The Malcontenta

11

Brock realized just how serious when he collected his tray for dinner that evening and opened the lid. There was a woman in a white coat standing at one end of the long table, a cook perhaps, and he took his tray to her.

I wondered if there had been some mistake,’ he said.

He opened the lid and showed her the solitary glass of water and slice of lemon. She smiled and looked at the label on the tray.

‘Mr Brock? No, no mistake, dear. You’re on total fast for three days.’

‘Three days!’

‘That’s right, dear. Seventy-two hours. You can look forward to dinner on Thursday night for a real treat.’

‘My God. What will it be?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she laughed. ‘Something special. Maybe a glass of carrot juice. Sit down anywhere and make some friends.’

Somewhat stunned, he wandered over to a table at which a couple were sitting and asked if he might join them. The man rose stiffly to his feet and extended his hand. He was tall and willowy, and there was an air of exhaustion about him.

‘Sidney Blumendale,’ he said. ‘And this is Martha Price.’

Brock introduced himself and sat down.

‘Are you all right, old chap?’ Blumendale asked. ‘You look a bit pale.’

‘I’ve just had a shock, actually,’ Brock said. He lifted the lid of his tray and showed them the glass of water. ‘Apparently this is my dinner.’

The two diners smiled. ‘Your first day?’ Blumendale asked, and Brock nodded.

‘You’ll feel wonderful after you’ve got over the first week,’ Martha Price assured him.

‘You sound as if you’ve got plenty of experience of the place,’ Brock said, eyeing their plates. ‘What are you eating? It smells good.’

‘It’s a vegetable casserole,’ Martha told him, ‘with a delicious nut crust topping and fresh green salad. But don’t think about it.’ She was enjoying herself. ‘Oh, and this is freshly made carrot juice from the vegetable gardens here. And after the casserole we’ll get some stewed apples and cream bran — that’s bran with yoghurt and honey.’ Of a similar age to her companion, in her sixties, she appeared to have twice his energy and her voice crackled with mischief.

Brock groaned. ‘I’m told I can look forward to the carrot juice in three days’ time, if I behave myself. How long have you been here to deserve all that?’

‘Oh, we practically live here. I started coming five or six years ago, when I was first seriously bothered by this.’ She held up a hand with joints swollen by arthritis. ‘You wouldn’t believe, but I could hardly move with it, and I was only sixty-three. Now it hardly bothers me at all, and that’s all due to exercises and acupuncture and, above all, the diet. In the last six months I’ve even been able to do without my walking stick. So you must behave and do as you’re told, David. No cheating!’

Brock guessed he was getting the pep-talk she gave all newcomers and he played along with it, pulling a face and muttering, ‘Good for the soul, I suppose.’

‘Now, why did you come here if you weren’t ready to take it seriously?’ she scolded him. ‘This isn’t a holiday camp, you know. Honestly, some of you men are like little boys. You don’t know what real hardship is.’

Brock was beginning to think that Martha Price was a pain, but he nodded ruefully and sipped his water, and after a moment Sidney Blumendale gave a dry little cough and said, ‘I first came here in ‘89, the year after my wife died. Getting a bit run down, you know. Spend ten months of the year here now.’

‘The other months he visits his children for as long as they can put up with him,’ Martha added, ‘and this winter we had a fortnight out of season in Majorca, which we’ll be doing again, won’t we, Sidney?’

Sidney nodded agreement. From the look of him Brock guessed he didn’t dare do otherwise.

‘What about you, David?’

‘This is my first time. Got a bit of a bad shoulder. Thought they might be able to help.’

‘Oh, if anyone can, Dr Beamish-Newell will. He’s a wonderful man.’ Martha Price’s eyes filled with the light of enthusiastic faith.

‘Is he? I only met him this afternoon for the first time. He’s certainly got an impressive way with him.’

‘Bit of a showman,’ Sidney murmured, and then, as if he might have been overheard blaspheming, hurriedly added, ‘but brilliant, of course, brilliant.’

‘His wife’s pretty formidable too, isn’t she?’ Brock tried not to stare at them eating.

‘She doesn’t put on the kind of pretence you often find in the private health sector,’ Martha said with her mouth full, since she was determined to respond immediately to the scepticism she heard in Brock’s voice. ‘But she’s very competent and she cares deeply for her patients, the genuine ones, that is.’

‘Sound,’ Sidney nodded in agreement. ‘Very sound.’

‘Isn’t everyone genuine, then?’ Brock asked. For a moment Sidney was inclined to speak, but seemed deterred by Martha’s unexpected silence. She chewed thoughtfully for a moment, then said, ‘You’ll get the hang of the place after a while.’

Brock saw that he was going to have to be patient, and let the conversation move on to questions about himself, what he did for a living, and where he lived.

‘Not far from Dulwich,’ he said.

‘That’s where Mrs Thatcher lives, isn’t it?’ Martha said. ‘What a wonderful woman.’

‘Can’t say I’ve ever bumped into her in Boots.’

She shot him a look to see if he was being disrespectful, then went on at some length about her husband, who had been active in local government for a number of years before his death. Her voice was sharp with resentment, above all at the injustice of the stroke which had interrupted his inevitable progress towards becoming mayor and taken him when so many less adequate men had been spared. She also showed Brock a photograph of her only son, Ralph, pronounced Rafe, a man of around forty with shoulder-length hair, whom she described as artistic. Sidney waited patiently through this account of her family, although he must have heard it many times before, and at the end rose to fetch them their desserts.

The dining room had been the principal reception room of the original house, with tall glass windows overlooking the gardens, an ornate ceiling and pilastered walls, and a huge central chandelier. On one wall long gilt-framed mirrors flanked a marble fireplace, making the space seem deceptively large. The air resonated with the murmur of conversations at the dozen or more tables.

Brock felt uncomfortable sitting alone with Martha Price. He felt irritated by her and suspected the feeling was mutual, yet she had been there the previous autumn and was just the sort of person whose confidence he should be cultivating. He decided to try again. He thought for a moment and then asked her about her arthritis and how it had been helped by the treatments at the clinic. She told him about her first symptoms and the progress of the disease, at first imperceptible and then frighteningly fast, and her increasing desperation as the relief provided by drug treatments was followed by relapse and further deterioration. While she was speaking, Sidney returned with their puddings but neither of them touched their plates as she went on to describe the painful but steady progress of her recovery after she had discovered Stanhope. Brock was moved, and when she finished and asked him about his own problem with his shoulder, he shook his head, embarrassed, and admitted that it was rather trivial compared to what she had been through. She put her hand on the sleeve of his dressing gown and insisted that he tell them, so he shrugged and made his story sound as interesting as he could.

At the end she smiled and patted his hand, as if she’d just heard a confession, and nodded at Sidney. ‘There are two types of visitors here, David,’ she said. ‘We call them the sheep and the goats. The genuine ones, who are here because they need help like us, we call the sheep. But you’ll come across others who are really only here for a break, to lose a few pounds perhaps, because they’ve heard it’s a fashionable place to come or some other reason best known to themselves. They are the goats. They don’t really believe in Dr Beamish-Newell’s work; in fact you’ll hear them laughing at him behind his back. He tolerates them because they bring income to the clinic which he uses to subsidize genuine patients who couldn’t otherwise afford to come here. Of course’ — she leaned forward and lowered her voice — ‘Dr Beamish-Newell is under pressure from the business side of the clinic to take them in, to make more money.’

‘Ah,’ Brock nodded. ‘That’s Mr Bromley’s department, isn’t it? I haven’t met him yet.’

‘Come, come, Martha,’ Sidney protested half-heartedly. ‘Ben Bromley has his part to play. Place like this needs to be run efficiently, just like any other business.’

‘Well,’ Martha said, changing the subject as if his remarks weren’t worth the effort of contradiction, ‘we’d better get in now if we want good seats.’

‘Get in?’ Brock asked.

‘To the Director’s fireside talk. He holds them three or four times a week after dinner. You must go, of course.’

He followed them out of the dining room and across the hallway to another large public room, set out as a sitting room with armchairs and sofas arranged around a blazing fire, and a variety of bentwood chairs behind them making up seating for fifty or more. A more intimate atmosphere than the dining room was created by a lower level of lighting from a few table-lamps around the perimeter of the room. Martha and Sidney made straight for a sofa in front of the fire, but Brock felt he’d had enough of their company for the time being and excused himself. When he returned five minutes later, all the comfortable seats at the front in the glow of the firelight had been taken, so he sat in a chair in a corner at the back. He watched the remaining patients filing in, a few of them young but mainly middle-aged or elderly.

The buzz of conversation died away at the sound of Beamish-Newell’s voice outside in the hall, and then he entered, his dark suit conspicuous among the assorted dressing gowns of his audience. He made his way to the fireplace and stood to one side of it. The light from a low table-lamp shone up into his face, and he looked slowly round the room before speaking.

‘Tonight,’ he said, ‘I shall talk about what we mean by the idea of balance in diet.’ He paused, letting the warmth of his voice soak into them like the heat from the fire.

After five minutes Brock found his attention wandering. The content of what was being said seemed amateurish science, and the voice was mildly soporific. He looked around the room, examining the attentive faces, trying to decide which were the sheep and which the goats.

After a while he forced his attention back to the figure by the fireplace. The Director was saying something about grains and pulses, and as Brock tried to pick up the line of argument again, the talk came to an end. For a moment there was silence as Beamish-Newell’s dark eyes travelled around the room from one rapt face to another.

‘I expect you have some questions.’

No one moved at first, and then a woman towards the back put up her hand. The gesture seemed tentative, but the voice was loud and firm. ‘Yes, I do understand about that as a theory, doctor. But the fact is, I’ve been following this diet for ten days and I feel worse now than I did when I arrived.’

An excited murmur rippled across the chintz chairs. Beamish-Newell showed no reaction.

‘I mean, I felt all right before. Now I feel … well, not right at all. I seem to have no energy. Quite often I feel nauseous.’

Several heads were nodding surreptitious encouragement. ‘Yes, yes,’ their eyes said, ‘that’s how it is with us too. Tell him!’ Still the Director said nothing, and the murmur stilled into an expectant hush which became tenser as the silence persisted.

Then he spoke. ‘That’s good,’ he said, slowly and firmly, and their eyes widened in surprise. ‘That’s exactly how it should be.’ His gaze was locked on her. ‘Did you drink tea, Jennifer?’ he challenged her gently, an iron cadence in his velvet voice. She nodded.

‘Coffee?’

‘Yes, I…’

‘How many cups a day? Five, eight, ten? … And meat? … Processed food with a hundred preservatives, colourings, additives? For years you have been filling your body with poisons, Jennifer. It has become a toxic vessel. Your body is addicted to poisons,’ he accused softly, and the other patients focused on her as if her arms were covered in needle marks. ‘And you are surprised that after ten days it is still suffering from the shock of withdrawal. It must suffer. If it didn’t suffer, you would be getting nowhere.’

Then he turned his gaze away from her and his face filled with immense warmth and charm. ‘Champagne for my sham friends,’ he said, ‘real pain for my real friends.’ And a wave of relief and laughter followed his smile around the room.

As soon as Beamish-Newell left, some of the patients started to shuffle out of the room, while others stayed chatting in small groups. Brock made his way across the entrance-hall to the reception desk, now closed for the night. On the noticeboard beside it he found the list of current patients which he had spotted earlier when he checked in. Looking round to make sure he wasn’t being watched, he unpinned the list, folded it up and put it in the pocket of his dressing gown.

The pay-phone in a converted cupboard down the corridor was unoccupied, and he went inside and dialled. Kathy’s voice sounded wonderfully normal. ‘How is it, Brock?’

‘Dreadful,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure how much of this I can take.’

‘But you’ve only just got there.’ She sounded a good deal less than sympathetic.

‘Do you know what they’ve just given me for dinner? A glass of water! Oh, it had a slice of lemon in it, too.’

She laughed. ‘Well, it’ll do you good. Anyway, I haven’t had time for anything to eat all day.’

‘Yes, but that’s your choice.’ He found himself extremely irritated by her lack of sympathy. ‘Look,’ he snapped, ‘get out that list of who was here last October and I’ll read you the names of who’s here now.’

‘I’ve got it.’

He began to read through the names. At the end of it they had found only three which appeared on both lists: Martha Price and Sidney Blumendale, plus a Grace Carrington.

‘And Martha Price was on the list that Beamish-Newell gave me of patients who had particularly asked for Petrou,’ Kathy added.

‘Right, I’ve met her. There’s a Jennifer someone …’ Brock scanned his list. ‘It must be this one, Jennifer Martin, who stood up to Beamish-Newell this evening. Are you sure she wasn’t here then?’

‘Sorry, no, she wasn’t. What do you think of him, Brock?’ Kathy’s voice was serious.

‘I don’t know, Kathy. He’s quite a performer. I imagine he could be a bastard if he didn’t get his own way. Did anyone say anything to you about sheep and goats when you were here?’

‘What?’

‘Never mind. I’d better go.’

‘See you Thursday?’

‘If I survive that long.’

As he slammed down the receiver he realized he was still annoyed with her, and he recollected his earlier irritation with Martha Price. He thought of Beamish-Newell’s sermon and wondered if the poisons were already preparing to leave his toxic vessel.