Crystal's Song (18 page)

“How about we go down this afternoon?”

“Hmmm. Could do. He did get it sorted the last time but all he could ever say was, ‘Give up the ciggies, Dinah, before they give you up!”’

Tom didn’t comment. He’d been a smoker too until he became a prisoner of war. Then quickly he realised his captors wouldn’t supply his basic needs in food and clothing, never mind handing out cigarettes. After the war, he’d decided that saving up the deposit for this elegant house (as he saw it) was more important than wasting money on a quick draw, so he’d never taken up the habit again. As for Dinah, he did try last year to get her to give up and she did indeed manage, accompanied by her fellow-addict, Etta. However, their success had been short-lived. The pair of them, along with Archie, went to the Palace Picture Houses to see Vincent Price in
The House of Wax
. While watching the lassie being toppled into the hot, bubbling, molten wax, Archie became so frightened that he dropped his packet of five Woodbines. Dinah and Etta then scrambled to pick them up and Archie naturally insisted they each have one. They’d readily agreed because Vincent’s Wax House was so scary it was possibly going to put them all off their sleep. So surely it was better to have a puff to calm their nerves!

Before Tom and Dinah could set off for the doctor’s, the doorbell rang with a characteristic clamour which indicated that Tess had arrived with her baby: the baby that was now only six months old because she’d had decided to show her father that
she
was now in charge by arriving three weeks late.

“Can’t stand people who don’t deliver on the date they agreed,” Rupert had announced when she was one week late – and by the time she was three weeks late he had accused the doctors of getting their calculations wrong. He’d even gone to the length of interviewing the consultant obstetrician and demanding that he be furnished with the formula that was used when the estimated time of birth was arrived at! While this request was being courteously rejected, Tess had gone into labour and Davina arrived. Of course she was called after Dinah but
never
was Davina’s name to be shortened to Dinah. And small as she was, she was the one person who could make Rupert forget all his calculations and figures as he was too busy jumping through the hoops.

The instant Dinah relieved Tess of the baby, Davina began to bill and coo to her grandmother. “My, but she sure is getting on. Just look at those big blue eyes – and that smile could melt the iceberg that sunk the Titanic, so it could.”

“Talking of melting, Mum, d’you know who I’ve just seen walking arm-in-arm along the front of the Links?”

Dinah shook her head and Tom looked nonplussed.

“Crystal and Bing!”

“Great,” exclaimed Dinah. “Now if we could just get her up the aisle before wonder-boy Sam gets back from Korea … ” Dinah couldn’t go on as she was overtaken by a further bout of coughing.

“Look, Tess, just before you came in, I’d got your Mammy to agree to go to the doctor’s – d’you mind if we nip out and do that? We won’t be long.”

“Not be long?” spluttered Dinah. “We’ll be gone at least an hour. Why they don’t have appointments I simply don’t know.” She stopped to draw in some air. “You mark my words! People will get fed up just going into a waiting room and counting the numbers in front of them.” She coughed again. “You know, last week your Granny Mary was there for three hours because she kept losing count until she was the only one left in the waiting room! Now where was I? Oh aye, you mark my words – appointments will come.” To please her, both Tess and Tom nodded in agreement. “Anyway, instead of you staying here, let’s take wee Davina here down to see Dr Hannah. He’ll be tickled pink to see her.”

Once Dr Hannah had admired Davina and everybody else had left his surgery, he was then able to examine Dinah. He sighed as he removed his stethoscope from his ears and laid it on his desk. “Don’t like the sound of your lungs.” He paused. “Look, you go up to Spittal Street – you know, just behind the Castle – and get an X-ray done. In the meantime, I’ll talk to a colleague of mine at the Eastern General Thoracic Unit and get him to see you.” He paused again. “No need to ask you if you’re back smoking again. I can smell it.”

Dinah bowed her head in embarrassment. “I suppose I let you down.”

“Not me. Yourself. Nicotine is a killer, Dinah. And you have just so much to live for!”

Until last week, Dinah had moaned at the length of time it took for the powers that be in the Eastern General to send her an appointment to meet the god-like figure, better known as the consultant. Dr Hannah had, after all, continually stressed to them that, in his opinion, she should be seen as a matter of urgency. Now here she was on her way at last, only a few days after the first of April, her favourite time for giving birth. Instinctively, she put her hand up and grabbed the hedge to steady herself as a bout of coughing racked her.

Then she breathed in deeply and was continuing to make her way slowly up Restalrig Road when she heard a voice call out her name from across the road. It was her mother-in-law, Mary Glass, who had obviously been waiting for her to pass that way so that she could open the window and let the whole neighbourhood know from her shouts that Dinah was going off to the hospital and so needed all the luck Mary could wish her. Waving back to let Mary know she’d heard, Dinah walked on towards the YMCA where she saw her mother already waiting for her.

Dinah had tried hard to persuade her not to come, but as Patsy herself explained, in her usual clumsy manner, she had given birth to her and if anyone was about to tell her that Dinah was going to make an early exit she would definitely be there to tell them otherwise!

They decided it would be best to enter the hospital by the back door, so they journeyed along Restalrig Crescent, crossed over Findlay Avenue and walked on to the posh side of the Crescent, which had Gumley Davidson tin hut houses on one side of the street and smart four-in-a-block corporation housing on the other.

Patsy remarked, “You know, they say folk are just desperate to get one of these tin huts. Wouldn’t thank you for one, I wouldn’t.”

“Don’t know anybody in they huts. And even if they are running with condensation, boiling in the summer and freezing in the winter, the folk inside all seem to be well-heeled.”

“Aye, but they’re snobs. I mean to say, just look how well you and Tom have done and you don’t send your children to fee-paying schools.”

Dinah was getting breathless by now and was grateful that they’d reached Findlay Gardens and the cul-de-sac that led into the allotments from where the hospital back door could be seen. “Have you ever thought, Mammy … that we don’t send our bairns … to posh schools because we cannae afford it?”

“Look, you’re fair puffing. Come on now. Haud on to me. I’ll do the talking for once and you just listen.”

By now they were in the narrow pathway that bordered the very tall hospital wall. Dinah fell against it and started to laugh uproariously. “What’s so funny?” demanded Patsy, who began to rub Dinah’s back after the fit of laughing had set off the coughing again.

“Nothing really,” giggled Dinah, who just couldn’t bring herself to explain to her mother that all her life she’d kept quiet to allow Patsy to hold court freely.

Once through the small wooden green door that took them to the rear of the hospital, Patsy said, “We’ll be able to get into the thoracic unit if we go round to the left. No need to go down to the front door. That place gives me the creeps, so it does.”

“Why?”

“Because,” replied Patsy, indicating the hospital front with a sweep of her hand, “it’s carved into the stones above the portal there that this place was opened up as the Leith Poorhouse!” She now looked all around to make sure she was not overheard – though even if she was it wouldn’t matter. “And,” she went on in a whisper, “they do say that Rachel Campbell – you know, Sam Campbell’s mother that’s a wee bit uppity …”

“I admire her. She’s somebody to look up to,” interjected Dinah.

“Oh aye, she’s done a great job bringing up five bairns on her own. But they say her own mother died here of consumption when it was a Poorhouse. Then her drunken man had her dumped in a pauper’s grave over there.” And Patsy jabbed her thumb towards Seafield Cemetery.

When the X-rays had all been done for a second time and Dinah was now to be examined by a doctor, Patsy was much put out at not being allowed to follow her into the inner sanctum. For her part, Dinah had been grateful to have some rest from her mother’s incessant babbling, though she realised that the prattling was due to Patsy having become a “nervous wreck” (as she put it) ever since Doctor Hannah had said he thought Dinah had a complaint that needed urgent attention. Dinah well understood her mother’s reaction: after all, when Tess was three weeks late in giving birth to Davina, hadn’t she offered to have the baby for her! But even with this insight into how a mother reacts when one of her brood is poorly, Dinah was still finding it hard to cope with her own mother.

The clock on the wall seemed to take five minutes to move on by one minute, and Patsy was on the verge of knocking at the door and asking if there was a problem, when the door opened and a nurse ushered an ashen-faced Dinah out, saying, “You will receive your appointment in the post, Mrs Glass,” before she brusquely closed the door.

Immediately, Dinah put up her hand to warn her mother that this wasn’t the time to ask any questions. Patsy was at a loss what to do and unconsciously she found herself saying, “I think the WVS run a wee tea shop here – d’you fancy going for a cuppa?” Dinah nodded and they made their way down to the small tea station where a well-to-do lady was in command of a tea urn and a bag of digestive biscuits. “You sit there, Dinah,” Patsy suggested as she pointed to one of the three small tables in what could only be described as an oversized cupboard. “I’ll get the tea. Oh look, here’s your mother-in law coming. I’ll just get her a cup too.”

Dinah agreed as Mary looked about her sheepishly. “I ken I shouldn’t hae come. But you’ve been that long. I was so worried. I thought,” she now turned to Patsy who was returning with the tea and three digestive biscuits on a tray, “the two of you might need some … well, ye ken, some …”

A warning glance from Patsy made Mary realise that she should just sit down, drink her tea and discuss the price of bread.

The whole family were trying hard to keep upbeat. They nevertheless realised that the removal of a malignant tumour along with half of Dinah’s left lung and some ribs, which (it was thought) would give the remaining half-lung room to breathe, was a very worrying prospect. For Dinah’s part, the worst was the radiotherapy. It was so debilitating that she wished Marie Curie hadn’t bothered to discover it. To be truthful, it wasn’t just the continual radium sickness that was the worst. No, it was the way it had ravished her good looks. Looks that had always been so important to her.

“That you off on seven weeks’ holiday, Tom?” Patsy asked, when he came into the back living room where Dinah was propped up in a chair looking out of the window.

“Think it’ll be you who’ll be having the holiday. And with all you’ve …”

“And Frieda,” interjected Patsy, in the hope Tom would give some recognition to all the hard work Frieda had put in.

But a couple of contemptuous snorts from Tom indicated he certainly wouldn’t. In his eyes Patsy deserved all the credit. “I was saying,” he went on, “that with all you’ve done these last few weeks, keeping the home fires burning, you sure deserve a holiday.” Tom toasted Patsy with a cordial wave before going over and pressing Dinah’s shoulder.

Tom had underestimated Patsy. Wild horses wouldn’t be able to drag her away on holiday as long as Dinah remained as poorly as she now was. She now acknowledged that Dinah had lung cancer – and also accepted Tom’s assurance, based on what Dr Hannah had told him, as Dinah’s next of kin, that with the removal of the tumour along with half her lung Dinah would make a full, though very slow recovery. Patsy wanted to believe Tom. She
had
to believe him. But as the weeks went by and there was no sign of any real recovery, she was beginning to have nagging doubts. And if she weren’t knocking her pan in, doing so much cleaning, cooking and shopping, she would have too much time on her hands to let her fertile imagination run riot.

Further discussion as to who would be going on holiday was halted when Mary came in with an armful of newly ironed bedding which she immediately handed over to Patsy. “Good drying wind. Took them to that new launderette. Just over the way there. Remember? It used to be an ice cream shop but what a blessing the change is. You just pop your washing in as many machines as you need. Then all you have to do is put your feet up and either just watch it all going round and round till you’re dizzy or else you get out your
Woman’s Weekly
and, before you know it, the washing’s done. Then into the dryer it gets bunged and finally a wee blaw in the back green when you get back home. And wasn’t I lucky there was a nice wee wind the day. So there you are, Patsy. Got the ironing done, too, listening to
Mrs Dale’s Diary
,” Mary cackled. “She’s worried about Jim again.”

Everyone laughed. But no one made her feel that her banter was inane or pointless. She was doing all she could to help but, unlike Patsy, she feared the worst. But then Tom, her Tom, had got a wee bit fu’ the night before Dinah got out of hospital and on leaving the Learig pub, he hadn’t gone straight home but had made his way up to the only person he could always rely on, his own mum. She’d only opened the door to him when he immediately broke down. “Oh Mammy,” he had sobbed, holding her tight. “You’ve just got to help me. Help me. Help all of us to be brave.” Once they were through in the living room, Mary had reached down for the poker to stir the embers of the dying fire before calmly asking, “For how long?” Because of his uncontrolled sobbing, Tom’s reply had been almost inaudible but she thought she had heard him splutter, “If we’re lucky just … one … oh, Mammy … just twelve miserable months!”

“Oh, here,” Mary continued, turning to Dinah. “I saw Tess and the bairn going into the shops. She’ll be here in …”