More shattered by this unexpected explosion than she liked to admit, Louise sat up straight and glared at the girl.
‘Be quiet! You’re behaving like a silly child. This idea of a shop is lunatic. I have no doubt that Edna will look after you when I’m gone – you’re not capable of looking after yourself.’
At her last words, Celia’s temper died. Reimplanted in her was the haunting fear that there was something the matter with her, that she was not normal in some way and was, therefore, incapable – and had been kept at home because of it. Since her father’s death, she had done her utmost to cope with the many problems it had presented, and she had considered that she had, in the circumstances, done rather well, but perhaps other people would have done much better. She had no yardstick by which to measure her performance.
Now, she went a ghastly white, and clutched her arms across her waist as if she had been struck in the stomach. Then with bent head she stumbled to the door, opened it and went out into the hall. She hooked her toe in the door and slammed it behind her.
She nearly ran into Edna, hurrying from the living room.
‘Hello,’ Edna greeted her, obviously relieved to see Celia on her feet. ‘I heard you shriek – thought you’d fallen down the stairs. Are you hurt?’ She touched Celia’s white cheek. ‘You look absolutely awful!’
Celia looked into her sister’s concerned face. She mourned, ‘Oh, Edna, help me,’ as she fell into her arms.
Edna gripped her stricken sister firmly, and said, ‘Come into the living room and lie on the old settee. Shall I call Mother?’
‘No,’ Celia gasped, and stumbled to the settee, where she collapsed and curled herself into a tight knot.
Puzzled, Edna took one of Celia’s clenched hands and chafed it, while she glanced over her face for bruises or some other injury. Then she pulled a knitted blanket down from the back of the settee and covered her. She turned and ran to the back kitchen for a glass of water.
‘Here, sip this,’ she ordered Celia and lifted her head so that she could do so. She eased the glass between Celia’s chattering teeth, and water slopped over her. The shock of its icy coldness soaking through her black blouse seemed to ease the poor girl’s rigor, and she gasped, ‘Thanks.’ Then she whispered pitifully, ‘I’m so frightened, Edna. Mother’s so angry.’
‘Were you asking her about Mr Philpotts?’
‘Yes. About my having the furniture. I don’t think she cares very much whether or not I have the furniture – but she was so put out at the suggestion that we could start a shop, and that I should work in it. She was really shocked.’
‘That’s just like Mother.’ Edna sounded slightly amused, as she leaned over to put the water glass down on the table. ‘But that shouldn’t throw you into a panic, dear. It could make you angry, of course – but you shouldn’t be so upset just by that.’
Celia gave a big sobbing sigh. Through her chattering teeth, she said, ‘It was what she said at the end that hit me – and she’s said it so many times in my life – that I’m not capable of doing anything. And I wondered again if I’m kept at home because I’m mentally lacking – or because I’ve got tuberculosis – or something.’
‘Ridiculous! Ever since I came home, you have steadily proved it. The only thing that is the matter with you is that you have never been taught anything, except to say, “Yes, Papa” and “Yes, Mama” like a talking doll. I am sure you could do very well, with Mr Philpotts to help you out to begin with.’
She still had her arm round her tiny sister. Now she hugged her close, while she considered the situation. Then she said, ‘I think you need to be reassured by somebody outside the family. I noticed, when I was out, that there is a lady doctor who practises in Hoylake. You could tell a lady everything that has happened to you – much more easily than you could a male doctor. I think another woman would understand.’ She smiled and hugged her sister closer. ‘I am sure that she would reassure you that you are sane, though I don’t think you’re very well physically – we’ve all been under great strain and you have had to do a great deal – I simply don’t know how Mother can say that you’re incapable.’
She smiled down at Celia, and she could feel the younger woman’s body beginning to relax. ‘Let’s go to see the doctor tomorrow,’ she soothed. ‘She probably has a morning surgery.’
‘I can’t pay her.’
‘I know that – but I can. Between us, in case of emergency, Paul and I were carrying a fair amount of cash with us when we left Brazil. I changed it into English sovereigns when I arrived, and, thanks to Papa Fellowes, I have not had to spend much of it, except to help Mother out with her housekeeping. I can certainly afford a few shillings to pay for a doctor for you.’
As Celia began to protest, Edna stifled her objections by saying that she could accept the fee as an advance birthday present. ‘Don’t worry,’ she added. ‘My income will be quite adequate as soon as the will business is settled. If a doctor can lift this cloud from your mind, I think it will be the best birthday present I can give you.’
‘It would, Edna. It really would. Do you think the doctor could? Could we go to her without telling Mother?’
‘Certainly. She’s going to read to her boys tomorrow morning and then help to take the two deaf-blind ones for a walk.’ Edna laughed softly. ‘We’ll leave the housework – just forget about it.’
Celia struggled to sit up, and Edna loosened her hold on her. ‘What am I going to do about Mr Philpotts?’
‘Well, I think we should talk to Cousin Albert, when he comes on Monday. He may see how sensible John Philpotts’ suggestion is – and understand that in the end Mother won’t lose financially. If anyone can talk sense into her, I think he can.
‘She has to realise that you’re a human being, her daughter as much as I am. She must consider your future.’
‘I never thought of Cousin Albert.’
‘Well, at least he’s a man, and Mother may listen to a man.’
‘You’re being wonderfully kind, Edna,’ Celia said gently. ‘I’m so grateful.’
Edna made a face. ‘I’m making up for past sins. I never realised until recently what was happening to you. I was at school for years and you were just the younger sister at home. Quite honestly, I thought you liked helping Mother, and I was dreadfully self-centred anyway. For myself, I knew that to please Father I had to net a husband – a suitably well-off one. Then I was all excitement about meeting Paul – and then I went to Brazil. And, frankly, when I came back, I was quite distraught myself – my whole life seems to have gone to pieces, and England seems so different.’
Celia swung her feet carefully to the floor. She put one hand gently on Edna’s shoulder. ‘It must be dreadful for you, you poor dear,’ she said with sympathy. Then she went on dejectedly, ‘We didn’t really see much of each other, did we?’ She sat looking down at her slippered feet, and then, after reflection, said, ‘I always thought Mother would bring me out and arrange for me to meet someone to marry, like you, as soon as I was old enough. Then the war came and both Mother and Father kept putting me off – and Father wouldn’t hear of my becoming a nurse or anything. And that further convinced me that there must be something wrong with me, because a lot of untrained girls went to nurse the wounded.’
She looked up at Edna. ‘You know, he threatened that if I left home, he would cut me off without a penny. And in the end, it was so ironical – he never did make any provision for me.’
‘I think that was awful.’
Celia reverted to the question of her physical health. ‘I’ve never seen a doctor in my life, not even when I caught Spanish flu,’ she confided. Then she glanced apprehensively at the door into the hall. ‘I’m so scared, Edna. I thought Mother would come after me – but she hasn’t.’
‘She must have thought that she has settled the matter with her refusal – and that you just had a childish tantrum which you will have forgotten by morning.’ She began to laugh, and soon Celia was giggling, too.
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In perfect imitation of their old nanny, Edna said reprovingly, ‘“Now, Miss Celia, no lady allows her temper to get the better of her. A gentle answer turneth away wrath, remember.”’ Then she added in her own voice, ‘It can also make people think you are a doormat. Now, off you go to bed before she wipes her feet on you again.’
Chapter Thirty-Eight
After spending the tumultuous years of the war in a London hospital constantly full of wounded, Edith Mason came home to the village where she was born, to practise medicine with her father, who had had a family practice there for many years.
Though it was extremely difficult for a woman to obtain training as a doctor, old Dr Mason had given his only child every support and encouragement, and he was happy to welcome her home and to have such an experienced physician as his junior partner. Like many other medical students of the time, she had faced a constant flow of terribly wounded or very sick men, and, perforce, her experience during training had been much wider than it would have been in peacetime.
With her father as her partner, his patients tolerated her, though men often specified that they wanted to see old Dr Mason. When, in January 1920, he died, however, the old, ugly prejudice against women doctors surfaced and patients tended to drift away to any physician who wore a pair of trousers.
To Edith’s relief, however, it became evident that women were glad to discuss their more intimate problems with her, and, at the time of Celia’s visit, she was beginning to rebuild the practice, though she was still far from busy. Edna knew of her only from her business plate bolted to her front gate.
Edna felt that Celia would simply freeze in front of a male doctor and that what her sister needed most was reassurance. Dr Mason seemed to her a sensible choice.
When the two young women arrived at the doctor’s front door, they obeyed a cardboard notice hung on the door handle and entered her hallway. A further notice by an open doorway instructed them to Please Take a Seat, so in they went and shyly sat down.
Dr Mason’s waiting room held only one middle-aged lady, who sat primly upright in a corner. In response to a small ting-ting of a bell, she immediately rose and went into an inner room to see the doctor. The sisters heard her being greeted with a cheerful good morning, and then the door was closed.
When Edna and a very timid Celia answered the bell and went in to face her, Dr Mason was able to give them plenty of time.
At first Edna did the talking, but when finally her description of her sister’s fears about her health became clear, the doctor turned to Celia.
Celia said baldly, ‘I want to know, Doctor, if I am quite normal and sane in my mind and that I am not physically ill in any way. My parents have always kept me at home and consistently said that I am incapable of looking after myself.’
Edith Mason saw much more in this request than Celia realised. She knew the type quite well. A daughter kept as a superior servant, no social life, no sex life, little education, few friends. Queen Victoria had set the fashion for this misuse of a daughter, and Dr Mason had seen a number like her, and, indeed, wives with the same crushed passive look. She knew that, in the case of the latter, sometimes their only escape was into a form of semi-invalidism which had little to do with real illness.
She suggested, first, that she take Celia’s medical history and then give her a thorough physical examination.
Celia said she did not have any medical history. She had never been to a doctor before.
The doctor laughed and, after questioning her, ended up with a long list of childhood illnesses and, as an adult, recurring coughs, colds, unknown fevers, and Spanish flu.
When Edith saw the fear in her patient’s eyes at the length of the list, she assured her that it was quite an ordinary list. Most people went through all these illnesses.
Celia agreed. ‘It must be so, I suppose. Mother never called the doctor for any of them.’
Dr Mason took Celia behind a screen in a far corner of the spacious room, and asked her to undress and wrap herself in a white sheet lying on an examination table. While she did so, the doctor went to check that there was no one else in the waiting room.
Edna remained in the consulting room as chaperone. She was, however, seated at the furthest possible distance from the screen, and could reasonably be expected not to hear the doctor’s quiet conversation with her patient.
It was Celia’s first medical examination and her face went pink with embarrassment. While she was seated on the examination table, the doctor put her stethoscope to her chest and listened to her heart, turned her around and knocked carefully on her back, peered down her throat and down her ears, examined her throat and tongue and turned down her lower eyelids to check for anaemia. She took a little hammer and tapped her knees for reflexes. Then she laid Celia out on her back and took a good look at her, stark naked. She saw a short, small-breasted, perfectly formed, very white, reasonably nourished body that had obviously never been exposed to sunlight, hips of a normal width for her height. She was probably perfectly capable of bearing children and of feeding them. There was no apparent sign of malformation or ill health.
Anxious not to discommode a patient who, she guessed, had probably never been stripped in front of anyone, never mind a doctor, she did not feel for breast cancer.
She gently covered the little body with the sheet, and pulled a swivel chair up close to the table and sat down herself, picked up her clipboard from under the table and began to make some notes.
‘I should take your pulse,’ she said, her worn face breaking into a smile. ‘I forgot.’ And, looking at her closely, Celia realised, with surprise, that this self-possessed, careful lady was not much older than Edna.
Celia returned the smile. She felt perfect confidence in the physician, and answered as carefully as she could the questions she was then asked. No aches? No bad accidents at any time? No pains? Headaches? Menses regular? Celia had to have the word ‘menses’ explained to her, having previously only heard polite euphemisms, including the curse, for the menstrual cycle. Her last curse had been two weeks before.
Dr Mason sat back and looked at the prematurely sad face before her, and said that she appeared to have normal health, except that she was a little anaemic, for which she would prescribe a tonic. ‘And much more fresh air,’ she suggested. ‘Do you walk?’ Yes. ‘Can you swim?’ No. ‘Play tennis?’ No. ‘Ride a bicycle?’ No. ‘Church?’ No. ‘Mother goes, but I have not had time for months.’
The doctor leaned back in her swivel chair. ‘What do you do with your day?’ she asked in a friendly, conversational way.
Under the sheet, Celia squirmed uneasily. ‘Usually I do whatever Mother wants doing. But now she’s widowed, I have had to do all kinds of things.’ Her voice sounded flat and tired.
‘What kind of things?’ The doctor’s voice was soft and amiable.
The story of her father’s bankruptcy and having to move to the cottage came out, at first diffidently, and then in a rush. ‘Mother is so upset that she is not able to do much,’ she finished up in polite defence of her surviving parent. ‘So I had to make all the arrangements.’
‘And what do you personally hope to do in the future?’
And Celia replied dully, ‘Look after Mother and the house and the garden – and …’ She tailed off.
‘And?’ The doctor prompted.
Celia looked her squarely in the eye. ‘Do you really want to know?’
‘Well, it is natural that you might want to do something you enjoy in your spare time. You don’t have to tell me, but the more I know about you, the better I will be able to advise you. Did you lose someone in the war, my dear?’
‘Both my brothers. There is just Edna, Mother and I left now – Edna’s husband died of the Spanish flu.’
‘No sweetheart?’
Celia laughed disparagingly. ‘Me? I’m far too plain to have a sweetheart.’
Edith smiled inwardly. This, she thought, is where I begin the healing. ‘I don’t think yo
u’re too plain,’ she assured her. ‘You have a pretty, healthy body, and you are not at all ugly.’
‘Really?’ Celia had never in her life received a compliment regarding her appearance.
‘Of course.’ No need to tell her that most of the males of her generation were dead.
‘Is there nothing that you would like to do, if you had time? Your mother is not going to live for ever. You need to have something else to do.’
Celia propped herself up on one elbow, and said almost eagerly, ‘Well, yes, there is. But Mother has always assured me that I am totally incapable of doing anything. My father, too. That’s why I came to you – to find out if I am sick in some way – or if I am mentally deficient. You see I get so frightened that I curl up into a ball and I can’t do anything for hours until it passes.’ Her voice faded into despair. ‘You must think I’m awfully stupid.’
Panic attacks. ‘You poor child. Because of these episodes you think you are mentally deficient?’
‘I fear so. Edna doesn’t think I am, but she doesn’t know me very well. She’s been in South America for years and has only just recently come home.’
The doctor again put her fingers round Celia’s wrist. The girl’s pulse was now racing. She grasped her hand and squeezed it. She smiled, and said, ‘You strike me as a perfectly normal person, perhaps a little too dutiful a daughter, but, nevertheless, perfectly normal. Now, tell me what it was you wanted to do – it must be important since it apparently drove you to come to see me.’ She laughed. ‘Nobody knows better than a woman physician how difficult it is to become a professional – or do anything the least unusual.’
And while Edna fidgeted her way through a couple of magazines, Celia told Edith Mason about Mr Philpotts and the proposed furniture shop.
Edith Mason smiled. She said easily, ‘People said things like that to me when I announced that I was going to be a doctor. Women are incapable, they told me, besides which it is vulgar – I might have to look at blood – and at naked men – shocking!’
Mourning Doves Page 27