Coronation Wives

by Lizzie Lane

  ‘To stop Ethel running off,’ said Charlotte as if Janet had asked for an explanation.

  The leaden note of the cast iron knocker seemed to swim up and down the street before fading to nothing. The sound of footsteps echoed along the passageway on the other side of the door before it opened and Polly appeared dressed in a white blouse and black skirt with a white apron.

  ‘Goodness. You look like a housemaid,’ said an amused Charlotte.

  Polly smirked and curtseyed. ‘Good day, madam. Her ladyship will see you now.’

  Janet laughed.

  ‘Very droll I’m sure,’ said Charlotte, her foot on the step, poised to enter.

  Polly let go the door and studied her fingernails. ‘No, I don’t think I was cut out to be a housemaid. I ain’t no good at taking orders. What do you think, Jan?’

  ‘I think you’re right,’ said Janet, smiling at the thought of Polly ever being a maid of any description.

  A door beyond Polly’s shoulder towards the rear of the house suddenly caught both Charlotte and Janet’s attention. Suddenly a figure rushed down the dark passage that led from the front door to the back scullery. It was Edna. Her face was taut and her eyes were wide and anxious.

  ‘You can’t come in!’

  Charlotte paused. ‘It’s just us, Edna.’

  Edna stopped halfway, glanced at Charlotte, then looked directly at Janet. ‘You can’t come in, Janet. I’ve got the children here.’

  ‘Now come along, Edna. There’s no need for this,’ said Charlotte in her most sensible voice.

  Edna looked wildly from mother to daughter and back again. ‘Yes, there is. I’ve just told you. I’ve got the children here.’ Again she looked at Janet. ‘They might catch it.’

  Edna was talking nonsense. Charlotte knew that. ‘Edna, they’re in no more danger of catching polio from Janet than they are catching it from you. You went to the sanatorium with Polly. Don’t you think they could catch it from either of you?’

  Charlotte could tell by the look on Edna’s face that it wasn’t sinking in.

  ‘That’s not the point. Janet’s there every day.’

  Charlotte was adamant. ‘Edna, you can’t keep the children in isolation. Surely you’ve been told how long the incubation period is?’

  Edna’s eyes were hugely round and her hair swung round her face as she shook her head and said, ‘I don’t care how long it is. Janet works out there. Perhaps I can let you in – as long as you stay away from the children, but Janet can’t come in. They’ll catch it.’

  Polly began to look unnerved by all this. ‘What about my Carol?’

  Charlotte sighed. They’d been standing on the doorstep for a few minutes now. The cold was getting to her and it seemed that the handbag she held in her right hand was far heavier than it had been. She swapped it from one gloved hand to the other. ‘Look—’ she began.

  Janet interrupted. ‘I don’t need to come in. I just wanted to tell you that Susan is now receiving more intensive heat treatment. I’ve visited her as much as I dare and I’ve continued to read her bedtime stories. She’s missing you all. That’s what I wanted to tell you.’

  Hands clasped nervously in front of her, Edna came forward. Tension still showed in her face and her eyes looked too big to be real. ‘I appreciate you visiting her, Janet, but I can’t let you in. It wouldn’t be right.’

  Although Janet offered to wait outside, Charlotte insisted they left. ‘I’ll see you shortly,’ she said to Polly as she handed over the vegetables.

  They were silent as they motored along St John’s Lane, up Sheene Road and past the crowded shops of East Street, the lengthy expanse of the tobacco factory, and the stone, castellated solidity of Bedminster Police Station.

  As they crossed Bedminster Bridge, Janet said, ‘It wasn’t really about me being contagious. That wasn’t really what Edna was getting at.’

  Charlotte responded too quickly for what she said to be sincere. ‘Darling, she’s just upset and terribly worried about Susan.’

  ‘No, that’s not it! It’s the fact that I took Susan to Clevedon and I was concentrating on what Jonathan was saying rather than on what Susan was doing. Edna blames me, and she’s right.’

  ‘Of course she’s not!’ Charlotte sounded anxious, almost angry, but it did no good. Janet could not get the idea out of her mind.

  When they got home, Charlotte went upstairs to see how David was. He had recovered well from the slight stroke, but was inclined to rest during the afternoon.

  Janet offered to make tea and Charlotte accepted with gratitude.

  The tea caddy was made of tin and covered with stencilled pictures of Chinese temples and ornate pagodas. Janet flipped open the lid. A mere scoopful sat at the bottom. She went to the larder, a walk-in affair that had once been termed the butler’s pantry. As in the past, this was the place where a good stock of basic essentials was kept. It included a cold slab on which sat a pound of smoked haddock for tonight’s dinner and the Sunday roast, a rib of beef, its dark meat encompassed in yellow fat. Quarter pound packets of tea were sat next to packets of cubed, granulated and Demerara sugar on the top shelf. If she stretched herself to full height and stood on tiptoe …

  The worst thing that could happen, happened. Using the tips of her fingers she rolled a packet of tea to the edge of the shelf, tipped it over and tried to grab it. At the same time, her knuckles hit a packet of expensive Demerara that sat close to the edge of the shelf. Both items fell onto the unforgiving stone floor and burst open, tea leaves and brown sugar spilling out over the floor from the broken packaging.

  Janet groaned and buried her face in her hands. Today had been bad enough already. Trivial as it was, this small occurrence was the final straw.

  ‘No! No! No!’

  She sank to the floor, her desolation complete. Nothing in her life was going right. Even the larder door had closed shut on her and she didn’t feel the least bit inclined to open it. She sat head in hands and knees drawn up, sobbing into her fingers.

  Ten minutes or so passed before light from the kitchen fell in, followed by the shadow of someone standing in the doorway.

  ‘Janet?’

  She knew without looking up that it was Ivan, but didn’t want to look at him. Getting drunk, she’d decided, was something she would never do again. Fancy opening her heart to him! She hardly knew the man!

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

  ‘No. But it’s none of your business.’

  ‘Are you going to stay in here all day?’

  ‘Yes. Go away.’

  ‘You will get very cold.’

  Never ‘you’ll’, she thought, always ‘you will’, ‘you are’, ‘you will not’. That’s how foreigners spoke, taking extra care by pronouncing the words in full; no slang, no abbreviations.

  ‘I don’t care.’

  He paused. She assumed he was going to close the door and leave her there. Instead he came over and squatted down beside her.

  ‘Use this,’ he said.

  She peered out from between her fingers. He was offering her a man-size handkerchief. It looked freshly laundered. She took it roughly, rubbed at her cheeks, indignant at her tears and at him for finding her like this. Then she blew her nose long and loudly.

  ‘What do you want?’ She knew she sounded rude, but she didn’t want him to get any ideas after what she’d told him in confidence.

  ‘Tea,’ he said and looked pointedly at the mess on the floor. ‘You wanted it too?’

  She nodded.

  He remained squatting, looking at her as if trying to assimilate why she was talking to him like she was. His next words sent a jolt through her system.

  He shook his hand at the mix of tea leaves and sugar. ‘You are too strong to let this worry you.’

  She spoke sharply. ‘How would you know?’

  He paused as if weighing up what he was about to say and how she might respond to it. Then he settled himself down against the wall beside her, his legs drawn
up close to him, his elbows resting on his knees.

  ‘You have told no one, I think, about what happened to you. You only told me because of the whisky.’

  ‘I should not have.’

  She could have kicked herself for saying it like that … like he said it.

  ‘You needed to. It was a terrible thing that happened to you, something you have to live with. It is not easy.’

  This was a man saying this! Her response was immediate.

  ‘What the hell do you know about it?’

  His voice dropped. ‘A lot.’

  A silence followed. She sensed that although his body was here, sitting beside her, his mind was elsewhere.

  At last he said, ‘My wife was raped.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had a wife.’

  ‘I don’t, not any more.’

  Again, the silence, pregnant with possibilities.

  ‘The Germans released me from prison. There was no point in keeping me there. The Russians were coming. We were all going to be liberated. There was much drinking and dancing. Some soldiers of the Red Army joined in, conscripts taken from the Steppes and put into a uniform, given a little training but not too much, just enough to be brutal.

  ‘Some women hid because they had heard tales about these Russian soldiers. Freedom after so many years of occupation clouded my judgement and that of my wife. What was there to fear? These were our liberators.

  ‘One night they came to my house. They had heard I had been in the Resistance. They did not trust anyone who had been. They called me a capitalist spy and said I had to go for questioning. My wife cried and held onto me. I knew what they were going to do. My wife was raped, then killed in front of my eyes.’

  Words didn’t come easily. She suddenly felt ashamed, not for what had happened to her, but because he had suffered so much more and she had treated him so badly.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  He appeared not to hear her, but stared at the floor as if he could see his past among the scattered leaves and sugar.

  ‘Then it was my turn,’ he said, his voice little more than a whisper.

  ‘They beat you up?’

  He swallowed, his eyes still fixed on the floor. At first she thought he was not going to answer, but he did.

  ‘They used me as they had used my wife – but didn’t kill me. For a long time after I wished they had.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ she whispered, hardly able to believe that such a thing could happen to a man.

  ‘You were not supposed to,’ he said and got to his feet. He shook his head as if dispelling the memory. ‘Life goes on.’

  His expression brightened. He put his hands on his hips and nodded at the mess on the floor. ‘If you make the tea, I will clear this up. Is that a deal?’

  She nodded.

  He offered his hand so she could get to her feet. Without hesitation she took it and went to put the kettle on.

  Monday mornings at the sanatorium were usually no different from any other day of the week, but the moment Janet entered the grimly decorated reception hall, she felt that something momentous had happened.

  As usual a char lady was on her hands and knees outside Professor Pritchard’s office door rubbing lavender polish into the cracked brown lino.

  Janet greeted her as she always did. ‘Good morning, Mrs Davies.’

  ‘Oow! Guess what?’ said the cleaner, her steel curlers bobbing out from under her checked turban as she sat back on her haunches. A half-smoked cigarette jiggled at the corner of her mouth causing an inch of ash to scatter over the newly polished floor.

  The piece of gossip she’d been about to deliver was strangled in her throat as the door to the Professor’s office sprung open.

  ‘Janet!’

  Jonathan almost fell over Mrs Davies as he rushed out of the door. ‘In here! I want to speak to you.’

  Warily Janet eyed the open door. The Professor never allowed anyone to use his office. And Jonathan had called her Janet in front of a member of staff! What was he up to?

  She followed him into the office. Mrs Davies gave her a toothless grin and muttered, ‘When the cat’s away …’

  She closed the door on whatever else was said.

  Janet raised her eyebrows at Jonathan, who had gone behind the big mahogany desk from where the Professor had kept the sanatorium in battleship readiness.

  ‘Should you be there?’ she asked him.

  He smiled, placed his hands on the arms of the Professor’s handsome leather chair and slowly lowered himself into it. ‘The Professor is no longer with us. A heart attack. Because of the suddenness of his departure, I have been put in temporary charge.’

  ‘You?’

  He seemed less lost behind the desk than the Professor, who was a much smaller man, had done. Or perhaps it was that he had grown into his promotion.

  ‘Don’t sound so surprised. I deserve promotion.’

  ‘Goodness!’

  ‘Is that all you can say?’

  Absolutely astounded, Janet sank into a chair. ‘What next?’

  ‘Get your notepad. I’ve got a lot of dictation to give you. I’m going to introduce new ideas,’ Jonathan said. ‘I want to let a little light in, tomorrow’s methods, not yesterday’s.’

  Janet thought of Susan and her promise to Edna. ‘May I ask you …’

  At that point the office door swung open and there stood Matron, plump arms folded beneath equally plump breasts. ‘Dr Driver. I believe you wanted to see me.’ She glanced at Janet and immediately presumed the reason for her summons. ‘Ah yes. Unqualified staff visiting my patients. May I suggest that Miss Hennessey-White is released forthwith following her very unprofessional—’

  Jonathan interrupted. ‘Oh, I can’t possibly do that. There’s too much paperwork to be done. Whatever grievances you have regarding Miss Hennessey-White’s behaviour have to be ignored for now. There are far more important matters to deal with.’

  Matron stood speechless, both her size and her status seeming to diminish as Jonathan opened and shut files and drawers, his eyes swiftly fixing on any of the Professor’s papers that interested him. It was as if the office, the whole world and everyone were no longer of any importance to him. He had gained the position he’d coveted from the moment he’d arrived at Saltmead, and he was well and truly rising to the occasion.

  Janet got up to leave. ‘I’d better—’

  ‘No. Please stay, Janet.’ said Jonathan.

  His voice is different, thought Janet. It was almost as if it had aged and dropped an octave the moment he’d placed his backside in the Professor’s leather chair.

  His gaze never left Matron’s formidable countenance as he said, ‘Perhaps you’d like to sit down, ladies.’

  It was obvious from Matron’s expression that she did not approve of a mere secretary sitting in on a meeting between two people of a more superior profession. Even when Janet brought two chairs closer to the desk, Matron neither acknowledged nor thanked her.

  Jonathan was in his element. ‘We are all very sorry to hear of the death of Professor Pritchard, and I will, on behalf of Saltmead Sanatorium, send a letter of sympathy to his family. However, the work of this establishment must continue. People are counting on us. I trust also I can count on the help of both of you.’

  As he outlined his plans for running the sanatorium, sunlight shone weakly from behind a gold-edged cloud in the window behind him and made it look as if he were wearing a halo. He couldn’t possibly live up to it, thought Janet, smiling to herself. Jonathan was far from being a saint. The swiftness of his transition from sympathy for the Professor’s death to the implementation of modern ideas in the running of the sanatorium was amazing. Although she was in favour of those changes, she couldn’t help thinking that he was being disrespectful and premature; after all, the Professor hadn’t yet been put in his grave. But that was typical of Jonathan. His career, his crusade against polio, was all that mattered to him.

  ‘Until such time as hospit
al management decides otherwise, it falls to me as senior physician to see that patients are treated properly both mentally and otherwise.’ He sounded zealous and looked it too.

  Matron’s expression was pure self-satisfaction. ‘Everything will go on as before, Doctor. You can count on me and my nurses to ensure that the patients receive exactly the same treatment they always have had.’

  He was gushingly charming. ‘So pleased I can count on your support, Matron. Obviously I will not be running things in exactly the same way as the Professor, but please be assured that the well-being of the patients is closest of all to my heart.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it, Doctor.’

  ‘And now with the help of Miss Hennessey-White, I will peruse the medical records and write accordingly to the near relatives of all our patients. I think it only right that they should know that there’s a new captain at the wheel!’

  Matron nodded a tight-lipped approval.

  Jonathan lit a cigarette after she’d gone, sighed and closed his eyes. ‘The first hurdle. Now for the rest of them.’ He curled his fingers over his cigarette, the smoke escaping from the gaps between them. ‘Get me the patients’ address list, will you?’

  Janet eyed him apprehensively. ‘You really are going to write to them about the Professor’s death?’ She’d assumed it was just a ruse to placate a less than pliant Matron. Patients’ relatives cared about their loved ones, not the medical personnel nursing them.

  Jonathan stretched and folded his arms behind his head. ‘Of course I am. I’m going to tell them that we are implementing visiting hours. Of course it cannot be allowed to affect treatment schedules, but I do believe it is imperative to the patients’ well-being.’

  Janet had a tremendous urge to burst into a Highland Fling. She’d wanted a miracle and here it was.

  She noticed his mood change, a seriousness come over him that was in direct contrast to his initial exuberance. He settled behind the desk and reached for the telephone. ‘You can go now.’

  ‘I presume you’re ringing your mother.’

  He looked at her tight-lipped, obviously remembering her less than polite comments about his relationship with her. ‘Of course.’

  Although he looked serious, he also looked like a child demanding his parent, the sort seen in shops, petulantly hanging onto their mother’s coat with podgy, clenched hands.