A Family Affair Page 39

  ‘Heather!’

  ‘I don’t see many people. I’m sure I could get away with it. Then I’d go off on holiday – the baby is due in the summer – pretend it had come early … I honestly don’t think anyone would be any the wiser. There might be a few questions asked, but they’d soon forget it.’

  ‘You mean … you’d bring my baby up as if it were yours?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I mean. You’d be able to watch it grow up.’

  ‘Thinking you were its mother!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And I was just its auntie!’ The horror was in her voice, written all over her face.

  ‘Isn’t that better than giving it up to a stranger? Never seeing it again? Never knowing what it looked like – whether it was happy, well, dead or alive even? You’d be there, Jenny. At least you wouldn’t lose it altogether. Wouldn’t that be better?’

  ‘No!’ Jenny said. She was shaking all over, trembling with the fiercest emotion she had ever experienced. ‘I think it’s a terrible idea! I don’t know how you could even think of such a thing!’

  ‘I’m thinking of you, Jenny. And the baby. And yes, me too. I don’t want this baby to go to strangers any more than you do. Because …’

  She reached for Jenny’s hands; Jenny snatched them away.

  ‘I can’t believe you’re suggesting this! My baby – thinking you were its mother! Just imagine what it would be like! I’d have to watch it come to you instead of me. I wouldn’t have a single say in how it was brought up.’

  ‘Of course you’d have a say! I’d make sure you did.’

  ‘No!’ Tears were pricking her eyes. ‘I thought you were going to say you’d help me – look after the baby while I went to work or something. That would have been fine.’

  ‘Mum would never have that. People knowing you had an illegitimate baby. The shame would kill her.’

  ‘And it would kill me if my baby grew up thinking you were its mother. What do you take me for? What sort of person could do something like that?’

  Heather turned away. She looked older suddenly, haunted and sad. There were tears in her eyes too.

  ‘It was only an idea, Jenny. I didn’t mean to upset you. But think about it. Please. And talk to Mum. See what she says. You’ve got to talk to her, anyway. She’s got to be told.’

  ‘Don’t you think I know that?’ The tears spilled over and ran down Jenny’s cheeks as the terror of telling Carrie eclipsed all else once again. ‘I’d better go, Heather. She’ll be wondering where I am.’

  ‘So tell her now. Tell her tonight.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  She meant to. She really meant to. But when it came to the point she couldn’t. There was always some reason for putting it off. Just as she’d screwed up the courage something would happen to prevent her going ahead – David or her father would come in, or one of Carrie’s customers from the Kays Club she ran would come to the door with their weekly contribution or to pick up a parcel. There were twenty customers – well, twenty ‘turns’anyway to cover the twenty weeks; some people, Carrie herself included, had two turns – so the Club caused a lot of comings and goings. But even when the house was quiet and Carrie was on her own in the kitchen, Jenny lost her nerve at the last minute.

  Once the words were said they could never be unsaid. Jenny went cold, literally, when she imagined them leaving her lips, and the thought of Carrie’s reaction filled her with dread. She remembered all the times she had incited her mother’s wrath, and realised she was afraid of Carrie. Not physically, of course – she could only remember Carrie ever striking her once – a slap on the back of her legs when she was about five or six. Carrie had been wound up about something and Jenny kept dancing around, annoying her, and refusing to keep still. Jenny remembered the occasion very well simply because it had been an occasion – the day Carrie had slapped her. The one and only. But Carrie had other ways of showing her displeasure that were far worse, in Jenny’s experience, than a slap. The sending to Coventry, the cold tone of displeasure when she did speak, the way she had of making you feel that to go against her was a personal affront which hurt her deeply. Basically she was a good mother, strict but kind and generous, always ready to do almost too much for you, so that when she made it plain you’d upset her you felt so horribly guilty. So horribly, terribly, dreadfully guilty. Jenny loved Carrie very much and respected her and she wanted Carrie’s love and respect in return. How much of either could she count on when she confessed to that most heinous of sins – ‘Letting herself down’.

  And so she put the moment off, praying all the while that she would get a letter from Bryn, though hope had faded now, and let in despair.

  She wrote one more time, to tell him she was pregnant, and gave it to Carrie to post. She hated herself for what he might see as blackmail on her part but she told herself he had a right to know – and admitted privately that was just an excuse for this one last attempt to get a response from him. If it didn’t work this time, she promised herself, she wouldn’t humble herself by writing again. Or contacting him. And if, when she told Carrie, her mother wanted to know where to find him so as to make him face up to his responsibilities, she wouldn’t tell. Unless, of course, Carrie already had the address copied down somewhere. Jenny wouldn’t put that past her.

  But she wouldn’t willingly allow Bryn to be forced into anything. Frightened and wretched though she might be, she felt that somehow it was her problem and hers alone.

  In moments when she felt strong, Jenny made herself a promise. Whatever happened, she’d manage. Somehow.

  Helen was beginning to be concerned. It was more than two weeks now since she had confirmed Jenny’s pregnancy to Heather and asked that Jenny should make an appointment to see her, but so far that hadn’t happened. There had been no word from any of the Simmons family. Helen wondered how long she should let it go on before she did something about it. She was anxious to examine Jenny properly, give her advice about her ante-natal care, help work out some plan of campaign. Mother and baby homes got very booked up – if they didn’t soon do something about it, she might have difficulty finding Jenny a place. But the situation was delicate to say the least. Presumably Carrie didn’t yet know, or she would have been in the surgery banging the table and having her say, if Helen knew anything about it.

  Which meant she was sitting on a time bomb and whatever she did or didn’t do, was likely to upset at least one of her patients. If she spoke to Carrie she could be accused of breaking Jenny’s confidence; if she didn’t she could be seen as colluding with Jenny to hide the facts from her parents with whom she still lived and who were still, in some areas, legally responsible for her.

  The law of majority was a total mess, Helen decided. You could marry at sixteen with the permission of your parents or the courts but had to wait another year before ceasing to be a child in legal terms; you could fight – and die – for your country at eighteen but not vote or come into an inheritance until you reached the magic age of twenty-one.

  A total mess. And where did it leave her? Helen decided this was a case which could benefit from being discussed with at least one of her partners. But first she wanted to get over the other thing that was hanging over her head like the sword of Damocles. The inquest on Ida Lockyear.

  It took place on a Wednesday afternoon at the beginning of March in the room in the Victoria Hall which was used as a magistrates’court. Helen, who had been called to give evidence as she had expected, arrived early, smartly dressed in a grey costume with a pleated skirt and a small fitted jacket, and wearing, for once, a hat. It was only a small hat – scarcely more than a band of felt and feathers – but it clipped tightly just above her ears and made her feel uncomfortable. She left it on, nevertheless, feeling that the solemnity of the occasion warranted it, just as it warranted a pair of wrist-length cotton gloves.

  Helen took her seat in the front row of chairs which were lined up facing the bench and waited. She nodded to the policeman who ha
d attended the scene, PC Dowding, and to Charlie Gregory, the baker man, and Annie Tiley. Walter Evans, the Mercury reporter, was already installed too, with a notebook on his knee and an expectant expression on his rather red face. He looked as if he was in two minds as to whether or not to come over and speak to her and Helen dissuaded him by looking away. She looked away, too, when a man and woman she guessed were Ida’s son and daughter-in-law came in. The man looked to be in his middle forties, slightly built, and wearing a dark suit which, judging by its cut, had been bought for his wedding twenty or more years ago, a white nylon shirt, a cheap black tie and a black band fastened around his arm just above the elbow. The woman, too, had made some effort to appear in mourning. She wore a tight black costume which pulled uncomfortably round her bosom and stomach. Both wore sombre expressions.

  Perhaps, Helen thought, the grief concealed guilt. If they had visited more often and made sure Ida’s home was safe for her to live in she might not have died. But the thought only served to stir up her own feelings of guilt. Whatever Ida’s son might or might not have done, it was she, Helen, who had been Ida’s doctor. She had been on the spot when they had not and she had misinterpreted Ida’s calls for help.

  At precisely two o’clock, the policeman standing guard at the second door – the one nearest to the bench – opened it, peeped round, and cleared his throat.

  ‘All rise for HM Coroner.’

  The coroner’s name was Harvey Benson. He was a small rotund man with a fringe of hair surrounding a shiny dome, and with a pair of half-glasses perched precariously on the end of his rather bulbous nose.

  Harvey Benson liked his courts to be as informal as possible. Chatting to witnesses rather than interrogating them was much the best way to get to the truth, in his opinion. He said as much as he opened the proceedings and, as each witness added a little more to the story, Helen thought he was probably right.

  ‘What do you think happened?’ he would ask conversationally, sitting back in his chair and looking over the top of his glasses, and one by one they opened up, putting flesh on the bare bones of the tragedy.

  Helen, however, did not escape so lightly. As he questioned her she felt his censure; benign he might appear, but Harvey Benson had no patience with professionals who failed to do their job properly.

  ‘So the symptoms were all there,’ he said when Helen explained how Ida had come to the surgery.

  ‘They were.’

  ‘But you didn’t diagnose them as carbon monoxide poisoning.’

  ‘No. With hindsight I should have done, but as you yourself know, all these complaints could be attributed to a number of other things, from influenza to depression. They could even have been imagined.’ She felt bad saying that, casting aspersions on Ida’s character when she was not there to defend herself.

  ‘So you dismissed Mrs Lockyear as a hypochondriac.’

  ‘She had a history of hypochondria, yes. But I didn’t dismiss her. I ran every test I could think of to determine what was causing her symptoms and drew blanks on every one.’

  ‘But you didn’t do a test for carbon monoxide poisoning.’

  ‘No. I have to admit it never occurred to me. I wish it had – but it didn’t. I find it very difficult to accept that if it had occurred to me, I could probably have saved Mrs Lockyear’s life.’

  For the first time Harvey Benson seemed to relent.

  ‘Don’t be too hard on yourself, Doctor. You’re not the first to miss something like that and you won’t be the last. Without inside knowledge of Mrs Lockyear’s circumstances you couldn’t reasonably be expected to consider carbon monoxide poisoning. It is, after all, very unusual. Indeed, in my experience, rare indeed. I don’t think that any blame can reasonably be attached to you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Helen said. But it didn’t actually make her feel any better. She could have saved Ida’s life and she hadn’t. A fatal mistake. A professional failure. Simple as that.

  Eventually all the witnesses had been heard and the coroner summed up.

  ‘In all circumstances, I find that Mrs Lockyear’s death was accidental.’

  Helen stared at her hands, knotted together around her black cotton gloves in her lap. She was enormously relieved but it did nothing to ease the sense of guilt. She got up, turning away from Walter Evans, who was heading in her direction, and walked past the rows of seats to the rear door without looking to left or right. As she stepped out into the small lobby, a voice behind her said: ‘Just a minute.’

  She turned, not sure whether it was she who was being spoken to. Ida Lockyear’s son, Clarence, was behind her, his wife behind him.

  ‘You got away with it then,’ he said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You got away with letting my mother die.’

  ‘I’m sorry …’ she began.

  ‘And so you should be! If you’d treated her properly she’d be alive today. You should be struck off!’

  ‘Mr Lockyear …’ The viciousness of the attack had made her begin to tremble. ‘You heard what the coroner said …’

  ‘Oh yes, I heard all right. He covered up for you. You lot all stick together, don’t you? I shouldn’t have expected anything different. Well, I’m not leaving it there. My mother is dead because of you.’

  ‘Now just a minute.’ There was someone else at the doorway behind the Lockyears. As she recognised the familiar voice, Helen started with surprise. Paul! She hadn’t realised he had been in the court. He must have been in one of the back rows, hidden behind others. Now, in spite of his smart suit and tie, he looked for all the world as he must look to the attacking forwards on the rugby field – solid and rather threatening.

  Ida’s son hesitated, taken by surprise. Then, like a terrier squaring up to an Alsatian, he snapped: ‘Mind your own business!’

  ‘It is my business. That’s my colleague you are talking to.’

  ‘Oh – another of the clique!’ the man sneered. ‘You should be ashamed, all of you.’

  ‘Didn’t you hear what the coroner said?’ Paul said tartly. ‘He exonerated Dr Hall of blame. There was no way she could have been expected to know your mother’s boiler was emitting toxic fumes. The verdict was accidental death.’

  ‘Negligence, more like.’

  ‘On whose part?’ Paul asked.

  ‘Well – hers, of course.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Paul said smoothly. ‘I should point out that the coroner also said that if the boiler had been properly maintained, this tragedy would never have occurred.’

  ‘My mother was an old woman!’

  ‘Exactly. So don’t you think there might be others who had a duty of care to make sure the house was safe for her to live in?’

  ‘What a thing to say!’ That was Mrs Lockyear junior, determined to put her oar in. ‘My husband has just lost his mother and you’re trying to put the blame on him!’

  ‘Not at all. But I think, don’t you, that we should all accept a share of responsibility for what happened. When did you last visit your mother, for instance?’

  ‘I’m a busy man!’ Clarence Lockyear retorted. ‘I can’t keep driving up and down from London.’

  ‘And Dr Hall is busy, too. She has a great many patients besides your mother to look after. She can’t be expected to do the things one would normally expect members of the immediate family to do. For our part, I assure you we regret what happened very much, and lessons will be learned. But it’s totally wrong to try to shift the blame for what happened on to Dr Hall. She did her very best for your mother.’

  ‘And it wasn’t good enough,’ Mrs Lockyear junior was determined to have the last word. ‘Trying to blame my Clar! I never heard the like!’

  ‘I think we shall have to leave it there,’ Paul said. ‘If you wish to make a complaint to the GMC then of course you have every right to do so.’

  ‘And what good would that do? They’d stick up for you lot just the same!’

  ‘They would look at the facts and come to a balanc
ed conclusion,’ Paul said, adding, with emphasis: ‘Just as the coroner did.’ He touched Helen’s arm. ‘Shall we go?’

  She was shaking from head to foot.

  ‘Oh my God, Paul, that was awful!’

  ‘It was guilt, Helen. He feels guilty and he’s trying to shift the blame so as to ease his conscience. He hasn’t been near his mother for months.’

  ‘But he had a point. I should have known, Paul. I should have taken it further.’

  ‘We’ve been through this before, Helen.’

  ‘And I still feel terrible about it.’

  ‘Look.’ He took her arm. ‘From time to time, Helen, you are going to miss something.’

  ‘Misdiagnose, you mean.’

  ‘If you’d known about the boiler, you wouldn’t have misdiagnosed. You need facts to help you, otherwise you’re only guessing – taking shots in the dark. You ran every test I’d have run and they all came up negative. Unfortunately it never occurred to you to run the one test that might have uncovered the truth.’

  ‘And my patient died.’

  ‘Little as we may like it, we have to accept it. We’re human beings, Helen, not God Almighty, all seeing, all wise, whatever our patients might like to think.’

  ‘At this moment I feel like chucking it all in and doing something where lives aren’t at stake.’

  ‘Don’t talk such nonsense. You’re an excellent doctor. Think of all the lives you’ve saved.’

  ‘Right now I can only think of the one I lost. You don’t know how I feel, Paul.’

  He was silent for a moment. Then he said:

  ‘Believe me, Helen, I do know. I lost a patient once because I missed something. A young woman, with a young family. She had a three-month-old baby when she came to me complaining of a painful lumpy breast. I diagnosed mastitis; she took my word for it. She didn’t come back to me for another six months. By that time it was obvious to me that it wasn’t mastitis. She had breast cancer. Raging breast cancer. I sent her straight to hospital and they operated but it was too late. The cancer had spread to her lymph system and her spine. The baby was fifteen months old when she died, and her other children two and four years old. It’s a long time ago now. Her husband remarried and her children are all at secondary school. But I’ve never forgotten her, never stopped blaming myself for not spotting what was wrong in the first place and not following up to make sure the “mastitis” had cleared up. If I’d been on the ball I might have been able to save her life. But I wasn’t and she died, aged just twenty-nine. So you see, Helen, I do know exactly how you feel.’