A Family Affair

by Janet Tanner

  In the end, to Jenny’s surprise, Joe had taken her side. He usually sat on the sidelines when such arguments were taking place, but when he did intervene, he could be unexpectedly forceful.

  ‘I think you should let the girl do what she wants to, m’dear,’ he said, and it was his tone more than his words which made Carrie take a step back. ‘She’s old enough to know her own mind and there’s no point forcing her.’

  ‘But I wanted to see her …’ Carrie began.

  ‘It’s not what you want, though, is it?’ Joe said reasonably. ‘It’s our Jenny’s life and you can’t live it for her.’

  And so Carrie had conceded defeat, still not knowing whether to be relieved or disappointed – it was true that an extra wage packet coming into the house a year or so earlier than would otherwise have been the case would be very useful. Jenny had left school, bidding, in the end, a tearful goodbye to her friends. Most of them, including Rowena, were staying on.

  Now, however, a few short months later, she felt as far removed from them as if they were inhabiting different worlds, which, of course, was not far from the truth. While they were still confined to school uniform, Jenny could wear what she liked, even a little make-up, which Carrie had at long last ceased to object to. Whilst they were living under the same regime of morning assemblies and dinner eaten in the school hall – albeit with a few privileges that came from being that elite Sixth Form – Jenny went straight to the desk that folded back to reveal her typewriter and ate sandwiches in the lunch hour in the coffee-bar style ‘student’s common room’ before wandering around Bath window-shopping. It was an exciting time, opening a window on what life as an adult would be like, giving her for the first time a glimpse of real freedom. But to begin with it was also a little lonely. Jenny was the only one from the Hillsbridge area. All the others in her group had been to school in Bath – either the High School or the Convent or the City of Bath Girls’School – and she thought they considered her something of a bumpkin. And if not that, well, an outsider.

  The first friend she made was called Susan – Susan Beauchamp – and she was a bit of an outsider too, being several years older and having gone from school to do a course at the Lucie Clayton School of Modelling. This might have made her impossibly glamorous, and in some ways Susan was, but she was also somehow embarrassing with her rather affected ways and her boomy ‘posh’ voice, and Jenny felt as reluctant to be paired off with her, as she had been, all those years ago, to be paired with bandy wombly Diane Whitcombe and fat Penny Presley. At least on her own she stood a chance of being accepted into one group or another. With Susan tagging along, she stood none.

  It wasn’t only with the other girls that her style was being cramped by having Susan in tow. Jenny had noticed that the coffee bar/student common room was often overflowing at lunchtime with interesting-looking boys. Most of them were on day release from the jobs they were apprenticed to and were therefore several years older than she was, which only made them more attractive – along with their hairstyles (including the DA which had been banned as totally unsuitable at school), their casual clothes (denim jeans and enormous fisherman rib sweaters) and their motorbikes (gleaming BSAs and Nortons and Triumphs drawn up in lines in the college car park).

  There were engineers on Mondays and Wednesdays, electrical engineers on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and something known as Technical Trainees on Fridays. Amongst them, Jenny had spotted some Hillsbridge boys she knew vaguely – and would like to know better!

  Shaking Susan off wasn’t easy, but sometimes when she had no sandwiches she went into town for soup and a roll and Jenny took full advantage of her absence to go to the common room alone.

  Such a short time ago, she realised, she would never have had the nerve! She wasn’t sure she had now! But she hid her nervousness behind a façade of self-confidence and pit-patted in on her kitten heels, found a stool and tried to look pert and alluring at the same time.

  It worked.

  ‘Don’t I know you?’ one of the Hillsbridge boys – a Wednesday engineer – asked her, and soon they got talking and the others joined in. Jenny found herself the only girl in the circle – and found she was enjoying it too! Some of the older girls, the ones who wore short skirts and spiky stilettos, glowered at her, annoyed that she had muscled into what they regarded as their preserve, but the reaction amongst her own course mates, when they got to hear of it, was very different. They were impressed.

  Jenny had never before thought of herself as a rebel or trendsetter; now with her reputation soaring, her confidence grew. The High School girls still thought themselves a cut above her, of course, but then they thought themselves a cut above everyone with the possible exception of Susan, but the Convent girls and the ones who had been to the City of Bath became noticeably friendlier.

  Within a couple of months she had teamed up with three of them – Sandra, Marilyn and Jane – and was copying some of their more sophisticated city ways. She rolled her skirt over at the waistband so it was an inch or two shorter (though she had to roll it down again when she got off the bus in Hillsbridge each evening – Carrie would have had something to say if she didn’t!) and wore a little more make-up. She began reading the magazines they read – Melody Maker and Screenplay and even, occasionally, Vogue. And soon she was meeting them at weekends too, taking the bus into Bath and walking round to the big estate where they all lived, listening to music and even (Carrie would have had a fit if she’d known) smoking the occasional Woodbine.

  The first time she took a puff – in Marilyn’s bedroom, up the chimney – Jenny thought she was going to pass out. It was a long time before she summoned up the courage to try again!

  Her status in the group was finally sealed when one lunchtime one of the engineers asked her if she would like to go for a ride on his motorbike. It was a Triumph 500 Twin, as befitted its owner, a boy who could have been taken for the twin of James Dean, Jenny’s current screen idol.

  She clambered on to the pillion behind him, her tight black skirt hitched up above her knees, kitten-heeled shoes balanced precariously on the footrests, and wound her arms round his black leather-jacketed waist. He wasn’t wearing his crash helmet because she didn’t have one and he had made the very chivalrous declaration that if he was stupid enough to cause them to fall off he should be as vulnerable as she was. Jenny was charmed, not stopping to consider the doubtful logic of this, and they roared off, gently at first, manoeuvring the city traffic, then, when they hit the open road, zooming along with the throttle fully open. Jenny was exhilarated by the feel of the wind in her hair and the sensation of wild freedom. She soon learned not to be afraid to let herself go with the bike as he leaned it around bends, once or twice so low that sparks flew as the exhaust pipe scraped the tarmac.

  All too soon it was over; a lunch hour didn’t last long, especially as they’d eaten their sandwiches before leaving. By the time they got back a glance at her watch told Jenny her afternoon class had begun five minutes ago. She raced up the stairs and tore along the corridor. In her classroom Miss Lintern, who taught them French conversation, was in full flow. As Jenny threw open the door Miss Lintern looked up sternly over her horn-rimmed spectacles and the entire class, as one, turned their heads to look at her.

  ‘Sorry I’m late …’ Jenny scrabbled up the aisle to her desk, wondering why everyone was laughing. It was only later that they told her.

  ‘Your hair’s standing on end!’

  ‘You look as if you’ve been dragged through a bush backwards!’

  ‘Where have you been?’

  Jenny went to the cloakroom, looked in the mirror. One glance was enough. Her hair was indeed standing on end – blown into a vertical shelf above her forehead and tumbled and tangled about her ears. In addition, the wind had made her mascara run into black smudges beneath her eyes.

  ‘Oh my goodness – I didn’t go into class like that did I?’ she gasped.

  ‘Yes, you did!’ came the chorus.

  But
there was admiration in their laughter.

  ‘She’s not going to do it, you know,’ Helen said to Paul. ‘She’s never going to do it.’

  It was almost a year now since she had moved into Greenslade Terrace, but Charlotte was still living with Dolly.

  ‘She keeps saying she’ll come to stay, then she puts it off again,’ Helen went on. ‘I don’t think she can bear the thought of being here if it’s not permanent. And she won’t commit to coming permanently because she thinks it would upset Dolly.’

  ‘And you think she really wants to be here.’

  ‘I know she does.’ Helen chased the last bit of cottage pie round her plate, then put down her fork and pushed the plate away from her. ‘Why does everything have to be so complicated?’

  ‘It’s understandable, I suppose.’ Paul was mopping up the last of his gravy with a hunk of bread. ‘This pie’s too good to waste a mouthful! You’re a terrific cook, Helen.’

  ‘Who do you think you’re kidding? It’s just plain honest to goodness stuff I learned at my mother’s knee. Hardly haute cuisine.’

  ‘Who wants haute cuisine when they can have this? I stand by what I said, Helen – you’re a fabulous cook. And believe me, I should know.’

  ‘Oh yes? How?’

  ‘Put it down to experience.’

  She laughed, not sure what he meant, but thinking it didn’t much matter anyway. There was a comfortable closeness between them which transcended such trifles and which had been growing steadily over the past year.

  When she had moved into the house he had been on hand to help her – and not only by driving the van she had hired to transport her bits and pieces, though he had done that admirably, turning up at eight in the morning, dressed in a checked country shift and baggy khaki-coloured cords. He’d helped her clean the house from top to bottom – the family who had moved out had apparently been founder members of the Society for the Preservation of Spiders, Helen had laughingly suggested – and stayed to share a fish and chip supper eaten out of the newspaper on the newly scrubbed kitchen table, which they had conveniently left behind.

  In the weeks that followed, he had helped with the decorating too, though on occasion Helen had thought that might be a mixed blessing. Paul’s idea of wallpapering was to get the strips up as quickly as possible, smoothing them into place with a suspiciously pasty rag and asserting cheerfully that the shiny streaks would dry out. They didn’t, of course – Helen had known they wouldn’t – but it seemed churlish and ungrateful to say to. And not only was it useful to have a man around to open jammed windows, fix electrics and drill holes for pictures and coat hooks, she was actually enjoying his company. Almost insidiously he seemed to be taking over that role in her life she had sworn he never would – and strangely she found she didn’t mind at all.

  ‘Would you like some pud?’ she asked now.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Apple pie and cream.’

  ‘Sounds good to me.’

  She fetched it, warm from the oven, and put it on the table, a golden-brown crust with steam escaping through tiny sugar-coated vents and exuding a tempting aroma of cinnamon.

  ‘When do you get time to make apple pie like this?’ he asked admiringly.

  She grinned enigmatically, cutting a large slice and passing it to him.

  ‘Shortage of time is a poor excuse.’

  ‘Hmm.’ He poured custard on to it and tucked in. ‘Going back to what you were saying about your grandmother …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I wouldn’t give up hope just yet.’

  She looked at him, a spoonful of pie poised halfway to her mouth.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘As a relative of the patient in question, I’m not sure I should tell you, but …’

  ‘Paul – what are you talking about?’

  ‘But since we both work for the same practice I don’t suppose there’s any harm in it.’

  ‘In what?’

  ‘I think there’s an odds on chance your aunt Dolly is going to be in no fit state to look after your grandmother for a while.’

  Her spoon clattered to the plate and she stared at him in alarm.

  ‘What … ?’

  ‘Don’t look so worried. It’s nothing serious. But Dolly has been having a few problems of the variety usually referred to as “women’s trouble”. She went to see Harbutt-Lennox last week and he’s recommending a hysterectomy.’

  ‘Aunt Dolly?’ Helen said, stupefied. ‘She hasn’t mentioned a thing about it to me!’

  ‘My guess is you’re the last person she’d talk to about it. But you and I both know a hysterectomy is going to mean a stay in hospital, followed by convalescence of at least three months. At her age and her weight, she’s going to feel it. I think you’ll find she’ll be only too glad not to have to run around your gran for a while. In fact, Reuben will probably recommend she should have somebody to look after her.’

  ‘I don’t believe it!’ Helen said. ‘Auntie Dolly!’

  ‘It’s true, I assure you. So I suggest, Helen, you take the opportunity to get Charlotte here – if you’re quite sure it’s what you want.’

  ‘Oh, I do!’

  ‘Well, I’m looking after Reuben’s patients whilst he’s on holiday, as you know, and I shall make it my business to suggest to Dolly that she needs to shed as much of her responsibilities as she can. As her GP it’s no more than my duty.’ But his eyes were twinkling.

  ‘Well, thanks for the tip-off – and for any assistance you feel obliged to render …’ She hesitated, looking at him slyly. ‘Is the apple pie good?’

  ‘Better than my mother used to make – and that’s saying something. You’re a lady of many talents, Helen.’

  ‘Well …’ she smiled, her lips pursing mischievously, ‘since this seems to be the time for confidences, perhaps I should confess. All I did was pop it in the oven to warm it up. It was actually made by one of my patients – a thank-you for getting her over a nasty bout of bronchitis. You actually have Mary Thomas to thank for the feather-light pastry.’

  He grinned.

  ‘As I said – a lady of many talents. Even if one of them is for being devious and deceitful. Don’t tell me the cottage pie was made by a grateful patient, too!’

  ‘No!’ she said indignantly. ‘Certainly not!’

  He got up, came around the table and held out his hand to her.

  ‘Come on – let’s go and sit on the sofa to let it all go down. When you look at me like that it gives me ideas that don’t include washing-up. And if your grandmother is going to be coming to live with you, my chances for putting them into practice might get rather restricted!’

  Linda Simmons lay on the sofa in the front room of her parents’ home with pillows piled behind her head and a tartan rug tucked around her body and legs.

  Against all the odds, she had survived the winter and in spring she had surprised and delighted everyone by going into remission. Though the doctors had warned him it would almost certainly not last, David had allowed his hopes to rise. Every so often one heard of a medical miracle – why shouldn’t his Linda be one of them? But then, quite suddenly, she was worse again, much worse, and his feverish optimism dissipated into a cloud of black despair.

  She was so weak now that even lifting a hand to push her heavy lank hair off her forehead was too much effort for her, she only rolled her head restlessly against the pillow in an attempt to escape the irritation of the way it clung to her moist skin.

  Dr Hall had suggested she should be in hospital but she had resisted, just as she had resisted taking to her bed upstairs. Tired as she was, weak and ill as she was, her spirit remained strong. If she went into hospital there was an odds-on chance she would never come out again; and the same went for retiring to the bedroom. Linda had faced the fact that she couldn’t have long left to live and she was determined not to waste a minute of it. At least lying on the sofa she was still at the hub of the house, she could watch the comings an
d goings; listen to what was being said even if she couldn’t summon up the energy to take part in the conversation.

  Every morning before he went to work, David dressed her – a warm soft jumper or twinset and ski-pants, if she was having a good day, her quilted dressing gown if she was not – and carried her downstairs; every evening he reversed the procedure. During the day her mother was there to attend to her needs, she had a little transistor radio to listen to, and when the children’s television programmes and the cartoons started at around teatime she was able to see the screen from where she lay. She couldn’t read much – it made her eyes ache, and the effort of holding a book for long was beyond her – and she dozed quite a bit of the time because the exhaustion was like a drug, drifting her away.

  But at least being downstairs gave some semblance of normality. At least there were times when she could almost forget for a little while that she was an invalid … worse, that she was going to die.

  Today had been a bad day. A very bad day. As well as all other everyday and slowly worsening symptoms, she had a terrible headache, the sort that had started dully and worsened until it felt like a steel cap squeezing her skull, easing, relaxing a little, only to tighten again, worse than before. It weighed down on her eyes, making them so heavy she could only keep them open for a few seconds at a time and it pulsed in her ears. Linda who had learned to be so cheerful, so stoic, sank beneath it, whimpering weakly into the pillows, tears escaping from the corners of her eyes. Even they lacked the energy to roll down her face. They merely gathered in the hollows, tickling, drying where they lay.

  For the first time in this whole nightmare, Linda lost the will to live.

  When David came home he was shocked at the sudden deterioration, seeing anew the grey translucent pallor of her skin, the way it stretched taut over her cheekbones and fell away into the shadowed hollows beneath, the lack of lustre to her hair, her bloodless lips. But most of all, the expression on her face, the hopelessness, the resignation, the suffering. She looked like an old, old woman lying there. His Linda, his lovely, laughing Linda, had been lost without trace.