Yorke see reason, you’ll be the first person who’s ever succeeded.’ He let out an irritable breath. ‘New Year’s Day. I have a very good notion what’s wrong with her. Overindulgence. Simply won’t make any attempt to diet.’
He sighed again, loudly. Disease and natural disasters, he thought–with the accumulated anger of a lifetime spent in combating the follies of mankind–the only things we ought to have to battle with; all the rest is wished upon us by ourselves or our fellows.
‘What shall I tell her?’ the girl asked timidly. ‘She’s blocking the phone for other calls.’
‘Tell her to go to hell.’ He saw the girl’s anxious look. ‘No, wait a minute.’ He’d have to do something about the woman. She was after all the wife of Owen Yorke, shortly to be made president of Gethin’s club. And Gethin had served in the first war with Owen’s father, they’d lied about their ages, both of them, been through two years of fire and mud before the Armistice. One didn’t forget those things, old and soured though one had become. He stood up.
‘I’ll speak to her.’ He went out of the room, tall and spare, a little stooped now, his hair silvery white.
‘Ah! Dr Gethin!’ Zena said in triumph as soon as he spoke. ‘I told that silly girl—’
‘I employ no silly girls,’ he said. ‘Though I have some remarkably silly patients. Have you had your injections regularly? Yes or no? Don’t bother to play games.’
‘Yes. Well, most of the time. But I’m sure they don’t do me any good. I feel so dreadful—’
‘You’ll feel even more dreadful if you keep on as you’re doing. Where’s Owen? Is he in? Let me speak to him. Go on,’ he added as she broke in. ‘Get him. I’ve got patients waiting to see me.’ He drummed his fingers on the table, glanced at his watch, did his best to control the irritation which had become habitual with him. ‘Oh, there you are, Owen. Anything really wrong with Zena? Or just looking for notice as usual?’
‘I’m sorry she bothered you,’ Owen said. ‘It isn’t really anything. She overdid things last night, New Year’s Eve, you know how it is.’
‘Make sure she keeps on with the insulin. I’ll try to look in on her tomorrow, talk some sense into her. You’ll be burying her one of these fine days if she doesn’t mend her ways.’ He rang off abruptly, nodded to the girl and went back to his room.
Happily married himself until his wife had died twenty years ago, he hated to see a decent fellow like Yorke caught up in the destructive toils of a wretched union like that.
Balance and discipline, he repeated in his mind, the twin essentials for the control of diabetes. Zena was conspicuously lacking in both qualities. It wasn’t medical assistance she required, it was miracles.
Self-pity, self-dramatization, boredom–what drugs could be prescribed for those? A woman at a kind of malicious loose end in life, he found it impossible to feel a shred of sympathy for her. He stretched out a hand and pressed a bell on his desk. When the door opened to admit his first patient he saw with a feeling of relief and pleasure that it was one of his elderly arthritics, someone suffering from an identifiable complaint that could be eased and made tolerable.
‘Good evening,’ he said gently. ‘And how are we today?’
‘There’s plenty of cold stuff in the fridge.’ Zena settled herself back in bed. ‘You can open a tin of soup if you want something hot. I think I’ll go down later and watch television.’ She picked up the glass Owen had set down on the table. ‘Do you know what’s on?’
‘I haven’t the remotest idea.’ He stood watching her take a long drink. ‘I’m going down to the club. I’ll get a bite to eat there.’
She pulled a face. ‘Oh–this is bitter. They must have changed the formula. I’m sure it didn’t taste like this last time.’ But she drained the glass, feeling the tonic doing her good, much better than old Gethin’s mixtures. Her mind registered what Owen had said. ‘You mean you’re going out again, leaving me here all by myself?’
She gave him a searching glance, actually seeing him for the first time that evening. Something decidedly odd about his expression, a fixed, strained look. She had a sense of a good deal going on in his mind, things she couldn’t get at and drag out into the open. I do believe he’s up to something, she thought, experiencing in successive flashes anger, resentment, curiosity and finally a sharp pleasure at having a whole new area of interest to poke about and pry into. She almost smiled at him.
‘You won’t be by yourself,’ Owen said. He was pleased to find he could look at her now without emotion of any sort. A couple of seconds more and he succeeded into shifting his mind into the correct gear, achieving the mood of detached pity that allowed him to live with her at all. ‘You said this morning that your brother would be coming in.’
‘That won’t be till later on. In the meantime—’
‘There’s plenty to occupy you.’ He jerked his head at the radio, the pile of magazines and novels. ‘Or you could get some sleep before Neil comes. Will Ruth be coming too?’ No point in asking if Jane would also be tagging along; a pretty girl of seventeen would have better things to do on New Year’s Day than trot dutifully beside her father to visit an egotistic aunt.
Zena pouted. ‘I don’t suppose so. Ruth’s never liked me.’ Her brother’s second wife, many years younger than Zena, slender, well-dressed, strikingly beautiful, conducting a successful career in addition to running a comfortable home.
Ruth Underwood had been prepared on her marriage, almost a year ago, to make a genuine effort to get on with her difficult sister-in-law. But it was scarcely to be expected that Zena could welcome into the family a newcomer whose entire mode of life threw her own shortcomings into even greater prominence. And Owen whole-heartedly liked and admired Ruth, which was enough in itself to make Zena detest her.
‘I’ll be off then.’ It did cross Owen’s mind that he ought to tell Zena about his decision to close the High Street shop. She would have to be told sooner or later–she was joint owner with him of the whole business enterprise that still traded under her father’s name of Underwood. And she could be relied on to make a fuss about the closure whether she secretly considered it wise or not, simply in order to demonstrate that she still legally controlled half the purse-strings.
‘Leave the front door on the latch for Neil,’ Zena said.
I could mention the shop now, Owen thought, then I could cut and run for it; give her time to come off the boil before I get back.
‘This room is like a pigsty,’ Zena said suddenly, realizing how it would appear to her brother with his liking for more orderly ways. ‘Emily Bond is the limit these days. I told her to clean up in here, but would she? Oh no, she had to go running off to her Mrs Fleming’s.’
A warm glow of pleasure spread through Owen’s frame. I’ll call in on Linda Fleming after I’ve been to the club, he decided, I can speak to her about jobbing off the leftover stock.
No wish now to embark on the tedious chore of breaking the news about the shop. He felt again the exhilarating sense that in a very short time everything might be entirely different. He went from the room at a rush, only just remembering in the doorway to turn and raise a hand in a gesture of farewell.
Zena threw back the bedclothes. There was nothing for it, she’d have to make some show of tidying the room herself. She still cared what Neil thought about her. He had worshipped her all during their carefree childhood, given her admiring affection throughout their youth. She felt that he still loved her, that he was probably the only person alive who could look at her and see the lovely Zena Underwood; his image of her had been too deeply engraved too long ago to be altered by anything as trivial as the passage of time.
She shuffled her feet into fluffy mules. As she straightened herself to begin her task she frowned, recalling the strangeness of Owen’s manner, his preoccupation, his casual attitude towards her health. She