Page 68 - WTP Vol. V #1

The Vigil
I came across Jane Shanks in a more personal way one May morning when she was twenty-eight. A tall woman, she came down the front steps of her father’s house at an active and determined pace, two steps at a time, and stood on the wide pave- ment looking about herself. At least, that is how I see her in my memory, framed as she was by the tall area spear-railings and the large, green-paint- ed door with a fan-light and on the central pane, the number 7 in ancient gold-leaf.
“Authoritative,” said Miss Shanks, uncrossing her arms. She looked at me closely. “Shall I let you in?
I was only going to Carwardine’s for some coffee- beans; African Sidama; I discovered that we were about to run out. I’m particular about the quality of coffee. But that errand can wait. We have enough for today.”
As this was several years ago the moment stands in a slightly unreal isolation: Did she step out with her right foot or her left? How could I now tell? At any rate the door closed behind her with some- thing of a slam which echoed in the canyon of the street. Certain sounds are memorable, somehow, and I can recall the slam of that door to this day.
“Not at all,” said Miss Shanks. She climbed the steps and put her latch-key in the lock. The house was
a pleasant one, a terraced Georgian town-house with a plain front and a parapet roof. Whereas most houses in The Crescent had been divided into flats, the Shanks’ house retained its integrity. Many of its original fittings had survived.
So she came down the worn stone steps, two at a time, put the house-key in her pocket, stood
with the railings to either side of her and looked around herself uncertainly, her determination ap- parently evaporating. Then she saw me.
She opened the door. She stood aside for me to en- ter and then followed me in. “He’s in the breakfast room. On the left,” she added. “You know the lay- out, I think.”
“Dr Lawless,” she said, breaking into a friendly smile. “What a fine day! Were you coming to visit father?” She crossed her arms. Her manner was open and welcoming.
I walked down the hall, large and lofty. The wide, shallow stairs, cantilevered out from the walls, were of stone with a starkly simple wrought-iron hand-rail. It reminded me of a stairway in the Radcliffe Infirmary where I had studied. The décor was plain and faded. Her father now has been dead these fifteen years. Back then, chronically ill, he was my patient, but I had never met Jane’s mother; she had died before I came to town, indeed, before I knew the town existed except in name. Medical confidentiality prevents me from telling you the nature of her father’s illness, but I wish to pre- serve Jane’s identity, and to do that, I must retain her name, as she uses it herself: Jane Shanks. She is a woman who will, I guess, always retain her own name. Though married, now, she’ll never wear a ring.
I had, of course, seen her many times before dur- ing my home visits to her father, but her presence had been shadowy, limited to opening the door and preceding me along corridors and up and down stairs; a tall, attractive figure with whom
I would have spoken, but did not know how.
She herself was reticent and her father would
cut across my words as I began to talk with her, though I never knew whether this was purposeful or not. How different she was that bright spring morning!
Mr Shanks was not in the high-ceilinged breakfast room, though clearly he had been. There was a white side-plate with crumbs of toast, a folded copy of The Telegraph and a pair of rimless half-glasses
“I was close by, and thought I would call round after my home-visits,” I said. “How is he?”
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“If it’s not inconveniencing you,” I said.
daVid WhEldon