The Walking Stick Read Free

drink and I sipped mine. Arabella was laughing with her new boy friend.
    The young man said: ‘Maybe I talk too much.’
    I half-smiled but did not look at him.
    ‘What’s your name?’
    ‘Deborah.’
    ‘Mine’s Leigh. Spelled with a gh. Leigh Hartley. You a doctor?’
    ‘No. I work in the West End.’
    ‘The only unmedical Dainton, eh? Thank God. I’m always scared of doctors, even those I know well. And women doctors frighten me even more.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Why? Oh, I don’t know. Because they’re somehow the wrong sex for the job, I reckon. And people who are the wrong sex for a job are always slightly more sinister than people
who are the right sex . . . like male nurses, f’rinstance.’
    Sarah was leading the way into the bedroom for supper.
    I said: ‘Your ideas are a bit Victorian, aren’t they?’
    ‘Old-fashioned, maybe. But why blame the poor old Queen? There weren’t any women doctors in Edward’s day, were there? Or the earlier Georges or the Stuarts or—’
    ‘Well, they burned them then,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you think that’s a good idea.’ I picked up my stick. ‘Supper’s ready.’
    ‘Can I sit with you, d’you think?’
    I smiled. ‘No. I have to help. You follow Arabella and then you won’t lose your way.’
    He smiled back at me and turned away, glass in hand. Before he could move far I deliberately came out and limped beside him to the bedroom door. ‘In there. I think there are enough
seats, but I’m afraid it’s going to be crowded.’
    He pretended not to notice and nodded and slipped in.
    Actually I didn’t help much because it’s always hard for me to get up and down in a hurry, and anyway the kitchen would hardly take more than three. So after
passing a few things I grabbed a plate and a glass of wine, and a couple of people made room for me sitting between them on a bed.
    There was a biggish round table which was normally in the living room, and that took seven. Three or four more sat around the low dressing table, and the others sat on or between the two beds or
stood or squatted on the floor. Leigh Hartley was at the dressing table and spent most of the meal talking to a stout dark girl whose name I never knew; but every now and then I could tell his head
was turned and once I glanced up briefly and met his look.
    We ate for about an hour. It was Spanish Chablis, with vichyssoise , followed by jambon à la crème . Virginia fancied herself with her foreign menus. But actually it
was very good. The man next to me was a doctor and the man on the opposite bed was a doctor and they were discussing the opening of a new psychiatric ward. The man next to me said: ‘What
I’d really like is a selection: about fifteen schizos, five paranoids and a dozen manic depressives to begin. That’s about the right proportion. It doesn’t do to get out of
balance right at the start.’ He sounded as if he was ordering plants for his herbaceous border.
    ‘Well maybe we can fix that,’ said the second man. ‘I’ll talk to Villars-Smith in the morning.’
    The man on the other side of me had just come back from a skiing holiday in Norway, and if supper had gone on another hour he might just have been able to get the whole thing out of his system.
I sat there listening and saying yes and no and watching his red young self-important face swelling up like a frog as the room got hotter: a perfect subject for a coronary at forty-eight; but
he’d still got twenty years ahead of him of swelling and shouting and accidentally spitting out bits of food. One couldn’t help but speculate what he would be like as a husband. Some
poor girl . . .
    Supper finished about eleven, and everyone was very jolly and talkative. I went into the kitchen, but after a bit Sarah pulled me out. ‘I’ve told you before, Deborah, you are an ape. We pay to have this cleared up. Come and talk.’
    So I went in and somebody found me a chair, and in about five minutes Leigh Hartley had edged over to