Ellis Peters - George Felse 08 - The House Of Green Turf Read Free

as it takes for a somersaulting car to smash itself against a tree-stump, and spill you out among the broken glass and twisted metal on to the grass. And probably about as long as it takes to launch the decisive word or act that looks almost excusable at the moment, and only afterwards, long, long afterwards, turns out to have been your damnation.
     
    She awoke from an uneasy sleep in mid-afternoon, to find a small, elderly, shaggy man in a white coat sitting beside her bed. She had seen him making his official rounds twice since her admission, and she knew he was the consultant surgeon who had perseveringly stitched Humpty-Dumpty together again; but until this moment she had never seen him still, and never without his retinue.
    ‘Good!’ he said. ‘I’ve been waiting for the chance to talk to you. You worry me.’
    ‘Do I? I’m sorry!’ she said, startled, and her memory fitted one detail, at least, into its true place. ‘I know you now,’ she said obscurely, ‘you’re the one who said I had a chance to begin again.’
    ‘Did I? I don’t remember that. But you have, that’s true enough. What are you going to do with it?’
    ‘Use it, I hope.’
    ‘I hope so, too, but I’m not so sure of it as I was three days ago. You’re my investment, I want to see you thriving. After a tricky start you got over your physical troubles marvellously, and believe me, you can think yourself lucky to have a constitution like yours. Your pulse is steady, your blood pressure’s satisfactory, and your body’s functioning like a first-class machine. But Sister tells me you’ve lost some weight and are losing your appetite. Why? Why have you less energy than you had two or three days ago? Why do you have nothing to say to anyone unless you’re obliged by politeness? And never use that telephone we gave you?’
    Her eyes, which were the darkest, deepest blue he had ever seen, and in any but this lofty light might have seemed black, widened in alarm, astonishment and compunction. ‘I didn’t realise that,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry!’
    ‘And for all this, let me tell you, there isn’t the slightest physiological reason. Your body’s doing its job. Doing everything it can to get well. So since there has to be a reason why you’ve come to a halt, and even begun to lose ground, the reason must be in your mind. Now probably you’ll tell me that what’s in your mind is no concern of mine,’ he said dryly, ‘but at least don’t tell me there’s nothing damaging there, because I shan’t believe you.’
    ‘No,’ said Maggie, and raised herself strenuously on her pillow to be eye to eye with him. ‘No, I do realise… It was you who put me together again.’ He understood what she meant; it gave him rights in her. Every artist, every craftsman, has the right to demand that his work shall not be wasted by somebody else’s wanton irresponsibility. ‘I do want to get well,’ she said. ‘I want to go on singing—what’s the good of me, otherwise? And I want to do you credit, too. It’s a priority bill that I must pay before I can get any peace. But, my God, don’t you think I’ve been trying?’
    ‘I know you have. Even successfully, until something else distracted your attention. Something with a higher priority?’
    She let her head fall back on the pillow. Her eyes closed for a moment, but opened unwaveringly to hold him off. There were defences there only an old man with privileges could hope to breach, and even he only when the wind and the hour and the mood were favourable. She was a strong, fit woman, thirty-one years old and one of the treasures of the world, even if she herself didn’t know it, and he was disposed to believe that she did; and unless somebody managed to goad her back into living, she would draw in upon herself and die of absent-mindedness. Literally absent-mindedness, for all her energy and will-power and passion were engaged elsewhere, and her body, however robust and heroic, could not