Coronation Wives (13 page)

‘I’m sure we can help,’ said Edna, her eyes bright as her hand covered that of her husband.

Charlotte was suddenly reminded of the old saying that behind every successful man was a very strong woman. Edna’s gentle exterior was deceptive. Charlotte sighed with satisfaction.

Colin agreed to look at the particulars of any people she referred to him.

After that their conversation turned to family matters.

Edna started talking about how well Pamela was walking compared with Susan and her brother at that age. Recognizing that he wasn’t likely to get a word in on this subject, Colin struggled to his feet. ‘Excuse me, ladies.’

He made his way to the lavatory making a loud clanking noise each time one of his legs hit against the metal leg of a table.

Exuberant that Colin had agreed to help, Charlotte didn’t think too carefully about what she was saying. ‘You sometimes get the youngest outperforming the oldest though it isn’t really fair to compare. I mean, are you comparing the right ones?’

Edna looked startled.

Charlotte could have bitten off her tongue. She had sounded as if she were talking about Edna’s children, and in particular the son she’d given up for adoption. She made an effort to make amends. ‘I meant a child of two and one of seven.’

Edna collected herself. Her smile was as soft and gentle as her large brown eyes. Her gaze settled on the child sleeping in the pushchair of tubular metal, a little chipped nowadays seeing as she’d used it for all three of her children.

‘It’s all right, Charlotte. It hurts to remember, but don’t think that I don’t. It’s just that I try not to mention my wicked past and my firstborn child when Colin’s around.’

‘Wicked? I’d hardly call it that.’

Edna grimaced. ‘You haven’t heard my mother. Despite her mind being weak nowadays her views on my eternal shame have got worse rather than better.’

‘I thought she might have mellowed with the years.’

‘Oh no! Not her. I close my ears to her as much as possible. Sherman
was
a part of my life, just as his father was part of my life. I don’t advertise the fact that I have an illegitimate child – people being the way they are. But I don’t forget it either.’

Charlotte sipped her tea and thought of the letter locked in her bureau. She felt compelled to ask the obvious question. ‘What would you do if something from your past suddenly caught up with you?’

Edna looked at her questioningly. ‘What are you getting at?’

Charlotte gathered her thoughts. She purposely inverted the situation. ‘Let’s say Sherman’s father wrote to you and wanted to meet you again?’

‘I don’t think that’s ever likely to happen.’

‘But what if he did. What would you do?’

Edna looked towards the restaurant door. It rattled as though it were about to fall off its hinges every time a bus went by. The whole place was beyond its best. Before very long it would be no more than a pile of dust and jagged wood.

She waited for the buses to go by and the door to stop rattling before she answered.

‘Sometimes at night I imagine how it would be, how I’d tell him about Sherman and then about Colin and me. And then I think of Colin.’ She turned to face Charlotte. ‘And then I feel scared. I couldn’t be sure that someone wouldn’t get hurt.’

Janet stared through the office window over the rooftops to the misted skyline of the city centre. There were plenty of reports, letters and patients’ notes to be typed, taken for signature, and the filing was brimming from the tiered wire trays sitting on her desk. She hated office work. Its only redeeming feature was the fact that she was fascinated by medicine and the hospital. Sometimes when she was out of the office she wandered along the hospital corridors chatting to medical staff, but mostly to patients. It felt good to talk to them about their ailments, to calm their fears, even to try to explain a surgical procedure or a course of medication. The more she did it, the more she wanted to do it. Paperwork, especially typing, was another matter entirely.

The office which she shared with Dorothea and two other secretaries was plain but not dark. On the contrary, the fact that they were on the fifth floor meant the office was bathed in light from a sky that seemed almost touchable. Because they looked down at it from St Michael’s Hill, the city seemed like a counterpane left rumpled by a recent sleeper into hillocks of varying shape and size.

Her reverie was disturbed as the door swung open. Dorothea entered and twirled into her chair, slapping a pile of papers and a shorthand notepad onto her desk.

‘One of these days Doctor Bailey is going to ask me to take down more than shorthand – mark my words,’ she said with a ribald giggle.

Why wasn’t it Dorothea that got raped? Janet gazed out of the window, no longer seeing the panoramic view but a kind of map, a table of possibilities and probabilities. She answered her own question: availability. She’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Dorothea had been elsewhere, willingly surrendering to Henry’s sexual advances.

‘Are you listening to me?’ Dorothea asked from over the top of an Imperial typewriter, a squat object of black metal and brass-edged keys.

Janet eyed Dorothea’s round face and the permanently parted red lips. Her permed hair bounced in curly bangs as she rested her chin on her hand and her elbow on her typewriter. She had a willing look about her, of course she did. Dorothea had the reputation of being a jolly sort who had a way with even the most crotchety of the senior surgeons. She was a coquette, a girl who promised and quite often delivered.

‘Of course I am. Why do you ask?’

‘It’s ten forty-five,’ said Dorothea.

Janet looked at her blankly.

Dorothea jerked her chin at the untouched cup of tea still sitting on Janet’s desk.

Janet shrugged. ‘I didn’t feel like it.’

Dorothea grinned wickedly. ‘I always feel like it – and I don’t mean tea.’

Janet raised her eyes to heaven and got up from her desk, cup and saucer in hand. Just as she got to the door, Grace Argyle, Secretary to the Chief Medical Officer and self-appointed Mother Superior to the secretaries and the typing pool, entered. She was a grey person, though not in the light, fluid way that the sky is grey. Iron-grey hair cropped close to
her head, steel grey eyes, and lip colour resembling unpolished tin made her seem solid and unyielding, which she was. She was also built like a battleship.

The keys of Dorothea’s typewriter immediately clattered into life.

Janet stood to one side of the door to let her pass, hoping that once she was through she could slip out quickly herself without too many questions. Grace Argyle stopped and looked her up and down. ‘Where are you going?’

‘To empty my cup,’ said Janet raising it slightly and half-wishing she had the courage to throw it over her.

‘Don’t be long!’

Once outside, Janet took a deep breath. The antiseptic smell of the hospital corridor was preferable to Miss Argyle’s mix of musty tweed and lavender water.

Maude, the other secretary with whom she shared the office, was coming along the corridor, shrugging a short box jacket from off her shoulders having just returned from the dentist. On seeing Janet, she glanced at her watch. ‘Is the old bat on the warpath yet?’ she asked with rushed nervousness.

Janet smiled wanly. ‘Don’t worry. You’ve got a legitimate excuse.’

‘Don’t be long emptying that teacup,’ Maude called after her.

Janet opened her mouth, meaning to say that it didn’t take very long to empty a teacup. But she was out of the office and, although Miss Argyle had verbally warned her not to do it, she couldn’t help herself. The hospital was full of patients who appeared to appreciate her presence.

‘I’m going to visit a friend of my mother’s in Logan Ward,’ she lied.

‘Watch out,’ Maude shouted after her, the sleeves of her jacket dragging on the floor as she rushed towards the office door.

I’ll be careful,’ Janet shouted back. For the first time in days she smiled at someone other than a child. Grace Argyle was a Harpy who liked to be in control of her ‘girls’. Janet had already been warned by her not to go wandering around the hospital.

‘Once more,’ Miss Argyle had said, ‘and your employment could very well be terminated.’

It was a dire warning, but Jonathan’s words rang in her ears. ‘Do what you think is right.’ Well, that was exactly what she was going to do. Visiting the ‘proper’ hospital, getting away from the offices, was the best part of working here.

No one questioned her as she wandered around. Few of the nursing staff knew the secretaries, so she could pretend to be a visitor, one who had travelled miles, but could not, because of distance, visit at the normal visiting hour of seven p.m. to eight p.m.

The corridor adjacent to the geriatric ward was empty except for what appeared to be a bundle of laundry buried inside a fawn and brown dressing gown. She thought she heard groaning. On further examination she noticed the wisps of hair and was instantly reminded of ‘old man’s beard’, the cotton soft growth that clings to September hedgerows.

The thin skin of the hand hanging over the chair arm was peppered with liver spots. His fingers flicked convulsively as she approached and he lifted his head, his face contorted into a pain-filled grimace.

Concerned, she dropped to his side so that her face was level with his. ‘Are you all right?’

Blinking as if trying to focus, he screwed up his face so that his eyes were no more than glistening dots among wrinkly folds. ‘I don’t like it here. I like flowers. I like fresh air. Can you take me to the garden? Can you? Can you?’ He was like a wilful child, repeating until someone gave in to him.

Janet patted his hand and smiled up into the half-hidden eyes. ‘I can’t. I’m sorry.’

‘Fresh air? Can I have fresh air? Please?’ he whined.

There was no point in explaining that there was no garden, but she couldn’t help but pity him. She could understand him wanting fresh air. The wards were stuffy.

‘I can’t promise you a garden, but I think I know where we can have some fresh air,’ she said finally.

After getting to her feet, she released the footbrake on the wheelchair and pushed him off along the corridor. They stopped at a place where it widened, glass windows in thin metal frames forming an enclosed balcony with casements that opened. Like the window frames, the handles had been painted recently and were difficult to open.

The old man muttered loudly behind her, ‘I grew marigolds, gladioli, tulips, cabbages, kidney beans, Brussels sprouts …’ The litany of flowers and vegetables went on and on. It was as if his achievements in the garden were being used as encouragement for her to use greater strength to satisfy his needs.

‘There!’ she exclaimed as the dried paint finally flaked away and the window swung open. A stiff breeze blew across the roofs of the city. The old man squinted against it, his hair floating like mist around his head.

Janet bent over him. ‘Is that better?’

He closed his eyes. If he were taking deep breaths it was hardly noticeable. The whole man seemed little more than dressing gown and pyjamas. Only skin and sinew held his bones together. Lines curved from the sides of his closed eyes, creased his cheeks, drooped like muddied ruts from the sides of his mouth and formed a criss-cross pattern, like a small chessboard, over his chin. An old man now, concerned only about his garden, but what had he looked like during his youth? she wondered. Had his garden been as important to him way
back then as it was now? And what sort of life had he planned as a young man? Had everything gone according to plan? Had unforeseen events occurred just as it had in her life?

She hadn’t noticed that he’d stopped breathing. Perhaps she’d been too wrapped up in her own thoughts, but something in his face had definitely changed. Was it her imagination or was he paler than he had been? Had his lips turned blue? Had his eyes closed for ever?

Gently she shook his arm. ‘Sir?’ She had forgotten to ask his name, but wished she had. People responded more easily to their names than they did to formal address. ‘Sir? Can you hear me?’ She shook him again. His eyes remained shut. His mouth dropped open and a sound like the cackle of a strangled cockerel erupted from his throat. “Wake up! Wake up!’

Someone in uniform pushed her aside. ‘Mr Sharpies! I’ve been looking for you.’

A ward sister, trimly pristine in royal blue dress and diaphanous white veil, bent over the man. ‘Mr Sharpies! Mr Sharpies!’

Janet stood helplessly as the man’s limp wrist was checked for a pulse. Even before the ward sister told her it was so, she knew he was dead.

The ward sister straightened. ‘How did he get here?’

Janet could only tell the truth. ‘I pushed him. He wanted some fresh air.’

Dark brows frowned at her. ‘I know you, don’t I?’

Janet nodded. ‘I work in the secretarial unit.’

‘Oh dear. This could cause problems. You know I have to make a report, don’t you? I’ll have to mention that I couldn’t find him and that you’d wheeled him off. You shouldn’t have done that.’

‘Wasn’t he dying anyway?’

The ward sister sighed apologetically and shrugged her
shoulders. ‘That’s not the point. I wasn’t there when it happened and you were. I’m sorry.’

Judging by her voice and her regrets at having to report the matter, this was a woman who cared for her charges. Janet couldn’t possibly be mad at her.

‘I had to do it,’ Janet explained. ‘He was missing his garden. I think that when the fresh air hit him he imagined he was back there again. I was just trying to help.’

‘I know. Mr Sharpies loved his garden. But that’s not the point.’

Miss Argyle stood behind the huge cherrywood desk in the office of the Chief Medical Officer. He had gone to play golf that afternoon, but not before discussing a suitable reprimand for Janet’s misdemeanour.

Grace Argyle’s backside amply filled the big leather chair. She indicated that Janet be seated in the small chair purposely placed by her in front of the desk. It was modern, low and had thin metal legs and no arms. Janet found herself looking up at Grace Argyle and felt intimidated – which was exactly how Miss Argyle wanted her to feel. First, her ‘crime’ was read out in full. At last Grace Argyle looked with ungracious disapproval down her long nose and sniffed so forcibly that her nostrils momentarily disappeared. She stated, ‘We expect an apology.’