Secrets to Keep

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN





Aidy was humming happily to herself as she entered the last patient’s name into her ledger one morning. Four weeks had passed since Arnold had been driven from their lives, and from the moment the back gate had slammed shut behind him, the atmosphere in the house had returned to the happy one it had been before he’d made his unwelcome return. There was still the underlying sadness of their loss of Jessie and the breakup of Aidy’s marriage, but time was helping both wounds heal.

They were all excited about Christmas and each in their own way trying their best to have a present to give every family member on Christmas morning. Aidy was certain that the children had put together their farthings and ha’pennies earned from running errands for neighbours, topped up by the odd ha’penny she or Bertha had been able to scrape together on a Saturday for them, and had bought her a box of her favourite liquorice allsorts. She knew this because Marion was terrible at keeping secrets and had dropped so many hints to Aidy that it would have been difficult for her not to guess what her siblings had done for her, although she would never spoil their surprise by letting on.

Aidy wanted to buy her family the world, but the few coppers in her purse dictated she should lower her sights. Up to now she had managed to purchase Marion a cut-out doll book; for George a second-hand Meccano set minus a couple of pieces, which was how she was able to afford it; and had fashioned a new dress for Betty from one of her mother’s old frocks, hand sewing it in the evening after the children had gone to bed. And for all the family to play with, a pack of Snap cards. For Bertha she had yet to think of something as she hadn’t any spare money. Should she not be able to, she knew her gran would be more than understanding, just content they were all well and happy, dry and warm under the same roof together, and more especially no longer suffering the tyranny of her detested son-in-law.

Having put the reception ledger to one side until it was needed again for evening surgery, Aidy was filling in time by sharpening pencils until she had seen the last patient out. Just then an anguished cry coming from behind the closed door of the surgery reached her ears. The cry was one of several that had been issued by the last patient she had sent through.

Aidy knew Beattie Rogers, was on chatting terms with her should they meet up in the street. She lived in the next road and the youngest of her four children was in the same class at school as Marion. She was a salt-of-the-earth sort, solid and reliable. Her husband worked for a local factory as a storeman. Like most people in these parts they hadn’t much, but Beattie kept the mildew and bugs down in her home as best she could, was a good mother to her children, a good wife to her reliable husband, and a helpful neighbour. She hadn’t needed to tell Aidy why she was paying a visit to the doctor as it was very apparent she’d done something to her arm. It was tightly bound by a piece of bloodied towelling and her face revealed the pain she was in.

Moments after Aidy heard Beattie’s last cry, she heard the surgery door open, footsteps came across the corridor, and Ty appeared. He looked frustrated.

Seeing Aidy was alone, he said, ‘Oh, Sister has already left on her visits then? I was hoping she hadn’t. You’ll have to do. Come through to the surgery.’

She arrived in the surgery to find Beattie Rogers seated at one side of the examination couch, her injured arm now unwrapped from the bloodied towel and laid across it. The gash on her arm was at least six inches long and half an inch deep. Ty had wrapped a rubber tourniquet tightly around her arm above her elbow, to stem the flow of blood. He was standing poised on the other side of the table, holding a suture needle threaded with thick cat gut.

He ordered Aidy, ‘Restrain Mrs Rogers to stop her pulling back her arm every time I try to start stitching.’ Then, to Beattie: ‘Would you please stop screaming every time I make an attempt?’

She was most apologetic. ‘I’m sorry, Doctor, really I am. I hate needles, you see. They terrify the life out of me. Every time I see it coming towards me, it sets me off. I know it’s going to hurt when you stick it into me … and me arm already hurts like the devil as it is.’

He snapped at her brusquely, ‘But not as much as it will should I have to amputate after septicaemia sets in – which it will if you don’t allow me to close the wound and disinfect it. I keep telling you to look the other way.’ He then snapped at Aidy, ‘Well, hold Mrs Rogers down then.’

She was weighing up the situation. If anyone was restraining her, she would automatically fight to free herself and had no doubt that was what Beattie would do, making it impossible for Ty to work away on her arm in any case. What Aidy felt she needed to do was to distract Beattie’s attention from what Ty was doing to her and on to something else. Hopefully, knowing the type of woman Beattie was, she knew just what would work. Engaging her in conversation! Rushing over to the back of Ty’s desk, Aidy grabbed his chair and pulled it over to set it before Beattie Rogers, so that she had to turn her head away from the doctor to look at Aidy.

Taking Beattie’s free hand in hers and squeezing it hard to get her initial attention, which thankfully she did, Aidy asked, ‘Did your Avril catch the measles when we had that epidemic a few weeks ago, Mrs Rogers, or was she one of those that escaped? Marion, George and Betty all went down with it together. What a nightmare! It wasn’t so bad at first when they were all too ill to do anything more than sleep, but then they started to recover and the boredom set in. How do you keep three youngsters entertained in their bedroom for a fortnight? That was the problem.’

For a moment Ty was annoyed that his receptionist seemed to be blatantly ignoring his instructions. Then, being the intelligent man he was, he realised what Aidy was attempting. She seemed to be succeeding, so without further ado he set to, hoping she would keep the patient’s attention diverted long enough for him to finish his work.

Beattie was looking sympathetically at Aidy. ‘Oh, I know just what you went through, ducky. Three of mine caught chicken-pox all at the same time last year. It cost me a small fortune in carbolised oil from the chemist to stop them scratching, which didn’t do the job as well as the label on the bottle promised, so I did what I should have done in the first place and got some lotion from your …’

Aidy nearly choked, knowing what Beattie was about to divulge innocently, and interrupted to stop her, ‘I’ve no doubt that worked. So just how did you keep your kids occupied, to stop them from driving you mental?’

‘I was lucky ’cos neighbours rallied around and borrowed me some books and jigsaws, but I have to say, it was the longest three weeks of my life. I was lucky with the recent measles outbreak. My lot escaped it.

‘Anyway, I haven’t had chance to tell you in person but it’s a grand job you’re doing. Me and Mrs Fisher were only talking about you the other day. All of us around here admire you. Not many young women of your age who had their own home and husband would give it all up to care for their orphaned sisters and brother like you are. And yer’ve yer gran living with you as well. I know Bertha will be pulling her weight to help as much as she can, but the burden still falls mostly on you ’cos she’s not as young as she used to be. Only so much she can do, and ’course a lot of her time will be taken up making her …’

Aidy frenziedly cut in, ‘Yes, well, I couldn’t manage without Gran, and the kids help out too with what they can do. I can’t say it’s easy, but we manage.’ Desperate to change the subject, she asked Beattie, ‘With all what’s happening just now, Mr Rogers is still in work, I hope?’

‘At the moment, thank God. Every night he comes home I have a dread on me he’s going to tell me he’s been laid off and be joining the groups of other desperate men gathering on street corners ’cos they’ve n’ote else to do. Some I’ve no doubt are plotting other ways to make themselves a bob or two, if yer understand me. With all the worries you must have in the circumstances, be thankful that’s one you ain’t got, lovey, what with you and your husband no longer being together.’

She pulled a rum face before continuing, ‘Shame on him is what I say. Up and leaving you to care for your family on yer own ’cos he didn’t want the responsibility. Throughout our lives, we all have to knuckle down and do things we don’t want to. And, after all, family is family. I hope he’s managing to live with himself, wherever it is he’s gone off to. Mind you, looking at who his parents are, ’specially his mother who’s all take and no give, is it surprising he did what he did, coming from her loins? Well, just thank God you had no kids of yer own, love, and he didn’t leave you to look after them as well as yer sisters, brother and grandmother. Still, I bet you’re glad you don’t have the likes of Pat Nelson as yer mother-in-law any longer.’

Beattie’s eyes suddenly brightened with curiosity. ‘Actually, there is a mystery you can clear up while I’ve got you here. I’m positive I saw your father going about a couple of times a while back. Nelly Miller and Hattie Jones thought they saw him too. My Harry came home from the pub one night and told me he thought he’d seen Arnold. He was with a couple of those shifty-looking types that live down the bottom end and they looked like they was up to no good according to Harry. Anyway, if it was your father, he’s got some brass neck, showing his face again after what he did to your mother, leaving her to struggle to raise you kids. It wasn’t the first time either, was it? He did it before, when you was little. So was it him we all saw? Has he had the nerve to come back again, after all these years?’

Aidy froze. If she confirmed Beattie Roger’s suspicions and it got back to the rent man that she had lied, she wasn’t sure how she would stand regarding her tenancy of the house. She had in truth conned the rent man into handing it over to her. Mr Trotter was the upstanding sort and might not at all like the fact she had done so, despite her good reasons. He could even respond by taking the tenancy back and evicting them. Aidy couldn’t risk that so she lied.

‘That wasn’t my father. We haven’t heard a word from him since he left before our Marion was born. He could be dead, for all we know. Who you saw was a relative of his, his cousin. He was just stopping with us for a while as he was down on his luck, but he’s gone now.’

Aidy was dying inside. Mortified that, through Beattie, her employer was learning all her sordid family history, personal secrets she had wanted to keep hidden. She vehemently hoped he was so consumed in his work he wasn’t paying any attention to what was being said.

But Ty was listening. In fairness, he couldn’t really not unless he was deaf, the two women being right next to him and not exactly whispering. But what he had heard had come as a shock to him. He had been under the impression that his receptionist was a happily married woman, with no other responsibilities than that. He had had no idea she was being mother to her orphaned siblings and guardian to an aged grandmother. But then, how would he? At her interview it was the abilities she possessed to do the job he required of her, not her private life, he’d been interested in, so he had only enquired of her the barest personal details about herself, like her age and place of abode. She’d announced herself to him as ‘Mrs’ so he’d assumed she was happily married. And since then he’d made no attempt to get to know her on a personal level.

There was far more to his receptionist that he’d thought. She hadn’t led an easy life it seemed, her mother being left to raise Aidy and her siblings single handed. And neither was Aidy now just a housewife who chose to work so that she and her husband could afford a better standard of living than the majority of folks here had. No, Aidy Nelson worked because she needed the money to care for her orphaned siblings and aged grandmother, and did so on her own as her husband had left her, not wanting to share the responsibility. It took a very unselfish person to give up their own future to give their family one. He knew what he paid her, it wouldn’t be easy for her to make her wage stretch all the way.

He was starting to see his receptionist in a different light. He had based his opinion of her as being rude and disrespectful on his first impression, when she had burst into his surgery and insisted he go with her to attend to her mother. He’d been angry at the time, seeing that as a blatant lack of respect for a man of his professional standing, but in truth wouldn’t he have acted the same way had he found one of his parents in a similar condition?

Beattie Rogers had opened his eyes to the fact that Aidy Nelson was neither rude nor disrespectful but, when her family was in danger, a woman who would do whatever it took to get help for them. She had to be a highly principled, caring and considerate individual to have taken on the burden of her entire family after her mother’s death. And she had strength of character too. Hadn’t she more than proved that by putting up with him? A thought occurred to him then. She still insisted on addressing him as Doc, despite the number of times he had reprimanded her and reminded her he wished to be addressed as Doctor Strathmore. Was this her way of taking a stand against him for the arrogant way in which he treated her? If that indeed were the truth he realised he couldn’t actually blame her, and even found himself admiring her way of getting her own back.

He suddenly felt guilty for his whole attitude towards her. Here was a woman still in mourning for the loss of her mother and the collapse of her marriage, struggling single handed to care for her orphaned siblings and grandmother. And as if all that wasn’t enough, during work hours she had his uncompromising attitude to endure as well. Shame filled him suddenly and a need flooded to explain to Aidy just why he’d acted like he did, so that she did not think the worst of him. But he could not take her into his confidence. Dared not. Even platonic friendship with a woman involved an emotional attachment that held the risk of eventual hurt. He’d enough emotional scars to last him a lifetime. But, regardless, he need not be quite so curt with her in future, need he?

While Ty had been lost in his own thoughts, thankfully for Aidy she had managed to steer the conversation from her personal life and on to other matters. They were at the moment discussing Beattie’s neighbour’s washing, her whites in particular, which in fact were a dingy grey according to Beattie. Aidy was not finding the topic at all stimulating but was trying her best to show she was, in her effort to keep Beattie’s attention on what she was saying and not what the doctor was doing. Out of the corner of her eye Aidy saw Ty snip the end of the last stitch, and gratefully exclaimed, ‘That’s Doc finished, Mrs Rogers.’

Beattie looked stunned. She spun her head round to look at her arm, the gaping wound now closed by Ty’s skilful work. ‘Well, bless my soul, I never felt a thing,’ she said, awestruck.

‘Doc just needs to swab it with Iodoform then dress it for you and you’re all done.’

Ty eyed his receptionist, taken aback. That was exactly what he was going to be doing next, but how did she know? And further more, it wasn’t her place to explain medical procedures. ‘You can leave us now,’ he said to Aidy tartly, then remembered he was going to treat her with a little more kindness in future and called after her, ‘Er … and thank you.’

Aidy was outside in the corridor by now. She stopped abruptly, her mouth gaping. Had Doc really just thanked her for her help? In all the time she had been working for him, she hadn’t ever heard the words escape his lips. Didn’t think he was aware of them. She must have misheard.

A short while later, Beattie Rogers came back out into the waiting room. Ty followed her. He handed Aidy that morning’s patients’ records to file away while saying, ‘The list you’re compiling of visits for Sister to make tomorrow … add Mrs Rogers to it for a change of dressing. I’m off on rounds.’

With that, he left.

Beattie Rogers was looking pensive. ‘That man reminds me of my Uncle Bert. He was a miserable old bugger! Give him his due, though, he did lose both legs in the war, and his wife left him ’cos she didn’t want a cripple for a husband. I wonder what excuse the doctor’s got for his surly manner? I don’t envy you working for him, love. Can’t fault him as a doctor, though. Stitched me up good and proper. I’ve to come back to have them removed in ten days.

‘Been an expensive accident I had today with the bread knife. I’ve had to plunder me Christmas money to pay the doctor’s fees. Thankfully I don’t have ter pay for Sister’s visits, only for the bandages and whatnot she uses, her services come courtesy of the convent she’s with. I’m not what you could call a religious person, but at times like this I do give a thank you to whoever is up there for those who do good works as their way of serving God. What time will Sister be calling to change my bandage and check no infection has set in? Only I’ll have a pot of tea ready for her.’

Without waiting for Aidy to reply she went on, ‘Takes her calling very seriously does Sister. She makes it her business to find out if there’s any old bodies that are on their own and drops in to see if she can do anything for them. I know this ’cos she called in on Lily Potter the other afternoon, and Lily told me when I popped in to see if she wanted any shopping the next day. Lily can’t get around now, she’s practically crippled by arthritis. She’s no family living around here, so relies a lot on us neighbours to help her. Anyway, Sister did a few jobs for her, had a nice chat with her over a cup of tea and made Lily’s day.

‘Between you and me, dear, I’ve always wondered what it’s really like inside a convent, how strict it is, and this is my chance to find out. What time will I be expecting her then so I can have the tea ready?’

Good people like Sister Teresa made up for the bad people in the world, Aidy thought, picturing the likes of her father and Pat Nelson. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Rogers, but I can’t give you a time. It depends how long the visits take before yours. It’ll be between ten and three, that’s as much as I can say.’

Aidy had only just turned the key in the lock on the waiting-room door when an urgent thump on it from outside made her jump. Unlocking the door again, she opened it to find a woman around her mid-forties, looking extremely agitated. She seemed well-to-do with smart clothes, hair expertly coiffured, expensive leather handbag hooked over her arm. Aidy wondered what a woman of her sort was doing around these parts. As soon as she spoke, though, it was apparent that she was in fact from these parts originally, although trying to disguise the fact with her bad attempt at a posh accent. This woman had obviously escaped the life of poverty she’d been born into by snaring herself a rich husband.

Pushing past Aidy to make her way inside, she demanded, ‘I need to see the doctor – now. Show me through.’

Aidy admired anyone who’d bettered themselves but that didn’t give them the right to be arrogant to those they’d grown up amongst. She felt like putting this woman in her place but that might put her own job at risk if her employer heard of it. Evenly she responded, ‘I’m afraid the doctor is out on his rounds, won’t be back for a couple of hours or so. If it’s a real emergency then I’ve a rough idea where he’ll be and can go and fetch him for you.’

‘Yes, it damn’ well is an emergency. I want him to section my mother! Grace Willows, twenty-three Wheat Street. She’s losing her faculties … accusing people of stealing. As if anyone would risk a jail sentence for stealing a few paltry trinkets worth no more than a few shillings the lot. She’s put them somewhere herself and won’t admit she’s forgotten where. The person she’s accusing is the woman I pay to keep an eye on her.

‘My mother is eighty-seven and not very stable on her legs. Mrs Baker isn’t at all pleased about being accused of stealing and has said she won’t continue to check on Mother unless she receives an apology from her. Mother won’t give her an apology as Mrs Baker is the only one who goes in to see her, and she says who else could have stolen her trinkets? I’ve had such a job persuading Mother to allow Mrs Baker in every day as she can be so cantankerous … Getting someone else she will approve of could take forever, and I can’t get over to see her much myself as I have a very busy schedule and we’ve no room at all to have her live with us.

‘Anyway, all that’s beside the point. It saddens me that Mother is no longer in control of her faculties but she’ll only get worse, so best we get it over with now before she becomes a danger to herself. I need to have it done today because I’m going to London for a few days tomorrow, to do my Christmas shopping.’

That old lady was no more a case for the asylum than Aidy’s own grandmother was. Grace Willows had had a simple lapse of memory. Upset at not being able to put her hands on her trinkets, which might be worthless junk to her daughter but were obviously precious to her, she had vented her distress by accusing her helper of stealing them. Not wanting the trouble of finding someone else to keep an eye on her, or worse still having to have her live in her own home, this selfish bitch was taking drastic measures.

Aidy certainly wasn’t going to help her achieve her aim. ‘Your mother isn’t running amok in the street or bleeding to death, so this doesn’t count as an emergency,’ she said promptly. ‘Evening surgery starts at six.’

The visitor snapped, ‘I will be having dinner with my husband then. What time is the doctor due back from his round for his lunch? Can I see him then?’

Aidy gave a nonchalant shrug. ‘Hard to say. I’ve known him not get back until just before evening surgery is due to start.’

Her visitor’s eyes darkened thunderously. ‘Oh, this is just too bad. I cannot get Mother committed without the doctor’s help.’ She gave a disdainful click of her tongue. ‘I’ll just have to deal with her when I get back from my shopping trip. With a bit of luck, she might have died meantime and I’ll be free of the burden of her at long last.’

She spun on her heel and marched angrily out.

Aidy stared in disbelief after her. Someone should have that woman committed, for being so selfish. She doubted she would ever achieve her aim via this particular doctor. A few weeks back a patient had ranted and raved and threatened to maim him because Ty would not sign him off as unfit for work when he was clearly able. Aidy couldn’t see him committing an old woman to the mental institution, just because she’d become a burden to her daughter.

Aidy caught sight of the clock ticking away on the wall above the fireplace. The last visitor and her devious plan had taken up twenty minutes of her time. She should have cleaned the surgery by now and have any medical instruments used that morning boiling in the steriliser, ready for evening surgery. She started to begin her tasks when a thought struck her. Hadn’t the doctor asked her to do something just before he left? She felt sure he had but couldn’t remember what. Hopefully it would come back to her as she went about her work.