A Family Affair (13 page)

‘I'm hungry,' he said suddenly. ‘Let's go out and get some fish and chips.'

‘Da-vid!'

But she went with him anyway, and for that evening at least talk about babies – Heather's, or anyone else's, for that matter – was forgotten.

Something of a kerfuffle was going on in Alder Road, and Billy Edgell was at the centre of it.

When she had finally returned after making sure Heather was comfortable and set up for the night, Carrie had found him creeping about in her back garden.

‘What do you think you're doing?' she demanded.

‘Lookin'for me ball, that's all.'

‘In the dark? I wasn't born yesterday, Billy Edgell.'

‘Honest!'

‘And how did the ball get in my back garden, I'd like to know?' The back garden of Number 27 was accessible only from the gardens of the neighbouring houses or through the covered passageway between the kitchen door and the outhouses and it was enclosed at the far end by a fence which marked a steep drop to what had once been a quarry but now housed a rank of cottages.

‘I've been playing with the Clarks next door to you.'

‘You never have, Billy Edgell. Ivy Clark would never have you in her garden. Not a ragamuffin like you. We'll go and ask her, shall we?'

She went to grab his collar and he dodged away. ‘Went past me like greased lightning,' she told Joe later. ‘Up the path and through our side passage before you could say Jack Robinson!' Carrie shouted after him but by the time she reached the front of the house Billy was nowhere to be seen.

Ten minutes later, however, when she had put the kettle on to make herself a much-needed cup of tea and gone upstairs to change out of the overall she had been wearing all day and which now felt sticky and uncomfortable, she saw him again. As she went to pull the bedroom curtains before putting the light on she spotted him standing on the pavement immediately beyond her low boundary wall and in the orange glow of the street lights there was no doubt whatever as to what he was doing.

Outraged, Carrie threw open the bedroom window.

‘Billy Edgell! How dare you wee in my garden!'

He looked up, clearly shaken at having been caught in the act, but still cheeky, still defiant.

‘I'm coming over to have a word with your mother about you!' She slammed the window shut and pulled the curtains. All thoughts of changing forgotten, she stamped downstairs and pulled on her coat.

Closing the front door behind her, she set off across the Green, her boots squelching in the wet grass. Lights were blazing from every window of the Edgell house – how in the world they paid their electricity bills, Carrie couldn't imagine. She strode up the path and rapped loudly on the door.

It was opened by one of the Edgell tribe – Marilyn – at thirteen, small and skinny with hair that flopped untidily round her shoulders.

‘Is your mother in?' Carrie demanded.

‘Mum!' Marilyn hollered without moving from the doorway.

After a minute or so Joyce appeared, a cigarette dangling from her mouth and wearing a shrunken-looking cardigan and shabby slippers. If George Parsons could see you now! Carrie thought in disgust.

‘Oh – it's you!' Joyce said rudely.

Relations between the two women had never recovered; if Carrie could have given up her job and still been able to afford to pay the bills she would have done so rather than continue working with her. But she couldn't afford to and couldn't see why she should be the one to suffer.

‘I've come about your Billy,' she said. ‘He was round my back when I came home just now – up to no good, I expect. And now I've just seen him relieving himself over my front garden wall.'

Joyce glared at her.

‘What are you on about?'

‘I don't think I could make it much clearer. He was using my garden for a public convenience.'

‘Our Billy wouldn't do that!'

‘Well, I'm sorry, but he did. He didn't know I was at the window – I didn't have the light on – and I caught him nicely. You want to bring your children up to know how to behave themselves, Joyce.'

‘And you want to mind your own business.'

‘When your Billy relieves himself in my garden it is my business!' Carrie returned tartly. ‘You'll have a word with him if you know what's good for you.'

‘What's that supposed to mean?'

‘It means I shall have the bobbies on him if he does it again,' Carrie returned tartly. ‘You'll have a word with him if you know what's good for you.'

‘What's that supposed to mean?'

‘It means I shall have the bobbies on him if he does it again,' Carrie said. ‘Indecent behaviour, that's what it is.'

‘Oh, get bloody lost!' Joyce snarled, prodding Carrie in the chest. ‘Go on – get off my bloody doorstep, or I'll call the bloody police myself.'

‘Don't you threaten me, Joyce! And don't you touch me neither!' But Carrie had retreated a step or two. Angry as she was, her sense of propriety was still strong – getting into a brawl in public just showed you up for what you were – common. And no-one was going to think
her
common if she could help it!

She had been home for about half an hour when she heard the tinkle of breaking glass, and on investigation, discovered someone had put a stone through the glass porthole window in the outside lavatory. There was no sign of anyone outside, but it didn't take much to work out who was responsible, or who had put him up to it, Carrie thought, fuming with helpless anger.

Battle lines had been drawn between her and Joyce. And things could only get worse.

Helen Hall drove her Morris Minor along the narrow lane that swept through the valley parallel to the river, past the mill pond where her aunt Grace had once tried to drown herself, past the farmland and the yard that housed the headquarters of the Roberts Transport business, turning up a steep little hill that branched off opposite Ralph Porter's timber yard and into the drive of Valley View House.

She got out of the car and stood for a moment looking back down the valley. Hillsbridge. Her family's home for generations. Now to be her home too.

A small thrill tickled at her, the thrill of knowing that at last – at last! – she had achieved her lifelong ambition to work as a general medical practitioner, and also a warmth that felt oddly like nostalgia satisfied. It couldn't be nostalgia, of course. She had been born and brought up in Minehead, where her father Jack was headmaster at the local school, and she only knew Hillsbridge from the briefest visits – a few days at Christmas or Easter, a week during the summer holidays when she had stayed either with Charlotte and James Hall, Jack's parents, in their terraced home, or with her grandmother and grandfather on her mother's side, in the vast house that had gone with Grandfather O'Halloran's job as General Manager for the Spindler family who had owned the collieries before nationalisation. The two ends of the social spectrum and she knew them both intimately, and loved them equally, though truth to tell she had always had a special place in her heart for courageous, warm-hearted Charlotte and the house in Greenslade Terrace where her father had grown up. Perhaps it was because there she was able to experience so many things that were completely alien to her middle-class upbringing, Helen sometimes thought. It had been a novelty to look at the
Jane
cartoon strip in the
Daily Mirror
– at home they took the
Telegraph
– and she had been totally fascinated by the
News of the World
, which she seldom got a chance to look at because it was stuffed under a cushion out of sight whenever she was around. But deep down she knew it was the earthy honesty that drew her like a magnet. The same earthy honesty which ran in her own veins. No wonder she felt so at home, here in the shadow of the black batches.

The O'Hallorans had gone now, and the big house was empty and falling into disrepair. Hal and his wife were both dead, as was Grandpa Hall, and Charlotte had moved out of the house in Greenslade Terrace to live with her eldest daughter Dolly and her husband Victor when her health – and her legs – had begun to fail her. It saddened Helen to think that if only she had been a little older and the opportunity of a position here had arisen a few years earlier she could have moved in with Charlotte and saved her from having to leave the house she had lived in all her married life. But there it was, it hadn't been meant to be, and at least she would be able to visit often and build on the bond that she felt drew her and Charlotte together.

Charlotte had been the first of the family to hear Helen's news. Helen had driven out from Bristol, where she worked as a houseman at the city hospital for her interview with Dr Hobbs, senior partner in the Hillsbridge practice now that Dr Vezey had finally retired. The practice needed an assistant to take his place and as soon as she had left Dr Hobbs'house with his offer of the job ringing in her ears and her fingers half numb from his enthusiastic handshake to seal the agreement, she had called to see Charlotte and share her excitement.

‘This is a surprise and no mistake!' Charlotte said, beaming, when Dolly took Helen into the front room where Charlotte had been having an afternoon nap on the sofa. ‘Fancy you coming all the way from Bristol to see me!'

‘You know I always love to see you, Gran.' Helen put a box of Terry's All Gold chocolates down on to the arm of Charlotte's chair. ‘But I have to admit you're not the only reason I'm in Hillsbridge this time!'

‘Oh?' Charlotte might be older, perhaps she couldn't see as well as she'd used to be able to, but there was no mistaking the flush of excitement on Helen's fair skin. ‘A young man, is it?'

Helen laughed. ‘No. It's a job. I didn't mention anything about it before in case I didn't get it. It seemed like tempting fate.'

‘A job?' Charlotte frowned, her almost unlined face creasing into small furrows across the bridge of her nose. ‘But I thought …'

Helen told her all about it, and Charlotte listened intently, shaking her head from time to time and looking at Helen wonderingly.

‘Well I never! You a doctor!'

‘I've been a doctor for a long time now, Gran,' Helen said, smiling.

‘I know that! But a doctor
here
, in Hillsbridge!'

It was the most respectable job Charlotte could imagine – everyone still stood in awe of the doctor, who held the strings of life and death in his hands and was treated as a god. And as for a
lady
doctor … the very thought made her swell with pride.

‘You'll be buying a house here then, I suppose,' Charlotte said, easing her swollen ankles into a more comfortable position.

‘Eventually. When I find my feet and get some money saved up. I'm hoping that I might be able to stay with Auntie Amy and Uncle Ralph for the moment,' Helen said.

‘Well, they've certainly got bags of room. Have you asked yet?'

‘No. I wanted you to be the first to know.' Helen had hugged her grandmother. ‘I'm going to see them now, see what they say. I expect I'll find Amy at the yard, won't I?'

‘I expect so,' Charlotte said tartly. ‘She's never anywhere else. I don't know why she goes on working. There's no need. She and Ralph aren't short of a penny or two.'

‘She works because she enjoys it, Gran,' Helen said. ‘I can't say I'd want to give up and sit at home at her age.'

‘Hmm!' Charlotte snorted, a snort which in a way signified her agreement. Nobody sat around at home from choice, especially when they'd always kept busy – especially when they didn't have their own home to sit around in.

‘Oh, Gran!' Helen said, reading her mind. ‘I'm sorry …'

‘Old age doesn't come on its own, that's the trouble,' Charlotte said ruefully. ‘You make the most of your youth whilst you've still got it, Helen.'

‘I intend to.'

‘Well, we shall be seeing a bit more of you soon then,' Charlotte said. ‘You don't know what a treat that will be.'

‘For me too. I mustn't stay too long today, though. Not if I'm to see Auntie Amy and still get back to Bristol tonight.'

‘That's all right, my love. But you can tell our Amy from me I wouldn't mind seeing
her
when she can spare the time.'

Helen didn't. She didn't want to upset Amy – she knew sparks often flew between mother and daughter – and hopefully there would be other opportunities to put it more tactfully when she was staying with Amy –
if
she was staying with Amy.

As she had expected, however, Amy was only too delighted.

‘Of course you can stay with us – as long as you like,' she had said at once. ‘Ralph and I rattle around in that great house like two peas in a colander.'

‘That's super of you, Amy,' Helen said. ‘I'll pay my way, of course.'

‘You'll do nothing of the sort! You'll need every penny you earn if you're going to buy into the practice and think about getting a home of your own.'

‘Well, we'll see about that,' Helen said. ‘I'd never have asked if I'd thought you wouldn't let me contribute something.'

‘It's a bad job if I can't help my niece out,' Amy replied tartly and Ralph, who had been listening from the sidelines intervened.

‘We can sort out all that later. But rest assured, we shall be very happy to have you, Helen.'

Helen found herself remembering the conversation now as she stood outside Valley View House, looking back towards Hillsbridge. She hoped Amy wasn't going to prove stubborn on the point. It would be embarrassing to feel she was taking advantage of their hospitality, although it was perfectly true that she was hardly flush with money. The long training had meant she had reached her middle twenties without a penny to her name, and the hospital post in Bristol, where she had worked since qualifying, had not been well-enough paid for her to be able to put anything by.