In the morning Jackie handed her the address of the surgery on a Clean Slate compliment slip and, snatching the keys for a spare van, gave Stella twenty minutes to get to Kew.
Stella had no intention of going; she would pretend Mrs Ramsay had called and asked her to come a day early. Yet obeying the satnav’s peremptory directions and driving along untypically clear roads to ‘reach her destination’ – a tree-lined street of detached Edwardian villas off the South Circular – she had arrived with five minutes to spare and a pain that was robbing her of her senses.
She had slotted the van into a tight space outside the surgery, crunched over a gravel sweep, circumventing a huge four-by-four car to steps between plinths, each supporting a stone eagle with outspread wings. A brass plaque on one, smeared with dried polish, read: ‘Dr S. A. I. Challoner. Dentist’. Nursing her jaw, Stella had pushed open one of two studded doors and gone inside.
She returned to her seat and took refuge in the newspaper.
Her phone rang again: Paul had called her at home and so far today had sent five texts. She switched off the handset.
‘You must be Stella.’
Stella looked up from an article about the curse of the Kennedy dynasty to see a resurrected Ted Kennedy: a middle-aged man with ebullient greying hair in a pristine white coat, piercing blue eyes and a smile of perfect teeth. He spoke as if her presence was a happy discovery and put out his hand. Stella rose.
‘I am Ivan.’ He kept her hand for the right amount of time in a grip that was firm but did not crush.
When he gently shut the door to his surgery, all extraneous noise ceased.
The richly decorated room reminded Stella of the sitting rooms of many of her clients. Floor-to-ceiling shelving of hardback books: Austen, Dickens, Eliot, Homer and Trollope were – she was gratified to see – in alphabetical order. The opulent décor of rich ochres: yellow, terracotta, deep oranges contrasted with the midnight blue of Mrs Ramsay’s tablecloth. All this demoted the harsh white dental equipment to ornamental rather than the main activity of the room. Stella’s dread diminished and she waved at the bookshelf indicating Wuthering Heights.
‘Good story.’ She dared risk no more; she had only skimmed it at school.
‘Don’t you love it?’ Dr Challoner was examining his instruments, laying them out on a long marble-topped table with lion-paw legs.
‘I wouldn’t go that… Yes, I do.’
‘It was my wife’s favourite too.’
This stopped Stella from adding that she’d been annoyed by all the bad weather and had given up before the end. As Dr Challoner guided her to the chair, she kept to herself that she did not see the point of fiction and, lying back, became aware of the faint notes of a piano.
Although Stella knew little about classical music, she recognized it. Mrs Ramsay had put it on every day; the music was depressing and Stella thought it could not be good for her. Mrs Ramsay said the music came from the walls, which was the sort of illogical remark that had led Stella to suspect she was going mad. On her last visit, Mrs Ramsay, behaving as if in the scene she was describing, had rhapsodized over some bird – ‘Don’t look up, you will blind yourself’ – hovering above the ruins of a village and had cautioned: ‘Sssssh! See the children playing. Keep an eye on what they are doing.’
Stella had been compelled to reply that she could not see anyone. Mrs Ramsay had pointed out that the top of the cistern needed a wipe, which it did not.
Stella had taken over Mrs Ramsay’s cleaning two years ago when one of her staff was frightened by the old lady pretending to be a celebrity at an opening ceremony and forcing her to hold up a length of parcel tape that she snipped with a pair of pinking shears.
Mr Challoner clipped a plastic bib into place around Stella’s neck and adjusted wrap-around sunglasses on her nose. He elevated her into position and Stella allowed herself to relax.
As he stood over her, a lock of his hair slid over eyebrows so defined Stella wondered whether he plucked them. She could not identify his aftershave: a mix of musk and incense cut with juniper berries and spicy pepper and calculated that veins criss-crossing the backs of his hands put him in his mid-fifties while his translucent complexion and prominent cheekbones made him seem younger.
‘My nurse is off sick. It is she who runs this tight ship, so do bear with me.’ He snapped on surgical gloves with a magician’s flourish.
‘I like this music.’ Stella regretted speaking. It opened possibilities of a discussion in which she would have nothing to say.
‘When my son was small this was his favourite, he made my wife play it every bedtime. One gets sentimental once they grow up. If music had been more accessible in Proust’s time, he might have experienced it as a vehicle of transcendence instead of a morsel of sponge cake.’ He gave a quick smile.
Stella opened wide to avoid responding and her jaw clicked the way Terry’s did; her calm evaporated.
‘I’m transported to his bedroom, tidying his toys, reading Beatrix Potter or some such to him. Raise your hand at any time during the procedure if you want to rest and rinse. Creeping out, I would have to stop and gaze at him, his face deceptively angelic in the glow of the nightlight, he hated the dark.’ Dr Challoner appeared distracted; then he shrugged and picked up a sickle probe from his tray.
Stella imagined a father who read his child stories, held her hand in the street and sat her on his knee to ask about her day at school. Bright light warmed her face when Mr Challoner repositioned the lamp; she closed her eyes.
It was over.
Mr Challoner was keying details of his treatment into a computer. Stella tottered against the chair as she tidied her hair and tugged at her clothes. The bib lay on the counter.
She had a gum infection under her lower left second bicuspid for which he scribbled a prescription for antibiotics, reassuring her that, apart from a spot of plaque and decay behind her top left incisor revealed by the X-ray, her teeth were good. With his hygienist on holiday he had performed a clean and polish. He would see her again for the filling which he made sound like a treat in store.
He delivered Stella to his receptionist and with a slight bow bade her goodbye.
Outside it occurred to Stella coming out of the reception, that the wall where the surgery had been was blank. She put this crazy impression down to the lidocaine numbing one side of her face; it turned the visit into a not unpleasant dream.
She stuck to the speed limit on Chiswick Bridge thinking about the little boy tucked in by his father. Terry could not have named her favourite music. Her phone’s ringtone was amplified through the speakers and propelled her into the present.
Jackie had left a voicemail about Mrs Ramsay, although crackling made the message unintelligible, Stella guessed Mrs Ramsay wanted her. When doing costing analyses Stella never built in the extra attentions she gave some clients regardless of their business worth. Such efforts, she had explained to Terry, were key to her success.
Stella did not reflect that the extra touches were because she cared about Mrs Ramsay. Page two of her staff handbook warned cleaners of the dangers of mixing emotion with business: You are one side of the dustpan and brush; the client is on the other.
Stella resolved to start on Terry’s house that afternoon. The pain in her mouth had gone and as her van rumbled over the rickety Hogarth flyover the cloud lifted. She angled the visor to cut out low sunlight and estimated, based on years of experience, that clearing his possessions need take no time at all.