The Healers Read online

  From an envelope which had been propped on the mantelpiece he took a photo. This was his date. She was his perfect match, the agency had said. She had chosen him from the rest of the men on their files. He read again her details though he knew them almost by heart. Jane Symons. Divorcee. Blond. Blue eyes. Forty-four years old. She was, she had written, manageress of a high-class shoe store. He wondered briefly if he would get shoes at a discount. He could do with a new pair of boots. The photo was small, the kind you can have taken in a machine, just a head shot. When he looked at it he couldn’t connect it with a real person, with the blond-haired, blue-eyed divorcee of his imagination.

  He had arranged to meet her in the lounge bar of the Ship Hotel in Otterbridge. It was a longish way for him to go and the drinks were a bit pricey but she hadn’t said on her form if she could drive. Besides, he thought the Ship would impress her. He would buy her a meal. If they got on perhaps she would come over to Mittingford next time. The real secret hope was that he would persuade her to come back with him tonight. That would show Lily Jackman.

  In the depths of the house his mother’s clock chimed the half hour. Half past six. For some reason it had kept better time since the old lady had died. Not like the one in the song. If he was going to meet Jane at eight he’d have to get a move on. Jane. He said the word out loud, practising.

  No time for a bath, he thought, without much regret. He hadn’t lit the boiler this morning and if he waited for the emersion to heat the water he’d be there all night. He’d put a kettle on and have a wash at the kitchen sink as he had when he was a lad.

  When he was ready he thought he was smart enough for any woman. He’d bought a shirt for the occasion from the small gent’s outfitters in Mittingford and there was the suit his mother had made him get for his uncle’s funeral. He cleaned his shoes, spitting on them as he’d been taught during National Service.

  Jane, he thought again, pushing thoughts of Lily Jackman to the back of his mind. Likes: the countryside, classical music, walking. She had left the dislikes space on the form blank. He hoped that meant she was an easy and accommodating person. A gay divorcee, he thought. Meaning laughter, sex.

  The grandfather clock struck seven. At least half an hour to get to Otterbridge and park, and then he’d need a couple of drinks for Dutch courage before she arrived. He locked the farmhouse door behind him. When Mother was alive he’d never bothered.

  She’d be more than a match for any burglar. But he didn’t trust Sean any further than he could throw him.

  He crossed the yard gingerly, trying to avoid getting his shoes too mucky. From the Land-Rover he could see over the wall into the meadow. Sean was sitting on the caravan steps with his head in his hands. He must have heard the Land-Rover starting up – it was a diesel engine and it needed a service – but he did not look up at the sound. Ernie wondered wistfully if they’d had a row.

  The fantasy returned of Lily in his kitchen, cooking his meals, and in his bed smoothing away the pains of the day with her long, brown fingers. But, he told himself sternly, there were other women in his life now. He had other fish to fry. He drove off.

  On Saturday night Val McDougal too was preparing to go out. At that point it was all she had in common with Ernie Bowles. Later their names would be linked together, but they had never met.

  Val’s husband Charles was surprised that she had arranged to go out. They had developed a ritual to Saturdays. To relieve the stress, he said, after a week at the grindstone. He worked in the university. Sociology was his subject though these days, he said, it was hardly a thing you owned up to. Better tell the man in the Clapham omnibus that you were a serial killer than a sociologist. Val, who had never known him travel anywhere by bus and had heard it all before, usually managed to contain her irritation. She taught basic literacy and numeracy skills in a further education college, and secretly she thought sociology was a waste of time too.

  On Saturday they got up late. Only one of their sons was still at home: James, who was in the upper sixth and preparing to take A levels. He was a placid, amenable boy who fitted in with them. At least he did his own thing and made no demands. He did not play music late at night or throw up in the garden after an all-night party. Richard, their elder son, had done both these things. Luckily he was now away at university.

  The three of them would have a late and lazy breakfast: croissants bought fresh by Charles from a local bakery and lots of coffee. At midday Val and Charles would walk into the town to a pub by the river where they’d meet a group of friends. The friends were mostly Charles’s. They had clear, loud voices and told jokes about the sociology professor who spent more time talking on Radio 4 than to his staff. The same jokes were told week after week. Charles would drink beer and Val white wine and soda for most of the afternoon, then they would emerge into the town centre to go shopping.

  This wasn’t boring shopping. They didn’t buy toilet rolls or bleach or cat food. Val would get all that from the supermarket on the way back from college on her early night. This was quite different. Late in their married life Charles had taken to cooking, and indeed he was very good. At first Val had been grateful. These Saturday night extravagances were something of a treat and she had enjoyed wandering round Otterbridge with him looking for the special ingredients he needed. But lately the novelty had begun to wear off. His creations were always elaborate and took most of the evening to prepare. He used every utensil they possessed. And because he had cooked she felt obliged to clear up the chaos and load the dishwasher afterwards, though she noticed that he never felt the same obligation after her weekday stews and spaghetti bolognese.

  At breakfast on that Saturday he had asked, as he always did:

  ‘Well, what shall we eat tonight?’

  She had answered, as casually as she could. ‘Well, actually I won’t be here. I’ll be going out.’

  ‘Where?’ he asked petulantly.

  ‘Just to a friend’s for supper.’

  ‘You didn’t say.’ His voice was accusing.

  No, she thought. I was frightened. I didn’t have the nerve.

  ‘We fixed it up at the last moment,’ she said, ‘and I thought it would be quite nice for a change.’

  She realized how lame that sounded, saw that her hands were shaking, wondered even if she would have one of those panic attacks which she seemed to have been controlling better lately, despite Charles’s scorn. He was right, of course. She was quite feeble. But he had a frightening temper and she never liked to upset him.

  ‘Who is this friend?’ he demanded. ‘Someone from college?’

  ‘No,’ she said vaguely. ‘I met her on that weekend away at the Lakes. I told you we’d kept in touch.’

  ‘Did you? I don’t remember.’

  He thinks I’m lying, she thought with astonishment. Perhaps he thinks I’m having a wild affair with a secret lover. She smiled to herself and saw him become even more suspicious. She enjoyed his uncertainty. It served him right. She was certain that he’d been having a fling with a bright, postgraduate student called Heather for more than a term.

  ‘I shouldn’t be late,’ she said. ‘Not very late.’

  She could hardly tell him that he bored her to the point where she had been physically ill and that if she didn’t have an evening away from him she would do something desperate.

  Chapter Three

  Although the Old Chapel opened on Sundays Lily Jackman had the day off. Yet she woke early, was suddenly wide awake and realized that Sean was not there. The night before he had arrived back at the caravan soon after her. He had eaten a tin of beans and gone away again. Just for a walk he said, and she knew better than to ask where he was going. Now it seemed he had not come back all night. He had never done that before.

  She opened the caravan door and looked out at Laverock Farm. Everything was very still. There was no smoke coming from the chimney, no clatter of machinery. Only a dog barking furiously and that bloody cockerel which had probably woken her in the fi
rst place.

  Then she saw Sean, walking across the farmyard. He bent to slide between the struts of the five-barred gate, as if he were too tired to push it open. She shouted before he was halfway across the field:

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’

  He looked up as if he were surprised by her anger. His eyes were bleary and his coat was crumpled.

  ‘Where the hell have you been? I’ve been worried sick.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d be back before you woke.’

  ‘You haven’t been walking all night?’

  He shook his head. ‘I met some people. Parked at the gypsy transit site on the way into town. I knew them from Wales. Wes and Lorna. They had a blue Transit, still have. You must remember.’

  He leaned over her, strangely insistent.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘There were so many people.’

  ‘They’ve got a kid now. A girl, pretty little thing. They’re talking about settling down so she can go to school.’

  She turned away. Sean was always talking about settling down. He blamed his midnight wanderings on the fact that he was unsettled. Because she wouldn’t give him a commitment that their relationship was permanent. She saw it as a sort of blackmail.

  ‘I’m going to get ready,’ she said. ‘Are you coming to the Abbots’ or do you want to stay here?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ll come.’ To spy on me, she thought. To see who I talk to. He pretended that he wasn’t jealous, but she could tell from the way he looked at her that he saw her as a sort of possession.

  ‘You can go to the launderette then,’ she said, to punish him, ‘while I go to Magda’s group.’

  On Sundays they went to the Abbots’ for lunch. Every week, Daniel and Win Abbot, acupuncturist and homoeopath, the founder members of the Old Chapel Alternative Therapy Centre, had open house. Sean, and Lily were always there. Lily suspected they were invited to salve the Abbots’ consciences and to provide a topic of conversation. It was the Abbots who had brought them to Mittingford in the first place and then dumped them in Ernie Bowles’s caravan to keep them out of the way. This Sunday, unusually, they were the only guests. Lily could tell that the Abbots had not put as much effort into the food and its presentation as when other people were present. Lunch was a scrappy affair and the couple seemed distant and rather fraught. Lily and Sean sat at the kitchen table eating macaroni cheese as if, Lily thought, they were the deserving poor.

  Otherwise it was all much as usual. Daniel spoke smugly about his work. The Natural Therapy Society in Otterbridge had invited one of his old lecturers to give a talk, he said, and he’d been asked to do the introduction. Win fussed over the children. Lily was reminded of Sunday lunch in the large and gloomy house in Clifton where she had spent her childhood. Occasionally her mother returned from London to join them and there was an attempt at gaiety, at real family life. Lily had known that it was all pretence and had the same sense now. Perhaps the Abbots weren’t the model couple everyone thought them to be. She would have liked to believe in them and the idea depressed her. Sean was no help. He seemed more dazed than usual, shovelling food into his mouth with a fork, his eyes on his plate.

  When she had first met them Lily had thought Win and Daniel the most together couple she had ever seen – organized, hard working, still idealistic. Not a bundle of laughs, she’d had to admit from the beginning. Not exactly fun to be with. They took themselves and everything they did too seriously for that. But successful in every way. Now she wasn’t so sure. Something about Daniel gave her the creeps and Win never seemed happy.

  Lily supposed that professionally they were doing well for themselves. They had that in common. She had heard the story of their conversion to alternative medicine many times. Both, for different reasons, had been interested in health since childhood. Daniel’s father had been a consultant neurologist and Daniel had enjoyed the reflected glory, the status, the power. He had applied to medical school himself but had been turned down. These days nepotism could not overcome mediocre exam results. At the interview it had been suggested that he go in for nursing but that would hardly have provided the same rewards. He’d drifted for a while after that, travelled. Subsidized by affluent and indulgent parents he’d made it out to India, joined second-generation hippies seeking enlightenment, had his consciousness raised. Or so he claimed. Came across the idea of natural therapy, took to acupuncture like a duck to water. It was logical, he said. It made sense. And it made him feel useful.

  His parents were sceptical but determined to be liberal. He was their only son. They funded his training at the Traditional Acupuncture College at Leamington Spa. When he set up in his original practice they paid the first six months’ rent and when he and Win moved to Mittingford they paid the deposit on the house. The venture at the Old Chapel soon flourished. He was everything his patients required in a practitioner – grave, calm and authoritative. He wore a white coat and they treated him as an old-fashioned family doctor. He encouraged them in the belief that he was infallible.

  Win’s childhood encounter with medicine had been as a consumer. Her father had died, when she was a baby, of one of those strange genetic disorders for which there is no cure. She had suffered dreadfully from asthma and eczema. In the playground she wheezed and scratched and was picked on by other children. Her mother was a remarkable woman who had survived bereavement without bitterness, but she was determined not to lose her child too. Win was dragged along to a variety of doctors, all of whom diagnosed her illness as psychosomatic. Only after she consulted a homoeopath did the condition improve. Both mother and daughter were instantly converted to the benefits of complementary medicine. The mother, as she admitted wryly later, rather went over-board. She went on numerous courses, took up strange diets and settled for a while on reflexology as her preferred method of healing. Throughout Win’s adolescence their house was filled with unfamiliar people who exposed their feet to her mother’s gaze. It was quite natural for Win to follow in the same path. She had never been a natural rebel. She believed, quite literally, her mother’s assertion that homoeopathy had saved her life, and saw it as her mission in life to spread the word to others.

  In time Win’s mother had moved on from reflexology to rebirthing. Now she was an establishment figure in the movement, an old hand, regarded as a guru and a leader by the younger people who followed her. She had written widely and had been featured in the national press. ‘The Acceptable Face of Quackery’ one of the headlines had said. She gave advice on childbirth, relationships and her photogenic face made her one of the strong women loved by the colour supplements. Her fame gave her a special mystique. She had a reputation among her young disciples for wisdom, though they never defined what that meant. She set up a clinic in a house in Hampstead and had politicians and rock stars among her clients.

  Then Daniel had persuaded her to join them at the Old Chapel. It was a great coup. Everyone admitted that and wondered how he had managed to pull it off. Perhaps all the publicity in the capital had frightened her away. She did talk occasionally about needing to return to the simple life, and she seemed quite content in the little flat next to the Alternative Therapy Centre, under the roof of the old chapel. She had sold the big house in Hampstead and there was considerable speculation about what had happened to the money. Lily was occasionally tempted to ask her, but had never quite found the nerve. Magda didn’t encourage idle conversation.

  But Magda Pocock had definitely brought success, Lily thought, looking round the Abbots’ stylish house. The Alternative Therapy Centre must be a thriving business now. Then she was ashamed that financial calculations had entered her thoughts because Magda had become a guru to her too, besides a surrogate mother and role model.

  ‘Are you going to Magda’s group this afternoon?’ Lily asked. Win was pouring coffee into hand-thrown mugs. She looked haggard, tired, undernourished. Not a brilliant advert for homoeopathy, Lily thought, but perhaps that was what motherhood did t
o you. Win had given birth to two boys, only a year apart, as if she wanted to get the mucky business over with as soon as possible.

  ‘No,’ Win said. ‘ Not this afternoon.’ She offered no excuse.

  On Sunday afternoons Magda ran what she called her Insight Group, a nineties version of the encounter group.

  ‘We’re doing Voice Dialogue,’ Lily said.

  ‘What about you, Daniel?’ she added. But Daniel obviously thought he had no need of insight. He led workshops but seldom participated in them. He shook his head, smiling slightly.

  ‘I suppose babysitting must be a problem,’ Lily said. ‘Now Faye’s not around any more.’ She saw Win turn away and realized she’d put her foot in it. She went on, to make amends: ‘You know I’d always babysit if you’re stuck.’

  ‘Would you?’ Win turned to Daniel. ‘Perhaps Lily could babysit tomorrow night. So I could come to the lecture with you.’

  ‘Why not?’ Daniel said, but his response was half-hearted, and Lily had the impression that he would have preferred to go alone.

  ‘Sure,’ Lily said. ‘I’ll come straight from work. Daniel can give me a lift home after, if he doesn’t mind.’

  She was pleased with the arrangement. At least she would have an evening away from the caravan and Laverock Farm. She did wonder, briefly, what Daniel could be up to.

  That Sunday afternoon, in a small terraced house in Wallsend, a dozen misfits and loners crammed into the tiny front room to sing rousing choruses to praise the Lord. Despite the heat the men wore dark suits and ties and the women gloves and mushroom-shaped fluffy hats. There was a squeaky harmonium. After the songs and some prayers they sat, excitingly crushed together on the settee or on dining chairs brought in for the purpose, to listen to Ron Irving giving the address.