by K. C. Finn
“I really hate that doctor,” I answered bitterly.
The beauty queen cracked a little smile on her made-up lips. She came round me to grab the handles of my chair, letting out a little laugh.
“Well that’s one thing we have in common,” she observed.
I found myself a little happier too. We had bonded, if only for a moment. Nevertheless, Blod pushed me over every large or jagged cobble she could find as we made our way home.
It was Thursday night that I started to worry about the appointment. During the week I kept telling myself that if I practised with the chair I’d improve, but as Friday drew nearer and nearer I had managed only two inches of distance before it felt as though my shoulders had been ripped from my body like a ragdoll caught in a bulldog’s teeth. I had to tell myself firmly that any distance was better than no distance and if that didn’t impress Doctor Bickerstaff then he could lump it for all I cared. I wasn’t sure if I’d be brave enough to tell him that to his face, but I supposed that when the time came to challenge him I’d find out.
That was how I came to be thinking about him at bedtime, most especially when Mam strapped my arms and legs into the torturous splints that were slowly turning my joints a regal shade of purple. I had gotten used to sleeping with them as the nights wore on; it was the pain in the morning that I’d begun to dread, especially that first agonising moment after taking them off. I tried not to think of it as Mam tucked me in with her kind, rosy face, leaving me the water and the biscuit that Leighton would come and steal in the morning. She put out my light and left me lying in the dark where I tried not to think about tomorrow.
I expected, as I always did, that I would probably visit somewhere interesting on my way to sleep, but I was most confused in my half-slumber to find myself staring directly at Doctor Bickerstaff’s movie star face. It took me a while to realise that I was looking into a mirror, at which point the horror set in. I was in his head. Bickerstaff was looking at himself in the polished mirror of a very pokey little bathroom with grey tiled walls. His blue eyes were bloodshot in the harsh light from the unshaded bulb and his chin had a dark, stubbly shadow growing on it.
It was strange enough seeing him in his navy pyjamas, but as the doctor started to brush his teeth it was the strength of his emotions that disturbed me the most. He had a very peculiar feeling hanging about him; he kept stopping in his night time routine to stare at his face again in the mirror, like there was something about his look that troubled him deeply. It was like that feeling when someone takes the last cake off the plate just before you go to grab it, except that it consumed him completely. He was Leighton when he’d finished a particularly good dessert, staring at the empty bowl. He was me when I watched people dancing at a fete, feeling the cold metal of my chair against my useless legs.
Bickerstaff wound his way to a small, single bed with starchy sheets, into which he climbed with that awful feeling still weighing down his chest. He checked his watch before he flicked off the light, but in the darkness of his small bedroom he was just laid there staring at the ceiling. I had been to some depressing minds during my dreamtime visits, but there was something different about his. Perhaps it was just because I knew him that it was all so awkward. Perhaps someone somewhere was trying to teach me to hate him a little bit less.
But he didn’t have to sleep with dirty great slabs of wood strapped to his limbs that bruised him all night as his joints resisted them. Aside from whatever thought was troubling his mind, his body lay healthily and comfortably in his crisp little bed. As my own sour thought overtook his deepening sadness, I felt a cold shiver travel through me. It seemed to travel through him as well, making him shift onto his side. Bickerstaff finally closed his eyes and soon we were both asleep.
***
I thought I could have done without the creepy and depressing experience of being inside Doctor Bickerstaff’s head, but when I went to my appointment the next day I was surprised by how much less intimidating he seemed after my little excursion. When he wheeled me briskly to his room I cared nothing for his smug, sharp-suited façade; I rather thought he must have noticed because he even gave me a curious smile when he took his place opposite me next to the desk.
“You seem very relaxed Catherine,” he observed.
“I really do prefer to be called Kit, if you think you can manage it,” I answered. It seemed the sight of him, depressed and alone in his navy pyjamas, had done wonders for my confidence.
Bickerstaff almost laughed, haughty and oblivious to the source of my amusement.
“I do hope you’ll be putting this newfound spirit of yours into your treatment,” he said in his schoolmaster tone.
“We’ll see,” was my reply.
“I’d like you to try and stand again,” he said.
Confidence, I learned then, is a very fragile thing. My sense of superiority flooded away as I remembered the embarrassing display from the last time the doctor had ordered me onto my feet. I thought about refusing to do it, but I had an idea that Bickerstaff was stubborn enough to just keep me there until I did as I was told.
“Do you enjoy seeing me fall over then?” I asked, gripping the arms of my chair as I forced my feet to find the lino floor.
“Not as much as you think I do,” he answered. I was annoyed that it wasn’t a clear ‘No’.
To my surprise he stood up after that and crossed the small gap between us, waiting patiently for my upheaval. Dragging my torso up by the strength of my elbows was just as painful as the last time I had tried it; I felt the familiar burning of the strain as flames of pain seared up and down my arms. I persevered, shifting myself forward forcefully onto my unsteady legs as I had before.
For the briefest of moments, I thought I had done it. I was standing. But it was just a few seconds of false hope, and this time as my knees gave way the doctor at least had the courtesy to catch me around the waist and drop me back into my chair. I felt the red flush of defeat in my cheeks, turning my face away from him and chiding myself for my own stupidity. I don’t know why I thought I could win against him, because every time I fell back into that chair I had lost. And I would always fall back into the chair.
Bickerstaff was writing in his file when I dared to look again. At least I had stopped myself from crying this time. His pen raced across the page he was turned to.
“You’re not practising moving around enough,” he said without looking up from the page, “Your elbows ought to be stronger.”
I bit my lip to resist answering him back. There were a lot of things about my body that I thought ought to be different; I didn’t need him pointing them out one by one like they were easy things to fix. No matter how troubled the doctor was in private, at least he could hide it behind his smart suit and smug face. I was troubled for all to see and pity me for it, and so long as I was stuck in this chair that fact was not going to change.
***
The first few months of life at Ty Gwyn turned into a drab but comforting routine from there on in. I devoted about a quarter of my free time to Doctor Bickerstaff’s rotten exercises and my mobility in the chair grew inch by inch until I could wheel from my bedroom door to the edge of the bed unaided. It was about three feet, which was not much use to me or anyone else, but it was enough to shut the rotten doctor up, which meant I had the other three quarters of my time left to train my other, far more important skill.
I went to school with Leighton many times, mentally of course, but his lessons in the winter term were simple things that I had learned years ago and I grew tired of sitting in his mind listening in. I tried to visit Mum’s mind plenty more times as the weeks went on, but the psychic journey to London gave me unrelenting headaches for hours after a trip. The headaches did get less the more carefully I focused on the connection between us, but in all truth her growing sense of guilt for our welfare and fears about the war made it hard to stay in her mind for very long.
With my two usual avenues of practice fast becoming useless, I de
cided that a few other targets around me would be a better use of my time. I deliberately avoided Doctor Bickerstaff for fear that his depression might be catching, but if I could get into his head from over the hill then the inhabitants of Ty Gwyn’s farmlands were surely within my grasp. Ness Fach was easy to find; one thought of her huge blue eyes and I was there with her rolling in the stiff winter grass and flinging Dolly across the mud. I was there when her Bampi picked her up by the ankle and told her it was too cold to play outside. I watched the upside down world full of her giggling joy as she was transported back into the house.
I tried Blodwyn a few times before I actually got her, my own eagerness to see what little miss perfect got up to in her spare time making me all the more determined. I wasn’t surprised to find that she was just as shallow in private as she was in public. Blod spent most of her free time doing and re-doing her hair into different styles from her magazine, trying on clothes and practising dance steps to the radio in her bedroom. I also learned through these little trips that the young farm boys Idrys had taken on for the winter were throwing love letters into her window attached to little stones. She laughed at them all, the boys were only about my age, and wrote things back like ‘No chance mochyn’ and ‘When you start to shave, we’ll see’.
I’d be lying to say I didn’t envy the attention; the farm boys treated me like a leper at worst and a statue at best, either way I was something to be avoided. But then what chance did I have with a newly-adult Celtic goddess flouncing about the place? The only thing that really surprised me about Blod was that she was, sometimes, actually nice to her sister. In the public parts of the house and when she was doing her chores, Ness was just constantly in Blod’s way and consequently was always being shouted at. But when Blod was upstairs having a break Ness quite often wandered into her room uninvited. The first time it happened I expected to feel Blod hit the roof and order the little wanderer out forthwith. But despite the huge age gap between them, Blod was actually quite a good sister when she thought no-one could see. She let Ness put some of her make-up on and let her bounce on her bed to the radio tunes. Sometimes she even sat and talked to her.
When those moments happened I let her mind go, too jealous of the sisterly bond to stay and listen in. I had Leighton, of course, but it wasn’t the same. And girl chat made me think of Mum too, for that matter. I had noticed a strange thing on that score whilst I was practising my visits. Out of any of the new minds that I had tried to reach in Bryn Eira Bach, none of them gave me the splitting headaches that I got from reaching Mum in London. I was tired certainly, after every encounter, but there was never so much pain as when I took my mind to hers. I pondered if it could be the distance between us that hurt so much, but the visits I made in half-sleep took me to all sorts of places much farther than London and I never woke up crying from those.
***
By the time the snow set in and Christmas loomed on the horizon, I felt I was ready for some serious new challenges. Mam had given me a few little chores to do in the house as my arms grew stronger, just polishing things or peeling vegetables before dinner, but I still had more time alone in December than I knew what to do with. Once Leighton was off school things were better and there were no shortage of preparations to be made for a Price family Christmas. Things went especially mad on the 22nd when Mam received a telegram delivered from the village post office.
“Clive and the boys are coming home for Christmas dinner!”
I was most keen to meet RAF Flight Sergeant Clive Price, so when they arrived on the morning of Christmas Eve I gave it my best effort to wheel myself out into the hall before anyone had to fetch me. I was so successful that Mam tripped over me when she came out to wait by the door herself, but she was good natured enough to congratulate me on the effort all the same.
“Oh Doctor Bickerstaff will be pleased with you,” she observed.
I didn’t care a fig for how the rotten doctor felt; I was just interested in keeping him from causing me trouble.
The door of Ty Gwyn burst open, bringing a flurry of cold, snowy air into the hall that made me shiver all over. The blast let in three tall, strapping figures in smart blue uniforms, the tallest of which slammed the door behind him. Clive’s smiling face was red with the morning frost as he took off his blue officer’s hat and hung up a huge overcoat that he had been carrying. It was clear that he and his sons hadn’t wanted the sight of their uniforms to be obscured as they made their way here. Mam rushed to Clive with an explosion of pride and relief, hugging him repeatedly before it was the turn of her sons to have their bones crushed.
I knew that Thomas was the blonde one and also the eldest child. He had a handsome face with a lot of Blodwyn’s features and the same pale blue eyes that ran through the whole family. The other son, two years younger at twenty-two, was Ieuan, which I had learned to say as Yai-yan in the run up to meeting him. He had Idrys’s gingery look, but with Clive’s long nose and square jaw.
“You must be Kit,” Ieuan said when Mam had released him. He shook my hand very gently. “Mam must’ve written a hundred letters about you and your brother being yur. I feel like I know you already.”
“Pleased to meet you Ieuan,” I replied with a smile.
There was a lot of bustling as Idrys, Ness and Blod each got their hugs whilst Leighton and I were introduced to the boys. It was a long time before everyone had spoken to everyone and we were all stood frozen in the black and white hall by the time they were all settled again. Clive and the boys were exhausted from their overnight journey across North Wales in the back of a truck, so Mam packed them off to bed each with a cup of tea and a biscuit and set about making a huge welcome home dinner. Idrys tried to put her off since we’d already be having a huge lunch the next day, but she wouldn’t be deterred.
I had gotten used to a full table of food at Ty Gwyn, but now that her boys were home I finally understood Mam’s tendency to overprovide. Clive, Thomas and Ieuan ate like they had been starving in the desert for weeks on end, consuming everything in their immediate vicinity and then asking for more, which Mam dutifully provided. Leighton seemed very glad to be at my end of the table where his share was safe from them, but as he gave me one of his cheeky looks, his eyes fell to my hands and he frowned.
“What’s happened to your skin?” he asked in a whisper.
I looked down, horrified to see a peculiar salmon-coloured rash spreading in blotches over my left hand. I pulled up the sleeve of my jumper to find it was travelling there too. It had happened before, now and then, just small patches, on my leg or on my tummy, but never anywhere that anyone could see, and certainly not on such a scale. Doctor Baxendale had told me it was just something some people got. I shoved my hand under the table, eating with only my fork.
“It’s fine,” I told Leighton, “Get on with your dinner.”
But it wasn’t fine, it was hideous. And, worse than that, I was starting to feel very hot in my jumper. Clammy beads of sweat formed under my hair at the nape of my neck, but if I took off the jumper now then someone besides Leighton was sure to notice the rash and make a fuss. It would most likely fade like it had in times gone by, so the last thing I wanted to do was make a spectacle of myself, especially with new people at the table. It had taken the last four months to get used to the first half of the Price family, I didn’t want to make an odd impression on the rest.
But the heat grew as dinner went on; I was starting to think it wasn’t just the jumper. I could feel sweat behind my knees under the table, even my feet were clammy in my shoes. When I checked under the table, the blotchy pink rash was also on my legs and in the space of fifteen minutes at the table it was suddenly on my right hand too. Mam was so thrilled to have her boys back that she hardly looked at anyone else, that was until I dropped my fork and it went clattering onto the plate loudly.
“Sorry,” I said clumsily, my eyes shifting in and out of focus as I tried to find her at the busy table, “Excuse me.”
I reached f
orward for the fork, but when I went to grab it my blotchy hand didn’t seem to find the right place.
“What on earth’s wrong with her?” Blod demanded. Her voice echoed in my head.
The room was suddenly darker. I wanted to ask who had switched off the lights.
“Oh my God,” said Mam somewhere very far away, “Somebody phone the doctor!”
The next thing I was aware of was the sight of the black beams of the ceiling in my downstairs bedroom. My eyes flickered open six or seven times before I could get them to actually stay open, so when they did I let them focus on the ceiling for a while as I tried to remember what had happened. I noticed as I lay in the bed that I wasn’t wearing my splints, so I shifted my weight around to see if any damage had been done when I presumably collapsed out of my chair at the dinner table. I was still horribly sweaty all over, my limbs were weak and though I could move them it was a terrible strain.
“Ah, good afternoon,” said a voice I recognised beside me.
I turned my head too quickly, feeling dizzy and sick. Doctor Bickerstaff. He wasn’t wearing his usual doctor’s attire, just a woolly jumper and a pair of corduroy trousers. He had a book on his lap and his face was terribly haggard. He looked as tired as I felt and a thick layer of blonde stubble covered his jaw.