A Family Affair

by Janet Tanner

  Now that she had met Enid, Helen could understand why the gathering had been dignified by the sobriquet ‘soirée’.

  Like her living room, Enid was all faded gentility with a nod towards the fashion of the day which somehow just managed to miss the mark. Her greying hair was swept into a smooth chignon, yet her fringe, soft and bubbly, looked as if it had just come out of curlers. Her lips were a fashionable pink, but she had applied a similar colour to her cheeks in well-defined patches that made her look oddly like a middle-aged Dutch doll. Her voice was girlish, her accent as mincing as her brother’s was local. Her hands, with their bright pink nails, fluttered, her small eyes darted, her bright smile tightened into a grimace of disapproval each time her glance fell on Matthew.

  Enid enjoyed being the doctor’s sister, Helen imagined. It conformed perfectly to all her delusions of grandeur. But Matthew did not. No doubt she nagged him ceaselessly about his clothes, his behaviour, his way of speaking, but without the slightest effect. As Paul had said, Matthew would indulge her and ignore her, going his own sweet way.

  ‘That chap hasn’t bothered you again, has he?’ Paul said unexpectedly.

  ‘Chap … ?’ For a moment she was puzzled, wondering what on earth he was talking about, then as she realised she felt an uncomfortable flush begin in her neck. She’d hoped Paul had forgotten about the embarrassing incident when he had thrown Guy out of the surgery.

  ‘No, I haven’t seen him since.’

  ‘Tell me it’s none of my business if you like,’ Paul said, casually conversational. ‘But I couldn’t help wondering.’

  ‘It’s none of your business,’ she said lightly.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s OK. Just a bit of a sore point.’ She didn’t want to talk about Guy; didn’t want to think about him even. It still hurt too much.

  ‘I shouldn’t have asked.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t.’

  Into the small awkward silence a voice from behind her boomed: ‘Right, you two! So what’s been going on since I left the fold?’

  Matthew had seemingly abandoned the drinks table in his eagerness to be updated on the latest goings-on in the practice that had been his life for thirty years and more. Suddenly Helen was glad Paul had asked her about Guy. If he hadn’t they might well have still been discussing Matthew and his sister.

  ‘You see, Helen? What did I tell you?’ Paul said. ‘I knew this party was just an excuse for you to get the low-down on your former patients, Matthew!’

  ‘D’you blame me?’

  ‘No. OK, you old rogue, what do you want to hear about first? Flo Tranter’s hypochondria – or the pretty young widow who’s moved into Parsonage Lane and registered with me? No – don’t tell me – the gypsy family down at Horler’s Cross. The whole brood have gone down with impetigo, all fifteen of them. They’re going round with purple-painted faces and frightening all the old ladies half to death. Now tell me you’re not glad to be out of it!’

  Helen glanced at him, at his cheerful grinning face and the wicked twinkle in his eyes. A moustache of beer foam had adhered to his upper lip and somehow it made him look a little vulnerable. She felt a sudden rush of warmth for the partner who had surprisingly become her ally. He really was rather attractive, too.

  No, Helen told herself. The last thing you want at the moment is another set of complications.

  She turned to Matthew.

  ‘I could tell you all about how poor old Cliff Button has become epileptic and how I’ve fixed him up with a gardening job,’ she offered.

  And as the three doctors chatted, the awkward moment passed.

  Walt Simmons was not feeling well. Truth to tell, he thought, he felt rotten. It had started this morning when he’d had a dizzy spell whilst peeling the potatoes, but he had taken the saucepan, bowl and knife into the backyard and finished them off sitting on the wooden bench and the spell had passed. Then, when he’d tried to eat his dinner, he’d been violently sick.

  ‘I think I ought to get the doctor in,’ Glad had said, but he had immediately protested.

  ‘There’s no need to bother the doctor,’ Walt had said. ‘I expect it’s something I ate.’

  ‘Well, I don’t like it,’ Glad said. ‘It’s not like you. And another thing – I’d like the doctor to have a look at your leg.’

  ‘Whatever for? My leg’s on the mend.’

  And it was. The ulcer that had wept and mattered for the best part of twenty years seemed miraculously to be healing over.

  ‘That’s just it,’ Glad said. ‘I can’t understand it. After all these years. It’s a funny thing, if you ask me.’

  ‘You don’t call the doctor when something’s getting better,’ Walt said.

  ‘You look a funny colour to me.’

  ‘I’ll be all right,’ Walt said. ‘When I’ve had a bit of a rest.’

  He settled back in his chair with his head tucked between the wing and the back and his foot resting on the little three-legged stool – no sense not taking care of his bad leg even if it did seem to be improving – and sure enough when he woke again at about three he did feel better. Not right, but better.

  He was glad about that, not only for his own sake, but also for Glad, Heather and Steve. The three of them were going out tonight. Steve had joined the local male-voice choir and Glad and Heather had got tickets to hear them sing in a concert in the Town Hall at South Compton. He knew they would be disappointed to miss it, but he also knew they wouldn’t dream of going and leaving him alone babysitting Vanessa if they thought he wasn’t up to it. Glad had already said as much.

  ‘Heather can still go. I’ll stop here with you.’

  But he knew how much Glad was looking forward to the concert. She’d been very down this week, they’d had really bad news of David’s girlfriend, Linda, that she had leukaemia and there was really nothing much that could be done for her, and Glad had taken it very hard. David had always been a great favourite with her – the only grandson in a family of girls. There was talk that they were going to get married, and this had upset Glad even more, knowing that David would be a widower before he was thirty, and with no chance of having children of the marriage. Going to the concert would take her mind off things, if only for a bit.

  When teatime came and he managed to keep down a slice of bread and honey it gave him all the ammunition he needed.

  ‘There you be! I told you I was all right. You get off and enjoy the concert. I can mind the babby.’

  And so they had gone, leaving Vanessa tucked up in bed and Walt in his chair, listening to the radio and looking at the evening paper which they had delivered every day except Sunday.

  The truth was, though, he still didn’t feel too good, and when the door had closed after them and he didn’t have to pretend any more he acknowledged it to himself and even tried unsuccessfully to analyse it. He couldn’t. He honestly didn’t think he could remember ever feeling quite like this before – sick yet not sick, heavy yet floaty, and a pain in his stomach that might have been indigestion or a strained muscle from being violently sick and yet oddly felt like neither.

  ‘You be getting old,’ Walt said to himself. It wasn’t a thought that worried him much. The only thing was he hoped he’d live to see Vanessa grow up. In his quiet undemonstrative way he adored his great-granddaughter.

  Now he shifted in his chair, jiggling his feet and shaking his hands, which had gone to pins and needles. Perhaps he’d been here too long. It would do him good to move about a bit and besides, he could do with a cup of Bengers. The fact that he still felt queasy was probably down to the fact that he hadn’t kept down more than a slice of bread and honey all day. He was empty – ‘sinking’ Glad called it – and that wasn’t a bad description of it either.

  He levered himself up out of his chair and went to the pantry, where he measured a cupful of milk into a saucepan. Back in the kitchen he lit the gas ring with a taper – Heather had bought them one of them new-fangled gas lighters w
ith a battery which created a spark when you flicked a button, but he hadn’t taken to it. Give him the old ways any day. And besides, he didn’t think he’d have been able to manage that fiddly little button with his pincushion hands today even if he had wanted to.

  The pain in his stomach was worse again now, shooting arrows in all directions. Walt gritted his teeth against it, spooned Bengers into the cup and headed back for the pantry with the tin. He hated muddle from things left about. ‘There’s a place for everything and everything should be in its place,’ his mother had used to say. He had a sudden image of her, standing in the doorway, with her hair all piled up and wearing a black satin blouse and skirt that had been her Sunday best when he was a nipper. So clear it was it almost took his breath away.

  ‘What are you doing here, Mother?’ he asked aloud, then chuckled to himself, shaking his head. ‘You’m taking leave of your senses, Walt,’ he said, also aloud, but more softly, more to himself.

  It was as he went through the doorway where he’d thought he’d seen his mother standing that he heard Vanessa crying. He stood under the bannisters for a moment or two, listening, his own aches and pains and sickness forgotten. Was she just crying in her sleep? Would she quieten down in a minute? But Vanessa’s sobs were getting harder with an element of hysteria in them and he could hear her calling for her mummy.

  ‘It’s all right, my love, Grampy’s coming,’ he called, going along the hall and, with an effort, up the stairs. ‘Grampy’s coming now.’

  He switched on the landing light and almost instantly Vanessa’s sobs lessened. As soon as he went into the bedroom he could see why; the little red nightlight Heather always left on for her because she was afraid of the dark was out, the bulb had gone, he supposed. Or because it had still been light when Heather had put her to bed she’d forgotten to switch it on.

  Vanessa had kicked her bedclothes into a tangle and her face was wet with tears and sweat. It had run into her hair too; damp strands and curls clung round her small round face.

  ‘What’s the matter, my old Dutch?’ he asked.

  ‘The moo-cows were chasing me.’ Vanessa hiccoughed.

  ‘Dear, oh deary me. Dreaming, was you? That’s all it was, my love. You go back to sleep. There won’t be no more moo-cows tonight.’

  He bent over to tuck her in and she clutched his sleeve.

  ‘Grampy … Nessa’s frightened …’

  ‘Come on, my ducks. Grampy’ll leave the light on for you.’

  Her fingers tightened their grip. ‘Grampy stay!’

  ‘Grampy can’t do that.’ He was thinking of the milk heating on the gas ring, boiling over, perhaps, putting out the flame but leaving the gas to escape. But he was feeling pretty groggy again too. He didn’t think he could make it down the stairs to turn the gas out and back up again. Well – not make it back up again, leastways.

  ‘D’you want to come down with Grampy?’ he asked.

  ‘’es! ’es!’ She wasn’t crying now, but the whimpery tone suggested she would be if he left her.

  Walt turned back the covers and lifted her up. Her arms twined trustingly round his neck and she wound her plump little legs around his waist. Love surged through him and tenderness and pride. He thought he saw his mother again, in the shadowy corner beside the wardrobe.

  ‘See, Mother?’ he said, but silently this time. ‘I didn’t do so bad, did I? This here’s my grandbabby!’

  He carried Vanessa along the landing, holding her tightly and started down the stairs. He was two or three steps down, just rounding the curve, when the dizziness hit him again. He stopped, swaying, and let go of Vanessa with one hand to grab at the bannister, but it wasn’t there. He hadn’t reached it yet; here it was only a sham against the landing wall. He felt forward, his shaking hand grasping air, his fingers rasping on the wallpaper that divided the wooden struts, took another step and lost his balance. He heard Vanessa’s cry of alarm, then there was nothing but the bump, bump, bump as he was propelled downwards, each stair thudding into his thin body, knocking the wind out of him, blotting out thought.

  As he fell Vanessa fell with him, clinging on to him, too startled and frightened to scream again. It was only at the foot of the stairs that she began to cry once more as she lay trapped beneath him. But Walt could not hear her. He had been dead even before they reached the bottom.

  The male-voice choir concert had been a great success. Heather and Glad had found seats right in the front row – why was it that people always filled up the middle first? – and Heather had been glad she had such a wonderful view of Steve, who looked smart and incredibly handsome in his dark suit, white shirt and red tie (the uniform of the choir), standing with the baritone section and singing his heart out.

  There was something tremendously uplifting about the massed voices of the men, too; though their only accompaniment was an elderly woman on a somewhat tinkly piano, they were the music, singing in four-part harmony. The range of songs was enormously wide – ‘Brigadoon’and ‘The Desert Song’and ‘South Pacific’; ‘In A Monastery Garden’, ‘The Bells of St Mary’s’and ‘Ave Maria’. There were supporting artistes too – ‘turns’, as Glad called them – a fat tenor, resplendent in a black evening suit, frilled shirt and wine-coloured cummerbund, singing ‘Granada’and ‘O Sole Mio’, and the local elocution teacher reciting Joyce Grenfell monologues.

  Glad had enjoyed herself every bit as much as Heather, though for different reasons. She had met up with a lot of people she hadn’t seen in a long time; she chatted with this one and that during the interval, almost regretting that the concert had to start again, and when it was over she took up where she had left off, hanging on in the hall whilst the organisers cleared away the chairs around her and then delaying on the pavement outside for a last lingering exchange of news and gossip.

  Heather and Steve had almost begun to despair of ever getting her home at all. Steve had gone on to where the car was parked in the Island and Heather stood a few paces away from her waiting impatiently. Eventually her anxiety to get home to Vanessa got the better of her and she went back to Glad and touched her arm.

  ‘Gran – look – I don’t want to hurry you but I think we ought to be going home.’

  ‘I’m coming. I’m just coming …’

  But still she delayed, enjoying the chance for a gossip, even enjoying being able to regale her old friends with the details of Linda’s leukaemia, for in spite of her genuine distress on David’s behalf, her involvement in the drama made her feel not only important, but also like a tragedy queen.

  By the time Heather eventually managed to propel her to the Island, Steve had the lights on and the engine running. Heather installed her grandmother in the front passenger seat – sitting in the back made her queasy, she always said – and climbed in herself.

  ‘I thought we’d lost you, Glad,’ Steve said as he turned up the High Street in the direction of Hillsbridge.

  ‘I was just talking,’ Glad said, slightly huffy. ‘I haven’t seen Mrs Wilcox since I don’t know when. I don’t know why you had to drag me away like that, Heather.’

  ‘Because I think we ought to get home,’ Heather said. ‘You know Grampy hasn’t been well today.’

  ‘Oh, he’s all right,’ Glad said dismissively. ‘You don’t want to worry about him.’

  ‘Well, I do,’ Heather said. ‘Especially …’

  She broke off. Especially since he’s in sole charge of Vanessa, she had been going to say, but suddenly she didn’t want to. Why she didn’t really know, unless it was because the words would give form to the vague but unmistakable sense of unease that had been niggling at her for the last half-hour. But Glad wasn’t listening anyway. She was still mulling over the titbits of gossip she’d gleaned.

  ‘D’you know, Heather, Mrs Wilcox was telling me poor Connie Parker’s gone funny again. She’s in Wells …’ Wells was the local mental hospital, or asylum as the old folk knew it. ‘Gone down to Wells’in local parlance didn’t mean a shopping
trip or a visit to the Cathedral. It meant the equivalent of a fate worse than death.

  Heather said nothing. She didn’t know Connie Parker and she couldn’t have cared less if she’d gone to the moon. All she wanted was to get home and make sure everything was all right.

  Steve pulled up opposite the front gate to let them out then drove on around the block to the back lane where he had built a hard standing on the end of the back garden to park his car. Heather helped Glad up the steps, carrying her stick and her voluminous bag for her and noticing that a light was showing through the gap in the curtains of the small front bedroom – Vanessa’s room. It wasn’t the main bedroom light, it was too faint for that, but at the same time it was too bright to be Vanessa’s little red light bulb. She could only conclude it must be the landing light showing through, which must mean the bedroom door was open. The realisation gave her anxiety another tweak. She knew she’d pulled the door almost closed when she’d left as she always did.

  She turned the knob and tried to push the front open – they never locked the front door until they went to bed at night, although they usually turned the key in the kitchen one when they’d finished outside. But the door would go no further than a few inches. She pushed again and again encountered solid resistance. And then she heard Vanessa whimper, no more than a foot or so away from her, behind the jammed door.

  ‘Vanessa – is that you?’ She was trembling suddenly from head to foot, ice water running in her veins instead of blood.

  ‘Mum-my! Mum-my!’

  ‘Vanessa – what are you doing? Let me in!’

  ‘Mum-my! Mum-my!’

  Heather dropped down on to her knees on the doorstep, placing herself at the level her child’s voice was coming from, wriggling a hand through the narrow gap between door and door jamb. Her outstretched fingers encountered something that felt like thin human hair and beneath it flesh that didn’t feel like flesh but cold and clammy. She withdrew her hand as if what she had touched had been searingly hot, gasping a scream as she did so.