The Mill on the Shore (12 page)

‘What was it then?’ Molly asked impatiently. ‘What was making him so miserable?’

She saw at once that she should have been more careful. Grace shook her head angrily.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘That’s confidential information. Between the patient and me.’

‘He’s dead!’ Molly said. ‘It can hardly matter to him now.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. ‘ It matters to me.’

There was a pause. Molly tried again.

‘You encouraged him to write his autobiography,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ the woman said, strangely self-mocking. ‘That was my doing.’

‘How did you think that would help?’

She did not answer directly. ‘Do you know,’ she asked, ‘what Mrs Morrissey intends to do with that? Will she still publish?’

‘She can’t,’ Molly said flatly. ‘It’s disappeared.’

‘Did Jimmy destroy it before he killed himself?’ The notion seemed to excite, even to please her. Molly thought again that she might have been more involved with the man than she was letting on.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I suppose it’s a possibility. That had never occurred to us.’ She looked at Grace Sharland and asked again: ‘How did you think the autobiography would help?’

This time the nurse seemed more willing to answer. She seemed to have forgotten about her commitment to confidentiality.

‘Soon after meeting James I thought it more likely that his sudden lack of self-confidence and self-esteem had to do with his professional rather than his private life,’ she said. ‘Work always mattered to him more than personal relationships. He defined himself by his work. For some reason he thought that he’d failed. I saw the autobiography as a way of remembering all the successes.’

‘What do you mean, he’d failed? Was there some specific incident?’

She was cautious again. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I believe that there was.’

‘He didn’t tell you about it?’

There was a silence. ‘No,’ she said. ‘He told me I could read about it in the autobiography.’ Molly did not quite believe her.

‘You must have been surprised when he committed suicide,’ she said at last, ‘if you didn’t consider he was clinically depressed.’

‘Of course I was surprised,’ she said. ‘It was dreadful. I’d been so wrong about him …’

She turned away from Molly and looked into the fire.

‘You went to his memorial service,’ Molly said. ‘ Why did you do that?’

‘To say goodbye, I suppose.’

‘Do you get so involved with all your patients?’

‘What do you mean?’ She looked up sharply, blushing.

‘Jimmy had something of a reputation with women, you know,’ Molly said gently.

‘Did he?’ she said sadly. ‘I suppose he must have done.’

‘What happened?’ Molly asked.

‘Nothing happened!’ She was shocked. ‘He was a patient!’

‘I suppose he fell in love with you,’ Molly said matter-of-factly. ‘He was always doing that. And it’s not unusual, is it, for a patient to form a romantic attachment with someone caring for them. A sort of gratitude.’

Grace smiled gratefully. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s not unusual.’

‘What about you?’ Molly said. ‘ Did you fall for him?’

There was no reply.

‘Why wouldn’t you?’ Molly went on. ‘He was charming, a celebrity. At the very least it must have been flattering to receive his attentions.’

‘I never encouraged them!’ she said defensively.

‘Of course not,’ Molly said.

‘I’d never met anyone like him,’ she went on. ‘Even when he first arrived and he was so morose you couldn’t help being impressed by him. He was so
intelligent.
And then, as you say, when his mood improved I felt that I’d really achieved something. It gave me such a buzz! And I was flattered by his admiration. It was only later that I saw he was using me …’

‘In what way?’

But she shook her head and would not answer.

‘Tell me what happened on the day he died.’

‘He phoned me and asked me to visit,’ she said. ‘I’d only seen him the week before and I said I wasn’t sure I could fit him in. He insisted. During the previous meeting we’d had a …

misunderstanding. I thought perhaps he wanted to apologize so I agreed to go.’

‘What sort of misunderstanding?’

Again she refused to answer, and Molly continued: ‘And did he want to apologize?’

‘Of course not!’ She laughed. ‘I should have known him better than that. He wanted to let off steam, that was all. Meg had done something to annoy him. He didn’t say what it was. I expect it was something trivial. He said he couldn’t stand it at the Mill any longer. He’d had enough.’ She smiled again. ‘He even suggested moving in with me. Can you imagine him in here? He said if I’d just get rid of my hang-ups we could make it work. He claimed he was desperate but I didn’t take him seriously. He was always saying that he had to get out of the Mill, leave Meg and the bloody circus behind. But for some reason he never did.’

‘Why do you think that was?’

Grace Sharland shrugged. ‘ Perhaps he still didn’t have the confidence to break out on his own. Perhaps it was the kids. He was fond of them in his own way. Especially Caitlin.’

‘How did he take it when you refused to let him move in with you?’

‘I don’t think he ever thought I would agree. He was trying it on. He said: “ Well sod off then, Sharland. If you won’t help me I’ll find my own way out.”’ She paused and stared blankly into the fire. ‘I thought he intended to go off on his own, down to London perhaps. If he found the courage to leave at all. It never crossed my mind that he meant to kill himself.’

Molly made no attempt to comfort her. The only way to relieve her sense of guilt would be to prove that Jimmy Morrissey hadn’t taken his own life.

‘You didn’t mention all this at the inquest?’ she said.

Grace Sharland shook her head. ‘What would be the point? Meg had enough to cope with without having to face the fact that her husband was chasing another woman.’

She stood up and her voice was calm and unemotional. ‘I’ve told you all I can,’ she said. ‘ Perhaps you’d leave now.’

‘Of course,’ Molly said. ‘But there is one thing … When you visited James that afternoon did you see him in his office?’

The woman nodded.

‘Was he working on his autobiography?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘ When I arrived he was writing frantically. When he saw me he shut the notebook. He was always very secretive. He never showed me anything he wrote.’

‘Yes,’ Molly said, ‘I see.’

On the doorstep they paused. Outside it was quite dark and very cold.

‘I’m sorry to have troubled you,’ Molly said.

‘That’s all right.’ Grace seemed reluctant now to let her go. ‘It was good to have someone to talk to. It was hardly the sort of thing I could discuss with my friends.’ She shivered, but still she did not shut the door.

‘I’m staying at the Mill,’ Molly said. ‘ If you think of something else, perhaps you’d ring.’

‘Yes,’ she said gratefully. ‘I will.’

Molly turned and walked back towards the town.

Mardon Wools had a square brick and glass factory on a trading estate inland from the town. It was larger and more solid than the other units on the estate but George was disappointed. He had expected something massive and gothic: a dark satanic mill. That was ridiculous of course. They wouldn’t be spinning or weaving at Mardon now, just putting together the finished garments and machine knitting. He parked neatly in a space marked
VISITORS
and got out of the car. It was almost dark. As he approached the main entrance to the factory one of the shifts must have ended because a group of women still wearing overalls under their outdoor clothes spilled out of a small door at the back, almost falling over each other in their eagerness to leave. A bus drove slowly down the hill on its way to town and they ran, giggling, towards the stop, waving their arms and shouting for it to wait. They climbed aboard, the bus drove off and the estate seemed suddenly quiet and deserted.

The reception area was spacious with a shining block wood floor and a forest of potted plants. Beyond it was the factory shop where seconds and end-of-range garments were sold at a discount. A few well-dressed women browsed through the rails. A middle-aged woman in a camel coat and suede boots lifted out a sweater and held it against her. The inevitable swan was embroidered on the chest. She looked at the price, shook her head and replaced it.

In glass cabinets in reception more of the company’s designs were on display reflecting the fashion of the past. There were twin sets from the forties, fifties’ short-waisted cardigans, little knitted suits. In the last cabinet was a display of chunky sweaters which had been popular several years before when green consumerism had first taken off. The colours were bright and the designs were of tigers and elephants and whales and stitched underneath were simplistic exhortations to save the planet. Cathy had mentioned that her first work had an environmental theme and he supposed these were her designs. He recalled that there had been a sponsorship deal with the International Wildlife Fund which had attracted a lot of publicity. It had made George uneasy. He had always thought that increased consumption and conservation were incompatible. Now, in the depths of a recession, people were more concerned about saving jobs than the rain forests and the jerseys had gone out of fashion. They were preserved as a relic of a more optimistic time, when the Green Party were considered electable and politicians thought they could save the world by banning hair spray.

A receptionist sat behind an impressive curved desk made, he suspected, from imported South American hardwood. She was operating a switchboard and finished dealing with a call before turning to him.

‘Yes?’ she said with a bright, almost natural smile. ‘Can I help you?’

‘I wonder if it might be possible to see Mr Cairns. I’m a friend. I’m afraid I haven’t an appointment but if he’s busy I’m quite prepared to wait.’

He gave his name.

‘Just a minute, Mr Palmer-Jones. I’ll see if he’s free.’ She pressed some buttons on the switchboard and added confidentially: ‘ I know he’s been in a meeting for most of the day because he asked me not to put any calls through to him, but I think his visitors have just left.’

She spoke into the telephone, then gave George another of her professional smiles. ‘ Mr Cairns says if you’d like to take a seat he’ll be with you in a minute.’

It was extraordinarily lucky, George thought, that Phil hadn’t taken any calls. Cathy wouldn’t have been able to tell him what to say.

George had known Phil since he was a teenager. They had met at annual ringing and migration conferences then bumped into each other at bird observatories where they both went to increase their ringing experience: at Portland in the sixties when you still slept in the lighthouse tower and the warden’s wife cooked an evening meal for three shillings and sixpence, on Lundy where they had shared a squalid, rat-infested dormitory, and on Cape Clear off the southern point of Ireland where they drank Guinness together in Paddy’s Bar. They still met up at the Swanwick Conferences and it was hard to believe that he was now middle-aged. There was some grey in his beard. He had put on weight. But the enthusiasm which had had him up at dawn every morning on Lundy even though the best migrant was a willow warbler remained with him.

A door beyond the reception desk burst open and Phil bounded across the floor towards George, beaming.

‘What are you doing here then?’ he said. ‘Meg said you’d be at the Mill but I didn’t think you’d waste time by coming into town. There’s not much to bring a keen birder to this place. I thought you’d be out on the shore making the most of the light. But eh man, it’s great to see you.’ He turned to the receptionist. ‘See if you can rustle up some tea, Helen, and some of those chocolate biscuits that only come out at directors’ meetings.’ He clapped George on the shoulder. ‘Come on through, and you can tell me what this is all about.’

His office was on the second floor and there was a large plate-glass window with a view of the river.

‘I have to sit with my back to that,’ Phil said, ‘or I’d not work at all. Not that there’s much to see of course. It’s not like the view from the cottage.’

‘There are always the swans,’ George said.

‘Oh, there are always the bloody mute swans. But I sometimes think they’re more bother than they’re worth. We have coach trips in the summer, guided tours round the works and hope they spend a fortune in the shop. You know the sort of thing. If there are no swans about they ask what we’ve done to them and if they’re here they feed them with leftover sandwiches.’ He smiled broadly. ‘I don’t mean all that of course. The swans have really captured the public’s imagination. They’re spectacular – the biggest gathering in the North of England – and Mardon Wools wouldn’t be the same without them. Sometimes I think they’re symbolic of our success, like the apes on the Rock of Gibraltar, and if anything were to happen to them the company would go down too. But they can be a nuisance all the same.’

He took a seat behind the desk and motioned George to sit opposite. Helen brought in a tray with tea and a selection of biscuits. He thanked her and she blushed with pleasure. He would be popular with his staff.

‘What’s all this about then?’ Phil asked. ‘What are you doing at the Mill? You’re not just there for the winter birding.’

‘No,’ George said. ‘Didn’t Meg tell you why she wanted us to come?’

Phil shrugged. ‘I haven’t seen much of her since the memorial service. I don’t know what to say to her and I don’t like to intrude. She’s got her family with her and Cathy feels awkward about going there.’

‘But you had heard that she’s not happy with the inquest verdict of suicide?’

‘I’d heard,’ he said. ‘ You don’t keep many secrets in a place like that.’

‘What’s your feeling about it?’ George asked.

‘My feeling is that it should be over and forgotten. It does no good going through it all again. The inquest should be the end of it.’ He paused. ‘Cathy’s been a nervous wreck since it happened,’ he said. ‘I hate to see her like that. It brought back all that business with Hannah, the talk of inquests. I wish Meg would leave well alone.’