A Family Affair

by Janet Tanner

  ‘Because …’ He was silent for a moment, grimacing, whether in pain from his leg or for some other reason Helen did not know. ‘I talked to one of her neighbours. She told me she thought Jenny’s pregnant. If she is, and you’re her doctor, well, you’d know, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Do you think Jenny is pregnant?’ Helen asked.

  ‘I suppose she could be. But if so, why didn’t she write and tell me?’

  ‘If she is pregnant, you think the baby is yours?’

  He jumped as if she had hit him. She sensed his hurt.

  ‘Why are you asking all these questions? Why can’t you just tell me where I can find her? I’ve got to see her, Doctor, surely you can see that?’

  ‘What for?’

  Then he really did explode. ‘What the hell do you mean – what for? Because I want to marry her, of course – if she’ll have me! I love her – can’t you understand that?’

  They were at the gates of the hospital. Helen felt nothing but relief at the reprieve.

  ‘Let’s get your X-ray done first. Then …’

  ‘You’ll tell me?’

  ‘We’ll talk about it,’ Helen corrected him.

  She didn’t know what to do. She honestly did not know what to do. As she waited for the plates to be developed so she could examine them for evidence of a hairline fracture, she kept turning it over and over.

  The boy seemed genuine, there was no doubt in her mind. If he said he was the father of Jenny’s baby, then in all probability he was. Jenny wasn’t a promiscuous girl, and the timing would be just right. But the stumbling blocks were there all the same. One. Jenny had stopped writing. Hadn’t even let him know she was pregnant. Two. Confidentiality between doctor and patient was one of the cornerstones of her professional etiquette. To tell him that Jenny was indeed pregnant, let alone where she was, would be a serious breach of that confidence. If she got it wrong, she would be finished in Hillsbridge – perhaps finished as a doctor full stop.

  And yet … and yet … She kept seeing Jenny’s frightened face and hearing Carrie’s bossy voice as she took charge. Jenny had had no say as to what she wanted – Carrie had made the decisions and Jenny had gone along with them because she thought she had no choice. Now it was possible she did have a choice.

  As for the letters – it was always possible, if he was moving from place to place that they had not caught up with him. And then, feeling rejected, Jenny had stopped writing, retreated into a position from which she could not be hurt any more.

  The boy was clearly anxious to stand by her, which was a good sign. It would have been all too easy for him to do a runner at the first mention of the word pregnant if he had wanted to.

  The radiographer appeared with the plates. Helen checked them, struggling to keep her mind on the job. They looked fine.

  ‘No fracture,’ she reported back to Bryn. ‘You’ll be in some discomfort for a couple of days, and I’ll give you a painkiller for that, then I’ll take you back to the Jolly Collier for your motorbike.’

  His eyes met hers, steady and determined. ‘What about Jenny?’

  Helen made up her mind. ‘I can’t give you information just like that. But what I will do is speak to her and see if she’s willing for me to tell you what you want to know.’

  ‘But I told you … I have to go back to camp tonight.’

  ‘We’ll stop off at my surgery,’ Helen said. ‘I’ll make a phone call from there.’

  Sister Anne was feeling spiteful.

  This morning she had had a most unsatisfactory conversation with Jennifer – a girl she particularly disliked since she seemed not to appreciate anything that was being done to help her out of the predicament in which she had found herself. She had called Jenny to her office with what she had believed to be good news.

  ‘We have found alternative adoptive parents for your baby,’ she had said, looking with distaste at Jenny’s swollen body. ‘As you know, the first couple stipulated a girl. This couple have no strong preferences either way. All they are asking for is a healthy baby.’

  She looked up at Jenny, saw the way her face set suddenly into lines of mulish defiance.

  ‘Well?’ she demanded. ‘Isn’t that a relief for you?’

  Jenny swallowed hard. ‘No.’

  ‘What do you mean – no?’

  Again Jenny swallowed, as if she was nervous but determined not to be intimidated. ‘I’ve changed my mind, Sister. I don’t want my baby adopted.’

  Bitter gall rose in Sister Anne’s throat like the indigestion to which she was a martyr.

  ‘It’s a little late for that, Jennifer. The arrangements have been made.’

  ‘I haven’t signed anything.’

  ‘You have made a moral commitment. In any case, your mother …’

  ‘She’s not my mother,’ Jenny said. ‘She’s my grandmother. And she can’t make me do what she wants. None of you can.’

  ‘Young lady,’ Sister Anne said severely, ‘you are not in a position to assume responsibility for a baby.’

  ‘I’ll find a way!’

  ‘I think not.’

  ‘I will!’

  ‘Don’t talk nonsense! It has been decided that the best course of action for you and your baby is that it should be adopted. A lot of hard work has gone into making arrangements. And let me tell you, it will be so, whether you like it or not.’

  ‘You can’t …’

  ‘A few years ago,’ Sister Anne said, ‘a very few years ago, girls like you would have been committed to an asylum. You are more fortunate than that. But you will do as we say. Believe me, your mother and I between us will make sure of that. Now, go to your room and think about what I have said.’

  Jenny’s lip was trembling but still she faced Sister Anne out defiantly.

  ‘You can’t take my baby! I won’t let you!’

  ‘When you are suffering the hellfire of childbirth,’ Sister Anne said, coldly furious, ‘I think you will find that you are not in a position to argue. Now – go. And I think, in preparation for penance, you should miss your lunch.’

  Jenny had gone, but Sister Anne’s bad mood had lingered. Just who did girls like Jenny think they were? Hussies – all of them. Little better than prostitutes! But with the nerve to argue with her – her! – Sister Anne!

  At lunch, she had the satisfaction of noting that Jennifer had not tried to disobey her on that edict at least. Her place at table was empty. Perhaps when she got hungry enough she would begin to see the error of her ways.

  It was about two in the afternoon when the telephone on Sister Anne’s desk rang. She reached for it and was surprised to find Jenny’s GP on the other end of the line.

  ‘You want to speak to her now?’ she said coldly. ‘I’m not sure that it’s convenient.’

  The GP – a woman – refused to take no for an answer. Sister Anne put the call on hold and rang the bell to summon Sister Theresa.

  ‘Would you go and fetch Jennifer, please? Her doctor wants to speak to her urgently.’

  Five minutes later Sister Theresa was back. She looked flushed, flustered and frightened.

  ‘She’s not in her room, Sister! I can’t find her anywhere. And her things seem to be missing.’

  Until she had seen for herself, Sister Anne simply refused to believe it. But when she had inspected the dormitory there was no denying what Sister Theresa had said. Jenny had gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The town square, which had been busy with Saturday afternoon shoppers, was growing quiet and more deserted. Couples and family groups, like birds at sunset, were heading home. The long shadows, sharp against the bright patches of sunlight, concealed the debris of the day – chocolate wrappers, crisp packets, cigarette butts. There it would lie until morning when the road sweepers pushed their bins around the deserted streets and swept it all away.

  In the bus station café on a corner of the square, Jenny huddled over a mug of luke-warm coffee, her hands cupped tightly around it in an effort to
stop them from shaking. The emptying streets had awakened a feeling of panic. All those people wending their way home while she had nowhere to go! Soon the streets would be empty and then the night-lifers would move in. And still she would be here, on her own.

  Think. She must think. Where to go. What to do. She hadn’t stopped to consider for so much as a moment when she had walked out of the home. The only thing on her mind had been getting away – away from Sister Anne’s tyranny, away from everyone who wanted to take her baby away from her. She had thrown her few belongings into the old brown leather attaché case and fled, terrified that she would be apprehended and hauled back. But there had been no-one to see her creep down the stairs – they were all at lunch. She could hear the clatter of cutlery on pottery, but no murmur of voices. Mealtimes at the home were silent affairs. The heavy old door creaked as she opened it and her heart beat hard against her ribs. But no-one came and she stepped out into the sunshine.

  All she could think about then was putting as much distance as possible between her and the nuns. She half ran down the drive and into the village street, then slowed down, aware that too much haste would only draw attention to her, and aware too, painfully, of a stabbing stitch in her side.

  There was a bus at the stop opposite the post office store with a few passengers getting off and a few more waiting to board. Jenny didn’t even stop to wonder where it was going. She joined the queue, glancing anxiously back towards the gates of the home, but still no-one came.

  ‘Where to?’ the conductor asked when he worked his way down the aisle to the back where she had flopped down, her case on the seat beside her.

  ‘As far as you’re going.’

  She could sense his curiosity as he rolled out her ticket, swaying with the movement of the bus as a master mariner might sway with the rocking of a boat, but he didn’t say anything. He was a solid, ruddy-faced little man, and when she counted out the money he averted his eyes, embarrassed, no doubt, by her condition.

  The journey lasted for almost an hour and Jenny watched the hedges and fields roll past in a kind of heavy trance. At last the countryside gave way to houses and the houses to office blocks and shops. The bus turned into the square and the driver killed the engine. She had to get off. This was the end of the line.

  Heat came off the pavement in waves as she walked aimlessly, burning through the soles of her shoes and a fine sheen of sweat formed across her back. The baby was a leaden weight, exhausting her, and the stitch had become a niggle of discomfort low in her back. Where was she going? She didn’t know. Lisbee Smith, with whom she had shared a dormitory for a while, lived in this part of the world and she had given Jenny her telephone number before she left, but if Lisbee had been packed off to the home to have her baby, Jenny couldn’t imagine that she would be greeted with open arms if she turned up on the family doorstep!

  The first elation was beginning to give way to anxiety now, sending her thoughts into chaotic turmoil, and time, too, was playing peculiar tricks. On the one hand it moved so slowly as to seem to stand still, on the other it rushed by, minutes becoming hours in the blinking of an eye.

  As the shadows began to sharpen, both the heavy discomfort in her lower back and her sense of panic and isolation grew. All very well to run, but with nowhere to go it seemed less and less of a good idea. The future which just this morning had seemed so ominously imminent was now a lifetime away, playing the same tricks as the hands on her watch. First there was today to get through and, more importantly, tonight. Having nowhere to sleep and next to no money to pay for accommodation would have been bad enough under any circumstances, as it was, with a baby to think of, it was even more worrying.

  Scouring the streets, Jenny found a couple of small commercial hotels offering vacancies, but when she enquired the cost of a night’s bed and breakfast she realised it was beyond her means. One night and all her money would be gone with nothing left over for anything to eat. She couldn’t possibly make herself penniless in one fell swoop. Dare she use the accommodation and leave without paying? The very thought was anathema to her, raised as she had been to be strictly honest. And supposing she couldn’t get out in the morning? For all she knew the proprietors might lock and bolt the door. If she was caught trying to leave without paying the police would be sent for. In any case, the B & Bs probably required payment up front, or at the very least a hefty deposit.

  So it was beginning to look as though she’d be sleeping rough after all. At least – thank heavens for small mercies – the weather was good. From the windows of the bus Jenny had noticed a small park on the outskirts of town, with swings and an iron roundabout for the children, and a bandstand. There were sure to be covered benches too which would afford her some shelter.

  By now Jenny was hungry, thirsty and exhausted. She made her way back to the bus station and spent some of her precious little money on a sausage roll and a cup of coffee. From here, she thought, she could retrace the route the bus had taken and find the park again. But not just yet. Someone might notice her lurking and turn her out. She’d wait a while. But even sitting down the ache in the seat of her back was still making her squirm, a discomfort as persistent as a nagging toothache.

  At least her brain was beginning to function again, though. The panicky spirals were straightening out, forming straight lines. The trouble was they led nowhere. Or, perhaps more accurately, they all led to the same conclusion. Her situation was totally hopeless. She might be free of the home and the nuns, but she had no money, no way of getting any, nowhere to go, no real plans beyond the next few hours. She couldn’t survive this way alone, much less with a baby. She’d behaved with incredible foolishness, made things worse rather than better. And yet …

  Maybe, just maybe, the fact that she had run away from the home might make Carrie realise how desperately she wanted to keep this baby. Had the nuns notified them yet that she was missing? Were they worried about her? If they knew, they certainly would be worried. That they cared about her, very much, had never been in question. It was just that they’d cared too much about other things too – propriety and what people would say, to name but two. Perhaps they even cared too much about her, thinking about her future, coming up with the wrong decisions for all the right reasons and imposing them on her because they believed they knew best.

  Well, she wasn’t going to go along with their decisions any more, she had made up her mind about that. She wasn’t going to have her movements mapped out for her as if she was still a child. Whatever happened she was going to keep this baby and bring it up. But if she was to convince them that she was a fit person to be a mother she must show some sense of responsibility now. Sleeping rough in parks, endangering her own health and the health of her unborn baby was not the way to do that. She had to prove to Carrie that she was sensible enough – grown-up enough, to cope. Then, perhaps, she would help.

  And then Jenny remembered what she had been unable to forget since Heather had come to see her, but which had somehow fallen out of the equation as she tried to work out what to do, where to go. Carrie wasn’t her mother. Heather was.

  A sudden rush of love and longing for the girl she had always thought of as her sister overwhelmed her. When Heather had broken the news to her, the shock of it had made her recoil. She had been able to think of nothing but the deceit practised on her, the growing-up years when nothing had been as it seemed. The sense of rejection, coming from a quarter where she had never expected to find it, had made her determined that her own child should never experience such a rejection, and she had retreated into a hard shell of bitterness, shutting herself off both physically and emotionally from the family she felt had betrayed her.

  Now, for the first time since she had learned the truth, she found herself remembering the closeness of her relationship with Heather; the little things and the big; the way Heather had always been there for her, the love she had shown.

  Heather had been even younger than she herself was now, Jenny reminded herself, eve
n less able to resist Carrie’s relentless overpowering way of making all the family decisions. No doubt it had been her idea to bring Jenny up as her own, and Heather had gone along with it.

  I, of all people, should be able to understand how it was for her, Jenny thought. How frightened she must have been, how helpless she must have felt. And how it has been for her all these years, too. I glimpsed that when she offered to take on my baby. But I was too shocked to consider her feelings. How I must have hurt her!

  And had it been such a bad thing that Heather had done? However misguided, she and Carrie had both acted out of love.

  I’ve known that love all my life, Jenny thought. At least I have been with my family, not with strangers. And I can’t believe, honestly, that they will turn their backs on me now.

  It wasn’t true that she had nowhere to go, tonight or any other night. Whatever the problems, somehow, as a family, they would find a way to overcome them. Carrie’s desire for secrecy might be blown out of the water, but it seemed to Jenny that the time for secrecy was over. There were other more important considerations

  now. Her mind was made up. She was going home.

  ‘Where can she be?’ Heather said. ‘Where would she go?’

  She had been asking the same questions over and over again, every few minutes, ever since she had heard that Jenny was missing, pacing the floor in an agony of anxiety, trying to control the wilder excesses of imagination and not quite succeeding.

  ‘The stupid girl!’ Carrie said. ‘What a stupid thing to do! In her condition!’

  She, too, had become repetitious and as usual her anxiety was finding release in irritation. It had been like this all afternoon.

  Heather had been at Number 27 Alder Road when Dr Hall had come knocking on the door. Steve had taken Vanessa to the swings in the football fields and Heather had gone to collect a pair of curtains which had shrunk in the wash and which she had promised Carrie she would try to let down for her.

  They were at the window, hanging a replacement pair, when the car pulled up outside the gate.