Gemma's Journey

by Beryl Kingston

  It was soon coming. Later that evening, while they were sorting the letters into piles ready to be answered, he had three phone calls, two from journalists wanting to interview him, the third from ITV, asking him to appear on a programme specifically about the collapse of the NHS. The Question of Morals team were right. He really had started something.

  Gemma was so caught up in the excitement of what was happening that it put all thoughts of her father’s extraordinary return right out of her mind. It was still stirring at a lower level of consciousness, but it wasn’t until she was in bed that she had a chance to think about it. Then she turned it over in her mind, quietly as though it was an academic problem. She was inquisitive about this unknown father of hers. But did she want to see him? She knew that refusing to make a decision about it had upset her mother but that was what always happened when she started to pile on the pressure. It was almost like a reflex action. I’ll write to her tomorrow, she decided. Send her a card or something. I should have written today but she’ll understand how busy I’ve been. I won’t give her my address or she’ll come rushing round here to see me. And I don’t want that. Not till I’ve settled in and had my new leg fitted. Things’ll be different then.

  And at that point, lying there in the unfamiliar darkness, she realised that the person she really wanted to see and talk to was her Dr Quennell. There was too much unfinished business between them and now she would only see him on rare occasions when he came to visit his parents and wouldn’t have time to talk to her anyway. Even if he wanted to. Which he probably wouldn’t. She was surprised to realise that she was sighing at the thought, as if she missed him. How stupid! As if she hadn’t got anything else to do.

  Sure enough, the next morning she was woken by Polly with a mug of tea and the news that the doctor had left her a lot of letters to write.

  ‘They’ve both gone to work this morning,’ she announced, putting the mug on the bedside table. ‘She said to bring you tea and see what you wanted for breakfast and to tell you she’ll be back for lunch and he’s left the computer switched on for you.’

  It took most of the morning to type in the format letters he’d suggested and that afternoon he brought home his dictaphone, asking, ‘You can work this thing can’t you?’ and looking happy when she said she could. By that time, there was another parcel of letters waiting for him on his desk.

  Gemma had a sandwich for lunch sitting in her green and yellow living room, as the trees shushed and swayed in the green garden beyond the window. And that afternoon, while her hosts were busy tidying the herbaceous borders, she drove her wheelchair all the way down Putney Hill, feeling very pleased with herself, and went shopping in the High Street. She returned with a selection of cards for her mother – one of which she wrote and posted there and then – flowers for Catherine, whisky for the doctor, groceries to stock her own cupboard and a gâteau for tea, which turned their second meal together into an occasion.

  By Sunday she felt so at home that she decided it was time to write to her old flatmates to tell them to bring her possessions over.

  ‘I shouldn’t be using your sheets and towels,’ she said to Catherine. ‘And I’m running out of suitable clothes. Not being able to wear jeans puts a great strain on your wardrobe.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ Catherine said. ‘I think it’s a good idea. You’ll feel more settled with your own things round you.’

  So the letter was written that night and addressed to Jerry, telling him she would like her belongings to be sent to her as soon as possible. As a helpful afterthought, she drew him a sketch map of the side roads and marked the house with a large red cross, thinking how very appropriate the symbol was.

  Unfortunately he arrived on Tuesday evening, just as she and Catherine were setting the kitchen table for dinner which was their routine, the Quennells having established that she would dine with them twice a week.

  ‘I am sorry,’ she apologised, wheeling out of the room to attend to him. ‘I’ll just see them in and I’ll be straight back.’

  ‘Not to worry,’ Catherine said. ‘We’ve got plenty of time. It won’t take long, will it?’

  There was such a lot of luggage, that it took half an hour just to get it out of Jerry’s car and bundled into her bedroom. She couldn’t think where it had all come from. There were two tennis rackets that she’d forgotten all about, a dead potted plant, trailing cobwebs and clots of earth, three battered suitcases, stuffed to bursting point, and so many cardboard boxes that Jerry ended up stacking them on top of one another. She was quite relieved when he finally threw three broken umbrellas on top of the pile and told her that was the lot, ‘except for some letters.’

  ‘Most of the stuff that came for you was junk mail,’ he explained, ‘so we chucked it. There’s one or two things we weren’t sure about, so I’ve brought them, and this one came yesterday. Looks pretty official to me. I thought you’d like to see it.’

  Gemma hadn’t got time for letters, official or otherwise, not when Dr Quennell would be arriving for dinner at any minute. She stuck the little bundle between the umbrellas. ‘I’ll look at them later,’ she said.

  Jerry didn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave. ‘Nice place,’ he said, looking round. ‘You’ve fallen on your feet here – if you’ll pardon the pun.’

  She agreed that it was and she had. But now that her stuff had been safely delivered she realised that all she wanted to do now was to get rid of him. Poor Jerry, she thought. And you were my part-time lover for three years. I’ve grown hard-hearted since I saw you last. He looked seedier than she remembered. His shirt was frayed at the collar and his jeans were filthy. And he needed a shave. But she couldn’t feel any affection for him at all. She wheeled towards the front door, as a hint that he should follow, and reached up to open it. Then she took momentary pity on him. ‘How are things?’ she asked. ‘Did – what’s her name? – Cossie settle in all right?’

  He stepped out on to the doorstep, wincing as he went. ‘Don’t talk to me about Cossie,’ he said. ‘She’s been nothing but trouble. Bickering and fighting. Argue, argue, argue. It’s doing my head in.’

  She was delighted to hear it. ‘Oh dear!’ she said, struggling not to smile. Didn’t I know she’d be trouble? Well it just serves you right, all of you.

  There was a car pulling into the drive. She watched as the headlights turned the hedges emerald green and listened as the wheels crunched to a halt and the driver pulled on his handbrake.

  ‘You’ll have to move,’ she said, looking at Jerry’s old banger. ‘You’re in the way. Thanks for bringing the things.’ Then she saw that it wasn’t the doctor’s Rover that was waiting in the drive to park but a dark green Peugeot and that her Dr Quennell was sitting at the wheel. Oh shit, she thought. Why didn’t they tell me he was coming?

  There was an awkward pause as they looked at one another in the darkness of the little front garden while Jerry crunched across the gravel to his old wreck, crashed it into gear and drove off in a cloud of acrid smoke. Nick parked his car, got out, hesitated, and walked to the door. Gemma put her chair into reverse to make way for him, thrown by the sight of those long legs striding towards her. Then they were face to face and neither of them knew what to say.

  He’s cross, Gemma thought, looking at the stern line of his mouth. I have annoyed him. If they’d told me he was coming, I’d have made an excuse not to join them. But she was caught now and she would have to endure his company, whether he wanted it or not and no matter what he was thinking.

  In fact she would have been very surprised if she could have read his mind at that moment, because he was actually thinking how gorgeous she was, noticing her dark hair and those great brown eyes and those neat little teeth and her gorgeous figure, almost as if he was seeing her for the first time. And admiring her so much that it was turning him on.

  He stepped into the hall, muttered ‘Hello’ and brushed past her chair, annoyed to see how clumsily he was moving. He was rescued by his mother who
came out of the kitchen oven-cloth in hand to see how Gemma was getting on.

  ‘Heavens!’ she said looking at the pile on the bedroom floor. ‘That’ll take a bit of sorting out. What a lot there is! Never mind. You can leave it there for the minute, can’t you. There’s no rush. I’ll give you a hand if you like.’

  Gemma was hideously embarrassed. The one thing she didn’t want was for him to see her tatty belongings. And he was looking straight at them. She turned her chair, awkwardly, and shut the door on the mess as quickly as she could. But he went on looking at the closed door and the expression on his face was one of total disdain. It didn’t soften much when his mother kissed him.

  ‘Hello Nick,’ she said. ‘I thought you were your father.’

  ‘No,’ Andrew laughed, stepping in through the front door. ‘I’m his father. I’d have thought you’d have got that worked out by now.’

  His coming broke the tension and the joke made them all smile – even Nick. He hung up his coat, beaming at all three of them. ‘So what’s new?’ he asked his son.

  ‘Have you seen today’s Herald?’ Nick said.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘I’ve brought my copy. I’ll show it to you.’

  ‘Pass it round as we eat,’ Catherine urged, shepherding them towards the kitchen. ‘I’m ready to dish up. Come on, Gemma.’

  There was another short uncomfortable moment as Nick realised that Gemma was joining them and looked at her so sternly that it made her bristle with annoyance. Why shouldn’t I be part of this meal? she thought angrily, glaring back at him. I helped to cook it. But the moment was brushed aside by his father, who ushered them all to the table and insisted on sitting next to Gemma and opposite Nick – much to the relief of both of them.

  The meal began with the usual business of meat-carving and plate-filling and there were too many tasty things to choose and eat for any irritation to last for long. While his father was still carving, Nick produced his copy of the Herald, opened it, and passed it round.

  They’d run a half-page article on ‘Dr Drew’ and very interesting it was, particularly to Gemma, for most of it was about his early career and revealed that he had been awarded a Military Medal for bravery during the troubles in Cyprus in 1956. He’d been in the army at the time, according to the reporter, doing his National Service, and had been behind an army truck when it was blown up by EOKA terrorists. There was a picture of the wrecked truck and another of an injured soldier with a very young Dr Quennell kneeling beside him in the dust. It seemed natural to Gemma that he’d been the one who’d tried to rescue the four men who were injured, ‘working under sniper fire and in constant danger.’ And it made her admire him even more than ever.

  Nick said it had surprised him. ‘I never knew you’d been given a medal,’ he said. ‘You never told me.’

  ‘I don’t tell you everything,’ Andrew teased him. ‘Actually I hadn’t thought about it for years. Almost forgotten it, in fact. And then damn me, if I didn’t remember it on the day of the crash. Being there brought it all back. Funny how the mind works. Let’s have a look then, Nick.’ Holding out his hand for the paper: ‘I haven’t seen it either, don’t forget.’

  ‘Did the reporter get it right?’ Gemma asked as he took the paper and began to read. ‘Was this really what happened?’

  ‘More or less,’ he told her. ‘He recorded the interview, so it should be OK. Seemed the sort of young man who would be accurate. I didn’t expect them to dig up the pictures though. That’s a shock.’ And not a pleasant one, for it brought back another and more difficult memory. Sticky heat, dust spurting up like a series of yellow fountains under the impact of that God-awful machine-gun, his tongue stuck to his palate with fear and anger, having to spit before he could roar his order. Christ! I’d really forgotten that.

  Catherine was looking at him with concern. ‘It was all a long time ago,’ she said, soothing with her voice.

  ‘Does it upset you to see it again now?’ Gemma wanted to know. He’d gone quiet and that made her wonder how she would respond if she were to see pictures of the crash when she wasn’t expecting it.

  He pulled himself together. Kate was right. It was all a long time ago. Well in the past. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not really. Memory softens things. It’s part of the body’s natural defence system. It puts a distance between you and the horrors. Looking at it now, I feel as if it had happened to someone else. As if it was nothing to do with me. Although, in actual fact, it was a turning point in my life.’ And as she waited, watching his face curiously, he gave her as much of an explanation as he thought she needed and knew he could contend with. The full truth certainly wasn’t possible. ‘I’d always had a vague feeling I would end up as a doctor, you see, like my father. I’d got a place at college waiting for me, the right grades, all that sort of thing, but I wasn’t committed. That day made up my mind for me.’

  ‘I know how you felt,’ Gemma told him. ‘The crash was a turning point in my life.’

  Andrew looked at her and smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said seriously, ‘so it was. But not all to the bad, I hope. At least, not now.’

  ‘Quite a lot to the good,’ she answered, grinning at him, ‘except for occasional writer’s cramp.’

  He suddenly saw a way to turn the conversation. ‘There’s something really rather good coming up next weekend,’ he said. ‘Family party. In Yorkshire. Wedding anniversary. How would you like to join us?’

  The question had such impact it was as if he’d dropped a bomb. Catherine was so surprised her eyebrows disappeared into her hair, Nick was more annoyed than any of them had ever seen him, while as to Gemma herself, she stopped breathing for at least a second while she took in the implications. She wasn’t at all sure about it. In fact, if it hadn’t annoyed her Dr Quennell so much she wouldn’t have considered it, Being here in Amersham Road with them was one thing; being at a party with hordes of other people to look at her would be a very different matter, sitting in a wheelchair, with a face like a gargoyle, as the only stranger.

  ‘Well it’s very kind of you,’ she said at last, ‘but a wedding anniversary’s a family affair. Wouldn’t I be butting in?’

  Andrew laughed that excuse aside at once. ‘No, you wouldn’t. There’ll be lots of people there. You’ll be one of many. And they’d love to have you.’

  ‘But they’ll all be relations. I mean, I’m …’

  ‘The family lodger,’ Andrew smiled. ‘You’ll be a novelty. Just say yes. You’ll have a great time. Wouldn’t she, Nick?’

  Nick was looking impassive and avoiding Gemma’s eyes. ‘Don’t ask me,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t bully her,’ Catherine said. ‘Let her make up her own mind. It’s a long journey.’

  And that was another thing. ‘How will you get there?’ Gemma said, wondering whether she could face a train again so soon.

  ‘By car,’ Andrew reassured her. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll drive you. But it’s your decision. If you’d like to come with us, come, if you’d rather not, don’t.’

  I’ve got to meet people sooner or later, Gemma thought, looking across the table at him. It’s cowardly to hide away. I ought to go. Then she looked at Nick and his disapproval swung the balance. ‘If that’s the case,’ she said, ‘I’d love to come.’

  ‘Good!’ Andrew said. ‘That’s settled, then.’

  Gemma was pleased to see that once the decision was made it restored Catherine to her usual good humour. But her Dr Quennell was still sternly distant, and when his parents got out the photograph albums after the meal to show her snaps of Susan and her husband and their two little girls, he sat apart as though it was nothing to do with him, and didn’t become animated again until he and Andrew started talking shop.

  How odd he is, Gemma thought, as they all went out into the hall to see him off at the end of the evening. His body cues were so contradictory they were very hard to interpret. One minute so kind he’s almost tender – look how wonderful he’d been at the crash – and the next all sti
ff spine and formality and giving me the full glare treatment. Well he won’t put me off no matter what he says and does, and he needn’t think it. If his father wants to take me to the party he’ll just have to put up with it. She wondered how he would react to her once they were there. It was going to be very interesting. Meantime there were clean clothes to sort out for the morning and she really ought to make a start on that awful heap.

  But when she wheeled herself into her bedroom, she was too tired to do more than edge her wheelchair into the pile of boxes to retrieve her letters.

  Two were junk as Jerry had predicted, one was a postcard from Pippa with no forwarding address, and the most recent was an official letter which took her breath away for the second time that evening. It was from Railways South, offering her a one-off payment of £10,000 as compensation for her injuries and enclosing an official envelope ‘for the courtesy of an early reply.’

  Chapter 14

  Andrew’s second appearance on TV was an even bigger success than his first, which wasn’t a surprise to anyone who knew him, especially after the article in the Herald and particularly when this programme was entirely concerned with the troubles in the NHS. The presenter gave him his head right from the opening question.

  ‘Many people say that the NHS is becoming a two-tier system. Dr Quennell, would you agree?’

  He felt no nervousness this time. His answer was instant and trenchant. ‘It’s a two-tier system already. Has been for years.’

  ‘Could you elaborate?’

  He could and did. ‘We keep being told that the Health Service operates within finite resources. Very well then, if you allow one set of people to buy swifter service, better care, private rooms, the right to jump waiting lists, there will be consequences. Another set of people – the ones without extra insurance or the money to pay up front – will have to wait, and put up with overcrowded wards and tardy treatment and exhausted doctors. Two tiers. It’s the inevitable result of encouraging the rich to buy privileges.’