Gemma's Journey

by Beryl Kingston

  But on Thursday, when she went down to the ground floor for lunch, she was wheeled out of the lift to find herself confronted by the press. There were so many of them they seemed like a solid wall of faces and cameras, reporters side by side, microphones in hand, photographers ranged beside the lift doors one above the other as if they were ready for royalty. She barely had time to understand what was happening before the flashlights began to pop and the reporters surged forward all talking at once.

  ‘Gemma!’ ‘What’s the latest?’ ‘Are you still going to be a model?’ ‘Are you very upset?’ ‘Are you going to sue?’ ‘How much?’ ‘Are you …? Look this way … This way … Turn your head for us Gemma.’ ‘Gemma! Gemma! Just a few words … Are you going to sue?’

  She felt as though she was under attack. They were so fierce and insistent, like birds of prey with their mouths perpetually open, crowding in upon her, wings and lenses flexed and aggressive, following her chair so closely she could feel the heat of their bodies and smell the food and drink on their breath. She tried to wave them away from her face but they pushed in closer. She tried to speak but the clamour was too great for them to hear her. ‘Are you going to sue?’ they insisted. ‘How much are you asking for?’

  ‘Peace,’ she tried joking to the nearest face, ‘that’s what I’m asking for. Peace and the chance to buy some lunch without being crushed.’ But the clamour went on.

  ‘Look this way!’ the photographers begged. ‘This way, Gemma.’ They were blocking the corridor completely. People were having a struggle to get out of the lift, others were pushing their way through the scrimmage to get into it. Surely, Gemma thought, someone must come and deal with them. They’re causing an obstruction. She felt responsible and ashamed, as if it were all her fault.

  She had to make a decision. And quickly. She turned her head to speak to the porter, but there was so much noise he had to lower his own head until they were mouth to ear. ‘Wheel me out,’ she said.

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Out of the hospital,’ she told him firmly. ‘I can’t stay here. We’re holding people up.’

  He widened his eyes ready to protest but she gave him her forceful face. So he did as he was told and pushed her past the shops, through the foyer and out into the pale October sunshine beyond the glass entrance. And the pack followed her, shouting all the way.

  It was better out in the open air. Now she could speak to them with some hope of being heard. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘I’ve come out here so that you can take your pictures without getting in everybody’s way. But I shall expect you to do something for me in return.’

  ‘Name it, sweetheart,’ a bearded photographer called.

  ‘Go away afterwards and let me have lunch in peace.’

  ‘One interview,’ a reporter said.

  ‘Three questions,’ Gemma told her. She felt more in command now and better able to argue.

  ‘Six.’

  ‘Three.’

  So they agreed to her bargain and the photography session began in earnest. They arranged her chair, her skirt, her hands, her hair and then took so many pictures that her jaw ached with the effort of giving them a smile. But, true to her promise, she answered the first three questions they fired at her. No, she didn’t know whether she was going to sue or not. No, she didn’t know when she would be leaving hospital. Yes, she was making good progress. ‘I shall be walking in no time.’

  ‘Is it true you were going to be a model?’

  ‘No,’ she said, refusing the question. ‘That’s it; That’s the last. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Brilliant!’ the photographers said, and the bearded one called out by way of farewell. ‘See you!’

  Gemma had recovered enough to grin at him. ‘Not if I see you first,’ she said. ‘Now I’m going to have my lunch. Right?’ And she looked at the porter so show him she was ready to be wheeled back into the hospital.

  The press pack began to disperse, some on the run, others, like the reporter and photographer from the Sunday and Evening Chronicles, rather more slowly.

  ‘OK Nicky,’ the photographer said. ‘Now what?’

  ‘We try the parents,’ the reporter said.

  ‘Do we know where they are?’

  ‘We know where Mummy is. She’ll do for starters. Unless …’ She stood still for a moment, thinking. ‘No. You go on, Jake. I’ve got an idea. Isn’t there a florist’s in that shopping mall?’

  ‘Florist’s, sweet shop, newsagent’s,’ he told her. ‘You name it.’

  Nicky made up her mind. ‘Right!’ she said.

  Back in the relative peace of the restaurant, Gemma was feeling rather pleased with herself. She sat in her wheelchair at one of the tables by the window, eating her meal and enjoying the view and congratulating herself on how well she’d handled the mob. It had been a nasty moment but she’d come through it well.

  There was cheerful movement everywhere she looked, the sky full of scudding clouds, the pavements thronged with people, all in a rush, the Thames busy with boats. They swished past the Houses of Parliament, hurling white water from their bows and bouncing on the choppy water, as though they hadn’t a minute to spare. And on Westminster Bridge cars and buses scurried nose to tail, their metallic colours bold above the grey stone of the bridge.

  They’re all going somewhere, she thought, getting things done, changing things. Like me. Yet there was a reassuring continuity about the scene too, the Thames following the same old route, the bridge splendidly solid and dependable and dominating the scene, the long elaborate frontage of the Parliament buildings burnished by sunshine and looking as if it had been there for ever, a visible reminder that democracy endures, no matter how many changes it has to weather. As I shall endure, she thought.

  She was just finishing her apple pie when a girl arrived and stood beside her table, smiling in the half-hopeful, half-apologetic way of a stranger who wants to open a conversation.

  She was an attractive-looking girl, a leggy blonde in a chocolate-coloured trouser suit – long straight jacket, slightly flared trousers, an abundance of gold jewellery – and she was obviously a visitor, as she was carrying a bunch of freesias and a large box of Terry’s chocolates.

  ‘Hel-lo!’ she said, as though she and Gemma were long-time friends. And before Gemma could return her greeting she began to speak again in a gush of half-formed sentences.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me coming here like this … Nicky Stretton, by the way … I felt I just had to see you, you being so brave … Stuck in that awful train, it must have been We all admired you so much. Well we still do. Who wouldn’t when you’ve been so brave? You’re our heroine. Absolutely. Anyway, these are with our warmest love.’ She thrust the flowers into Gemma’s lap, put the chocolates on the table and smiled a winsome smile, all bright eyes and thick lipstick.

  More flowers, Gemma thought, remembering the overflowing vases in the ward. And how kind to deliver them in person. I wonder how far she’s come. ‘Who’s we?’ she asked.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘We. You said “we” all admire you.’

  ‘Oh! Oh yes! Me and my colleagues. We’re your fan club.’

  Gemma was touched. Flowers, get-well messages and now a fan club. ‘Well thank you,’ she said.

  Nicky seemed to be having difficulties with something inside the pocket of her jacket. ‘Can I talk to you for a moment?’ she asked.

  ‘Why not?’ Gemma said, feeling she ought to make her welcome at the very least. ‘Take a seat.’

  ‘Let me buy you a coffee.’

  So two coffees were bought and the flowers and chocolates were put on the spare seat and the two young women settled to talk.

  ‘Are you better?’ Nicky began.

  ‘Much,’ Gemma told her. ‘As you see.’

  Nicky looked down at the bandaged stump propped up on its board and the thickness of plaster around this poor victim’s remaining leg. The words of her article were already forming themselves in her head: Gemma Goodeve,
pathetic victim of the Wandsworth rail crash, sits alone in her wheelchair, gazing out over the streets of London, dreaming of what might have been. ‘It must be awful,’ she sympathised. ‘I couldn’t even bear to think about it if it was me … to have your life smashed to ruins like this. To be sitting there so helpless and everything … A cripple.’

  Oh no, Gemma thought, I can’t have you saying things like that so let’s put paid to it here and now. ‘I’m not helpless,’ she corrected. ‘And I’m not a cripple. That’s not a word I answer to. It’s a dreadful word. It ought to be wiped out of the language. And my life isn’t in ruins. I’ve had an accident, that’s all, arid now I’m recovering. I shall be measured for my false leg soon and then I shall get rid of this plaster and after that you won’t know me. I shall be leaping about all over the place.’

  Nicky adjusted her tone. ‘I’ll bet you will,’ she agreed and drank some coffee, smiling at Gemma across the rim of the cup. ‘Is it true you were going to be a model?’

  ‘I did a bit of modelling when I was a child,’ Gemma admitted. ‘Catalogues and things like that. Miss Pears. My mother’s been bragging about it to the papers. That’s what you’re referring to, isn’t it? Right. But there was never any question of me being a model once I grew up. I’ve been trained as an actress. In fact I was on my way to a theatre when the crash happened. So the minute I get my new leg I’m going to … take up again where I left off.’ She’d nearly said ‘apply for auditions again’ but caught herself in time. Taking up again where she left off sounded much better.

  ‘Your parents must have been so upset when you got hurt,’ Nicky sympathised.

  Gemma drank her coffee thinking how friendly this girl was and how easy it was to talk to her. It was like gossiping with Pippa. ‘My mother certainly was. Still is.’

  ‘And your father?’ Nicky fished. ‘What did he think about it?’

  ‘I’ve never really had a father,’ Gemma said, surprised to realise that she wanted to talk about him. ‘Except in the biological sense. He left when I was a baby.’

  ‘How sad! Do you miss him?’

  ‘Not really. You can’t miss a person you’ve never known, can you?’

  ‘No, I suppose not. But didn’t you ever wonder what he was like? I know I would have done.’

  ‘Oh I knew what he was like,’ Gemma said. ‘My mother’s got photographs of him all over the living room.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘Handsome, in an Errol Flynn sort of way. Tall and dark with a little moustache. My mother used to call him her dreamboat. It was all dreams when I was little. She used to tell me how wonderful he was and I used to dream about meeting him again. I made up fantasies about it in my head, the way you do. What he’d say. How he’d promise to make things up to me. Bring me presents and tell me he’d always loved me. Come charging in like a knight in armour and right all wrongs. That sort of thing. Silly, isn’t it.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Nicky said, thinking, Deserted, fatherless, crippled, yet she still fights on. ‘I think it’s sweet. I’d have loved a knight in shining armour myself.’

  ‘Things like that don’t happen in real life.’

  ‘No, I suppose not. We all have to look after ourselves, don’t we? Are you going to sue the railway company?’

  That’s none of your business, Gemma thought, but she gave an honest answer. ‘I’ve no idea. It’s much too early to think about it.’

  ‘But you will eventually,’ Nicky persisted. ‘Given all the things you’re going to need. And it was sheer negligence.’

  ‘Was it?’ Gemma said. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Haven’t you seen the Evening Chronicle?’ Nicky said and produced a folded copy from her shoulder bag. ‘Look. There it is. Front page.’

  Gemma read the headlines without much surprise. She’d always known that the accident must have had a mechanical cause, unless the driver had gone through a red light, and that had been ruled out right at the start. But as she read on and realised that it was due to something as simple as a broken axle, fury swelled in her chest and filled her throat. I’ve lost my leg and my looks and all those people were killed because this fucking awful company were too mean to mend their fucking rolling stock. She knew it was useless to feel so angry because no amount of anger or recrimination would bring back her leg, but she couldn’t help it. A broken bloody axle!

  ‘“Poor maintenance,”’ Nicky was quoting. ‘See? Negligence. It could have been avoided. So you will sue, won’t you.’

  The persistence of the question pulled Gemma’s mind away from her anger and into an unexpected clarity. ‘Does it matter?’

  The answer was instant and honest. ‘Of course it matters. If you go about it the right way you could be a millionaire.’

  ‘And that’s important?’

  ‘Well naturally. If I were you, I’d go for it. Everyone wants you to. Absolutely everyone. The railway companies can afford it. They’re coining it in. All the privatised industries are. Everyone knows that. Look at the salaries the directors are paying themselves. And think of the sweeteners they were given to get them to buy in the first place. Taxpayers’ money that was, every penny of it. If you think of it that way, you’d just be taking back some of your own money, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I’ve been a student,’ Gemma said reasonably. ‘I haven’t paid taxes. At least, not many. I haven’t earned enough.’

  Rags to riches, Nicky thought. ‘Well there you are then. All the more reason. You go for it.’

  ‘You make it sound like some sort of revenge.’

  ‘It is in a way, when you think what they’ve done to you. They ought to pay for it: Don’t you think so?’

  It’s tempting, Gemma thought. There’s no doubt about that.

  But then Nicky said something that made her feel suddenly suspicious. ‘We could help you,’ she offered. ‘Advise you. Put you in touch with a good lawyer. That could make all the difference, a good lawyer.’

  We again and we with enough resources to hire a lawyer. ‘We?’ Gemma asked. ‘Who’s we?’ And with a lurch of her heart, she suddenly understood. ‘You’re a reporter, aren’t you?’

  The admission was cool. Pretence wasn’t necessary now. ‘That’s right. I’m with the Chronicle.’

  Gemma gave her an equally cool look. ‘And you’d get me a lawyer, would you?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Nicky beamed. ‘You’re a star. Of course we’d need to know we can depend on your story. That goes without saying. You’d have to give us exclusive rights. But it would be well worth it.’

  And that’s what this is about, Gemma thought. Selling papers for you. It’s got nothing to do with sympathy or friendship. I’ve been conned. ‘At the moment,’ she said, speaking carefully, ‘I’m just a patient in this hospital receiving treatment. If you look you’ll see there’s a sister over there who’s probably coming to take me back to the ward.’ There really was a sister walking towards them. It wasn’t anyone she knew but the threat of her arrival might be enough to remove this girl from the restaurant.

  Sure enough, the reporter glanced round. ‘I’d better go then,’ she said, standing up. ‘Mustn’t hold up the good work. Florence Nightingale and all that sort of thing.’ She’d got the information she wanted and her headline: Gemma to sue. With her life in ruins, feisty heroine, Gemma Goodeve, takes on the establishment. ‘Good luck. I’ll leave the paper for you. There’s the address and the phone number if you want it and I’ve written my name alongside.’ She was fiddling in her pocket again and now, knowing she was a reporter, Gemma realised what she was doing.

  ‘You’ve been recording this,’ she said, her voice spiked with disbelief. ‘You’ve got a microphone in that pocket. And I thought you were a friend.’

  ‘It’s only for accuracy,’ Nicky said, cheerfully. ‘You wouldn’t want me to make mistakes, would you? Actually I could have put it on the table only I find it puts people off. You don’t mind do you?’

  Gemma was so anno
yed that for a few seconds she was bereft of words. Then her anger returned, enhanced and terrible – at the incompetence of the railway company, at the insensitivity of this ghastly girl, at her own hideous injuries, her childish gullibility, her dangerous indiscretion. It filled her throat, made her sweat, enlarged every sensation. Feet seemed to be trampling down upon her, the clatter of cutlery from the next table was like the racket of an engine, the busy scene beyond the windows a manic, uncontrollable blur. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I do mind. I mind very much. I wouldn’t have said a word to you if I’d known you were from the papers. You got this interview under false pretences.’ Her face was white with fury, the scar across her temple livid against the sudden pallor of her skin.

  Which was how Catherine Quennell first saw and heard her.

  Catherine had driven to the hospital that morning in a state of suspended indecision, none too sure about what she was doing and suspecting that she was probably making a mistake. In fact, when she reached the ward and was told that Gemma wasn’t there, it was almost a relief. But now, one look at that tempestuous face was enough to dispel all her anxieties in a second. She liked this girl at once, instinctively. A fighter, she thought, quickening her pace, a survivor. Like I was when I was left on my own with Susan. She won’t be put down. Not with that sort of strength.

  ‘Gemma Goodeve?’ she asked, smiling at her.

  Gemma turned, took a breath to bring her anger under control and nodded to her as though she’d been expected. ‘Yes,’ she acknowledged. ‘I’ve got to go back to the ward, is that it?’

  Catherine had spent too much time on hospital wards not to recognise a plea for help when she heard one. She picked up the hint at once and smoothly. ‘When you’re ready,’ she said, looking at the other young woman.

  ‘This is – I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name – a reporter,’ Gemma explained, adding firmly. ‘She’s just going.’

  At which, still smiling sweetly, she did.

  Gemma’s anger exploded as soon as she was out of earshot. ‘Bloody reporters!’ she raged. ‘I’ve had it up to here with them. They pull you to pieces. Peck, peck, peck! They don’t care what they do. They’re like vultures. If that creature had stayed here a minute longer I’d have hit her.’