know I’m right. Brin has to learn to stand on his own two feet - and encouraging his silly vanity over this scar isn’t going to help him do that, is it? He needs to be taught to be what he is, instead of daydreaming about what he can’t be.’

‘I can’t see any point in continuing this conversation any longer,’ Charlie said stiffly and stood up, collecting her bag and gloves together with slightly shaking fingers. If she didn’t control herself very carefully she would scream at this maddeningly calm woman like a fishwife. ‘I’ll talk to Brin myself. You needn’t worry yourself. I’ll arrange this operation and he’ll have it when
he
and
I
decide it’s right. One patient, one doctor, and no one else’s interference -’

‘I shall still interfere as much as I can,’ Sophie said and her voice was as calm still as if she were talking about the recipes she used for her baking. ‘I dare say I’ll not succeed, but I do have to try. I’d have hoped you’d see that, Miss Lucas. If you really care for him as much as you seem to.’ And she gave Charlie so shrewd a glance that Charlie felt her face get red, and was glad of the warmth of the July afternoon and the hot little kitchen to give her an excuse for it.

‘Good afternoon,’ she said shortly, not trusting herself to say more, and went, leaving the heat and the drifting smell of freshly baked buns and yeast and sugar and the round slightly sweating figure of Sophie to escape into the petrol-reeking heat of Earlham Street, but feeling she could at least breathe there. How dare that woman talk to her so, how dare she meddle so unashamedly in Brin’s affairs! It was appalling, outrageous, and as she went marching down towards Cambridge Circus she luxuriated in the fury that rose in her, fanning it with her thoughts, needing to express her anger with vigour.

Just wait till I see Brin, she thought. Just wait! I’ll tell him all she said, every word, alert him to the way she’s trying to take him over, run his life - oh, I’ll tell him -

She reached the Circus and stood uncertainly on the kerb,
not knowing quite what to do. She looked at her watch and frowned; just three o’clock. Brin had told her when she had telephoned the rehearsal room that he couldn’t talk then; they were up to their ears and he’d try to talk later, he’d said hurriedly, and hung up, and that was why she had gone to the flat. She had expected perhaps to find Mrs Burroughs, the daily help, there, and had intended to leave a message for him and then go back to East Grinstead to finish her packing ready for her return to Nellie’s in a few days’ time, having spent the early part of the day at Nellie’s in discussions about the job she was to return to. Pleasant though it always was to see Brin, she had decided, the present heat wave that had clamped its evil smelly hand on London was more than she felt she could bear; it would be much cooler in West Sussex, that was for certain.

But now she knew she had to stay and see Brin, no matter how late he got out of the rehearsal. The sooner she warned him of his sister’s dangerous attitudes, as she now regarded them as being, the better. He must send her packing, home-baked bread and all, that’s what he must do, she thought grimly, and went across the road towards that all too familiar Lyons’ teashop on the far side, to while away as much time as she could over stewed tea and leathery toast. Once again, just as she thought Brin’s problems were on the point of being solved, a new one reared its head. It really was getting more and more difficult having him for a patient, she thought, as she ordered her tea from the counter and went to sit at a grubby marble-topped table. If only he could be just a friend. Or something more.

But
that
was an outrageous thought, enough to get a doctor struck off, and not to be entertained. But it was an agreeable thought for all that, and it stayed with her all the time she sat in the stuffy teashop, refusing to leave her in peace, while she waited to go and see him.

The sky over Cambridge Circus was a rich deep blue by the time she emerged from the teashop. She had managed to stretch the eating of a limp salad and a toasted teacake so long that the waitresses had begun to stare at her with curiosity rather than disapproval, but at last she thought that Brin must surely have left rehearsal and made her way slowly back to Earlham Street.

There was a light in the sitting-room window of his flat and she stared up at the yellow square and for a moment her resolve failed. Suppose Sophie was still there? Suppose she had told him of their argument that afternoon, had managed to bring him round to her way of thinking? They were brother and sister, after all, and she was only an outsider; and for a moment her mind conjured up a vision of the two of them sitting side by side and staring at her with cold hostile eyes, Brin’s as remote and unfriendly as Sophie’s, and she wanted to turn and run away and forget all about the whole business. She wanted to help Brin, wanted to be with him, but was it worth all this obsessive anguish?

She tried to stand apart from herself for a moment. There in the darkening street with its smell of petrol and rotting fruit drifting over from Covent Garden market, and its exhausted gritty heat, she tried to be as cool and objective as a sensible trained woman should be, but that didn’t work. However hard she worked at being Miss Charlotte Hankin Lucas,
MB, BS
, she was still Charlie, standing and looking yearningly at the window of a man she cared about, and that realization made her feel such a fool that she moved sharply and hurried to the entrance to go running up the stairs to the front door of Brin’s flat, refusing to think any more about what she was doing. She just had to do it, and stop worrying. Just
do
it -