Secrets to Keep (15 page)

He hadn’t realised he’d dozed off until he was shocked awake by the door unexpectedly bursting open. A woman came rushing in, proclaiming, ‘You’ve got to come quick, Doc! It’s me gran, she’s hurt really badly.’

He stared over at her, sleep dazed for a moment, as he gathered his wits, then recognition of the intruder struck. This was the woman who had rudely erupted into his surgery only days ago. Now here she was, disrespectfully interrupting once again.

‘I see you haven’t yet learned to knock before you invade someone’s privacy. And it’s
Doctor Strathmore
,’ he told her.

Aidy hadn’t time for what she perceived as his pettiness right now. She reiterated, ‘My gran’s hurt really badly, Doc. You got to come and see her
now
.’

The woman hadn’t exaggerated how ill her mother was the last time she had fetched him so he had no reason to believe she was summoning him on a wild goose chase now. His first priority was to the patient.

‘Name?’ Ty demanded. Memory stirred within him of the last time he had asked her the same question and he added, ‘The patient’s name, not your own.’

Aidy’s hackles rose that he hadn’t given her credit for not making the same stupid mistake again. This man was so arrogant, so annoying. She inwardly fought with herself not to snap a response. After all she couldn’t afford to antagonise him and risk his refusing to have anything to do with her.

‘Bertha Rider. You’re wasting your time looking for her record card, though. Gran is very proud of the fact she’s never in her life suffered from anything bad enough to warrant seeing a doctor over. Well, until now, that is.’

Ty got up from his chair, pulled on his jacket and grabbed his bag, indicating to Aidy that she should lead the way to where her grandmother was.

I
t was after seven when the family all gathered round the sofa upon which Bertha was lying, a worn, patched blanket covering her.

Marion knelt on the floor beside her, looking at her grandmother earnestly. ‘I don’t like to see you hurt, our Gran,’ she wailed.

Despite her extreme discomfort, Bertha managed to quip, ‘I’m not that happy about it meself, ducky.’

‘D’yer want my comic to read?’ offered George from the other end of the sofa.

She flashed him a pained smile. ‘Not now, love. Maybe later, eh?’

‘I hate that Mrs Nelson,’ piped up Betty, perched on the arm of the sofa to one side of her brother. ‘I’ve a good mind to push her out the door meself. See how she likes it.’

‘I’ll come with yer and help yer do it,’ offered George, his face screwed up in hatred for the woman who had caused his beloved grandmother such agony
from a broken leg and wrist as well as bruising to other parts of her face and body that had hit the cobbles.

‘You’ll do no such thing,’ Aidy told them in no uncertain terms as she arrived in the room carrying a cup of sweet tea for Bertha. Although she was having a hard job herself controlling a desire to confront her mother-in-law and repay the compliment. But all that would do would be to lower herself to Pat’s level, plus show her siblings that it was all right to repay violence with violence. ‘If there is any justice in this world, that woman will get her comeuppance one day. But not from us. So if I hear of any of you going anywhere near Mrs Nelson, then none of you will be able to sit down for a week. Is that clear?’

Their sister’s warnings were never idle. They all vigorously nodded their heads.

‘Good. Now clear out of the way and give Gran air to breathe and me room to give her a drink,’ she ordered them, adding as an afterthought, ‘In fact, go out and play, but be back in an hour.’ When they had done as they were told she knelt beside the sofa, picked the cup up out of its saucer and held the rim to Bertha’s lips so she could take a few sips.

After she had had her fill for the time being, Bertha looked gratefully at Aidy and in a weak voice said, ‘Strong and sweet, just what the doctor ordered.
Thanks, me duck.’ Her face then clouded over. ‘Talking of doctors, there’ll be a bill of his to settle. I’m hoping there’s enough to cover it in me remedy tin.’

‘Don’t worry about that now, Gran. I told him I’d sort it out, and I will as soon as I can. I could tell he wasn’t happy about that, but it’s hard luck ’cos we can’t give him what we haven’t got, can we?’ There was still an outstanding fee from his visit to her mother that Aidy hadn’t settled, and he’d have to wait for that too. More important things had to be paid for out of her wage first, like the rent and food.

Bertha pulled a face. ‘I don’t know quite what to make of the new doctor. He seems to know his stuff, didn’t take him long to work out what I was ailing from and get me sorted, but he was very brusque, made me feel like I was an inconvenience to him. He comes from money, judging by the posh voice he’s got. And his clothes might be old but they’re the best quality. I wonder why his sort has come to live and work round these parts?’

Aidy gave a nonchalant shrug. ‘I don’t know, Gran, and I don’t really care. I don’t like him. He spoke to me in a manner you wouldn’t address a dog in when I went to fetch him for Mam and yourself. Anyway, considering the pain you must have been in at the time, still are for that matter, you noticed a lot about him?’

‘Well, I had to concentrate me mind on something while he was resetting me bones.’ Bertha seemed intrigued. ‘There’s a story behind that new doctor coming here, I’d bet my life there is. Someone with his obvious breeding doesn’t voluntarily give up the high life to slum it with us.’

Aidy had no time to waste on conversation about a person she didn’t care a jot for. ‘Can I get you anything else?’ she offered.

‘You can, if you don’t mind. Could you make me a bread and vinegar poultice to put on me bruises, to help bring them out and ease the throbbing? Also, from me store in the pantry, can you bring me through the bottle with “Headache Relief” on the label?’

Aidy looked at her quizzically. ‘What do you want that for?’

‘Help with the pain, ducky.’

‘But aren’t the pills the Doc gave you, to tide you over, helping at all? I’m going to the chemist for the rest tomorrow.’ She was already worried whether she had enough money in her purse to cover that outlay, along with what food they’d need until she got her next pay in two days’ time.

Bertha was pulling a face. ‘The pills and prescription are for morphine. I’ve seen what that does to people. I’d sooner be in the pain I am than end up reliant on that stuff. And I’m not giving the pharmacist any of my hard-earned money when I can sort meself out.’

Aidy couldn’t believe her grandmother had endured the agony of her broken bones and their resetting without any strong relief. She could, though, see Bertha’s reasoning for the refusal, but regardless said, ‘You will promise to take the pills the Doc gave you if your own remedy doesn’t work, though?’ She saw the look Bertha shot her and quickly added, ‘I didn’t mean your remedies aren’t any good, Gran, I know they are as they’ve sorted my ailments out enough times over the years, but the pain you’re suffering is not just a headache and your remedy might not be strong enough to ease it. So you will, won’t you?

Bertha was in far more pain than ever she would let on to her granddaughter, but to be knocked into oblivion by the effects of morphine was not an option she’d choose. To appease Aidy, though, she said, ‘Yes, all right.’

‘Good. Now I soak the bread in hot water with a good measure of vinegar … that’s how I make the poultice, isn’t it?’

Bertha nodded and quipped, ‘And there’s me thinking you never took any interest in what I do.’

As Aidy went off to do what she was asked, a worried expression appeared on Bertha’s face. Easing the pain of her injuries was not what was really concerning her so much as the situation her injuries had left her in. Her broken leg and wrist had rendered
her practically incapable while they healed. She couldn’t even go to the toilet without help. It was a hard enough job looking after a family of five for a normal housewife who didn’t work. Aidy did, full-time, and on top of that, she now had the problem of covering the chores Bertha herself would have been doing, plus the care of an invalid. The kids would help when they came home from school and at weekends, but there was only so much youngsters their age could manage. Pat Nelson certainly had a lot to answer for but Bertha doubted the woman was feeling the slightest glimmer of remorse for what she’d done. In the kitchen, as she was mashing the soggy bread and vinegar together to form the poultice, Aidy too was worrying about just how, on top of working full-time, she was going to manage all the household chores while her grandmother recovered, her only help being with the lighter tasks her siblings could perform. But somehow she would just have to. And no matter how tired she was, she must not let her grandmother know and make her feel any more guilty than she already was.

It was approaching nine o’clock and Aidy had just finished mopping the kitchen floor. Bertha’s home-made pain-killing remedy certainly seemed to have done something for her. At the moment she was asleep on the sofa, although looking quite a sight
with clumps of the bread poultice resembling grotesque growths covering her bruises, in the hope they’d help speed up their healing. The children had all gone to bed without so much as a murmur of protest tonight. Usually they put up some sort of lame excuse to delay bedtime for a while longer. Aidy was grateful they hadn’t. They’d obviously sensed that with all she had on her mind, their sister wasn’t in the mood to put up with any nonsense from them. Since their mother’s death, before going up, Marion’s parting words were always the same. ‘Mam might be back when I get up in the morning.’ All the others were always too choked to respond to her. Betty and George still cried themselves to sleep, although George would deny it. How Aidy wished she could magic away their pain, and her own, Gran’s too, but she couldn’t. It was only time that would help ease that.

Despite her efforts not to, she started to think about Arch then. He had been an important part of her life for the last ten years, the most important for the last five as her husband. They had been very loving and supportive of each other. She was angry with him, hurt and shocked to have witnessed a side to him she hadn’t known about before and didn’t like at all, but regardless she was still missing the Arch she knew and loved dreadfully. A future without him in it seemed very bleak to her.

Why couldn’t she be like the majority of other women, who managed to turn a blind eye whenever their husbands were discovered to have been dishonest with them? But then a simple white lie, such as saying their wives looked nice when they looked awful or that the food was delicious when in truth it was unpalatable, was a far cry from voicing the sentiment that you were happy giving up your house and all your plans for the future, when in truth you weren’t at all. And there was still the matter that Arch had stood by and done nothing when his own mother had been verbally and almost physically attacking his wife and her family.

As desperate as she was for a way to resolve matters between herself and her husband and to return to the happy couple they had been before this, Aidy didn’t believe they could be reconciled.

She was just cleaning the dirty mop head in a bucket of cold water when her ears pricked as she heard the click of the latch on the yard gate, announcing the arrival of a visitor. The back door was already open to aid the drying of the floor. Propping the mop up by the pitted pot sink, she went over to look through and see who the visitor was.

It was a lovely, warm late-August evening. The voices of women gossiping on doorsteps and the laughter of children still playing out, filled the air. A keen sense of loss filled her. It was the sort of evening
when she and Arch would have gone for a walk into a better-off area that had a park, or else they’d have taken chairs outside into their tiny backyard and sat there chatting about nothing in particular, just enjoying each other’s company.

The man in her thoughts stood framed in the gateway, looking hesitantly over at her. For a moment all that had happened between them flew from Aidy’s mind as a desperate need to rush across to him, wrap her arms around him and feel his around her, filled her. Then the reasons that had brought them to this sorry situation flooded back, along with renewed hurt at his betrayal of her. ‘What do you want?’ she called curtly across.

‘To talk to you,’ he said tentatively.

She responded, ‘As far as I’m concerned, I can’t think of anything we have to say to each other. You finished work three hours ago, so what kept you? You don’t need to tell me … it was your mother. Had to wait until her back was turned so you could slip out, did you?’

‘No, not at all. She encouraged me to come and put things right with you. Was on at me as soon as I got in from work.’ Then he added sheepishly, ‘I’d have been here sooner but I needed a couple of pints for Dutch courage first.’

Aidy wasn’t surprised he needed Dutch courage to face her, but she was very surprised to hear of the
change of attitude in her mother-in-law, encouraging her son to make up with her, when Aidy knew that for the last ten years Pat had been doing her best to cause trouble between them, in the hope they’d part. And what about her plan to keep Arch away from her so Aidy could learn the hard way she couldn’t manage to care for her family on her own and then go begging Pat to let her take up her offer? The truth slowly dawned. Of course, Pat no longer had any need to continue with that plan as she’d already succeeded in achieving a comfortable new home for herself.