Elliot and the Shadows

‘Mother’s not at all well today.’ Mother and son lived in The Rectory, an impressive house on the west side of Thornton Heath, in Galpins Road, and it certainly seemed that the Rector had once lived a privileged life, for it was twice as large as all the other houses in Galpins Road—indeed, most of the houses in Thornton Heath. Built of granite, it was three storeys high and its roof was steeply angled; from the centre of this a small four-sided spire thrust up into the sky. The garden was relatively small for the size of the house, but it was secluded by dark trees; in the middle of the front lawn was the arachnoid form of a monkey-puzzle tree. ‘What’s the problem?’ He was leading me through the hallway; any room with stained-glass windows is going to be dark, but this was sepulchral in its dinginess. One had to acclimatise one’s eyes in order not to bump into the heavy wooden furniture and knock the busy ornaments, thus making a loud crash and raising billows of dust. He said, ‘She’s got the stomach pains again.’ Wilhelmina Wylie had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis—an incurable and progressive degenerative disease of the central nervous system—eleven months before. When I had started in the practice a year ago, she had been a bright, vivacious and intelligent sixty-two-year-old woman, supported by a full social life and a wonderful sense of humour; she had been one of the first patients to walk into my surgery and, unlike most of her compatriots, she did not regard me as a pervert merely pretending to be a general practitioner. It had been love at first sight; platonic love, but none the less real for that. ‘Badly?’ We were walking up the first flight of stairs and I saw his silhouette nod against the polychromatic light shining through the coloured glass of the window where the staircase turned. ‘She was almost crying with the pain.’ At one level he sounded genuinely concerned but at all the others he sounded like a man only pretending to be genuinely concerned. We ascended the next flight, moving towards even greater darkness. In the months that had followed her diagnosis, she had inevitably deteriorated, but she had been unlucky. She had lost youth, something that she had hitherto managed to retain; the disease had sucked it from her, and done so remorselessly. Some patients deteriorated slowly, but Wilhelmina was not so fortunate; if she continued at the same rate, I expected her to be dead within six months. ‘Did you try the medicine I gave you last time?’ The stomach pains were not new. I half suspected that they were in her head—I could find nothing in the literature that suggested they were one of the usual symptoms and the consultant neurologist at Mayday Hospital had never heard of them as a symptom either—but I knew that they might be no less real to her. He paused halfway up and turned to me. ‘It didn’t seem to work.’ His tone was caught perfectly between sorrow, sympathy and contempt. I had guessed that it wouldn’t, but I said only, ‘Then we’d better try something else.’ He nodded. We continued up to the first floor, turned again and set out for the next floor, towards the old lady who lay dying at its top. She had the attic for herself. A large bedroom that doubled as a living room, a bathroom, a small kitchenette in which she could prepare drinks and snacks. She could move around in her wheelchair between these with ease. In the centre of the room there was a circular oak table, on which I assumed she ate her meals and wrote her letters. It had been covered in brilliantly white Formica; even in those days of dubious taste, I thought this a rather crass addition. She no longer moved from this place, having retreated from the world both mentally and physically; it was Martin who acted as the housekeeper and nurse, who looked after her. She communicated with him via a bell-pull that hung from the ceiling by her bed and he got her up in the mornings, brought her meals three times a day and put her to bed at night. And this self-constructed world Wilhelmina had furnished in her own way. She had surrounded herself with thousands of books and she refused to have a television. She did not take a newspaper either, and had no radio, so that her only source of information about the outside world was the odd visitor and whatever Martin chose to tell her. Except that I was shortly to learn that perhaps she didn’t need anything else. ‘Mother? Dr Elliot’s here to see you.’ She was still in bed, a flannelette nightdress under a knitted lilac bed jacket. She had long silver hair that was so fine each individual strand seemed to be invisible; her face was thin, her eyes bright blue. I had always thought that forty years before she would have been a catch indeed; had always thought, too, that her husband, if the son were anything to go by, could not have matched her in beauty. She smiled when she saw me, and that gladdened me. She looked tired, even sicker than normal. ‘Dr Elliot! You really shouldn’t have.’ It was a habit of hers to scold me at every opportunity, not in an unpleasant way, more an affectionate one. ‘You’ve been having tummy pains again, I understand.’ A shrug and grimace. Simultaneously, and without the need of words, she told me that, yes, she had and that I wasn’t to worry too much about it; she was an old woman and she counted for little. I came forward to the bed, put my bag on the carpet and turned to her son. ‘Thank you, Martin.’ He hesitated before nodding and turning to go, as if he really thought that he ought to stay and sit in to make sure that I wasn’t going to defraud her of his inheritance, but he left the room and I turned back to my patient. I asked her questions, examined her stomach, but, as expected, found nothing amiss. ‘Well?’ I smiled at her. ‘It’s all working fine, Mrs Wylie.’ ‘Wilhelmina,’ she scolded. ‘It’s still all working fine, Wilhelmina.’ ‘Then why am I getting such terrible pains?’ For the first time in the course of the consultation I sat down on the side of her bed. ‘Sometimes there isn’t a physical cause. That doesn’t mean that the pain’s any less real; it’s just that there’s no inflammation, or infection, or malfunction.’ ‘You mean I’m mad.’ She said this as if I had accused her. ‘No, I don’t mean that . . .’ ‘It’s not because of the trouble with the nerves, then?’ ‘No.’ She sighed. ‘Then there’s nothing to be done . . .’ ‘We could try a different tack.’ A sharp glance at my face. ‘What does that mean?’ ‘Amitriptyline sometimes works in cases like these.’ Most of my other patients would have accepted my suggestion without argument; not Wilhelmina. ‘What is that?’ ‘It lifts the mood.’ She was staring at me intently. ‘You think I’m depressed?’ ‘I think you’re in pain. This might help.’ She said nothing while continuing to stare but, as I became uncomfortable under this scrutiny, she suddenly nodded curtly and said, ‘Very well.’Well, actually, I couldn’t, but I had hoped that I had always kept my incomprehension to myself. I couldn’t lie to her, though, and admitted, ‘No.’ She let me finish the prescription and put it on her bedside cabinet beside the Teasmade before she said, ‘It’s not fear, you know.’ ‘Fear?’ ‘Fear of dying.’ She had surprised me and, truth be told, slightly discomfited me and, accordingly, I did not know quite what to say. ‘Well . . .’ ‘Over the past few years I have had precious few reasons for wanting to participate in this world. All that I have had has been here.’ I thought that I knew what she was talking about—Martin. For many years, she had been married to David Wylie, a successful banker. According to local gossip, David Wylie had left her for another woman ten years before. It had apparently been quite a scandal at the time, and she had been left with only her son. Personally, I would have considered having to live with Martin Wylie the best of reasons to pack my bags and take to the open road, but I knew that I had a different perspective on the matter. I said, ‘But what about Martin? You must fight to live for him.’ She smiled a smile that I had seen before, one that told me I was being naive. ‘Martin was seventeen when David went. He was already a man.’ ‘But he’s still your son. You still love him and he still loves you.’ She bowed her head in acknowledgement of this, but said, ‘What I think I fear is the pain that my passing will cause.’ ‘To Martin?’ But when she answered that, murmuring, ‘Of course,’ she also was still smiling. Before I could ask, however, she went on, ‘Anyway, my life up here is not cut off from the rest of humanity, not cut off at all.’ ‘No, I’m sure it isn’t.’ But she was denying my agreement, shaking her head. No, you don’t understand. You think that you do, but you don’t. And she said, ‘You’d be surprised how much I know about the outside world, Dr Launceston Elliot.’ She mocked me gently with the use of my full name, guessing that I hated it and guessing so correctly. She was looking into my face, hinting at secrets by the twinkle in her eye, the confined smile about her lips. Any other aging, dying woman in a self-imposed exile at the top of her house and I would have guessed that she was fantasising, but not Wilhelmina. Looking around at the angled walls, I spotted the large sash windows that looked out on to Galpins Road and the rooftops of the houses stretching away to the north. She would have a fine view of the comings and goings in the streets immediately around The Rectory, although the density of the housing was such that her view was quickly blocked in all directions. She was watching me and guessed what I was thinking. ‘Yes,’ she admitted, ‘I do know a lot of what goes on in the road outside.’ If I thought that was her mystery solved, she quickly disabused me. ‘But I see much further than that. Much, much further.’ ‘Do you?’ I admit that I was humouring her, that I thought this was the harmless fantasising of a dying woman. Of course, she picked up on my scepticism. ‘Oh, yes.’ I was smiling. ‘Such as what?’ But she would not say, preferring to tease. ‘Perhaps one day, Dr Elliot, I will tell you.’ She paused. ‘But not today.’ I sighed, played my part in the game. ‘Oh, dear.’ She giggled delightedly and I was pleased because it was all part of her therapy. I said, ‘Come on, now, Wilhelmina. It’s time to get up. We can’t have you vegetating in bed all day.’ I took her hand and, supporting her arm, pulled her forward. I helped her turn herself so that her legs hung over the side of the bed. When I tried to help her into her wheelchair that was kept by the side of the bed, she refused, scolding me, ‘Thank you, but that won’t be necessary, Dr Elliot.’ She then rang the bell for Martin, who appeared so quickly that I suspected he had been listening at the door. I gave him the prescription. ‘Could you get that filled out as soon as possible?’ He looked at it. ‘Of course’ was his only comment, although his face suggested that he had little faith that it would effect a cure. ‘Goodbye, Wilhelmina.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘Goodbye to you, Dr Elliot.’ Martin and I walked down the flights of stairs in silence. He accompanied me to the door and then out into the front garden. I looked around but we were alone. ‘No Charlie today?’ ‘No. He’s on the allotments, I think.’ Charlie Daniels was the odd-job man. He had worked for the Wylies for years. Martin said abruptly, ‘I’m very worried about my mother, Dr Elliot.’ ‘We all are, Martin.’ ‘I’m sure that both you and the neurologist at the Mayday are doing your best.’ I said nothing, didn’t really need to; the subtext was deafening. ‘But I can’t help wondering if a second opinion might not be a good idea.’ ‘Of course. Your prerogative.’ I tried not to sound defensive or put out. ‘Have you anyone in mind?’ But, before he could give me the benefit of his opinion, there came a loud scream from the attic. For a moment we froze before we jerked and twisted around to look up at the top of the house. Then, with speed that surprised me, Martin was running inside; I followed as quickly as I could. He had actually gained slightly as he burst into his mother’s apartment, banging the door back against the wall. I remember hearing an odd noise just before I entered the room, the kind of noise that a casement window makes as it is opened or shut, but I had no time to ponder upon this. Wilhelmina, still in her wheelchair, was at the oak table in the middle of the room, but she was slumped, apparently unconscious. Martin was crouched in front of her, holding her hand, rubbing it with his fingertips. ‘Mother?’ He looked up at me as I strode over to them, then made way for me. Her hands were clammy but she had a pulse, albeit a weak, twittering thing. I said, ‘She’s fainted. Let’s get her back into bed.’ It was easy because she was so light. I told him to fetch some water while I did a more thorough examination, finding nothing to explain why she might have collapsed. As he put the glass down on the bedside cabinet he said, ‘Why did she faint?’ ‘I don’t know.’ He was clearly dissatisfied with this. ‘Is it her condition?’ ‘I wouldn’t have thought so.’ ‘What about the stomach pains? Perhaps it was something to do with those?’ ‘Perhaps.’ ‘She screamed with pain.’ ‘She screamed,’ I agreed. ‘But whether it was with pain is another matter.’ He frowned at me but she was beginning to come round and any further debate was forestalled. ‘Mother? Mother? Are you all right?’