‘At least it doesn’t look clinical.’
‘It looks completely
private
clinical to me. It’s like a country house hotel for rich hypochondriacs.’
‘It’s a naturopathy clinic, as you well know, and they consider the surroundings important. Beauty has a healing power, that’s the theory. And it’s run as a charity, some people don’t pay anything, so they’re not necessarily all rich,’ Sara said, ‘or hypochondriacs. That’s what Tom says. And it’s what I say, too.’
Between them, they had been selling James the idea of the Sulis Clinic solidly, ever since Tom had brought him back from Edinburgh late on Sunday and since his telephone call to Sara on Monday afternoon. He wanted James to try the Sulis because some years ago Tom’s mother had spent a fortnight there and been cured, rather amazingly, of her diverticulitis. In a fortnight. Tom had seen it for himself. James had been unconvinced but also too ill and scared to object, and had agreed to the appointment with Dr Golightly in Bath on Monday morning.
‘But look at these colours. I cannot sleep here.’
‘Yes, you can. It’s the best room in the whole clinic. The colours are very restful, if you give them a chance,’ Sara said with determination. James was sitting glumly on the end of the lilac quilted bed. She joined him and put an arm round his shoulders. He sagged, his head dipped, he turned his face into Sara’s chest and wept.
‘I can’t stay here. Don’t make me.’
‘You have to stay here,’ Sara said gently, ‘just for a while, a couple of weeks. While Tom’s away on this case in Brussels. You know how reluctant he was to leave you and you promised him last night you’d give the Sulis a go. You know you’re not well.’
‘But I’d be all right at home. I’m feeling fine now.’
Sara eased herself away and, with her hands on James’s defeated shoulders, looked him in the eye. ‘You promised Tom. He wouldn’t have gone otherwise. When the pain does come it’s more than you can stand. You don’t want a repeat of Edinburgh, do you? Do you really want another ambulance ride to A&E, just for the pain to disappear almost the minute you get there?’
The A&E doctor had sent him away with the
recommendation that James go to his own GP. Instead Tom had driven all night and marched James off to Dr Golightly’s surgery for an appointment the following day because Dr Golightly, when he had been reminded that Tom was Lady Wallace’s son, had found that he could ‘fit him in’ after he had seen his morning patients. Tom was still furious because James had kept from him the fact that he had been having the pains, on and off, for about two months. It was Tom who had explained to the doctor that James’s own GP knew nothing of the problem because James (and this was said with a despairing look at the patient) had not consulted him about it. And they had both allowed themselves to be calmed by Dr Golightly’s view, and by the way he expressed it, that James had an irritable bowel, illustrating the strange truth that even strong men in their forties would rather be told about a ‘troublesome tummy’ than intestinal inflammation, twisting, strangulation, blockage or obstruction. And to Tom’s relief the doctor had gone on to suggest that the Sulis would indeed be an appropriate solution if James would consider going there.
‘He’ll go,’ Tom had declared. Delicately, Dr Golightly had raised the squalid question of money.
‘When patients come through my surgery door, of course, I’m just an ordinary part-time GP,’ he explained, ‘although when I treated Lady Wallace I was working very nearly full-time for the good old NHS. But I do also have the Sulis, though most of my NHS patients have never heard of it,’ he had said. ‘Run on naturopathy lines, a holistic approach. It’s a special area of mine. Conditions such as IBS are often very responsive. But of course although it’s not run for profit, it’s private sector and fees do have to be
charged. I take it that would be, er … no obstacle to, er …?’
‘None,’ Tom had said.
And because he had to go to Brussels on Monday night he had rung Sara to ask her not so much to take James in to the Sulis as to make sure he went. And stayed. So now she was saying gently to James as they sat on the end of the bed in the Wisteria Suite, ‘He doesn’t want you on your own while he’s away. We’ve got to get you better.’ She gave James’s shoulders a little shake. ‘Haven’t we?’
James looked back at her and for the first time did not try to hide the fear in his eyes. ‘But what if something happens when he’s not here? I mean … suppose it’s not IBS? Suppose it’s something like … something you don’t get better from?’
Sara interrupted, reiterating old reassurances. ‘There’s no good reason to think it’s anything other than an irritable bowel, Dr Golightly said so. You’re very wound up, that’s all, you know what the past six months have been like. It’s stress-related IBS. So this is the best possible place you could be. It’ll
make
you relax in a way you just wouldn’t at home. Tom said Dr Golightly says you’ve got to change your pace, your diet, your outlook, and stop worrying. Then you’ll be giving your body the right conditions to heal itself.’ She did not add how utterly, desperately, she needed this to be true. ‘Tom thinks Dr Golightly’s a good egg. His mother’s never looked back. And she’s not easily fooled.’
‘No, but she practically fell in love with him. Apparently everyone does. You wait till you’ve met him, you’ll see why.’
‘Don’t change the subject.’
James nodded, conceding. ‘All right, I know, I know. I’ll stay. It’s not your fault. I suppose I’ll bloody stay.’
‘And Tom will be in touch though they don’t like you to have your mobile here. We just have to accept that he can’t be here to look after you when you’re ill. So you’re going to stay here and be properly sorted out, once and for all. Lots of people come here and get better when nothing else has worked. Lots of them come regularly because they leave feeling so well. It’s got a great reputation.’
‘Not for its fucking wallpaper, it hasn’t.’
‘It’s hand-printed.’
‘It looks like deadly fucking nightshade. Or poison ivy.’
James was reverting, possibly even without noticing it, to the tense and aggressive posturing he adopted when he was hopelessly tired. Sara, now convinced that this was at least partly why he was ill, tried again. ‘Tom says Dr Golightly set the place up for people just like you.’
‘What, specially for people with IBS? Or suspected IBS, because nobody knows except Dr fucking brilliant Golightly?’ It had swept over James again that Tom had walked out and left him here, and he had decided that he felt not grieved, but aggrieved by his abandonment.
‘Oh, you’ve got IBS all right,’ Sara said, rising and walking to the window. ‘Irritable Bastard Syndrome. You’re an awkward sod, you know that? Do you realise how hard you’re making this for yourself?’ Despairing, she looked out across to the city and the hills beyond, blind to the beauties of the view, framed as it was by the trickle of hand-printed wisteria down the sides of the window.
There was a knock at the door of the sort that is not asking if entry is permitted but giving a split second’s notice that privacy is about to be violated. A white-uniformed
nurse strode into the room, marched over to the other window and tugged at the sash cords.
‘Afternoon! Oh, they do stick, these windows. I’ll just—Ooof!’ The window cracked open. ‘’Scuse me!’ Sara stepped aside from her window and the nurse strode over and pulled this open, too, with much greater ease. ‘That’s better, need a bit of air in, don’t we, Mr Ballantyne?’ She turned with a matey smile to face James. She had the almost plumptious curves of a small fifty-year-old, with no-nonsense legs in white stockings and shoes, and black curled hair.
‘Mr Ballantyne?’
James looked up meekly and met her gaze. Above the white of her uniform, her large brown eyes had a delicious lustre, like melted plain chocolate.
‘Aw, sweetheart,’ she said, tipping her head to one side and wrinkling her nose sympathetically. She walked over, crouched beside him and took his hands. ‘You’re not feeling too clever, are you? Never you mind, sweetheart, that’s why you’re here.’ She patted his hands and stood up. With a nod and another nose wrinkle, a conspiratorial one, to Sara, she announced, ‘I’m Sister Cartwright but everybody calls me Sister Yvonne, all right? And I’ll call you James, that’s if you don’t like me calling you sweetheart, because I tell you now that’s what I call everybody, all right?’ To Sara’s amazement, James was smiling up at her like a comforted child.
‘And aren’t you lucky getting the Wisteria Suite? Lovely, isn’t it?’ Her confident beam took in the whole room and its contents.
After a pause James said, ‘Yes, it’s lovely.’
‘You are lucky Mrs Purdey was due to go this morning.
She was very happy here. She’s gone off fit as a butcher’s dog. Oh, except they’re all vegetarian here, don’t tell anyone I said that, will you?’ In a stage whisper she confided, ‘You do tend to get meat a bit on the brain here, though, if you’re like me.’
James, a dedicated carnivore, giggled. Sister Yvonne checked the watch on her bosom. ‘So, tell you what, sweetheart, we’ll go down now and see Dr Golightly. He likes to see his new arrivals. I expect you’ll be down for Scottish Douche and balneotherapy, for starters, but we’ll see what the doc says. All right, chuck?’
James stood up and said, ‘Yes, that would be lovely.
Thank you.’
Sara followed them, open-mouthed.
As they made their way down the stairs Sister Yvonne pointed out various features with the proprietorial pride and closet ignorance of a National Trust volunteer. ‘These are the main stairs, grand aren’t they?’ She waved an arm bountifully. ‘There’s a little staircase as well, for the staff, through a door down in the main hall. Built in 1828 originally, this house, by a chap called Henry Goodridge. Supposed to be Grecian influenced. But,’ she lowered her voice, ‘you tell me what’s Greek about black wrought iron banisters and bright yellow walls. My Chris and me’ve been to Patsos
and
Athens and there’s nothing like it there. English as roast beef and Yorkshire pud, I’d say—oh, there I go again! Meat on the brain. Dr Golightly’s on the ground floor. Here we are.’ She knocked at a door and turned to them. ‘Got to wait,’ she whispered. ‘Dr G’s rule. Might be with someone.’
But he was not, judging by the speed with which the door was opened. The welcoming bearded face looked so
happy to see them that James feared Dr Golightly might burst into song. ‘Here’s Mr Ballantyne for you, Doctor,’ Yvonne said, taking her leave. ‘James, I should say. All right, James? I’ll leave you with Doctor now but I’ll be seeing you soon, no doubt.’
‘Ah, no! Let’s rather say here am I for James,’ Dr Golightly laughed, ushering Sara and James in urgently, as if they were standing in the rain. ‘Do come in and sit down. I’ll just find your records.’
The room, although not nearly as large, had the same imposing high windows as James’s room, here dressed by sweeping silk curtains in a restrained rust colour which exactly matched the carpet. It was arranged partly as an office, with a desk and tall filing cabinets, and partly as a consulting room. But evidently the consultations carried out here were only of the verbal sort conducted in the comfortable chairs where they were now being invited to sit. There was no high couch, not even a washhand basin with the soap, paper towels and ominously clean-looking implements that doctors need in order to do the kind of unspeakable things they routinely do to their embarrassed, half-dressed patients. Although grand the room exuded intimacy, even kindness. A clean and calming scent filled the air, its source, James assumed, being the small clay contraption on the table where a nightlight burned under a little pot. Aromatherapy, no doubt, a thing he had no time for, but the scent—lavender with something?—was wonderful.
Dr Golightly was turning to them from the filing cabinet behind his desk, holding a slim folder. Before he could speak, James announced, ‘I should say at the outset, because yesterday I didn’t get the chance, that I really don’t
see how you can claim that naturopathy is the answer to every medical problem under the sun.’ He would not look at Sara.
Dr Golightly stopped, took off his metal-rimmed spectacles and looked at James indulgently. James stared back. Had he been feeling so bad yesterday that he had somehow managed not to notice what a perfect advertisement the doctor was for whatever quackery he was presumably about to flog him? Dr Golightly was both extremely tall and long-legged. He was straight and supple and moved with the grace of a young man, which James admitted to himself was impressive, guessing him to be in his late fifties. Probably just lucky genes, he tried to think, his good manners requiring some mental resistance to such a persuasively sexy body. But what was quite impossible to dismiss was a sense of wellbeing so powerful that Stephen Golightly seemed to embrace others with it, as if he were offering to share some quietly joyful aura of his own with other people. Never had James found a person’s health so compellingly attractive. He felt himself almost blushing.
Stephen Golightly took a chair opposite and placed the folder on the low table between them. ‘But of course it isn’t. Whatever gave you the idea that it could be?’
James straightened up in his chair and looked embarrassed. He glanced over at Sara, who raised an eyebrow sternly at him. ‘Well, this place,’ he said uncertainly, ‘the whole thing, it’s … all very … big and …’ He waved an arm hopelessly.
‘If you mean it’s all rather grand,’ Dr Golightly said gently, ‘I probably agree. But it’s also a gracious building. Architecture matters, don’t you feel that? I looked at several places, but I bought this one and set the clinic up here
because it seemed to offer a haven—it’s spacious, surrounded by trees, it’s high, it overlooks the entire city. Didn’t you feel that, up in the Wisteria Suite? I always hope that beauty helps people forget what’s not really important and connect with what is. That’s the true, the only purpose of beauty, to my mind.’
The intelligent eyes looked a little crestfallen and James, obedient to the same impulse not to disappoint that had prevented him being rude about the Wisteria Suite to Sister Yvonne said, ‘Oh, of course, it is a wonderful house, yes. I just mean, naturopathy, I mean, if it’s that great, why isn’t everybody doing it?’