Secrets to Keep

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR





Aidy was lying on something soft. The air was thick with dust and she was coughing and spluttering. She tried to open her eyes so she could see something then realised they were open, it was just that it was pitch black. She heard a soft groan and felt movement beneath her, realising with horror the something soft she was lying on, that had in fact broken her fall, was the body of Doc.

Her immediate thought was, Of all the people to be trapped in a room with, it had to be him! But she had worse things than her unreciprocated feelings to worry about at the moment.

Easing herself off him, Aidy cried urgently: ‘Doc … Doc, are you all right? Answer me!’

Finally he groaned and told her haltingly: ‘I … think … my shoulder … is either … dislocated or broken. And I can’t … move my right leg.’ He seemed to lapse into silence then and she feared he had passed out.

At least they were both alive, she thought. Her mind was racing. She needed to get some light in here so she could assess the situation. There had been a candle … Oh, it could be anywhere now. Did the doctor carry only one candle with him or more? If she could find his bag, she could check.

On her knees, hands outstretched, she began tentatively feeling around her. She remembered she hadn’t seen much in the room when she had looked down into it from above, except for the tea chests, several old chairs and a few other long-discarded items stacked against the far wall. Now the floor was littered with chunks of plaster and wood from the part of the ceiling that had broken off beneath her. Inch by inch, shuffling forward on her knees as she did so, the sharp debris on the floor stabbing painfully at her, she felt her way around, but the doctor’s bag seemed to be eluding her. Then, finally, her fingertips hit something made of leather.

She let out a small cry of triumph. It was the doctor’s bag! It was covered in rubble and Aidy swiped her hands over it to clear off as much as she could. Oh, but wait a minute, it couldn’t be the doctor’s bag as she remembered seeing that was open while looking down on it from above. This one was shut … it was Ruth’s nurse’s bag. Aidy’s heart dropped. Would a nurse carry candles? She could only hope.

Opening the bag, she plunged in her hand and carefully felt around. Right at the bottom, underneath several bandages and other things wrapped in waxy paper, her hand clasped around two long cylinders. Candles! She pulled them out, then realised they’d be no good without matches. But if Ruth carried candles, she must carry matches to light them with. Aidy put her hand back in the bag and found the box near where the candles had been stored.

Once the candles were lit, holding them in her hands, she took a good look around her. The room they were in was about twelve foot by twelve. There was a door to her right that Doc had told her was jammed shut. Apart from the discarded packing cases and several office items, the space was empty. The doctor’s body was lying a few feet away. He was groaning softly in agony. Pinning down his right leg was part of a thick beam that must have broken off when the floor above fell in. There was a dark stain on his trouser leg which was obviously blood. It was all right, though, because the police would be appearing at any minute to rescue them. Automatically Aidy looked up towards the hole she had fallen through, hoping to see faces peering back at her. She gawped in horror. The hole was there no longer! Something was completely blocking it. The rest of the building could now be piled on top of them, for all she knew.

Ty gave a loud, pitiful groan and she lowered her gaze to look him over. Sadie Billson had instilled in her that a nurse should be calm and clear minded at all times, concentrating only on her patient. That advice came in useful now. Putting all thoughts of their dire situation to the back of her mind, Aidy concentrated on the doctor and seeing what she could do for him until hopefully help eventually reached them. It was extremely cold down here. Before she did anything else, she took off her coat and put it over Ty so he didn’t go into shock from the cold.

Shivering herself now, she cleared a space on the floor beside her, then tipped one of the candles up so that melted wax trickled on to the ground. She quickly secured the candle upon it. Then she stood up and stepped over the rubble to the other side of the doctor and did the same with the other candle. Now an area around them was illuminated well enough for her to see reasonably well. Quickly glancing him over, Aidy felt the first thing she should do was remove the heavy length of beam from his leg. If she had just heaved three children through a hole, this beam would be like a matchstick in comparison. Stooping by his feet, she clasped both her hands around the beam and, taking a huge breath, heaved at it with all her might. It was heavier than she’d thought but slowly it hovered an inch or so above his leg. Then, grunting and groaning, she heaved it sideways until Ty was free. She let go of it and it fell to the floor with a dull thud, scattering some of the chunks of debris beneath. One piece caught her cheek and she felt the trickle of blood which she hurriedly wiped away.

Aidy then set about ripping open Ty’s trouser leg and examining the wound the beam had made. It wasn’t deep, thankfully. From Ruth’s bag she took out antiseptic and cloths for cleaning and dressing. Five minutes later she surveyed her own handiwork. Not bad if she said so herself. It would pass Matron’s inspection.

Ty seemed to be waking up. He was groaning softly, clutching his shoulder, then he tried to move and as he did so let out a painful cry. ‘Anthea … get … the … laudanum … from my bag. Anthea, darling … please.’

Who was Anthea? There wasn’t time for Aidy to wonder, though. She scrambled over to where she could see his open bag, now part filled with rubble. She scrabbled enough out to unearth a clear, cork-topped bottle with a label on it reading Laudanum. But to her dismay it was broken, all the precious liquid that had been inside drained away.

‘Anthea, darling, did … you … find the laudanum?’

Like any woman who harboured unreciprocated feelings for a man, even though she was trying hard to quash those feelings, Aidy was annoyed to hear him calling her by another woman’s name.

‘I’m just looking for it,’ she snapped back.

Her abrupt response seemed to snap him out of his pain-fuddled state. ‘Mrs Nelson, is that you?’

Aidy was too busy looking through his bag for other means of pain relief to answer him. She unearthed a small pill box and pulled it out to inspect it. The label on it spelled out Morphine. Well, this should be strong enough to take away his pain. She eased off the lid, finding a white grainy substance inside. She wasn’t sure how much to give him. She supposed she ought to try one grain first to see how well that worked, but he did look to be in so much pain … Oh, what the hell? She’d give him two.

Ten minutes later Ty was feeling very light headed and mellowing more by the second. The pain in his shoulder had eased sufficiently for him actually to sit up and support his back against a wall. Aidy had tucked her coat around him. He couldn’t remember how he’d come to damage his shoulder. Something heavy falling on it when the ceiling came down, he presumed. He noticed the dressing on his leg. He couldn’t remember tending to himself and applying that, but it looked to be professionally done.

Aidy was watching him and knew what he was thinking. ‘Yes, I did it,’ she told him. ‘I’ve been learning basic nursing from an old wartime nurse in my spare time. I’m not bad, if I say so myself.’

His eyes drifted lazily across to look at her, now perched on top of one of the tea chests. His speech was very sluggish, almost drunkenly slurred, when he said, ‘Not bad at all, Mrs Nelson. Not bad at all. Pity you no longer work for me or I could have sent you out sometimes on nursing duties.’

She looked terribly cold to him. In fact, she was shivering. ‘Haven’t you a coat? You really ought to put it on, you’re shivering.’

‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘How’s your shoulder now?’

‘Bearable, thank you. But you really are shivering.’ He suddenly found he had a great need to protect this woman from the cold. It was overwhelming, in fact. With his good arm, almost in slow motion, he lifted Aidy’s coat from around him and held it out to her. ‘Please borrow my coat. I’d really hate you to catch a chill.’

It was he who was most at risk from the cold, since he was badly injured. ‘I’m fine, honest. Please put it back over you. You really do need to keep warm. Please, Doc,’ she urged him.

He gave a laugh, a silly sort of chuckle, as he laid the coat back across himself.

‘What’s so funny?’ she snapped at him, considering their situation was anything but.

‘You addressing me as Doc. It’s funny because you know it infuriates me, you addressing me disrespectfully.’ He chuckled again and flashed her a boyish grin. ‘To be honest, though, at the moment I really don’t care what you call me.’ Then, like a naughty schoolboy, he said in a sing-song voice, ‘You tell me your name and I’ll tell you mine … I mean, Aidy isn’t your real name, is it? You told me that at your interview. Well, Ty isn’t my full name, just the name I call myself. So we do seem to have at least something in common, Mrs Nelson.’

She said tartly, ‘I had no idea what your Christian name was because you didn’t think me good enough to call you by it.’

He said aghast, ‘Oh, no, it wasn’t because I didn’t think you good enough to be on first-name terms with me. No, that’s not it at all. I do have a good reason for being so standoffish with you. It’s the way it’s had to be.’ He then chuckled again and said in a boyish manner, ‘So what is your name then? Come on, out with it?’

Aidy sighed. She never divulged it to anyone unless she was absolutely forced to, she hated it so much. But she supposed it wouldn’t hurt her to humour Ty, considering the way he was acting. It was apparent to her by now that she had given him far more morphine than she had needed to; it was making him act as if he’d consumed a good quantity of alcohol. It was doubtful he’d remember any of this once the effects wore off so her secret was safe. She took a breath and said: ‘Adafonsia.’

She could see he was doing his best not to laugh out loud. ‘Well, yes, that is … er … But I have an even worse name.’

‘That’s not possible,’ she said.

‘Oh, it is.’

‘Well, go on then. If you don’t tell me, I can’t judge.’

He announced it as if he was divulging a state secret. ‘Titus.’

She gawped first then started to giggle. ‘Oh, yes, that is awful, but still not as bad as mine.’

He started to chuckle then. ‘Oh, it is.’

They both laughed together.

‘Both our fathers have a lot to answer for,’ said Aidy.

The laughter suddenly died on Ty’s face and he uttered, ‘Oh, mine certainly has. Much more than giving me an awful name to put up with. You see, he killed my wife and baby.’

Aidy stared at him in utter shock. ‘What!’

Unable to stop himself due to the tongue-loosening effect the morphine was having on him, he poured out his sorry tale. His words came out soft and slurred.

‘My father did not set out to murder my wife and child, but when it came down to it, that is what he did because he knew what he was doing. He was an eminent physician. Had a thriving practice where only the very wealthy could afford his fees. He was a well-respected man in his field. I admired him, loved him, all I wanted to do was emulate him.’

He paused for a moment, seeming to drift off into his own little world, then suddenly returned from wherever he had been in his mind and continued where he’d left off. ‘As soon as I qualified, I joined him in his practice and he made me joint partner. It was with great shock and sadness that at the age of fifty-five it was discovered my father was suffering from Parkinson’s disease. Of course, it was the end of his career. He took it very hard.

‘I had met and married my wife Anthea by this time. She was beautiful and sweet, the love of my life. She was expecting our first baby.’

Ty paused and drifted off again for a moment before saying, ‘My mother had died ten years previously, so at Anthea’s insistence we moved out of our own home and into my father’s house, to help care for him. Anthea was getting near her time and we were very excited about the imminent birth. She had three weeks to go and it was about twelve o’clock one morning when a telephone call was put through to me. It was my father’s housekeeper. She was frantic. She’d been out to do the shopping and came home to find a terrible thing had happened. Would I please come back straight away? She put the telephone down abruptly. I thought something dreadful had happened to my father. He’d had one of his bouts and fallen over and hurt himself badly … something like that. I wasn’t at all prepared for what I was to find.

‘Anthea was dead and so was our baby. She was lying on our bed with her stomach cut open, her womb exposed and that half cut open too. I could see part of the baby inside. There was blood everywhere. My father was sitting in the chair by our bed with his head in his hands. I was frozen, paralysed by shock, and at first hardly taking in what my father was telling me, begging me to forgive him.

‘The housekeeper had not long gone out when Anthea suddenly began to suffer from horrendous pains in her stomach. She was screaming out in agony. It was apparent to my father that something was dreadfully wrong and the baby needed delivering as soon as possible. The surgery was only a short drive away. I’d have been there in a matter of minutes. He knew he should have gone straight to telephone me to come home. He didn’t, though, because he said he’d felt fine, no sign of the shakes at all. And he was being given a chance, he said, for one last time to experience surgery again. Actually given the opportunity of delivering his own grandchild by Caesarian section. He couldn’t let that opportunity go. It was a simple procedure for him. He had performed it many times before. He helped Anthea on to our bed and fetched his bag.

‘I can only assume that my wife was in such pain and so frightened of what was happening to her, she wasn’t really aware of what my father’s intentions were. I know she would not willingly have allowed him to operate on her. He gave her a whiff of chloroform to send her to sleep and immediately set about cutting her open to take out the baby. He got as far as he did when the spasms started. By the time the spasm stopped he was powerless to stop Anthea from bleeding to death or save the baby. He knew he was wrong to attempt what he did. Was well aware how suddenly an episode could take him. He had selfishly seized his last chance to practise his skills, and this was the result. He begged my forgiveness, hoped that as a physician like himself I would understand why he’d done what he had. Then he went into his room, got his duck gun out of its case, put the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

‘I have never felt pain like it. I almost went out of my mind. I was mad with grief. I thought I’d never come to terms with it. Eventually you do, though. The pain never goes but you learn to live with it. I am so frightened of going through anything like that again, I avoid the risk altogether. It’s a very lonely life. If I could only be sure that I could trust someone enough to open my heart to them … but I’m too afraid to take the chance.’

He paused and went silent for a moment before picking up, ‘I wouldn’t go to my own father’s funeral. It would have been hypocritical of me, pretending I was sorry for his death when I wasn’t. As soon as Anthea and our baby’s funeral was over, I took off. I left everything behind, just abandoned it and lived for two years on what I had in my bank account. When that ran out I had to get a job. I didn’t want to work in the medical profession again, couldn’t bear people whispering behind my back when they discovered who I was because it was front-page news at the time, but doctoring is the only thing I know I’m good at. So I landed up here.’ He heaved a sigh. ‘The ironic thing is that my wife loved life and lost hers through no fault of her own. Now here I am, working all hours, killing myself really, trying to keep people alive who don’t take the most elementary care of themselves. Their ignorance is their own undoing.’

His sad tale had touched Aidy deeply. She now understood completely why he acted as he did, pushing people away, being rude to them so they wouldn’t want to get close to him, but she wasn’t going to put up with his last statement, whether it had been voiced through a loose tongue from morphine or not. Hands on her hips she blurted out, ‘Well, have you ever thought that instead of looking down on those so-called ignorant people, if you took the time and trouble to teach them better, you wouldn’t be flogging your guts out, having to treat the diseases they wouldn’t then be catching, would you? People can’t put into practice what they don’t know, can they? For instance, there’s a couple of women in our street who wouldn’t think to wash a baby’s teat after it accidentally fell in a full potty ’cos their mothers knew no better and so neither do they. They wouldn’t take kindly to the likes of me telling them they’re risking their babies’ lives with their dirty habits, but they would listen to the likes of you putting them right.’

She took a deep breath and said, ‘And think about this, Doc. You’re never going to know if you’ve met someone you can trust if you don’t at least give them the opportunity to prove it to you. And you won’t do that if you don’t allow them even to get close to you a little or take the trouble to get to know them.’

She realised Ty wasn’t listening to her as his eyes were closed and his head had slumped to one side. He was asleep. Aidy slipped off the tea chest and went over to him, kneeled down and pulled her coat further around him for warmth. She then gently ran her hand over his forehead and said softly, ‘I wish you’d take a chance on me, to see if we could be happy together. I could be happy with you, I know I could. Not the man I saw at work, though, he’s not a nice man at all, but the man I saw on Christmas Day who had forgotten to put a front on. And the man I’ve seen just now, laughing. I like that man, he’s just my type.’ She heaved a sad sigh. ‘Oh, but I wouldn’t presume a man like you would ever look twice at a woman who comes from these parts.’

She caught sight of the candle to one side of him. It was rapidly diminishing. So was the other one. If rescue didn’t arrive soon, they’d be plunged into pitch darkness. And it was so very cold down here.

Suddenly she thought she heard a scraping noise from above. Her eyes darted upwards. The noise was getting louder. She heard a faint cry: ‘You all right down there? You both all right?’

‘Yes,’ she screamed back. ‘Doc’s badly injured, though, and needs urgent attention …’

‘Hold tight. We’ve a bit more rubble to clear away then we’ll be with you.’