Secrets to Keep (42 page)

When George came in at seven-thirty from playing out, she asked him, ‘Could you pop to Elsie Stringer’s for me and ask her if the doctor eventually turned up for surgery?’

He pulled a face and wailed, ‘Ah, Sis, it’s cold out there! Do I have to?’

‘It didn’t seem to be cold when you were playing football out there for the past two hours!’

‘Weren’t playing football … we been playing cops and robbers in the old factory.’

‘I’ve told you not to play there, it’s dangerous,’ she scolded him.

‘No, you didn’t, Sis, honest.’

‘Well, I’m sure I did. Look, I’ve no time for this. Go on that errand like I asked you or …’

George was gone.

He returned ten minutes later and plonked himself down in an easy chair, hanging one leg casually over its arm. ‘Mrs Stringer said the doctor hadn’t shown by the time she gave up and came home at seven-thirty. Can I have some hot cocoa?’

‘Me too, please,’ said Marion who was sitting at the table with Ruth, cutting out clothes for the paper doll she had got for Christmas.

‘And me,’ said Betty, who was standing behind Ruth and playing hairdressers with what hair she had, painstakingly twirling sections into kiss curls and securing them with grips.

‘I’m just making you all one,’ Bertha shouted in from the kitchen.

Ruth carefully turned her head so as not to disturb her hairdresser too much. ‘You’re worried about the doctor, aren’t you, Aidy?’

Busy with a pile of rumpled clothes, she spat on the iron to check its heat and replied: ‘I couldn’t give a damn about the bloody man.’ Then she sighed. ‘All right, yes, I am, though he really doesn’t warrant me bothering. Only it isn’t like him not to turn up for
surgery or at least send a message. He wasn’t well this morning …’

‘Well then, he’s probably recovering in bed,’ Ruth suggested.

‘He wouldn’t have just gone to bed and not informed the patients surgery was cancelled tonight.’

‘Mmm, from what I know of Doctor Strathmore as a man, I agree with you there – he wouldn’t have. Well, I was actually thinking of taking a walk. I could go by the surgery and check for any signs of life.’

‘I think I’ll come with you. I could do with a walk myself.’

Ruth smiled to herself. Aidy might have every reason to be angry with her ex-employer for the way he had treated her while she worked there and for not hearing her out before he had sacked her. But, regardless, she certainly had a soft spot for him, whether she realised it or not.

A short while later they both stood staring over at the doctor’s house. It appeared to be in complete darkness, no light shining through any window.

‘That doesn’t mean to say Doctor Strathmore isn’t home and tucked safely up in bed, nursing his cold or whatever it is he’s suffering from,’ Ruth told Aidy.

She looked pensive. ‘No, it doesn’t. But you know when you have a feeling that something isn’t right? I’m going to go around the back … see if I can see anything through the windows.’

‘And what if the doctor looks back at you from the other side?’

‘Then I’ll shout “Boo!” and scarper off quick and hope he thinks it’s kids larking about.’

T
y had had the strangest dream. He seemed to have been floating in a mist and had either felt so swelteringly hot he was on fire or so shiveringly cold he was embedded in ice. But the strangest thing of all was that for some of the time he’d been hearing voices somewhere above him, ghost-like, whispering voices, but no matter how hard he had strained, he couldn’t hear what they were saying.

He fought to open his eyes, wondering why his body felt so stiff, his head as if his brain was too big for it and pushing against his skull. Finally he prised his eyes open and instantly snapped them shut as a bright light blinded him. He tried again, slowly, and as his vision began to focus, nearly shrieked in shock as the ghostly face hovering above him began to materialise.

Then he heard a quiet voice say, ‘You’re finally back with us, Doctor Strathmore. Obviously the light is bothering you. Keep your eyes shut for a moment and I will draw the curtains again.’

With eyes tight shut he lay still, listening to the sound of light footsteps. His mind was racing. What was this? He was in his own bed, that much he did know from the familiar feel of the lumpy mattress beneath him. But who was in the room with him? The voice that had spoken to him had belonged to a female. What was a woman doing in his bedroom?

As soon as he heard the sound of the curtains being pulled to he fully opened his eyes and fought to focus his vision. He saw a woman coming towards him. As she came into focus he noted she was in her late thirties and had a kind face though her haircut did not do her justice. He felt she was familiar to him but there was something different about her … he couldn’t place her. He made to ask who she was and why she was here, but found his throat was so dry he couldn’t speak.

The woman obviously realised his dilemma. A spoon was being placed next to his lips with water in it. As he sipped the water slowly he couldn’t understand why he felt he had done this same thing several times recently.

Finally his throat felt easy enough for him to pose some questions. ‘Who are you?’ he asked the woman.

There was a surprised tone to her voice when she answered, ‘Ruth Whelham, Doctor Strathmore.’

He looked puzzled as he tried to ease himself up
a little higher on his pillows. ‘I don’t recall the name, yet I feel I should know you.’

Ruth automatically slipped her arm around his back and gently helped him sit up, then settled the pillows comfortably around him, saying, ‘Maybe you remember me better as Sister Teresa.’

‘Oh, yes, of course. Yes, it’s coming back to me now. You’ve left the order. How are you coping back in the outside world?’

As she spooned more water into his mouth, she told him, ‘With the help of my new family, I’m adapting extremely well. I have much to be grateful to them for.’

He was looking at her quizzically. ‘So why are you here, Sis … Miss Whelham? How did you come to be with me?’

She sat down on the chair to one side of his bed. ‘You’ve been very poorly, Doctor Strathmore. Needed constant attention in case you should take a turn for the worse. You gave real cause for concern on a couple of occasions when your temperature suddenly shot up. It took a lot of cold sponging to get it down again. Anyway, the fever finally broke this morning, I’m glad to say, but you’re still very weak and will need to stay in bed a little longer to regain your strength.’

‘How long have I been ill?’

‘Three days, all told.’

‘I’ve been unconscious in a fever for three days? Well, I owe you a real debt of gratitude, nursing me for all this time, Miss Whelham. I will, of course, reimburse you.’

‘Oh, I haven’t been nursing you, Doctor, or sitting with you to keep an eye on you. Not all this time. I had to go to work, you see. Mrs Nelson did it mostly, and her grandmother helped out too for an hour or so, here and there. I’m only here now to give Aidy a break.’

His eyes blazed with sudden anger. ‘Mrs Nelson! After what she did, I told her never to darken my door again.’

Evenly Ruth responded, ‘Well, if I were you, Doctor Strathmore, I’d be grateful she
did
or you might not be alive now. Aidy … Mrs Nelson … had an uncomfortable feeling that all was not right with you when she heard you hadn’t attended evening surgery the day you dismissed her. She was aware you weren’t at all well earlier that day and was very concerned something wasn’t right. She decided to quell her worry by paying a visit to your house, to check for signs that you were not in distress. I accompanied her. We found the house in darkness. After checking through the windows and seeing no sign of life at all, we assumed you must have retired to bed, having dosed yourself with medicine, hoping to sleep off what was ailing you.

‘Thankfully, though, Aidy decided to take a peek through the letter box as a final check before we went home, and that’s when she spotted you. The hall was dark but she could just make you out, lying at the bottom of the stairs. She called through the letter box to you several times but received no response. We immediately went round the back and broke the glass in the door so we could let ourselves in. Please don’t worry, we have had it fixed since.’

A memory stirred in Ty. ‘I remember now … I was about to go upstairs and ready myself for evening surgery when suddenly I felt myself go very hot and then start to feel faint … and that’s it.’

‘It was very apparent the moment we set eyes on you that you had a raging fever. We fetched a strapping young man from a few doors down and he put you over his shoulder and carried you up here. When I first checked you over, I was worried you could have typhus or scarlet fever but there were no spots or other symptoms. Bertha … Mrs Rider … agreed with me. She thought the same as I did, that you were suffering from complete exhaustion and had caught a very bad chill.’

‘Mrs Rider?’ Ty queried, the name not being familiar to him. ‘Who is Mrs Rider?’

‘Aidy … Mrs Nelson’s grandmother.’

‘
That woman
has been in my house?
She
made a diagnosis of my illness! She’s no more qualified to
do that than my milkman is. I’m surprised at you, a trained nurse, being in cahoots with a charlatan like her and actually seeming to believe in her. People like that should be jailed for making fraudulent claims. Oh, I expect she’s going to try and make me believe that my life was miraculously saved by one of her potions and then I’ll change my mind about her being a con merchant?’

Ruth had spent her life being subservient to others, doing as she was told by strong-minded people who forced her do their bidding. But this man before her had just spoken out very unfairly against people she knew were not at all the type he was denouncing them as. They weren’t here to defend themselves, but Ruth was.

Taking a deep breath she said, ‘No, your life wasn’t saved by one of Bertha’s potions. It was she who suggested, in fact, that quinine was the only medicine which would help get your fever down. I agreed with her, so regular doses of quinine is what you were given. Only, as a matter of interest, Doctor, isn’t quinine obtained from the bark of a tree?

‘And I can assure you, Mrs Rider is no charlatan. She is in fact an expert in what she does. For your information, she learned her craft at a very young age from a woman who had learned from her own mother. They both spent their lives studying the medicinal properties of what Mother Nature provides
for us, making detailed records of their findings along with beautiful drawings of each individual plant, flower and fungus.’ Ruth paused and looked at the doctor meaningfully. ‘Is that not how you learned your own profession, Doctor Strathmore, by listening to someone who had spent their own life studying it? But whereas you learned medicine in a recognised educational establishment, Bertha learned her craft in a cottage kitchen.’

She paused slightly to let the doctor digest what she had just said before she continued. ‘Bertha too has spent her life refining her remedies and using her expertise to concoct a few new ones. She has great faith in her medicines but would never claim that they will cure every ailment. Should someone approach her for help that she feels she cannot provide, she will tell them that it is a stronger medicine from the doctor that is called for on that occasion.

‘I was quite sceptical when I first learned what she did. Couldn’t imagine for one minute that the juice from the dandelion weed is actually good for helping anaemia, or that a geranium leaf placed on a cut will stop it bleeding almost immediately. Of course, as with all medicines, whether made from natural ingredients or chemical compounds, they work better on some patients than with others. I have been spending quite a lot of time with Bertha,
getting an overview of her work, and it has certainly captured my interest enough for me to want to learn more. May I ask how you came to the conclusion that women who make home remedies are all fraudsters out to cheat people of their money, Doctor Strathmore?’

‘I have very good reason, I can assure you, Miss Whelham. As part of my training, I worked as a registrar in a hospital. An hysterical woman came running in with a child in her arms one day. On examination, from the profusion of yellow ulcers in the child’s mouth and other symptoms, it was clear that it was at an advanced stage of diphtheria, which the woman had been treating with a bottle of medicine her neighbour had made up for her, charging her a penny and claiming it was a cure-all. The child died the next day. Had the mother not believed this woman’s fraudulent claim and taken her offspring to the doctor when it first showed signs of being ill, there’s a good chance it would still be alive today. I tested the medicine afterwards and found it to be no more than water with a few drops of laudanum and arrowroot, to thicken it a little and turn it white.’

‘A dreadful tale, Doctor Strathmore, but I’m surprised a man of your intelligence has based his opinion entirely on one incident. Maybe if you took the trouble to spend just a little time with Bertha, she would make you see that your decision to brand
all home remedy makers as fraudsters was a bit hasty. You might even feel that some of her potions merit being prescribed by yourself, for certain patients.

‘And while I have your ear, Doctor, you would not allow Mrs Nelson the courtesy of explaining to you her motives for sending some of your patients her grandmother’s way. She saw for herself how overworked you are, how little time you have for yourself, and it was apparent to her that some patients’ ailments could very easily be remedied by one of her grandmother’s potions. She also knew those patients didn’t, in fact, have the means to settle your account. So, you see, she wasn’t stealing patients from you and their fees along with them, but was in fact trying to ease your burden a little. And, yes, the bonus was that a little more money came the family’s way, which they make very good use of, I can assure you.’