A Family Affair (42 page)

‘That when they brought their daughter Cheryl to see you, you refused to treat her.'

‘That's ridiculous!' Helen protested. ‘She had a heavy cold, that's all.'

‘They maintain she had a sinus infection and was very chesty.'

‘She had a bunged-up nose and a cough, yes. Nothing that wouldn't clear up on its own. They asked for antibiotics, which simply weren't appropriate – or warranted. I know penicillin is the new wonder drug, but you know as well as I do it won't do anything for the common cold.'

‘If she had an infection …'

‘I don't think she did. And in any case, I don't want to start prescribing antibiotics to a child when it's not necessary.'

‘You could have given her something.'

‘I did. A bottle of linctus. And I advised a steam kettle to clear her sinuses.'

‘Well, they clearly weren't satisfied. I'm not going to question your diagnosis, Helen. You saw her, I didn't. But perhaps you could be a little more tactful next time and explain the situation more clearly. We can't afford to lose patients and in a small town like Hillsbridge word spreads like wildfire. It only takes the Hilliers to start talking – and they will – and we could suffer a major breakdown in patient confidence.'

Helen was shaken but seething.

‘I'm quite sure I did all that was necessary and I'm equally sure I made my reasons clear. I didn't treat them any differently to any of my other patients.'

‘Then perhaps you should give some thought to your bedside manner,' Reuben said smoothly. ‘In general practice you can't employ the same tactics as on a busy accident and emergency department.'

Helen started to say she was aware of that, but Reuben cut across her.

‘To more pleasant matters. At least – I hope they're more pleasant.' He smiled, a little smugly, Helen thought. ‘Brenda and I are having a dinner party a week on Saturday. I hope you'll be able to come.'

‘Thank you. I think I'm free that day,' Helen said stiffly.

‘Good. Well, if you could confirm so that Brenda can get her planning in hand.' He smiled again, but there was no warmth in it, just the finality of dismissal. ‘I won't keep you any longer. I'm sure you're busy.'

Helen beat a hasty retreat to her own room, where she slammed papers around on her desk for a few minutes. It didn't help. The injustice of Reuben's attack on her was rankling, all the things she wished she had said running round inside her head now that it was too late. But there was an unpleasant sense of guilt and rejection too. Though she honestly didn't feel she had anything to reproach herself with, the fact remained she had lost the practice a patient family. Perhaps Reuben was right and she could have handled it differently. Perhaps she was to blame. And the thought of the Hilliers going round spreading some account of their dissatisfaction, enhanced and exaggerated, no doubt, was not a nice one. She had worked so hard at building up patient confidence, it was horrid to have it undermined this way. And all this coming on top of Miss Freeman's death, which was still making her feel uncomfortable and irrationally guilty.

Perhaps I am handling things all wrong
, Helen thought.
Perhaps I have still got a busy hospital manner and I'm not connecting with the patients here.

Under normal circumstances she would have talked to Paul, vented her tension and anxiety on him. But she rather thought Paul would be around for her less, and that too was a sadness. She had never been able to talk to Guy that way. For one thing he was never very interested in anything that didn't directly concern him, for another, in spite of the length of time they'd been together, she still had this absurd desire to impress him. Perhaps it sprung from the fact that he had once been her boss, perhaps it was just an intuition that anything less than perfection would fall short of the ideals he demanded, but Helen had never been willing to let him see her weaknesses.

And on top of everything else, Reuben had asked her to his wretched dinner party. She didn't like formal occasions at the best of times, and given that she was bound to be paired with Paul to even up the numbers, this one was bound to be awkward to say the least.

Damn, damn, damn!
Helen thought.

But beneath all the surface anger lurked a sickening sense of failure. She had never felt more isolated than she did now.

Three weeks before Christmas Bryn was boxing again – in Bath at the Pavilion – and Jenny went in by bus to watch him.

This time the excitement was heightened to fever pitch by a mixture of nervousness and pride; it made her stomach turn over and the tension was a knot in her throat. When he came out in his towelling robe her mouth was dry and the palms of her hands moist, and her programme was rolled into a narrow tube between her trembling fingers.

It was a harder fight than the last time; once or twice his opponent had him on the ropes and she thought he was really hurt. She was almost weeping; screaming at him, ‘Come on, Bryn! Come on!', amazed by the primitive responses she was experiencing. And then he seemed to come alive and it was the other man who was reeling on the ropes. A flurry of blows and a cut opened up over his opponent's eye. The gush of blood made Jenny gasp. Then the referee stepped in, signalling to the corners. It was all over. Bryn's hand was raised high, and then, once again, he was back in the ring, wearing his dressing gown and with a towel draped over his head, being presented with a small silver cup by an official in a black dinner jacket, frilly white shirt and dicky bow and the press cameras were flashing all around.

Tears of relief welled into the corners of her eyes, the adrenalin all released into trembling excitement. She watched in adoration and then he was climbing out of the ring, going, not towards the dressing room, but making straight for her.

‘Well done!' she said, her voice a breathy little gasp.

And he gave her the cup. Placed it in her hands.

‘For you,' he said.

It was one of those special moments Jenny would remember all her life.

When he came back, wearing his everyday clothes, he caught her eye and nodded towards the door. She wove her way between the seats to join him, clutching the cup to her as if it were indeed made of solid silver. She was aware of people looking at her but she had eyes only for him.

Outside it was a bitingly cold night but very dark, the moon and stars obscured behind a blanket of cloud.

‘You were wonderful!' she said. ‘And giving me the cup … can I really keep it?'

‘That's why I gave it to you.'

‘But don't
you
want it?'

‘I've got loads of them.'

‘I'll put it on my dressing table. I'll keep it for ever.'

He said nothing. His arm was around her shoulders, walking with her away from the lights. She glanced at him. His chin was hunched into the turned-up collar of his jacket and he was staring straight ahead.

‘You're quiet,' she said. ‘What's wrong?'

‘There's something I've got to tell you.'

The seriousness of his tone cut a swathe through her delicious mood; suddenly she was filled with foreboding.

‘What?'

He stopped walking and turned to look at her.

‘I've got to go away.'

‘You mean on a training exercise or something?'

‘No. I'm being posted. To Norfolk.'

‘Norfolk!' He might as well have said Singapore or Malta. It sounded like the end of the earth. ‘When?'

‘Next week. On Wednesday.'

‘Wednesday!' Shock seemed to have robbed her the ability to do anything but echo his words.

‘I know. It's a bugger.'

She'd never heard him swear before.

‘But why?' she asked. ‘You thought you'd be at Colerne for ages.'

‘You don't ask why in the forces. You just do as you're told.'

‘I don't believe it!' She was close to tears again but this time they were not happy tears. ‘They can't do this! Can't you tell them …' Her voice trailed away. They could do it, of course. As he said, he belonged to them and they could send him anywhere they liked, whenever they liked. ‘Is that why you gave me the cup?' she asked.

‘Well – partly. I don't want you to forget me.'

‘As if I would! Well, at least we'll have the weekend.'

‘No, we won't. I don't think I'll be able to get down again before I go. Some of the time I'm on duty and then I've got all my packing up to do. This is going to be our last time, Jen.'

The finger of ice probed at her again, sending shivers of misgiving through her.

‘Bryn, this isn't …' She swallowed. ‘… the end, is it? You will keep in touch?'

‘Of course I will. I'll write as soon as I get there and I'll be back to see you, first chance I get.'

She nodded, unable to speak.

‘And there's another hour before my coach goes,' he went on.

She thought of the last bus home, decided she didn't care. If she missed it, she missed it. ‘Can we go somewhere quiet?' she said.

They walked until they found a secluded spot at the rear of the car park, where they melted into one another's arms. Jenny hardly noticed the raw cold any more; between them they were generating enough heat to insulate them in their own small world. She burrowed into Bryn's jacket, the sharpness of desire now made poignant by the impending separation, and his lips on hers and his hands on her body made her long for him with an overpowering intensity. He was going away, she didn't know when they'd be together again this way, and she didn't think she could bear it.

She slid her hands down his back, pressing his hips tightly against hers and relishing that fine-tuned ache deep inside that sometimes reached the physical equivalent of a scream.

‘Jenny – don't make it so hard for me,' Bryn whispered against her ear, and the raw edge of his need echoed her own.

‘But I want you to,' she said. She heard the quick, ragged intake of his breath. ‘I know what I said before but now … I want you to.'

‘Are you sure?'

She nodded, her hair brushing his cheek. She was trembling with the enormity of her decision but she didn't want him to leave without them having been together properly. The time hadn't been right before, now it was. Perhaps tomorrow she would regret it; tonight it was the only thing in the world which mattered.

‘Oh, Jenny …'

She could feel all the pent-up desire within him like a powerhouse of electricity reaching out to spark and fuse with her own, but his lips on hers were incredibly gentle, kissing her with a tenderness that was somehow even more evocative than the most passionate, bruising of kisses. Shyly she slid her hands round until they found the zip of his jeans and eased it down. His body, hot and swollen, surged forward into the palm of her hand and for a moment she hesitated, not sure what she should do, before she closed her fingers around it. She remained there motionless, enjoying the heat and the strength and the intimacy of the moment and then Bryn was rucking her skirt up about her legs, moving them both so that all that heat and strength was between her thighs.

‘Jenny – are you sure?' he whispered again.

‘Yes – oh yes!'

She'd heard the first time could be painful, but it wasn't. He slid inside her with unbelievable ease and she felt only full and complete. She buried her face in his shoulder, her arms wound around him so tightly that their hearts seemed to be beating as one and their breath rising and falling in unison. Then, as he moved within her, his breath came faster and faster and she tipped her head back, seeing the stars and the orange-tinged hue of the city lights in the night sky through a dewy mist. At the last he cried out her name and, as he slipped out of her and she felt the sticky wetness between her legs, she experienced the most enormous rush of tenderness and warmth. Strangely, her own sharp sensations of response had gone away the moment he had entered her and though they returned now, teasing, the overwhelming emotion was one of satisfaction that she had given herself to him, heard his cry of delight.

‘Oh, Jenny, I'll never forget,' he said.

And that, she thought, was the most important thing of all.

She couldn't stop watching for the postman. She waited at the landing window, dashing into her bedroom or the bathroom if anyone came into the hall because she didn't want them to know how eager she was. But they were in no doubt. The moment the mail dropped on to the mat she was down the stairs, almost falling over herself in her eagerness, pushing Sally out of the way. Sally had ears like radio receivers. She could hear the postman's bicycle coming from way down the road and ran into the hall to attack the letters with a frenzy of barking. They were in no doubt either as to Jenny's disappointment. She would deposit the mail on the dining-room table and disappear upstairs again, the picture of dejection.

It was almost two weeks now since Bryn had gone and she couldn't understand why she hadn't heard from him.

‘Forget about it and it will come,' Carrie advised. But Jenny couldn't forget. She thought about it every waking moment and her dreams were overlaid with a sense of gathering despair.

Why hadn't he written? He'd promised! She hugged the silver cup, gazed at it, willing him to write, but still the longed-for letter didn't come.

‘It's the Christmas post, I expect,' Carrie said, but she sounded more consoling than confident, and Jenny knew her mother thought that Bryn had probably forgotten all about her and was secretly glad it was over.

The post, it was true, was becoming more and more erratic. Sometimes now it didn't come until lunchtime or even later, delivered by fresh-faced students with long striped woolly scarves, out to earn some pin money during the holiday. Jenny had tried for a job, but by the time she'd thought about getting round to it they'd all been snapped up. Her holiday was not as long as what Carrie called ‘proper colleges', and meant university.