Gemma's Journey

by Beryl Kingston

  ‘Ten o’clock.’

  ‘Let’s spoil ourselves and have our first cup now or we shall be too cold to do any work.’

  The secretary made a moue. ‘With respect, Ms Pengilly,’ she said. ‘It would be better not to. They’re very hot on conformity here. Place for everything, everything in its place.’

  ‘Even coffee?’

  ‘Particularly coffee. The chairman has a thing about dirty cups.’

  He also had things about punctuality and brevity. The board meeting began at ten o’clock precisely and business was brisked through because, as Susan wis quick to notice, no one – except the chairman – was allowed to speak for more than thirty seconds. He prided himself, he told them, that Rail North East was a lean machine. ‘Work smart,’ he said to Susan. ‘That’s our motto. That’s what pays dividends.’

  But, as Susan also saw, it had an anxious board, and item six on the agenda that morning ‘Railtrack inquiry’ revealed one of the causes.

  ‘You’ll doubtless have been hearing rumours about this one over the break,’ the chairman said, ‘so I thought I would put you in the picture. There is likely to be – ah – um – legal action of some kind. Between you and me, Railtrack are dragging their feet over this inquiry of theirs and – ah – um – Railways South want to force them to publish. Their own report, which was largely the responsibility of – ah – um – Ms Pengilly here, was very full and frank and came out in October, if my memory serves me correctly. The findings of the Railtrack report will of course be – ah – um – instrumental in determining liability for compensation claims. This will affect us in three ways. Firstly because it is the first sizeable action of its kind since BR was privatised, so there is bound to be considerable media interest, secondly because we need to be – ah – um – mindful of our own relationship with Railtrack and aware of the impact of adverse publicity, and thirdly because we have been – ah – um – specifically asked to be – ah – um – circumspect in our own dealings with the media.’

  So we’re under a government gagging order, Susan thought. It didn’t surprise her, given public sensitivity about rail privatisation, but it left a nasty taste in the mouth, even so.

  The chairman was looking at her. ‘Of course Ms Pengilly, you had some – ah – um – dealings with the media in your capacity as secretary to the Railways South inquiry, did you not?’

  ‘I published the report,’ Susan told him firmly. ‘There was never any question of me giving interviews. Nor was I ever asked to. I did the job I was required to do and kept in the background.’

  ‘Quite,’ the chairman said. ‘Point taken. Given the – ah – um – complexion of the media these days, we all need to be quite clear where we stand. Any questions? No. Then we will adjourn for coffee.’

  It was a long, cold, trying day. The bad weather brought non-stop problems, the computer crashed when she was in the middle of a complicated transaction and the damned central heating wasn’t switched on again until nearly half past five.

  She came home bone tired, filthy with cold and feeling that she’d more than earned her money that day.

  ‘There’d better be an improvement tomorrow,’ she said to Rob. ‘I’ve never worked under such pressure.’

  But, as she was to discover as the month wore on, pressure was the norm in her new environment and she had to get used to it.

  In St Thomas’s hospital, Nick was under pressure too, far too hard at work in a ward full of elderly patients suffering from the usual ailments of a spell of bad weather: falls, flu and pneumonia. In a way, he was glad to be busy because it stopped him brooding over his relationship with Gemma. If it had been a relationship, which looked less and less likely the more he thought about it.

  In the clinical light of a hospital morning, he found it hard to understand why it had all come to such an abrupt end. They’d had a great day together in York and, as far as he could see, their night out at Cats had been great too. And then, suddenly, she’d taken that flat, and she didn’t have any time for him. True, she’d given him a Christmas present, but she’d done it as if it wasn’t important. It might have been better if he’d followed his instincts and bought her a present. But he hadn’t and there was no point in thinking about it now. It wouldn’t have hurt her to talk to him over Christmas instead of sitting on the other side of the room all the time. Then he could have explained. It wasn’t his fault that he hadn’t gone back to A and E that night to say goodbye to her. That was the way life was in a big hospital and she ought to understand it. If there’d been a problem about it, she should have talked it through with him, not gone rushing off to live on her own. That was a slap in the face. Why did she have to be so bloody independent all the time?

  And yet for all his irritation, he couldn’t get her out of his mind. He remembered her when he was in the restaurant, when he was on his own at night, when he woke in the morning, even when he was on the ward. Only a rush of work kept his mind away from his preoccupation. As it was about to do at that moment, for there were two more casualties coming up from A and E and nowhere to put them.

  ‘We shall have to move our two geriatrics for the time being,’ Sister Taylor said. ‘We could do with another ward.’

  ‘And twice the number of nurses and doctors,’ he agreed, examining their case notes. ‘If only!’

  It was a point that was being made in the editorial offices of the tabloids that morning, where the headlines that were being set up read BED CLOSURES SCANDAL and HEALTH SERVICE IN CRISIS. The story that was about to break was one that combined bad weather, bureaucratic muddle and loss of life. A pensioner, who had fallen on ice and broken her hip, had been left on a stretcher in a busy Accident and Emergency ward for ‘five long terrible hours’ without food or attention, and had died before anyone had time to attend to her. Now her son was threatening legal action against the Hospital Trust. It was good strong stuff and they were beefing it up for all it was worth.

  Gemma heard it on Radio 4 as she was putting on her Ottoback socks in the bathroom later that morning. She’d slept until nearly midday and woke feeling oddly sad. Now, showered and half dressed, she paused, one sock on and the next in hand, to listen and sympathise. It seemed dreadful for someone to die like that. Having come close to death herself, she felt she understood how the poor old thing must have felt, lying there in pain, looking at the ceiling, in a strange place, all on her own, as the hours went by and nobody came to help.

  She was still listening and still torn with sympathy when the phone rang with a message that cheered her up at once. It was the local Ford dealer to tell her that her disabled car had arrived. When would she like to take delivery?

  She hadn’t expected to have it delivered for several weeks so she was delighted by the news and didn’t stop to consider the bad weather or the state of the roads or how long it would take to have something to eat. ‘Now,’ she said.

  It was with her forty minutes and a rushed breakfast later, a neat metallic blue Fiesta specially adapted, as the dealer explained, ‘for one right foot and two hands.’ She couldn’t wait to try it out.

  ‘Shall I sit in with you till you’re used to it?’ the dealer offered.

  But she told him she could manage. She hadn’t driven since she’d sold her original old banger to pay the deposit on her first shared flat and that was nearly eighteen months ago, but, as she told them both with cheerful confidence, ‘Driving is something you never forget, isn’t it?’

  So he asked her to sign the agreement, gave her the keys and left her to it.

  It was a hair-raising morning, as she gradually found out how to handle the controls along roads that were silvered with salt, occasionally slippery and far too full of traffic. Her prosthesis was heavy and useless, pinning her false foot to the floor when all her instincts were urging her to use it to change gear. She bumped the kerb every time she took a left turn, misjudged distances and even managed to stall the engine before she could drive with anything approaching confidence, but by
the time a flurry of snow made her stop for lunch and a rest, she was more or less proficient again. As she turned off the ignition, she decided she would drive to school on Thursday and start her new job in style.

  It had been an eventful morning for Andrew Quennell too. As Gemma was edging her new car gingerly back into St Mary’s Court, he was taking a call from Thames Television.

  ‘It’s this story about the pensioner who died in the Casualty department,’ a young voice said. ‘We’re planning a discussion on it this evening and we need our guru. Could you possibly manage it, do you think?’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ he promised.

  ‘Four days into the New Year and you’re off again,’ Catherine said.

  He grinned at her. ‘But think how it’ll annoy Garry McKendrick.’

  ‘I’ll bet you played with matches when you were a kid.’

  ‘Correct. I was a regular fire-bug.’

  She laughed at that. ‘Well let’s hope we get better weather if you’re going to dash about all over the country,’ she said.

  ‘I shall take my new hip flask,’ he told her.

  Gemma could have done with a hip flask on Thursday morning for although it wasn’t snowing, it was bitterly cold. But Fairmead School struck warm and the welcome she got when she walked into the staffroom made her feel as if she was coming home. She was introduced to all ten teachers, told that Colin Rainer would be looking after her and given a copy of the school timetable, a peg for her coat and scarf, a locker for ‘books and so forth’ and a pigeon-hole for letters.

  ‘I’ve got two folders here you ought to look at before you start,’ Mrs Muldoony told her. ‘They’re the relevant notes on Francine and Matthew. To put you in the picture. And there’s a whole lot of teaching information in the green file. I should have sent it to you before but I thought it would get lost in the Christmas post. Right? We always start term with an assembly so you’ll have time to look at them before you have to begin and if there’s anything more you want to know, pop into my room. Colin’s going to be your shepherd for the day. Would you like a cup of tea?’

  Gemma accepted the tea gratefully and sat down to drink it, noticing that all the others were either drinking where they stood or carrying their mugs away with them. ‘Is it always such a rush?’ she asked Colin Rainer.

  He considered. ‘I’d say this morning is about par for the course,’ he said. ‘Have you got all you need for the minute? My lot are waiting for me. I’m in Room 6.’ And was gone along with everyone else.

  So she drank her tea and read up the case notes on her two pupils. Francine turned out to be exactly the sort of child she’d appeared to be – average ability, willing worker, popular with her friends – but there was a sad surprise in Matthew’s notes. Before his accident, he’d obviously been one of the leading lights in the school, ‘an excellent athlete’, ‘captain of the school football team and the cricket eleven’ and a ‘promising scholar.’ Poor little boy, she thought, no wonder he’s grieving. And she felt even more sorry for him than she’d done when she met him.

  But trying to help him that morning was a waste of breath and effort. He was surly and monosyllabic, sitting morosely in his chair and deflecting every suggestion with a shrug or a single word. ‘Nothing,’ he said, when she asked what he’d done over the holiday. ‘Nothing,’ when she tried to find out what work he was supposed to be doing.

  ‘You can’t do nothing,’ she told him. ‘That’s not the way schools work.’

  That at least provoked a sentence. ‘It’s the way I work.’

  Colin Rainer came over to provide the answer – in the form of an English worksheet that had to be completed.

  ‘You’re a clever boy,’ Gemma told the scowling face beside her. ‘You could do this with no trouble at all. I’m supposed to help you but I bet you could do it without me. Why not read it?’

  ‘It hurts my head.’

  ‘I’ll read it for you,’ she told him. ‘How will that be? Then you can answer the questions. It won’t hurt your head to answer a few questions, will it?’

  So the task was done, but mechanically, with no trouble, total accuracy and absolutely no interest at all.

  ‘I’m not sure I was any use to him,’ Gemma said to his teacher when the first half of the morning was over and they were back in the staffroom for more tea.

  ‘He did the work,’ Colin told her. ‘And that’s progress. Usually he just sits there. You’ll get more joy from Francine.’

  But Francine was in a weepy mood. She and her family had flown back from Jamaica the previous day and she said she felt cold and was missing her grandmother.

  ‘Tell you what,’ Gemma said. ‘When you’ve done your project, I’ll get you some coloured paper and you can make her a great big New Year card and put your love on it and send it to her.’

  The idea dried the child’s tears so they made a start on the project. But it was hard going. And it got harder at the end of the morning when Colin gave her a notebook and reminded her that she had to write up a report of both lessons.

  ‘Yes, I think it’s unnecessary too,’ he apologised. ‘It’s all filling in forms and writing reports these days. I sometimes think that’s more important than teaching.’

  ‘It’s changed a bit since I was at school,’ Gemma said.

  ‘You can say that again!’

  By the time she got back to the flat that afternoon, Gemma felt so drained that she was thankful to sit by the window and eat a late lunch and watch the river. I hope it gets easier tomorrow, she thought.

  But the days that followed were all as difficult as one another. She learned to pace herself better and to write up shorter notes but otherwise the pressure was constant.

  As it was for Susan in her new job in York.

  As it was for Nick in his old one at St Thomas’s.

  And in the second week in February news broke that was to affect them all. FRESH REPORT ON WANDSWORTH CRASH DELAYED the headlines said. RAILWAYS SOUTH TO SUE. The Chronicle dug out their old picture of Gemma being carried away from the crash on a stretcher and featured that on the front page too. It gave her quite a shock to see it on the news stands and it provoked a lot of interest and sympathy among her new colleagues in the staffroom.

  ‘It was all a long time ago,’ she said. ‘I’ve moved on a bit since then.’

  ‘Does it upset you, seeing it all again like this?’ Mrs Muldoony asked.

  ‘No,’ Gemma told her, more or less truthfully, and she remembered what Andrew had said about being under fire in Cyprus. ‘Actually I feel as though it wasn’t me, as though it had happened to someone else. Memory softens things.’

  Chapter 26

  Tim Ledgerwood was riding a donkey and feeling extremely foolish. If any of his acquaintances in Cape Town had predicted that he would soon be living this sort of life on a batty little island in the Mediterranean, he’d have laughed them to scorn. And yet here he was, with a straw hat on his head and his legs dangling awkwardly on either side of the creature’s rounded belly, plodding up the side of the Troödos mountains like a peasant.

  It was more than seven weeks since he’d flown out to Nicosia and despite hideous economies his money was virtually gone. He’d had to take a job in a bar to eke it out. And he’d never imagined he would be reduced to doing that either. It was pleasant to be back under a Mediterranean sky again, even if it was a cold one, and he was glad to be out of the way of Mr Gresham’s pressure, which according to Billie’s letters was getting pretty insistent, but he still hadn’t found the Papagathangelou family, although he’d courted every journalist he could persuade to meet him and followed every lead that offered.

  But the more disappointments he had to endure, the greater his determination to succeed. By the end of that first month his self-imposed task was no longer a necessity. It had become an obsession. He couldn’t let that gross man get away with it. He had to root out the truth, no matter how long it took or how much it cost. Which is why he’d set out on t
his ridiculous expedition into the mountains.

  If it had been anyone other than Fat Nico who’d suggested it, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But this man had led him on so many wild-goose chases and spoke such incomprehensible English that he really didn’t have any hope of a useful outcome. Yet he was here, on the road yet again. What else could he do?

  ‘You come!’ Fat Nico had ordered. ‘I find.’ He’d arrived just after breakfast, wearing a smile like a slice of melon and leading two donkeys. ‘Is mountain.’

  Which was true enough. They’d been climbing for hours. Or what seemed like hours.

  ‘How much further?’ Tim called.

  ‘Is here,’ Fat Nico called back. ‘Is village.’

  Yes, Tim thought. I’ll bet. It had been ‘is here’ for the last quarter of an hour at least.

  But this time they really had arrived. Hardly a village. Just a cluster of low houses and an old lady sitting in the doorway of the nearest, hump-backed and dressed entirely in black.

  They dismounted, stiffly. Fat Nico waddled across to the old lady. There was an exchange of murmured Greek and much nodding. Tim sat on the grass verge and lit a cigarette. This could be protracted as well as useless.

  But no. Nico was back, sweating with excitement. ‘Is woman,’ he announced. ‘Andreas Papagathangelou. Is cousin. You come. I trans-a-late you.’

  She couldn’t possibly be, Tim thought. The kid was sixteen and she’s an old crone. But he got up and walked across to the old lady to be trans-a-lated.

  ‘Ask her how Andreas was killed,’ he suggested.

  The answer was given in mime. An imaginary pistol held at arm’s length. ‘Boom!’

  So there’d been a death. But that didn’t really mean much. There’d been hundreds of deaths. ‘Ask her when. Was it on Greek Independence Day?’

  Long conversation. More nodding. Apparently it was.

  This was beginning to get exciting after all. ‘Can you ask her who shot him? Does she know? Who boom boom?’

  There was no need to ask that. ‘Soldier,’ Nico said at once. ‘British soldier.’ And he picked up a twig and drew a cross in the dust.