Jillie hesitated, then said, ‘Give the phone to me. Jennifer, this is Jillie Curtis. Yes. I’m very well, thank you. Look, I need to talk to Mr Welles. I’ve got a very sick child I want him to see. It’s desperately urgent. What? Oh – yes. Yes, I’ll hold on.’
She had become very pale. Alice tried to imagine what she must be feeling, how painful this must be. She reached for Jillie’s hand and held it; Jillie smiled at her, rather wanly.
‘Oh – Ned, hello. Yes, I’m very well, thank you. And you? Good. Ned, I’m with Alice Knelston. Her little boy, Kit, is very unwell. Stomach pains, vomiting, fever. No, I don’t think so. But he’s producing what we were told to call a redcurrant stool. Does that mean anything to you? Yes, I thought it would. Look, can you see him this morning? I think it’s really urgent. Yes, of course, I’ll tell her. Thank you, Ned. Thank you so much. Bye.’
She turned to Alice.
‘The red poo is very significant. I thought it was, but I didn’t feel confident enough to say so. We’re to get Kit up there just as soon as you can. We can take my car. Fine to bring Lucy. I can look after her, but I’m not sure about Charlie –’
‘It’s OK,’ said Alice. ‘The lady next door, the love of Charlie’s life, will have him. I’ll just go and make a bottle and take him in there.’
Mrs Hartley was delighted. ‘A whole morning with my little sweetheart. How lovely! Come to Nana, darlin’.’
Charlie gurgled delightedly at the sight of her. He never gurgled . . .
‘Oh, Mrs Knelston –’ Mrs Hartley looked stricken suddenly. ‘I hope you don’t mind me calling myself Nana. My own are all grown up, and it’s so lovely to be one again.’
Jillie said she was delighted to think of Mrs Hartley as Charlie’s nana, and handed him and the bottle over. ‘I’ll bring in the carrycot and some nappies in a minute. Thank you so much. I hope we’re not too long.’
‘You be as long as you need. Poor little Kit, what a shame. We’ll have fun, won’t we, Charlie? How would you like to go to the park, eh?’
Charlie gurgled again.
‘There’s one thing I must do before we go,’ said Alice. ‘Tell Tom. I’ll ring him straight away. Are you OK with Kit?’
‘We’re fine. Only be quick. We don’t want to be late for Ned.’
‘Promise I won’t . . . Tom, it’s me. Look, Jillie’s here. She’s very worried about Kit, says he needs to be seen by a specialist right away. She’s very kindly arranged for him to see Ned, this morning. Straight away. Ned Welles. Yes. Yes, Tom, that Ned Welles. Now, actually. We’re just leaving. I just thought I’d better let you know. What? Yes, of course I know he’s a private doctor. What? No, of course I’m not going to cancel the appointment. Why should I? Tom, this is your son you’re talking about. Who is very, very ill. And possibly needs surgery right away. I beg your pardon? No, Tom, I won’t listen to you; I can’t believe you actually said that. No. Yes, of course I realise what I’m doing. Do you realise what you’re doing? Putting your principles before your son’s life. I can’t believe it. No. No, I will not go and see Dr Redmond again. Apart from anything else, he’s got no particular knowledge of paediatrics, whereas Ned is a paediatric surgeon. Look, I’ve got to go. Ned is fitting us in between patients. Jillie’s driving us up. No. No, I’m sorry, Tom, I’m not going to wait for you to come home. If you really want to see me you can come to Ned’s rooms. I can’t listen to any more of this – it shocks me, it really does.’
And then, as she put Lucy’s shoes on, shaking with rage and shock at Tom’s reaction, came the dreadful, ugly thought. Would Laura have done this? Gone against one of the most sacred tenets of Tom’s life? Defied his most deeply held belief? Would she? Or would she have done what he wished, battled on with the NHS, seen that Kit got the same swift treatment from them; whereas she, getting it through contacts and privilege, was doing what Tom most hated and despised. And as she stood there, suspended by indecision and her fear of not being a good wife, as good a wife as Laura had been, Jillie, her voice urgent now, called her to hurry, and Kit started crying again with pain and fright.
Tom put the phone down. He was literally shaking with rage. Alice, his wife, taking his son to see a private consultant in Welbeck Street. He thought for a moment he was going to be sick. How could she betray him like this? She knew how passionately, how deeply he cared about the National Health Service, how he hated privilege, and the rights it bought to do things like seeing top consultants immediately, getting special care, jumping queues. It was so wrong, such appalling injustice: and she was putting her name – his name – to it. With a general election only a week away, when his loyalty to the National Health Service, his hatred of privilege, were under such scrutiny. He had been so proud of his speech, comparing the system of private doctors and hospitals, where only the rich could go, with apartheid. Now it could come back to haunt him.
It only needed one person to have seen Kit at Ned Welles’s rooms, or to have heard he had been there, and – well, he could see the headlines.
‘Knelston the Bevanite sends sick son to Welbeck Street’ . . . ‘Bevan betrayed by his disciple’ . . . ‘What price principle now, Mr Knelston?’ God, it was awful. Terrible. He would be ruined. How could Alice have done this to him? Of course Kit mattered desperately, but he didn’t seem that ill, he’d been larking about in between attacks, apparently perfectly well. And the GP was sending him to an NHS consultant. It surely couldn’t take that long, they could press to have it hurried along . . . and there was always the emergency department.
Kit lay quietly on the examination table in Ned Welles’s consulting room, displaying the listlessness that always followed the attacks, and allowed Ned to examine him without complaint.
When he had finished, Ned said, ‘Good boy, you were very brave. Now – come and sit on Mummy’s knee again.’ Within minutes he became drowsy, held in Alice’s arms like a baby, exhausted by the events of the morning.
‘Right,’ said Ned. ‘Well, the good news is that I know what’s wrong – well, I’m as certain as one can ever be – and that it can be fixed surgically. The bad news is that it’s been allowed to develop – in no way your fault, Alice, or even your GP’s. It’s very rare – and he’s pretty ill.’
‘So – what is it?’ asked Alice.
‘It’s something called intussusception. Did you ever come across it at Thomas’?’
‘No. I’d have suspected it if I had.’
‘Of course you would. It’s pretty rare. And very unusual in any child much over two. Basically, the gut folds into itself, bit like one of those folding telescopes. Then, because it’s anchored by blood vessels, it can’t go any further and it causes an obstruction. And then it will swell, and if not treated, the bowel can necrose, leading to peritonitis. Kit’s high temperature leads me to suspect there’s a danger of that. Peritonitis, that is.’