Daughter

by Jane Shemilt

  After surgery that evening I phoned the Prices. No one answered. Frank and I had arranged to visit them the following morning but I decided to go now anyway. The street was empty. The windows of number fourteen were dark. I knocked, waited, knocked again. I pictured Ma inside, listening, writhing in her seat in the dark. After a while I went home.

  That night the boys were at a careers talk and Naomi at her play rehearsal. It was just Ted and me. We shared the bottle of wine and sat for a long time over the empty plates. Ted held my hand and the warmth crept into my wrist.

  ‘What shall I say to them, Ted?’

  ‘Tell them the truth. You went on the evidence in front of you; it’s all we can ever do.’

  ‘She said she didn’t know about the bruises. So did he. But I didn’t believe them. They both told me about the cough. That was the evidence, but I had made up my mind already.’

  ‘We’re not lawyers, Jenny. There isn’t always time to weigh things up, not on a first meeting.’

  ‘It wasn’t the first meeting; anyway we do behave like lawyers. We make judgements all the time.’

  ‘Judgements?’

  ‘The Prices were guilty of being poor. Of not being able to tell me clearly or at least in language I understood or believed. Guilty of having a bruised child. Now they’re being punished.’

  ‘You have to go by instinct sometimes.’

  He leant over and kissed me deeply. I tried to turn away, but his lips held me, his tongue pushing, nudging in.

  He wasn’t listening either. Going by instinct wasn’t enough. I pulled my head away. Because of my preconceptions I hadn’t referred her early enough and then, when I eventually did, it was on the basis of the wrong diagnosis. Instinct had failed me completely.

  The boys and Naomi came back. The boys ate quickly and went upstairs, catching up with work. Naomi shrugged off my questions about the rapist; the girls went about in groups, she said, and were checked in everywhere. She leant against the table, eating spoonfuls of leftover gratin dauphinois that were stuck to the edges of the dish in front of us. She answered us between mouthfuls. The rehearsals were going brilliantly. The teachers were talking about drama school. Her expression was inward, secret. Possibilities were obviously beginning to unfurl. I watched her guarding her thoughts and decided not to push her with more questions. I was too tired anyway to focus on her answers. After a while she went upstairs.

  Ted and I silently did the dishes and tidied food away. I put the last load of washing on. We walked upstairs, side by side, hands touching. My legs moved slowly, heavy with exhaustion. Halfway up, Ted put his arm round me, pulling me in. By the time I reached the landing my breath was coming quickly. The children had gone to sleep so we talked in whispers.

  I forced myself to strip, shower, put on a new nightdress, comforted by its softness and lace. Ted came up beside me as I stood at the mirror. They say you marry someone who looks like you, but I’ve never seen it. Ted was tall and broad with a blue stare. I came up to his shoulders, and my Irish grandmother looked back at me with the face from the photos in our family album: dark curly hair, light eyes, freckles. Ted looked at me in the mirror and the hand on my neck tightened. His fingertips felt hot, widely splayed under the edge of my hair.

  In bed we turned to each other wordlessly. I was ready for his mouth now and I let his kiss open me further and further. His mouth tasted of wine. I knew his smell, the way his muscles felt, his shoulders, his flat belly with the hair thickening at its base, the weight of him. I knew him by heart. But tonight it was different. Tonight it was rougher and faster. Ted pushed me hard down, then the nightdress was round my neck, and he was quickly deep inside and moving and I was moving back, as if the stress of the day and the exhaustion had tipped us into a different place from where we usually were, giving us space to plunder. No preamble. Not gentle. This was biting and held wrists, open mouths and eyes wide open, straining and pushing against each other like animals. Then suddenly, shockingly, pleasure.

  Then falling apart so we lay with limbs sprawled, tangled. Unmoving. Not speaking. Ted bent over me, licking tears off my face I didn’t know were there. He fell asleep almost immediately afterwards, breathing deeply with his face turned away on the pillow. I lay awake for a while, letting my hand rest on the dip of his back.

  Sleep, when it came, was like a blanket being thrown over me. Complete. No dreams at all.

  8

  DORSET 2010

  ONE YEAR LATER

  She probably fainted but it could be anything: a heart attack, a diabetic coma, a stroke. Maybe she’s had a fit or an abdominal crisis of some kind, though her face is symmetrical and her abdomen feels soft. There could be clues – medication on a table or a blood sugar-testing kit somewhere – but the house doesn’t have the neglected air of chronic illness. She stirs, her lips move then her eyes open, puzzled rather than frightened. She looks directly at me as I explain how I found her, and I notice her eyes have the milky rings of cholesterol around the iris. I hold her hand as she slowly gathers her words. The swollen joints and fragile skin are familiar; they feel just as my mother’s old hands used to. I feel a tug of guilt that I am sitting with a stranger now, but I never had time for my mother the year before she died.

  BRISTOL 2009

  NINE DAYS BEFORE

  I was pushing notes into my bag when the phone went.

  ‘Hello, darling.’

  I was caught. Damn. ‘I can’t be long, Mum.’

  ‘Are you working today, then?’

  ‘Yes, you know I work every day, except for Fridays.’

  ‘It’s just that dizzy thing again. Silly, isn’t it? Last night I felt really poorly, so I thought –’

  ‘Poorly? What do you mean, Mum?’

  ‘Just poorly. I can’t explain, Jennifer.’ The tone was accusatory, returning me to twelve years old. ‘Let’s talk about something else.’ Her voice picked up: ‘How’s Jack?’

  ‘Jack?’

  ‘Your husband, darling.’

  ‘Mum, Jack is Kate’s ex-husband.’

  ‘Of course. Silly me. Who’s your husband, then, darling?’

  I can see her as clearly as if I am in the same room. She will be looking out at the empty paths around her sheltered accommodation; she sighs and touches her pearls, looking back at the television set with its bloom of dust and the neat piles of magazines. There’s a smell of mothballs and Pledge. Her memory is bleeding away. I mustn’t lose my temper.

  ‘Ted. Look, Mum –’

  ‘I don’t know what to do about the cottage. Kate doesn’t want it.’

  Not the cottage now. ‘I’ll come and see you. We’ll talk about it then.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Friday. My day off.’

  ‘How lovely, darling. It’s only that I feel poorly.’

  Frank was waiting in the car park at the surgery. I got in his car and was surrounded by taped chords of a violin concerto. He looked grim.

  ‘Let’s get this over with.’ He eased the car out of the car park.

  ‘Sorry you have to do this, Frank.’ His patients had been cancelled for the first part of the morning; we hadn’t even had time to go through the day’s results properly.

  ‘Not like I’ve never made mistakes. It’s you I’m worried about.’

  ‘What mistakes have you ever made?’ I looked at him; his eyes were focused on the road.

  ‘Missing the case of hyperthyroidism, so that chap went off his head.’

  ‘He was all right after he had treatment,’ I reminded him.

  ‘What about the ankle fracture I thought was a twisted ankle?’ He shot a quick glance at me.

  ‘You’ll have to do lots better than that.’

  ‘I’m not telling you the really bad ones. Look at the Medical Protection Society magazines. That’ll make you feel better.’

  I did look at them, often, picking them off the top of the lurching piles in our bedroom. They made difficult reading. Children with pyrexia left unvis
ited, then the midnight dash to hospital with meningitis; the altered bowel habit that was cancer, not irritable bowel; the headache that was a brain tumour, not stress. I read them with a sinking heart.

  ‘Makes me feel much worse.’

  Jeff Price opened the door and stood aside, stony-faced.

  We crowded awkwardly into the narrow hall. His face was so near mine I could feel the heat from his skin. He jerked his head in the direction of the kitchen.

  ‘Come down here. Don’t want Ma to have to hear this.’ He led the way to the kitchen, where he stood with folded arms, waiting.

  ‘I made a mistake,’ I said. My face felt hot. I had the sudden sensation that I might start crying.

  ‘That’s great, that is.’ It was obvious Mr Price was not going to forgive me. The vein that ran down one side of his forehead began to throb visibly. ‘My child is taken into hospital on suspicion of abuse, I get arrested and cautioned before they let me go, and you’re telling tell me you made a mistake?’

  I’d been taught to own up to mistakes in medical school but now I wondered if that was the right advice. It seemed to be making everything worse.

  ‘Mr Price,’ said Frank evenly, ‘Dr Malcolm has come round with important things to tell you.’

  ‘I asked a hospital doctor to see her because of her bruises.’ I tried to keep my voice from trembling. ‘We didn’t know –’

  ‘I told you that I didn’t know about them bruises. I told you when you came snooping round here before, when I thought you was trying to help.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ The word sounded small in his kitchen.

  ‘So? It’s not going to go away just because you decide to feel guilty all of a sudden. She’s still in there, isn’t she? They cut her hair and all. Just for flipping lice. When can we get her?’

  ‘Not yet. They told me yesterday, when I went to the hospital …’ I paused; this should be told gently, bit by little bit, but it was too late for that. ‘This is not good news, Mr Price.’

  ‘What are you on about now? Hang on, hang on.’ He raised his voice. ‘Trace. Tracey, get down here, will you?’ He stared blackly at us and, pulling a cigarette from a crumpled packet on the table, lit one and inhaled deeply.

  I sensed Frank watching closely and I fought the impulse to step behind him.

  Mrs Price came into the room in a dressing gown. She was smoking and had been crying; the mascara had run down her cheeks in black lines.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Price.’

  She looked at me with no expression.

  ‘I’m sorry but I have some difficult news for you both.’

  ‘Difficult for who, Doctor?’ Mr Price’s voice got louder. ‘Out with it, then, for Christ’s sake.’

  His wife put her hand on his arm. Her fingernails looked different today, bitten to the quick.

  ‘I’m afraid she has a disease in her blood.’ I paused, looking at their faces, which had suddenly become blank with disbelief. ‘It’s called leukaemia.’

  ‘That’s cancer, isn’t it?’ Mr Price’s voice had dropped.

  ‘Yes, it is; a kind of cancer, one that we can treat.’ I was nodding as I spoke, trying to project a confidence I didn’t feel.

  ‘Bleeding Christ,’ he whispered.

  Mrs Price sat down heavily, her eyes fixed on me.

  ‘How do they know? Could be wrong, couldn’t it? Hospitals get things wrong all the bloody time.’ Her voice was defiant.

  ‘From the blood tests. They’ve done them twice. I’m afraid there is no doubt.’

  They stayed silent for a minute; I watched Mr Price’s head sink between his shoulders.

  ‘What now?’ Mrs Price was twisting her hands, her eyes fixed on mine.

  ‘She needs to stay in hospital, for the moment.’

  ‘Then what?’ her husband asked.

  ‘She will have some powerful drugs, which have been shown to be helpful.’

  ‘No.’ He spoke slowly. ‘I mean, will she die?’

  By now I should have been able to answer questions like that, but there was never an answer, or at least not an easy one. ‘It’s a serious diagnosis. Many children survive and go on to have normal lives. I can show you statistics –’

  ‘Let’s go to the hospital.’ Mrs Price got up from the table. ‘Now. I can’t listen to her any more, not with my child going to die.’

  ‘She has a good chance. We can’t know yet –’

  ‘If she dies it will be your fault.’ She turned her head away as she said that, as if she couldn’t bear to look at me any more.

  ‘Dr Malcolm made sure Jade got to hospital.’ Frank spoke carefully. ‘She knew the bruises were serious. The tests were done immediately. That wouldn’t have happened without her intervention.’

  I don’t think the Prices even heard him.

  Mr Price looked at me. ‘The wife brought her to see you four times. Four times. You could have done something and you never bothered. I’ll bloody have you for this.’

  Although, afterwards, I could never remember if that was what he actually said or if that’s what I thought he said. In any case, his eyes told me exactly what he was thinking. They had looked at me with loathing.

  9

  DORSET 2010

  ONE YEAR LATER

  The old lady stares at me, confusion in her eyes, and then she frowns as she looks around the room. ‘I was weeding the step …’

  I slip my hand from under hers. I’ve been careful to avoid tangling with other lives, but it’s beginning to feel too late: I can’t leave her yet.

  ‘I think you fainted.’ Her eyes turn to me as I continue: ‘I live opposite – I’ve seen you …’

  She nods and smiles. She’s seen me too, of course; she must have noticed that I’ve kept myself apart in the village. She probably knows about Naomi too. ‘I’m Mary,’ she says.

  ‘I’m Jenny. Can I phone anyone?’ I glance at the photos. ‘Your family?’

  ‘I’ll be right as rain in two minutes.’ She looks unhappily around her kitchen. ‘It’s so untidy.’ To me it seems vibrant with life.

  ‘Sorry I’ve caused you this trouble,’ she murmurs. ‘I’d offer you a cup of tea …’ Her voice is uncertain.

  ‘I’ll make it.’

  The metal kettle sits neatly on the hob. In the fridge there is a bowl of lettuce covered in cling film, a few brown eggs in an enamel dish and a china milk jug with a yellow cow painted on the front. On the shelf next to the sugar is a stack of cardboard boxes: furosemide and perindopril. Medication to lower her blood pressure may have lowered it so much she fainted. I find a little brown teapot on the shelf above the tablets and two china mugs.

  Drawing a stool near the sofa for the mugs, I pick up a cushion from the chair and slide it under her neck. Her skin is cool.

  ‘Can I get you a blanket?’

  She sips her tea and colour edges into her pale cheeks. She nods towards a door.

  ‘Through there, if you can be bothered, dear.’

  As I go into her bedroom, I am invading deeper into her territory. She has held onto it; luckier than my mother, who had to relinquish hers. Her hovering dementia took hold after Naomi disappeared and she died without knowing who I was, though she had been all right when she gave me the cottage. Everything had still been all right then.

  BRISTOL 2009

  SIX DAYS BEFORE

  It was dark early morning when I drove into the forecourt of my mother’s housing complex. Little globes of light picked out identical pathways that spread like fingers to shining front doors. A lifetime that had been spent marking out and burnishing her territory had shrunk to a path and a door that were the same as everyone else’s.

  Her fragility surprised me each time. The blotched skin of her hands stretched thinly over deep blue veins, crêpey lids drooping over her pale eyes. Walking slowly with her Zimmer frame, she led the way into the soulless little sitting room. As I massaged her lumpy feet, her talk turned quickly to the Dorset cottage. She wanted me to have it. I though
t of the early family holidays there with our children, the salty swimsuits flung to dry over the stone garden walls, the sound of seagulls, the sloping bedroom walls, the ammonites my father had built into the outside walls. It was tempting but I hesitated.

  ‘Please, Jenny. Take it. Have it now. Kate doesn’t want it. One less worry for me. I’ve seen my lawyer.’

  One more worry for me, though. The children had long grown out of the cottage. They liked windsurfing in Lefkada and the little cafés in Corfu. Ted loved fishing in Wales with his friends.

  When I arrived home, Naomi was on her way out. ‘Got to go now, Mum.’ Her face was flushed; she pushed past me in a hurry. Her dress beneath the open coat was red, low cut with glinting mother of pearl buttons on the bodice. It looked silky, unfamiliar.

  ‘What’s that you’re wearing? Isn’t it a bit low? What about food?’

  ‘Nikita lent it to me. I’m trying it out for the play.’ She turned to look at me accusingly: ‘The fridge is empty. I’ll grab something backstage.’ Then she was at the door, pulling it open.

  ‘There must be something in the freezer,’ I said quickly. ‘I’ll heat it up.’

  ‘Why did you go to Gran’s, then, Mum?’ Theo called out loudly. He was sitting at the table leafing through his portfolio and didn’t look up.

  ‘Wait a mo. Naomi, when –’

  The door closed behind her.

  ‘Cut her some slack, Ma,’ said Theo in a bored voice. ‘Dress rehearsal tonight, play in a couple of days – she’s all over the place.’

  I put my bag down on the floor and switched the kettle on. ‘All over the place?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘Cross, then singing, then grumpy again. Just nerves.’

  Of course he was right. I made tea for both of us, then, digging round in the freezer under loaves of bread and spilling packets of peas, I found some plaice fillets I’d bought months ago, and a half-full bag of chips.