Coronation Wives (35 page)

‘No!’ She tried to push him away.

‘Too late, my dear, too late!’

‘I’ll scream! Your mother will hear me.’

‘No! Do not scream! Do not scream!’

He tried to clamp his hand across her mouth, but she ducked away. He grabbed her shoulders. She twisted, struggled and rained blows onto his chest. Her fists pounded against his ribs. She was sure she was hurting him. She could hear her blows thudding against his body, then realized it couldn’t be because the sound was getting louder and not coming from within the dreary basement, but tumbling down the cold concrete steps. Someone was hammering at the front door.

He caught hold of her wrists. ‘Ignore it. We haven’t finished yet.’

Claw-like, his fingers ripped at her clothes, tearing her bodice away from her brassiere, her brassiere cup away from her breast. There was fire in his eyes, wetness around his mouth. He was going to have what he wanted whether she was willing or not. No one and nothing would stop him – with one exception.

A voice cawed like a territorial crow from somewhere upstairs. ‘Reginald! Reginald! Where are you? Do I have to answer the front door myself? Me? A poor old woman in my state of health?’

‘Oh Jesus!’ Griffiths let her go and swiftly tightened his tie. He glared at Polly as if she were dirt. ‘Tidy yourself up!’

She pulled up her knickers, buttoned her dress, grabbed her bag, smacked him round the ear with it, then pushed past him to get to the front door before he could stop her.

‘Well, that’s your job gone!’ Griffiths called after her.

‘Stick your job up yer arse!’ Polly shouted back.

The door lock was stiff, but what with her pulling and whoever was on the other side pushing, it jerked open.

Two figures fell forward. A head crashed against her bosom. The other figure fell onto grimy knees that looked as if they hadn’t seen soap since the day it was invented.

‘Carol!’

Polly looked down into her daughter’s face.

‘I didn’t want the chips, Ma. I wanted to be with you. Don’t be mad.’

‘I won’t be!’ Polly grabbed Sean’s arm, dragged him to his feet. ‘Come on! Let’s get the hell out of here!’

Like rabbits bolting from a burrow, the three of them ran down Britannia Road towards the London Inn.

Once Polly was sure there was no chance of pursuit, their headlong run slowed to a march before they stopped at the kerb to cross the road.

‘Nice of you to come with our Carol,’ Polly remarked to Sean once she’d caught her breath. Hardly a Prince Charming with his socks round his ankles, holes in his pullover and his shabby shirt done up askew, but she really meant what she said.

Sean sniffed and said, ‘I wanted to.’

Carol stood on tiptoe and whispered against her mother’s ear, ‘I think he loves me.’

‘That’s nice,’ said Polly. ‘But just keep yer hand on yer ha’penny.’

Carol frowned. ‘I ain’t got a ha’penny. I’ve got twopence. So’s Sean.’

‘Good,’ said Polly. ‘That’s just enough for the three of us to get the bus on ’ome.’

Edna and Colin argued that night. Colin was sitting down at the dinner table, his meal unfinished, head in his hands.

‘Sweetheart, if I could do more, I would. Perhaps the doctors are right and Susan should be left to get well without us interfering.’

Edna slammed the teapot down onto the cast iron stand. ‘That’s ridiculous!’

Colin sighed and tried again. ‘Edna, can’t you be content that Janet’s finding out how she is? She might even get to visit her. We can only sit tight and—’

‘I will do no such thing!’

Edna’s eyes, usually as soft as brown velvet, had dulled with tiredness and worry since Susan’s departure. Now they blazed with anger.

‘I’ve decided to go there and demand to see her.’

Up until now, Pamela and Peter had been watching their parents, wide-eyed, listening to them arguing and getting more worried by the minute. The loud voices were just too much to bear. Pamela began to cry. Peter did too. Edna appeared not to notice.

‘Well, I’m not going!’ Colin eased Pamela onto his lap and put his arm around Peter.

‘Then I’ll go alone!’ Edna stormed out of the room and thundered up the stairs.

Hanging from an upstairs window, she gazed at the city lights twinkling in the distance. She didn’t want to go to the sanatorium alone. Hospitals of any sort frightened her. They brought back painful memories from years ago of being unmarried and giving birth. She needed someone to go with her, someone who cared. Her father might, even though her mother was a drag on him. But Susan was his granddaughter. ‘I’m going to ask Dad to go with me,’ she muttered. ‘I can’t wait around for Janet.’

Skeletal weeds, their leaves fallen and their stalks brown, dripped with rain. Blocks of light fell in a series of squares and oblongs, like building bricks hastily adopted to keep the darkness at bay. Late afternoon was swiftly turning to evening and November was giving way to December.

Janet eased open her desk drawer, retrieved the spectacle frames, unbuttoned the top three buttons of her cardigan, then swiftly stuffed the frames down the front of her blouse. The afternoon could get even darker as far as she was concerned, the darker the better.

Professor Pritchard had gone home early complaining of indigestion. Jonathan was having a day off to visit his parents. Even Mrs Prendergast, the almoner, was out inspecting someone’s home prior to a patient being discharged.

It was best, Janet decided, if she didn’t wear a cardigan. She shivered as she draped it over the back of her chair. The small, cast iron radiator, which she depended on to heat her office, gurgled in warning. As usual it was barely lukewarm.

The corridors were colder than her office. Rain criss-crossed the windows and flurries of dried leaves blew beneath gaps in the doors.

She was in luck. It had been raining for about a week and what with the draughts and the wetness, quite a few members of staff were sick with colds and flu.

By the time she got to the changing room where she’d spotted the uniforms, the sky outside had darkened further. On top of that, a few lights in the corridor had gone out.

Anyone watching from a distance would not recognize her, especially once she’d set the glasses on her nose.

After quietly closing the door behind her, she switched on the light. Protective clothing hung from hangers. Some sat in neatly folded heaps on eye level shelves above labels stating what they were. The hangers had names on them.

PROFESSOR PRITCHARD
.

DR JONATHAN DRIVER
.

Reluctant to wear someone else’s clothes, she automatically went over to the neatly folded piles. She had everything she wanted in her hands and was about to put them on over her own clothes, when a thought came to her. What if someone should see that there were more sets of cover-ups used than needed?

It would be best, she decided, to wear a set of those already hanging up. Someone might notice if there were three used outfits when she came to put them back. She decided on Jonathan’s and was glad when she detected no residual male aroma.

Once kitted out in a gown that almost swept the floor, a cap that completely covered her hair, a mask hiding the lower half of her face, and the spectacle frames disguising the top half, she eased her head out of the door like a nervous turtle and looked up and down the corridor.

No one!

Thank goodness.

She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window that lined the corridor from end to end. If anyone did come along, they’d probably burst out laughing at her appearance. She looked more like a bundle of laundry than a doctor.

It was only a matter of half a dozen footsteps from the
changing room to the ward, yet it felt like a mile. Her feet felt and sounded as if she were wearing diver’s boots, the big lead-weighted ones that keep a man in a metal helmet stapled to the seabed while air was pumped down to him through endless lengths of rubber.

The door let out a long, lingering squeak as she slowly pushed it open. She gritted her teeth as it squealed closed and sighed with relief before studying her surroundings.

There was a small office to the left and a sluice room to her right. She stopped, listened. A tap dripped. A few seconds passed. It dripped again. No one had attempted to close it off more tightly. From that she deduced the sluice room was empty.

Keeping close to the partition that divided the office from the vestibule, she crept towards the door. At the same time, she swiftly rehearsed in her head what she would say if challenged. She would introduce herself as a duty nurse; she would have to bear in mind the clothes she was wearing.

Professor Pritchard is not feeling too good. I’m just filling in.

Everyone knew he had frequent bouts of indigestion. Most of the sanatorium staff would already know that he’d gone home with yet another attack.

The office light was on, and although the desk had been left neat and tidy, someone had not long arisen from that chair. Pens were laid in a straight line next to a specimen vase in which sat a single rose, a late, lingering bloom from a summer long over.

Despite her nervousness, Janet smiled. Conscientious as they were, a few hard-worked members of staff had probably grabbed the opportunity for an extended tea break. All would be fine – as long as Matron didn’t catch them.

Unsure what to expect, she headed into the main body of the ward. To her relief there were no iron lungs; neither was there
the more general arrangement of beds lining the walls as she’d expected.

There were only six beds and each was separated from its neighbours by solid partitions that gave way at about four and a half feet to glass. Fraternizing among patients was curtailed in the interest of contagion control. They looked like fish tanks, the big oblong ones used by those who bred tropical fish. Only each of these held a small and very sick human being. Adults, who formed the minority of polio patients, were in another ward.

Janet walked slowly, scanning each face before she realized that the patient’s name was held in a card holder on the outside of each individual cubicle. They reminded her of the hymn boards into which hymn numbers were slotted before a service. Beneath each name were a number of hooks holding various medical charts, each set held together by the stout teeth of a metal bulldog clip.

Expectant faces watched her walk slowly down the ward, each hoping, perhaps, that she would stop and come to them, even if only to give them medicine. Human contact was more important than she could possibly have imagined – especially to children.

A brief scan of the name board, and Janet opened the door to the very last cubicle. Susan was sleeping. Her cheeks had a rosy glow, which made her appear very healthy. The truth was very different. Susan was still very ill and had a long way to go before leaving this place.

Susan’s eyelids flickered as Janet bent closer and whispered her name before slowly – very slowly – opening and looking up at her.

Janet smiled behind her facemask. ‘Hello, Susan.’

Instead of receiving the welcome smile she had somehow expected, Susan’s bottom lip began to quiver. ‘I don’t think I want to get better.’

Regardless of the threat of contagion, Janet took hold of her hand. ‘Don’t be silly. Of course you want to get better. You want to see your mummy and daddy again, don’t you? And what about Pamela and Peter? You want to see them too, I expect.’

Susan’s nod was barely perceptible and her lip still quivered as though she were about to burst into tears. ‘Yes,’ she said weakly.

‘Well then …’ Janet gripped her hand tightly. ‘So you have to get better.’

Tears misted Susan’s eyes. ‘I don’t like it here. They hurt me.’

‘Oh darling, they don’t mean to,’ Janet said and cuddled her close. It had been her intention to throw off her disguise once she’d found Susan. But I can’t, she thought. If I do she’ll break down, beg for me to take her out of here, perhaps scream and convince someone that I have visited her. And then, she thought, I shall lose my job and no one will be here to keep an eye on her.

Behind the facemask, she bit her lip resolutely and closed her eyes. Never had she had to make such a hard decision. But there was no doubt she had to do it. Susan’s well-being was in her hands and the responsibility lay heavy on her heart. If these clandestine visits were to continue, she must not let Susan know who she was.

‘Would you like me to tell you a story?’ she asked, blinking back the tears as she looked intently into Susan’s face.

‘Yes please. A Christmas story.’

The idea was a good one. December was not far away. Janet racked her brains and swiftly condensed Dickens’s
A Christmas Carol
so that it revolved around the Cratchit family and left Scrooge and the ghosts out in the cold.

‘Right!’ said Janet adopting a cheery voice though she felt
like a traitor, ‘Tiny Tim was the youngest of the Cratchit family and couldn’t walk very well …’

Later she felt positively ill that she’d chosen that particular story and had so obviously focused the main story on Tiny Tim and his affliction.

Was it wrong to prepare Susan for the great tragedy that was about to befall her? Back in her flat surrounded by a genteel shabbiness from ages past, she sat in front of her dressing table mirror peeking through her fingers. Were those lines of worry she could see on her forehead or newly acquired maturity? She decided on the latter. Things were going well for her. She enjoyed her work, still enjoyed Jonathan telling her in great detail about
his
work, and adored relaxing on her days off in a room where ladies might once have played the spinet or worked on their needlework while admiring the view from the window.

She rested her face in her hands. So much had changed in her life. Here she was, a marriageable girl with no boyfriend and no career sneaking about a hospital for the sake of a sick child. If she wasn’t careful she could get into the same kind of trouble she’d got into at the Infirmary. Strangely enough, she didn’t care.

Just before getting into the snug spaciousness of the four-poster bed, she went to the windows, drew back the curtains and looked out across a moon-kissed landscape. Frost covered the ground and spangled on the roofs of the single-storey buildings of the wards and medical facilities. Like rows of rabbit hutches, she thought, housing a host of bunnies all waiting to escape.