Night Visit by Priscilla Masters Read Free Book Online Page A

said, ‘Harriet.’
    I stiffened.
    It may seem insignificant that a patient calls you by your Christian name. But the title ‘doctor’ is an amulet. It spins a magic web around you. You can ask a man intimate questions about his sex life, chat easily to him about extra marital affairs—all with impunity, while you have the title ‘doctor’ wrapped around you. Without it I was embarrassingly vulnerable.
    And how did he know my name was Harriet? My title throughout the surgery was Doctor H. Lamont. Only friends call me Harry or Harriet. Pritchard was not my friend. It felt an intrusion.
    He was already taking his jacket off, hanging it over the back of the chair, pleating his shirt sleeve. ‘You’ll be wanting to check my blood pressure again,’ he said, ‘I expect.’ The fat, white arm lay across my desk. I had no option.
    So for the second time I put the diaphragm of the stethoscope over the brachial pulse and pumped the cuff up. His blood pressure was still up. In fact it was slightly higher.
    ‘ You need medication,’ I said shortly, typing the script into the computer, struggling to ignore the smell of armpits. Did he ever wash?
    His arm was still lying across my desk like a grub. I instructed him how and when to take the tablets and told him to make an appointment to see the practice nurse. I even made a joke of it. ‘An excellent young woman by the name of Miriam.’ And for good measure I added, ‘You’ll like her.’
    He gave another of those quietly focused smiles. ‘I’d much rather come back and see you.’
    ‘ That isn’t necessary, Mr Pritchard.’ It was almost as brutal as physically pushing him away. ‘The nurse can easily deal with it. It’s just a minor problem.’
    He stood up then. ‘Then I’ll make another appointment,’ he said.
    I noticed he didn’t say who with.
    He had almost reached the door when he paused with his hand on the handle. ‘Oh by the way,’ he said. ‘You were asking about my poor father.’
    ‘ Only his cause of death,’ I said sharply.
    ‘ I felt I should question my mother as to the exact circumstances of my father’s death,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately it appeared to upset her.’
    ‘ I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean you to.’
    ‘But you wanted to know.’
    ‘ I was only interested from a medical aspect.’
    ‘ I asked her anyway,’ he said.
    ‘ And?’
    ‘ Apparently,’ he said, ‘at the time, the coroner classed it as an accident.’
    I wasn’t surprised and didn’t feel the need to point out that coroners prefer accidents to suicides. It was kinder to the relatives. An intent to die is difficult to prove without an announcement, a letter or a history of depression.
    He hovered in the doorway. ‘There is another thing that my mother told me, in confidence, which I feel I should mention.’
    ‘ Yes?’ Despite myself I felt a salacious curiosity.
    He flicked his tongue over his lips, a lizard waiting for an insect. ‘Let’s just say she wasn’t sorry he didn’t come out of the hospital—except feet first.’

 
    5
     
    It was a month later, on a perfect spring day, when clouds billowed across a deep blue sky that I made my next move to exorcise the ghosts of New Year’s Eve. I had a particular reason for thinking about them today. It was Robin’s birthday and in a moment of weakness I had sent him a card. I came out of surgery, felt the sun on my face and believed that not only could I acknowledge Robin’s existence but also I could face Vera Carnforth again. And this time back at Cattle’s Byre.
    I drove through the town, turned off the main road and crossed a narrow causeway over twin pools. Locally they were known as the Heron Pools and today they looked particularly inviting, each cloud contrasting very distinctly in the dark glass of its surface. Ferns and rushes dipped into the water, breaking its surface so the cloud picture was not quite perfect but fringed and in the border colour was returning to the country