Dead Certainty Read online

  Why is simply lying in bed so tiring? And it isn’t the sort of tiredness that begets sleep. The ceaseless twenty-four hours activity of the hospital ensures you’re on to a loser in the sweet-dreams stakes. If you do manage to snaffle some shut-eye through total exhaustion in the pre-dawn hours, the ridiculously early start to their day completely does for it.

  I’d succumbed to all the indignities inflicted upon me by the diligent nurses, from blood pressure and temperature checks, blood sample taking, needles filled with painkiller inserted into my battered rump through to the dreaded bedpan and catheter bag changes … you have to be strong to withstand being hospitalized.

  Right now I’d lay money on Leo being stronger than me.

  Dutifully, because Mike meant so well, I’d scanned the racing pages and attempted a few scribbled lines in the pristine notepad, but superlative script it wasn’t.

  Finally, frustrated and fed-up – not with food, I couldn’t face the sustenance as served up under the guise of meals – I’d flung down the newspapers and notepad and closed my eyes.

  I think I must have drifted off, far from harsh reality and my hospital bed, into welcome oblivion because I was dreaming. A beautiful dream that floated me away to happier times.

  Annabel was beside me, stroking my face, honeyed words murmuring something low and soothing. Her perfume played seductive games with my olfactory nerves, replaying memories of our exquisite lovemaking, teasing, tempting.

  For the first time since coming off Gold Sovereign I felt drowsily happy and content. Annabel was leaning close to me, kissing me tenderly … But my name was being gently called … and I stirred, reluctant to awaken and leave the dream behind. My eyelids flickered but the dream was still ongoing. I drifted lightly between sleep and wakefulness.

  It was Annabel who whispered my name and I half-opened my eyes and looked up into her lovely face. Maybe they’d given me a hefty dose of painkiller and I was having a great trip.

  ‘Harry …?’ Her lips brushed my own.

  Tentatively, I passed the tip of my tongue over my bottom lip. I could taste the slightly oily sweetness of lipstick. Slowly, very slowly, I risked it and fully opened both eyes. This was no trip, no unsubstantial, ephemeral dream. For a moment I found it difficult to breathe, my heart pounding like a farrier’s hammer.

  ‘It’s not you, is it? I’m hallucinating, yes? Annabel’s in Malta.’

  ‘How did you know that?’ The voice was Annabel’s, undoubtedly.

  I lay and stared at her, the woman who held my heart and always would. It was almost worth the fall, the injuries, the grotesque level of pain just to have her sitting beside me – holding my hand because, incredibly, she was.

  ‘But you’re in Malta …’ I repeated stupidly, ‘… with Sir Jeffrey.’

  ‘Aeroplanes make a nonsense of distance.’ She smiled at me.

  ‘You’ve come back especially to see me?’ I could barely believe it.

  ‘Just because we’re no longer living together as husband and wife doesn’t mean I don’t care about you.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head gently. ‘Of course I still care about you, about what happens to you.’

  ‘Doesn’t he object … to you coming, I mean?’

  ‘He would prefer me to be there with him, but he cares about my emotional state. He knows I’d be as edgy as a cat stroked the wrong way if I didn’t satisfy myself you’re out of any possible danger. If you can cope …’ Her voice tailed away and I knew she’d been talking to the doctor.

  I wasn’t ready to talk about the outcome of my fall. I changed the subject. ‘Mike’s got the cottage keys – he’ll let you have them. Take a taxi, charge it to me. Can’t guarantee Leo will be there to keep you company, though.’

  ‘Dear Leo. I miss him, too.’

  A tiny word, too, but it carried enormous impact.

  I swallowed hard trying to hold in the emotion and the betraying hot prickle behind my eyelids. I must be in a pretty lowered state. For goodness sake, what was it Mike had called me – iron man? What a laugh. I suddenly felt very vulnerable.

  Annabel, intuitively reading my reaction, bent over her shoulder bag resting on her knee and produced a bag of grapes. ‘Green, seedless, they OK?’ She knew they would be; she’d remembered my fondness for green grapes.

  ‘Don’t tell Mike you’ve brought me some.’

  She frowned. ‘Why ever not?’

  I smiled. ‘His idea of a joke.’

  She placed the paper bag on the narrow table across the bed. Then collected up the scattered pages of the racing newspapers, folded them tidily and put them beside the fruit. She picked up the notepad, noted the pathetic few lines of script I’d dredged up.

  ‘Stop beating yourself up,’ she said firmly. ‘How on earth do you expect to do any worthwhile work in your present state?’

  ‘How do you know I was beating myself up?’

  ‘Because I know you.’

  Our eyes met.

  ‘Time enough to think about work when you’re well again.’

  I inclined my head in acquiescence.

  ‘What about Silvie? Does she know about your accident?’

  I shook my head. ‘And that’s the way it’s going to stay.’

  She stared at me. ‘Do you think that’s fair?’

  ‘Fair or not, it’s the way I want to play it.’

  Annabel sighed. ‘She’s not a child. I mean, how long is it now before her eighteenth? Three months? Less?’

  I nodded. ‘About that.’

  ‘She’s a lot stronger than you give her credit for, you know.’

  ‘I’m here to be strong for her.’

  ‘I know you are, Harry.’ Annabel reached for my hand and squeezed it. ‘And you do know you can always count on me where Silvie’s concerned, don’t you? It hasn’t altered my involvement because you and I aren’t together. Any help Silvie needs, I’m only too willing to give it.’

  This time I felt the tears fill my eyes before I had time to stop them. Annabel noticed but said nothing, just squeezed my hand again. We sat silently for a few moments. My thoughts were all of Silvie in the nursing home.

  ‘There but for the grace of God, go we,’ Annabel said in a low voice.

  Her words focused my thoughts back to Silvie’s birth. I’d qualified from the British Racing School in Newmarket just two months before and was deferring taking up a job promise from a northern trainer because of my mother’s situation.

  We had no other relations, barring Uncle George – who was paying a heavy price for his ‘comforting’ and barred from any communication whatsoever with my mother. He was now living with Aunt Rachel in marital hell.

  My mother needed my help, but thinking back, as a sixteen-year-old youth that help must have been pretty minimal. I’d rung for a taxi to get us to the maternity wing of the Queen’s Hospital at Nottingham, seen her safely into the nurses’ care and then sat it out – alongside the prospective fathers – until the baby was born, which wasn’t long. The labour had been over very quickly, an easy birth; everything should have gone on from there perhaps not with rejoicing but with relief that normal life could now resume again.

  Except that the doctor had called me in afterwards to speak to him.

  Silvie was severely disabled and had Rett Syndrome – no one’s fault, just a very short straw she’d drawn in life.

  ‘Harry? You OK? You’re miles away.’

  ‘Sorry, just reliving a bit of the past.’

  ‘Hmmm, I see.’

  And she probably did. Annabel was a practising psychotherapist in Melton Mowbray. She was very good at unscrambling people’s minds, and had a reputation for results. Her diary was always full, mostly from word-of-mouth recommendations. A sure measure of the success she’d made of her life. Apart from her one big mistake – marrying me.

  ‘How did you know I was on holiday in Malta?’

  ‘Sir Jeffrey is hardly your average unknown tourist.’

>   ‘True,’ she murmured, adding without rancour, ‘as your friends in the newspaper world no doubt passed on.’

  ‘I’m not stalking, Annabel, but I still feel somehow … responsible.’

  Her laughter bubbled up, clear and bell-like. ‘Harry, darling, I’m a card-carrying member of the grown-ups. I don’t need a minder.’

  ‘I’m still your husband – well, on paper.’

  ‘You had responsibility thrust upon you at an early age and it’s a habit. I won’t say a comfortable one, perhaps it’s not. But until you dig yourself out and change your thoughts, it will still be a habit.’

  I thought about a plaque on her consulting room wall that read: ‘What you think dictates how you feel.’ But responsibility felt right; I was comfortable with it.

  ‘What else have you found out, about me, I mean?’

  ‘Is there something?’

  She pursed her lips and hesitated.

  ‘Annabel?’

  ‘You’re such a practical hands-on type of man, I’m not sure how you’ll react.’

  ‘You’re not ill, are you?’

  ‘No, no, nothing of the sort – well, quite the reverse, really.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I’ve just completed a training course.’

  ‘Oh, yes? What sort of a course?’

  She gave a quirky little smile. ‘Spiritual healing.’

  I gaped at her in disbelief and repeated, ‘Spiritual … healing?’

  ‘It’s taken me two years.’

  ‘You mean, “laying-on of hands”, that kind of thing?’

  ‘Yes and no. I don’t usually place my hands on people, except briefly at the beginning and end of a healing, and then only lightly on their shoulders. And I always ask permission first. They may not want you to touch them.’

  ‘And …’ I was floundering, ‘… does this, er, healing, work then, without actually laying your hands on?’

  She smiled with satisfaction. ‘It most certainly does.’

  ‘Right.’ I gazed at her, nodding slowly. ‘And am I right in thinking you want to give me some of this … spiritual healing?’

  ‘The fall didn’t injure your mental dexterity, did it?’

  ‘No, thank God. But you haven’t given me an answer.’

  ‘Entirely up to you.’

  ‘You’re offering?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said slowly. The whole concept felt like a big question mark I couldn’t get a grip on.

  ‘Dear Harry,’ she smiled sweetly, ‘please don’t sweat, there’s no need. Forget I mentioned it.’

  ‘But I can’t do that.’

  Right now I couldn’t do anything to help myself. I didn’t feel in control of my own body. And the helplessness wasn’t pleasant. For a brief agonizing moment, I felt what surely Silvie must feel every day of her life, totally dependent upon the care of the nurses in the hospice. How the hell did she stand it? It made me want to cut my own throat. But rationality kicked in. Of course, Silvie couldn’t know; she had never known what it felt like to earn her own living, choose a place to live, to look after herself in any way … to even walk.

  There’s a saying: ‘What you’ve never had, you never miss.’ Pray God that held true for dear Silvie.

  I looked up and met Annabel’s eyes and saw the genuine concern in them. What had I to lose? Nothing. What had I to gain? I swallowed any lingering inhibitions.

  ‘I don’t object to your hands touching my shoulders at the beginning and the end …’ I began to smile. ‘Or, come to think of it, anywhere else …’

  Annabel gave a gurgle of laughter. ‘Think it over, there’s no pressure.’

  ‘I have thought. I’m up for it. I’m up for anything that gives me a bit more of a fighting chance to get well.’

  ‘OK. But first I have to see the ward manager and ask permission.’

  ‘Ethics?’

  ‘Hmm, and good manners and, much more importantly, according to the code of conduct I’m bound by.’

  ‘Serious stuff, then?’

  She nodded, wiggled her fingers and said, ‘I’ll be back in a few minutes. Don’t do a runner.’

  When she’d left I glanced at the clock. It was five past ten. I had a few minutes now to think about the idea of being on the receiving end of a healing. Did it mean I needed faith to make it work? I’d been brought up C of E, naturally following in my parents’ footsteps. They’d been married in church, had me baptized at a tender age, we’d occasionally attended Sunday Evensong as a family, Father had had his funeral at our local church. And, nearly eighteen years ago, Mother and I had had Silvie christened there, too. But as I lay in bed, I asked myself the big question: did I believe in God? Did I have a strong faith?

  And I knew the answer was no, I did not have a strong faith. A faith of sorts, yes. Maybe up to eighteen years ago I might have said strong but when Mother gave birth to that innocent baby girl and we realized with horror the extent of her affliction, something within me diminished, was tested and found wanting. If that was so, how on earth could I receive spiritual healing?

  In the first place, I’d be a hypocrite and secondly, it wouldn’t work. Despite her playing it down, Annabel was keen to give it a go I could tell. It was her new project, maybe she even saw it as a vocation. Obviously she was fully committed to it. She’d invested a precious two years of her life in training. Telling her I’d had a change of heart and mind would be anything but easy but I had to do it.

  I eased into a more comfortable position and closed my eyes.

  It was a tea trolley rattling along on its rounds that roused me from a deep, peaceful sleep. I yawned and glanced across at the clock. It read nearly ten past eleven. Reality flooded me. Annabel. Where was Annabel? Maybe I’d dreamt the whole thing. She certainly wasn’t here. Disappointment, deep and enervating, told me how much I still cared for her. I’d kidded myself successfully for a long time I was over her. Now I knew I wasn’t.

  A green overall-clad lady bustled in with the tea trolley and effectively burst my self-pitying bubble. I remembered my mother’s words: ‘There’s always someone worse off than yourself.’ After Silvie’s birth it had become her daily mantra. At the time I’d thought they’d have to be going some to be worse than Silvie, but it seemed to give my mother strength and, even more importantly, hope, so I’d gone along with it. And gradually over the years I’d come to realize the truth of her words.

  ‘Milk, no sugar, right, me duck?’

  ‘Spot on.’

  She poured tea out into a plastic beaker with a flat spout – all I could manage lying at this angle – and pressed it into my hand. As she whisked away through the door one of the nurses came in.

  ‘Had a good nap?’ She fussed with the clipboard hanging over the end of my bed.

  I took a chance. ‘What happened to my visitor?’ If she said what visitor I’d know for sure it had been a dream.

  ‘Your wife, Mrs Radcliffe? Well, she gave you a spiritual healing and then because you were still asleep, she decided she’d fly off.’

  ‘Oh.’ Too late now to say I’d changed my mind and that the healing wouldn’t work. And what did the nurse mean by fly off? My spirits plummeted. Could Annabel have actually flown back to Malta and Jeffrey?

  The nurse straightened the already pristine sheet and said, ‘Drink your tea whilst it’s still hot.’ She was halfway through the door when she turned and grinned at me. ‘By the way, Mrs Radcliffe said, “tell him I’m thinking of him”.’

  I nodded, somewhat comforted. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ her grin widened, ‘your wife also sends her love and says she’ll be in to see you again tomorrow morning.’

  FOUR

  The journey home didn’t take long – twenty minutes or so at Mike’s rapid rate of driving – it just seemed a long way to me. For the last five weeks I’d seen little else but four bland walls; now the lushly green countryside and bluest of skies dazzled my eyes and stretched ahead end
lessly. My starved senses absorbed the intense vibrant quality with delight. I’d forgotten how beautiful colours could be. It was like relearning basics.

  Whereas at an early stage in the hospital I’d been utterly helpless and feeling defeated, now I felt I’d been given a fresh chance at life. Maybe not the life I would have willingly chosen but one I could accept with gratitude – for the moment. A damn sight better than my self-pitying vision of cutting my own throat.

  The worst thing was, of course, my inability to ride a horse. And following on from that, my loss of potential earnings.

  ‘I’ve got you a few essentials in, y’know, bread and cereal, milk, two or three different cheeses.’ Mike flashed me a quick smile. ‘Got to get you muscled up.’

  ‘You’re a mate,’ I said, and meant it. He’d remembered my predilection for cheese, something in my racing days I’d had to eat sparingly.

  ‘And I want you to eat it, OK? Don’t give all the Danish Blue to Leo. He’s like a fluffy bolster on legs. Good job he’s not human. What a con cat.’

  ‘He can obviously see through the chain-mail exterior to your soft centre.’

  ‘Huh!’

  Reaching the cottage, he swung the Range Rover in at the open gateway and drew up on the gravel drive as close as possible, I noticed, to the front door. A considerate man, Mike.

  With two crutches I made a hack job of walking the half-dozen steps and ended up leaning against the windowsill while he unlocked the door. I hitched myself over the step and turned to face him. ‘As far as you go, Mike.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This is where I take over.’

  Concern crinkled his face. ‘Now wait a bit …’

  ‘No, no.’ I shook my head. ‘Like you said, the essentials are in place. It’s up to me now.’

  He pursed his lips. ‘So, you’re going to do it the hard way, are you?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘I might have bloody known it.’

  I smiled at him. ‘On your way, Mike – and thanks. A big thanks.’