Page 85 of The Elements

We had only been back in England from our honeymoon a few months when we received an unexpected visitor.

I was reading through some case notes at home when the doorbell rang and I opened it to find a man standing outside, in his early seventies I judged, with a slim build and a few scraps of gray hair dragged mercilessly across his crown.

“You must be Aaron,” he said, and I was a little taken aback that a stranger should know my name.

“I am,” I said.

He extended a hand. “We haven’t met,” he said.

“I’m Daniel. I work with your wife at the airline.

Nothing as exciting as what she does, I’m afraid.

You wouldn’t be safe with me in the cockpit!

No, I’m in Human Resources. I’m sorry to drop by unannounced, but there were a few documents that I needed her to sign and I’m away on holiday for the next two weeks and since your house was on my way home, I—”

“Oh, right, of course,” I said, standing back and ushering him inside. “Sorry, please come in. She’s just taking a bath though, so it might be a few minutes.”

“No problem. I’m happy to wait if you’re happy to have me.”

We made our way into the living room and I tried not to notice how carefully he studied everything in the room, the books on the shelves, the paintings on the wall, the magazines on the coffee table, as if he was considering renting a room from us.

“Very nice,” he said quietly, more to himself than me. “Very nice indeed.”

“Can I make you a cup of tea?” I asked.

“You could, yes, but would it be very rude if I asked for something a little stronger? Only it’s fierce cold out there tonight and I’m not as young as I used to be.”

“I might have a beer in the fridge,” I said.

“Maybe a whiskey?”

It seemed like a slightly forward request from a guest, but I offered to look, walking into the kitchen where, hidden away at the back of a cupboard, I found an unopened bottle of Bushmills.

“Water? Ice?” I asked, standing in the doorway and displaying it to him.

“We won’t disgrace it with dilution,” he said, and I poured him a glass, neat, bringing it back with me and leaving the bottle on the table between us.

The scent of it, one I rarely experienced, brought me back to my childhood, to my own father, who had always enjoyed a glass of Glenfiddich on Friday nights when I was a child. It was a comforting memory.

“You won’t join me?” he asked, and I shook my head.

“Better not,” I said. “Work in the morning.”

“Did no one ever tell you that it’s the height of bad manners to leave a man drinking alone in your home?”

His tone was just on the polite side of confrontational, and he wore such a disturbing smile that I was left feeling rather unsettled.

He continued to stare without so much as raising his glass to his lips so, when I realized that he actually meant it, I returned to the kitchen and took a bottle of Heineken from the fridge.

“That’s much better,” he said when I returned. “I can enjoy my drink now. You have a lovely home,” he added, looking around.

“Thank you,” I said. “We’re only renting, of course, but in time—”

“Wasted money.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I said, wasted money. Filling a landlord’s pockets when you could be paying your own mortgage.”

I looked at him, uncertain how to respond to this.

“When I was a young man,” he continued, “when I married, there was no such thing as renting. I went from my parents’ house to my marital home.

I never gave a penny to anyone else, other than the banks, who fleeced me, of course, because that’s the nature of the beast, but I paid it all off before I turned fifty and then what was mine was mine. Or at least I thought it was.”

I was glad of the Heineken now and took a long swig from it, feeling a slight sense of relief that there were a few more in the door of the fridge if I needed them.

“You’re a doctor,” he asked after a moment. “Did I hear that about you?”

“I am, yes.”

“What kind of a doctor, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Psychology. Child psychology to be precise.”

“Child psychology,” he said, musing on this. “Freud,” he added, apropos of nothing.

“Well, Freud was a psychoanalyst,” I replied. “I’m more of a—”

“Obsessed with sex, wasn’t he? Freud, I mean.”

I shrugged.

“I think that’s rather a clich é d notion of his philosophies, to be honest.”

“Thought everyone wanted to murder their father and sleep with their mother. Like that lad over beyond in Denmark.”

I stared at him, uncertain to whom he was referring. Was there some appalling psychopath emerging from Copenhagen that I’d missed out on?

“Hamlet,” he said, leaning forward and enunciating the word carefully, as if he was on the stage of the Globe itself.

“Oh, right,” I replied. “Of course. Yes.”

“Can I ask you a personal question? Is there good money in psychology? Or child psychology?”

I didn’t quite know how to answer such a peculiar question.

“Relative to what?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he replied. “Relative to being a GP, for example.”

“Well, it’s not really about the pay scales,” I told him. “We all know the NHS runs on too little as it is. Everyone says how much they love it, but no one wants to pay for it.”

“Would you not think of going private, no?” he asked, and I realized now that he was Irish, although his accent was not particularly strong. “Would there not be more money in that?”

“No, I don’t approve of private healthcare.”

“Do you not?” he said, raising an eyebrow. “May I ask why?”

“Because I don’t believe that patient care should depend on a person’s wealth. Especially when it comes to the well-being of children. Every person has the right to the same level of support, regardless of their circumstances.”

“You don’t think that if a man, for example, has worked hard all his life and earned a good living that he should be entitled to spend his money anyway he wants?”

“Sure,” I replied. “And if he wants to spend it on luxury hotels, first-class flights, fancy cars, or a season ticket to his favorite football club, then I say good luck to him. But should he be allowed to jump the queue for medical attention? I think that’s a bit more complicated. Morally speaking, I mean.”

“That sounds like socialism to me,” he replied, frowning. “Which, in my experience, is a luxury only those with a few quid in the bank can afford. But then, perhaps you’re one of those very people.”

“I think, perhaps, you overestimate our financial situation,” I said, trying to sound lighthearted, and he glanced around again, a raised eyebrow suggesting that he wasn’t sure he was.

Our home might have been rented but it was in a good part of North London, after all, and was expensively furnished.

My parents had owned their house and been scrupulous savers, and so when they died, I inherited more than enough to get a good start in life.

The only reason we were still renting was because we hadn’t yet decided whether we wanted to remain in London or move abroad.

“In a perfect world,” said Daniel, “you must wish you were unemployed.”

I sat back, baffled by why he would say such a thing.

“Because,” he continued, sensing my confusion, “if no one had any need of you, then all the little children would be happy. There’d be no one looking for the help of a child psychologist.”

I thought about it. It was, to be fair, a reasonable point, one I’d never considered before.

“You don’t have children yourself, do you Aaron?

” he asked, and I shook my head. “When you do, you might have a different attitude about private healthcare. Should one of those children fall ill, God forbid, you would want them to receive treatment as soon as possible. Even if it meant that some poor unfortunate child who’d been ahead of you in the queue got left behind.

It’s human nature. We look after our own first.”

I could have protested but suspected he was probably right. I wasn’t na?ve enough to think that principles had a peculiar habit of disappearing when confronted by brutal reality.

“By what you say, I assume you’re a father,” I said, hoping to lighten the mood. He finished his whiskey and held his glass out to me with a smile. I took this as his signal that he wanted another, so lifted the bottle and duly refilled it.

“I am,” he said, his voice quieter now, more reflective. “I was blessed with two but, sadly, we lost one.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“There is nothing more unnatural in this world,” he said, looking directly at me and pointing a finger in the air, “ nothing more unnatural than for a parent to lose a child. No man or woman should ever have to experience that level of grief.”

“No,” I agreed, glancing toward the closed door that led to a corridor, which, in turn, divided our bedroom and spare room on one side from the bathroom on the other. I hoped to hear the water rushing from the bath, knowing the sound would bring Rebecca to us within a few minutes.

“And are your parents still alive, Aaron?” he called after me when I went back to the kitchen to retrieve a second beer for myself.

“No,” I replied, when I returned.

“They must have died young.”

“My father suffered a heart attack in his forties. My mother developed cancer a few years later and, unfortunately, it was late stage by the time it was diagnosed.”

“Siblings?”

I shook my head.

“So you’re all alone in the world.”

“No,” I said. “I have Rebecca.”

“Of course, of course,” he replied, nodding his head. “But you have no one of your own to fall back on.”

“Again, Rebecca.”

“No one of your own blood, I mean.”

I sighed. He seemed determined to have his way on this. “I suppose not,” I said.

“The little boy that Santa Claus forgot.”

I frowned. I had never thought of myself in quite those terms before.

“It’s a good thing you met Rebecca so,” he said. “She’s a wonderful young woman.”

“She is,” I agreed.

“Can I ask you a personal question?”