The Little Stranger (8 page)

‘Pretty foul, isn’t it?’ he said, in a more subdued tone, as I tried the leg and foot in various positions.

‘Well, the circulation’s sluggish, and there are a lot of adhesions. That’s not good. But I’ve certainly seen worse … How’s this?’

‘Ouch. Stinking.’

‘And this?’

He jerked away. ‘Christ! What are you trying to do, twist the damn thing off?’

I gently took hold of the leg again and set it into its natural position, and spent a moment or two simply warming and working the rigid muscle of the calf between my fingers. Then I went through the process of wiring him up: soaking squares of lint with salt solution, fixing these to the electrode plates; putting the plates in position on his leg with elastic bindings. He leaned forward to watch me do it, looking more interested now. As I made a few final adjustments to the machine he said, in a simple, boyish way, ‘That’s the condenser, is it? Yes, I see. And there’s how you interrupt the current, I suppose … Look here, do you have a licence for this? I’m not about to start sparking at the ears or anything?’

I said, ‘I hope not. But let’s just say the last patient I hooked up to this now saves a fortune on permanent waves.’

He blinked, mistaking my tone, taking me seriously for a second. Then he met my gaze—met it properly for the first time that day, perhaps for the first time ever; finally ‘seeing’ me—and he smiled. The smile lifted his features completely, and drew attention from his scars. One saw the likeness between him and his mother.

I said, ‘Are you ready?’

He grimaced, more boyish than ever. ‘I suppose so.’

‘Right, here goes.’

I threw the switch. He yelped, his leg jumping forward in an involuntary twitch. Then he started laughing.

I said, ‘Not painful?’

‘No. Like pins and needles, that’s all. Now it’s hotting up! Is that right?’

‘Perfect. Once the heat begins to fade, let me know, and I’ll turn it up a bit.’

We spent five or ten minutes like that, until the sensation of heat in his leg had reached a constant, which meant that the current had found its peak. I left the machine to look after itself then, and sat down in the second leather armchair. Roderick began to feel in his trouser pocket for his tobacco and packet of papers. But I couldn’t bear to see him roll up one of his wretched little ‘coffin nails’ again, so I got out my own case and lighter and we helped ourselves to a cigarette each. He took a long draw on his, closing his eyes and letting his head grow loose on his slender neck.

I said sympathetically, ‘You look tired.’

At once, he made an effort to sit straighter. ‘I’m all right. I was up at six this morning, that’s all, for the milking. It isn’t so bad in this weather, of course; it’s in winter that one feels it … Having Makins for a dairyman doesn’t help, though.’

‘No? Why not?’

He changed his pose again, and spoke as if reluctantly. ‘Oh, I oughtn’t to complain. He’s had it tough, with this bloody heat wave: we’ve lost milk, we’ve lost grass, we’ve already had to start the herd off on next winter’s feed. But he wants a thousand impossible things, and doesn’t have a clue about how to achieve them. That’s left to me, unfortunately. ’

I asked, ‘What sort of things?’ He said, with the same touch of reluctance, ‘Well, his big idea is for me to get an extension run out here from the water main. He wants me to bring out electricity while I’m at it. He says that even if the well fills up again, the pump is just about ready to blow. He wants me to replace that; and he’s started saying now that he thinks the milking-shed’s unsafe. He’d like me to pull it down and build a brick one. With a brick shed and an electric milker we could start turning out accredited milk, and make more of a profit. It’s all he talks about.’

He reached to a table at his side for a gun-metal ashtray, already crowded with worm-like stubs. I leaned across and tapped my cigarette into it too, saying, ‘Well, I fear he’s right about the milk.’

Roderick laughed. ‘I know he’s right! He’s right about it all. The farm’s absolutely jiggered. But what the hell am I to do about it? He keeps asking me, Why can’t I free up some capital? It’s as though he’s found the phrase in some magazine. I’ve told him frankly that Hundreds doesn’t have any capital to free. He doesn’t believe me. He sees us living here, in this great house; he thinks we’re sitting on piles of gold. He doesn’t see us blundering around in the night with candles and Tilleys because we’ve run out of oil for the generator. He doesn’t see my sister, scrubbing floors, washing dishes in cold water …’ He jerked a hand towards his desk. ‘I’ve been writing letters to the bank, and putting an application together for a building licence. I spoke to a man at the district council yesterday about the water main and the electricity. He didn’t give me much encouragement; he said we’re too isolated out here to make it worth their while. But of course, the whole thing has to be put down on paper. They need plans and surveyor’s reports, and God knows what else. That’s so it can do the rounds of about ten different departments, I suppose, before they reject it properly …’

He had started speaking almost unwillingly, but it was as if he had some sort of spring inside him, and his own words wound it: as he went on I watched the bitter shifting about of his scarred, finely cut features, the restless dipping and rising of his hands, and suddenly remembered what David Graham had told me, about his having had that touch of ‘nervous trouble’ after his smash. I’d been supposing his manner to be rather casual, all this time. Now I realised that the casualness was actually something else completely: perhaps an exhaustion, perhaps a studied warding off of anxiety; perhaps even a tension, so complete and habitual it resembled languor.

He became aware of my thoughtful gaze. He fell silent, drawing deeply on his cigarette again, and taking his time over exhaling. He said, in a different voice, ‘You mustn’t let me run on. I can be a frightful bore about it.’

‘Not at all,’ I answered. ‘I’d like to hear more.’

But he was clearly set on turning the subject, and for five or ten minutes we discussed other things. Every so often as we chatted I moved forward to check his leg, and to ask him how the muscle was feeling. ‘It’s fine,’ he’d answer each time, but I could see his face growing flushed, so guessed he was suffering slightly. Soon it was clear that the skin had started to itch. He began to pick and rub at the edge of the electrodes. When I finally switched the thing off and removed the elastics, he worked his fingernails vigorously up and down his calf, grateful to be released.

The treated flesh, as I’d expected, looked hot and moist, almost scarlet. I dried it off, shook powder on it, and spent another couple of minutes working the muscle with my fingers. But it was clearly one thing for him to be wired up to an impersonal machine, and quite another to have me squatting before him going over his leg with quick warm powdered hands: he shifted about impatiently, and at last I let him rise. He saw to his sock and plimsoll and unrolled his trouser leg, all without speaking. But once he had taken a few paces across the room he looked back at me and said, as if pleased and surprised, ‘You know, that’s not too bad. That’s really not too bad at all.’

I realised then how much I had wanted the thing to be a success. I said, ‘Walk again, and let me watch you … Yes, you’re definitely moving more freely. Just don’t overdo it. It’s a good start, but we must take things slowly. For now, you must keep that muscle warm. You’ve some liniment, I suppose?’

He glanced doubtfully around the room. ‘I think they gave me some lotion or other when they sent me home.’

‘Never mind. I’ll give you a new prescription.’

‘Oh, now, look here. You mustn’t trouble any more than you already have.’

‘I told you, didn’t I? You’re doing me the favour.’

‘Well—’

I’d anticipated exactly this, and had brought along a bottle in my bag. He took it from me, then stood gazing at the label while I went back to the machine. As I was tidying away the lint there was a knock on the door, which startled me slightly, for I had heard no footsteps: the room had those two great windows, but the wooden panelling on its walls gave it an insulated feel, as if it were the below-decks cabin of an ocean liner. Roderick called out, and the door was opened. Gyp appeared, thrusting his way into the room and trotting straight to me; and behind him, more tentatively, came Caroline. She was wearing an Aertex blouse today, tucked haphazardly into the waistband of a shapeless cotton skirt.

She said, ‘Are you cooked, Roddie?’

‘Quite fried,’ he answered.

‘And is that the machine? Crikey. Like something of Dr Frankenstein’s, isn’t it?’

She watched me lock the thing back in its case, then noticed her brother, who was absently flexing and bending his leg. She must have seen from his pose and expression the relief the treatment had brought him, for she gave me a serious, grateful look, which somehow pleased me almost more than the success of the therapy itself. But then, as if embarrassed by her own emotion, she turned away from me to pick up a stray piece of paper from the floor, and began complaining light-heartedly about Roderick’s untidiness.

‘If only there were some sort of machine for keeping rooms in order!’ she said.

Roderick had unstoppered the bottle of liniment and was lifting it to his nose.

‘I thought we had one of those already. It’s called Betty. Or else why do we pay her?’

‘Don’t listen to him, Doctor. He never lets poor Betty in here.’

‘I can’t keep her out!’ he said. ‘And she moves things around where I can’t find them, and then pretends she hasn’t touched them.’

He spoke absently now, already having drifted back to that magnetic desk of his, the bottle put aside and his leg forgotten; and when he had opened up the cover of a dog-eared manila file and was frowning down at it he began, just as automatically, to bring out papers and tobacco in order to roll a cigarette.

I saw Caroline watching him, her expression growing serious again.

‘I wish you’d give those filthy things up,’ she said. She went to one of the oak-panelled walls and ran her hand across the wood. ‘Look at these poor panels. The smoke’s ruining them. They ought to be waxed or oiled or something.’

‘Oh, the whole house needs
something
,’ said Roderick, yawning. ‘If you know a way of doing
something
with
nothing
—no money, I mean— then go ahead, be my guest. Besides’—he had raised his head and caught my eye, and made another obvious effort to speak more brightly—‘it’s a fellow’s duty to smoke in this room, wouldn’t you say, Dr Faraday?’

He gestured to the lattice-work ceiling, which I had taken to be ivory-coloured with age, but which I now realised had been stained an irregular nicotine-yellow by half-a-century’s worth of cigar-puffing billiard players.

Soon he returned to his papers, and Caroline and I took the hint and left him. He promised, with a touch of vagueness, that he would shortly join us for tea.

His sister shook her head. ‘He’ll be in there for hours now,’ she murmured, as we moved away from his door. ‘I wish he’d let me share the work with him, but he never will … His leg was really better, though, wasn’t it? I can’t thank you enough for helping him like this.’

‘He could help himself,’ I said, ‘by doing the right kind of exercises. Or a bit of simple massage every day would make a great deal of difference to the muscle. I’ve given him some liniment; you might see that he uses it?’

‘I’ll do my best. But I expect you’ve noticed how careless of himself he is.’ She slowed her step. ‘What do you think of him, honestly?’

I said, ‘I think he’s fundamentally very healthy. I think he’s charming, too, by the way. It’s a pity he’s been allowed to organise his room like that, with the business side of things dominating everything else.’

‘Yes, I know. Our father used to run the estate from the library. It’s his old desk that Roderick uses, but I never remember it looking so chaotic in the old days, and that was with four farms to manage, not just one. We had an agent to help us then, mind; a Mr McLeod. He had to leave us during the war. He had an office of his own, just back there. This side of the Hall was the ‘men’s side’, if you know what I mean, and always busy. Now, apart from Roderick’s room, this whole section of the house might as well not be here at all.’

She spoke casually, but it was novel and curious to me to think of having grown up in a house with so many spare rooms in it they could be shut up and forgotten. When I said this to Caroline, however, she gave that rueful laugh of hers.

‘The novelty soon wears off, I assure you! One starts to think of them pretty quickly as something like tiresome poor relations, for one can’t abandon them completely, but they have accidents, or fall ill, and finish by using up more money than would have been needed to pension them off. It’s a shame, because there are some quite nice features here … But I could show you over the house, if you’d like? If you promise to avert your gaze from the worst bits? The sixpenny tour. What do you say?’

She seemed genuinely keen to do it, and I said I’d like it very much, if it wouldn’t mean keeping her mother waiting. She said, ‘Oh, Mother’s a true Edwardian at heart: she thinks it a barbarism to take tea before four o’clock. What time is it now?’ It was just after half past three. ‘We’ve plenty of time. Let’s start at the front.’

She snapped her fingers for Gyp, who had gone trotting on ahead, and took me back past her brother’s door.

‘The hall you’ve seen, of course,’ she said, when we reached it and I had set down my therapy machine and bag. ‘The floor’s Carrara marble, and three inches thick—hence the vaulted ceilings in the rooms underneath. It’s a devil to polish. The staircase: considered quite a feat of engineering when it was put in, because of the open second landing; there aren’t many others quite like it. My father used to say it was like something from a department store. My grandmother refused to use it; it gave her vertigo … Over there’s our old morning room, but I won’t show you that: it’s quite empty, and far too shabby. Let’s go in here instead.’

She opened a door on a darkened room which, once she had gone across to the shuttered windows and let in some light, revealed itself as a pleasant largish library. Most of its shelves, however, were hung with dust-sheets, and some of its furniture was obviously gone: she reached into a mesh-fronted case and carefully drew out a couple of what she said were the house’s best books, but I could see that the room was not what it had been, and there wasn’t much to linger for. She went to the fireplace to peer up the chimney, concerned about a fall of soot in the grate; then she closed the shutter and led me to the neighbouring room—the old estate office she had already mentioned, which was panelled like Roderick’s and had similar Gothic touches. Her brother’s door was next, and just beyond that was the curtained arch that led to the basement. We went quietly past them both and found the ‘boot room’, a musty-smelling chamber full of mackintoshes and perished wellingtons and tennis racquets and mallets but really, she told me, a sort of tiring-room from the days when the family still ran a stables. A door inside it led to a quaint delft-tiled lavatory that had been known for over a century, she said, as ‘the gentlemen’s hoo-hah’.