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She met Hester at the bedroom door.
‘We do not need you, Mrs Monk,’ she said coolly. ‘My father is gaining strength every day. Dr Rand is a genius. I think he will make medical history.’ She said it with pride. Perhaps it was a safer emotion than hope so fragile. She had been very afraid, and she must now be uncomfortably aware that Hester had witnessed her fear almost intimately, much too close to forget.
‘I’m very pleased to hear it,’ Hester smiled back at her. It was easy to be honest, for many reasons. ‘I will still go in and check his pulse and temperature.’
Adrienne stood in front of the door, blocking it. They faced each other for a few seconds in silence. Finally Hester spoke.
‘Is there something you do not wish me to see, Miss Radnor?’ she said levelly.
A shadow crossed Adrienne’s brow. ‘Of course not. I just don’t want you to disturb him. Your manner is discourteous, sometimes even quarrelsome; as I am sure you are aware. He needs to rest. Go and look after the children. I think you care more about them than you do about him anyway, even though it is he who is ill.’
‘The children are ill also, Miss Radnor, and they have no one else to care for them,’ Hester replied with surprise. She had been aware that Adrienne did not have any affection for them. In fact, she showed no outward compunction about the fact that Rand was regularly taking their blood for her father. Perhaps she was so desperate for him that she had not even given it consideration. Her fear that Radnor could die obscured everything else.
Hester thought for the first time that since Adrienne was in her early thirties, perhaps she had devoted so much care to companionship with her father that she had missed some opportunities for marriage, and might not have many more. Then she would have no children of her own. Did that cause her pain?
One never knew what wounds other people carried where no one saw them. She spoke more gently.
‘I simply want to make the usual checks, Miss Radnor. I will not disturb him. Then I shall report to Mr Rand, after which, if he has no more for us to do, I will make sure the children are also well.’
Adrienne stepped aside without speaking, but she indicated that Hester go through the door. She did not open it for her.
Radnor was awake, sitting almost upright against the pillows, a book lying open in front of him. However, he was watching the door. Hester was certain from the expression of interest on his face that he had heard at least part of the conversation just outside.
‘I am glad you are feeling well enough to read,’ Hester said with a slight smile as she closed the door behind her.
He held up the book for a moment, and then closed it. ‘It’s good,’ he observed. ‘But no substitute for life. Do you miss the army, Mrs Monk? Don’t you want to pit your wits against something more than extending some old man’s life by a couple of years?’
She stared back at him. ‘Yes, Mr Radnor. Right now I would much rather be at home, but unfortunately I don’t have that choice. There are lots of things I like to do, and this isn’t one of them.’
He smiled. ‘Honesty at last! But you would like to see Rand succeed, wouldn’t you? You’d like to be part of it. Are you going to lie to me about that?’ He looked as if he would enjoy that, savour his superiority in at least acknowledging the truth within himself.
‘Yes, I would like to,’ she admitted. ‘That doesn’t mean that I will.’
‘You mean escape?’ he asked with satisfaction. ‘You haven’t the fire, or the intelligence. You’ll always stay in the safe bounds of doing your duty.’
‘You are definitely much better.’ She reached for his wrist to take his pulse. She touched his forehead with the back of her other hand. It felt warm, but with the warmth of life, not of fever.
‘You won’t go, will you?’ he challenged. ‘You’ll stay, always hoping for mercy from Rand – until he kills you!’
Hester finished counting his pulse. It was a fraction fast, but well within normal.
She ignored his comment. ‘You are much better, but you have had a brush with death, and I think you know that.’
‘God in heaven, of course I know that. It is my body that is ill, not my mind. Stop talking to me as if I were senile! I’m still young enough to take you, with passion you’ve never even imagined. I could leave you breathless and gasping for more.’
‘Which I doubt you would be able to give,’ she responded with a touch of cold amusement, although in fact she felt peculiarly vulnerable. She was used to fairly uncontrolled remarks from soldiers. Life and death are very close at times.
He glared at her. Then she recognised something other than fury in him, and she knew exactly what it was. It was terror, the all-consuming terror of annihilation, of becoming nothing, not even a hole in the darkness. He was well enough now not to long for the peace of death as an end of pain, but as an irrevocable step into oblivion.
There were no words that would make a difference, and she was afraid he would see the understanding in her face.
‘With luck, you will have a good night, and feel like breakfast in the morning,’ she said blandly. She hated the sound of her own voice, as trite as if she had seen and understood nothing. It was insulting to her own intelligence. And yet it was still better than acknowledging the truth.
She made the bed tidy and comfortable, leaving a small night candle burning so Radnor was not in the dark. The country dark was absolute on a moonless night, nothing like the city where there was always a lamp lit somewhere, however faint, and usually the sounds of traffic, hoofs, wheels, and the rattle of harnesses, the reminder that there were other living beings in the world.
This would be complete – as he might envision death to be.
As Hester left the room, she saw Adrienne waiting, watching. Hester suggested that she sleep in the chair beside him, uncomfortable as that was.
