A Few Green Leaves (22 page)

‘Oh, there are still roses out in our garden,’ she said in her flutey voice, ‘and I think these will do another week, with a few more leaves. A few green leaves can make such a difference.’

There was another crumb for a sermon, Tom thought, what with that and the rewarding qualities of wood. But it was somehow depressing the way these elderly women kept giving him ideas for sermons. He determined not to use them.

‘You’re so good with flowers and plants,’ he said, picking on Miss Grundy’s solitary talent. Perhaps she would be the one person who could raise corn from the grains of wheat found in the wrappings of a mummy. He had read in a local history book about something of the kind which had occurred in a village not twenty miles from here. If only one could get hold of a grain of this ‘mummy wheat’, Miss Grundy might come into her own!

All through her exile in West Kensington Miss Vereker had cherished a memory of her early days as governess to the girls at the manor, and before she died she determined to pay a last visit to the village to see the house again, the church, the mausoleum, and the few people who still remembered her. She chose a beautiful November day, with brilliant sunshine and the air almost like spring, the kind of day that may suddenly come in the unpredictable English autumn. She took the train from Paddington to the station nearest to the village, not telling her nephew and his wife what she was doing. After all, she was just going for the day (half price on her Senior Citizen’s rail-card) and would be back in the early evening. She wouldn’t tell anyone in the village either – just surprise them, perhaps for a light lunch with Miss Lee, but she didn’t want to think of anyone taking trouble. A bit of bread and cheese would do for her, what was jokingly called a ‘ploughman’s‘ lunch, herself being the most unlikely ploughman you could possibly imagine (though hardly more unlikely than those who habitually ordered it in the pub where her nephew went).

She thought of her nephew as she sat in the train. Of course in theory he would have been only too happy to take her wherever she wanted to go in the car, but in practice it never seemed to be the right time. To begin with, he could only manage a Saturday or a Sunday and there was always something else more urgent on Saturday, while Sunday morning was devoted to cleaning the car and the afternoon to visiting his wife’s parents, like as not. Of course she was very lucky to have been ‘taken in’ like this; an aunt was not a very high priority on most people’s lists of obligations, but she had been the favourite sister of her nephew’s dead mother and in this way held in superstitious veneration. And then, of course, when she reached her seventies, though she was marvellous for her age apart from a touch of bronchitis in the winter, she became an old person and therefore entered yet another sacred category, that of ‘the aged’. So, all in all. Miss Vereker had nothing to complain of in her present life, except that it was not the past.

After Oxford the train seemed to slow down as if there was no hurry now, no need to arrive anywhere at any particular time. It stopped at several places which Miss Vereker remembered from the old days, though the stations looked sadly neglected now, with no neat little gardens, only a tangle of weeds and grass with perhaps the remains of some more persistent plants which had seeded themselves. The ‘family’ would not have approved of this, she felt, as she got out and handed in the half of her ticket to a youth who seemed to be in charge of the station. There was, of course, no car from the big house to meet her, or indeed any car to take her anywhere, though there were a great many cars parked in the station yard, more than she ever remembered seeing. Presumably people used the station to go to work in Oxford or even in London, returning in the evening.

She set out to walk to the village. It was less than half a mile to the outskirts of the woods, and she could easily manage that. Then, after a pleasant stroll through the woods, with a sight of the house, she would arrive in the village to surprise Miss Lee or even Dr G. – not the rector, she was not acquainted with the present incumbent – there would surely be somebody who remembered her.

In the village, morning surgery was nearing its end – both Dr G. and Dr Shrubsole were having a busy morning. The waiting-room had been crowded with people who knew each other and might be surprised to meet in these circumstances, though it was not a reaction they could express. Conversation at these times was kept to a minimum – one did not talk in this place. Adam Prince and Emma, sitting at opposite ends of the room, he with his own copy of the
Daily Telegraph
, she with a battered copy of
Woman’s Own
, dated some twelve months back, which she had picked up from the waiting-room table, acknowledged each other with a smile then immediately absorbed themselves in their reading. Adam read with growing indignation and dismay about women ‘priests’ ordained overseas, while Emma plodded through the sexual difficulties expressed by writers to the advice page. Could she perhaps have written in about her own unsatisfactory relationship with Graham to this sympathetic woman adviser? But there was so little to confide. Better, surely, to turn to the cookery pages where she might find ideas of what she might give Tom for supper, if she invited him again. The brightly coloured illustrations gave other kinds of food for thought.

Dr G. had started off his day in high spirits. A fine bright autumn morning, but there was quite a nip in the air and the days were certainly drawing in. The cosy comforting of these chilly nights might lead to a good crop of babies in the summer…. He was therefore disappointed when Adam Prince came into the surgery, looking the very picture of health, fat and sleek as a well-living neutered cat. What could be
his
trouble? he thought irritably as he greeted him in his usual genial way and asked him how he did.

Adam proceeded to tell him. ‘I suppose you’d call it tension or stress – isn’t that the fashionable word? And I’ve been suffering from insomnia – things seem to be “getting me down”.’ He smiled at the slang expression.

‘Not sleeping, did you say?’ Dr G. dismissed Adam’s ‘insomnia’. ‘A warm milky drink at bedtime, perhaps …,’ he added vaguely, but even as he said it he realised that this remedy, the very idea of warmness and milkiness, would repel rather than help Adam Prince. Nor did one think of a man of his age as having a ‘bedtime’.

‘I
don’t
think, in my case…,’ Adam began.

‘What sort of things worry you, get you down?’ Dr G. asked.

‘Oh,
well
…,’ again Adam smiled. These ‘things’ were, of course, rather less serious than his doubting the validity of Anglican Orders or anything of that nature, but they
did
cause worry, tension, stress, whatever you liked to call it. Yet when you actually listed them they sounded trivial, mere pinpricks of irritation. He proceeded to tell Dr G. about the unreasonable fury he felt at seeing a bottle of wine being warmed up (‘chambréed’) on a storage heater, or being offered vinegary bottled mayonnaise instead of homemade, or sliced bread or processed cheese, or there being no Dijon mustard available when asked for, or freshly ground coffee, and finally, the use of tea-bags – that seemed to upset him quite, unreasonably.

Dr G. stopped him at this point – for the list threatened to be endless – to remind him that the use of tea-bags in restaurants was now universal, so very sensible and convenient and much less trouble for the womenfolk, avoiding
their
stress, you might say. ‘It seems to me’, he pronounced, ‘that the sort of job you’re doing is getting you down. You need a rest from it. All this going round eating meals and writing about them….’ He seemed to reduce Adams occupation to a very unimportant level. ‘Well, it’s not natural, is it?’ He became bluff and hearty again. ‘Try not to be quite so critical – learn to like processed cheese and tea-bags and instant coffee, and beefburgers and fish fingers too – most of the people in this village live on such things and they’re none the worse for it. As for the sleeping or not sleeping – insomnia, I think you called it – well, as I’ve said, try not to be so critical – take a short brisk walk last thing at night, and a warm milky drink at bedtime takes a lot of beating. I often recommend it.’ He did not feel it necessary to add that this was usually for young pregnant mums. When Adam murmured something about a prescription for sleeping tablets, Dr G. scribbled something, more in the nature of a placebo, repeated his advice to Adam not to worry, and dismissed him. He had seen Emma Howick in the waiting-room and a woman patient would surely be more interesting and rewarding than a pompous bore like Adam Prince.

But Emma was going to consult Martin Shrubsole and went into the other surgery, leaving Dr G. with a tiresome woman who only wanted her blood pressure taken.

Martin had so far had a difficult morning. He had been obliged to tell an elderly woman patient that her days were numbered, for, in his usual frank way, he had not shrunk from the truth. In his opinion it was no good trying to hide things from an intelligent person. But she had come back at him by asking if he believed in life after death. For a moment he had been stunned into silence, indignant at such a question. Then of course he had realised that
he
couldn’t be expected to answer things like that – it was the rector’s business. The fact that death came to all of us seemed irrelevant at this moment. It was a relief when she slipped quietly out of the room and Emma came in.

Emma had a slight rash on one of her hands, probably caused by some allergy – detergent, ho doubt – though it might just possibly have some other cause – stress, perhaps – what did the doctor think?

At the mention of ‘stress’ Martin was at once on the alert. Although his main field of study and interest was geriatrics, he was well aware of the importance of giving full attention to
all
his patients, for even the young middle-aged would one day be old persons. Besides, he was interested in and puzzled by Emma, who did not seem to fit into any of his prearranged categories.

‘Have you been in a particularly stressful situation lately?’ he asked.

Emma seemed as if she might burst out laughing. ‘Well, who hasn’t, come to that,’ she said. ‘Life is full of stressful situations, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, the pace of life these days,’ Martin began, but it did not seem strictly applicable to the village; obviously she must be referring to some particular aspect of her own life. That man in the cottage in the woods, Graham Pettifer (
Doctor
Pettifer), who had bored them all in the pub one evening, holding forth about something in Central Africa, could
he
be the cause of her stress? ‘Even in a seemingly quiet life-style,’ he went on, ‘there can be stress.’

Emma agreed that there could be.

‘Having to look after an aged relative, for instance. I’ve seen so much of it.’

‘Yes, I expect you have,’ said Emma sympathetically. ‘You specialised in geriatric medicine, didn’t you, before you came here?’

Martin said that he had, but it was getting to be the wrong way round, the patient questioning the doctor. Then he remembered that Emma was an anthropologist, or at least had been engaged in the kind of work that involved questioning people, so he felt less inadequate. He must press on and try to get to the root of her trouble. ‘Let me see the hand,’ he said.

Emma placed her right hand, palm downwards, on his.

‘It seems rather rough,’ he said. But was he insulting her, suggesting that she didn’t take care of her hands, use hand-cream after washing as his wife and mother-in-law did? And there was such a difference in the feel of people’s hands – a woman’s, a child’s, an old person’s…. ‘Sometimes an unsatisfactory relationship can cause stress,’ he said boldly.

Emma looked up at his young earnest face, bending towards her. He was really making an effort to get to the cause of her trouble. ‘I suppose I ought to wear rubber gloves when I’m washing up and that sort of thing,’ she said.

‘Yes, you could try that.’ Perhaps it was a relief that she had rejected his invitation to confide. ‘And I’ll give you a prescription –come and see me again in three weeks if things don’t improve.’

The way he had said ‘things’ left the situation open, wide open, really. She could confide her whole life to him, if need be.

Martin wondered if his wife would be able to get to the bottom of whatever it was and imagined them walking in the woods, Avice beating down nettles with her stick while Emma poured out her heart.

Emma left the surgery clutching her prescription –‘script’, the junkies called it – grateful that he had not asked her about her sex life or lack of it.

That same morning, on the outskirts of Birmingham, Daphne was taking Bruce to the vet. The scene in the surgery waiting-room was very different from the hushed atmosphere at the doctors’, with nobody speaking to anybody. Here there was a friendly air and anxious, even searching, enquiry into the ailments and troubles of the patients, cradled in their owners’ arms or shrouded in baskets and boxes on the urine-stained carpet (the result of a nervous animal forgetting itself). Neutering and spaying, the best treatment for worms, the various injections against cat flu, distemper and hard pad were all fit subjects of conversation, eagerly discussed.

When Daphne’s turn came she found that she was seeing the youngest of the vets – there were three in the practice – and that he had the same air of anxious concern that reminded her of Martin Shrubsole. His kindly manner as he prepared Bruce for his injection – ‘Just a routine jab – this won’t hurt you a bit, old chap’ – made her feel that he would be sympathetic to her own troubles, even advise her what to do for the best. It was a gift some people had, a great asset, as much for a veterinary surgeon as for a general practitioner. How often must this young man have reassured and comforted worried and distressed owners, how many more years of such devoted caring lay before him! But of course she couldn’t really confide in him in the same way she did in Martin Shrubsole, couldn’t burden him with her own troubles – how Birmingham, even the house on the outskirts of the delightful wooded common, wasn’t really proving to be the answer, was really no substitute for the stark white cottage on the shores of the Aegean. And then there was Heather – how much bossier she had become in her old age – and Tom – she sometimes worried about Tom and whether he was getting on all right, and had she done the right thing in leaving him as she had…. But none of this could be revealed to the sympathetic young vet.