Mrs P’s Book of Secrets. Lorna Gray
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discussion about her concern for Mr Underhill.
And it really was concern. She was a universally caring woman who seemed as if she and her country tweeds had worked for my uncle since the dawn of time. She hadn’t. Amy was like the doctor and only about ten years old than me. I hadn’t known either of them as a child.
‘Watch him,’ she told me seriously. ‘Next time someone sneezes, you watch him. I have a theory about our Mr Underhill. You know he trained as a doctor, don’t you? Before the war, I mean?’
‘He never qualified,’ corrected Doctor Bates. ‘He and some of his fellow students got caught up in all that excited talk about duty and service, and abandoned their medical college when the first call went out for volunteers.’
He didn’t mean that as a compliment. He meant to imply that the decision counted as lunatic when Robert might have qualified and postponed his war duty, or might even have never served abroad at all.
Amy added thoughtfully, ‘Actually, it must drive the man mad, really, mustn’t it, to think that after all that enthusiasm and training, he had one brief battle in northern France and was a prisoner for the rest anyway.’
‘I served in the European War too, you know,’ remarked the doctor a shade plaintively when he realised how his comments had been interpreted. ‘I’m not suggesting that qualified doctors didn’t serve at all. I staffed a field hospital behind the front line, wherever that line should have been at the time.’
‘You were already qualified?’ I hadn’t meant to say that. I had meant to slip away to resume my work. Then I realised what I’d asked. I drew back and added quickly, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean to pry into your war service.’
Just as I had never asked Robert about his life as a POW, it wasn’t really the done thing to push returning soldiers into speaking about their experiences, any more than anyone dared ask me about my husband. People offered whatever they were willing to share and we were all content to leave it at that.
Doctor Bates, to do him credit, though, didn’t look remotely shaken by my question. He didn’t look proud either. He simply looked tougher all of a sudden. Less like a Cotswold teddy bear and more like a man who had experienced some of the harder corners of the world when he said, ‘I qualified in ’36. I got my name on a brass plate the year Mr Underhill began his training. In fact, he and I both studied at the same university hospital in Birmingham, although I’d already left by the time Underhill joined my old college.’
Amy leaned in to rest her folded arms upon the glass countertop. Beneath her, ranks of pens and other writing tools glittered as a shining island in a sea of yet more old and blackened wood. ‘You knew him back then?’
The doctor shook his head, ‘He wasn’t a native of this town. There was no earthly reason for our paths to cross either before or after his studies, until Underhill moved here and took up his job with Mr Kathay. But you might be interested to know that these days I’m still very much in contact with my old lecturer, and he mentioned Underhill’s name only last week. In fact, the story the old fellow told was quite enlightening. Mrs P, has your uncle ever mentioned—’
‘Mr Underhill,’ Amy interrupted with renewed energy, ‘was drafted as a medic.’
She didn’t notice the way Doctor Bates was staring at her. I didn’t think he was used to being interrupted. Which was silly really because she did it to the rest of us all of the time.
Amy added, ‘Mr Underhill spent his war begging the guards for plasters and aspirin so that he might treat the many ailments of his fellow inmates. I believe that these days the poor man feels he’s seen enough sickness and runs away.’
‘Do you know this? Or are you surmising?’ This was said sharply, by Doctor Bates.
Suddenly, he wasn’t looking so much like a man who had been offended by her lack of interest in his university life. Instead, he was paying far more attention than he had before.
Amy’s bracelet clattered on the glass countertop as she moved. Beneath the cuffs of jacket and blouse, a thin gleam caught the dim light. She closed her hand over it, muffling it as she told her friend, ‘It’s just a guess, but the evidence is there in the way he kept away from me last week, wouldn’t you say? You must have seen plenty of signs of mental damage in the returning men.’
They didn’t notice my quiet movement as I slid my advent calendar from the counter and retreated for the stairs. She was telling the doctor earnestly, ‘I don’t mean to blame Mr Underhill if he can’t bear to see people with winter colds. I mean he might justifiably have a real horror of illness now. That might be what brought him to us.’
‘Really?’ The light from the wall lamp caught the side of the doctor’s face as he stirred. He was being framed by the dark ranks of every title we had ever published, while the golden lettering of each book’s embossed spine ran away like fine threads into the gloom of the shop. He asked, ‘What do you know about Underhill’s arrival here?’
Amy replied, ‘The first time I set eyes on him was when he wandered in one morning in the early spring with Mr Kathay, who took him upstairs and sat him down with a cup of tea. I can’t help wondering whether we’d find it was illness he was running away from that time too. The war can take people like that you know. It can leave them rootless. It can make them fragile.’
She added softly, ‘And Mr Underhill’s got that handsome look that goes a bit drawn down to a fine art, if you know what I mean? He looks like a man who ought to have gone back to doctoring and finished his studies. The trouble is, he definitely doesn’t fit that life any more. For all we know, he mightn’t quite fit this one either.’
I saw her fidget as she confided with renewed energy, ‘He might be going away for days on end because he’s building up the courage to escape us. One of these days I think we might find he’s gone and he won’t come back.’
‘And yet,’ the doctor added like it was his job to be the voice of reason, ‘let’s not get too carried away with this dire portrait of a man shaken by war.’
I thought I caught a sideways glance from him. I didn’t think that he was saying this for her sake. He was saying it for mine. He was a man who liked everything to be orderly and he must have abruptly noticed that I was retreating step by step up the stairs.
I don’t know what my expression was showing, but it was as if Doctor Bates didn’t want me to leave like this when he observed calmly, ‘If Mr Underhill is truly afraid of illness, he might simply be aware that the slightest hint of a temperature is enough to bring out his more difficult memories in the form of some awfully vivid dreams.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked, puzzled.
The doctor replied kindly, ‘Mr Underhill may simply be a man for whom a short illness will mean a hard battle with some utterly troubled nights. It’s a common enough problem, believe me, for men who have experienced war. And if the man actually caught an illness of some kind, the ensuing mental fatigue might certainly be enough to keep him away from his work for a few days. But,’ he added as an afterthought, ‘I believe, Mrs P, you said that he went away on a job last week?’
He seemed to be expecting me to answer this. He barely even blinked.
But Amy had noticed a detail that I had missed. I saw her head turn on its neck and her remark was a quick, ‘You’re speaking with a remarkable degree of authority there. Do you mean to say that Mr Underhill is your patient?’
Outside the shop door, a car went past with its headlights blazing. In here, the amber cast on our faces made us all look rather too eager to learn how a man might have recently visited his doctor to talk about the influence of illness upon his state of mind.
And now I was angry with them. And with myself too, because I had let them follow this course and I knew that the doctor’s tactful refusal to answer Amy’s question would change how I saw Robert now. It merged with my uncle’s troubled looks and my aunt’s eagerness to settle their houseguest down to his supper