A Family Affair Read online

  ‘You went there when it happened, did you?’ she asked now.

  ‘They’re my patients, yes.’

  ‘So what was it then? A clot, I heard.’

  ‘That’s close enough,’ Helen said. She didn’t want to talk about it – though it was common knowledge now that Walt had suffered thrombosis she was still uncomfortably aware that she was discussing a patient. Even though it was only her grandmother she was talking to, even though it would go no further, she didn’t want to give anyone the slightest chance to consider her guilty of breach of confidence. ‘Dolly said … And her niece is the doctor …’ was all it would take. Like Caesar’s wife, she must remain above reproach.

  ‘Are you ready to go then?’ she asked, changing the subject.

  Charlotte sighed, finished her tea and got up. Her ankles bulged over the top of her shoes; even with a notch cut in the leather they felt tight.

  ‘You’re sure you’ll be all right, Mam?’ Dolly asked, coming in from the kitchen with the tea cloth still in her hand.

  ‘Of course I’ll be all right!’ Charlotte said, a touch impatiently. If there was one thing worse than getting old it was having your children treat you as old.

  Helen had parked her car in the lane behind the rank of houses; she armed Charlotte out and installed her in the back seat.

  ‘I thought we’d go up to Masbury Ring. Or Deer Leap. What do you fancy?’

  ‘Deer Leap would be nice.’

  Helen had taken her there before; she liked to sit in the car and look down over the vista of countryside, green and unspoiled, though in truth nothing could match the way she had felt with her first sight of the Hillsbridge valley so many years ago. Then she had been a young bride, and to her the rolling fields, the rows of cottages stacked like the fingers of a hand into the hillsides, yellow lias and smoke-blackened grey, all in the shadow of the sentinel batches – the Black Mountains – had seemed an enchanted place. Lovely as it was, the acclaimed beauty spot could not even come close to stirring her as the Hillsbridge valley had stirred her then, but somehow it evoked the memory and as they drove home she said to Helen: ‘I’d like to drive up to Greenslade Terrace. I’d like to see my old home again.’

  There was something in her tone that caught at Helen and evoked a twist of anxiety. It was almost as if Charlotte had added the words: ‘one last time’. Helen pushed the disturbing thought away.

  ‘Of course. We’ll make a detour up there if you’d like to.’

  She headed down the main road into the centre of town. The shops were all closed for Sunday, the blinds drawn and the sun awnings rolled up. Apart from a group of youths sitting astride their bicycles on County Bridge and a handful of people walking to chapel the streets were deserted. Helen turned the car into the steep hill alongside the George and was aware of Charlotte’s sudden alertness as she looked from one side of the road to the other.

  ‘Oh – the Miss Latchams have had their house painted! The spring’s dry … of course we haven’t had the rain this summer. Look at the state of that garden! Captain Fish would have a fit if he could see it now!’

  Helen slowed at the approach to Greenslade Terrace. Cars could, and did, pass along the narrow lane between the backs of the houses and what had used to be the blocks of bake ovens, privies and coal houses, but if there were vehicles parked there it could be difficult to drive past and even more difficult to get out again. Some girls were playing hopscotch on a grid they had marked out, and a boy squatted outside one of the doors rolling marbles.

  Helen drove slowly along the rank. Most of the people living here would be strangers to her now, but Charlotte was all avid interest and it was she who saw the estate agent’s sign first.

  ‘It’s for sale! It’s up for sale!’ She sounded almost affronted.

  ‘What?’ Helen asked. Then she saw it too – garish green on white-painted tin.

  ‘Well, fancy that!’ Charlotte said indignantly. ‘Over fifty years I lived there, and they’re selling it again already! Well, I never!’

  ‘I expect they have their reasons, Gran,’ Helen said.

  ‘Oh, I expect they do!’ Charlotte retorted in disgust. ‘They’re looking to make a profit, I expect. I knew we let it go too cheap, but our Dolly was so worried about me being here on my own she couldn’t wait to get rid of it. Oh, they had a bargain, all right.’ She sighed. ‘When I think of the happy times we had here! Summer nights we used to sit out on the steps, all of us, all along the rank – except the Clementses, of course. And the Christmases! Singing carols round the piano, playing games – no television in those days. We made our own entertainment.’

  So many memories were here – washing the menfolk’s backs when they bathed in the tin tub in front of the fire after a shift underground; the day the Bryants’pig had escaped and rooted up the parsnips and Ted had been blamed for it; the end of the Second World War when she had heard on the radio that it was all over and she and Peggy Yelling had danced together in the street; the community parties with the children all sitting up at trestle tables eating tomato sandwiches and jelly and blancmange; Nipper, the stray dog Ted had adopted, scavenging for scraps at the dustbins.

  Time had telescoped, somehow, events which had happened decades apart merging and blurring together though each one in itself was sharp as if it had been only yesterday; a lifetime encapsulated in a kaleidoscope of small scenes.

  ‘I spent my whole life here,’ she said. ‘I always said they’d only get me out of here feet first in a box, and I wish they had.’

  ‘Don’t say that, Gran!’ Helen protested.

  ‘It’s no more than the truth. I’m just a lodger at our Dolly’s, biding out my time. She won’t let me do anything to help.’

  ‘She means well,’ Helen said.

  ‘I dare say she does. She was always a good girl. But oh, I don’t know, it’s no way to live. It’s not like being in my own home.’

  ‘Come on, Gran,’ Helen said. ‘I knew it was a mistake coming up here.’

  ‘No,’ Charlotte said, ‘it was me made the mistake ever leaving.’

  Helen slipped the car into reverse and backed away along the rank. Charlotte was silent now; glancing at her in the rear-view mirror Helen saw that she was crying. Her heart bled for her grandmother, and in that moment, she knew what she was going to do.

  Next morning, as soon as surgery was over, she went to the estate agents.

  ‘Number 11, Greenslade Terrace,’ she said. ‘It’s for sale, I understand. How much are you asking?’

  The girl at the desk fished the literature out of a file.

  ‘Six hundred and fifty pounds. It’s a very nice property, modernised, well-maintained …’

  ‘I want to buy it,’ Helen said.

  The girl tried, unsuccessfully, to hide her surprise.

  ‘You’d like to see over it? I could make an appointment for you.’

  ‘No need,’ Helen said.

  A man in a tweed jacket, who might have been listening from the inner sanctum, appeared in the doorway and came towards her, holding out his hand.

  ‘Don Basson,’ he said. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I want to buy Number 11, Greenslade Terrace.’

  ‘We have some very nice properties on our books. Perhaps you’d like to see some of those before you make up your mind.’ He smiled ingratiatingly, suggesting that he had recognised her. Much more in your class, that smile said.

  ‘I’m not interested in any other property,’ Helen said. ‘It’s Greenslade Terrace I’m interested in. It hasn’t been sold, has it?’

  ‘I have someone viewing this evening …’

  ‘But they haven’t made an offer yet.’

  ‘Not as yet.’

  ‘Well, I am,’ Helen said. ‘I’m not even going to quibble over the asking price and I have nothing to sell. I can exchange contracts in the time it takes the solicitor to draw it up.’

  ‘This is really very unusual, Doctor.’ So he had recognised her. ‘Don’t you ev
en want to see over the property?’

  ‘I know it like the back of my hand. No, I don’t want to see over it. I just don’t want you to sell it to anyone else.’

  ‘Well, in that case …’ He seemed totally bemused. ‘If you’re quite sure, I suppose …’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Helen said. ‘I’m quite sure.’

  And she was. Never had she been surer of anything. Last night she had lain awake, not so much turning it over in her mind, for her mind was already made up, as relishing the idea, taking each aspect in turn and thinking how perfect it was.

  She’d always intended to buy a house here, though not perhaps just yet, not until she was offered a partnership, but she already felt settled and thought that, barring some unforeseen catastrophe, the partnership would one day be hers. Property had to be a good investment and besides now that she was seeing Paul regularly she needed a home of her own, for a variety of reasons. She couldn’t impose him on Amy and Ralph – hadn’t even wanted to impose herself for too long, kind and accommodating though they were; couldn’t – didn’t want to – use his house as an extension of her own. That, perhaps, was even more of an influential factor. Since the night Walt had died she and Paul had a far more intimate relationship than previously but Helen was not ready to commit to anyone – and especially not Paul. She was still too raw and, in spite of herself, too much in love with Guy. Besides, all the dangers of a relationship with a colleague remained, as much of an obstacle as ever, and Helen thought that buying her own house, demonstrating her intention for continued independence was as good a way as any of keeping him at arm’s length. They could be alone together there, but in her house on her terms.

  It was possible, of course, that if the old family home had not been for sale she would have chosen something a little more upmarket, a little more the type of property Don Basson had expected her to be interested in. A cottage in one of the nearby villages, perhaps, small enough to be affordable, but with more privacy, and roses or creepers round the door. But Number 11, Greenslade Terrace held many happy memories for her too. And that was not the best of it. The best of it was that she would be able to take Charlotte home.

  Jenny lay on the flat roof of the shed at the back of the grandstand in the town football ground. It was, she knew, an odd place to choose as a refuge, but for some reason she liked it there. It was one of her own special places.

  What the shed was used for, she wasn’t sure. It wasn’t the team’s changing rooms – they were in a spanking new concrete block building on the opposite side of the ground and just beyond the turnstile. It wasn’t the refreshment hut – that was a wooden shed with a shuttered window a few yards away from the grandstand. Perhaps, she thought, it was used for storing equipment but what equipment Hillsbridge Town FC possessed she could not imagine. The only piece she had ever seen in use was the huge iron roller used for flattening the pitch, and over the bar of which the children turned somersaults, standing in line to wait their turn. It could be white paint for marking the lines, she supposed, but that hardly seemed to warrant such a spacious storage area.

  Whatever, a few summers ago, when the grandstand had been in process of being renovated, she and the others had discovered the hut with the flat roof. In those days the boys had swung on to it by means of a rope attached to one of the grandstand girders and she had done the same – a little timidly, but gaining confidence each time and finding exhilaration in her daring. When the work on the grandstand was completed and the rope removed the boys lost interest in the hut, but Jenny continued to go there, climbing on to a water butt and hauling herself up. The roof was sheeted with asphalt which reflected the sun, but there was also shade from the tall side of the grandstand which dwarfed the hut and hid it almost completely from view. Jenny would take a book to read, or a pad and pencil to scribble the stories she had begun to write – lurid imitations of the paperback novelettes which came out monthly and which she saved her pocket money to buy. First it had been Schoolgirls’ Own Library, with titles such as Trixie’s Diary and themes that came straight out of her favourite comics, School Friend and Girl. But lately she had progressed to romances – Yukon Adventure one was called – and the stories she scribbled progressed accordingly. Carrie would have a fit, she knew, if she ever read Jenny’s wildly imaginative stories – runaway teenagers and forbidden love, and even one about a pair of bigamists who married other people for their money but were really, truly, in love with each other – and even more furious at the lurid descriptions of kisses and embraces, about which Jenny could now write from experience. But she wasn’t likely to get the chance to read them. Jenny kept her notebooks close by her at all times, and at night slept with them under her pillow.

  Today, however, she was neither writing nor reading. She’d brought her books with her but they lay spread out around her untouched. Her mind was too full of death.

  First Grandpa. That had hit her harder than she’d imagined possible. Grandpa had been – just Grandpa. Never saying very much, a shadowy background figure, but always there, part of her world. Now he wasn’t there any more and Jenny found she minded dreadfully. She’d never lost anyone close to her before, never thought about it very much. Well, she had lost Barry, of course, but that was different. He hadn’t done anything as horribly final as dying. Now she felt as if the very foundations of her world had rocked, felt a terrible empty ache knowing he’d never be there again, ever; felt, too, fear. Grampy had gone and so would they all, one by one. Gran next perhaps, and then … the awful inexorable inescapability of it made her feel helpless and apprehensive. Who would be next?

  Well, now she knew the answer to that. Linda Parfitt. David’s Linda. Younger than Heather, even. Not much older than herself. Jenny shivered, feeling the chill of death in the heat of the sun.

  She had only learned the terrible truth this morning. She had known something was going on; David had had long whispered conversations with Carrie in the kitchen, Carrie had done the same with Joe. But they’d always stopped when she had come into the room and when she had asked what was going on Carrie had said it was nothing to concern her. And then, this morning:

  ‘David’s getting married,’ Carrie said. ‘In three weeks’time, when they’ve had a chance to call the banns.’

  Jenny had immediately assumed that this was a shotgun wedding like Heather’s; that explained the whispered conversations.

  ‘Oh – I see,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not that, Jenny,’ David said, reading her mind.

  Jenny looked at him, startled. His face was strained, and he didn’t look at all happy.

  ‘Then why … ?’

  And then they told her. Her first reaction was utter disbelieving shock and then she was angry as well. Why couldn’t they have said something before? Why treat her like a child?

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she asked.

  ‘We didn’t want it blabbed all over Hillsbridge,’ Carrie said.

  Typical! Jenny thought. Typical of Carrie to treat illness as something to be ashamed of.

  ‘Do you really think I’d have gone round blabbing if you didn’t want me to?’ she retorted furiously. ‘What do you take me for?’

  ‘Don’t be so stupid, Jen. I just didn’t want to talk about it,’ David said.

  He was close to tears, her big brother, who never cried, and suddenly she wasn’t angry any more, just sorry for her outburst and very, very sorry for David.

  ‘I don’t believe it!’ she said, and she was close to tears herself. ‘Oh, Dave – it’s so awful! She’s not really going to die, is she?’

  She asked the same question now, sitting on the roof of the grandstand, staring up at the clear blue of the sky, and addressing herself to the unseen omnipresence.

  She can’t be going to die! Not Linda!

  But there was no comfort in the voice that seemed to be speaking not only in her head but in every fibre of her being.

  Linda was going to die. That was why David looked so ill himself, so tota
lly devastated. Linda had leukaemia and there was no cure for leukaemia. Who could say for sure whether she would even make it to her wedding?

  For a long while Jenny sat while the thoughts and emotions washed over her. She cried a little, for David, for Linda, even for herself and the rest of humanity who had no choice but to go along with the lottery of life – and death. She cried for Walt – the first time her grief at his loss had actually found expression – and when at last the tears had dried, she sat some more whilst the thoughts and emotions rumbled around again, but less violently, as if they were the aftershocks of an earthquake or a thunderstorm rolling away into the distance.

  When even they stilled, Jenny reached for her pad and pencil. Suddenly she wanted more than anything else in the world to write. Not her silly bigamy story (she didn’t know how to finish it anyway), but something much deeper. She felt a compulsion to put what she was feeling on to paper, as if by so doing she could cleanse herself, ease the pain.

  A strangely detached part of her mind was urging her to write it down now before she forgot. Some day – some day – she would look back and read it and say: ‘Yes! That’s how it was!’

  She began to write, the words tumbling on to the page, and the overwhelming heaviness of heart began to leave her. It was a curiously uplifting experience.

  When Jenny got home Carrie was cooking the dinner. Jenny smelled it as she went up the path – sausages frying. She realised how hungry she was, and was glad that Carrie’s job in the school canteen meant that she was at home during the holidays.