The Unquiet Heart Read Online Free PDF Page A

timing?” I called to Miss V Allardice sitting stiffly behind her newly polished desk with its wooden wedge displaying her initial and surname. She pursed her
lips, and kept typing, pretending not to have noticed me. Levity was frowned on within these serious walls. I suppose she was needed as a counterpoint to Haggarty.
    She hit the return, the carriage slid across with an efficient ping and she deigned to look up. She unzipped her lips. “Good morning, sir. It’s Mister McRae, isn’t it? The
Professor will call you when he is ready. Please take a seat.”
    She expected to be obeyed. She was just the sort you’d need on Judgement Day to keep order. No coffin lids opened until we say so, thank you very much. Everyone lined up in strict order of
sinning, worse ones to the rear. I’d barely parked my bum on the hard seat when Haggarty’s voice boomed down the hall.
    “Is that McRae? Show him in, Viv!”
    Miss Vivienne Allardice flushed at the treacherous revelation of her first name but she kept a steady grip on her sangfroid and her keyboard.
    “Professor Haggarty will see you now, Mr McRae. Straight through that door…”
    “Thanks, Viv.”
    She glared, and the glare turned to horror as I dropped my coat and hat on the chair. She leapt out to hang them up and reinstate order before I got through the door. Haggarty was standing in
the corridor like a pub landlord welcoming his first customer after some remodelling by the Luftwaffe.
    “How have you been, man? Come in, come in. Take a pew. Isn’t this a glorious day? Better than you and I are used to in our wet native lands, eh?” His great paw dragged me in to
his lair. After one session with the Prof, I knew I didn’t have to respond to any of his early questions. I sat down in the big armchair set aside for his victims.
    “So, how’ve you been?” he asked again, this time requiring a reply. He settled his great bulk in a double of my chair and flung my file on the table between us. It was a thick
file. I’d given them plenty to write about.
    “I’ve been fine, Professor. I get the odd bad head but it passes.”
    “Are you still using Scotch to clear it?”
    “It works.”
    “Aye, so it does. For you. As long as it doesn’t get to be a habit. How much do you drink?”
    “A glass or two a day.”
    “Liar. But never mind, eh? I enjoy a tipple myself. What about smoking?”
    I shrugged. Everybody smoked. “A packet a day, sometimes more.”
    “That, you should stop. Or at least use the ones with filters. But you’re not here to chat about your lungs.” He began to sift through his thick pile and pulled out a piece of
black film. “The hospital sent me the x-ray we had taken the last time. Shall we take a look?”
    He was on his feet and holding a foot-square panel of dark film up to the light streaming through the window. I walked over and stared at the outline of my skull. I didn’t know what I was
looking for. Something that told me what sort of man I was. Something less like poor Yorick. How could that be me? This is how I’ll look ten years after they bury me, after the worms have had
their fill. Is that all there is to us?
    Haggarty’s big finger traced the outline of the white wedge that sat across much of the skull like a smudge on the plate. “They made a good job, so they did. Nice. Neat. No sign of
movement.” Then he turned to me and looked down at me from his great height. “But it doesn’t tell me what’s going on under there.” He stabbed the film, then
prodded my skull in the same place.
    “Nothing you should worry about, Prof, I’m sure.”
    “That’s for me to find out. Let’s have a chat. Are you keeping the journal?”
    I pulled out a little notepad from my inside jacket pocket and waved it at him.
    “Good man.”
    We took our seats again and got down to it. He made me talk through the last month and the number of headaches. According to my records they seemed to be getting fewer.
    “And what about the