The Year of the Virgins Read online

  Daniel swallowed deeply before he replied, ‘No, he didn’t escape.’

  ‘But if he’s as bad as you say, she could lose him yet. We could all lose him, but I think I’d rather see him dead than helpless, because then he’d be back to square one, or even beyond that.’

  ‘Oh no, by God, he won’t. They’ve got their own house, and, as I understand it, Annette hasn’t been injured much, and she’ll look after him. And there’s always nurses. No, by God! Maggie, that’s one thing I’ll see to: in some way they’ve got to be on their own. She might never be off their doorstep but at least they’ll be in their own home. And he’ll have a wife.’

  She stared at him before turning away and going to the chest of drawers, from which she took out a clean apron. Putting it on, she said, ‘Will you all be back for lunch?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ he answered.

  ‘Will Flo and Mr Rochester be staying on?’

  ‘I don’t know…What do you think of him? Were you surprised to see who she had become engaged to?’

  ‘Perhaps at first, but later, no. I should imagine there’s many a woman would be glad to link up with a fellow like that, an educated one an’ all, and he so good-looking. But then aren’t they all? I’ve never seen an ugly black man. Have you?’

  ‘Come to think of it, no, not really. Anyway, we’re both of the same mind: I think she’s done well for herself, no matter what his colour is. Now, I must be off.’ He stood for a moment gazing at her; then, taking a step forward, he thrust his arms about her, and hers went around him, and they held each other close; and with his head buried in her shoulder, he muttered, ‘Oh, Maggie, I’m heartbroken, not only for meself but for him. I dread to think what’s in the future.’

  Pressing him from her, she rubbed the tears from her cheeks with the side of her finger before saying, ‘You can do nothing about that. Yesterday should prove that. Man proposes but God disposes. Go on now; and phone me from the hospital, will you?’

  He nodded at her, but said nothing more, and went out.

  In the hall Flo and Harvey were already standing waiting with Joe, and on seeing him, Flo walked quickly towards him, saying, ‘I’ve tried to speak to her but she won’t open her mouth.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘In the breakfast room drinking a cup of tea; she hasn’t eaten a thing.’

  ‘Well, that won’t hurt her.’ His voice was grim. ‘She’s got plenty of fat to live on. Go and fetch her. Tell her we’re ready and waiting.’

  ‘She’s been ready and waiting for the past hour or more.’ Flo sounded somewhat upset at Daniel’s attitude, but did his bidding.

  Tension seemed to be rising, and so Joe turned to Harvey and asked, ‘Will you be going back today?’

  ‘It isn’t at all necessary. We’re both on a week’s holiday; we could stay on if we could be of any help.’ He now looked at Daniel, and Daniel replied simply, ‘You’re welcome to stay, at any time. I’ll leave it to you.’

  Flo now emerged from the corridor, followed by Winifred, who passed them all as if they were invisible and walked out of the house and took her seat in the car waiting in the drive; and as she settled herself she tucked the skirt of her coat under her calf as if preventing it from coming in contact with her husband’s leg.

  Daniel averted his eyes from the broken railings as they went through the gate into the road, and he did not utter a word until they were nearing the hospital. Then, as if he were whispering to someone, he said, ‘Don’t you give us a show of hysterics in here this morning, because if you do I’ll go one better: there’s a simple cure for hysterics, you know.’

  She gave him no immediate answer; in fact, not until he had pulled into a line of cars in the hospital forecourt did she speak, and then, her hand on the door, she said grimly, ‘I’ll see my day with you. Oh yes, I will.’ To which, he replied, ‘We’ll see our day with each other, and pray God it will be soon.’

  As she marched towards the hospital door, he turned to where the others were getting out of their car, and together they entered the reception area to hear Winifred proclaiming in no small voice: ‘I want to see Doctor Richardson,’ and the receptionist answering, ‘I’m sorry, but Mr Richardson’s operating at the moment, but if you take a seat in the waiting room, I’ll ask another doctor to attend to you.’

  Daniel was standing at the desk now, and he cut in on what his wife was about to say by asking, ‘Can you tell us which ward my son is in? You wouldn’t have been here earlier; he was operated on. Coulson is the name.’

  ‘Yes, yes’—the receptionist nodded at him—‘I know, but as I’ve said, if you would take a seat in the waiting room, I’ll get someone to attend to you.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He turned away, followed by Joe, Flo and Harvey, although Winifred remained standing at the desk for a full minute before following them.

  The waiting room was busier than when they had left it earlier that morning; there were now at least a dozen people present, so that only three seats were vacant. What was more, two small children were scampering after each other around the tables.

  After one glance, Winifred went back into the corridor and, after a quick exchange of glances between Daniel and Joe, the latter followed her.

  Harvey now led Flo to a seat and sat down beside her, while Daniel stood near the door, and they each became aware of the silence that had fallen on the room. A white woman with a black man. And what a black man! And both dressed up to the nines, not like those mixed couples you might find in Bog’s End who had to brave the community, these two were brazen. In some such way did the atmosphere emanate from the adults who, with the exception of a youth and a man, were all women.

  But they had hardly been seated a few minutes when the door was pushed open and Joe said, ‘Dad,’ then beckoned towards Flo and Harvey. And there they were, all in the corridor again, standing before a young doctor who was saying, ‘Mr Richardson would like to see you. He’ll be free in about half an hour. In the meantime you may see the patient, but only for a moment or so. In any case, Mr Coulson has not yet recovered consciousness. It will be some time before he does. If you will come this way. And…and just two at a time, please.’

  He led them along a corridor, then another, and into a passageway leading to a ward where there was a great deal of activity and the clatter of dishes on a food trolley being wheeled from the ward. The young doctor stopped outside a door. Then nodding first to Daniel, then to Winifred, he gently pushed the door open and they went inside.

  Slowly Daniel walked up by one side of the bed and looked down on his son, who might have already been dead, so drained was he of colour. There was a tube inserted into one nostril, there were tubes in his arms, there was a cradle over his legs.

  Daniel closed his eyes for a moment: his throat was constricted as his mind was yelling, ‘His legs! His legs!’ He opened his eyes to a sound of a gasp and he looked across the bed at his wife. Her face was screwed up in anguish, the tears dripping from her chin. He heard her moan.

  A nurse whom he hadn’t noticed seemed to appear from nowhere and, touching Winifred gently on the arm, said, ‘Come. Come, please.’

  Winifred jerked the hand aside, muttering now, ‘I want to stay. I can sit by him.’

  ‘Doctor says…’

  ‘I’m his mother!’ She almost hissed the words into the nurse’s face, and the nurse glanced across the bed towards Daniel as if in appeal. In answer to it he moved down by the side of the bed and Winifred stepped quickly away. She made for the door, muttering, ‘I want to see the specialist.’

  Not the doctor, not the surgeon, but the specialist.

  Daniel made a small motion of his head, then asked quietly of the nurse, ‘When…when do you think he’ll come round?’

  To this she answered, ‘I don’t know…there’s no knowing.’

  He now asked, ‘Which ward is his wife in? Mrs Coulson?’

  ‘Oh, I think she’s upstairs on the next floor.’

&
nbsp; ‘Thank you.’

  A few minutes later when he was ushered into a side ward, there, to his surprise, he saw Annette propped up in bed. Her eyes were open and as he neared her he could see that one of her arms was in plaster and that the right side of her face was discoloured, as if she had been punched.

  Her voice was small as she said, ‘Dad.’

  ‘Oh, hinny. Oh my dear, my dear.’ He lifted her other hand from the counterpane and stroked it. And now she said, ‘Don?’ then again, ‘Don? Is he very…very bad? They…they won’t…tell me.’

  He swallowed some saliva before he lied, saying, ‘He’ll…he’ll be all right. I…I understand his legs were hurt. He’s not quite round yet, but he’ll be all right. You’ll see.’

  The nurse who had followed him into the ward pushed a chair towards him, and he nodded his thanks to her and sat down. Still holding the limp hand, he said, ‘Oh, don’t, my dear. Don’t cry.’

  ‘We…we were…’

  ‘Yes, dear?’

  ‘Esca…ping.’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes, you were escaping. And you will again, dear. You will again. Never you worry.’

  ‘Why Dad? Oh, why?’ The last word, dragged out on a higher note, acted as a signal to the nurse, for she motioned Daniel to his feet, saying to Annette: ‘There now. There now. You need to sleep again. I’ll bring you a drink and then you’ll rest. You’ll feel better later.’

  Daniel walked backwards from the bed. Just a few hours ago she had been a bride, a beautiful bride, and now she looked like someone who had inadvertently stepped into a boxing ring and got the worst of it.

  He waited in the corridor until the nurse came out of the ward, then he asked quietly, ‘How bad is she, nurse?’

  ‘Surprisingly, she’s got off very lightly. She’s bruised all over, naturally, but the only bone broken is in her arm. She’s had a miraculous escape, whereas her husband, I understand, is in a pretty bad way. You are…her father?’

  ‘Her father-in-law.’

  ‘Oh, then he is your son?’

  ‘Yes, yes, he is my…’ But he found he couldn’t complete the sentence, and when the nurse said, ‘It’s a tragedy, isn’t it? Just married for a matter of hours, and just starting their honeymoon. It’s incredible the things that happen.’

  When later he emerged from the toilet his eyes were red but he looked more composed. And it was as he was making his way back to the waiting room that he almost bumped into the surgeon.

  ‘Oh, there you are, Mr Coulson. I was wanting a word with you.’

  ‘Good morning, Mr Richardson. I’ve just been to see my daughter-in-law.’

  ‘Oh yes, yes. Now, she’s been lucky. It’s amazing how lightly she got off. Would you like to come into my office for a moment?’

  They were in the small room now and the surgeon, pointing to a chair, said, ‘Sit down a moment.’ Then, taking his seat behind a long desk, he joined his hands on top of a clean blotting pad and, leaning slightly over them, he said, ‘I’m afraid, Mr Coulson, I’ll have to ask you to speak firmly to your wife with regard to her visits to her son, at least for the next few days until we can ascertain fully the extent of the damage. You know, as I pointed out to you, that he is unlikely to walk again, and that his liver has been damaged too. Quite candidly he’s lucky to be alive, if one can put it that way. Anyway, together with the liver problem he’s likely to be incontinent. And added to this, we had to take away part of his lung.’

  Now he paused and, putting his hand out, he tapped the edge of the blotter, as if it were in sympathetic contact with Daniel, saying, ‘I know that sounds terrible enough, but there could be more. These are physical problems which, in one way or another, can be treated, but until he is fully conscious, to put it candidly, we won’t know what has happened in here.’ He now tapped his forehead. ‘The point is, you have to ask yourself if you would rather see him dead and out of all the coming misery, or would you have him live, if only to be nursed for the rest of his life. And how long that will be…well, I am not God and I can’t put a time to it. We don’t know if there is damage to the brain, although we do know his skull was slightly cracked. And the same question will apply to him, you know, when he knows about his condition: will he want to go on living? The will is a mighty force both ways, but we must just wait for time to answer that question. And, as I pointed out, the next few days will be crucial: so I must insist that he be put under no undue strain, for I hold the theory that many a patient who is apparently unconscious can imbibe the emotions of those around him. And your wife…well, you’ll know her better than anyone else, but she does seem to be a very highly strung lady. Am I right?’

  Daniel stared at the surgeon for a moment before he said, ‘Yes, you’re right, only too right. The fact is, he’s all she’s lived for for years. And to put it plainly, she was already in a state yesterday, feeling she had lost him through marriage. But now, if anything was to happen to him…Oh’—he waved his hand in front of his face as if he were flicking off a fly—‘it’s all too complicated. But I will see that her visits are kept short.’

  Mr Richardson rose from his seat, saying, ‘Thank you. I shall leave word that only you and she are to be admitted to see him during the next day or so, and then for a matter of minutes only. But’—he shrugged his shoulders—‘she seems determined that she’s going to sit with him. You will impress upon her that this would not be for his good at the moment, won’t you?’

  ‘I’ll do that.’ But even as he spoke he had a mental picture of the scene being enacted as he told her she was to carry out the surgeon’s orders, or else. It was the ‘or else’ part that made him visibly shudder, for he doubted that, were she to act up again, he’d be able to keep his hands off her.

  In a kindly tone, Mr Richardson now said, ‘And you, Mr Coulson, I won’t tell you not to worry, because that would be pointless, but you can rest assured we’ll do everything in our power to bring him round; and when, or if, that is accomplished, to help him to accept the life ahead.’

  ‘Thank you. Thank you very much indeed.’

  They parted in the corridor; but there was no need for Daniel to go into the waiting room to collect Winifred, for there she was standing at the reception desk. And what she had to say was drawing the attention not only of those behind the desk but also of other people in the hall.

  ‘I will take this matter further. I shall write to the Medical Board. Other people can sit with patients, with their family. Who is he, anyway?’

  Daniel’s voice was scarcely above a whisper but the words came out of his mouth like iron filings as he said, ‘Only the man who saved your beloved son. Your son. Nobody else’s. And nobody else is feeling pain or worry, only you. Have you been to see Annette? No. No. Now look! Get yourself outside.’

  After casting a ferocious glance at the staring faces, she stamped out of the building. And as she went towards the car she turned her head to look at him, hissing, ‘You! To show me up.’

  ‘Nobody can show you up, woman, because you’re an expert at showing yourself up. Always have been. Now get into the car.’

  He had taken his seat and started the engine, and she still stood there, until the sound of his engaging the gears drove her to drag open the door and to drop like a heavy sack onto the seat.

  Again no word was exchanged during the journey, but he had hardly drawn the car to a stop before she thrust open the door and swung herself out. And again he was surprised that with her weight she could still be so light on her feet, especially so now when she ran across the drive as a young woman might.

  Joe had already arrived, and he walked quickly towards Daniel’s car and, bending down he said, ‘Go easy on her, else…well.’

  ‘Or else what?’

  As Daniel got out of the car Joe replied, ‘I would call the doctor if I were you. She can’t go on like this or something will snap.’

  ‘It snapped a long time ago, Joe.’ Daniel’s voice sounded weary.

  ‘Yes, in one way, but t
his is different. She’s never had to tackle anything like this before.’

  ‘None of us have had to tackle anything like this before.’

  ‘No; you’re right, you’re right there. But will I do it? Will I phone the doctor?’

  ‘Yes, phone him. Not that it’ll do any good.’

  Daniel knew it was too early in the morning to drink but he also knew he must have a stiff whisky before he went up and confronted her with the news that she could not babysit her son in the hospital.

  He had just thrown off a double whisky when the door opened and a quiet voice said, ‘Dad.’

  He turned to see Stephen standing there hesitantly.

  Daniel went towards him, saying, ‘You’re down early,’ but stopped himself adding, ‘Why, and all by yourself?’ Instead, he asked, ‘Where’s everybody?’

  ‘Maggie’s in the kitchen, Dad. Lily’s gone to church with Bill, and I think’—he paused as he put his head on one side—‘Peggie is doing the bathroom. Not mine; I’ve been good. I have, Dad; I’ve been good.’

  ‘That’s a clever fellow.’ Daniel put his hand on his son’s shoulder, saying, ‘Well, what are you going to do now?’

  ‘I…I want to see Joe. I…I want to ask him about Don and Annette.’

  It had been evident to Daniel for a long time that it was Joe whom the lad sought whenever he wanted help with anything, not him, his father. He said, ‘Well now, I think Joe will be busy, as we’ve all only just come back from the hospital, so you should…’

  He was cut off by Stephen, who quickly said, ‘Don’t…don’t send me back upstairs yet, Dad. Don’t; please don’t send me back upstairs. I’m…I’m sad. I’m sad all over. I…I would like to go and see Don. I…I saw it happen yesterday. I…’

  ‘Yes, I know you did,’ Daniel sharply interrupted, ‘and you are upset, but now I want you to keep quiet and be a good fellow. And I promise you this: as soon as Don and Annette are a little better, I’ll take you myself to see them in hospital. What about that?’