‘Only because tradition says so.’
Jim sighed. Katharine saw the frown form once more on his forehead and knew it was time to change the subject.
But the frown returned again the day she first mentioned the desire to try and walk again, outlining to Jim her plan for exercising her legs to try and strengthen them.
‘You’ll try no such thing, Katharine,’ he said severely. ‘You’ll hurt yourself.’
‘Of course I shan’t. If I’m very careful and take it slowly.’
‘I forbid you to try it,’ he said pacing up and down the drawing-room whilst her eyes followed him.
She looked at him appealingly.
‘Jim, please I …’
‘If you won’t think of yourself, Katharine, please think of our child. Think what harm you could do if you were to fall, apart from further injury you may do to yourself.’
He paused and swung round to face her, his eyes blazing and hostile. Katharine had seen his many and varied moods, but never had she seen him so heatedly angry.
‘You’re a doctor. How can you be so foolish?’
She realised he was right. However careful she was, she might easily fall and injure herself and her baby especially now she had the extra weight to carry, she acknowledged.
‘All right, all right. You win,’ she said bitterly and covered her face with her hands.
He came and knelt beside her chair, his anger dying swiftly.
‘Katharine, my love, I don’t mean to be cruel and hard, but can’t you see how much you mean to me? I couldn’t bear you to hurt yourself further.’
‘But I must walk again, I must,’ her voice was muffled, but she knew he heard her.
When she raised her head, he had left the room swiftly and silently.
She never mentioned the subject again to Jim and though for a few days there was constraint between them, gradually the frown softened and left his forehead and she thought he had forgotten the incident.
Anthony came regularly to see her, as a doctor and also as a friend and he dined with them frequently.
‘I see you’re beginning to look a little more like the old Kate,’ he said one morning on one of his official visits, when Jim was out visiting Tom at the quarry.
She smiled, warmly and genuinely.
‘And have you thought any more about my suggestion as regards giving talks to the women of the village?’ he said.
‘Oh Anthony,’ Katharine said, her face falling. ‘I really couldn’t.’
He shrugged and shook his head.
‘I wish you would, I really do. There’s so much in the way of hygiene you could teach them. And I think it would be one of those cases where they’d take it better from a woman than from a man. These country folk are so goodhearted. You’ll go a long way before you find kinder folk, but they just don’t understand that unhygienic living can cause all sorts of trouble, a regular breeding ground for disease …’
‘Please, Anthony, please,’ her voice became high-pitched.
‘All right, all right. But you’re wasting your time and talents. You’re a trained doctor, remember?’
She could not fail to notice the sarcasm apparent in his tone.
‘I can’t,’ she whispered, and refused to meet his eyes, afraid of the reproach she would read in them.
‘Forget it then,’ he said lightly and with his natural good humour restored he changed the subject abruptly.
But after he had gone, Katharine was left alone with her thoughts before Jim returned, painful and guilty thoughts she found them to be. She couldn’t do it now, really she couldn’t, not with the child coming. But later perhaps, if she got to walk again, then things might be different – she could take up medicine again …
Chapter Eight
Christmas that year was a quiet family affair. The end of the nine months approached and the date Anthony predicted for Katharine’s confinement came – and passed.
‘What can be wrong?’ Jim asked anxiously for the hundredth time it seemed to Katharine.
‘Nothing. He’s just lazy,’ she answered patiently.
‘You haven’t been – well – trying to walk or anything, Katharine, have you?’
She looked up into his dark, worried eyes and was thankful that she could answer him truthfully.
‘No, Jim, I promise you I haven’t.’
He sighed with relief.
‘I realised you were right – at least until after the baby is born,’ she added.
‘Now, Katharine …’
‘Let’s change the subject,’ she said brightly, but she knew she could not deceive Jim for long.
The days passed by slowly whilst they waited and Jim grew more and more impatient and anxious. And so it was with profound relief that Katharine was able to say to him one evening in the New Year.
‘Jim, I think my time has come. Would you carry me up to the bedroom and then fetch Anthony.’
He sprang out of his chair.
‘Oh Katharine, Katharine. How can you be so calm? Are you all right? Is the pain bad?’
She laughed.
‘’Tis a wonderful feeling. I feel alive for the first time in years.’
She reached up and as he bent down towards her she put her arms round his neck and kissed him with gentle fervour. He responded and in his kiss she felt his concern, his love, his excited expectation in the birth of their child.
As another sharp pain leapt through her, he lifted her gently and carried her up the wide stairs to the room which had been specially prepared weeks ago for this event. Even though she was so much heavier, Jim carried her like a feather, such was this man’s strength.
He laid her gently on the bed, kissed her forehead and left the room swiftly.
‘Mrs. Johnson, Mrs. Johnson,’ she heard him calling as he ran downstairs.
She heard the woman’s footsteps come from the servants’quarters, a muted exchange of conversation, the slam of the front door as Jim hurried to fetch Anthony, and, as Mrs. Johnson came into the room, the distant sound of Jim’s motor car engine bursting into life.
‘Now, my dear,’ said the older woman, her pleasant face wreathed in smiles. ‘This is what we’ve all been waiting for. We’ll soon have the little fellow here.’
Despite the pains which were becoming more rapid, Katharine smiled at Mrs. Johnson’s faith that the arrival would be a son and heir.
Girls, thought Katharine ruefully, were still second-best.
‘Well, Kate,’ Anthony boomed as he strode into the room, ‘at last you’re going to do something useful, eh?’
Katharine saw Mrs. Johnson’s startled glance and realised she misunderstood Anthony’s manner. This was not callousness on his part, Katharine knew. It was merely his brusque way of letting her know how foolish she had been and at the same time how pleased he was that the black days were almost over. She grinned at him over the bed covers, her old, cheerful self reasserting itself more quickly than anyone could have imagined. Here, out of her bathchair, she felt the same as any other woman giving birth to her first-born.
It was a difficult birth from Katharine’s point of view though her son suffered no ill affects whatsoever and bawled lustily and immediately on arrival.
But Katharine suffered far more pain than she had imagined she would. She could not, brave though she was, resist moaning softly to herself. Anthony, however, seemed to accept the pain cheerfully.
‘You’re cruel, Anthony Stafford, absolutely heartless,’ she bantered him afterwards when it was all over and the pain had subsided a little.
He sat on the bed and grinned at her.
‘I can’t help being a little pleased because you’re suffering pain.’
‘What!’ Katharine almost shrieked at him, though half in jest.
‘Don’t you realise, Dr. Kendrick, that it could be an excellent sign that you could regain all feeling, could recover – perhaps completely.’
Katharine’s eyes shone.
‘Anthony,’ she w
hispered. ‘ Do you really think I shall be able to walk again?’
‘Now, now, don’t get too excited. I don’t want to raise false hopes, but you know everyone has always been baffled as to the exact nature of your paralysis, but I see no reason why you shouldn’t recover completely.’
Further conversation was suspended as Mrs. Johnson brought Katharine’s baby to her.
‘’Tis time that husband of yours saw his son,’ Anthony said rising. ‘And now you’re safely delivered of your child, I’m off to London for a few days to see Elizabeth.’
‘Oh, Anthony, I’m so glad – I didn’t know you had kept in touch.’
‘Yes – regularly,’ he grinned down at her.
He paused in the doorway and looked back at her.
‘Well, Kate my dear,’ he said softly. ‘By the look on your face, I would think you’d found your vocation right there.’ And he nodded in the direction of the child in her arms, then he closed the door before she had time to reply.
Katharine looked down at the small wrinkled face. He was sleeping now. Her eyes wandered over the tiny features. So small yet so perfect.
Her son. This was her son.
When she looked up again, Jim was standing at the foot of the bed watching her.
‘Jim,’ she whispered, and found her voice not quite steady. ‘Jim, here is your son.’
He nodded, not speaking, and when he moved closer to bend over her and the sleeping child, she understood why. Unshed tears of joy filled his eyes.
‘Hold him, Jim.’
‘No, I couldn’t. I might hurt him.’
She laughed.
‘Of course you won’t. He’ll not break.’
Gently Jim took the child and the pride and love apparent in his face was, to Katharine, worth all the pain she had suffered.
‘Jim,’ she said, suddenly remembering. ‘Anthony thinks that there may be a chance that my back will improve. I may be able to walk again.’
Jim looked up, the bemused pleasure in his face dying a little. A wary look came into his eyes. He seemed about to speak, but then decided against it and turned his attention back to the small white bundle in his strong arms. But the unspoiled joy was gone from his face. Some cloud had crossed the day and Katharine could not understand why.
She made no further reference to the hopes which she now nurtured that one day she may be able to walk again. For the present she was willing to glory in her child and in Jim’s obvious happiness. Gradually, he too seemed to forget her remark for it was surely that which had caused him to look downcast.
‘What are we to call him?’ Jim asked. ‘We still haven’t decided and the little fellow must have a name.’
‘I should rather like to call him after my father. But would you mind?’
‘Do you know,’ Jim said soberly. ‘It seems rather dreadful, but you haven’t told me anything about your family. I don’t even know your father’s name.’
Katharine felt ashamed.
‘I know, it’s my fault. His name was Jonathan.’
‘Why, that’s a grand name. Jonathan Kendrick.’
‘He was a doctor.’
His eyes searched her face.
‘Hoping he’ll take after his grandfather?’
‘No, not particularly,’ she said truthfully. ‘It hasn’t done me a great deal of good, nor, come to that, my father.’
‘Why not – for your father, I mean?’
‘We lived in a very poor district of London, but my father never refused a patient and more often than not his services were never paid for.’
Jim nodded.
‘I can understand that. But Katharine, why did you become a doctor then, if you knew it meant such hardship in certain cases?’
She lay back against the pillows and her mind flew back over the years and she was a small girl standing beside her father. She could hear his words.
‘You shall become a doctor, one of the first women doctors, Katharine my child, you shall pave the way for other women.’
And all she had wanted was to see his pride in her justified. Besides which, she had lived and breathed medicine since childhood.
‘He lived just long enough to see me enter university,’ she told Jim. ‘He was so pleased, so proud. I think he wanted a son to carry on after him. But mother could have no more children, so I had to take the place of a son.’
‘But did you really want to become a doctor, from your own point of view, or was it solely because your father wanted you to do so?’
‘Oh I wanted to, I loved it, and I also knew, or thought I knew, that I should always have to earn my own living.’
‘How do you mean?’
She grinned sheepishly.
‘I couldn’t imagine anyone ever wanting to marry me.’
‘My dearest Katharine, how wrong you were.’ And he kissed her hand.
‘Jonathan shall do whatever he pleases, so long as he’s happy,’ Katharine said.
‘Agreed. But give him a few years yet?’
And they laughed at their own parental pride. At that moment a curious ringing sound reached them faintly, as if coming from a long distance.
‘Ah, they’re ringing t’gavelock,’ Jim said, his Yorkshire accent more pronounced as Katharine had noticed before when he felt something deeply.
‘The what?’ she asked.
‘It’s at the quarry. I didn’t think we’d hear them from here, but the wind must be in this direction, carrying the sound.’
‘But what is it, Jim?’
‘The quarrymen suspend a long, iron crowbar on chains and then about six or seven of them stand beside it and strike it with their iron hammers. Listen.’
Jim crossed to the window and opened it. She could hear now the rhythmic ringing from the quarry – still distant – but there was no mistaking it, now Jim had explained it to her.
‘Why are they doing it? Why have I not heard it before?’
‘The gavelock’s rung in celebration of important events in the lives of the villagers. This particular occasion is in honour of this little fellow.’
And Jim bent over the cradle once more as if he could not see enough of his son, nor cease to wonder at the perfection of the child.
And so Jonathan Kendrick took his place in the Kendrick family and indeed at Kendrick House he soon became the most important personage in the household. Katharine’s life revolved round her small son, and whilst she tried not to indulge him, she at last had something worthwhile to occupy her mind and time – at least, when she was allowed to play with him by the stern, but devoted nanny. The appointment of a nanny had caused a quarrel between Jim and his wife. Katharine clung to her child as being her means of recovering from her depression, but at last she had had to admit that Jim was right in his views, that she could not look after her infant son perfectly from a bathchair.
‘Other women do – what about those who cannot afford to employ a nanny?’ she had asked.
Jim had sighed.
‘I know – I know. But we can, so there’s no need to run the risk of you hurting yourself or Jonathan.’
‘If only …’ Katharine had been about to say if only she could walk, but had stopped short. On so many occasions it had distressed her husband that she would not invite his further anger on this occasion.
But during the time she spent with her son, she recaptured much of her old spirit. At last, she thought, she was cured of melancholia. At last she could begin to look forward in life and plan for the future. A worthwhile future.
About eight months after the birth of her child, in the middle of August, when the village was bathed day after day in sunshine and it became so hot, almost unbearably hot that children ran about near-naked, Anthony called at Kendrick House one evening.
He came into the drawing-room and having greeted Jim and Katharine, sank wearily into a chair. Katharine saw that he looked desperately tired, his eyes dark-ringed, his fair hair dishevelled.
‘Whatever’s wrong?’ Jim asked.
>
Anthony’s eyes met Katharine’s and she was shocked to see there was no trace of the smile she was so used to seeing on his gay face. Lines of worry and weariness etched age into his young face, as if he carried the troubles of the world on his broad shoulders and yet was unable to bear the burden.
And there was something else in his eyes, Katharine knew, even before he spoke. Reproach. She read reproach in his eyes as he looked at her.
He dropped his head into his hands and his voice was muffled as he spoke.
‘Jake Ford’s lad’s ill. Very ill.’
‘What is it?’ Katharine asked sharply.
‘I can’t be absolutely sure as yet. But all the symptoms could point to – typhoid.’
‘Oh my God,’ exclaimed Jim.
And Katharine’s heart went cold.
Anthony raised his head slowly.
‘The weather’s been so abominably hot. Food’s gone bad, as they eat it almost, and Mrs. Ford’s not as careful as she might be where cleanliness is concerned. Then again, mothers allow their children to play in the beck, not, mark you, up near the source, where the water is clean and pure, but below the village after all the housewives have thrown their dirty water and waste into it. I’ve no proof, of course, as to exactly how he has contracted it. There could be several explanations, and, unfortunately, several causes.’
And his eyes met Katharine’s once more. The silence hung in the room between them.
‘You’re blaming me,’ Katharine said softly, at last.
Before Anthony could answer Jim broke in.
‘Whatever do you mean? What can you possibly have to do with it?’
‘Anthony asked me to give talks to the women of the village about hygiene and general health problems – you know,’ she paused and looked down at her hands lying on her lap. ‘And I refused.’
‘I knew nothing of this,’ Jim said.
Katharine looked up from Anthony to Jim.
‘But Anthony said he’d discussed it with you and you had no objections.’
‘I never said anything of the sort.’
They both looked towards Anthony.
‘I spoke to you about it one day about her joining in the village activities, don’t you remember?’
‘But I thought you meant socially, not to practise medicine. I should never have agreed.’
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