Gemma's Journey

by Beryl Kingston

  Gemma leant forward in her chair and watched him, admiring his long legs and envying his ability to run. She was downcast by her incapacity. If only she could have jumped out of this awful chair and run down the steps with him, instead of sitting in a bloody chair.

  He was leaping back up the steps, splendidly tousled and slightly out of breath. ‘Come on!’ he ordered and picked her up in his arms.

  This time the pleasure of it was so intense it took her breath away. She put one arm round his neck and settled her head against the warmth of his chest, the woollen cloth of his jacket soft and multicoloured under her cheek, the rhythm of his heart insistent under her ear, the scent of his skin now both familiar and exciting. She was glad that he had a distance to carry her – all the way down the steps and into the boat – and very loath to be put down again, especially on a wooden seat that struck decidedly cold.

  ‘Won’t be a minute,’ he promised, blue eyes earnest. And he wasn’t, hurtling down the steps with the chair and bounding back to sit beside her. The boatman cast off, the engine churned the river into a froth, and their day out began.

  It was cold on the upper deck but neither of them cared because it was so wonderfully private. They sat on the back seat very close together, as the boat chugged them towards the city and ducks squawked away from their passing in a rush of white water and frantic wings. They were on their own, in a magical, blue and green world, enclosed by overhanging branches and green banks, with wide empty fields on either side and not a sign or sound of any other human being to disturb them – apart from the boatman, of course, and he had his back to them and was tactfully occupied at the wheel. They passed empty footpaths and mud banks where coots paddled among the weeds and unseen birds called and twittered in the branches. The pale sky arched above their heads and the wash of pale blue water spread into a gentle fan behind them. And at last, as the bells of the Minster rang out over the winter fields, Gemma began to talk out her pain.

  ‘Have you had a lot of nightmares?’ she asked, her face strained. ‘If you don’t mind me asking.’

  ‘Yes,’ he admitted, thinking, I was right. She does need to talk. ‘I have. Especially in the first few days. I kept going back to it all the time. I couldn’t get it out of my head.’

  ‘I relive it,’ she confessed. ‘I have the same dream over and over again. Reliving it. It doesn’t matter what I’ve been doing during the day.’

  He waited, wondering whether he should say something to prompt her. But after a while she went on. ‘Always the same,’ she said, ‘that awful carriage coming in on top of me and thinking, I shall be crushed. It’s going to cut me in half.’ And then she began to cry. ‘Oh shit! I’m sorry.’

  He put an arm round her and held her as she wept. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘Cry all you like. There’s no one to see you. You’re safe with me.’

  ‘I can’t get away from it,’ she wept. And out it all came in a torrent of stumbling phrases and shuddering memory. ‘I could hear that little boy … and when I put up my hand it was covered in blood … And then the pain began … I shall never forget it. I thought I was going to die …’

  ‘But you didn’t. You came through.’

  She found a tissue in her pocket and tried to dry her eyes. ‘Oh God!’ she said. ‘I’m sorry to make such a fuss. I’m such a coward.’

  ‘It’s not a fuss,’ he said. ‘It’s part of the healing process. Just go with it. And you’re not a coward. You’re the bravest girl I’ve ever met.’

  ‘It didn’t feel like brave to me,’ she admitted, trying to force herself back to normal. ‘It just felt inevitable. I can remember thinking, I’m going to die. I think I was accepting it. Well I was accepting it, until you came along.’

  But she couldn’t keep her voice steady and her tears flowed no matter how hard she tried to hold them back. Now that she’d unlocked them, memories surged into her mind, too strong to be denied, and everything she saw triggered another one. The sound of children squealing at play reminded her of the screams she’d heard, a sudden flight of finches was green as falling glass, even something as peaceful as a riverside path bordered by trees recalled her last glimpse of Wandsworth Common as the train rolled over.

  They passed a derelict building, labelled YORKSHIRE HERALD but long out of use. The brickwork was fusty with grime and all the windows were smashed and splintered, gaping like a mouth full of broken teeth. And that brought a torrent of images, of broken debris, the filth and grease of that dreadful bogey, the terror in the darkness.

  Even when they passed a huge modern building, a pseudo-castle of turrets and gables, expensively grand in cream stone and with bold black windows like empty eyes, she still cried, remembering the hospital and coming round in that white recovery room and having to face the loss of her leg.

  ‘We’re nearly there,’ he warned, as she dried her eyes for the fifth time. ‘This is Lendal Bridge. We stop here at the boatyard.’

  She made such a valiant effort to control herself that it tore him to see it. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I am all right. Really.’

  He was concerned because her eyes were red and her face blotchy with weeping. But they were manoeuvring into position at the boatyard and there was nothing he could do to hide her from inquisitive eyes now that they were in the city. Perhaps this hadn’t been such a good idea after all. He took his time getting the chair ashore and carried her off the boat most gently, glad that it wasn’t a thing that could be done in a hurry. Luckily it was a struggle to get out of the yard, and that took time too. The ground was rough, and the incline too steep for the chair’s limited engine. But they finally managed it by a combination of her electricity and his muscle power, and found themselves in the isolated darkness of the tunnel under the river.

  ‘We’ll stop here for a minute or two,’ he said, adding tactfully, ‘I need to get my breath back.’

  ‘Do I look a sight?’ she asked.

  ‘Not to me,’ he said. ‘Your eyes are a bit red, that’s all.’

  ‘I’ll bet,’ she said, making a self-deprecating face. But she was recovering. The horrors were receding. ‘You won’t tell anyone about this, will you?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course not,’ he reassured her. ‘Trust me. I’m a doctor.’

  ‘That’s what your father said last night,’ she recalled.

  ‘It’s a family joke. Chris says it too. Fact, I think he started it.’

  There was an oddly yearning expression on his face. ‘You miss him.’ She understood.

  ‘I do rather. Well we all do, to be honest. But it’s only for four years.’ He grinned. ‘Then he’ll be back and driving us crazy and we’ll be telling him to go away again.’

  ‘I envy you,’ she said, ‘having a brother and a sister. I was an only.’

  Which is why your mother’s so heavy, he thought, but it wasn’t something he wanted to talk about. Not yet anyway. ‘OK to move on?’ he asked.

  She touched the skin under her eyes with her fingertips. ‘Has it gone down a bit? I don’t want people to stare. I’m sorry to sound so vain but you feel exposed when you’re in a wheelchair.’

  ‘They won’t stare,’ he promised. ‘Come on.’

  They emerged, blinking, into the bright daylight of the town. The streets were full of tourists, most of them Japanese. They walked in long trailing columns, meekly following the upheld umbrellas of their leaders and they were much too busy looking at the buildings to notice a girl in a wheelchair.

  ‘This is Museum Street,’ Nick told her, and waved at the park they were passing. ‘The museum’s in there but you don’t want to see that, do you?’

  ‘Are you taking me on a tour?’ she wondered.

  ‘If you like,’ he said. ‘Now we’re here. It’s a great place. We could go to a pub and have something to eat first, if you like. Then I’ll take you round. What do you think?’

  So they had a pub meal, rang Sue and explained where they were and then set off to see the sights, from Boo
tham Bar with its black portcullis at one end of the town to the little round keep of Clifford’s Tower, aloof on its high green mound at the other. And Gemma gradually recovered her spirits. They went to the Minster, naturally, and along the Petergates, High and Low, to admire the Elizabethan shop front of Mulberry Hall and walk under the banner advertising the Star Inn and dodge in and out of another straggling column of Japanese tourists. They stopped in King’s Square, which delighted Gemma because it was triangular, and listened to a flautist who was entertaining the crowds, with a coin-spotted cap at his feet. And then they reached the Shambles, where butchers’ hooks were still visible above the shop windows and the upper storeys sagged into the lesser storeys below them like a row of fat ladies sitting on tiny stools.

  Halfway down the street, Nick remembered the house where Saint Margaret had been crushed to death for her faith. That was far too near the knuckle for Gemma to see in her present tender state. He would have to try and smuggle her past before she asked questions. Fortunately the cobbles gave him the opportunity.

  ‘They’re not made for wheelchairs,’ she said, as the chair rocked on the uneven stones.

  ‘I shall have to push you,’ he said and manoeuvred the chair rapidly along the rest of the street, off the cobbles and out of harm’s way. ‘Parliament Street next. Then we’ll take a look at the Yorvik Centre. I’ve never been there, so it’ll be new to me too.’

  She was impressed by his knowledge of the place.

  ‘We used to come here for half-term holidays,’ he told her, ‘when Sue and Rob were first living together. They had a flat in Blossom Street, over a shop.’

  ‘You and Chris?’

  ‘Yep. I was still in primary school then. It was great. Rob was a jobbing gardener in those days. He used to take us round to all these wild gardens and give us rides in wheelbarrows and squirt us with hoses.’

  Gemma found it hard to imagine the elegant Sue putting up with that sort of behaviour. ‘And what was Sue doing while all this went on?’

  ‘She was at the university here. We used to meet up for lunch and then she’d cut lectures and he’d pack up work and we’d go to the pictures and after that we’d … Which reminds me. It’s getting on for teatime. Let’s go to Betty’s and have tea and cakes.’

  ‘I’ve done nothing but eat all day,’ she protested. ‘What about my figure?’

  He dared a compliment. ‘Your figure’s perfect.’

  ‘Oh this has been a lovely day!’ she said, turning in her chair to look at him. ‘I didn’t think it was going to be when it started but it has.’

  ‘We’ll do it again,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. I’d like that.’

  ‘The next time I get a day off,’ he promised. And as she smiled at him, he thought how very different their return journey was going to be.

  It was. But not in the way he imagined.

  They took a taxi back to Poppleton and arrived as Andrew was packing his car and the drive was full of departing guests.

  ‘Just in the nick of time,’ Andrew said. ‘If you’ll just get your things, Gemma, we can be on our way. Told you they’d make it, Kate.’

  He was in such an overpowering rush – and Nick didn’t oppose him or offer to give her a lift home – and there were so many people all running in and out of the house and saying goodbye, that for once Gemma simply did as she was told. She collected her bag, said her goodbyes to Susan and Rob, and ‘hopped in’ to the back seat of the Rover, as she was instructed. There was no sign of Nick but as the Rover turned out of the drive, he came out of the house carrying his bag and stood on the doorstep to watch them go. She waved to him, but he didn’t wave back, and she wasn’t sure he’d seen her. It was a miserable anticlimax after their day together. ‘And that’s the way the world ends,’ she thought. ‘Not with a bang but a whimper.’

  ‘What a weekend!’ Andrew beamed, as they headed out of the village.

  ‘Now you’ll have to tackle your fan mail,’ Catherine warned him.

  ‘If any comes.’

  ‘It will,’ she said. ‘Don’t you think so, Gemma?’

  Sure enough, two parcels were delivered the very next morning. And with them was a letter for Gemma. It was from the rehabilitation centre, offering her an appointment on 9 November.

  Chapter 17

  The rehabilitation centre at Crystal Palace is a new, brick and glass, bungalow complex built below the parade on the site of the old railway station that used to serve the Crystal Palace in the glory days before it was burnt down. Few of the thousands who drive along the parade today have any idea it is there. Why should they? They drive with two feet and both hands. But to amputees it is a special place, staffed by people who are there to help them, and purpose built to suit their needs, with wide windows to admit as much light as possible and wide doorways to admit their wheelchairs. The tiled floors reflect light like long wide mirrors, there are louvred blinds at the windows for privacy, and the furnishings are subdued and subtle, chairs and curtains a quiet grey-blue, carpet an unobtrusive buff.

  Had she not been a patient, Gemma would have liked it a lot. As it was, she approached it with caution and considerable apprehension. And, most important of all, entirely on her own.

  Catherine had offered to come with her as soon as she heard about the appointment. ‘I could swap shifts with Marjorie,’ she offered. ‘It wouldn’t be a problem.’

  ‘I’m the problem,’ Gemma told her. ‘I don’t mean to sound ungrateful but I’ve got to do this on my own.’ If she was going to be hurt, or make a fuss, or burst into tears, or, worse still, fail at her first attempt to walk on her new leg, she didn’t want anyone she knew to be around to see it.

  Catherine took her refusal sympathetically. ‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘The offer’s open if you want it.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Gemma said, thinking how kind she was, ‘but, if you don’t mind, no thanks.’

  As she was lowered out of the ambulance and wheeled herself into the reception area, she knew she’d been right to face this on her own. There were already several patients waiting there, either sitting in their wheelchairs or in a group of armchairs ranged in front of a shoulder-height TV set – an old lady, a girl in her teens, three old men and two young ones who had to be soldiers if their haircuts were anything to go by – and they all had limbs missing. Amputees, she thought, wincing at the word. That’s what we all are. And the day ahead loomed in upon her like the ordeal she feared it would be.

  But everybody was kind. The receptionist smiled at her warmly, the other patients chatted to her as she waited to be called, the nurse who finally came to escort her to the consulting room was cheerful and pretty.

  As they progressed along the corridor, a young man in a pale green shirt and squeaky shoes strode past them carrying four artificial legs as though they were shopping baskets. He grinned at Gemma as he passed and she wondered whose legs they were and whether one of them was for her. But he strode on, legs and all, and squeaked in through a door marked ‘Socks.’

  ‘Here we are,’ the nurse said. ‘This is it.’

  Gemma moistened her lips and propelled herself into the room, where two men and a young woman were waiting beside a handsome man in his fifties who was obviously the consultant – the expensive suit would have revealed that without the earnest attention of his team. Gemma’s senses were working at full stretch now, taking everything in, a white examination table like a bed with no covers, a full-length mirror – have I got to look at myself? – a zimmer frame – I’m not going to need that, surely – a desk facing the wall. The desk pleased her. It showed that this man put patients before paperwork.

  Sure enough, his greeting was warm. ‘Gemma,’ he said. ‘Nice to see you. I’m Mr Pearce. Could you bring your chair up to the desk? Fine. There are quite a few people for you to meet today, but you’ll see who we all are as we go along. Peter’s worked with you already, hasn’t he?’

  Peter was the prosthetist and among so many new faces he
looked like an old friend.

  ‘Are you going to fit my new leg?’ she asked hopefully.

  Apparently not. First she had to submit to yet another examination and then her plaster had to be removed. It was the oddest sensation, even though the saw looked more alarming than it felt, and it took a long time. But eventually, there was her leg at last, very white, wrinkled like an old lady’s and shrunk to a matchstick. She was horrified by the state of it.

  ‘Muscles disappear very quickly if they’re not used,’ Mr Pearce comforted her. ‘Once you’re walking about it’ll build up again in no time. Now let’s see how well you can stand up.’

  She put on the sock and trainer they’d advised her to bring, but standing up was another matter on such a fragile limb. For a start it was extremely difficult to find her balance on one leg, even with two crutches and a physiotherapist to help her. It was also painful.

  ‘All right?’ they asked, as she gasped and staggered, the crutches hard in her armpits.

  ‘Yes,’ she lied. ‘Fine.’ And gritted her teeth, determined not to be beaten.

  ‘There’s a mirror at the end of the room,’ the physiotherapist said. ‘Take a look at it from time to time. It will help you to work out where to aim your foot.’

  Gemma had been concentrating so hard that she hadn’t looked at anything beyond her trainer but now she glanced up and there she was, right in the middle of the mirror, centre stage, standing, looking like herself again – only one-legged. Despite her discomfort, it was a lovely moment. ‘Watch out Sarah Bernhardt,’ she joked. ‘I’m on my way.’

  ‘Let’s see if you can get a good swing this time,’ the physiotherapist advised.

  ‘By Christmas,’ Gemma told her, ‘I’m going to walk out of here with two legs and perfect balance.’

  ‘That’s our aim too,’ Mr Pearce said. ‘Now we’re going to teach you some exercises to strengthen your muscles.’