The Private Patient by P. D. James Read Free Book Online

them into civic virtue. If they protested that their cities had become alien, their children taught in overcrowded schools where 90 per cent of the children spoke no English, they were lectured about the cardinal sin of racism by those more expensively and comfortably circumstanced. Unprotected by accountants, they were the milch-cows of the rapacious Revenue. No lucrative industry of social concern and psychological analysis had grown up to analyse and condone their inadequacies on the grounds of deprivation or poverty. Perhaps she should write about them before she finally relinquished journalism, but she knew that, with more interesting and lucrative challenges ahead, she never would. They had no place in her plans for her future, just as they had no place in her life.
    Her last memory was of standing alone with her mother in the women’s cloakroom, gazing at their two profiles in a long mirror above a vase of artificial flowers.
    Her mother said, “Ronald likes you, I could see that. I’m glad you could come.”
    â€œSo am I. I liked him, too. I hope you’ll both be very happy.”
    â€œI’m sure we shall. We’ve known each other for four years now. His wife sang in the choir. Lovely alto voice—unusual in a woman, really. We’ve always got on, Ron and I. He’s so kind.” Her voice was complacent. Gazing critically into the mirror, she adjusted her hat.
    Rhoda said, “Yes, he looks kind.”
    â€œOh he is. He’s no trouble. And I know that this is what Rita would have wanted. She more or less hinted at it to me before she died. Ron has never been good at being alone. And we shall be all right—for money, I mean. He’s going to sell his house and move into the bungalow with me. That seems sensible, now that he’s seventy. So that standing order you have—the five hundred pounds a month—you don’t have to go on with that, Rhoda.”
    â€œI should leave it as it is—that is, unless Ronald isn’t happy about it.”
    â€œIt isn’t that. A little bit extra always comes in useful. I just thought you might need it yourself.”
    She turned and touched Rhoda’s left cheek, a touch so soft that Rhoda was only conscious of the fingers shaking in a gentle tremble against the scar. She closed her eyes, willing herself not to flinch. But she didn’t draw back.
    Her mother said, “He wasn’t a bad man, Rhoda. It was the drink. You oughtn’t to blame him. It was an illness, and he loved you, really. That money he sent you after you left home—it wasn’t easy finding it. He spent nothing on himself.”
    Rhoda thought,
Except on drink,
but she didn’t speak the words. She had never thanked her father for that weekly five pounds, had never spoken to him after she left home.
    Her mother’s voice seemed to come out of a silence. “Remember those walks in the park?”
    She remembered the walks in the suburban park when it seemed always autumn, the straight gravelled paths, the rectangular or round flowerbeds thick with the discordant colours of dahlias, a flower she hated, walking beside her father, neither speaking.
    Her mother said, “He was all right when he wasn’t drinking.”
    â€œI don’t remember him when he wasn’t drinking.” Had she spoken those words or only thought them?
    â€œIt wasn’t easy for him, working for the council. I know he was lucky to get that job after he’d been sacked from the law firm, but it was beneath him. He was clever, Rhoda, that’s where you get your brains. He won a scholarship to university and he came in first.”
    â€œYou mean he got a first?”
    â€œI think that’s what he said. Anyway, it means he was clever. That’s why he was so proud when you got into the grammar school.”
    â€œI never knew he’d been to university. He never told me.”
    â€œWell, he wouldn’t, would he?