MARCH HOUSE Read online

  Mary Hocking

  MARCH

  HOUSE

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  To Beth, Delia,

  Margot and Sue

  Chapter One

  ‘I did not dress sombrely for my mother’s funeral and one or two of my father’s relatives were shocked. I heard them talking in the corridor while I was in the kitchen making tea.

  ‘I’m surprised at Ruth; you would think she would have shown more respect for her father’s sake.’

  ‘They don’t nowadays.’

  ‘But she’s always seemed an old-fashioned girl.’

  My mother’s sister, Eleanor, did not criticise. She was a short, prime-coloured woman with an air of watchful repose. Other people grew older, but she did not seem to have changed since I had first known her when she must have been in her twenties. Although she was plump, I was sure that for many years her weight had not varied by as much as a pound. There was nothing spontaneous about Eleanor; she thought carefully before she spoke and always gave the impression of holding something back. My father’s eldest sister had told me yesterday that she feared Eleanor hoped to marry my father. I had no idea whether this was true or not; but, unlike my poor mother, Eleanor was a very intelligent woman, and whatever ambitions she might have had, she was keeping discreetly in the background today. I was aware, however, that she was watching me constantly, almost as though she found me as inexplicable as I found her. This surprised me as I have always thought of myself as a straightforward person.

  Tomorrow the relatives were coming to lunch before returning to their respective parts of the country. I had prepared a cold buffet because I had to go back to work and would not be present. This shocked them even more than my not wearing sombre clothes.

  My eldest aunt said, ‘Your father needs you more than ever now.’

  ‘He’ll manage while you’re all here,’ I said cheerfully.

  They did not like my being cheerful. But Mother had had a brain tumour and I had not felt that her death was a cause for sadness. I had been sad enough, though, before she died, but my father’s relatives would not understand about that because none of them came to visit my mother when she was ill. They had never forgiven my father for marrying beneath him.

  The house seemed heavy with death. The curtains had been drawn across the windows and although the wreaths which had been laid in the breakfast room had long since gone the scent of the flowers hung in the air. I could smell them all night, particularly the carnations. It was a relief to get out of the house the next morning.

  My father was still asleep and I wheeled my bicycle across the front lawn so as not to make any noise which might disturb him. Before I rode away, I looked back at our home; an old red-brick house with a well-matured garden, fields in the distance and a few haphazard trees. My father chose to live in the country because he needed to escape from London and the responsibilities of his job at the Home Office. He did not want to gather up a lot of other responsibilities in the village, so he and my mother had lived a rather isolated life. Friends often asked whether I found it lonely, but I had always lived here and I had never thought about it. Today, however, I did find myself thinking it was odd that I lived in one isolated house and worked in another.

  March House where we had our clinic was on the outskirts of the little town of Weston Market. It was a small country mansion which had been converted into a nursing home twenty years ago. When the nursing home failed, the Ainsworth Foundation took the building over. That was seven years ago, in the days when the Ainsworth Foundation was highly respected. The directors of the Foundation were Dr. Jonathan Ainsworth and his sister Olive. Dr. Ainsworth had made a simple discovery, namely that far more people are in need of psychiatric help than ever get to see a psychiatrist. In the commercial field this identification of a neglected human need might well have made a millionaire of a man as gifted and energetic as Dr. Ainsworth. As it was, thanks to his enterprise, clinics were set up in different parts of the country and for several years all went well. But unfortunately the number of people prepared to admit to this particular human need, let alone pay for its satisfaction, was in inverse ratio to the financial expectations of the professionals required to staff the clinics. Dr. Ainsworth, who was determined as well as being enterprising, gifted and energetic, engaged in a recruitment campaign of a somewhat eccentric nature which in due course attracted the attention of the British Medical Association and the police. The police had for the time being retired, but the British Medical Association was more tenacious and accusations relating to advertising were currently taking up a great deal of Dr. Ainsworth’s time. Inevitably, the various establishments set up by Dr. Ainsworth suffered accordingly. When March House was first taken over by the Ainsworth Foundation there was a staff consisting of three psychiatric social workers, two clinical psychologists, two nurses, and a visiting psychiatrist who came three times a week. Now the professional staff was reduced to one clinical psychologist, one psychiatric social worker and a part-time nurse; the psychiatrist, whose visits had long been reduced to once a week, had retired and as yet no replacement had been appointed.

  There were other problems, not of Dr. Ainsworth’s making. The clinic was supposed to have facilities for a limited number of residential patients and the psychiatric social worker, his wife and family, had lived on the premises thereby creating a warm, sheltered environment for the patients. The psychiatric social worker, however, had recently parted from his wife and family and formed a liaison with a male artist. As the directors of the Foundation had their own worries, it had not been thought necessary to burden them with this development; but it had been decided that the present relationship could not be regarded as a substitute for the nuclear family and so there was now no residential accommodation for patients.

  When I entered the building the reception office, immediately to the right of the entrance hall, was empty and someone was buzzing impatiently for a line. I went into the room and studied the switchboard, which always looked very complicated to me although it was a comparatively simple model. The door of my room, on the left of the hall, was open and I could hear Iris Bailey, the clinical psychologist, talking to Mrs. Libnitz, the receptionist.

  ‘Where is Ruth? She wasn’t in yesterday and . . .’

  ‘It was her mother’s funeral.’ Mrs. Libnitz, a wiry little Jugoslav, always tended to sound angry; now she made it apparent that she was shocked as well.

  Iris took up the challenge immediately. ‘The death of a husband, a child, that is a tragedy; but the death of a mother is something that comes to us all.’

  ‘The death of a mother strikes to the heart.’ Mrs. Libnitz spoke with a venom that robbed the statement of all pathos.

  These two hated each other. Mrs. Libnitz was a refugee and needed someone to hate; but I could never understand why Iris should reciprocate. Now she said in an amused voice calculated to annoy, ‘Well, I hope Ruth isn’t too stricken. Did we send flowers?’

  ‘We sent a donation to the Brain Research Fund or some such place.’

  ‘Oh yes, I remember.’

  ‘And Douglas went to the funeral.’ Mrs. Libnitz laid accusing emphasis on ‘Douglas’.

  ‘Did he? I don’t think he mentioned it to me. But as long as we were represented . . . Will Ruth be back today? Not that we want to hurry her; but I expect she’d like to have something to occupy her mind. And in any case, I
must have Mrs. Walsh’s file, the court hearing is tomorrow.’

  ‘I am back, Iris,’ I called out.

  Iris came into the room, arms outstretched. She laid her hands on my shoulders and studied me gravely. Behind her I could see Mrs. Libnitz making a sour face.

  ‘You’re all right?’ Iris nodded her head, having satisfied herself without the need for a reply. ‘Of course you are. That’s my girl!’

  Mrs. Libnitz elbowed past us and flipped up the switch on the board, cutting off the speaker. As Iris and I went out of the room we could hear her having an altercation about private calls with Di Brady, the nurse. We went across the corridor to my room. Iris said, ‘That woman always makes me feel as though I have just made the most inexcusable mistake, possibly costing several lives.’

  ‘I expect every office has these problems.’

  She looked at me. Her eyes were large and colourless, expressive windows for whatever aspect of her personality she wished to put on display. ‘But this isn’t every office. We ought to be able to manage our personal relationships better than that.’ I thought as I looked at her that there was something formidable about the impact of foaming white hair on a face suntanned and still young, a face bright with certainty, knowing nothing of the chastening of age. Iris was attractive now in her early forties, but already little lines at the sides of the incisive mouth and incipient pouches beneath the square jaw gave warning that in later life pugnacity might make her appearance less agreeable.

  I said, ‘Perhaps we make too much of things which would pass unnoticed elsewhere?’ It was no use discussing, let alone arguing, with Iris, yet I always persisted.

  ‘But the more one notices, the more one understands, surely? Or are you saying that our relationships are fragile?’

  I took the cover off my typewriter and a pile of papers which had been placed underneath slid onto the floor.

  ‘Sensitive, certainly,’ Iris said, ‘but not fragile.’ She gave a satisfied nod. While I tidied up the papers she went over to the filing cabinet. There was something impatient about the way she walked, head slightly bowed, arms moving as though she was elbowing her way through a crowded market. I had noticed when I saw her out walking with her sons that she always kept a pace ahead of them as though competing in a race. She was a very competitive person. Today, the competitiveness irritated me and I wanted to say, ‘What’s it all about. Iris? If you’d only stand still you’d realise how far ahead of the field you are.’

  She was under five foot, but generously endowed with full, deep breasts and ample thighs, a cottage loaf figure. She was almost ludicrously sexy and could have been as formidable as she wished with very little cost to herself if she had just been content with the way Nature had made her. Instead, she scorned her sex and was obsessed with a power struggle at the clinic; but the pathetic thing was that no one was opposing her only she did not seem to realise this.

  ‘You are all right?’ She had turned from the filing cabinet and was looking at me; I had been away for several days and I could see that she was counting the cost of my absence, and possible future absences if things were not all right. ‘How is your father? Did he cope? I’m sure you coped, you always do.’

  I looked at the pile of work on my desk, trying to ignore a tightening of my stomach muscles; I was suddenly unsure whether I had coped and would cope in the future. Iris glanced at the papers in her hand; she was obviously reluctant to ask about them so soon after mentioning my bereaved father and looked like a child who is being disciplined.

  ‘Is it Mrs. Walsh’s file that you want?’ I asked, taking pity on her. ‘It is in Douglas’s room. Jimmy Powell from probation came to see him the other day about Len Walsh.’

  ‘Really, that’s too bad of Douglas. I told him I couldn’t find the file anywhere only yesterday.’

  ‘Douglas has a lot on his mind,’ I pointed out.

  Iris seemed reluctant to concede that any part of the answer to Douglas’s behaviour might lie outside his work; she allowed her work to absorb her whole life and imagined that other people were the same. ‘It’s not having a psychiatrist,’ she said. ‘He’s been going downhill ever since Dr. Arnold left. But things are getting crucial now. He has begun to withdraw from me. Yesterday, when I went in to talk to him about the Walsh case he sat at his desk looking at me as though inwardly he was cowering in the corner of the room.’

  ‘Perhaps he had had a row with Eddie?’ I suggested.

  ‘It’s a trying time, I know. Not having a psychiatrist is worrying for all of us.’

  ‘I think you manage very well.’ She gave the impression of enjoying getting on with her cases without the intervention of a psychiatrist.

  ‘But Douglas always folds up under pressure. He needs support.’

  ‘Dr. Arnold wasn’t much of a support.’

  ‘But when he was around Douglas knew where his own responsibility stopped. Now it’s too much for him.’

  ‘I would have thought Douglas had shown himself fairly resilient to responsibility.’

  ‘We mustn’t make judgements, Ruth.’

  ‘It was just an observation.’ I threaded paper into my typewriter. ‘Do you want these case reports done first, or the appointment letters?’

  ‘The appointment letters.’

  I put the appointment letters on top of the pile and asked casually, ‘Did you write to the Foundation while I was away?’

  ‘No. I think we need to have something constructive to suggest before we write.’ Douglas, on announcing his altered circumstances, had proposed that he should move out of the clinic and that Iris and her family should move in—to preserve the ‘homely atmosphere’. From the little which Iris had subsequently said, it seemed that her family felt that enough sacrifices had already been demanded of them on the altar of psychiatry and were not prepared for further involvement.

  ‘After all,’ Iris said, ‘we don’t know how long this silliness of Douglas’s will last.’

  ‘Have you met Eddie?’ I asked.

  ‘I sometimes doubt if he exists!’

  When Douglas’s friend moved in, one damp February evening, Douglas told us that he was looking forward to meeting us very much; but after several weeks, during which, if one walked quietly into the residential wing of the building, one might see a shadow flit out of view, or hear a door shut fast, it became apparent that the friend was taking good care not to meet us.

  ‘He exists all right,’ I said. ‘He smokes those foul French cigarettes.’

  ‘I find the whole thing a trifle sinister,’ Iris said.

  ‘It is not sinister at all.’ Mrs. Libnitz had come in, unobserved, with the post. ‘He wants Douglas to himself so he pretends that none of you exist.’

  Iris looked at Mrs. Libnitz, eyebrows raised. ‘You’ve been boning up on your psychology, Mrs. Libnitz,’ she said, adopting her amusedly tolerant voice.

  ‘I don’t know anything about psychology,’ Mrs. Libnitz retorted. ‘I just know people.’ She went out, also knowing a good exit line.

  ‘You must have a talk with Douglas, Ruth,’ Iris said. ‘You’re always so splendid with him; the last time he was bad you were the one person who could do anything with him.’

  ‘Only because I didn’t try to do anything with him, Iris.’

  ‘Well, try now; before he really puts up the shutters.’

  The telephone rang and I picked up the receiver, but it was someone who wanted the dairy. Our telephones were frequently out of order and we got a lot of crossed lines; lately, we had had people telephoning who were waiting for taxis. Communication was not good. Postal deliveries had been erratic and one bag of mail had been found recently in the village pond. This made us all a bit edgy, particularly Iris who was convinced that the letter saying the new psychiatrist was on his way was now lying at the bottom of the pond. While I was speaking on the telephone Iris examined the post speculatively. There was one white envelope and two brown ones. When I put down the receiver she said to me, ‘The white en
velope, I should think. Open the brown ones first; we’ll save our treat to the last.’

  The first brown envelope contained a misdirected salary slip; the second a letter from Norfolk Social Services Department demanding a reply to a letter. ‘We haven’t had any reports from them on Victor Mullani,’ Iris said. ‘In fact, I’m sure we haven’t got a Victor Mullani among our treasures.’ She put the letter aside and watched while I opened the white envelope. There was a letter inside from the London headquarters of the Foundation; it stated briefly that Dr. Laver, consultant psychiatrist, would be starting with us in ten days’ time. There was no date on the letter. I looked at the postmark on the envelope but it was illegible. Iris was very excited and hurried out of the office to tell Di.

  When I had finished the case reports that I was typing I telephoned the County clinic which had a helpful secretary and asked her if she knew anything about Dr. Laver.

  ‘Dr. Laver?’ It was a bad line and I could not hear her very well. ‘You’re sure it says Dr. Laver?’

  I said I was sure. She said, ‘What about Dr. Laver?’ It was a bad line, she said, she could hardly hear me. We did not talk for long.

  I typed uninterrupted for an hour and then Di Brady came to have coffee with me. She walked to the window seat, moving with the relaxed, slouching gait which had so distracted Dr. Arnold, and sat down, stretching long legs in front of her. Her uniform was a tight fit and the skirt rode up when she sat down. ‘How are things with you?’ she asked. ‘Iris says we have a new psychiatrist. He’d better be good. I’m fed up.’

  ‘No work?’

  She nodded, staring with heavy-lidded eyes into her cup. The lack of residential patients had meant that there was much less for her to do and she was bored. Also, she felt ‘it isn’t moral, what’s happening here.’

  ‘I’d feel I ought to say something only I’ve got the kids to support and this is a job near home.’ She nibbled a bun, brooding on this. ‘If I made a fuss they’d have me out of here damn quick. Let’s face it, I only got the job because no one else applied.’