A Family Affair Read online

  When the bell went to end the lesson she followed the others into dinners, wishing Carrie worked in the kitchens here instead of the Junior School so that she could tell her how dreadful she felt. She collected her plate of stew and dumplings and took it to her place at one of the long trestle tables. The vegetable today was a green salad – geared to the first choice of cheese and onion flan, which had all gone by the time Jenny’s table had filed through the kitchen to collect their food. As she looked at the lettuce leaves floating in the plate of stew, Jenny realised she actually felt sick, and the first mouthful confirmed it. She put down her knife and fork, gazing at the glass-panelled swing doors at the end of the hall and willing her nausea to subside.

  ‘Jennifer!’ Miss Vokes’voice penetrated the gathering sense of isolation – Miss Vokes was also the mistress in charge of her dinner table.

  Jenny swivelled her eyes and Miss Vokes, from her seat at the head of the table, gesticulated towards Jenny’s plate. Obedient to the last, Jenny tried to force down another mouthful. It stuck in her throat. She put down her knife and fork again, covering her aching ear with her hand.

  ‘Jennifer!’ Miss Vokes called again, more sharply.

  Wordlessly, Jenny shook her head. Miss Vokes rose and squeezed between the rows of chairs to stand behind Jenny, holding her gown wrapped around her so that she looked like a skinny black crow.

  ‘Eat your dinner, Jennifer.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Jenny said. ‘I don’t want it.’

  ‘You can’t waste good food. If you don’t eat your dinner, you’ll have no pudding.’

  ‘I don’t want any pudding,’ Jenny said. ‘I feel sick and my ear hurts.’

  ‘The doctor said there is nothing wrong with your ear,’ Miss Vokes said. ‘Well, if you don’t eat it, you’ll have no pudding tomorrow either. Or for the rest of the week!’

  Jenny said nothing. At that moment she did not care if she never had pudding again, but she knew better than to say so. One was cheeky to teachers at one’s peril. Miss Vokes returned to her place tight-lipped with fury at what she saw as Jenny’s wilful disobedience.

  After what seemed like a lifetime the table finished eating and were allowed to dismiss. Jenny sat in the cloakroom on one of the long forms trying not to cry with the pain and wishing Rowena was here. But Rowena and her other best friends were away at the annual school camp. Jenny had begged Carrie to let her go too, but Carrie didn’t agree with camping.

  ‘You’d catch your death, sleeping in those damp tents!’ she had said, and Jenny hadn’t liked to argue because she suspected Carrie couldn’t really afford for her to go. Money was tight, she knew – as it always had been.

  When the bell rang it was time for those who were going to see The Pickwick Papers to line up ready to walk the three-quarters of a mile to the cinema. Jenny put on her blazer and went to join them. They started out in a crocodile down the steep winding hill, but before they had gone very far Jenny realised she felt very sick again – worse – she was going to be sick and there was nothing she could do to stop it. She went to the pavement edge and threw up into the gutter what dinner she had managed to force down.

  Nobody took much notice. Some of the children looked and looked quickly away, and Mr Peters, the English teacher who was accompanying the party, asked her if she was all right. Jenny nodded weakly and assured him she was. She was so embarrassed she wanted to fade into the background and in any case she was tired of complaining about an earache nobody would believe she had. Only one person seemed concerned, and ill as she felt, Jenny still managed to be surprised at who it was. Jimmy Tudgay.

  Since the days they’d been at Junior School together, Jimmy had changed very little. He was still big for his age, a bruiser of a boy with hair that flopped into his eyes and a reputation for getting into all kinds of mischief. He had grown out of playground fights now, but he could still handle himself, and the sports master had persuaded him to take up boxing. At this and every other sport Jimmy excelled and this had given him a certain self-confidence he might otherwise have lacked. Everyone had been faintly surprised when he had passed The Exam to go to the Grammar School, not least Jimmy himself. Now he stopped beside Jenny looking at her anxiously.

  ‘You shouldn’t be going to the pictures, Jen. You should be going home.’

  ‘I’m all right,’ she said. ‘I feel better now I’ve been sick.’

  ‘Does your ear still ache?’

  She nodded. The pain was continuous now, not coming in bouts as it had done before, and oddly that made it more bearable. The brief periods of relief had only seemed to make the returning pain seem worse as it built slowly to its awful throbbing crescendo. Now that it was constant it seemed to have become a part of her.

  ‘Why don’t you tell them you want to go home?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. She’d done enough drawing attention to herself for one day. ‘I’ll be all right.’

  ‘Stay with me then,’ Jimmy said. ‘I’ll look after you.’

  She stayed with him. They reached the cinema and filed in. Jimmy sat next to her.

  ‘Do you want to take your blazer off?’

  ‘No, I’m not very warm.’

  The lights dimmed and the film started, black and white images that flickered larger than life until they seemed to bound her world. She tried to concentrate but her eyes felt heavy and she couldn’t bear to look at those huge flickering images any longer. She closed her eyes, letting her chin rest on her chest. The harsh soundtrack became a distant background buzz and as Pickwick and his cronies strutted and rolled across the screen, Jenny fell asleep.

  The next thing she knew, Jimmy was shaking her gently.

  ‘Jen! Jenny!’

  She opened her eyes. The lights were on again in the cinema.

  ‘You’ve been asleep,’ he said. ‘You’ve slept right through the picture.’

  ‘Have I?’

  She moved her head gingerly. Her glands felt stiff but her ear didn’t seem to be hurting so much. Then she became aware of something tickling her neck. She put up her hand to touch it and felt a stream of something wet and sticky. She felt a moment’s panic. Was it blood? Then her fingers encountered the collar of her blouse and found it stiff. Moist and stiff.

  ‘What’s on my collar?’ she asked Jimmy.

  ‘I don’t know. It’s all yellow.’ He sounded frightened. ‘It’s all down your blazer too. And on your tie.’

  Suddenly Jenny wanted only one thing in the world.

  ‘I want to go home,’ she said.

  ‘You go on the coach, don’t you?’ Jimmy said.

  ‘Yes, but not tonight. I won’t be back at school in time for it. I was going to catch the bus.’

  ‘Come on then,’ Jimmy said.

  He lived in Purldown, which was on the same route.

  He walked with her to the bus stop, sat beside her on the bus when it came and watched when she got off in Hillsbridge. As the bus passed her she saw his square, tough-guy face looking at her from the window with a worried expression. She felt a frisson of surprise. She couldn’t ever remember seeing Jimmy look worried before, and who would have thought that of all of them it would be him who had taken the trouble to be concerned about her. Hardly knowing how to put one foot in front of the other, horribly conscious of the stiff yellow matter staining not only her blouse but her very expensive blazer too, Jenny struggled up the hill.

  When she got in, Carrie gazed at her in horror.

  ‘Whatever has happened to you?’

  ‘Oh, Mum – I’ve had the most awful day,’ Jenny said. And finally burst into tears.

  The doctor was sent for next morning. Though medical treatment was now free on the NHS, Carrie could not get out of the habit of trying to avoid unnecessary bills, such as out-of-hours visits, and since Jenny’s ear was no longer aching she thought perhaps she would be well enough to go to the surgery. But Jenny was still rather ill, couldn’t even manage a piece of toast, and so in the end Carrie went ou
t to phone.

  ‘You realise it will be Dr Hall, don’t you?’ Dorothea Hillman, who answered the phone, said. There was a note of acidic triumph in her voice. Dorothea, who did not approve of lady doctors and had been personally affronted that one had been appointed to the practice she liked to think of as her own, always enjoyed imparting this information and enjoyed even more the dismay with which the news was sometimes received.

  This morning, however, she was to be disappointed.

  ‘Yes, she’s seen our Heather’s Vanessa a couple of times, and very good she was too,’ Carrie said.

  ‘As long as you’re aware,’ Dorothea said sniffily.

  And added the call to Helen’s list.

  Helen arrived in Alder Road shortly after midday. As she parked her car outside Number 27, a group of boys playing football on the green with heaps of discarded jumpers for goalposts stopped their game to stare, and a few curtains in the surrounding houses twitched.

  ‘I’m sorry to have to get you out, Doctor,’ Carrie said when she opened the door. ‘But I really didn’t think our Jenny was fit to bring to the surgery.’

  Helen found Jenny propped up against the pillows, a copy of Little Women open and face down on her knees. But her eyes were bleary and Helen guessed she had been asleep when the doorbell had wakened her.

  ‘You’re not very well I hear, Jenny,’ she said. ‘Would you like to tell me about it?’

  ‘It’s my ear,’ Jenny said. ‘It’s a lot better today though.’

  ‘You should see the stuff that come out of it!’ Carrie interrupted. ‘And they kept her at that school all day! I’m furious, I can tell you. Some doctor from the county looked at her and said there was nothing wrong. Nothing wrong! A blind man could have seen how bad she was. I’m going up there and have my say, I can tell you!’

  ‘Mum, you can’t!’ Jenny pleaded.

  ‘I can and I will!’

  ‘Shall I have a look then, Jenny?’

  Jenny winced as Helen slipped the otoscope into her ear. A few moments later, Helen straightened up.

  ‘You have a perforated eardrum, Jenny.’

  Carrie was practically jumping up and down.

  ‘You mean the county doctor missed a perforated ear drum?’

  ‘It wouldn’t have been perforated then,’ Helen said.

  ‘He must have caused it when he put that thing in her ear!’ Carrie said furiously. ‘Jenny said he hurt her. I’ll have him up in court for this!’

  ‘He wouldn’t have caused the eardrum to rupture,’ Helen said. ‘That will have happened because of a buildup of pressure. She had an abscess, I expect, and when it swelled and burst there was nowhere for the fluid to go. Have you had a cold recently, Jenny?’

  ‘A bit of a one,’ Jenny said. ‘I hate colds in the summer.’

  ‘And you’ve been stuffed up, I expect.’

  Jenny nodded.

  ‘OK. Well, I’m going to give you some penicillin to clear up any infection. Have you had penicillin before?’

  ‘No, she hasn’t,’ Carrie said, speaking for her.

  ‘No, well, as you know, it’s only recently become available for general use, but I think in your case, Jenny, it will be very useful. It may make you a bit weepy and depressed and if you have any other problems, let me know at once. And I think you should stay in bed for a day or two, just until you’re feeling better.’

  ‘I’ll miss the end of term things at school,’ Jenny said. ‘I don’t want to miss them! It’s always such fun …’

  ‘You’ll do as the doctor says, my lady. And I’m going up there tomorrow to complain about that other one – the county man.’

  ‘Mum – please!’ Jenny looked totally desperate.

  ‘He needs to be told!’

  ‘There’s no need for you to trouble, Mrs Simmons,’ Helen said, taking pity on Jenny. ‘I’ll have a word myself.’

  ‘With the county?’ Carrie sounded awestruck.

  ‘Yes, I’ll speak to the doctor concerned myself.’

  Helen thought it unwise to add that Jenny’s ear problem had probably been obscured by wax. The suggestion that Carrie might have been in some way negligent about Jenny’s personal hygiene and so indirectly the reason why the abscess hadn’t been diagnosed would not, Helen felt, go down well. Plenty of time to mention that later.

  ‘Well, all right, thank you, Doctor. I’ll leave it to you. Say thank you to the doctor, Jennifer.’

  Helen’s sympathy for Jenny increased. Not only had she had a very painful twenty-four hours, on top of that she had a mother who treated her like a baby.

  ‘I see you’re reading Little Women, Jenny,’ she said.

  Jenny smiled. ‘For about the third time.’

  ‘She’s always loved reading,’ Carrie said.

  Helen ignored her.

  ‘I love Little Women too. Have you read Good Wives?’

  ‘Some of it. I couldn’t finish. I got really upset when Jo married that awful old German professor. I wanted her to marry Laurie.’

  For the first time, Carrie did not interrupt. Helen guessed she was out of her depth and she was right. Carrie had never read Little Women.

  ‘You cared about Jo, then.’

  ‘She’s my favourite.’

  ‘Mine too,’ Helen said. ‘I know what you mean about her marrying the professor. I didn’t much like that either. It seemed jolly unfair.’

  ‘She loved Laurie so much,’ Jenny said.

  Carrie could not resist a snort at this.

  ‘Love!’

  ‘At least you’ll have a nice lot of time for reading over the next few days,’ Helen said, ignoring her again. ‘Have you got plenty of books?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Jenny said, brightening. ‘I’ve got all my old favourites – and the Home Readers from school too. I’m halfway through The Old Curiosity Shop, but I just felt like reading Little Women today.’

  ‘That’s it – you indulge yourself,’ Helen said.

  ‘Well, thank you, Doctor,’ Carrie said when she saw her downstairs. ‘And you won’t forget to do something about that school doctor, will you?’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘It’ll come better from you than me.’

  Helen wasn’t so sure. And she wasn’t sure either whom she should be angrier with – the school doctor or Carrie. Between them they’d caused Jenny a lot of pain. There was nothing she could do about Carrie – the way she treated her daughter was her business – but she could at least tell the school doctor, whoever he was, what she thought about him.

  ‘I’ll see Jenny again in a couple of days,’ she said.

  The next call for Helen was a farm cottage further along the lane on which Alder Road had been built – an old miner who suffered from silicosis, the lung disease caused by years of inhaling coal dust, now lived there with his daughter and son-in-law who worked as a farm labourer. As the lane narrowed Helen drove more slowly. There wasn’t usually much traffic to be encountered here, but one never knew whether a tractor or milk lorry might be coming the other way, or, just around one of the many bends, a horse and cart or even a straying cow.

  Half a mile or so along, the lane twisted into a steep dip where the hedges obscured her view; Helen pulled well into the side as she negotiated it, cursing as a low-hanging branch scraped her nearside. Just as well she had pulled in though – something was coming the other way. Helen slowed almost to a stop and a big black car rounded the bend.

  Helen’s jaw dropped as she recognised it. Cliff Button’s taxi! As it passed she had a clear view of the driver who was looking straight ahead and concentrating on squeezing through the narrow gap and realised it was Cliff himself behind the wheel. She turned, looking over her shoulder to watch him disappear up the rise, infuriated and concerned. What on earth did the man think he was doing? It was only a matter of days since she had told him his epilepsy meant he must not drive. For a moment she hesitated, wondering whether to turn around and follow him, then deciding against it. There wasn’t
a great deal of point – so long as he didn’t have a fit and crash the car – and she had a busy round to complete. But she’d have to have a word with him as a matter of urgency and warn him of the consequences if he ignored her advice again.

  Helen sighed, dreading the encounter already. She hated having to be heavy-handed and she felt very sorry for Cliff. But, however unpleasant, she had a duty to do something about it. In his present condition Cliff on the roads was a danger to himself and everyone else. And whether he liked it or not she was going to have to tell him so in no uncertain terms.

  ‘I’ve had one hell of a day,’ she said to Paul that evening.

  He had called in at the end of afternoon surgery as he so often did these days. In one respect Helen was always glad to see him. In some ways her relationship with the two partners had completely turned around. Dr Hobbs, whom she had assumed approved of her, since he had appointed her, had turned out to be somewhat difficult to work with – a slightly fussy, old-school doctor who often questioned her closely about her diagnoses and treatments as if he didn’t quite trust her, and had an annoying habit of coming into her room and flicking through the files on her desk as he spoke to her. He had pulled her up over quite a few things and though Helen would have been the first to admit he knew a great deal more about general practice than she did and was only too prepared to ask for advice if she felt she needed it, she was irritated and rather unnerved by his constant nit-picking over things she didn’t feel mattered at all.

  ‘Just be careful how you speak to Dorothea, my dear,’ he had said on one occasion, his tone managing to be both avuncular and a little reproving. ‘I know she can be difficult but she is a valued member of staff and you must try to humour her.’

  ‘I thought I was perfectly civil to Dorothea,’ Helen had replied, a little sharply, since Dorothea was often barely civil to her.

  ‘You must remember she’s been here a good many years and she doesn’t like to be told how to do her job,’ he said.

  Helen had smarted, just as she had smarted when he had suggested that she would get through her surgery in far less time if she didn’t allow patients to prattle on about their personal problems.