by Cathy Kelly
Izzie’s hand flew to her mouth. Gran?
‘– but your aunt Anneliese tried to kill herself today. Drown herself, I should say. Somebody pulled her out of the sea in time. She’s in hospital. Edward and I were just with her.’ She could hear the shock in his voice. ‘Phone me when you get this. Love you, bye.’
Izzie shuddered. Her poor darling Anneliese. Only today, Izzie had been thinking about her and how she was surviving without her husband. Izzie had tried not to think about that because she didn’t want to compare Anneliese with her own story. She didn’t want to cast Anneliese and Elizabeth in the same role. She couldn’t bear to do that. There was nothing about her and Joe that mirrored Nell and Edward, was there?
NINETEEN
The day after Anneliese Kennedy tried to drown herself, Jodi bought herself a pregnancy testing kit and when Dan had gone to school, she went into the bathroom and used it. She would never have thought of such a thing had it not been for her mother saying that she’d had a shock, and instead of doing any sightseeing the next day, wouldn’t it be a good idea if the three of them did something relaxing, like taking spa treatments in the hotel.
‘Sounds great, Mum,’ Jodi had said. ‘I’ll go along to reception and book.’
They’d been having coffee in the lounge and trying to plan their day when an acquaintance of Dan and Jodi’s had walked by, and told her the news.
‘Trying to kill yourself is not the answer to anything,’ had been her aunt Lesley’s sniffy comment about it. ‘Just as well we never met her. I don’t like being around negative people.’
At which point Jodi’s mum had finally told Aunt Lesley she was being rude and why didn’t she leave them alone if she wasn’t going to be supportive.
Lesley, unused to her sister standing up to her, had stomped off furiously, leaving Jodi and her mother to talk.
Finally, Karen had suggested the spa treatments. ‘You need something lovely to help you chill out,’ she said. ‘I love those aromatherapy massages, they really take the strain out of your whole body. Lesley would hate that, though. She’s more of a manicure person.’
At the reception desk, Jodi had been put on the phone to the spa where she’d talked to a friendly therapist who’d listed their treatments.
‘We’ve got a lovely mum-to-be special on this week,’ she added, ‘if that applies to anyone in your party.’
Jodi had been about to say no, it wasn’t suitable, when a thought occurred to her. She had a very clear memory of sitting in Dorota’s with Anneliese and having to rush to the loo because her period had come. The cramps which always followed at high speed had made her feel so awful, she’d had to go home, and Anneliese had gone to the chemist to get some painkillers for her.
That had been six weeks ago – one and a half menstrual cycles. Two plus two equalled baby. She felt the same wild burst of excitement she’d had the last time, but she felt fear too. The last time, she’d miscarried. She couldn’t bear to go through that again.
‘On second thoughts, could I book treatments for two instead of three?’ she said to the therapist. ‘A facial, mani and pedi for my aunt, Lesley Barker, who’s staying in the hotel, and an aromatherapy massage and facial for my mum. Eleven o’clock for both? Great.’
‘Mum, I’ve booked you both in but you know, I forgot that I’m going to see this lady in the nursing home tomorrow – it’s part of my research for the Rathnaree story.’ This wasn’t precisely true. Jodi had been meaning to see Vivi Whelan for days but hadn’t got round to it. Still, the trip would give her an excuse to get away from Aunt Lesley. Right now, between the possibility of her being pregnant and the sadness over poor Anneliese, she needed to be as far away from her aunt as was humanly possible. If she was pregnant, she didn’t want her baby raised by someone else because she was in jail for manslaughter.
In her bathroom, she sat on the side of the tub with her eyes closed and then opened them to look at the little window. Two fat blue lines sat side by side. Two lines meant pregnant. Pregnant. Jodi sat with her hands clasped to her mouth and rolled the idea around in her mind. If only she could be given a guarantee that this time everything would be all right, then she might allow herself to feel happy. But nobody could give her that.
The meetings with the miscarriage support group had shown her that some people endured many miscarriages before carrying a baby to term. She didn’t think she’d be strong enough to cope with the pain a second time round.
‘Don’t panic,’ she told herself, and put the kit carefully away in her knicker drawer. ‘Don’t panic. Keep yourself busy and don’t panic’.
She gathered up her notebook and tape recorder. Seeing Vivi Whelan would be a good way of letting everything percolate in her brain.
Laurel Gardens was a long, two-storey building surrounded by beautifully kept gardens. Anneliese went there every few days to visit Lily, Jodi knew.
‘I came to visit Mrs Vivi Whelan?’ Jodi said at the front desk, wondering if there was a security system in place to protect the people in the home, and ready with an explanation about why she was there.
‘Great. She loves visitors,’ said the woman behind the desk cheerily. ‘Go on in, take the first left down the stairs to the garden room and buzz there. They’ll let you in.’
‘Er, OK,’ said Jodi, surprised at the lack of vetting. Anneliese had said it was a lovely place, but she hadn’t mentioned this laid-back approach to visitors.
On the inside, Laurel Gardens was the sort of place a person might rest in very happily. Decorated in soothing shades of apple green, soft classical music drifted out of a radio somewhere, the smell of baking permeated the air and there was no roaring or screaming from discontented people. Instead, the doors were open to a large garden and residents sat inside on armchairs or outside under the shade of parasols. The staff wore white but they weren’t bustling round like they might in a hospital: here, they sat beside their patients, talking, smiling, patting an arm here and holding a cup up for someone there.
‘I’m looking for Mrs Whelan,’ she asked one of the nurses.
‘She’s over there, sitting at the last table in the sun.’
Vivi Whelan was a rounded lady with little wisps of white hair curling round her face and a beaming smile which she presented to the world. A nurse was feeding her a bowl of cut fruit and as soon as Jodi sat down beside her, Mrs Whelan said, ‘Sarah! Lovely!’ and smiled at her with the distant benevolence of one who had long since lost touch with reality.
The lack of vetting at the desk suddenly made sense to Jodi: she’d had to be buzzed inside the garden room area and the garden itself was surrounded by a high fence. There was no way the residents could get out and it soon became apparent that not that many people came in. The garden room was carefully locked because most of the people there were living in their own world.
Jodi felt sorry she’d never been to visit Lily now: she hadn’t wanted to be intrusive, but now she realised that visitors were important in a place like this, proof that the people weren’t forgotten.
‘No, it’s not Sarah,’ said the nurse gently. ‘Sarah was her sister,’ she explained to Jodi.
‘Hello, Mrs Whelan, I’m Jodi Beckett,’ Jodi said gently. ‘I came to talk to you because Dr McGarry said you might be able to help me.’
Mrs Whelan nodded happily.
‘I don’t want to be here under false pretences,’ Jodi said, directing her conversation to the nurse. ‘I’m trying to write a history of Rathnaree House. Dr McGarry – old Dr McGarry, that is – said I should come to see Mrs Whelan because she knows all the history of Tamarin, but if it’s not appropriate, then I’ll go.’
‘Vivi loves talking about the past,’ the nurse said. ‘She doesn’t have that many visitors, just her immediate family, so it’s nice for her to have a new face and a chance to talk. You’re not doing her any harm. The past is another place for her, somewhere she’s comfortable. The present and the recent past are her problems. But if you want information, her daughter, Glor
ia, might be able to help. I’ll give you her phone number.’
Gloria sounded so bad-humoured on the phone that, at first, Jodi assumed the other woman was irritated by Jodi going near Laurel Gardens and her elderly mother in the first place.
But it soon became apparent that irritation was her normal state.
‘We’ve lots of papers of my mother’s, all her bits and bobs. I’m fed up with dragging them around with us. You see, we’ve moved three times in the past five years,’ Gloria informed her testily. ‘My husband’s job. When we got back to Waterford last autumn, I told him if he needed to up sticks again, then he was on his own.’
‘Perhaps I could drop in and talk to you sometime,’ Jodi said hesitantly.
‘I don’t know much,’ Gloria went on, ‘but I could give you a look at Mother’s things. I’m at home now.’
‘Now?’ Waterford was a forty-minute drive away.
‘I’m a busy woman.’
‘Give me your address and I’ll be there as soon as I can,’ Jodi said. In for a penny and all that. And she needed to keep her mind off the two blue lines on the pregnancy kit. Driving miles to Waterford would certainly fit the bill.
By the time she got to Gloria’s house, Jodi was sorry she’d started. Despite her best efforts, all she could think about in the car was her baby and the miscarriage. She’d been mad to think of doing this right now. The trail to Rathnaree was bare and the flicker of excitement she’d felt at the start was waning. There had to be stories behind that wonderful old house, stories surrounding the people in the faded sepia photograph. But they were going to remain hidden.
Gloria’s home was a semi-detached house on a busy road near the bishop’s palace, and Jodi’s sense of irritation with the whole project heightened when she had to circle the area three times to find parking, and then walk ages to find a ticket machine to pay the parking fee.
‘I must be mad,’ she thought as she finally pushed open the gate to the house. When Gloria opened the door and seemed pleased to see her, Jodi was a little surprised.
‘You won’t believe what I’m after finding,’ Gloria announced, ushering Jodi in.
‘What?’ asked Jodi, not convinced that it would be anything to do with her search. Already Gloria struck her as a bit of a fruitcake.
‘I knew we had papers and stuff, but it’s mainly old doctor’s bills and X-rays and things. Mother’s health was never good. But look at this: a box of old letters and all sorts of things. There’s nothing valuable in there, mind. I looked. I was hoping for a diamond necklace!’ She squawked with delight at her own joke. ‘Take care of it all.’
‘Oh, I will,’ Jodi said, her heart leaping as she looked at the box of papers and documents. Suddenly, the surge of excitement about uncovering the past came back to her.
‘But I want it all back, mind. And if you do a book, will you say that you got all the stuff from me?’
‘Of course,’ said Jodi, who’d have offered her own left leg at that precise moment, just so that she could get her hands on the precious bits of paper.
‘This is fabulous,’ she said, picking up an old newspaper clipping gently. Gloria had pulled it all out on the floor and Jodi quickly came to the conclusion that the best thing to do was to put it all away, take it home and sit down and sift through it all carefully. She felt like Carter, closing up King Tut’s tomb and saying he’d come back later when he had more time.
‘I promise I’ll write you a detailed list of everything I find in the box,’ she said, ‘and I can photocopy stuff and take photographs of it and then you can have all the originals back.’ She knew the right way to document archaeological finds.
‘It might be a load of old rubbish,’ Gloria said ‘but it’s the sort of thing you were looking for, isn’t it?’
‘Exactly what I was looking for,’ Jodi agreed.
At home, Jodi had turned the second bedroom into her office and she carefully took out every piece of paper, listed them and tried to organise them into chronological order. There were letters in a tiny, neat hand on filmy notepaper – letters from Lily Kennedy to her best friend, Vivi McGuire.
Jodi made herself comfortable on the office chair and began to read.
TWENTY
October 1944
Lily knelt on the bare floorboards in her thin cotton nightie, and through a chink she’d made between the blackout curtain and the window, stared out at the ghostly city in front of her. It was freezing; even on the surgical ward, always guaranteed to be warm, she’d felt the cold that day.
The ward had been short-staffed and, in between holding the hand of a man who’d come back from theatre after the trauma of having surgery for colon cancer, Lily had ended up on bed-pan duty.
The patient, a corporal who’d seen action in Africa, had begun to cry the last time she’d left him.
‘Don’t go,’ he said, grabbing her hand weakly. He was pale under his desert tan, and although he’d insisted on shaving that morning before surgery, he already had stubble on his face, making him look somehow more vulnerable.
Lily knew she was no good as a nurse if she couldn’t detach a little, but this man, drowsy and sick after the anaesthetic, seemed so desperate for her attention.
With his coal black hair and sad face, he reminded her of her father: a kind man stuck in a difficult situation. When he’d been half-delirious after the operation, he’d muttered constantly about the noise of the tank guns.
‘Will I write to your family and tell them how you are, Arthur?’ she asked.
His daughter worked in an aircraft factory near Slough and his wife was at home in Liverpool, taking care of their two smaller children. ‘It would be lovely for them to hear you got through this and that you’re getting better.’
‘Thank you, Nurse Kennedy,’ he said, choking back tears.
At the door to the ward, Lily could see Matron standing, her searing gaze taking in every patient and every nurse. It was nearly teatime and Lily had other duties to attend to, but when the two women’s eyes met, Lily read Matron’s agreement for her to stay with Arthur.
Matron was a woman nobody dared to cross, but Lily liked her for all that. Lily had been trained to work quickly and efficiently, and she applied those skills whatever the task. What was more, she never quailed under Matron’s fierce glare.
Matron’s favourite catchphrase was ‘Your best isn’t good enough, Nurse, I want it to be my best.’
She never said this to Lily.
Whether it was taking care of patients or general dogsbody duties that came with nursing training, Lily did it all.
Diana definitely suffered more under Matron, who did her utmost to ensure that her few de butante nurses didn’t receive any special treatment.
It was the first time Lily had realised that being born into privilege could work against you: nobody expected anything of her because of where she came from, but with Diana, they anticipated a lady-of-the-manor haughtiness. It was unfair because there was nobody with fewer airs and graces than her friend. From sharing clothes to sharing her godmother’s house, Diana gave everything she had, including her love and friendship.
The plus of being in their final year of training was that Lily, Diana and Maisie had been allowed, grudgingly, to live outside the nurses’ crowded accommodation. Two weeks ago, they’d moved into rooms in a small house at one end of a mews just off the Bayswater Road that belonged to Diana’s godmother, Mrs Vernon. Quite bare, because Mrs Vernon had moved a lot of her furniture down to her house in Gloucestershire, the house was, nevertheless, a blessing for the three nurses. Diana’s parents owned a great townhouse in Kensington that had been damaged by a bomb during the Blitz and left uninhabitable: the three of them had gone there to rescue a few bits and pieces to make their new home more comfortable. Diana had thought of asking Philip’s grandmother if they could take a couple of pieces of furniture from the big house in South Audley Street, but Lily had winced and said no.
‘We’ve got everything we need her
e,’ she said, worried in case Diana suspected the real reason why she didn’t want a single item from that house near her. South Audley Street meant Jamie, and Lily didn’t want any reminders of him. He was in her head often enough as it was, without having to look at a chair or a table from that damn house to ram it home.
Lily’s room in their new home was at the back of the house and looked out on to a small square of garden that she’d considered growing vegetables in. If nearby Hyde Park could host pigs and vegetables, she could supplement their rations with produce from Mrs Vernon’s little garden. But since they’d moved in, she’d changed her mind. They were all working such long shifts, and their time off was much too precious. It was far nicer to spend it lying on the couches in the drawing room, listening to the gramophone, and occasionally, when they could lay their hands on some coal, lighting a fire.
Mrs Vernon had quite a collection of orchestral music and Lily loved lying back on the couch, closing her eyes and losing herself in the music.
Diana had long since realised that Lily felt her lack of education badly, and she’d been more than happy to talk about art and literature, with Lily eagerly listening, keen to learn. The National Gallery’s treasures had been hidden in caves for safekeeping, but once or twice they’d been to the lunch-hour concerts in the gallery where, for a shilling, they listened to great musicians.
Sometimes, Diana talked about her life growing up, something she hadn’t done much before because she sensed the vast differences in their lives made Lily uncomfortable. Yet now, in this house where they could relax, and having come through so much together, it seemed more apt to be honest about their lives.
‘My best friend, when Sibs was small, was the cook’s daughter, Tilly,’ Diana said. ‘We used to play hide-and-seek in the orchard, and sit in the nursery and play with my doll’s house. I’d had governesses but I can’t say I ever learned anything. Mademoiselle Chamoix was the best, and even then, she only stayed a year. Then, when I was nine, Mummy and the rector’s wife cooked up a scheme where her sister, who was getting over a love affair, would come and teach me.