Coronation Wives (32 page)

‘I hope you did not go into that ward, my dear. As I told you, polio is a highly infectious disease.’

‘No!’ she lied. ‘Of course not.’

Professor Pritchard knotted his copious brows and studied her face as if she were less than human. Now she knew what a microbe felt like when subjected to microscopic scrutiny. ‘Carry on, woman. You’re not paid to hang around the corridors.’ He turned away.

Shaken, Janet stood as if frozen. Later, she’d be glad that she had. He opened a single door set in an alcove to one side. For a moment she glimpsed gowns, caps with flowing cotton ties and facemasks, clothes that offered some protection against the disease and made the wearer almost unrecognizable.

Unrecognizable!

As she followed the corridors towards her office her fingers curled more tightly around the spectacles that she’d found.

She pictured the door the professor had opened. Had it had a key? She couldn’t visualize one in her mind though that
didn’t mean he hadn’t used a key, merely that she hadn’t noticed he had. Butterflies took flight in her stomach. This could be it! This could be her way of seeing Susan. The professor’s warning about contagion came back to her. Surely she couldn’t contract the disease just by entering the ward?

Mrs Prendergast, the hospital almoner, passed her in the corridor close to her office and beamed broadly as if she knew Janet’s greatest secret. ‘There’s always someone in your office, Janet my dear. Aren’t you the lucky one?’

Mrs Prenderdgast winked wickedly and Janet almost blushed. Jonathan again! Well, if he had it in mind to offer her help in exchange for a night out at the village pub, he was out of luck.

Adopting a wide smile, she flung the door wide and breezed in, then stopped in her tracks.

‘Hello, darling.’

Smartly attired in a rust-coloured suit trimmed at the neck with a thin strip of rabbit fur, her mother rose from a chair.

‘Mother!’ Janet hugged the files to her chest then groaned. The files! She stared at them in disbelief. ‘Oh no!’ She’d been so absorbed in her plans that the archives and the files meant to be deposited there were completely forgotten.

Charlotte looked taken aback. ‘I’m sorry. Perhaps I should have telephoned to let you know I was coming.’

Janet placed the offending files on the desk and decided her mother deserved an explanation. ‘I was meant to take these files to the archives, but I saw …’ She couldn’t go on. The vision of the children entombed in metal cases was too recent and too raw to put into words without getting hysterical. She made a big effort to collect herself then asked, ‘Can I get you some tea?’

There was a smile on her mother’s mouth as she shook her head. The look in her eyes was not easily readable.

Janet dutifully kissed her mother’s cheek and breathed in the
familiar smell of expensive perfume and quality face powder. She’d certainly dressed for the occasion, you had to give her that. But what occasion? Initial delight was tempered by instant suspicion.

‘I had tea with Professor Pritchard.’

Janet glowered, picked the files up from her desk and, in a fit of temper, slammed them down again. ‘Don’t tell me! You’ve been worrying about me catching polio and asked him to accept my resignation! Well I’m
not
giving up my job, Mother, and I am
not
coming home and I thank you
not
to interfere with my private life.’

Charlotte got to her feet, turned her back on Janet and looked out of the window. Her shoulders heaved as though she’d taken a deep breath prior to diving into an even deeper pool. ‘Your father got me an interview with the Professor. I was quite sure I could persuade him to let Edna and Colin see Susan once the contagious period was over. He refused and lectured me as if I were merely a child. Visitors are not considered beneficial to patient recovery.’ She spun round suddenly, her grey eyes blazing with anger. ‘They’re children, for God’s sake! Mere children! What’s the matter with these people out here? Have they no souls?’

Contrite, Janet asked, ‘Did the Professor say whether she’d be all right?’ She remembered Susan running out from the Arcade that day she’d gone to the police station and got caught in the rain, the feel of her hand, warm and plump within her own. She remembered her at Clevedon, her dress tucked into her knickers, not at all ladylike, but very practical.

Charlotte wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. Suddenly she looked tired, and very much older. Janet’s heart went out to her, but she couldn’t
physically
reach out to her. It still sometimes felt as though her mother did not quite belong to her.

Charlotte continued. ‘The Professor said that she had been unfortunate to pick it up this late in the year, that the incubation period can be up to thirty-five days. Apart from that she could be in here three months, perhaps six or even more. It depends on the severity of the attack, but no matter how long she is here, visitors will not be allowed.’

Janet sucked in her breath and sank into her iron-framed typist chair. ‘Poor Susan. Poor Edna.’ Their misfortune had touched all of them.

Janet clasped her hands together on the desk in front of her and closed her eyes. She chose not to mention her plans for seeing Susan, at least, not yet. ‘Are you home at the weekend, Mother?’

‘Yes. All alone. Your father’s gone to Devon with Geoffrey. They’re going to do some fishing and other things that boys like to do.’ She laughed, then stopped abruptly and looked pained, as if it was slightly distasteful to laugh at a time like this, in a place where sick people hoped to be made whole again.

‘I’d like to come home this weekend. I’d like to see Edna.’

‘Of course.’ Her mother showed no sign of being surprised.

‘And I think you should know that I’m not living with Jonathan. That’s not the way it is.’

‘I believe you.’

Janet studied her mother for any sign of what she was really thinking. The serenity of her expression was unchanged. Always smart, always saying the right things.

Her mother glanced at the floor as if she needed to think carefully about what she would say next. She looked back to Janet, her gaze unblinking. ‘Ivan is still with us.’

Janet swallowed and tapped her fingernails against the pile of files. ‘Is he?’

‘He’s been through a lot, Janet. Honestly, if you knew …’

‘So have I!’

‘I don’t think there can be any comparison,’ she said, her
voice soft, similar to how it had been when Janet had been a child and had woken in the dead of night from a bad dream.

Janet took a deep breath. ‘No! Perhaps not.’ She was not going to divulge details about the foreign man, the rape, the darkness of the night – or her hatred of any song by Doris Day.

‘I’d better be going.’

After a light brush of lips against cheeks, Charlotte reached for the door, her movements languorously graceful, perfect in her poise and her appearance. Ah, thought Janet, in a sudden moment of reflection and remembrance, but you’re not perfect and I know that you’re not.

‘I’ll look forward to seeing you at the weekend,’ said Charlotte lightly, then more seriously. ‘You’re still my daughter, Janet. I don’t expect you to be a saint.’

Janet’s response was curt. ‘None of us are saints, Mother. Not even you.’

For the briefest of moments, her mother’s expression stiffened and her smile was short and nervous.

After she’d gone Janet leaned against the door, closed her eyes and cast her mind back over the years to when she had run away from school, come home in the middle of the night, and seen her mother in bed with a man who was not her father.

The Professor gave her plenty of work for the rest of that day, but did not comment on her mother’s visit. Saltmead Sanatorium was his world, an empire in which his word was law and the world outside an imposition that he could well do without. All he related to Janet was dictation and instructions regarding the preparation of reports.

Reports were exactly what she wanted to see, and one above all others, that of Susan Smith. Among the pile of buff files for discharged patients and blue for current, was one with a yellow memo attached. She burrowed down to it, saw the name and, trembling with trepidation, opened the file. A preliminary
appraisal of her condition had been carried out. One leg. One arm. Janet’s hand went to her chest in an effort to ease the sudden stab of pain. Please, she prayed, closing her eyes and focusing all her energies on whatever and whoever might be listening, please make her better.

When she blinked her eyes open, the words Hannah More leapt up to her from the head of the medical report. Besides it being the name of a famous Bristolian philanthropist, it was also the name of a ward close to the one full of iron lungs and the roomful of protective clothing.

Thoughtfully she opened the top drawer of her desk and took out the pair of spectacles she’d found. Holding them carefully over her wastepaper bin, she pushed each lens out of its socket. Silently they dropped among the bits of screwed-up paper and other debris. They were a little large and slid down her nose, but with enough sticky tape wound around the leaves, they’d serve her well. Until they were needed, they would live at the rear of the top drawer of her desk hidden behind notepads, pencils, and a packet of carbon paper.

After she’d left Janet, Charlotte sat in her car, the engine idling as she eyed the green and cream sign fixed to the fencing beside the main gate. It held great significance for her. Back in the forties it had said something entirely different. Nowadays the inmates were very ill; back then they had been enemies.

Josef, who had sent her the letter regarding Edna’s first child Sherman, had been a prisoner here. Even now, she could see his face, impatience with a world gone mad reflected in his eyes. She’d also seen fear. It was only after Josef had returned home and felt safe that he’d reported how a prison guard had died because he was different. He’d also named the man responsible, though she had no idea whether the man was ever brought to justice.

And here she was again, only now it was Susan somewhere behind that high fence, lying in a bed within one of these long, low buildings.

She gripped the steering wheel tightly, closed her eyes then stabbed her foot on the accelerator. Uncaring of speed, she hurtled across Warmley Common at over forty miles an hour towards St George and Kingscott Avenue where Edna and Colin Smith were waiting for news.

When she got there, Edna hung out of an upstairs window, her face almost as white as the net curtains bunched around her head. Charlotte smiled and waved. The curtain fell back into place. Halfway up the garden path the front door flew open. Edna looked apprehensive.

‘When can we see her?’ Hope shone in Edna’s eyes. Dark circles hung like bruises beneath them.

Charlotte wrapped her arm around Edna’s shoulders. ‘Shall we go in?’

The front room smelt of bleach, polish and Windolene. Edna had always kept a tidy house, thought Charlotte, but I can’t ever remember it smelling like this.

‘You’ve been busy,’ she said as she pulled off her gloves and thought about how best to report on her efforts with Professor Pritchard – not that there was anything positive to report.

Edna was so eager to hear something good that she had not offered tea as she normally did, but Charlotte adopted a warm smile. ‘Where’s Pamela? I haven’t seen her for ages.’

‘In the back room,’ said Edna. ‘I didn’t want her getting this one dirty. It has to be just right for when Susan gets home.’

A warning bell sounded in Charlotte’s head. Children made rooms untidy; it would be normal to say that. But dirty?

‘And where’s Colin?’

‘At work. I told him to go. He was getting on my nerves.’

Charlotte was adept at keeping her expression under control. She rarely showed her true feelings, but she did now. Colin was not the type to get on anyone’s nerves, even those of the woman he’d married. He was gregarious, funny, the life and soul of any party, but also the shoulder to cry on.

Charlotte sat down in an armchair, her gloves and handbag nestling in her lap. This wasn’t going to be easy and the right words were slow in coming.

‘Edna, I am afraid they will not allow visitors …’

‘No!’ It wasn’t like Edna to speak so sharply.

Charlotte kept calm. ‘There’s nothing I can do. Nothing,’ she said shaking her head and slumping back against the stiff covering of the squarely constructed armchair. Confidence gained from the experience of helping others, mostly complete strangers, melted away. She had failed a friend, the worst failure of all.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said again.

‘My child’s alone in that place.’

Charlotte looked at her gloves as she twisted them out of shape with tense, nervous fingers. ‘We can only pray.’

‘Hah! What for? A miracle? I’m not even asking if my daughter will ever walk again, all I am asking is that I can see her!’

Edna paced up and down the room, threw her head back, cried, prayed and blamed herself for not keeping the house as clean as she should.

Charlotte hung her head, her lovely kid gloves no more than a screwed-up ball between her clammy palms. Words were not enough. A balm was needed, some kind of salve to ease her friend’s pain, something to make her think of something or someone else besides Susan. There was only one course of action to follow.

‘Edna. I have to tell you something. You remember Janet talking about a letter?’

Edna was unresponsive. Poor woman! Was it any wonder that she’d forgotten all mention of it in the circumstances?

Charlotte continued. ‘I’ve received correspondence regarding your son, Sherman.’

The crying and praying stopped, just as she hoped it would. She went on to tell Edna about the letters and what she was being asked to do.

The haunted look left Edna’s eyes.

Charlotte congratulated herself. Hopefully she’d done this right. She kept her fingers crossed under cover of her crumpled gloves. ‘Of course you need to talk it over with Colin, but I think it would …’

At the mention of Colin, Edna’s new calmness dissolved. ‘I don’t want him! I want Susan.’ But Charlotte had seen the change in her eyes.