The Shift Key (7 page)

‘Dr Gloze! Come in, sit down! Let me offer you a glass of sherry!’

Taking the chair the parson pointed at, the doctor shook his head.

‘Frankly,’ he said in a faint voice, ‘I’m afraid to touch anything that might disturb my mind worse than has already
happened … Excuse me. I have no business intruding on you, especially since I’m not religious by conviction. It’s just that I have to talk to
somebody!’

He produced a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. He was in his late twenties, brownish-haired, clean-shaven, with a crop of freckles. He looked awful. Mr Phibson felt a stir of sympathy. He himself had been no older when he first took Orders.

‘I prescribe some nonetheless!’ he said heartily, and crossed to a corner table where, by force of a routine inherited from his predecessor, Mrs Judger daily filled a cut-crystal decanter and set four glasses next to it. Three of today’s were still clean.

As he poured, he added over his shoulder, ‘In case you think it paradoxical for a parson to prescribe for a doctor, let me admit at once that I’ve been thinking seriously about paying you a call.’

Steven tensed, accepting the drink and clutching the glass so tight it risked breaking. He said, ‘But after the stupid way I behaved this morning –’

A wave cut the words short as Mr Phibson, his expression grave, sank into a facing chair.

‘I did too,’ he said. ‘And I think we might usefully compare experiences. You see, young fellow … I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound patronizing. We hadn’t met before last night, had we?’

Steven shook his head dumbly.

‘Let me say how impressed I was with your no-nonsense manner. Obviously you realized at a glance that Mrs Lapsey is a self-pitying, self-glorifying fool. I don’t have to be a doctor to tell that she has a heart like a horse’s. Inside that scrawny frame it’s going to pound away for years. Lord, she’s buried three husbands!’

Steven took a cautious sip of his sherry. He said, ‘I didn’t know.’

‘Why should you? You’ve only been in Weyharrow a few days. Here’s how!’

Mr Phibson emptied his glass at a draught and made to set it on a nearby table.

But it was a bow-legged Victorian relic with a glazed top, and as glass touched glass there came a rattle and a clatter and a final slam. By the time he safely set it down his fingers, and his face, were drained of blood.

It was Steven’s turn to offer comfort. Hunching forward in his chair, he said, The last patient I saw today said something about –’

‘About my having taken leave of my senses?’ Mr Phibson suggested bitterly. ‘Yes, it seems that during morning service – repeating something I’ve done literally daily since I was ordained, bar variations due to the changing of the calendar – I made an utter fool of myself! And yet …’ He clasped his hands together. ‘And yet I
knew
as I was doing it that it was right! It was as though I were living a dream. Everything was different. Everything –’

Checking, he looked at his visitor.

‘I heard something about you from Mr Ratch. Forgive me for inquiring. But was it similar?’

Steven nodded miserably.

‘Even down to it being as remote as though I’d dreamed it all. I couldn’t believe what I’d done until I looked up the note I’d written on Mr Cashcart’s file. And then the whole horror of it overcame me! You see, I was so eager to make good down here! I’ve been surviving in locum posts since I graduated. I don’t want to go back into the kind of hospitals I trained in, in search of a consultancy. I’d rather be an ordinary
GP.
And I’d set my sights on a country practice like this one. This seemed to be a chance, a better one than I ever had before. And now I’ve cocked it up – Oh, excuse my language!’

Mr Phibson rose to pour more sherry for them both. Resuming his chair, he said, ‘I feel much the same. There
was one mischief-maker in this morning’s congregation who took it on himself, or herself, to phone my archdeacon, who then phoned me. Unless I can plead my way out of it, I could find myself arraigned before an ecclesiastical court. What an end that would be to my career, undistinguished though it may have been!’

Steven, cradling his glass, blinked in amazement.

‘Do they still do that sort of thing? I mean, heresy trials and all that?’

‘I assure you they do. This Church of ours isn’t called “established” without reason. But – Ah, you said you’re not religious.’

Steven hesitated. At length he muttered, sounding embarrassed, ‘I lost my faith when I first had to tend an injured baby. She was in a car that crashed and caught on fire. She went on crying till her strength was spent, and then she died.’

‘Hearing you say that,’ said Mr Phibson, ‘brings to mind not so much the heretical beliefs that this morning I felt convinced my congregation shared, as the conclusion I find myself being driven to this evening, concerning the all-too-concrete reality of evil as a Power.’ He contrived to make the capital letter audible. ‘I plan to address that subject at evensong, and again on Sunday when I can expect a somewhat larger – ah – audience … But you didn’t come to hear my plaints. It is clear that you are deeply troubled. Though a weak unworthy vessel, can I help?’

Gazing at the carpet, Steven said, ‘Did Mr Ratch explain exactly what I did?’

‘He said something about telling someone – let me see – to plunge his hand into a new-killed chicken.’

‘That’s correct.’ Steven drained his glass with a gesture like a blow to an enemy. ‘Later, though, I remembered where I got it from! It’s real!’

Mr Phibson stared. ‘What do you mean?’

‘It
isn’t
a real treatment for arthritis! But it
was!
It was
prescribed for Schumann! I was listening to a concert on Radio 3 yesterday, and the fact was mentioned. That’s what made me think of it when Mr Cashcart turned up! But how on earth I could have been so – so deluded … That’s what I can’t understand!’

There was a pause, silent save for the ticking on the mantelshelf of a Victorian clock in a carved ebony case.

‘I don’t know much about music,’ Mr Phibson said at last. ‘It’s one of your interests, is it?’

‘I suppose you’d say so.’

Then you should be introduced to our choral group, if they haven’t cornered you already … Excuse me: I’m digressing. But, you know, everything you’ve so far said confirms me in the view I’ve tentatively reached.’

‘Which is –?’

‘Let me offer a little more evidence before I explain in detail. Were you called to attend Mrs Flaken this morning?’

‘I haven’t been called to attend anybody today,’ was Steven’s bitter answer. ‘Word of my ridiculous mistake got around so fast, thanks presumably to Mr Ratch and/or Mrs Weaper – Wait: that’s not quite true.’ Suddenly he seemed fully alert. ‘I did have to wipe the blood off a couple of local farmers who’d been fighting. I sent one of them to hospital; his nose was broken.’

‘That would have been Ken Pecklow and Harry Vikes,’ the parson said. ‘I heard about their – their contretemps. But you weren’t told about Mary Flaken?’

‘I never even heard the name.’

‘Scarcely surprising … But suppose I were to say – Oh, this wasn’t in a confessional context, and besides, dozens of people must have heard her say the same by now. Suppose I were to tell you that she came to me in tears at lunchtime and admitted being plagued by jealousy because her oldest friend from school married the man she’d set her own heart on … and now lives next door.’

He was pacing his exposition according to the reaction he read on Steven’s face.

‘And woke up today convinced that she and this man were married and his wife was an intruder.’

Steven sat with mouth ajar.

‘She came to me because she needed to admit to somebody impersonal and in authority that she had attacked Hannah Blocket and her husband Bill – pelted them with eggs, to be exact – and it wasn’t until her real husband Philip showed her their marriage certificate that she could make herself believe she’d been mistaken.’

There was a terrible solemnity in his voice.

‘After what happened to me, and her, and you – and, as I am informed, certain other persons in Weyharrow, or who live here or nearby, such as our JP, Mr Basil Goodsir, who reportedly disgraced himself today in court at Chapminster – I feel driven to an inescapable conclusion. I don’t imagine it will meet with your approval, but my vocation requires me to maintain a more open mind than most people do in this corrupt and secular age.’

Steven sat immobile as a statue. Eventually he husked, ‘Go on.’

‘Are you familiar with Mr Draycock’s theories about the name of our village?’

Steven licked his lips. ‘I don’t believe so.’

‘Well, there’s no reason why you should be. Suffice it to say that he’s been sowing discord in the Weyharrow Society with his claims that Wey means “pagan idol”, Harrow means “site of a heathen temple” and Goodsir is a nickname for the Devil!’

‘I don’t know much about the history of place-names,’ Steven muttered.

Mr Phibson rose and replaced his glass on the tray next to the decanter.

‘He’s right, it seems to me, in one sense at least. And, in
passing, I have the suspicion I may have been unintentionally misleading when I said earlier that I had it in mind to call on you. I meant: I felt in duty bound to do so owing to Dr Tripkin’s absence abroad. You see, this was undoubtedly an ancient pagan site, a haunt of the being whom we term the Evil One. And, for what reasons we may not even guess, the Father of us all has chosen now to turn him loose again! Maybe it’s owing to our laxity in morals, our tolerance of the wicked who infest the village every summer … Wait! That’s it! It has to be!’

Standing up slowly, Steven ventured, ‘You mean …?’

‘I mean we are being assailed by the armies of evil –
and our defences are already breached!
’

There was another pause, during which countless half-formed answers flashed through Steven’s mind. He had no time to utter them. Having waited only a few seconds, Mr Phibson glanced at the clock.

‘Now you must excuse me. Duty calls.’

Steven rose. ‘I didn’t mean to take up so much of your time. I’m afraid I wasn’t thinking. You see, there’s no evening surgery on Thursday, only on Monday, Wednesday and Friday …’ He realized he was gabbling, and broke off.

‘No need to apologize!’ the parson said, escorting him to the door. ‘I’ve found this discussion very helpful. What were the memorable words Marlowe put into the mouth of Mephistopheles? Ah yes: “It’s sweet to have companions in adversity!” And our affliction is a dreadful one!’

Steven ventured, ‘Don’t you think that before mentioning your theory to – uh – in public, you ought to consult somebody else? You mentioned your archdeacon. Wouldn’t he –?’

‘No need! The evidence is incontrovertible! The signs are all around us!’

Abruptly it dawned on Steven that Mr Phibson must have been consoling himself from the decanter before his own
arrival at the parsonage. He said, ‘But –’

‘“But me no buts!”’ – with hand upraised and gleaming eyes. The Evil One is at work in Weyharrow, and we must fight back with all our force. I’m right. I know I’m right. You’ll see!’

Grey clouds had closed overhead during the afternoon, broomed along by a chilly wind. The change in the weather matched Steven’s mood.

Despite the cold, however, he noticed that an unusually large number of people were heading towards the church for evensong. What on earth were they likely to make of Mr Phibson’s claims about a visitation from the Devil?

Maybe they just wanted to see him lose his mind again. It wasn’t every day a priest went crazy …

Lord, how come this village was making him so cynical so soon?

Dead leaves rustled around his feet as he trudged across the green back to the Doctor’s House. During his stay he had the use of the family’s guestroom, fending for himself in the kitchen of a morning, taking a snack lunch at the Bridge Hotel and his evening meal with Mr and Mrs Weaper, who lived half a mile from the green on the Fooksey road.

Mrs Weaper was far from an outstanding cook. But it was not the prospect of indigestion that made Steven so apprehensive about heading for the Weaper’s now. It was the reception he could picture in his mind.

Should he brazen things out with affected defiance? After all, if a parson could blame his lapse on the Devil, a doctor ought to be able to find some equivalent excuse. Suppose, for instance, he were to bark: ‘Mrs Weaper! Kindly do not remind me again of the fact that both Mr Ratch and yourself seem to be woefully unacquainted with certain medical techniques of, I must say, respectable antiquity!’

(By that time, with luck, she would be blinking at him
behind her glasses, totally at a loss.)

‘Gaining the patient’s confidence in what one prescribes is half the battle! I can hardly expect Mr Cashcart to feel much confidence in me after a mere pharmacist took it on himself to overrule my judgment! Be so kind as to inform him that he doesn’t know everything!’

For a second he convinced himself that it might work. Then the picture in his imagination wavered and blurred, and he heard the sound of mocking laughter.

Sighing, he felt for his door-key.

At that moment, however, a car pulled up behind him, and a clear high voice called, ‘Excuse me!’

He turned to see, getting out of a blue Mini, a blonde girl wearing a denim jacket, jeans and a black sweater.

‘You’re Dr Gloze, aren’t you? Look, I know I haven’t made an appointment, and I’m not even a patient here – I go to Dr Grail in Chapminster. But …’ She hesitated, twisting her ring of car-keys round and round. Then, in a rush: ‘I’ve got to talk to somebody! I’m afraid of losing my mind!’

Oh no. Not another of us!

Steven had been about to say, by reflex, ‘I’m sorry, but there’s no surgery this evening.’ He cancelled the words because by this time he had taken a proper look at her. She stood some five foot three, with bright blue eyes and short and curly hair. Her round face was innocent of make-up, which he hated. She was not so much plump as – he sought the right word – chubby. His hands desired at once to curve around her …
Stop!