Disturbing Ground Read online

  “Andy” was her other partner. They called him Andy. Staff and patients alike. Because his real name was unpronounceable to Welsh tongues. So they didn’t even try. And calling him “Andy” seemed to make him one of them. He was a handsome, turbanned Sikh with flashing dark eyes and white teeth. A hardworking partner.

  “So. Rhys finally topped herself. Not a surprise.”

  “We don’t know she was trying to drown herself. She might have slipped in accidentally.”

  “Oh come on, Megan,” Phil Walsh interrupted with a touch of impatience. “She had a self destruct button. She was always slicing through her arms with razor blades. You must have seen the scars.”

  “Yes. Couldn’t miss them,” Andy agreed.

  Megan picked up her box of notes from the receptionists’ counter. “Self harming was one of things she did, I agree. If she’d accidentally hit an artery and bled to death I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised. But this …” She abandoned the sentence.

  “She had a great habit of swallowing all her pills at once too,” Andy said. “That’s why the psychiatric nurse went in every day to check her.”

  Phil Walsh interrupted. “Did she check her this morning?”

  “I doubt it,” Megan said drily. “She’d been in the water for some hours when I saw her.”

  Phil persisted. “So why didn’t Pauline Carver report the fact that she was missing?”

  “Because as usual Bianca had fallen out with her. Asked her to leave the tablets with a neighbour, Doris Baker, who in turn administered them to Bianca. It made things terribly difficult. But then Bianca was not the easiest of patients.”

  “She was such a nutcase,” Andy said, still smiling, “nothing should surprise us about her.”

  “Nothing except this,” Megan said slowly. “She was absolutely terrified of water. You know that, Andy, she was your patient before you fell out. She wouldn’t go near any body of water - the river, ponds. Absolutely refused to ever visit the seaside.”

  “Sensible woman,” Andy muttered.

  “Yes but it wasn’t because of the trippers. It was because she really was frightened,” Megan persisted. “She wouldn’t take a bath. And you would have thought Pauline Carver was trying to murder her one day when she tried to get her under the shower. Bianca ran out of the house screaming she was being drowned, she was. She was absolutely starkers too. And it was in the middle of winter. Freezing night.”

  Phil lifted his eyebrows. “Streaking through the streets of Llancloudy?”

  All three of them laughed but Megan soon sobered up. “No - really. Keeping her relatively hygenic was very, very difficult. I’m surprised at her going up to the pool - let alone being close enough to slip in.”

  And both her partners nodded their agreement.

  Phil Walsh wrinkled his nose. “I can remember the smell after a consultation,” he said. “It was so disgusting I had to open the windows and use half a tin of air freshener before I could see another patient.”

  “But she must have slipped in the pool,” Andy said. “What other explanation could there be?”

  “I don’t know.” Megan spoke reluctantly. “Except that she wouldn’t have been able to swim. Not that it’s deep enough anyway. She must have felt herself slip and panicked. Just like a child falling in shallow water. They could get out but they don’t.”

  She closed her eyes for a second.

  “You all right?”

  Sirwan was watching her, concern furrowing his forehead. “Yes, yes. I’m fine, Andy.” She tried to laugh it off then realised both were watching her with the same concern. They needed some explanation. “It’s a poem. The Bridge of Sighs. By Thomas Hood. It was my grandfather’s favourite. About a woman who drowned herself. Keeps running through my head.” She laughed again. “Doing my head in, as they say.”

  Andy gave her one of his warm smiles. “It’s been a shock for you, seeing her dragged from the water, having to identify her. When you knew her so well.”

  “I didn’t enjoy it,” she replied stiffly.

  Phil Walsh grinned. “You’ve had a tough time recently. Come round for supper one night with me and Angharad.”

  Megan flushed. “I’d love to. Thanks.” She and Angharad had been at medical school together - and then survived their house jobs - before twin sons had cut short Angharad’s medical career.

  “Good.” He was still watching her carefully. “Got any holiday planned?”

  What was the point? What was the fun of going anywhere - alone? Most of her friends were married, had husbands to holiday with. She had only one single friend - at the moment. It was a time of adjustment, this newly single status. Of course there were always Singles Holidays. She winced.

  “I’ll get away later on in the year. At the moment I’m still sorting out the new place.”

  “Ah yes. And how are you settling in?”

  “I’m just about getting straight - apart from getting the shower adjusted so it doesn’t either scald me or try and turn me into a human ice block.”

  Andy grinned at her. “Had the same problem myself,” he said, “but I do know a good plumber.”

  And so the conversation veered away.

  It was on the next day that the Coroner’s office contacted her.

  “We understand you were attendant on the recovery of the body of Bianca Rhys from Llancloudy Pool on Monday morning?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you were also the deceased’s doctor?”

  “Yes.”

  “The post mortem will be this afternoon. Is there anything you feel the Coroner ought to know about the deceased? Anything relevant?”

  “She was a schizophrenic receiving medication.”

  “One of the …” She could hear the assistant leafing through documents, “antipsychotics?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would they have made her drowsy?”

  “Very possibly.”

  “And her condition was well controlled?”

  “Reasonably,” Megan answered cautiously.

  “You hadn’t been concerned about her mental or physical condition in the last fortnight?”

  “Not especially.”

  “Well - well see what the post mortem turns up but I would think the pathologist will be quite happy with an open verdict considering her mental state. Balance of mind - and all that.”

  “So no open inquest?”

  “Should suit the relatives. She’s just got the one daughter. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  It crossed her mind then that she should visit Carole Symmonds.

  It proved unecessary.

  Carole Symmonds barged into her surgery on the following day. She was a hugely overweight woman in her thirties with short, bleached blonde hair which was badly cut and stuck out in all directions. Whoever had cut her mother’s hair had not extended the privilege to the daughter.

  Carole plonked herself down in the protesting chair and dabbed her eyes with a tissue. “I heard you found her, doctor. I just wanted to know.”

  Megan already knew what she was going to ask.

  “Did she suffer?”

  It was always easier to lie. Easier on the doctor, easier on the relatives.

  But it wasn’t always the truth.

  “I’m sorry. I just don’t know,” she said.

  “That damned bloody pool.” Carole Symmonds had found something to vent her anger on. “Ought to be filled in. It’s a bloody miracle some child didn’t fall in. As it was …” The bitterness was making her voice harsh. “I suppose the council won’t act in response to some old nutcase topping herself in it.”

  And for the second time in two days Megan found herself taking an opposing stance to the suicide verdict. “We don’t know she intended suicide.”

  “No - nobody knows and nobody bloody well cares either. Perhaps it was just an accident. Quite honestly,” Carole gave a harsh laugh. “I don’t suppose we’ll ever know what my mother was intendin’. Mind you. It’s p
robable she didn’t know what she was intendin’. Off her bloody rocker she was no matter what tablets and injections you gave her. They never made her sane. Just easier to control.”

  Megan felt admonished, nakedly exposed. Bianca’s daughter was right. The medication had not normalised her mother’s mental state but had made her less of a social and medical nuisance. To divert Carole’s focus she inserted a question of her own. “Was she in the habit of frequenting the Slaggy Pool?”

  A touch of humour brushed Carole’s lardy face. “At least they’re doin’ Mum the courtesy of callin’ it Llancloudy Pool in the papers. Sounds nicer than that old filthy pond.”

  Megan winced as words of the poem flicked again into her mind.

  Dreadfully staring Thro’ muddy impurity …

  “No. She never went up there. You know what she was like about water. Well - of all the places she hated Slaggy Pool the most. I think it was the blackness of the water. Hated the place, she did. You know where she liked to hang around, doctor. Outside the Co-op, runnin’ through the videos in the video shop, beggin’ batter bits from the chippie. I always knew where I could find her - in one of those three places. She never went up to the Rec or the pool. I used to say to her, sometimes - on a nice fine day - Why don’t you go and occupy them seats by the swings and she’d look at me as though I was the crazy one.” She laughed then mopped her eyes, her face twisted with grief that was softened by humour.

  “So what do you think took her up there on that day?” Megan paused to think. “That night,” she corrected.

  “Well - when are we talkin’ about?”

  “I saw her on Friday, in my evening surgery, to give her an injection. I didn’t see her again until …” The next time she had seen her patient, Bianca had been stone cold. More than a few hours dead.

  “Doris Baker said she gave her her tablets on Saturday morning. The police came to see me Monday late morning. About eleven. They said they thought she’d been in the water some time. No one seems to have seen her from when she swallowed her tablets on Saturday to when she turned up in the Slaggy Pool drowned on Monday. I asked at the video shop and the chippy and at the Co-op and they all said they didn’t see her all weekend. Mrs Baker said she didn’t see her on Sunday but Esther took the tablets from her and said she’d give them to Mam when she got in. She tried again on Monday and just got hold of Esther again. She was goin’ to ring you Monday after your surgery to say it looked like Mam had gone missin’. Then someone told her it was too late.”

  “When did Esther Magellan say she’d last seen your mother?” Esther and Bianca had shared a house.

  Carole rolled her eyes towards the ceiling. “You know that old fruit cake. She couldn’t remember when she’d last seen Mam. And the more we asked her the more hassled she got so in the end we had to leave her be.” Carole Symmonds stood up. “Look - while I’m here I wonder if you’d give me something to help me sleep. I keep thinking, you see. Goin’ over and over it in my mind. I keep seein’ her fallin’. You know Mam.” Her dark eyes held a terrible hurt. “She must have been terrified. She couldn’t stand water. For the life of me I’ll never know why she went up there. And it must have been in the dark. ‘Cos no one saw her go.” She gave a deep, long, why me, sigh that Megan knew she would never be able to answer satisfactorily. Indeed. Why her? The stigma of having a mother so afflicted, so embarrassing, such a responsibility. Always to worry about her “Mam”. And now. Megan tapped a few keys on the computer and printed out a prescription for sleeping tablets. “Look,” she said awkwardly. “Most of these drugs are habit-forming. Be careful. Just use them to tide you over the first week or two. Treat them with caution, Carole.”

  She watched her leave with a feeling of disquieted sadness.

  Chapter 4

  So now the gossips of Llancloudy had something else to talk about. Something other than the scandal of the doctor’s husband running off to Cardiff. And rumour had it that he was not with …

  Megan put her hands over her ears. Sometimes she could swear she too could hear the whispering, insinuating voices, the malicious, salacious shock at the turn this clean living valleys girl had ended up. When she walked into a shop, a pub, even the surgery, conversation stopped, people would turn to look and the voices breathed just behind her shoulder, murmuring inside her ear.

  Gossips had had a field day ever since she had returned from her holiday four years ago with a new husband in tow. That was when they had first turned their attention on to her. “Went on holiday, she did. To Italy. Met a man there. A foreigner. Married him! Quickly.” The words had been full of meaning, the implication harping back to the old phrase - that those who married in haste repented at leisure. The chatterers had stilled for the briefest of honeymoon periods before the gossips had sat back to await the arrival of an “early” baby. None had appeared. But they had still waited. And eventually they had been fed the richest and most satisfying of diets.

  “And have you heard the latest. Left her he did - for a …”

  “No,” the listener would rejoin, right on cue with plenty of shocked horror.

  “Ye-es. Ah well - that’s what happens when you marry a foreigner. Quickly. Don’t really know ‘em, do you? Not like someone from here.”

  They were right. There was safety in marrying a boy from the valleys. Predictability too. You knew his stock. Whereas outsiders …

  Work had proved a great distraction from personal life, money worries, traumatic events and the grossest public humiliation. Forget it all in a plethora of visits and consultations, prescriptions to be signed, letters to be composed, clinical meetings and medical lunches.

  Lunch. Three days after Bianca’s body had been found, Megan was queuing up in the local sandwich bar. Maybe it was the heat of the day or the scent of freshly baking bread mingling with herbs, basil, oregano, parsley. It was probably the combination of all factors which evoked acutely painful memories. She and Guido had been married happily - at first. But their marital contentment had lasted less than two years before disintegrating until there was no trace of happiness left. Initially the whispers had been soft and insidious; their marital discord was carefully concealed from the outside world, almost hidden even from the probing ears and the prying eyes of the gossips of Llancloudy who dredged the town for juicy titbits. But like water breaching a hole in a sea wall the force of tittle tattle had gained momentum and the damage inflicted huge.

  The low point had been a dull, December day when she had finished her surgery unexpectedly early and decided to surprise him with an offer of a peace-restoring lunch out. She had taken no notice of a strange car parked along the road, nor even of the curtains still drawn late in the morning. But when she had unlocked the front door she had known something was strange. And walking into a candelit lounge to see her husband bent over another man, both of them stark naked, she had flipped.

  Even now a waft of some scented candles was enough to make her vomit. The gossips had been wrong. Guido’s interest in women had been superficial only. Flirtation to smokescreen his real predilection.

  The same day he had gone from her life. But now Megan screwed up her face and allowed herself to recall the early, happy days. During their first two years, on balmy afternoons like this, she had often queued up to buy two sets of sandwiches, a couple of cakes, some flavoured, bottled water and they would meet halfway between the health centre and his restaurant - a point marked by a small chapel and a sunny graveyard. Quiet and peaceful, reminding her of Rupert Brookes and long-ago deaths, nothing too near or too painful, nothing she could be held even remotely responsible for, but as distant as the far off memory of drums beating soldiers to war.

  The graves almost all dated from the first half of the last century - well before this bright beginning of the millennium. Most of the stones in this ancient place had lost even their mourners now. And because the deaths had been long ago, she and Guido could amuse themselves reading out loud the inscriptions. Er Cof. Yn annwyl. Cariad. The Wel
sh phrases sounding so much more poignant than their English equivalents, In memory of … Dearest, Beloved, the stones marking all ages - from the elderly happy releases to tragic and multiple deaths of children, early, untimely and plentiful. Doctor-like she would wonder what they died of. Infectious diseases, accidents, genetic disorders, congenital malformation, malnutrition? The South Wales mining valleys had witnessed some of the most terrible, grinding poverty between the two wars. Tales abounded of the Means Test men, of the miners’ strikes and the vast families spilling out of tiny homes.

  “What sort, love?”

  She came to with a start accompanied by a thrust of panic. She was thirty-one years old. Young, she corrected. But already she was beginning to live in the past. She stared at the assistant in the sandwich bar, patiently regarding her, waiting for her to make up her mind. And she almost felt a confused and pitiful old lady. She ran her eyes along the counter. She and Guido had always had the same sandwiches - egg and cress. Despite the restaurant he had been an almost vegetarian, rarely, guiltily, tucking into huge, bloody fillet steaks before solemnly declaring it had been horrible, disgusting, and he never would indulge again. Until the next time. Meggie caught her breath at the sudden vision of Guido making solemn promises - to love, cherish and obey.

  And she had believed him.

  “Bacon and egg,” she said firmly, “and a chocolate covered flapjack and a diet coke.”

  Everything must be different. Everything. She glanced behind her at the growing, impatient queue.

  “One pound eighty five, please, love.”

  Meggie handed over two pound coins, waited for the change to rattle into her palm, picked up the plastic carrier bag of lunch and moved outside into the street. The valleys were all this shape, long and narrow. There was only really room for one main street. The others climbed either side in steep terraces. The gardens were slanted too. Coal dust dark, with soil so impregnanted with good Welsh coal you could almost believe you could burn it on a fire. But the mud could be a threat too. It was prone to slipping in heavy rain as the slag heap had on that terrible day in Aberfan. The land in these valleys shifted because some of the hills were not real hills but dumps of waste soil, slag heaps deceitfully grown over with grass that never grew as true lush vegetation but always looked half starved of nutrients; pale, poor scrub.