The Various Haunts of Men Read Free Page A

she would not do was call an ambulance and send him off to die, probably on a hard trolleyin a corridor atBevham General. She could make him as comfortable as possible, bringing in the oxygen cylinder from her car to ease his breathing, and she could stay with them both, unless she was called elsewhere.
    Cat Deerbon was thirty-four, a young GP, but one who, from a family of doctors going back four generations, had inherited the conviction that some old ways were still the best, when it came to individualpatient care.
    ‘Come on, Harry love.’ When Cat came back with the oxygen, Iris Chater was stroking her husband’s hollow cheek and talking softly to him. His pulse was weak, his breathing uneven, his hands very cold. ‘You can do something for him, can’t you, Doctor?’
    ‘I can make him more comfortable. Just help me lift him up on the pillows, Mrs Chater.’
    Outside, the gale was hurling itself atthe windows. The gas fire sputtered. If Harry lasted longer than the next hour or so, Cat would call in the district nurses.
    ‘He isn’t suffering, is he?’ Iris Chater still held her husband’s hand. ‘It isn’t very nice, is it, that mask over his poor face?’
    ‘It’s the best way of easing things for him. I think he’s quite comfortable, you know.’
    The woman looked at Cat. Her own face was grey tooand creased with strain, her eyes deep-set, the skin beneath them pouched and bruise-coloured with tiredness. She was nine years her husband’s junior, a neat, energetic woman, but now she looked as old and ill as he did.
    ‘It’s been no life for him, not since the spring.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘He’s hated this … being dependent, being weak. He hasn’t been eating. I’ve had a job to get a spoonful of anythingdown him.’
    Cat adjusted the oxygen mask on Harry’s face. His nose was beaked and jutted out, as the flesh had fallen away on either side of it. The skull showed clear beneath the almost-transparent skin. Even with the help of the oxygen, his breathing was difficult.
    ‘Harry love …’ his wife stroked his brow.
    How many are there like this now, Cat thought, married over fifty years and still contentedlytogether? How many of her own generation would stick it out, taking everything as it came because that was what you did, what you had promised to do?
    She got up. ‘I think we could both do with some tea. Do you mind me rooting about in your kitchen?’
    Iris Chater started from the chair. ‘Goodness, I can’t have you doing that, Doctor, I’ll get it.’
    ‘No,’ Cat said gently, ‘you stay with Harry.He knows you’re there, you know. He’ll want you to stay beside him.’
    She went out to the small kitchen. Every shelf, every flat surface was crowded not only with the usual china and utensils but with decorative objects, ornaments, calendars, figurines, pictures, framed words of wisdom, honey pots shaped like beehives, eggcups with smiley faces, thermometers set in brass holders and clocks likefloral plates. On the window ledge a plastic bird bobbed down to drink from a glass of water when Cat touched its head. She could imagine how much Hannah would adore that – almost as much as she would covet the pink crochet doll whose skirt covered the sugar basin.
    She lit the gas and filled the kettle. Outside, the windslammed a gate. This house fitted its occupants and they the house – likehands fitted gloves. How could others sneer at sets of royal family mugs and tea towels printed with ‘Home Sweet Home’ and ‘Desiderata’?
    She prayed that her phone would not ring. Spending some time now with a dying patient – doing something so ordinary as making tea in this kitchen, helping an ordinary couple through the most momentous and distressing parting of all – put the hassle and increasingadministrative burden of general practice in its place. Medicine was changing, or being changed, by the grey men who managed but did not understand it. A lot of Cat and Chris Deerbon’s