The Private Patient Read Free Page B

visit either for a day or overnight. I like patients to see where they’re to be operated on if they can spare the time. It’s disconcerting to arrive at a totally strange place.”
    She said, “Is the wound likely to be painful—after the operation, I mean?”
    â€œNo, it’s unlikely to be painful. A little sore perhaps, and there may be considerable swelling. If there is pain we can deal with it.”
    â€œA bandage over my face?”
    â€œNot a bandage. A dressing which will be taped.”
    There was one more question and she had no inhibition in asking it, although she thought she knew the answer. She wasn’t asking out of fear and hoped that he would understand this without greatly caring if he didn’t. “Would this be described as a dangerous operation?”
    â€œThere is always some risk with a general anaesthetic. As far as the surgery is concerned, it will be time-consuming, delicate and likely to present some problems. Those will be my responsibility, not yours. It would not be described as surgically dangerous.”
    She wondered whether he was implying that there might be other dangers, psychological problems arising from a complete alteration in appearance. She didn’t expect any. She had coped with the implications of the scar for thirty-four years. She would cope with its disappearance.
    He had asked whether she had any other questions. She said she had none. He rose and they shook hands, and for the first time he smiled. It transformed his face. He said, “My secretary will send you the dates when I can fit you in at St. Angela’s for the tests. Will that present a problem? Will you be in London in the next two weeks?”
    â€œI’ll be in London.”
    She followed Mrs. Snelling into an office at the rear of the ground floor, where a middle-aged woman gave her a brochure about the facilities at the Manor and set out the cost, both of the preparatory visit—which, she explained, Mr. Chandler-Powell thought would be helpful to patients but which wasn’t, of course, obligatory—and the greater cost of the operation and a week’s post-operative stay. She had expected the price to be high, but the reality was beyond her estimate. No doubt the figures represented a social rather than a medical advantage. She seemed to remember overhearing a woman say, “Of course, I always go to the Manor,” as if this admitted her to a coterie of privileged patients. She knew she could have the operation under the NHS, but there was a waiting list for non-urgent cases and she needed privacy. Speed and privacy, in all fields, had become an expensive luxury.
    She was shown out within half an hour of arriving. There was an hour to spare before she was due at The Ivy. She would walk.

4
----

    The Ivy was too popular a restaurant to ensure anonymity, but social discretion, in all other areas important to her, had never worried her where Robin was concerned. In an age when notoriety required increasingly scandalous indiscretions, even the most desperate gossip page would hardly waste a paragraph on the disclosure that Rhoda Gradwyn, the distinguished journalist, was lunching with a man twenty years younger than herself. She was used to him; he amused her. He opened up for her areas of life which she needed, however vicariously, to experience. And she was sorry for him. It was hardly the basis for intimacy and on her part there was none. He confided; she listened. She supposed that she must be gaining some satisfaction from the relationship or why was she still willing to let him appropriate even a restricted area of her life? When she thought about the friendship, which was seldom, it seemed a habit which imposed no more arduous obligations than an occasional lunch or dinner at her expense, and which it would be more time-consuming and awkward to end than to continue.
    He was waiting for her, as always, at his favourite table by the door,