A Silver Lining (26 page)

‘Sorry, I didn’t know anyone was here.’ Embarrassed, Alma backed out of the door.

‘I’m just going.’ Bethan put her hand into her shopping bag. ‘I brought you something for your new home. I hope you like it.’

‘Thank you.’ Alma took the parcel, but made no move to open it.

‘See you teatime, Charlie?’ Bethan said as she left.

‘See you,’ he smiled, turning to a sour-faced Alma.

Bethan woke in complete darkness. She blinked, disorientated, and for one blissful unknowing moment she fumbled in the bed alongside her, seeking the reassurance of Andrew’s presence. Surrounded by deafening silence she waited for the traffic noise of London to reverberate through the window from the street outside. Then she remembered: she was back home.

In her parents’ bedroom in Graig Avenue.

Fighting panic rooted in a fear she couldn’t identify, she lay back aware of the thunder of her heartbeat, waiting for a repetition of whatever it was that had woken her.

Something was wrong! She
knew
it.

She listened hard, all her senses on the alert. Somewhere towards the mountain end of the street a dog barked, closely followed by the spitting, snarling sounds of fighting cats. Then the springs creaked in her grandmother’s old double bed in the room next door as Diana turned in her sleep.

Either William or Eddie coughed in their bedroom. None of the noises was in the least out of the ordinary. But there
had
been something. She was certain of it.

She sat up, swung her legs out of bed, and reached for the old grey dressing gown she had left at home when she had fled to London. Wool, even scratchy worn wool, was more serviceable in the unheated bedrooms of the Graig than the silk and lace negligee Andrew had bought for her to wear in their centrally heated flat.

Edmund grunted, a muffling, snuffling sound unlike his normal steady breathing. In one single painful instant she knew what had woken her. She leaped from the bed and ran towards the door, feeling with her outstretched hand for the light switch.

She flooded the room with a harsh light that brought tears to her eyes. Without giving herself time to become accustomed to the glare she darted towards the cot and picked up her baby. His tiny body was hot, fiery to the touch, so much she almost dropped him from shock. Holding him close, she carried him over to her bed and laid him down on the patchwork cover. He was rigid, his eyes staring blindly up into the bright light, but for the first time since his birth she was oblivious to his discomfort.

She pulled up his soft flannel nightgown and carried out the routine checks she’d been taught under the eagle eye of Sister Church, who’d trained her in midwifery and infant care on the maternity ward of the Graig Hospital.

She ran her fingers over his chest. There was no rash.

His nappy was dry. Was he dehydrated? His temperature!

Holding him in one arm she went to the marble-topped washstand, poured cold water from the jug into the washing bowl and tossed in a flannel. Stripping Edmund, supporting his back and head with her hands, she plunged him into the bowl. He cried briefly as the chill of the water lapped around him, but even after she’d sponged him down, the fever still burned, flushing his skin a deep, unhealthy pink.

Wrapping him in the sheet from the bottom of his cot she carried him, wet as he was, to Eddie’s door and banged on it.

‘What?’ a sleepy voice mumbled.

‘Eddie, run down the hill and get Trevor Lewis for me.’ A crash came from the other side of the door, followed by a series of thuds. Eddie peered out sleepily.

He was dressed in rumpled pyjama bottoms, his chest bare, spattered with the black and purple bruises of punches from his sparring sessions in the gym.

‘Edmund’s ill,’ she explained, holding the damp bundle towards him.

‘I’ll go now.’

‘I’ll go. Eddie, you stay with Beth.’ William appeared in the doorway behind him. He’d already pulled his trousers over his pyjamas and was fastening the buttons. He reached out to the bottom of the bed, picked up his working shirt and thrust his naked feet into his boots.

As Bethan retreated into her bedroom, she heard him clattering down the stairs.

She was sponging the baby down a second time when Eddie appeared, half dressed, in her bedroom.

‘He is going to be all right, isn’t he, Beth?’ he asked urgently, staring at the tiny white figure laid out on a towel on her bed.

‘I hope so, Eddie,’ she breathed fervently as the baby wailed weakly. ‘I really hope so.’

Even as he turned to go downstairs to make her a cup of tea he knew. One look into her eyes had been enough.

William had never flown in an aeroplane. He’d gone up to the field in Penycoedcae one Sunday when one had landed and offered trips over the town for half a crown, but he hadn’t had the money.

Now, as he raced headlong down the Graig Hill speeding past sleeping houses and empty streets, his footfalls ringing out on the metalled surface of Llantrisant Road, he felt as though the sensation couldn’t be that different. He was whirling past a familiar world made strange. All life seemed to be extinguished. No lights burned except for the street lamps, and apart from a couple of cats fighting on the roof of a cottage he didn’t see a living soul. But it was only when he passed the darkened window of Griffiths’ shop on the corner of Factory Lane that he began to wonder just what time it was.

He placed his hands on his knees, bent over and took four or five deep breaths before sprinting on. Past the fish and chip shop, past the Temple chapel round the corner into Graig Street, up and over the triangular patch of rough grass to Laura and Trevor’s front door. He hammered on it without pausing to catch his breath.

Then he leaned back against the wall, gasping for air as he waited for his head to stop swimming and his heartbeat to steady.

‘I’m coming.’ He heard Trevor’s voice from the bedroom overhead, the click of the landing light, the creak of the stairs as Trevor descended. The front door opened wide. No cracks, or peering around corners for a doctor used to night calls.

‘William. Come in while I get my bag.’

‘It’s Bethan’s baby,’ William wheezed.

Trevor had already pulled his trousers over his pyjamas, but hadn’t bothered with a shirt. He was wearing a leather patched sports coat over his striped open-necked jacket. He picked up a bunch of keys from the hall table next to the telephone and threw them to William, who was still in the doorway.

‘Open the car and get out the starting handle.’ He went into the front parlour to fetch his bag.

A few moments later they were chugging steadily up the Graig hill.

‘Did Bethan say what it is?’ Trevor asked.

‘No. She just said to get you right away. I didn’t see the baby. She had it wrapped in a wet sheet.’

‘Fever.’ Trevor slammed the car down a gear to climb the steep area past the fish and chip shop.

William was out of the car before Trevor drew to a halt. He raced up the front steps, turned the key in the door and held it open. ‘She’s in the main bedroom. The door facing you at the top of the stairs.’

Swinging his brown leather bag Trevor took the stairs two at a time, passing Eddie on the landing. Bethan was in the doorway waiting to meet him. William noticed that she’d dressed, and brushed her hair back from her face.

‘High temperature,’ Bethan announced without bothering with polite preliminaries. ‘I’ve given him two cold baths and sponged him down three times, but it hasn’t had any effect.’

‘Convulsions?’ Trevor asked.

‘Yes, but he’s had those before,’ she explained as he followed her into the bedroom and closed the door.

William trailed behind Eddie into the kitchen. The light was on and he glanced up at the clock. The hands pointed to half-past three. No wonder he was tired. He opened the oven door, raked up the coals, recklessly adding another two pieces so that the kettle Eddie had already filled would boil quickly. Taking the easy chair opposite Eddie’s, he sat back and waited; still, silent and impotent like his cousin, as they listened to the quiet murmurs percolating through the floorboards of the bedroom above.

‘What is it?’ Bethan’s voice pitched high in urgency although she knew it was impossible for Trevor to make a firm diagnosis on the basis of Edmund’s symptoms.

‘I don’t know.’ He bent over Edmund and studied him closely. ’Frankly, I haven’t a clue,’ he added, irritated by his inadequacy. ‘You know as well as I do how susceptible to infection children with palsy are. This could be anything from –’

‘I took him out today, to town. And last Sunday we went to Cardiff. It was cold. He must have caught a chill while we waited in one of the bus shelters ...’

‘This isn’t the result of a chill, Bethan. It’s a deep-seated infection,’ he said authoritatively as he laid his hand lightly on Edmund’s stomach.

‘You can’t be sure of that. You –’

‘Stop beating yourself with the stick of bad motherhood,’ he admonished her. ‘No matter what precautions you took this was bound to happen sooner or later. Didn’t the paediatrician in the Cross warn you about the increased risk of infections for a child with palsy?’

‘Yes.’

‘I could admit him to the Graig. It would give you a break. You could rest ...’

‘What treatment would you prescribe?’

‘At this stage only observation. I don’t know enough to order otherwise.’

‘I’d rather keep him here.’

‘I couldn’t stop you, but it might be better for Edmund, and for you, to have a shift of fresh nurses on hand rather than one tired mother.’

‘I’ll cope and I’d rather keep him,’ she said firmly.

‘You sure?’

‘Perfectly.’

He knew Bethan too well to argue. ‘I’ll call in again before I do my morning rounds in the hospital. You obviously remember the drill. Try to keep the temperature down, and pour as much fluid into him as he will take. If he goes into convulsions again, even mild ones, send for me. Immediately! Laura always knows where I am.’

‘Thank you for coming, Trevor.’ Bethan wrapped the baby in a clean linen sheet. Although he still needed to be kept cool it didn’t seem right for him to lie naked in the cold bedroom.

‘That’s what doctors do,’ he replaced his stethoscope in his bag. ‘Come when they’re called. But for all of our training we can’t help every patient the way we would like to.’ He looked at her closely. She appeared composed, in complete control. But he’d worked with Bethan; seen her struggle through emotional traumas that would have felled a lesser person, only to collapse later when she’d believed herself alone. ‘Do you want me to telephone Andrew?’

She looked down at her baby. ‘If you like,’ she answered dully.

‘Bethan, surely it would be easier if Andrew were here, facing this with you?’

She bit her lower lip and shook her head, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

‘It’s none of my business but if this was my son I’d want to be with him.’

‘You
would Trevor,’ she said quietly. ‘But Edmund’s not your son, he’s Andrew’s.’

‘Bethan, I couldn’t live with myself if I kept something like this from any father, let alone Andrew who’s a good friend ...’

‘Do what you think is right, Trevor. You’re the doctor.’ She sat on the bed and moved Edmund on to her lap.

‘Then you won’t mind if I call him?’

‘He won’t come.’

Eddie barged into the silence that had fallen between them, carrying two cups of tea that had slopped into the saucers.

‘Keep it warm. I’ll be back at half-past six before I go into the hospital.’ Trevor picked up his bag.

Eddie dumped both cups on the bedside table. ‘I’ll see you out.’

‘The baby?’ Eddie whispered as soon as they were down the steps out of Bethan’s earshot.

Trevor faced Eddie squarely. There was something infinitely pathetic about the boy who’d been forced to carry a man’s load that wasn’t even his, far too soon in life.

‘I don’t know what’s going to happen to the baby,’ he answered with more truth than diplomacy. ‘If you’re the praying sort you might try that.’

‘I don’t go to church, only the gym,’ Eddie retorted drily.

‘Pity we can’t put whatever Edmund’s got into a punchbag and give it a bloody good pounding.’ Trevor opened his car door. ‘That way we’d both be doing something useful.’

‘That’s all she said, "Do whatever you think is right"?’ Laura turned the rashers of bacon she was frying.

‘That and "He won’t come".’

‘And are you going to telephone him?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I think it’s too early in the morning to play guessing games.’ She clamped the lid back on the pan to prevent the fat from spitting over the stove.

‘Truth is, Laura, I don’t know what to do. I realise Bethan doesn’t want me to telephone Andrew, but I can’t help thinking of him, alone in that flat of theirs in London. He must miss them terribly ...’

‘The only thing Andrew John would miss in life is a good time. And, as he’s living alone, it’s my guess he isn’t missing a thing.’

‘That’s a hard thing to say about any man.’

‘If we were talking about any man I’d agree with you, but we’re not, we’re talking about Andrew John.’ She lifted three eggs from the bowl on the dresser and placed them next to the frying pan. ‘He never gave Bethan, or the baby she was carrying, a second thought when his parents packed him off to London because they didn’t fancy the daughter of an unemployed miner joining the family.’

‘He came back for her. He married her,’ Trevor protested as he went out to wash his hands.

‘So he did, but he isn’t looking after her and that poor child now. Seems to me that whenever life gets tough Andrew runs.’

‘We don’t know for certain that he’s running this time.’

‘If he’s a caring husband and father, what is he doing in London while Bethan is coping all alone here?’

‘Probably coming to terms with having a son like Edmund.’

‘That’s exactly my point.’

‘Don’t we all try to run away from the unpleasant things in life?’ Trevor put his hands around Laura’s waist and kissed the back of her neck.

‘You don’t,’ she snapped irritably as she lifted the lid of the pan and received a spit burn on her finger.