Coronation Wives

by Lizzie Lane

  ‘You can’t go on like this, Edna love. She’s in the best place.’

  Edna sat numbly, her eyes still fixed on the screen. ‘I want to see her there. It’s been two days.’

  Colin sighed. ‘You know what the doctor said …’

  ‘Perhaps we misunderstood,’ she said, her voice brittle and her eyes nervously bright. ‘It was the middle of the night after all.’

  Sad-eyed, Colin tried to reason with her, saying it was a waste of time and that they had heard correctly.

  She nodded, her hands trembling as she fixed a pillbox hat on her head with a pair of silver pins. ‘We’ll see! We’ll see!’ she said in that same bright voice.

  There were about eight other people waiting to see the doctor. The clock on the wall ticked loudly accompanied by the rustling of well-thumbed magazines, wheezing chests, sneezes and sniffles.

  When it came to their turn, Dr Sampson, the same doctor who had come out to Susan, looked up, sighed and leaned back in his chair resignedly.

  Edna, determined that she would not be put off by his sullen and impatient attitude, sat herself down and asked him again when she could visit her child. Again he told her it was not possible.

  He narrowed his eyes and peered at her over the top of his glasses as though hopeful that a fierce look and strong words might dissuade her from asking any more awkward questions. ‘You’ll just get in the way and the child will get over-emotional.’

  Although Colin put a restraining hand on her shoulder, Edna sprang to her feet. ‘She’s a child away from her mother for the first time. Of course she’ll get emotional. What do you think we are? Fish?’

  Her outburst did not go down well. ‘No, Mrs Smith, I do not. I am a man with a great many more patients to see. I have told you the situation as it is. Now, goodbye!’

  ‘Come on, love.’ Colin coaxed her out. She was simmering inside. Yes, the medical care Susan was receiving was very important, but surely it wasn’t a good thing to isolate her from those she loved?

  ‘I don’t care. I’m going to see her no matter what they say,’ said Edna once they were back in the waiting room.

  ‘Listen …’ said Colin, his voice as gentle as his expression.

  ‘No! I’m going out there right away.’

  ‘Listen. Leave it for today. We may hear something, and anyway, Charlotte’s looking into it. If anyone can get us into that place, she can.’

  Colin hugged her close though she still held herself stiff as a board. Those still sitting in the surgery raised their eyes over the tops of the magazines or looked up from studying their shoes. Colin didn’t care. ‘Are you listening?’ he asked.

  His arms were warm and comforting. So were his hazel eyes and gradually her tension lessened.

  Colin sighed heavily and his body trembled. ‘Now, calm down. Let’s give things time. First thing tomorrow we’ll tell my parents and yours what’s happened. It’s only right. Agreed?’

  They told his parents first and took Pamela and Peter with them. Pamela was too young to know what was happening. Peter knew his sister had been taken ill, but time off school was definitely welcome although it meant he was isolated from his school friends for fear of contamination.

  ‘Oh my!’ gasped Colin’s mother when they told her. Tears clung to her sandy lashes as she covered her mouth with one hand and beat at her broad breast with the other. ‘Poor little mite!’

  Colin’s father bit hard on the unlit pipe he clenched at the corner of his mouth. His moustache quivered as he patted her shoulder. He said strong words, but there was no mistaking the pain in his eyes.

  He swallowed hard and managed to say, ‘Have you told …’ nodding at the wall in the general direction of Edna’s parents’ house.

  Edna took a deep breath, already recalling the smell of the place from her last visit. ‘They’re next.’

  They said kind words and offered to make them tea before they went. Edna declined. She wanted to get it over with. They also offered to take care of Pamela and Peter while she told her parents.

  She shook her head. ‘No.’

  It was hard not to appear surly, but she couldn’t help herself. One child had been taken from her. She wasn’t letting the other two out of her sight.

  Both the solid front door and the inner glass door of the house in Nutgrove Avenue where Edna had spent a restricted childhood and a less than happy adolescence was wide open. Normally only the outer door was left open during the day, but Edna gave it little attention. She had far more pressing things to worry about than her parents’ forgetfulness.

  Colin entered the dark passage leaving her to unbuckle the pink leather harness that fixed Pamela into her pushchair. Peter followed him, but not galloping and neighing wildly as he usually did. He didn’t quite understand the reasons for his sister having been taken away, but he sensed sadness, as children sometimes do.

  Just as Edna proceeded to lift Pamela out of her pushchair, Peter came rushing out of the house. ‘There’s no one in,’ he panted.

  A stiff thudding sound from within the passage foretold Colin’s return. He repeated Peter word for word. ‘There’s no one in!’

  Edna looked around the street, half-expecting her father to be ushering her mother down the road after taking her to do a little shopping in one of the small shops along St John’s Lane.

  An old man pruning a rose bush in the front patch – it could hardly be called a garden – of a house three doors along, straightened and looked in their direction. ‘He’s gone to the park!’ he shouted.

  Colin thanked him. Edna couldn’t bring herself to say anything. How nice! Her parents were in the park and her child was in hospital. It wasn’t fair!

  ‘We could leave my parents to tell them,’ said Colin. ‘You don’t have to see them.’

  Edna shook her head. Much as it angered her to waste valuable time trying to get through to her mother that her grandchild was ill, it was something that had to be done, a matter of conscience. Besides, there was still her father to consider. Despite having her mother to contend with, he would want to know.

  They walked up Nutgrove Avenue. At the top they turned towards the park where bronzed plane leaves sailed from the trees to the grass each time the wind blew. They took the lower path past the park keeper’s cottage, a building of red brick and grey slate, its lines softened by a rampant wistaria, its purple flowers hanging heavy and turning brown, and walked along Sycamore Street, a low wall dividing the park from the road. Children were playing on the swings and a couple with a black and tan dog were walking across the grass, their feet scuffing against the thick carpet of leaves.

  In the past Edna had loved the park at this time of year. Today she barely noticed the changing leaves, the smell of woodsmoke as the park keeper burnt up leaves, twigs and litter dropped by careless hands. For once she felt no fear about seeing her mother. She wanted to talk to everyone about it, even to those who wouldn’t understand. Talking about the basic facts, the night time visit of the ambulance, Susan being carted off, being told they could not visit, at least, not yet, helped her deal with it.

  Colin was the only person she had difficulty talking to about it because he knew the facts as well as she did and was so accepting of anything the medical profession said because of his first-hand experience when he’d lost his legs. She didn’t share that experience.

  She sensed Colin watching her, felt his frown and the worry behind it and couldn’t respond.

  ‘Can we go and look at the trains?’ Peter asked suddenly.

  He’d already asked about going on the swings and had run onto the grass, kicking the leaves, picking up a stick and throwing it for a black and white dog who had promptly, brought it back again. Edna had ordered him back to her side.

  ‘No!’ she couldn’t help snapping. To her mind he shouldn’t be playing. Susan was ill.

  Colin didn’t often get angry, especially with her, but he was now. ‘He’s just a child, Edna. Life goes on.’

  ‘For hi
m it does,’ she blurted.

  Colin grabbed her arm and turned her round to face him. ‘Don’t say that! Don’t you dare say that!’

  At first Edna wanted to shout at him, to vent all the worry and hurt into the open, but Peter was pulling at her skirt and whining for attention.

  ‘Can we go down to the trains, Mum? Please?’

  She looked down into the round face, the bright eyes that belonged to her husband glowing from her son’s face. Her heart melted. ‘Yes.’

  As she turned the pushchair towards the sloping path that led to the far end of the park, the main area of swings and roundabouts and the railway line beyond, she spotted a familiar figure running towards them.

  Coat open, hair dishevelled and face anxious, her father raced down the path. He was looking from side to side, scanning the gentle slope that led up through the bushes to the bowling green.

  He saw them and came rushing over. Unshaven, agitated and careworn, he held out his hands like some desperate beggar.

  ‘I’ve lost her!’ he cried.

  Typical, thought Edna. I’m here to tell them about Susan and already my mother’s needs have to come first.

  Colin grabbed his arms. ‘Calm down!’

  ‘I’ve got a problem!’ her father moaned.

  ‘Haven’t we all?’ Colin exclaimed, his voice bereft of his usual patience.

  Edna turned away from the tiredness of his expression, the exasperation of his voice. She looked about the park, half-expecting her mother to come flying through the flowerbeds, recently planted with wallflowers and pansies for spring flowering, and demanding to know why her father had gone out wearing his best overcoat over his gardening clothes.

  Peter fidgeted and wailed, “What about the trains?’

  Colin gave him a quick slap around the ear. ‘Cut it out!’

  ‘Colin!’ Edna was shocked. She’d never known Colin to raise a hand to his children, or to her for that matter. He saw the accusation in her eyes and she saw the shame appear in his.

  Edna put her arm around her father’s trembling shoulders. ‘What happened, Dad?’

  ‘I was doing a bit of gardening. She was hanging out some washing. She ain’t done that for days. It made me think she was on the mend.’

  ‘Oh Dad!’ Edna wanted to say that her mother never would mend, that her mind was dying bit by bit and would never be resurrected. She guessed he wouldn’t want to hear it.

  ‘I only went to the lavatory,’ he said, ‘and when I came out she was gone!’

  ‘Now, now,’ said Colin. ‘P’raps she’s just gone shopping down East Street.’

  Edna shook her head with unfamiliar impatience. ‘It’s Sunday, Colin.’

  Her father rubbed at his eyes. ‘It ain’t been easy. Believe me, it ain’t been easy. I’ve got to keep me eyes on her all the time. If she ain’t mixing up the porridge with the Persil, she’s accusing our nextdoor neighbour of climbing up the drainpipe at night and stealing her teeth and her glasses.’

  Colin looked askance. ‘Is there any reason for her to think that?’

  If Susan hadn’t weighed so heavily on her mind, Edna would have laughed. ‘Goodness me, no. Mrs Wiltshire is nearly eighty and hard pushed to get up her front step, let alone shin up a drainpipe.’

  A smile flickered around Colin’s mouth, then disappeared as quickly as it had come. ‘We’ll look for her with you,’ he said and exchanged a shrug and a helpless look with Edna. What choice did they have? Her father looked older than his sixty-five years. His retirement had not brought the peace and quiet he had hoped for.

  ‘I expect she’s down by the trains,’ said Peter timidly. He winced as his father rubbed at his head as if expecting another sudden slap.

  ‘Sorry, son,’ said Colin and smiled apologetically.

  Peter smiled back. All was well again. His hands resumed their customary slapping of his sides.

  They took the middle path that sloped down towards the swings, slide and roundabout of the children’s playground, which was situated next to the main line into Temple Meads Station. They could not have made a better choice.

  Colin pointed. ‘There she is.’

  A lone figure sat on the roundabout near the railings.

  Edna’s father broke into a lumbering jog, but Peter got to her first. She grinned toothlessly and said hello.

  ‘Shall I push, Gran?’

  ‘My name’s Ethel,’ she said to him. ‘What’s yours?’

  ‘Peter Colin Smith.’ He made a clopping sound then a loud neigh. ‘And this is Trigger.’

  The roundabout went round and Edna watched, thinking how unfair it was that her mother was enjoying a child’s ride. It should be Susan sitting there.

  Her father scuffed to her side. He was still wearing his slippers. ‘Thank God we’ve found her!’

  Edna sank onto a park seat, unable to bear the pain she felt inside. It was as if her stomach was filled with lead, too heavy for either her heart or her legs to cope with.

  ‘Will you tell him?’ Colin asked as they watched her father give Peter a hand with pushing the roundabout.

  ‘I …’ Her mouth was dry. If only she’d accepted the tea Colin’s mother had offered.

  With a relieved though tired expression, her father made his way back and sat beside her on the bench. Colin remained standing, his gaze fixed on a plume of steam gushing like a great white feather from the funnel of an engine pulling trucks out of the station.

  ‘Dad!’ said Edna. She turned to him and took one of his hands in both of hers. ‘Susan’s in hospital. She’s got polio.’

  The loose cheeks, the lapsed jowls seemed to grow longer as her father took in the news. At a loss for words, he blinked and shook his head.

  The silence lingered and the wind turned cold. Each absorbed in their own thoughts, they watched Peter and his grandmother on the roundabout. We’re all searching for the right thing to say, thought Edna. But there is no right thing.

  The impulse to talk about things to her mother had disappeared. Weary from lack of sleep and too much worry, she left the possibility – for that was all her mother’s understanding could ever be – of telling her to her father.

  She saw her father’s jaw move as though about to say something. His eyes stayed fixed on her mother. ‘I’ll tell her. Just as well she won’t understand. Unfair though, innit?’

  Edna understood, but said nothing. Her mother had lived a full life and now had the mind of a child. Susan was a child and deserved to live and play on the roundabout with her brother.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Charlotte understood, but appeared sceptical when Janet told her about Susan falling into the pool, and her decision to move out, and take the job and the accommodation at Saltmead Sanatorium.

  ‘You don’t have to do this.’

  Janet hung her head over the packing of a suitcase, her hands slowing as she gathered a pile of white underwear. ‘Oh yes I do.’

  Charlotte took hold of her shoulders. ‘I know you’re doing this for Susan’s sake. It wasn’t your fault, Janet.’

  It was too easy to say it wasn’t her fault. Janet couldn’t stop thinking that it was.

  ‘I can’t help feeling responsible. Everyone knows that swimming pools are a breeding ground for the disease. I should have known better.’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t stop seeing Susan’s cheery little face and the way she could run and play. I have to do something. I have to be near her.’

  Dorothea had bawled like a three-year-old when she’d left the hospital, hanging onto her arm, dripping tears over her shoulder. Eventually Janet had promised to go to the pictures with her at least once a month.

  Dorothea had dried her tears. ‘As long as I’m not seeing Henry that night,’ she said, then added coyly, ‘or anyone else.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Or Geoffrey.’

  How Dorothea had the nerve to be engaged to one man and dallying with another, Janet didn’t know. If the present situation with Susan hadn’
t been so dire, she would have found it amusing. As it was, she merely considered it sad, even a little sleazy.

  Dorothea dabbed at her eyes and slipped her arm through that of Janet. ‘So tell me all about your new boss. Is he good-looking too?’

  Janet shook her head. ‘No.’

  Professor Pritchard was a very precise man of around the same age as her father, but without the piercing eyes and the dark, swept back hair. In fact he had little hair, his pate being freckled like a large, rather pink egg. His nose was his most prominent feature because of its colour, a by-product of his predilection for port, if the rumours she’d heard from the medical staff were anything to go by.

  He was also a stickler for discipline. If she’d expected to wander the wards as she had at the Royal Infirmary, she was very much mistaken. It was put to her in no uncertain terms that such antics were out of the question.

  ‘Polio is a very contagious disease,’ he told her. ‘Any infringement of Saltmead rules will be dealt with very seriously. Visitors, including parents, are not allowed. These rules are based on accepted medical thinking that emotional upsets are not conducive to patient recovery, not because the staff are nasty, insensitive people. Is this clear to you?’

  Yes, it was. Any attempts to see Susan would have to be done in secret.

  Her office was little more than a cupboard stuffed with filing cabinets, an oak desk on which sat her typewriter, a large stapler and a tier of wire filing trays. A battered tea trolley filled the gap between her chair and the window. On it were a gas ring, a kettle and the usual accoutrements for making tea, along with a biscuit tin and a bag of sugar cubes. Professor Pritchard’s office, which she only entered when summoned by him, was the next one along. The Professor kept his door firmly shut. He was obsessive about his work and did not appreciate interruptions.

  The chance to find her way around and to get some idea of where Susan was came a lot quicker than she’d anticipated.

  Jonathan, who had been pressurizing her into going for a drink with him to the village pub, came along to her office with a pile of old files.