Neither he nor Trevor had said anything. When they left the table he’d tried to persuade Trevor to join him in his rooms, but Trevor had refused, and left soon afterwards. Trying not to think about the reasons that lay behind Trevor’s uncharacteristic reticence, he’d said goodnight to his parents, walked across the garden and packed his bags for London. But all the time he’d been in his rooms, shutting away the things he wouldn’t need into cupboards, the letter he’d written had lain like some evil talisman, on the table.
He’d taken a bottle of whisky into the bathroom with him when he bathed but neither the warm water nor the alcohol soothed him. He’d picked up a new book, one he’d looked forward to reading from his shelves and carried it to bed, but both sleep and the ability to concentrate on the printed word eluded him. Bethan’s image intruded persistently into his mind, colouring whatever he looked at with her presence. He saw her dressed in her uniform, working through the night on the ward. When the half-bottle of whisky was empty and he couldn’t stand the screaming silence a moment longer, he left his bed, dressed and went to his car.
He drove into Courthouse Street and parked on the road before walking through the gates into the hospital. The porter called out suspiciously as he passed, then he recognised him and smiled sheepishly.
‘Sorry, Dr John, didn’t know there’d been an emergency call.’
‘It’s all right, Ernie,’ Andrew shouted, not wanting to get involved in a discussion about a non-existent emergency, ‘I won’t be long.’
‘Go ahead.’
He walked on through the quiet deserted yards. The shadows of the tall buildings loomed out to meet him, huge, almost tangible in the indistinct light of the early morning low moon.
He looked up. Lights were burning in the maternity ward, the only lights that burned at full strength in the block. Another birth?
He opened the door slowly, holding it carefully lest it swing back on its hinges and make a noise. Then he climbed the steps, treading lightly, taking them two at a time. A maid and a trainee were settling the last of the babies down after their boiled water feed. He acknowledged them with a brief nod as he walked through to the ward. The glass in the office door shone bright yellow. A light was burning at full strength. That probably meant Bethan was writing her reports.
He glanced at his watch. Five o’clock. Not much time before she had to prepare for the morning’s change over. Perhaps it was just as well.
He opened the door without knocking and walked in. She was slumped over the desk. His throat went dry. He thought of Trevor’s revelation about her aunt. Had she … his heart in his mouth he crept up behind her. Her breath was falling, light, evenly from her parted lips. She was asleep. He leaned against the wall, dizzy with relief. Then he saw her cheeks. They were wet with tears.
He crept to one of the easy chairs next to the fireplace and waited, silently rehearsing what he would say when she woke.
Bethan fell from sleep, landing into consciousness with a start. Her head ached and her limbs were stiff. She opened her eyes. Totally disorientated, her mind strove to recognise her surroundings. Then she panicked. She wasn’t alone. There was someone in the room with her. She looked around and saw Andrew sitting in one of the chairs next to the gaping black hole in the fireplace. She stared at him, wondering if he were real or a figment of her sleep numbed imagination.
‘You looked so tired I didn’t want to wake you,’ he said at last.
‘I shouldn’t have been asleep. If anyone but you had found me I’d be hauled up before Matron …’ Her hands went to her veil, automatically securing and straightening it. Then she looked at her watch. ‘Is that the time? I must check the ward.’
‘I’ll wait for you.’
She smiled at him as she left, a smile he was unable to return. She walked up and down the aisle between the beds, pausing as she reached the side of the mother who’d just given birth. Then she checked the nursery.
She tried not to think of what Andrew wanted. Or why he’d come. She had her suspicions, but until he actually voiced the words, they remained just that, suspicions.
Eventually she had no reason to tarry longer. She went into the small ward kitchen, washed her hands and face, and made two cups of tea. Then she carried them into the office.
‘Tea.’ She set the cups on the desk.
‘Thank you.’ He might have been a stranger she’d just met.
She looked at the chair on the other side of the empty fireplace, thought of it and returned to her seat behind the desk.
‘Look, Andrew, about this morning …’
‘Beth!’ It was as much as he could do to stay where he was. He had to keep reminding himself of what his father had said about two kinds of women. Physical attraction. That’s all that lay between them, nothing more. ‘Please don’t say anything.’ He held up his hand. ‘At least not until I’ve finished. This is going to be hard enough for me as it is.’
She looked at the pile of reports, suspecting and dreading what he was about to say.
‘I’ve decided to go to London, at least for a while. Until the scandal … until what happened this morning dies down,’ he stammered clumsily. ‘I’m taking up Alec’s father’s offer of a surgical post in Charing Cross,’ he explained superfluously.
‘Must you?’ She spoke so quietly he couldn’t be sure afterwards whether he’d heard her or his own conscience.
‘I’ve talked everything over with Father. It’s for the best, Beth. I’m sorry about what happened today. Both your aunts …’
‘Thank you’ she interposed hollowly.
‘But it’s not just your family, Beth. You have to realise what the gossip generated by this sort of thing could do to me … to my family,’ he said, unconsciously reiterating his father’s arguments.
She nodded, suffocating on her tears, unable to speak.
‘A doctor can’t risk any scandal. You of all people should know that.’
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
‘I don’t think you quite understand. I’m leaving now, in an hour or so. I don’t know when I’ll be back. I’m sorry it has to end like this between us, Bethan.’ He rose from his chair.
‘Andrew, please take me with you,’ she begged, blocking his path. ‘Please don’t leave me here,’ she implored, forgetting all pride and dignity as the spectre of a life without him rose terrifyingly from the depths of her nightmares.
He’d prepared himself for a dignified parting scene. A little cold, unemotional and theatrical perhaps, but he’d pictured himself walking away while she stared silently after him. This was one eventuality he hadn’t mentally rehearsed. She flung her arms around him, entwining her fingers tightly around his neck.
‘Please, Andrew, take me with you,’ she sobbed. ‘I swear I won’t be any trouble. You don’t even have to live with me. I’ll find a job, a room. Just come and visit me when you can. Please Andrew …’
‘You don’t understand.’ He gripped her wrists, forcing her arms away from his body. ‘I’ll be working, living with Fe and Alec. I won’t have time to see anyone.’
‘Andrew, I love you,’ her voice rose precariously high, ‘I couldn’t bear to live without you.’
‘For pity’s sake, Bethan, stop being so melodramatic,’ he said harshly, concerned about the noise she was making. ‘Of course you can live without me. And it’s not as if I’m going to the outer reaches of the Antarctic. I’m only going to London. It’s a few hours away on the train. And although we can’t … can’t be what we were to one another, we can still be friends.’ He threw her the sop in the hope that it would calm her.
‘If you go I know I’ll never see you again. Please, Andrew –’ Her voice dropped, until it was barely audible. ‘Please.’
He looked at her calmly and dispassionately. Weeping, dishevelled, verging on hysteria. He recalled his mother and Fe’s restraint in everything they did. Then he remembered how long it had taken him to rouse Bethan’s passions. How she’d behaved in the privacy of h
is bed. A wave of nausea rose in his throat. He couldn’t take any more. Not from her. Not like this.
‘I have to go,’ he said abruptly, disentangling himself from her arms.
‘Andrew!’ The cry was agonising in its intensity.
He tried to concentrate on what his father had said. It had all made sense in the drawing room at home. Now, none of it made any sense. He only wanted to hold her close. Smother her face with kisses. Console her. Tell her he loved her, that it would all come right.
Instead he balled his hands into tight fists. His father had told him to finish it before he left. He remembered her aunts, her sister. The scandal, the gossip … it was her fault. The fault of her family. He didn’t want to end their affair. Her family – what she was – had forced his hand. And he was hurting every bit as much as her.
He lashed out, said the worst thing that came to mind.
‘It’s over. I daren’t risk demeaning myself or my family any more than I already have by continuing to see you. You’ve dragged me down as far as I’m prepared to go.’
He heard her cry out his name. The sound echoed at his footsteps every inch of the way as he walked across the yard and into the street where he’d parked his car.
The cry followed him home and back to the station.
He wasn’t free of it even when his train pulled into Paddington and he called a taxi to take him to Fe’s house.
Chapter Eighteen
The following days and weeks passed in a nightmarish haze for Bethan. She rose from her bed after sleepless nights, washed, dressed, walked to the hospital, worked, came home, sat on a chair in the kitchen, played with whatever food her mother put in front of her, stared into space until it was time to return to her room, where she lay down on the bed next to Maud, before beginning the process all over again.
Everywhere she looked, everything she did, brought back memories of the time she and Andrew had shared. And when she found the happiness of the past easier to live with than the cold, comfortless reality of the present she closed her mind to the events of the last night Andrew had visited the ward.
She was aware of very little besides Andrew and what she’d felt, and still felt, for him. She walked across the exercise yard in the hospital recalling the times she’d done so with him at her side. She climbed the hill towards home, looking at the streets not as they were, but as they’d appeared from the windows of his car. She went into town, only to see him in shops, in doorways, stepping out of the New Inn – wearing his evening suit – one of his lounge suits – his flannels.
She saw his hat on the head of every man she passed. She thought she saw him playing tennis on the courts in the park, caught sight of his even, regular features in the face of every man she met.
She began to live for the times when she was alone and could conjure up images that were far more substantial than anything around her. Hour after hour she lay next to him on her bed. The walls of her room changed, transporting her back to the opulent luxury of his bedroom, or the bohemian comfort of the glassed in veranda of his parents’ chalet.
She was only vaguely aware of events that didn’t concern Andrew happening around her, and she had no real recollection of any actual conversations. She was too busy remembering her discussions with Andrew and recreating new exchanges that they might have had if they’d still been together.
Someone, probably Evan, told her that Megan had been sentenced to ten years’ hard labour. Maud wandered in and out of their shared bedroom quiet and subdued after her few hours of hard questioning in the police cells. She hadn’t been charged with anything and was careful not to tell anyone, not even Bethan, of the true extent of her involvement with the gang. She became quieter, more withdrawn as she continued to live in fear of being found out. But Bethan was oblivious to Maud, let alone the change in her. Unfortunately for everyone, Elizabeth wasn’t.
Lacking any real evidence she ranted and raved at Maud whenever they were in the same room, and Evan had to exert all the authority he could muster to quieten Elizabeth.
There was also a bustle and a fuss about Megan’s house that took up a great deal of Evan’s time, but Bethan couldn’t have said precisely what it was all about.
She knew that her Aunt Hetty’s funeral was going to be a private one because that was what she told Matron when asked.
She lost all track of time. She no longer cared what she looked like. The only times she glanced in a mirror was to check whether her face was clean and her veil was straight.
Days and nights came and went, merging into one. She no longer had the acumen, nor the desire to differentiate between the two. She was too busy weaving not Andrew, but his ghost into her life.
On the day of Hetty’s funeral she went straight from the night shift to the chapel. Standing between her mother and Maud her thoughts left Andrew for the first time since he’d gone, and centred on the small dark wood coffin that lay on the floor in front of the pulpit.
Apart from four deacons and a visiting minister who’d been called in to read the burial service, only John Joseph and her immediate family were present. The shame of Hetty’s suicide coming close after Megan’s disgrace was too acute for her uncle to allow outsiders to witness it. Her brothers, her father and John Joseph himself had carried Hetty’s coffin from the house into the chapel between seven and eight in the morning. The timing was carefully arranged to minimise the risk of curious pedestrians gawping at the cortege. All the colliery shifts began at six thirty, and the shop assistants, clerks and schoolchildren didn’t leave their houses much before eight.
The service lasted a scant five minutes. There were no hymns. Bethan glanced at the empty seat in front of the organ and wondered who would play it now. There wasn’t even a sermon, only a short prayer mercifully free of the kind of rhetoric her uncle usually employed, which the visiting minister spoke in soft, soothing tones.
As soon as he finished speaking, the deacons picked up the coffin and stowed it in the hearse. Her uncle sat alongside the driver in front of the coffin, leaving her entire family to pile into the second and only other car that he had hired.
They drove slowly down the hill, past the hospital where the paupers leaving after their night’s lodging stripped off their caps as a sign of respect, skirted the edge of town and out along Broadway to the forlorn corner of Glyntaff reserved for those who were outcasts even in death. The paupers and the suicides.
They stood silently on the muddy earth alongside the grave as the coffin was lowered in by two workmen in dirty boots and grimy trousers.
Her uncle mumbled a few words that made little impression on Bethan. The only thought that entered her head was that they seemed to bear no relation to Hetty or her life.
Afterwards, she went home to bed. She was glad she was back on night shift because it meant she could sleep during the day in a bed she didn’t have to share with Maud. Those days were the best because she was free from grinding chores – free to think of
Andrew. To allow her imagination to run riot, to once again be alongside him – to feel the brush of his skin against hers, the hardness of his muscular back beneath her hands, his lips as they met hers. And so the pattern became established. Work, home, dream – wash, dress, work, home …
Trevor and Laura tried to help. She listened patiently to their plans to include her in their outings, then she fobbed them off with the excuse that she was on night shift for at least another two months and they were both on days. She was grateful she was able to do so. She couldn’t bear to watch them, to witness their happiness. All she wanted was to be left alone with her routine, her memories and her imaginings.
The days grew shorter and colder. The edges between reality and fantasy blurred to the point when she actually began looking for Andrew. Sometimes she sought him for minutes at a time before she remembered – and with remembrance came the first of the pains. Real, acute physical pain that made her sick to the pit of her stomach, gave her blinding headaches and dizzy spells.
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br /> She tried to cope with them, and when she couldn’t she looked at the painkillers in the drug cabinet on the ward. It would have been simple enough. She was in sole charge in the night. She could have written up doses on record cards for patients who didn’t need sleeping draughts. But something, probably fear of Squeers, held her back. Instead she reached for the brandy bottle that was always kept locked in Squeers’ desk. It was easier to take a drink from that.
She checked the level before she started and was careful to refill it to the same mark with water. But after only two nights she realised she was drinking water. That was when she opened her jewellery box and took out one of the pound notes Andrew’d given her from the bet he’d placed on Eddie.
That morning on her way back home from work she knocked on the back door of the Horse and Groom and asked for a bottle of brandy. The landlord didn’t question her motives. A nurse asking for brandy was common enough. When that bottle ran out she went to the Morning Star, comforting herself with the thought that there were enough pubs on the Graig to keep her going for months before anyone became in the least suspicious.
Her father and her brothers watched her grow daily thinner, paler and more remote. They noticed that she rarely went out. When Evan plucked up courage to ask after Andrew she simply said he’d gone away. There was no outburst, no tears, only the same blank, dead look in her eyes that had worried him for weeks.
‘Eddie, what are you doing here?’ Laura asked as she walked out of the hospital gate at the end of her day shift. ‘Bethan’s on nights you know.’
‘I know,’ he said awkwardly. ‘It’s you that I’m waiting to see, not her. Buy you a cup of tea?’
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