‘And what’s so wrong with that? That’s nothing to do with you. She was my past, incredibly precious to me.’
‘Well, exactly,’ she cried out, her voice cracking. ‘But that’s what stands between us, don’t you see? She’s so shadowy I feel I’ve only ever seen her outline. The basic facts, that she was twenty-nine years old, a teacher, a member of the bloody Labour Party, that she had curly hair and a nice smile, and I only know that because I found that picture of her that you keep in a drawer. I have no idea if she was good-or bad-tempered, clever or stupid, generous or mean, whether she could cook or sew. I have to fill in all those things for myself, imagining her. And of course I see someone absolutely perfect, who I can’t possibly measure up to. I have longed – longed for you to say just once, “Would you like to go to West Hilton and to the churchyard where Laura is buried?” It makes me feel you don’t want me there, you don’t trust me with her. Trust is everything in a marriage, Tom, and I don’t feel I can trust you. Less than ever now, of course, a hundred times less – but oh, this is unbearable. Let’s go home, I’ve had enough.’
He remembered sharply the conversation with Diana, talking of this very thing, trust: and of how Alice had destroyed his in her, that dreadful day of Kit’s surgery. And he felt a flare of anger that Alice was so blind to her own iniquities.
‘No,’ he said, ‘not yet. I have things to say too, Alice. About the almost unbearable pain you inflicted on me, telling me that she and Hope might still have been alive without my obstinacy about the hospital. How do you think that makes me feel, Alice and—’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘That!’
‘Yes, that, that revelation making me feel a murderer. How dared you do that? To leave me feeling for the rest of my life that Laura and Hope died because of me? The rest of it, the danger you put me in professionally, that was nothing, of course Kit should have come first – I feel ashamed even to have hesitated. But you did something else, that day – you stamped all over my most deeply held and precious convictions, without so much as a thought, a pause, simply to speak to me, however briefly, to tell me what you wanted to do. They mattered to me so much, those convictions, Alice, as dearly held as any religious ones – foolish as they may seem to you, they mattered desperately. I don’t even mind that they seemed foolish to you, but I mind very deeply that you could swat them aside like some irritating fly. I find that very hard to bear.’
There was a long silence; then she said in quite a different voice, ‘I’m – I’m sorry, Tom. Mostly for telling you about the harm you could have done to Laura, but the other too. It was – it was very wrong of me.’
‘Well,’ he said soberly, ‘it seems to me we have done one another considerable wrong, almost unforgivable wrong. But I think, for what it is worth, and that may not be much, we should try to forgive them. For whatever you may think, Alice, I do love you very much. I would be lost without you, quite lost; you and the children. You are my life – not Laura, not Diana – and I would like you to allow me to spend the rest of my allotted span proving it. But it may be too much to ask; and I can see why.’
She sat there, considering all that he had said, all that he had done; and she knew that she must at least try. But could she? Was the gulf between them too huge, the rage too violent, the hurt too deep? Could she really behave as if it was some mild misdemeanour that had taken place between them, some trifling quarrel, when each of them had taken hold of their marriage and wrenched it so ruthlessly apart? It looked almost impossible, sitting there in the darkness; but as they drove on and she thought of the alternative, thought too of what they had had, it seemed worth at least an attempt. It would take a long time, it could not be accomplished in a day, or probably even a year, and indeed it would never be the same in a lifetime; but they had achieved much in this marriage of theirs, too much to abandon it without fighting for it first. And at least they would be on the same side.
‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s not too much to ask. I’m sorry, so sorry, for what I did. I love you too, Tom.’ And then added, with a rather lopsided shadow of a smile, ‘Although I can’t for the life of me think why.’
Chapter 64
‘Well, that’s all splendid, Mr Welles. We shall be delighted to have you on board. We’re short on paediatric skills at the moment; Lionel Mainwaring has retired early, due to ill health, poor fellow, just as his research programme on childhood leukaemia was launched. But I believe that is one of your spheres of clinical interest.’
‘It is indeed. I have been following Mr Mainwaring’s work with great interest.’
‘Good, good. And we are very much in agreement with you over children’s hospitalisation, and the presence of mothers on the wards. There are considerable practical problems, but I don’t think it is beyond the ingenuity of man to solve them. My only stricture would be that you proceed with any programme slowly and with great care.’
He really was a good man, Ned thought, Mr William Curtis, MD, BSc (Hons), FRCP, FRCS (Hons) and God knew how many more such letters, this uncle of Jillie: sitting there, smiling at him across his huge desk. To work under his enlightened aegis would not only be an honour, but a pleasure. He said so.
‘The feelings are entirely mutual. Oh, Jillie did tell me, in the briefest possible terms, about the reasons for your engagement’s cessation, and I would like to assure you my only feelings on that are sympathy. Such a lovely girl,’ he added. ‘One of my favourite people, not just in the family but beyond, and extremely clever too. She’ll do very well, I’m sure.’
What he was saying, Ned knew, in the most sensitively expressed code, was that he felt no prejudice towards him for his sexuality, and moreover, given discretion, that he need have no fears of it from anyone else on the hospital staff.