Masters of the House

Chapter One: After the First Death

Chapter Two: The Funeral

Chapter Three: Carrying On

Chapter Four: That Woman

Chapter Five: The Threat

Chapter Six: Asking Questions

Chapter Seven: A Discovery

Chapter Eight: The Irish Club

Chapter Nine: A Visitor

Chapter Ten: A way Out

Chapter Eleven: Back to Normal

Chapter Twelve: The One who Got Away

Chapter Thirteen: Rob and His Women

Chapter Fourteen: Talking About Carmen

Chapter Fifteen: The Learys

Chapter Sixteen: Small Businessman

Chapter Seventeen: Connections

Chapter Eighteen: Conclusions

“N
o!” screamed the woman on the bed.

She had caught a gesture, the merest suspicion of a shaken head from the doctor as he handed the little scrap of a baby to the nurse to be put in the incubator. The doctor turned back to her, smiling encouragement.

“No!”

“There, there, Mrs—Heenan, isn't it? You must think of yourself now.”

“And of all your other children,” said the Sister, who knew Mrs Heenan's family situation better than the obstetrician.

Mrs Heenan protested no more. She looked from one face to the other as if anxious, even in the midst of her terrible pain, to assure herself of the import of their words. Then she gave a little sigh and closed her eyes. It was as if she had gently unslipped the boat she was lying in from its moorings and was beginning to drift out to sea.

The obstetrician knew the signs. He leaned forward urgently.

“Mrs Heenan, it's important you get a grip on yourself. We certainly haven't given up on your baby. Everything that we can do is being done for her. Mary you were—Mary you're calling her, aren't you?—Mrs Heenan, try to hear what I'm telling you. . . . Nurse! Nurse!”

The woman on the bed was still breathing and showing few signs now of pain. Five minutes later the brief life of the tiny scrap called Mary had flickered and been extinguished. And the frail craft on the bed was drifting further and further out to sea, soon, before their eyes, to reach a High Sea that was untroubled: without pain, without fear, without feeling.

 • • • 

“He's in the waiting room, is he?” Dr Sharkey asked the Sister.

“Yes. His wife told me he's never wanted to be present at any of the births.”

“How much was he told?”

“I don't know.
She
was told of the danger, but when I asked what she'd told her husband she got . . . well, cagey.”

“It's a common enough reaction. It's a way of shutting their own eyes to possibilities, as well as their husband's. . . . Telling him's going to be difficult.”

He looked at her. She had sometimes in the past relieved him of the responsibility.

“Oh
please,
Dr Sharkey. With both of them gone, I couldn't find words. It'll be better coming from a man.”

He pursed his lips, then nodded. He composed in his mind the ragbag of phrases he had used on similar occasions. Then he straightened his shoulders and went into the corridor.

 • • • 

In the waiting room, surrounded by scruffy piles of newspapers and magazines, there were three men, sitting in postures of
anxiety familiar to the doctor. Two were young, one probably still in his teens. The third was a middle-aged man slumped forward in his chair, his chin cupped in his hands. Dr Sharkey went up to him.

“Mr Heenan?”

The man looked up and then got up. He was of middle height, broad in the shoulders, with a round face formed to be seen over a pint mug or swapping jokes with a pretty girl. But now he looked stunned, as if he had not slept for hours. The doctor had seen victims of major accidents, and their rescuers, who looked like that. Almost shell-shocked.

“Is it over?” he asked eagerly in a thick voice that broke with emotion. “Boy or girl? Ellen's fine, is she? She'll be wanting to see me.”

“Could you come to my office, Mr Heenan?”

“I'd rather see Ellen first.”

“This way, please.”

The doctor gave him no choice, but guided his arm along the corridor, round two corners, and into his office. The man let himself be led, walking heavily with a slight limp. When they were both inside, Dr Sharkey propelled him into a chair, then got a bottle from a bottom drawer in his desk and poured him a small whisky.

“What is this, Doctor?” Heenan asked, eying the bottle. “Is there something wrong with the baby? We've been lucky so far, God be thanked. Tell me so I can go to her.”

The doctor waited until he had had a swig of the whisky.

“I'm afraid it's worse than that. I don't know how much your wife told you. . . .”

“Told me? What about?”

“Ah, I see. It's often the way.” The doctor swallowed. “Well, your wife was told some time ago that there would be problems
with the birth. And not just to the baby, but danger to herself as well.”

Heenan looked at him as he came to a halt. He echoed his wife's protest.

“
No
”!

“I'm afraid so. The birth was as difficult as we feared, and . . .”

“They're both gone! Aren't they? Tell me straight! They're both dead, aren't they?”

“Yes, Mr Heenan, I'm afraid they are.”

“Oh, God!” The man howled his outrage and keeled forward. Dr Sharkey let him sit thus, his face in his knees, his shoulders heaving. He seemed to be saying something, but all Dr Sharkey could make out was something that sounded like, “Oh, God, I have sinned.” He thought he must be mistaken.

“You won't want to be hearing medical details as yet,” he said at last, feeling that the shuffling of his little cards of conventional phrases was leaving them increasingly threadbare. “Take another little drink of whisky. . . . It does help, even doctors admit that. . . . Then perhaps you'd like to be driven home.”

He poured another quarter of an inch into the glass, then came round and handed it towards the hunched, unhearing figure. As he stood over him, he distinctly caught Heenan's words:

“Lord, I am punished, justly punished.”

Sharkey took him by the shoulder, pulled him upright and thrust the glass into his hand.

“Get that down you, man. Remember you'll need all the strength you can muster to tell your children. I'll try to find someone who can drive you, and a car.”

Five minutes later two ambulance drivers, a man and a woman, arrived at Sharkey's office, raised Heenan tenderly to
his feet and led him out to the waiting car. Sharkey wondered whether he was in a fit state to go home but didn't see what else he could have done. This was the winter of 1979; ancillary workers were on strike; all the hospital services at the Leeds General Infirmary were working at full stretch.

He hurried back to Maternity to monitor the progress of a woman who was about to be delivered of twins.

 • • • 

As fast as was consonant with compassion the ambulance people bundled Heenan towards a car.

“That's a bad limp you have,” said the man.

“Got it in a fire. Used to be a fireman,” mumbled Heenan.

It was almost the last piece of normal talk they got out of him.

The woman ambulance driver got into the back of the car with Heenan. She tried first administering comfort, then attempted to stiffen him for the ordeal ahead. Nothing she said seemed to get through. He muttered over and over again, “I am justly punished.” The woman looked into the driving mirror and saw the driver's eyes looking back at her.

“What should we do?” she whispered.

“What can we do?' He shrugged, not unsympathetically. “There's no spare staff at the hospital. We're needed there. We'll go in with him. . . .”

At last they drew up at the address they had been given. It was a detached house in Rodley, a minute or two from the Ring Road. It looked as if it had been built between the wars, and the paint was peeling and the plaster beginning to crumble in places. But it was a roomy house, quiet apart from the hum of traffic, and beyond it lay fields and a small wood. The ambulance woman registered that it was a better house than she had
expected the man in the car to live in: a good place to bring up children in, she thought.

“Mr Heenan,” she said gently. The driver had got out and was holding open the door.

“What? What?”

“Mr Heenan, you're home. Your children will be wanting to know what has happened.”

“Oh, my God.”

He heaved forward, put a foot out of the car and stumbled out onto the road. He looked around him wildly. The woman had briskly got out on her side and now took his other arm, and together the two ambulance people began leading him to his front door.

“Courage, Mr Heenan. For the sake of the children.”

“Oh, God, it's not courage they need. It's their dead mother, God rest her soul.”

Before they could get to the door, it opened. They had been watched from the window. A boy and a girl stood in the doorway.

“Dad!” said the boy.

The woman from the ambulance understood at once that they knew.

“Can you get your dad inside?” she said. “He's very upset.”

“Oh, God,” he mumbled. “My poor children.”

The children stood aside, and the ambulance people manoeuvred him with difficulty through the door.

“Where can he go?” the driver asked the girl.

“In here, the sitting room. He'll need time. It's the shock.”

“Can you show me the kitchen?” the woman asked her. “I'll make a cup of coffee.”

“He prefers tea. I'll make it. I know how he likes it.”

The woman realised with a shock that it was the children who were taking charge, the father who was being mothered.
She let the boy settle his father into an armchair in the sitting room and followed the girl to the kitchen.

“You know, don't you?” she asked, as she watched her at the cupboards.

“Yes. He wouldn't be so upset if it was just the baby.”

“He seems to be terribly shocked.”

“Mummy told us, you see. The doctor warned her there might be problems with the birth and . . . danger for herself. But she didn't tell Daddy. She said he was worried about his job. And he lost it two months ago.”

“What did he do?'

“He was foreman on a building site. He said they didn't want to sack him, but with the re . . .”

“Recession?”

“Yes. They had no choice.”

“So he's still out of work?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I suppose he'll need all his time looking after you.”

“Yes. Shall we take the tea in?”

“I'll help you. What's your name, by the way?”

“Anne. They call me Annie.”

When they came into the sitting room with the tray, Annie's father was sitting with his elbows on his knees, staring ahead, muttering to himself. When his daughter put the tray down on the table beside him and began pouring, he gave her one look, and tears came into his eyes.

“Oh, Annie, what have I done to you? And Matthew? To all of you?”

The eldest boy was sitting beside him, his hand on his arm. The younger ones were watching, frightened. The ambulance driver stirred in his chair and raised his eyebrows at his partner. She looked around, uneasy but unable to think of anything else
they could do. The man got to his feet and approached the group of the man and the two older children.