Night Visit by Priscilla Masters Read Free Book Online Page B

with the vivid pinks and yellows of wild flowers and waving above them trees in bridal blossom. Once over the causeway I turned right, immediately climbing through the dense woodland until the lane flattened out and I reached the Carnforths’ small-holding. As I pulled up in the yard I reflected for a moment. It was just five months since I had last been here, glad to be summoned from the party and rescued from the role of pitied wife. It seemed in the distant past but to myself I could admit I still thought of Robin. And Rosie did too, often. I gripped the steering wheel in sudden tension. Had it been worth it? When five months later I longed to see him, even if only to reassure myself that I had shed that awful, mooning love. What had I done by throwing him out? Had I finally pushed him that extra distance into a relationship with Janina?
    Robin had severed connections a little too completely. He never even rang. Arrangements to see Rosie were invariably left on my answering machine and not even addressed to me. ‘Rosie, darling. It’s Daddy here. How about Saturday?’ His usual instructions. ‘Wear something decent. We’ll go out somewhere.’ Never even a mention of me. No ‘Love to Mummy’ or any other message.
    I had a sudden, strong impulse to know how Robin was. You can’t have a close relationship with someone for more than ten years and then let their place be a void. I took my key out of the ignition. Maybe coming here had rekindled my feeling for him. Maybe it was just too soon. And five months and a different season had not been enough after all.
    To try and bring back my negative feeling about him I concentrated hard on Rosie. He saw too little of her. He was neglectful.
    I closed my eyes, and wished things had turned out otherwise.
    *
    Irritated with myself I picked my Gladstone bag off the passenger seat and opened the car door to yet another doubt.
    Why had I really come here to see Vera? Had it merely been to lay a ghost? But what did I presume I had to offer her? She was not ill, as far as I knew. She didn’t need a doctor.
    So why did the doctor need her?
    She had not consulted me. So why had I really come? To offer bereavement counselling? I wished I could have told her, with conviction, that Reuben was smiling down on her, that he was happy, that he was out of pain and in a better place but I was a doctor, not a medium, not a quack and not a priest. My job was science, my tools access to hospitals, tests, diagnoses and prescription pads. I had nothing else to give her.
    It was only as I covered the few steps between the car and the front door that I confessed I had a less savoury admission to make. I had another reason for coming out here today. It wasn’t pure concerned, professional altruism but something else: voyeurism. I had read in the local paper that Reuben Carnforth had left instructions in his will detailing where he was to be buried. Not in the churchyard’s hallowed ground or the municipal cemetery but here on the farm, in Cattle Byre. And I wondered why because I knew Reuben Carnforth had been traditional in his beliefs, devout Church of England. He had mentioned Easter services to me, Harvest Festivals and Summer Fayres and I had seen him and Vera in the back pew one Christmas when I had attended the midnight service. He had been, at the very least, a Christian. So why did he not lie in the churchyard? For four months I had puzzled over this anomaly. Today I hoped I would find out why he had rejected traditional hallowed ground in favour of here. True, it was pretty, rural and near home but Reuben had been a traditionalist. He would not have rejected it without good reason. So why? I could not believe he had felt undeserving. was there then some sin of which he and Vera had known which he believed excluded him from hallowed ground? Had the ‘Help me, Doctor’ been a clue? But how could I help him when I didn’t know what he wanted?
    I stood on the Carnforths’ threshold and