Secrets to Keep (24 page)

The hope that all her duties would be easy had faded when she saw the sheer number of record cards she was expected to sort into order and file back in their boxes. Never having done this kind of work before, she didn’t know where to make a start. Panic set in. If she failed to do this, she couldn’t blame the doctor if he sacked her. As she stared blindly at the cards, she inwardly scolded herself, telling herself to use her brain, work out for herself what she needed to do to complete her task. She stood there for what seemed like an age, staring at them, then suddenly it was as if a fog was lifting and she saw a way to do it. There were twenty-six letters in the alphabet, weren’t there? Everyone’s name must begin with one of them. All she had to do was sort all the records into piles, each starting with a different letter, then put them in the appropriately labelled section of the record boxes. It really was as simple as that.

By the time Ty returned at just before one o’clock she had managed to work her way through approximately a tenth of the five thousand or so cards. It was a laborious task and her eyes hurt from having to peer so hard in her effort to decipher the names on the cards. Doctor Mac hadn’t had the most legible handwriting. Her back ached too from continuously having to stretch over the table to add cards to the correct pile. And that was between answering the surgery door several times to patients who had arrived
after morning surgery had finished but had persistently knocked, just to check if the doctor was in and would see them anyway.

The sudden shrilling of the telephone had her nearly jumping out of her skin. Hurrying into the hallway where it was situated by the front door, Aidy stood and stared at it for several long moments before she tentatively lifted the receiver out of its cradle and placed it to her ear, hesitantly saying, ‘Hello.’ A very posh-sounding woman on the other end had announced to her that she had the pharmacist who wished to speak to the doctor. When Aidy informed her he wasn’t at home, she was asked to wait for a moment and then the line seemed to go dead for a while before the woman suddenly came back on again and told her the pharmacist would like to leave a message with her for the doctor, and then a male voice was speaking to her. Aidy was very careful to make sure she took the message she was being given correctly, and in her endeavours to, repeated it back three times, much to the irritation of the pharmacist. But she hadn’t cared how annoyed she made him. She was more concerned with not allowing her employer to find fault with her work.

The morning round had been a particularly arduous one for Ty and consequently he was not in the best of moods on his return. The weather was atrocious,
torrential rain pouring relentlessly down from a clouded sky. He was soaked to the skin. He was still trying to familiarise himself with the warren of miserable streets in the area. Several addresses had taken him an age to find, and at two he finally reached, the people who had requested a visit had not bothered to send someone to the surgery to inform him they no longer required his services on this occasion. He had known he was in fact needed, but they had obviously decided the health of the sick person he had been going to minister to was less important than his saved fee.

He didn’t think he’d ever get used to the dire state of many of the dwellings his patients lived in. Sometimes as many as ten children were sleeping in one damp bedroom, with only old coats for warmth.

Aidy heard Ty return. She was very put out that he did not come to greet her but went straight into the surgery, shutting the door none too gently behind him. She wasn’t sure what to do. Did she carry on with her task until he came to see her and request from her a report of what had transpired while he’d been out, or did she go and inform him in his inner sanctum? She had been working away all morning non-stop and it occurred to her that she hadn’t yet had a cup of tea. She would certainly welcome one. Ty hadn’t actually given her permission to go into his kitchen to make herself refreshments, but then
again he hadn’t told her she couldn’t either, so she would. It seemed churlish of her to make one just for herself, so she decided to take him one through as well.

Having stripped off his wet overcoat and jacket, Ty was drying his dripping thatch of hair when Aidy tapped on his door and came in. He looked over at her, shocked for a moment, in his bad mood having temporarily forgotten she was there. He was too consumed by his own misery at that moment to be bothered to reprimand her for entering before he had given her permission to.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

Aidy took a deep breath, letting his rudeness wash over her, reminding herself that she needed this job. ‘I thought you could do with a cuppa, Doc.’

‘Oh! Er … put it on my desk. And it’s
Doctor Strathmore
.’

Her hackles rose that he hadn’t had the grace to thank her for making him the cup of tea. If he thought she was going to apologise for calling him Doc, he could think again. She responded lightly, ‘I’ll try and remember that.’

Having put the cup and saucer on his desk, she told him, ‘The chemist telephoned and left a message for you. You wrote out a prescription for Nancy Pointer only he can’t make out whether the number of pills you want her to have is thirty or fifty.’

‘Can’t the man read?’ snapped Ty. Flinging down the towel he was drying his hair with, he went to dig out her record card from the boxes, to check what he had written up for her, then remembered he wouldn’t have it as Aidy was putting all the records in order. ‘You’ll have her card. Fetch it for me so I can check what I prescribed her.’ Then he demanded, ‘Have you finished sorting them all out yet?’

Aidy looked at him blankly. Was he really expecting her to have done this mammoth task in only a couple of hours? She might be inexperienced when it came to doing office work but even she knew that the job she was facing was not one that could be completed in so short a time.

The look on her face registered with Ty and he realised he was being unfair. He said, ‘Just get it done as quickly as you can. Fetch Mrs Pointer’s card first, though.’

As she hurried out to do his bidding, Aidy was inwardly fuming. No please or thank you! She only hoped she could put her hand quickly on the blessed card so as not to give him any reason to grumble at her for taking so long. Deciding to try and find it first in the large pile of Ps she had made, she was jubilant to discover it only a dozen or so cards down from the top. When she returned with it, she found the surgery empty. Hearing sounds from upstairs, she assumed Ty was up there changing his wet suit
for a dry one. Leaving the card on his desk, she was about to leave his surgery and return to her task when she noticed his discarded sopping wet macintosh and trilby hat, and automatically picked them up. She took them through to the kitchen where she draped them on a clothes horse which she placed in front of the range.

Aidy was grateful their paths did not cross again before she courteously went to inform him in his surgery that she was going off for her break and would be back prompt at a quarter to five. Ty was checking his bag was fully stocked before he departed on his afternoon round and didn’t even bother to stop what he was doing, but nodded his head to acknowledge what she’d told him.

When he came to depart, he was bewildered not to find his coat and hat where he had left them over the protruding arm of the weighing scales. He’d been meaning to hang them up to dry but it had slipped his memory. When he eventually found them draped on the clothes horse around the range, something he had not noticed when he had slapped together a hurried sandwich for his lunch a while earlier, he knew it was Aidy’s doing. He appreciated her kind gesture but he wouldn’t express that to her, not wanting her to think that their relationship was ever going to become anything other than the business arrangement it was. This woman posed no threat
whatsoever to him emotionally, but he had vowed after losing his beloved wife that no woman or man would ever hurt him again. In order not to incur any risk, he would keep all other human beings at a safe distance.

Bertha was eagerly awaiting Aidy’s return that afternoon.

‘So how did you get on then?’

The rain was still pouring down torrentially. Having hung her saturated coat on the drying cradle in the kitchen, Aidy was already towelling off her wet hair. Sighing heavily, she answered, ‘I think I’d really like the job if it wasn’t for him. I’m not surprised he’s not married! No woman in their right mind would put up with his ways. I don’t think he’s ever heard the words please or thank you. Anyway, I’m sort of getting my own back on him as he’s demanding I call him Doctor Strathmore and I’m insisting on calling him just Doc.’

Well, at least, and thank God, Aidy had a job. And when she heard what Bertha had to tell her, she would be too. ‘Have you heard what’s gone off at your old place?’

Aidy looked at her gran quizzically and shook her head. ‘No. What has?’ Thinking there had been an accident, fire or something of the sort.

‘They’ve laid off roughly a hundred factory-floor
workers. Mrs Fisher told me this morning when she popped in to visit me. Her neighbour works in the canteen and it was her who passed it on.’

Aidy was visibly shocked. ‘Oh! I’d no idea the firm was in trouble. But then, management never told us shop-floor workers anything. Oh, God, I do hope Col wasn’t one of them? The last thing she needs right now is to lose her job.’

‘Last thing all those who lose a job need,’ Bertha said.

Aidy whole-heartedly agreed, but with the fact her friend’s husband was under threat of losing his job at any time and she with no choice but to give up hers in a few months on the birth of her fourth child … well, the family would have no money coming in at all. The situation was more devastating for them than it would be for some. In light of this news, though, maybe it had been a blessing in disguise that Aidy had lost her job when she had. Had she not and been among those laid off now, then her job with the doctor would already have been filled by one of the woman she had got rid of, and there’d be even fewer vacancies to apply for now. She must try and find time to pay a visit to Colleen, and meanwhile pray that her friend wasn’t one of those laid off.

There was a knock on the back door and it was immediately heard to open. A female voice called out, ‘Cooee, Bertha, it’s only me.’

She groaned. ‘Oh, it’s that bloody Mona Knight after a potion for her chilblains! She’s popped in every day for a fortnight, asking after the same thing, and I keep telling her that I’ve run out until I’m back on me feet again and am able to replenish me stocks.’ A mischievous glint sparked in her eyes. ‘Oh, I’ve an idea! Tell her to come in here and then you go off and get one of me empty bottles, ducky. Put in a good measure of salt and a bit of gravy browning, then fill it up with water and give it a good shake. Won’t cure her chilblains but it’ll stop her badgering me for a bit while she finds out. I’ll tell her it’s a new potion I’m trying and she’s my tester.’

After the happy woman had departed, Bertha said, ‘I was so tempted to take money off her as it ain’t like we couldn’t use it, eh, love? But I couldn’t bring myself to do it, knowing that mixture won’t make a blind bit of difference to her chilblains. Oh, roll on my old bones mending! As soon as this plaster is off me leg, it’s a trip to the countryside for me, and all the kids are coming to help carry back what we can between us. Then I can start making as much as possible from me potions again to help you out more.’ She tapped the cast on her wrist. ‘Next week this is due to come off, so at least I’ll be two-armed again instead of one, able to do a bit more for meself and what I can to help you … peel spuds, shell peas, give meself a wash, that sort of thing.’

Any help her gran could give would be very much appreciated. Aidy was young and in good health, but working full-time as well as running a house by herself was starting to tell on her. Most mornings now she had to drag herself out of bed, and in the afternoons it took all her will-power not to curl up in the armchair for a rest before she began her chores, but resting in the afternoon, even for an hour, was a luxury she could not afford while she had no assistance at home.

Every minute of her afternoon today was accounted for. She was giving Bertha an all-over wash which her grandmother was so looking forward to; making the dough for next day’s bread so it could be raising while she was back at work that evening, ready to be baked on her return; several pairs of socks needed darning, and a patch putting on George’s other school shirt; the floors needed sweeping; coal needed breaking in the shed and the bucket refilled; and the evening meal needed preparing and cooking. If she had any time spare, the old gas cooker really could do with a scrub …

But none of the patients would have realised how tired Aidy was when she arrived, smiling, for work that evening to find several people already waiting outside for the doors to open, although she wouldn’t let them inside until she was instructed to by Ty not a minute before six. She went in search of him, out of
courtesy, to let him know she had arrived, eventually finding him in the dining room, staring into space. Immediately she thought he had found some fault with the record cards she was in the process of sorting and tentatively asked, ‘Is everything all right, Doc?’

So consumed in his thoughts he hadn’t heard her come in, he looked startled for a moment before he said sharply, ‘If there were, and it concerned you, I would tell you. And how many times do I need to tell you that I wish to be addressed as Doctor Strathmore?’

Aidy hid a smile. ‘I will try and remember. There’s a queue forming outside and it’s still raining hard, so shall I let them in?’