A Family Affair Read online

  ‘We should get the doctor to her,’ he said to Doreen.

  ‘What can the doctor do?’ Doreen asked.

  ‘Well, give her something for the pain for a start,’ he said.

  ‘We’ll have our tea and see how she is then,’ Doreen said.

  They had their tea and David tried to feed Linda a little soup, but she didn’t want it, had difficulty swallowing, and when she did manage a mouthful, moaned that it made her feel sick.

  ‘I’m getting the doctor!’ David said resolutely.

  ‘No – don’t, please …’ With an enormous effort, Linda grasped his hand, holding it with fingers that felt icy cold and trembling. ‘Don’t go. Just stay with me … talk to me …’

  He couldn’t think of a thing to say to her; his brain was swamped with anxiety, his whole consciousness concentrated on how dreadfully ill she looked. He sat beside her, holding her hand, and after a while she drifted into a fitful sleep. He stayed beside her, not wanting to disturb her or having her wake to find him gone, though his hand went numb with pins and needles and his leg, too, threatened to go into cramp.

  After about half an hour, when she opened her eyes again, she seemed to rally a little.

  ‘I’m so sorry, David. This isn’t much fun for you, is it?’

  ‘It’s not much fun for you either. We’re in this together, Linda.’

  ‘Mmm.’ She was silent for a moment, then she said: ‘I just wish we could have a proper life together. Nothing much – nothing special – just the sort of thing everybody else takes for granted. You know?’

  ‘I know. But I wouldn’t change a thing, Linda – except you being ill, of course.’

  ‘I’d have liked a home of our own. Just you and me. So we could shut the door and just be by ourselves.’

  ‘The door is shut,’ he said. ‘We are by ourselves.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Her eyes were closed. ‘You’ll have a proper home one day, though. With somebody else.’

  ‘Don’t talk like that!’ he said fiercely.

  ‘You will. You will. You deserve to be happy. I wish it could be me, I love you so much, but … it can’t be.’

  ‘There’ll never be anyone else!’

  ‘There will … there will.’ Her voice was slurred, drowsy. ‘Oh, David … I feel so ill … I can’t … I can’t fight any more.’

  Something in her tone alarmed him, a cold, sharp shard of terror giving an edge to the constant state of anxiety and premature grief.

  ‘Hold me …’

  ‘Just a minute.’ He got up, went through to the kitchen, keeping his voice low as he spoke to Doreen, though he could not disguise the urgency.

  ‘Get the doctor. Now!’

  He went back into the front room.

  ‘Please, David, hold me!’ she begged again.

  He went down on his knees beside the sofa.

  ‘I’m here.’

  Then, as she had asked, he held her.

  ‘That’s the phone,’ Helen said, unnecessarily. She dropped a handful of cutlery back into the washing-up water and stripped off her rubber gloves.

  ‘You want me to get it?’ Paul was drying the dishes she had already washed and stacked in the drainer.

  ‘No, it’s all right.’

  She couldn’t add by way of explanation that she didn’t want to advertise the fact that Paul was with her, sharing supper. And in any case it might not be a professional call. It could be personal. Amy. Her mother or father. A friend. Guy.

  For some reason Guy had been on her mind lately. She kept thinking about him at odd times – and particularly when the telephone rang. She hadn’t heard a word from him in more than a year, yet suddenly each time she lifted the receiver she expected to hear his voice on the other end of the line. Strange, really strange, but also very disconcerting, very unsettling. The wariness was there now in the pit of her stomach.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Doctor? I’m sorry to bother you, but Linda’s worse.’

  It wasn’t Guy. It was Doreen, sounding desperately worried.

  ‘I’ll be with you right away,’ Helen said. She went back into the kitchen. ‘Sorry, Paul, I’m going to have to leave you to finish here.’

  He raised an eyebrow and she qualified: ‘It’s Linda. She’s taken a turn for the worse. She should be in hospital, of course, but … well, there you are. She didn’t want to go in, not even for the end, and it’s possible she’s going to get her way. Can you cope here?’

  He drew his breath in a sharp whistle. ‘Oh – I don’t know about that …’

  ‘Paul, I’m sorry, I’m really not in the mood for jokes. I’ll be back as soon as I can, but I can’t promise when that will be.’

  ‘OK. At some point I’ll put the phone through to my house and let myself out.’

  ‘If you would.’

  She knew. In her heart she already knew. Strange how sometimes the sixth sense kicked in. Linda had already lived much longer than anyone had expected; if the present crisis passed she might rally again, go into remission again, for a little while at least. But somehow Helen knew this wasn’t going to happen this time.

  She had visited so often her car almost found its own way to the house. She parked outside, reached for her medical bag from the back seat.

  The door was opened by Jim. He looked haggard – old suddenly, his face grey in the porch light.

  ‘She’s bad this time, Doctor, really bad,’ he said. He stood aside for her to go in; she went along the hall and into the front room.

  David was still sitting beside Linda, still holding her hand, one arm crooked around her head, stroking her hair. From time to time her eyes fluttered open and a brief half smile curved her lips, but it was immediately obvious to Helen that she was failing fast.

  ‘Can I … ?’

  David moved reluctantly and Helen made a brief examination. Linda’s breathing was shallow and ragged.

  ‘Are you in any pain?’ she asked.

  Linda responded with an almost imperceptible shake of her head. Helen straightened, moved away, and David resumed his place at Linda’s side.

  ‘Can I speak to you?’ Helen asked.

  ‘I’m not leaving her.’ His voice was low but determined.

  Helen met Doreen’s eyes, Doreen nodded and left the room. Helen followed.

  ‘There’s nothing I can do,’ Helen said when they were out of Linda’s hearing.

  Doreen covered her mouth with her hand. Her eyes were brimming. Helen had never felt more helpless.

  ‘All I can offer is pain relief. But she seems reasonably comfortable.’

  Jim had followed them.

  ‘She should be in hospital,’ he said angrily. His grief was finding expression in aggression.

  ‘There’s nothing they could do for her either,’ Helen said gently. ‘And quite honestly, I think it’s too late to think of moving her.’

  ‘She wanted to be here, Jim,’ Doreen said. ‘She wanted to die at home.’

  ‘Mum!’ David called from the front room. There was urgency in his voice. Doreen made a dash for the door. Jim and Helen followed.

  Linda had slipped into unconsciousness, her eyes half open, her head lolling against the pillow. Helen checked her briefly. She was still breathing, but barely.

  ‘She’s going, isn’t she, Doctor?’ Doreen said, the tears held at bay by sheer effort of will.

  Helen nodded.

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Impossible to say … but not long.’

  David had Linda in his arms now, her head buried in his shoulder. He was murmuring to her softly, his voice too low for anyone else in the room to hear what he said. But that was as it should be. They were locked in their own private world.

  Helen felt a lump in her throat. Standing by and watching someone die never got any easier.

  At one end of the mantelpiece was a studio portrait of Linda as a child, a smiling little girl with curling hair wearing a smocked dress of white silk; at the other was a photograph of Lin
da and David on their wedding day.

  Helen stared at it helplessly as Linda’s life ebbed away.

  He had never known such grief.

  The church where they had married was packed, now, for the funeral. But surrounded by sombre and openly tearful relatives and friends, David felt utterly alone. The fog that enveloped him was impenetrable, through it voices were distorted, faces no more than a blur. He didn’t know who was there; they might have been on a different planet. He answered when they spoke to him without knowing what they had said or what he replied. He followed Linda’s coffin because his legs were obeying some unspoken inner command, but he was not even aware of the ground beneath his feet. His lips moved with the words of the hymns but no sound came out. His eyes never left the simple teak box, piled high with red roses that he could ill afford but had been determined she should have, but the images refused to translate accurately to his brain.

  But he smelled the roses. The air was heavy with their perfume, just as the front room had been filled with the woody smell of chrysanthemums in the dozens of wreaths and sprays that had been arriving at the house all morning. They had been stacked around the walls in that room where Linda lay, her small face at peace above the frilled collar of her shroud, her hands crossed on her chest. She was still wearing her wedding ring; David had insisted it was not to be taken off.

  He hated the smell of the chrysanthemums. The heaviness of it was typically funereal; it spoke of death. But the roses were different. The subtlety of their perfume spoke of love. The scent of them – and the choking smell of the chrysanths – would haunt him down the years, evoking blurred images from that terrible day.

  For the rest of his life, his senses would never forget.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Hillsbridge was justly proud of its Scouts’Hall. Whilst most of the surrounding villages possessed a Scout Hut, there was no way that this imposing building could be demeaned by such a name. It stood in its own wooded grounds at the head of a long steep drive, which was in turn hemmed with trees, a large building which boasted not only the hall itself, with the sprung floor which made it an ideal venue for dances, but also the best stage in the district – a real stage, not merely a platform, with deep red plush curtains, ample wings with storage space above, and a room on stage right which could be used as a dressing room and which connected to the cloakrooms on stage left by means of a passageway behind the rear wall. The two inward slanted corners of the apron were decorated by oil paintings, ten feet high, depicting scouting scenes and, most impressive of all, the flooring in front of the stage could be removed to form an orchestra pit. There was also a trap door in the stage itself which enabled the Demon King to make the most startling entrances and exits when the local theatre group staged its annual pantomime. At the front entrance to the hall was a large kitchen with a shuttered hatch which facilitated its use as a bar, and a small committee room, which also served as a private bar when the hall was hired out for functions.

  On this particular Friday evening in November the committee room was, as usual, well stocked with every conceivable type of spirit as well as a crate or two of beer, but only Bert Lines, who could never be separated from free booze for long, was inside, and even he lurked in the doorway, glass in hand, determined to get the best of both worlds. In the hall itself, a boxing ring had been erected and a series of amateur bouts, organised by the local ABA, was in full swing.

  In the third row, with her back to the stage, her chair on the first tier of blocks that had been erected to ensure that everyone had a good view of the proceedings, Jenny could hardly contain her excitement, and the thrill she felt surprised her. Perhaps, in a way, she shouldn’t have been surprised – she had been raised on boxing, for Joe tuned in to all the big fights on the radio, and since she had been knee-high to a grasshopper, Jenny had listened with him. But never before had she seen a live boxing match and now she was drunk on the atmosphere – the sweating boys in their trunks and vests, chewing on the gum shields, the fanfares that accompanied them into the ring, the shouts and groans, the thud of leather on flesh and bone.

  She wouldn’t be here now, she conceded, if it hadn’t been for Marilyn. It would never have entered her head to go – or Carrie’s to let her. But Marilyn had a boyfriend – Keith Hicks – who boxed for a club in Bath, and when she had heard a fight had been arranged for him at the Hillsbridge Scouts’Hall she had suggested to Jenny that they should go along.

  ‘I’ve been promising I’d watch him box for ages,’ she said. ‘And with this bout being in Hillsbridge, you could come and hold my hand.’

  ‘Why do you need someone to hold your hand?’ Jenny asked.

  ‘Wouldn’t you, if it was your boyfriend being beaten to a pulp?’

  ‘Isn’t he very good then?’

  ‘He’s all right, I think. He seems to win as often as he loses. And he’s been doing it for years, so I suppose he must enjoy it. But I can’t think why. And I’m not very keen on the thought of watching someone hit him.’

  ‘So why go at all?’

  ‘I told you – because I promised I will. Only I keep putting it off. But if you’d come with me …’

  ‘All right,’ Jenny agreed. ‘But just this once. Just because it’s in Hillsbridge, and just because it’s you.’

  ‘Thanks – you’re a pal! Now – will you comb my hair for me?’

  Marilyn had thick dark shoulder-length hair and a fetish about having it combed.

  Jenny had obliged, wondering what she was letting herself in for. An evening at a boxing tournament – she must be crazy! But instead of hating every minute of it as she had expected, she was loving it!

  There must be something wrong with me! she thought as she sat beside Marilyn relishing every violent sweaty minute. Perhaps in another life I watched the gladiators in ancient Rome, or a knight on a great blinkered horse carried my colours into the joust. It’s just not right to feel so excited watching two men hitting one another!

  But it wasn’t that. It was the whole thing – the skill of the footwork, their serious determined expressions, the seconds, working frantically in their corners with sponges whilst they talked incessantly, issuing instructions, the tension when the referee stood centre ring between the two boxers waiting for the decision of the judges, the moment when it came and the victor’s hand was raised. There was something so primitive and yet so proud about the whole thing that Jenny felt almost like crying with excitement and a whole host of other emotions she couldn’t even begin to identify.

  Of course, she thought wryly, the contestants themselves might have something to do with it. It wasn’t every day you got to watch a succession of fit, muscled young men wearing nothing but singlet and shorts and those flattering boots that managed to look softly pliant and tough both at the same time. There was something attractive about every one of those boxers, even the little ones – the flyweights – had that gritty look which Jenny found so appealing.

  Marilyn’s Keith had his bout fairly early on. He was boxing for the local boys – hand-picked from clubs within a ten-mile radius. Good as they were, quite a lot of them were losing to their opponents – a team representing the Armed Forces. Though naturally she supported the local boys, Jenny thought that in a way it seemed only right that the servicemen should be able to handle themselves so well – though they were using their fists, not guns, she felt she would sleep a lot more soundly in her bed at night knowing that such fine specimens would be defending England in the event of another war.

  Keith’s fight was a close one. Marilyn gripped Jenny’s hand, hid her eyes, sobbed, screamed, shouted and held her breath until she turned puce. But in the end it was Keith’s hand the referee raised and the whole hall erupted in a cheer of approval.

  Between bouts Jenny looked round at the watching crowd – the officials of the Hillsbridge Amateur Boxing Club in their monkey suits and black dicky-bow ties, the local supporters, many of them men who had once been boxers themselves but had now either
turned scrawny or gone to flab, and a handful of women who managed to make more noise than all the men put together. But there were also quite a few young men who had come along to support the Services team and several of them were very attractive.

  One in particular caught Jenny’s eye – a tall fair-haired lad with an angular chin and strong nose. From this distance she couldn’t see what colour his eyes were, but she guessed they were blue.

  In the interval, when Marilyn was hanging proudly on Keith’s arm, she looked round for him, but he was nowhere to be seen. Jenny was disappointed; she hoped he hadn’t left. When the boxing began again she took her seat but found she was more interested in scanning the crowd for him than she was in watching the fights. Then she saw him, standing by the door that led to the changing rooms, wearing a towelling robe, and a moment later, when the next fight was announced, he made his way between the rows of chairs to the ring. For just a brief second she could have sworn he looked directly at her, then he climbed up on to the canvas and ducked under the ropes.

  ‘A middle-weight contest of three rounds,’ the dinner-jacketed man with the microphone announced, ‘between, on my right in the red corner, Ray Comer of Hillsbridge Amateur Boxing Club, and on my left in the blue corner, Bryn Thompson for the Armed Forces.’

  Jenny’s heart had begun to beat so hard she could feel the reverberations in her throat. The fair-haired boy – Bryn – took off his robe and she saw that he had the most wonderful lithe muscled body and sturdy boxer’s legs. Against him, Hillsbridge’s Ray Comer looked positively clumsy; shorter, thicker-set and bobbling agitatedly from foot to foot so that his red sash swung and bobbled too.

  As the referee motioned the fight to begin she saw that Bryn moved easily and even with her lack of expertise she guessed that Ray would be no match for him. But she had reckoned without the local boy’s strength and skill and the advantage that came from having the home crowd behind him. As the contest got under way she realised it wasn’t going to be the walkover she had imagined. First it swung one way, then the other; whenever Bryn scored a good punch, Jenny cheered excitedly.