The Various Haunts of Men (40 page)

But then everything went as it always had and she was undressed swiftly, bagged and put away, the drawer slid out and back and it was done. He checked the gauges. The clothes and the handbag went into the usual heavy-duty black bin liner. He did not take anything at all from either her bag or her pockets, did not even look into them. He had never done so. He was not a common thief. The
dustmen came on Thursday, when the black bin liner would be put out for them along with several others. The more obvious and normal things were the better. He knew that. He did not draw attention to himself by taking full sacks to tips to be disposed of, he did what every other person on the business park did and put his rubbish out for the binmen on the correct day.

He left the unit and got
into his car more tense and anxious than he had been for years. When he drove away, his heart pounded and his hands were slippery on the wheel. But he saw no one. The security patrol did not come. He was out on to the main road and speeding home.

But it took it out of him. He was awake for hours, sweating with fear, his hands shook when he poured a drink. The next morning, he pleaded a temperature
and bronchitis and stayed in alone. He was afraid that he could no longer trust himself, no longer rely totally on his absolute self-control, his iron will, his determination. He had acted impulsively, without warning or planning. Perhaps it had been all right, and he had not been seen or heard, perhaps luck had been on his side. But he did not rely on luck, or trust to it. That way madness
lay. He had only ever trusted himself and he had never been let down. Until now.

Freya picked up the evening paper on her way home.

‘It’s a miracle. That’s all I can say. He’s given me my life back again.’

I was listening to Mrs Glenda Waller of Orchard Park Close, Lafferton, sing the praises of the man she believes cured her from a potentially fatal medical condition when orthodox doctors could do nothing.

Mrs
Waller is in her late thirties, and had been suffering from stomach pains for some time. ‘I was in agony, bent double with the pains. I couldn’t walk properly, couldn’t eat so I was losing weight, but when I went to the GP he said it was just indigestion. It got worse, so I went back, and he sent me to hospital, but no one there could find what was wrong with me and
all the time I was getting
worse. Some days I could hardly get up, and it was a struggle just to do the ordinary things. It was affecting my marriage, my family, everything.’ Mrs Waller is married to Rob, a long-distance haulage driver, and the couple have two teenage sons. ‘They were all very good but they began to lose patience and I was getting very depressed. I was sure I’d got something very serious but then why did no
doctor manage to find out what?’

When I saw Mrs Waller, over a cup of tea in her cheerfully cluttered family house, I found it hard to believe she had been so ill. She is cheerful and radiates good health. I had heard her story from someone else, who told me they knew ‘a woman saved by a miracle’. Although that isn’t a claim made every day, I was naturally suspicious. We’ve all heard the sad
stories of desperately sick people who believe they have been cured whether by orthodox or alternative treatment, only to find, sadly, that it was merely a temporary remission. But I was intrigued by Glenda Waller’s story, not least because the person she claims worked a miracle on her is, to say the least, a practitioner out of the ordinary.

‘Go and see him for yourself,’ Mrs Waller urged. ‘It’s
easy to be sceptical. Heaven knows I was – sceptical and scared. After all, you hear some funny things. But as soon as I met Mr Orford, I had a feeling something amazing was going to happen to me. And it did.’

So with Glenda Waller’s words ringing in my ears, I set off for the hilltop village of Starly Tor,
six miles outside Lafferton. I had an appointment with the man whose real name is Anthony
Orford, but who also claims to be Dr Groatman.

Starly is a pretty, compact village with steep streets of houses, leading down to a small square in which a few shops and cafés have sprung up to cater for the visitors who come in their hundreds every year to consult the many New Age and alternative therapists.

I was unimpressed by the crystals and incense sticks, beads, dream catchers and dubious
potions on sale, and frankly cynical about some of the therapists who advertise on noticeboards in every shop window … Ancient Chinese Healing, Dream Healing, Past Life Regression, Flower Therapy … They make plain old reflexology and aromatherapy look positively orthodox.

But if they all sounded faintly batty, then what about the man I was due to see? What on earth was I going to find? If it
had not been for Glenda Waller’s firm recommendation, I might have headed straight back for the safety of home.

Instead, I walked up one of Starly’s calf-muscle-stretching streets to ring the bell of what looked very much like a dentist’s surgery – which is exactly what Mr Orford’s consulting rooms used to be.

My first impression was that quite a few dentists could learn a thing or two from
the bright and welcoming reception area, with its huge windows overlooking a pleasant garden, fresh flowers, water cooler, and charming greeter, Mrs
Esme Cox, who has worked for Mr Orford since he set up practice in Starly at the end of last year.

‘I see people come in here looking frightened and strained, and of course often sick,’ she told me, ‘and I watch them leave with a new confidence,
a spring in their step and a light in their eyes. I hear about the wonderful things Mr Orford has done, the cures, the miracles – yes, I really believe that is sometimes the word … and all I can say is, I am just grateful and humbled to be working with this remarkable man.’

You might think she would say that, wouldn’t she? So I sat flipping through one of the shiny new magazines and waited for
the doctor.

‘No,’ he said at once, as he shook my hand, ‘you must not call me that. I am not a doctor.’

Anthony Orford is an ordinary, pleasant-looking middle-aged man, with an educated voice and a tweed jacket. Nothing alarming there then. He led me into his consulting room, which was in semi-darkness – the window blinds were down – and contained only a couch, a sink with a tap – and a large
bucket. I looked at the bucket with alarm.

‘No point in staying in here,’ he said. ‘I just thought you might like to see where I work. Perfectly mundane surroundings, you see.’

‘Like the dentist’s without the machinery.’ It seemed I couldn’t get dentists off my mind.

Back in the waiting room, Mrs Cox brought us tea. I wanted to take the conversation back.

‘Dr Groatman …’

‘A remarkable man,
quite remarkable, diagnostician, clinician, surgeon …’

‘But dead,’ I said.

For the first time, the warm smile chilled a little.

‘There is no such thing as death, Miss Carr … not in the sense you mean.’

I wondered what sense he thought that was.

‘Dr Groatman lived and practised in Limehouse in this life during the nineteenth century. Now, he practises through me, from the other side. He guides
me, teaches me, operates through me.’

‘When you say “operates” …’

‘Indeed. Psychically.’

I asked him what exactly that meant but his reply seemed a little evasive. When I pressed him, the chilly smile disappeared into the freezer altogether.

It was at this point that I began to feel uneasy. Nothing had happened to me, nothing had been said to make me shudder, yet as I sat there with this respectable-looking
man, I did just that.

‘People come to me in pain and in distress. They may have seen many doctors, may have been told either that there is nothing wrong with them, or that what they have wrong is incurable. Even terminal. Dr Groatman, through me, discovers what the illness is and treats it – usually operatively, sometimes not. He treats it psychically, removes a tumour perhaps, or a polyp, dissolves
a gallstone, cuts through an inflammation or sterilises some deep-seated infection. The results are remarkable.’

‘And you feel you have nothing to do with it?’

‘I have nothing to do with it at all. As I say, I am merely a channel.’

‘A well-paid one.’

The silence in the room went chilly too. Odd that. But I knew that the psychic surgeon charged high fees. Mrs Waller told me she had paid him
£150. Money well spent, she assured me. I suppose, for relief from months of pain, it might well be.

‘If you aren’t a doctor …’

‘I am absolutely not.’ Mr Orford was making quite sure I got that down.

‘Then how can you perform operations?’

‘I don’t.’

‘But …’

He sighed and I began to feel like a very stupid child.

‘Dr Groatman operates. Psychically.’

‘You mean he cuts people open?’

‘In
a manner of speaking.’

‘Psychically?’

‘Yes.’

We were going round and round in circles.

‘Where did you practise before you came to Lafferton, Mr Orford?’

‘Brighton.’

‘I’m amazed anyone would ever want to leave Brighton. I certainly wouldn’t.’ I was hoping to hear a lot more about Brighton. I wanted Mr Orford to tell me about the cures he – or rather, Dr Groatman – had performed there. After
all, wouldn’t all his new patients be impressed – not
to say reassured – by hearing some earlier success stories? But he seemed reluctant to go into any detail at all.

We chatted for a few minutes longer, but talking to Anthony Orford is like talking to a smoke haze. The more direct my questions, the hazier his answers, though he was always courteous.

He stood up and put out his hand. I had
obviously overstayed my welcome. At the door, I asked him yet again to explain to me a bit more about how Dr Groatman worked.

‘If ever you are ill – and naturally, I hope very much that you will not be – and your GP seems unable to help you, make an appointment. Then you will learn for yourself.’

The smile came out again as I said goodbye. But the thermostat was still below zero.

I left Starly
feeling puzzled.

So who is Anthony Orford? Who was Dr Groatman? And have either of ‘them’ a licence to practise in the way ‘they’ do? Apparently so. There are no regulations at all governing alternative therapists. Only those fully qualified are allowed to practise as doctors. But Mr Orford was at pains to stress to me that he does not claim to be one.

I found it all very alarming.

So I went
back to see Glenda Waller, and asked her to explain exactly what had happened at her consultations with Orford/Groatman. I got a surprise. Because the man she now described to me as ‘the doctor’ was certainly not the man I had
seen that afternoon. Apparently, when Anthony Orford is taken over by Dr Groatman, he changes. He shrinks, his back becomes a little bent, his face becomes lined and his
hair thinner. The voice Glenda Waller described was not that of Anthony Orford.

‘He wears a white coat,’ she said, ‘and you get into one of those gown things in a cubicle. Everything is proper, and he has a tray of instruments. Like the dentist really. First of all, he sort of runs his hands over your body but not touching it, above it, you know? Then he finds out what is wrong and where it is.
Then, well, he takes one of these instruments.’

What happened next to Mrs Waller sounds frankly unbelievable. The psychic surgeon appears to make some sort of incision in the patient, and quickly removes diseased tissue, tumour, infection or whatever is said to be causing the problem. Glenda Waller claims to have felt ‘something’ but not pain. She also says that she saw ‘something bloody, mixed
with tissue and cotton wool’ pulled out of her body and dropped into the bucket beneath the couch.

I asked her how she had felt. ‘A bit faint,’ she told me, ‘a bit light-headed. But I wasn’t worried or frightened and you’d think I ought to have been, wouldn’t you?’

I would indeed. I felt worried and frightened just hearing about it.

‘But I trusted him. I just knew he knew what he was doing
and that it was all going to be all right. And it was, wasn’t it?’

I had to agree with Glenda Waller. She looks radiant. Whatever was wrong with her is wrong no longer. She is out of pain and no longer depressed. It would be unfair to doubt her, churlish not to be impressed.

Nevertheless, there are some questions about psychic surgery which need to be answered. If the practitioner has nothing
to hide, why was he so reluctant to answer so many of my questions fully and frankly? What exactly goes on in the consulting rooms and on the ‘operating table’ of this man – or should I say, these men? Only they really know – but they are not telling.

Miracle worker or conman? The jury’s still out.

The article was spread across the whole of the middle pages of the
Lafferton Echo
and accompanied
by photographs of Starly Tor and the outside of the psychic surgeon’s consulting rooms. There was also a photograph of Rachel Carr in a neat box beside her name. Smug, Freya thought, smug and arrogant.

For now, she had other things on her mind, as she bathed, washed and blow-dried her hair carefully, chose a dress, changed her mind, chose another, and finally rejected that one too in favour of
her black silk trousers, black satin jacket and shocking-pink and low-cut silk shirt.

Lately, Freya had come increasingly to trust her inner feelings and it was those which told her now that Simon Serrailler was almost certain to be at his mother’s dinner party.