‘I have some new tablets here,’ Burnett said, ignoring the tedious humour. ‘I’d like you to try them. Some quite promising reports of them.’ He dug into his bag and produced a white cardboard drum. He removed the lid and tilted the drum forward under Henry’s gaze. ‘Tiny, as you see, no difficulty about swallowing them. One with a drink of water three times a day.’
‘What are they?’ Henry asked suspiciously. Didn’t like tablets, didn’t hold with any kind of drugs, pumping alien chemicals into perfectly good blood, unnatural, potentially dangerous.
‘You wouldn’t understand the name if I told you, you wouldn’t even be able to pronounce it. Just do as you’re told for once and take them for a few days. We’ll see how you get on with them, then we’ll think about continuing them or changing over to something else.’
‘I’m not a guinea-pig,’ Henry said without much hope. ‘You can carry out your experiments elsewhere, somewhere where they’ll be appreciated.’
Burnett opened the bedroom door and thrust his head out into the corridor.
‘Mrs Parkes! Could you come here, please?’
The nurse came out at once from her own room next door where she had been awaiting just such a summons. She came briskly into the room in her clean crisp uniform.
‘Yes, Dr Burnett?’ She slid a glance at the old man propped up against the pillows. He looked less tired now, stimulated by his exchange with the doctor.
‘Mr Mallinson may sit up for a short time when he has had an afternoon nap.’ The doctor repeated his instructions about care and warmth, about the dosage of the tablets.
‘And you are to remember particularly, both of you, that the tablets are on no account to be taken with alcohol.’
‘Alcohol?’ Henry frowned. ‘Do you mean I can’t have a glass of whisky?’ One of the few pleasures left to me, his aggrieved tone implied, I am to be robbed of that as well. Is there no limit to these infernal restrictions?
‘I didn’t say that.’ Burnett’s voice grew a trifle impatient. ‘I said the tablets were on no account to be taken with alcohol. If you must have a glass of whisky – ’ and his tone conceded that in all probability Henry must – ‘then you must dispense with the tablet. That is, if you insist, for instance, on a glass of whisky before you go to sleep, then you are on no account to take a tablet later than, say, four o’clock in the afternoon. The effect on the system will have ceased by the time you drink your whisky.’
‘Is he still to take the three tablets a day?’ Mrs Parkes was a little puzzled.
‘Yes.’ Dr Burnett sighed. He strove to make his meaning clear, as if to inattentive children. ‘One tablet on waking in the morning, one at noon, and the last at four o’clock. If by any chance either of you forgets and the last tablet is administered later, say at five or six, then there is to be no whisky on that evening. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Perfectly, thank you.’ Mrs Parkes was just the tiniest bit put out, not altogether caring for the doctor’s tone. After all, he had been rather confusing at first. ‘I’ll see Mr Mallinson takes the tablets at the correct time, in the correct dosage, and never with alcohol. I’ll make myself responsible for remembering.’
Nice going, Henry thought, allowing himself to fling a cheerfully defiant grin at old Burnett. Getting to be a bit of a dictator in his old age, ordering patients about as if they were babies, wouldn’t do him any harm at all to be put in his place for once. And by a nurse at that.
Burnett’s old cheeks showed a faint trace of heightened colour. He stooped to close his bag. ‘I’ll be looking in again,’ he said. ‘I can’t say exactly when. I don’t imagine it makes a great deal of difference to you.’
‘No difference at all,’ Henry said airily. ‘I feel a great deal better for your visit, I must admit. By the way,’ he added, slipping in the information with an air of casualness, ‘I’m having my solicitor call in later this afternoon. One or two things to discuss.’ He flicked his eyes upwards at Burnett. ‘A change of will among them.’ Mrs Parkes’s head came sharply round.
‘Is that all right, Doctor Burnett?’ she asked with a touch of anxiety. The first she’d heard of any summons to the solicitor, any change of will.
Dr Burnett considered the matter. ‘I suppose so,’ he said reluctantly. Henry was clearly going to see the solicitor whether it was all right with his doctor or not, not much use in uttering an ineffectual veto. ‘Don’t overdo it, though. Make it as short as possible.’ Of course, the reconciliation with Kenneth – and now a change of will, Kenneth being put back into the will. For how much? The lot? Or half? Mm, might be stirring up a nest of trouble there with his brother David.
‘I rely on you not to let the visit drag on too long,’ Burnett said to Mrs Parkes. But he knew that a sick man would rest more easily after his will was made, when his mind was at peace.
And it was only right that Kenneth should have his share. Cutting him out like that, the elder son, most unjust. Wouldn’t do to take a chance, delay matters, might end up with old Henry dying without the will being changed, Kenneth deprived of his inheritance. A tricky thing, the heart, one could never tell. Mallinson’s heart might be good for another ten years, might flicker out all in an instant. That’s the thing to remember about the heart, Burnett repeated in his mind, no one can ever be sure, no one can ever tell.
Mrs Parkes walked with the doctor to the head of the stairs. ‘You can safely leave Mr Mallinson to me,’ she said with firm confidence. ‘I won’t allow him to do too much.’
She watched Burnett walk away down the stairs and through the hall. She stood where she was for a minute or two. No one about, the hall and corridor deserted. She put a hand into the pocket of her uniform dress and drew out a much-creased envelope, pulled out her son’s letter and glanced at it yet again, not needing to, knowing the contents by heart, but unable to restrain herself.
‘If there was any possibility of getting a farm of our own here …’ She raised her eyes from the letter and stared at the wall. Kenneth Mallinson come home, the will to be changed. What of her own legacy now? Might it be swept away in the general redistribution of the estate? Might her claim on Mr Mallinson’s generosity be forgotten? And she had convinced herself by now that the legacy actually existed, that it was a very good sum indeed. She dropped her eyes to the letter.
‘Once you’ve made up your mind about a thing,’ her son had written, ‘there isn’t much point in hanging about.…’
‘Mrs Parkes!’ The old man’s voice calling from his room.
‘Coming!’ She thrust the letter and the envelope together into her pocket, cleared her face of the traces of emotion and went briskly back to the bedroom.
‘I want my lunch, Mrs Parkes! Have you forgotten my lunch?’
‘No, of course not!’ She smiled at him. ‘I’ll bring it up right away. I was just seeing Dr Burnett off.’
‘And tell Gina to bring up a couple of trays of my coins after lunch.’ He grinned like a mischievous boy. ‘Burnett didn’t say anything about not looking at my coins. The two trays from the first drawer of the left-hand cabinet, tell Gina. Have you got that?’
‘Yes, I’ll tell her.’ She went quietly from the room.
Henry lay back against his pillows with a contented air. He hoped there was something a trifle more substantial for lunch than the miserable couple of spoonfuls he’d been allowed for breakfast. Still, there were the coins to handle afterwards. Quite some time since he’d run his fingers over the carefully-cleaned surfaces. There were one or two little compensations to be enjoyed from illness after all.