The Quality Street Wedding

by Penny Thorpe

  ‘What’s her objection?’ Diana asked. ‘Is it legitimate?’

  ‘I don’t know, she didn’t say. She just said that she’d turn up on the day and stop it. You need to do something, Diana.’

  Diana didn’t take her eyes off the clock on the wall above her neatly cleared desk. It was evident that she did not think this situation was as urgent as Reenie did. ‘I’ll have a word with her beforehand and make certain she doesn’t interfere. However, just now I have a bus to catch and Dolly Dunkley can wait until Sunday morning.’

  But Diana was unlucky that day; as she’d been packing up her work to leave, a medical drama was unfolding in another office in which she was to play a part.

  Mrs Starbeck disliked people who made a fuss about illness and disliked even more the tendency of Mackintosh’s employees to stay at home when they were perfectly capable of coming to work and pressing on. She had first seen what people were capable of when she was a child out in Ceylon where the workers on her uncle’s estate wouldn’t try any nonsense about taking to their beds. Even the women would be back to work in the fields with their new-born babies strapped to their backs just hours after giving birth. Cynthia Starbeck would not be leaving her post for a slight scratch in her throat and a little rise in her temperature. Apart from toothache – which she conceded was dangerous – she did not believe in ill health; these things were all about mind over matter.

  ‘I want you to post this memorandum on the noticeboard in the Montelimar workroom, Dolly.’ Mrs Starbeck pulled a freshly typed sheet of foolscap from her Empire typewriter and thrust it in the direction of the young woman in front of her. ‘I’m shortening the dinner hour in their department by one quarter of an hour. If they don’t like it they must tell their fellow workers to return from sickness absence and make up the full quota of the work force.’

  ‘Are you quite all right, Mrs Starbeck?’ The messenger girl, who hoped to Dickens she didn’t look anything like the absent Dolly Dunkley, took the proffered sheet of paper and became even more concerned. ‘You look a bit of a funny colour.’

  ‘I’ll thank you not to make comments of a personal nature, Verity Dunkley. Please go immediately and do as I’ve instructed.’

  Starbeck was glad to have an excuse to send the girl to the other end of the factory. She was confident that the pounding headache she was experiencing would abate once she’d got rid of Dunkley.

  Mrs Starbeck picked up her first piece of correspondence and was seized by a fit of coughing. She fished in her skirt pocket for her clean handkerchief, coughing into her right hand all the while. The deep paper cut was throbbing and hot to the touch, but she had left it uncovered, confident that fresh air would remedy it far more quickly than any mollycoddling. But her head did pound and she felt so parched …

  Some time passed before Mrs Starbeck awoke, her face clammy with perspiration, her cheek sticking uncomfortably to the blotter on her desk. She was dimly aware of a gathering of people around her, touching her, loosening the collar of her blouse, feeling her pulse.

  ‘How long has she been like this?’ The question was asked by someone she knew, a familiar voice. It was her father’s voice. No, it was a woman’s voice. There were so many unwelcome voices crowding around her peace and quiet.

  ‘She sent me away to put up a notice, but she thought I was someone else, and when I looked at the notice I saw that it was all nonsense so that’s when I went to fetch Nurse Munton.’

  Someone had turned on her desk lamp and the light was painfully bright. She wanted water and quiet, and she was sure she was on her father’s boat and it was rocking from side to side while it sailed through the coalmines on her mother’s morning-room rug. The thirst constricted her throat and reached into the throbbing pain in her hand behind her eyes; they were all one.

  ‘I came as soon as I could. How bad is it?’ A new voice, a capable voice, another pair of hands, but blissfully cool.

  ‘We’ve called for a doctor, but …’

  ‘No, call for an ambulance. She needs to be removed to the isolation hospital. Don’t get too close to her. Have you touched her? Then wash your hands immediately. She has a very bad case. I doubt she’ll live through the night.’

  By the time Cynthia Starbeck entered the isolation hospital she had lost all sense of her surroundings, or what was being said about her. The nurses considered it a mercy because she was very far gone. There was an open wound on her hand which had become so infected that it had turned green and purulent and her fingertips were a dark purple tinged almost with black and there was a blue tinge to her earlobes and lips. This last symptom was the most worrying for the staff at the isolation hospital; it was a sign that she was developing blood clots in her lungs which would hamper her breathing at best, kill her at worst. There was no doubt that she had succumbed to blood poisoning. The bacteria coughed from her septic throat had entered the paper cut in her hand and now quietly worked away to end her life.

  ‘Can anything be done for this one, doctor?’ The night sister who’d attempted to make up a bed for Cynthia Starbeck on a bench in a corridor had a long shift ahead of her and she would need to prioritise her attentions; there were plenty of other patients who needed her.

  ‘I don’t like the look of that festering wound. Why don’t people come in sooner?’ The doctor frowned behind his cloth mask. ‘Have it washed and apply a magnesium sulphate paste to draw out the poison. I don’t think it’s worth giving her anti-toxin; if she were going to develop scarlet fever we’d see it by now. Hmm … nasty case of clotting in her fingertips; looks like they might need to come off.’

  ‘Nil by mouth, doctor?’

  ‘Not yet. See if she lasts the night. No sense putting her through anaesthesia if she’s on her way out. Notify me at the first signs of necrosis and we’ll make a decision about theatre then.’

  ‘Shall I tell the chaplain to notify her family?’

  ‘Yes, I think that’s wise. There’s very little chance she’ll pull through and they’ll need to prepare themselves for the worst. They’ll need to quarantine either way.’

  Cynthia Starbeck awoke from the nightmares of fever to face the nightmares of reality. She was disorientated and weak, but she was fully aware of her surroundings and she was horrified. She lay in a crumpled nest of bedding which was drenched in her perspiration. This was no hospital bed, but some low, creaking army cot pressed up against the wall of a corridor, not a hospital ward or a sickroom. The sounds and smells would have been enough to tell her that she was not alone: this corridor was crowded to capacity with other such sufferers as she.

  Mrs Starbeck tried to push the damp bedding away from her, but something about the feel of it on her fingertips – or rather the absence of feeling – made her look down at her hands.

  At first the shock struck her dumb; she didn’t understand what she was seeing and waived her hands violently in the vain hope that these horrible, alien fingers were not attached to her and could be shaken out onto the floor and away from her. But no matter how she struggled to wriggle away from them, these ugly fingers were now her own. What had happened to her while she slept? Who had done this to her? She blinked hard and rapidly but the sight did not change. The tips of her fingers were not only black, but they were beginning to shrivel to sharp little points like the talons of some terrifying bird of prey. Her fingernails, streaked with the same dehydrated blood, now curled over dead flesh. She could feel nothing in them and she began to scream.

  ‘There now, dearie,’ a staff nurse hurried to her side, ‘don’t you wake up the ward, there’s no need for that. Nothing to worry about, we’ll get you straight into theatre …’

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  There could never have been a good time for the infamous factory foal to be delivered, but that afternoon was perhaps the worst possible time for Diana Moore. It was not only the afternoon on which she was trying to get away to see her daughter Gracie, but it was also the day on which Mrs Starbeck had been removed to the fe
ver hospital. Cynthia’s case of scarlatinal infection would put some parts of the factory back into isolation measures after they had only just emerged from them and Diana knew that the work of implementing all this would not only fall to her, but it would fall to her to complete immediately.

  Diana had a lot to do and a lot on her mind when she arrived at Mrs Wilkes’s office with her clutch of correspondence, and she was so preoccupied that she did not initially notice the visitor in her manager’s office.

  ‘Ah, Diana,’ Mrs Wilkes picked up her cup and saucer, ‘just the girl. You know Mr Parsons from Men’s Employment.’

  Diana nodded at her opposite number and waited for Mrs Wilkes to offer her explanation:

  ‘Mr Parsons says that they require the assistance of Women’s Employment in the matter of the factory stables. The much-anticipated foal was delivered in the night.’

  Diana fixed Mr Parsons with a steely eye and said, ‘I was not aware that we had any female staff in the factory stables, Mr Parsons.’

  Mr Parsons smiled a smug little grin which suggested that his department felt they held a winning card. ‘The veterinary surgeon is a lady.’

  Mrs Wilkes smiled over her teacup to Diana with a look which suggested that she too thought this was outrageous, but they weren’t in a position to argue about it.

  ‘We would like,’ Mr Parsons managed to pronounce, through his oily grin, ‘an investigation into the lineage of the said foal, a draft company policy, a draft disciplinary process, and a subsequent tribunal to be conducted by your department once the culprit has been identified.’ When Diana and her manager did not reply – their false smiles beginning to make their faces twitch – Mr Parsons went on, ‘Men’s Employment are so busy at present. We are planning the annual golf tournament for the senior staff at the Norwich Factory and we have been requested to commission a solid silver trophy in honour of the occasion. I’m sure you quite understand.’

  ‘Oh, we do, Mr Parsons, we do.’ Amy Wilkes’s smile was beginning to look rictus and she couldn’t sweep the man out of her office fast enough, but she made certain that he did not have the satisfaction of seeing them appear daunted. As the door closed on him, she said, ‘Well, Diana, what do you think the odds are that they deliberately hired a lady veterinary surgeon just so they could drop this at our door?’

  ‘Just to be clear, Mrs Wilkes, you’re not suggesting that someone in our department takes this on, are you?’

  ‘Oh, but of course. In fact, I thought I’d give it to you. It’s not often that one has the opportunity to write a disciplinary policy, investigate a breach of it – and then hold a tribunal all in the course of one project. It will be excellent experience for you. I suggest you go down to the stables and see what you can find out. If you’re lucky, you might even be able to speak to the vet.’

  ‘So just to be clear,’ Diana pinched the bridge of her nose and tried to remain impassive, ‘at present we have the Italian fascists helping the Spanish nationalists to bomb Spain; we have a war between China and Japan; we’ve got unknown submarines firing torpedoes at British ships in the Mediterranean; we’ve got shootings and explosions in Palestine on public transport; Sir Oswald Mosley has doubled the number of card-carrying fascists in Britain; we’ve got employees in Germany who we can’t bring home; we’ve got a shortage of women staff while they sit out their quarantine; and the de facto head of Time and Motion is in the fever hospital, but you want me to write a disciplinary policy for any Mackintosh’s employee who allows a Mackintosh-owned horse to become pregnant without company permission?’

  ‘Yes, that’s about the size of it.’ Mrs Wilkes sipped her tea, her little finger tilting upward as she lifted her teacup from its saucer. ‘Do you foresee any difficulties with that?’

  ‘No, Mrs Wilkes, I’m sure it will be a most enjoyable project.’

  ‘It will if you handle it correctly. The order of the day is perfunctory, Diana. Give them their disciplinary policy on the back of a Quality Street carton and tell them to lump it – we’ve got more important things to do and we also don’t want them to sack Reenie Calder over a horse!’ And she winked at Diana.

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Dr Georgina Spanswick had a large and genial soul, but like all pioneers she was made of tough stuff. Over a decade before she had been among those first intrepid Englishwomen to gain recognition as veterinary surgeons by the Royal College and the steely determination it had taken to get there had never really left her.

  This tenacity notwithstanding, it was a bad time to qualify as a vet; horses were falling out of favour with businesses and for every new client she added to her practice she lost three to the growing trend for cars, vans, and tractors. The trade depression might have slowed the investment in motor vehicles for a time, but it had also squeezed purses so that her patients’ owners couldn’t afford her fees. Dr Spanswick could have left the profession – she had other options – but she stayed in it for love.

  It was a happy accident which brought her to the factory stables just as Diana was arriving there herself. Dr Spanswick had come out in the small hours of the morning when the overnight stable lad had raised the alarm that an expected foal was now coming, but the mare was in some distress. Dr Spanswick had delivered the foal and if she had sensed a tension among the staff in the factory stables, she hadn’t mentioned it, or asked what was the matter; she knew that the staff would tell her in time. She suspected that the uneasiness among the staff was being passed on to the horses and was the reason for the mare’s trouble – a rather loud murmur of the heart. These things could often be brought on by nerves and be recovered from with rest and she had come back to check on the situation so happened to be at the stables when Diana arrived and asked her questions.

  ‘Is it healthy? Will it be a good enough sort of horse?’ Diana asked the vet. She felt no need to conceal her total ignorance of matters equine or zoological; her job on this occasion was to pay lip service to the Men’s Employment Department and to give the most cursory investigation into the parentage of the animal.

  Dr Spanswick responded to the questions as though they were the most insightful she’d heard that day. ‘He’s healthy in body and limb and he’s got an inquisitive nature; he should make a jolly sound working animal. Good all-rounder, I’d have thought.’

  ‘And his parentage?’ Diana hoped to God there was no way to give an answer to her next question. ‘Is there any way of telling who might have sired him?’

  Dr Spanswick folded her arms, tilted her head, and gave the foal a look of careful inspection. ‘Well, he looks nothing like his mother. He’s apron-faced, but he’s also jug-headed. He might grow out of that, I suppose, but it’s distinctive and I’d have thought it probable that his sire had one of those traits; I’ve not seen any horse in the factory stables with a similar profile, but I expect time will tell.’

  Diana knew that time would tell and it was as well to get it over with there and then to save unnecessary dramatic revelations later. ‘Have you ever seen a horse called Ruffian? Lives on the Calders’ farm.’

  Dr Spanswick squinted her eyes at the foal with incredulity and then her face lit up in recognition. ‘Of course! I don’t know why I didn’t see it before; he has the same sharp withers. Very distinctive-looking horse; unmistakeable.’ She beamed a warm grin at the bandy-legged youngster. ‘Oh, you are like your papa, aren’t you?’

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  ‘Your friend from work is here to see you, Miss Starbeck.’ The auxiliary nurse had an irritating habit of allowing any callers to wander up to Cynthia’s bed, regardless of whether or not they had received an invitation to do so by the invalid herself. This would not have happened if she’d still had the money for a private nursing home, but as it was, Cynthia was doomed to put up with the loathsome communal facilities at the cottage hospital run on charity terms by the borough council.

  ‘Look cheerful, Miss Starbeck,’ the auxiliary was determined to dragoon her patients into grateful compl
iance, ‘some people would be very glad to have as many visitors as you have.’

  Cynthia did not think herself lucky. She had survived the scarlatinal infection, but what use was mere survival if the disease took so much of you with it? The doctor had explained that the pains in her joints and her head were likely to last for many months – if they ever went away at all. It was the nature of that particular strain of streptococcal bacteria which had caused the outbreak; the medical officers had observed the same thing in patients who had survived the Doncaster outbreak. He’d also told her that she was lucky. They’d only had to amputate her fingers and not her hands so the recovery time would be so much shorter than if it had been her hands which were necrotic. She had been so very, very lucky. She would need plenty of rest, of course, but the doctor was sure that her friends and family would take good care of her once she returned home.

  ‘And you’ll need your friends all the more now,’ the doctor had told her and she’d nodded, pretending to be rich in friends. ‘You will need them to do a great many things for you until you can learn to do them for yourself again. But don’t worry, in time you’ll be able to feed yourself once more, dress yourself, perhaps even write little notes. I think you’ll surprise yourself with just how much you can achieve. You’ve been very, very lucky.’

  She should have known what would happen next; the doctor wrote a note to her employers excusing her from work for six weeks – as was customary – but he also explained the nature of her illness and the changes and adaptations which would be required in the office on her return. The letter had fallen on Diana’s desk.

  Now Diana asked, ‘How have you been?’ without enthusiasm for an answer, as she pulled the utilitarian hospital chair closer to Cynthia’s bed and ushered Cynthia’s other visitor closer.

  ‘I’ve had a lot more visitors than I want,’ Cynthia Starbeck said flatly.