‘I beg your pardon,’ said Dr Summers aloud. ‘Afraid I rather drifted off – forgive me, Heyward, had rather an early start.’
‘So – would current staff be available, for purposes of consultation?’
This took a little working out. Does he mean me? Dr Summers asked himself. Then he understood.
‘I think you will have to ask Sister Goodrich that. And, of course, Sister Wainwright,’ said Dr Summers. The midwives. He had taken some time to get used to Miss Goodrich, whose manner was often so very forthright; but he had grown rather fond of her over the years. She was perhaps a little too ready to scold her patients, to bark commands; but she was absolutely reliable, an expert, kind enough most of the time. Miss Wainwright – younger, more recent, blonde and droopy – he knew less well. He suspected Miss Goodrich of bullying her, partly because, as his own wife had pointed out more than once, the poor woman looked so like a sheep; Miss Goodrich the cross bustling sheepdog.
A thought occurred to him. ‘They’d be paid extra, would they?’ he asked.
The thought had evidently not occurred to Heyward. ‘I expect some small sum might be made available,’ he said indifferently, after a moment’s surprise. ‘Though in fact the clinic would use their time far more efficiently. And to be frank, sir, I shall not want to stop there. In my opinion there is a crying need, in this country, not only for organized antenatal care but –’ here he gave the table a little smack with the flat of his hand – ‘for the wholesale improvement of the breeding stock of the nation.’
‘Now you really have lost me.’
‘Family planning, sir!’
‘You mean … contraception?’ Dr Summers was taken aback; he had always found such talk distasteful.
‘One day everyone will –’ began Dr Heyward, but then, perhaps, he noticed his senior partner’s expression, and changed tack. ‘So – we are in agreement, then, about the antenatal clinic? I may write to the Council informing them of our decision, and speak to Sister Goodrich?’
‘Don’t forget Sister Wainwright,’ said Dr Summers, folding up his napkin and escaping at last.
But the Council, it turned out, was most reluctant to commit itself, under the current financial circumstances; and Sister Goodrich, called on one evening and instructed in person, was similarly regressive.
Of course, she said briskly, she approved in principal; but it was simply out of the question for either Sister Wainwright or herself to run Dr Heyward’s proposed clinic; they both had more work than they could deal with as it was. No, with regret, she must refuse: there were simply not enough hours in the day.
‘Flaming cheek!’ cried Miss Goodrich hotly when he had gone. ‘If he wants antenatal messing-about with perfectly healthy women he can bloody well pay for it! Improvements indeed.’
For while it was true that the small terraced house shared by the Silkhampton midwifery service was paid for by the Council, with Light, fire and maidservant grandly specified in the contract, this translated into town gas, less than half the coal actually needed to keep the place habitable, and a girl called Elsie, not all there, running a dirty mop over the kitchen lino twice a week. Generally in winter the Silkhampton midwifery service dined with its shabby overcoats on. It re-used tea leaves, and could not join the Women’s Institute, though collectively it longed to, for the subscriptions were too high; tonight, now that Dr Heyward had gone, it sat down beside the inadequate fire for dinner: welsh rarebit again. One slice each.
Sister Goodrich, still maddened by Dr Heyward’s bland presumption, voiced stirrings of subversion as she ate.
‘Seven years’ training – I wouldn’t mind but that’s how long it takes to be a flaming doctor – look at him! And look at us, barely earning enough to live on! Why not? Why aren’t we earning enough to live on?’
Miss Wainwright looked uncomfortable, for she disliked all talk of money. She reminded Miss Goodrich that nursing was a vocation.
‘Oh, Dolly, that’s just what they want you to think!’ cried Miss Goodrich, exasperated, but she knew it was useless to argue.
Nursing was a life of dedication, offered Miss Wainwright, nibbling her rarebit. Especially being part of the everyday miracle of new life. Yes, of course, it was religious – why else were they known as Sisters? We are like nuns.
‘You speak for yourself,’ said Miss Goodrich rudely.
From old habit Dr Summers steeled himself a little before he rang the bell for the next patient; even now there was usually some discomfort in dealing with certain connections. Ready, he asked himself? Ready.
Grace was shown in, and he stood up to greet her.
‘My dear Mrs Gilder, how very nice to see you!’
Dr Summers came round the desk, and shook Grace’s gloved hand. ‘Looking very well!’ he added, thinking her indeed a touch more rounded in the face, and more buxom than he remembered. The likeliest reason for her visit was at once clear to him.
‘Married life suiting you?’
‘Yes, sir, thank you, sir.’
‘Mrs Dimond well?’
‘And sends you her kind respects, sir.’
‘And, ah, Mrs Givens?’
It had generally been noted in the town that Bea Givens was visiting far more than she ever had before. Rumour followed her, as usual: she had lost her place at the Home, for pawning the silverware, or for chucking old bedsteads into the lake, or for letting the children play at skating in the ballroom, with torn-up Rosevear sheets tied round their feet. She was going to open a fish-and-chip shop next to the Picture Palace; no, a tobacconist; she was emigrating to Australia.
‘She’s very well, sir, thank you.’
‘Good, good,’ said Dr Summers, retreating behind his desk. The thought of Bea Givens gave him a familiar qualm; he wondered if it was true about Australia. ‘Well, now, my dear,’ he said. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I think I might –’ She hesitated, smiling uncertainly.
He smiled back. ‘Might what? Might be with child?’
‘Well, sir –’
‘What does Mrs Dimond say?’
‘She says as I am, sir. Four months along, she says.’
‘Does she, indeed. Well, I dare say she is right.’ He remembered thinking of her vividly quite recently, when Heyward had been making one of his speeches; Mrs Dimond and the old days, when he himself had been as young as Heyward was now – no, younger. ‘When did you last have your … monthly, your period, can you remember?’
Embarrassed, of course; they always were. She shook her head. ‘Not sure, sir. Might a been … Christmas time.’
‘Usually regular?’
‘No, sir, not really.’
‘Any sickness? Needing to pass water more often than usual? Bosom a little tender?’
Presently he got her to lie down on his examination table, the top of her skirt loosened.
‘Just going to press down firmly – may feel a trifle uncomfortable – this your bellybutton, here? Good, good. Your mother do this too?’
Halfway between the umbilicus and the edge of the pubic bone: yes, four months at least, he thought.
‘She did, sir.’
‘When does she think the baby will come?’
‘September, thereabouts.’ He helped her to sit up, turned his back while she rearranged her dress and took up the patient’s chair again.
‘She’s quite right, of course,’ he said. ‘You happy about it all?’
She did not at once reply. ‘Mostly, sir,’ she said at last. ‘Mostly I am. Except sometimes. When I’m afraid.’
‘It is rather soon, perhaps. Husband happy about it?’
‘Mostly,’ she said. ‘Except when he’s afraid,’ and she laughed a little.
He had a sudden memory of a straw hat lying upturned on the grass, full of blackberries. It was so intense, so surprising, it made him catch his breath. ‘Oh, there’s nothing to be afraid of,’ he said, recovering quickly. ‘You’re a healthy young woman, and you’re going to have a fine healt
hy baby.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘But I want you taking good care of yourself now. Pregnancy is something of a strain, d’you see, on the heart, on the system in general, and yours has been, well, rather severely tried, quite recently, so – no gallivanting about now, Mrs Gilder. No riding, no bicycling, none of your strenuous tennis parties.’
It came to him that she looked extraordinarily like her adoptive mother; apart of course from her colour she was very like the comely Mrs Dimond of long ago. Another strange thought, come from nowhere! ‘No Highland flings,’ he added, as he usually did, and at her polite smile the likeness vanished, clearly had never been, so now he was imagining things. Or perhaps it had been in her posture, something copied, naturally enough, from Mrs Dimond; or maybe just a trick of the slanting light. But she was speaking:
‘See, it’s just that – well, me and Joe – my husband, sir – we thought as we wanted you to look after me, when the baby comes. If you’re willing, sir, of course.’
‘Ah.’ He cleared his throat. This was rather a surprise. ‘You know my fees, I imagine?’ He named them, and she did not seem taken aback. ‘And there is a retainer.’ He named that too, and she merely nodded. ‘So – that’s alright, then?’
She smiled. ‘Yes, sir, thank you.’ Then added in a sudden rush: ‘You know, sometimes I can’t hardly wait. To see the baby! Be the first time – my own flesh and blood, I mean. The first person I’m related to in the whole wide world.’
‘And by chance related to your husband as well,’ said Dr Summers lightly, and to his surprise, for she had never dared before, she answered him in the same tone:
‘Ain’t that a charming coincidence!’
He laughed, and moved on to the list he usually offered those with sufficient income: small but regular and nourishing meals, no constricting undergarments, no lifting, the lightest household duties only. Nothing more energetic than a stroll, plenty of repose, particularly after lunch, when a proper afternoon rest was really essential. Did she drink at all, he meant alcoholic drinks? No, he thought not; good. Here was the name and address of the local midwives, Sister Goodrich, Sister Wainwright, with whom he worked closely; while he would of course be in charge at the cottage hospital, he had every faith in their everyday professional judgement. Well; that was about it; had she any questions? No?
He rose, and so did Grace.
‘Congratulations, my dear girl.’ Ah, her lovely smile. He took her hand, the right one, so cleverly disguised in its small neat glove, and shook it affectionately, remembering the funny little brown baby of long ago, who had confused her age with her door number. He had privately considered it eccentric of Mrs Dimond, then, to take in so strange a mite; but see, he told himself, how well her kindness has served her!
‘You speak for yourself,’ said Miss Goodrich rudely, but of course she was lying. She was far more like a nun than she wanted to be, and was in fact a virgin, since no one had ever come close to trying to seduce her. In a month or two she would be forty years old, and had lately begun telling herself that soon she would think less about such things: she was looking forward to a new lightness and freedom.
All the same she was often conscious of bafflement at the extraordinary unfairness of life in general and of men in particular. Why, for instance, should anyone have married someone as frankly ill-favoured as, say, Agnes Dewey? And yet there she was cheerfully expecting her third, so Mr Dewey was clearly still pleased with his choice. If someone had gone for Agnes Dewey, why not for Eve Goodrich? Had it been mere luck, or had Agnes known or done something essential, that somehow Miss Goodrich had never found out about?
Of course Sister Wainwright was perfectly right in a way: nursing, midwifery, was its own reward. I am lucky in my work, Miss Goodrich often told herself, for it was true that the sense of awe had never left her. Sometimes, after a particularly lovely birth, in some neat clean cottage, a first baby born to a young couple instantly besotted, Miss Goodrich knew herself to be part of something profound, and was altogether transported with shared joy and contentment.
It was curious, regrettable, that the world at large still regarded the work of helping women safely to deliver their children as at once noble and distasteful, important and embarrassing, even slightly comical. In her uniform gabardine and hard round hat Sister Goodrich knew that despite the significant life-and-death of her work she was not so much a figure of authority as of sniggering music-hall fun; this compounded, of course, by her spinsterhood.
There seemed no way round this central puzzle, and no point in complaining about it, or being bitter. However Miss Goodrich often did, and sometimes was. Now and then it occurred to her that of all possible lives and careers, she had managed to choose the two most contrary: a maiden undertaking unmaidenly tasks, an outsider constantly summoned within.
Summoned to take up her special bag and go out in her coat and hat and boots to wherever she was required, sometimes far afield in bitter winds and rain, arriving soaked and chilled, and not always to any degree of household comfort; a trained and experienced and expert professional who nevertheless could not afford a bicycle, while Dr Summers had recently bought himself a bigger, better, more comfortable motor car.
Well, he was a nice old thing, at least.
‘What do you think of this Heyward?’ she asked now, putting down her empty plate. ‘Have you seen him in action yet?’
‘Not really,’ said Miss Wainwright. Her tone ever so slightly implied rebuke, at Miss Goodrich’s disrespectful tone.
Sometimes Miss Goodrich felt quite fed up with Miss Wainwright, especially when she suspected that in her heart Dolly hoped to be thought ladylike. Which was pretty bloody hopeless, Miss Goodrich thought, if you came from Ewell and were a railwayman’s daughter and sounded like one. More than once she had heard Sister Wainwright chatting to someone posh – Mrs Thornby, for example, or Mrs Grant-Fellowes – and actually trying to talk as they did, oh yars, how simply ghaastly, and been dreadfully embarrassed, because poor Dolly had sounded so false; besides, she knew her own accent was pretty cockneyfied.
Still on the whole she was fond of her lieutenant, and sorry for her, poor thing, so much younger than she was herself, barely thirty, but clearly in the same boat, though perhaps not knowing it yet. And surely so much better a person than she was herself, gentle and patient. Feminine, in a word. Whereas I am hardly a proper woman at all, thought Sister Goodrich, on her bad days.
But this was not one of them, and besides she had just seen off that beastly Dr Heyward’s attempt to get even more work out of them for no more money, and there was enough milk for cocoa, if it was well-watered. She leant forward, the small fire warming her all down one side.
‘Did you know Grace Gilder’s expecting?’ she said cosily.
‘No!’ said Miss Wainwright. ‘What, the darkie? Oo-er!’
When the door had closed behind her Dr Summers sank back in his big chair and leant on his desk with his face hidden in his hands. It was all a nonsense, he told himself; the old nonsense, worse today because he was tired, that was all.
He remembered himself, thirty, no, thirty-five years younger, on horseback one hot still August afternoon in one of the deep lanes above Porthkerris, and taken aback to come across that trusty handywoman, Violet Dimond, miles away from home, idling about all alone in the sunshine. He had had time to wonder a little at himself, that he had never noticed before how handsome her figure was; perhaps because she was dressed so differently, with several buttons undone at the top of the tightly fitting bodice of her dress, and her curly hair coming loose about her face. Her straw hat lay beside her on the soft grass of the verge; as he drew close he saw that it was full of blackberries.
‘Good afternoon, Mrs Dimond,’ he had said cordially, touching his own hat, ‘what brings you here, may I ask?’
But the woman who looked up at him in answer, who had looked right into his eyes and seemed at once to know all there was to know about him, had not been Viol
et Dimond at all.
‘Dr Summers, ain’t it?’ Bea had said. ‘Want a blackberry? They’re proper sweet, look.’
Oh Lord, thought Dr Summers now, remembering that long-ago meeting with very mixed feelings. For a long time he had been deeply ashamed of his own subsequent behaviour. It had taken him months to break free of her, of those gross and intemperate desires; years to recover his sense of himself as a moral man, a good father, a decent husband.
But lately, these days, he found himself unable to judge his lapse quite so harshly. After all, no real harm had been done. Her husband, his wife; neither had even suspected. Almost he wondered why he had been so set on quickly ending so passionate an entanglement; it seemed to him now that more than the affair itself he regretted its brevity.
How short life was, after all, and how extraordinary those few blissful and appalling weeks had been! He had never forgotten them, he realized. They had been part of him all these years, never quite disappearing even when he had tried his best to expunge them altogether. And all those years of working with Violet Dimond! How on earth had he managed it, he wondered now, half-smiling to himself. What a strain it had been early on, Mrs Dimond herself all innocence, of course, but even so, a constant unknowing reminder of adultery; more than once in those hectic times, he had dreamt at night of love-making, and woken in shameful longing, unsure which of the two women had come to him in his hot unruly sleep.
It had been strange, painful, to see Bea Givens again after so long, as she waited with her sister outside the operating theatre after Grace’s accident. She had seemed as desolate as the adoptive mother; turned up day after day, night after night, just as Mrs Dimond had, while the child lay struggling between life and death.
He came close, then. He almost noticed the thought at the edge of his awareness, that to look like Violet Dimond, matron of unimpeachable virtue, was also to look like her sister Beatrice Givens, of whom he knew a thing or two. But some other part of his mind pushed the thought carefully away, distracted him instead with Bea’s grief at the hospital.
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