Great Granny Webster by Caroline Blackwood Page B

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    â€œSometimes it can be hell being a man,” Dr Kronin muttered ruefully. He took out a handkerchief and wiped away the beads of perspiration that dotted his dome-like head.
    â€œHave you ever wished you were dead?” he asked her, apparently quite oblivious of the tactlessness of his question.
    â€œI know you think that I owe you an apology,” he added after a long silence.
    Aunt Lavinia was amazed that he seemed to regard her need for an apology as some kind of neurotic quirk. She asked him sarcastically if he always treated his female patients in the same way that he had treated her.
    â€œVery rarely,” Dr Kronin said.
    There was something so naive and outrageously frank about this statement that Aunt Lavinia had found it perversely appealing.
    â€œI saw you as special,” Dr Kronin said. “When I saw you lying there in the ward with your eyes all swollen from crying—you looked really special to me. I thought you looked so beautiful. And then I saw your bandages and something strange came over me ... I knew I was the only person in the world who understood you and could help you ...”
    He got up and limped over to the mirror that hung above the basin in her room. He adjusted his collar and tie, which had become rumpled and crooked in his fall. He smoothed the back strands of his sparse hair and he dusted his dapper suit. His voice was emotional when he spoke again.
    â€œI felt so protective towards you. Here is this beautiful woman, I thought to myself. Here is this beautiful creature and she feels cheated. All the men she has had in her life obviously have all let her down.”
    Dr Kronin stared mournfully at his own image in the mirror and once again tried to smooth the remnants of his hair.
    â€œI had the feeling that I was the man you had always been searching for, that if we could just be alone together for a little while I could release something inside you which no one had ever released before.”
    Aunt Lavinia said she wished I could have seen what Dr Kronin looked like while he was making this speech, that one really had to see the man with one’s own eyes before one could appreciate the grotesqueness of the idea that anyone could spend their life searching for him.
    Aunt Lavinia rolled her eyes. “The conceit of the little brute!” she said in awestruck tones.
    Dr Kronin had turned from the mirror and stared directly at her.
    â€œWell, it clearly didn’t work out like I hoped,” he said. “All I wanted to do was help you, and I failed. So what do I do now? I apologise.”
    He suddenly gave Aunt Lavinia a stiff little bow.
    â€œYou will not be seeing me again,” he said. “Tomorrow I have to attend an important psychiatric conference in Manchester. I will see to it that you receive the best possible care while you remain in this hospital. I wish you all the luck in the world. I have to tell you that I feel extremely sorry for you.”
    Dr Kronin then came over to Aunt Lavinia’s bed. He lifted her hand and kissed her fingertips with all the reverence and gallantry of a courtier in a period play.
    â€œThere’s just one last thing I want to say before I go. All my life I will never forget you.”
    Once again he gave Aunt Lavinia one of his courtly little bows.
    â€œGoodbye, unfortunate lady, goodbye,” he murmured portentously, and he picked up his black bag and walked out of the room.
    Aunt Lavinia finished painting her last fingernail and held out her hands in front of her, keeping her fingers stiffly separated, so that the wet varnish would not smudge.
    â€œIn one sense he was rather a character, that Dr Kronin,” she said reflectively. “By no means an enjoyable character. By no means a figure that one would ever wish to have in charge of one in a hospital. But in his peculiar way the amazing thing is that I think he really viewed himself as a romantic. So that with his incomprehensible