Today's Reading
Chapter 1
1964
In all failed relationships there is a point that passes unnoticed at the time, which can later be identified as the beginning of the decline. For Helen it was the weekend that the Hidden Man came to Westbury Park.
On Friday, she had been preparing the art therapy room for her favourite group of the week—Male Alcoholics—when Gil put his head around the door. Seeing that she was alone, he came in and sat on the corner of her desk, watching as she laid out paper, pencils, charcoal, and paints. A semicircle of easels was arranged around a still life—a wicker chair, draped in velvet cloth beside a table on which sat a vase of tulips, a milk jug, and a bowl of eggs. The doors to the two small side rooms, used by patients who preferred to work in privacy, were half open and he sent a glance of enquiry in their direction, which Helen answered with a reassuring shake of the head before he spoke.
"Kath is going down to Deal for the weekend with the children."
"Really?" There had been false alarms of this nature before and Helen had learnt not to give in to optimism too far in advance.
He nodded. "Her god-daughter has just had a baby and she's going down there tomorrow to... do whatever it is women do on these occasions. So..."
He stared at her with that burning look that he turned quite unconsciously on women of all ages, and his patients, both male and female. Helen had seen this phenomenon at work, but she liked to imagine that it contained a little extra intensity when it was directed at her.
"You could stay at mine?" she ventured. Even though they had been lovers for three years and he had found her a suitable flat and contributed to her rent with just this kind of opportunity in mind, it had been possible no more than half a dozen times.
"If you'll have me."
"Well, I suppose. If you don't make a nuisance of yourself."
This conversation took place across the width of the room and Helen had continued all the while to sort out materials for the forthcoming class. No one walking in on the scene would have suspected anything unprofessional in their manner. In the early days of their relationship, when passion made them more reckless, the art therapy studio and its side rooms were often used for assignations. Now, they were more careful, or perhaps less passionate. None of their colleagues, from the medical superintendent to the ward orderlies, had any inkling of the affair and if Helen had ever blushed or smiled more than somewhat in his presence, well, so did everyone else favoured by the full beam of Gil's attention.
"I'll be over after lunch tomorrow, then. Kath will have the car, so I suppose I'll have to walk."
He was thinking aloud, not fishing for a lift. Helen had no car—just a second-hand scooter, on which she rode the four miles from her flat in South Croydon to Westbury Park each day.
"Good. I'll cook something nice, then. You'd better go. My men will be here in a minute."
Gil nodded, raking his hand through his thick hair, which was mostly dark but streaked here and there with grey. By some sorcery of nature or grooming, it was always the same untidy length, just below the collar, but never seemed to grow longer or have been cut suddenly shorter.
"I love you," he said and was gone, his footsteps echoing down the long corridor.
Helen tuned the radio to the Third Programme. A background of classical music, at a volume to soothe rather than stir, had proved to be the most conducive to an atmosphere of calm and concentration.
The room, thanks to her little touches, was the pleasantest in the entire hospital. The colourful mobiles, stirring gently on their fishing-line frames, the prints by old masters on the wall alongside paintings by the residents of Westbury Park past and present, dried flowers in a vase, screen-printed cushions, and an atmosphere of harmony and order were all her doing.
...
