There was no time to argue. She was given an appointment slip and then Dr Harrison left the cubicle. All the words Rachel wanted to use popped into their correct order only when she found herself walking back along the yellow line to the entrance hall. She demanded, in her own head, in a loud and clear voice, to be told exactly what the significance of this thickening amounted to, and she wanted an explanation of how it could come and go. Dr Harrison boasted – it had sounded like a boast – that she liked her patients to be fully informed, but full information was exactly what was lacking. So proud of myself I am, thought Rachel, that I’m intelligent and unemotional and can ask the right questions, and I’ve been stupid and nervous and haven’t asked what I should have asked. She couldn’t do anything about this thickening. She didn’t need to know about it. It was cruel to have told her. Dr Cohen hadn’t told her. He hadn’t said it was there, and he hadn’t said it had gone. He had saved her from unnecessary worry and now that bloody woman had plunged her into it. She’d sounded so virtuous, with her ‘I like my patients to be fully informed’, but it was spiteful. Rachel thought she should register an official complaint. She should write to the consultant, to Mr Wallis, and tell him what Dr Harrison had said and how cruel she had found it. But she had just enough sense to realise that he might defend Dr Harrison’s attitude and criticise Dr Cohen’s policy of not informing her of the thickening.
She hadn’t the energy for complaining anyway. By the time she got to the entrance hall she was drained of all anger and only wanted to get to her car quickly and return to work. But she found herself suddenly at a full stop. She stood in the hall only a few steps from the doors, unable to move towards them. Her body was shaking, visibly trembling. She clutched her bag to her chest and closed her eyes and ordered herself to be calm and sensible. Stop it! You are perfectly all right! Proceed to those doors! The fresh air will restore you! Go! Now! This is not a panic attack! Go! Slowly, she began to inch her way forward, relieved to find she was obeying her own instructions, but then she felt a hand on her arm and a voice saying, ‘Are you all right, dear? Would you like to sit down for a minute? Would you like a glass of water?’ It was that woman, one of the Friends, the elderly one who always plonked herself in the middle of the hall. It had amused Rachel many times to see her pounce, and now here she was, caught herself. ‘I’m fine, thank you,’ she managed to say, and as she said it, she did begin to feel in control once more and was able to smile and to attempt to disengage the Friend’s hand from her arm. But she failed. The Friend’s grip only tightened as they both approached the doors. ‘Deep breaths!’ she was told, as they went through them. She took deep breaths, irritated because she hadn’t needed to be told to do so, and finally her arm was released. ‘Better now?’ the Friend said. Rachel saw that she had a name tag on the white blouse she was wearing. ‘Thank you, Mrs Hibbert,’ she said. ‘You’ve been very kind, though really I was fine.’ ‘Good,’ Mrs Hibbert said, but she smiled in a knowing way, as though humouring Rachel, and she looked so pleased with herself. Walking to her car, Rachel pondered on the nature of women like Mrs Hibbert – imagine, lurking in that entrance hall trying to spot people who needed your help and then being thrilled when it could be offered and accepted, delighted to be the good Samaritan. But then Rachel felt ashamed of wanting to mock her, the stranger who had seen her difficulty – she might very well have been thankful for that supportive hand and that kindly inquiry as to her well-being. They should have a Mrs Hibbert on duty in the clinic itself.
Maybe at the next appointment she would suggest it.
*
Only four women left now, each of them an hour and a half over their appointment time. They all looked calm enough, except perhaps for the one with red hair who, Chrissie noticed, had a scarf round her neck though the clinic was hot. She must be sweating profusely. She looked up as Chrissie returned to the cubicles and there was an air of bewilderment about her. Chrissie saw, as she edged past her into the corridor, that the red-head had collected some of the leaflets available and had been studying them. Patients found them scary. They were supposed to be reassuring, but she’d seen women read them, then drop them as though they were hot.
She knew she would get the red-head, and she did, though if she hadn’t had to leave the clinic for those few minutes, Andrew would have taken her. She’d had to rush out to be sick. It wasn’t real nausea, only a nervous reaction to the patient who’d been so angry about being told of the thickening in her breast. She’d just felt she was going to vomit, and had grabbed some notes and dashed out as though on some emergency. There was a lavatory near the door of the clinic and she’d rushed into it and stuck her finger down her throat and brought up a lot of bile, that was all. Once this was over, she felt better. Hastily, she’d washed her hands and splashed her face with water as cold as she could make the tap produce, and she was back behind the cubicles before anyone had missed her. Rita had seen her dash out, though. She would have to think of some explanation to give Rita later, but now she had the red-head to concentrate on and then one other and it would be over for today. She’d have survived the clinic and could go home, and hide.
It was a first appointment. The red-head, a Miss Collins, Carol Collins, had been referred by her GP. Chrissie read his letter. Miss Collins, who was a mere 26, had been to see him on four occasions suspecting that she had a lump in her left breast. The GP had found no evidence of this on the previous three examinations, but now he had felt what he was pretty sure was a cyst, and in view of Miss Collins’s very obvious fears he’d thought it advisable that she should be reassured by being seen in the clinic. It all seemed straightforward. Mr Wallis never minded obliging GPs even though such unnecessary referrals made the clinic’s load heavier. He said a spot of reassurance cheered everyone up. Chrissie went in to see Miss Collins, who gave her a tremulous smile and answered the routine questions in a whisper but at least did not cry. It was definitely a cyst. Chrissie was relieved, but the young woman didn’t seem to be. She asked if the cyst could ‘turn bad’, and whether it would go away or would have to be removed, and because she was tired and it was the end, almost, of clinic, Chrissie was a little abrupt in spite of her smile. She said Miss Collins shouldn’t worry, but if she liked she could return in three months’ time and if the cyst hadn’t gone they could discuss its removal.
Meanwhile, Andrew had seen all three of the other women in record time. He was slumped in the little staff-room eating biscuits when she went in. Mr Wallis loved biscuits, he practically existed on them, and his secretary Norma always saw that there was a new box available on clinic days. It was kind of her, Chrissie thought, to have put a box out even though Wallis was not there. Andrew was taking full advantage. He had already eaten half the top layer. His mouth full, he held the box out to her. She didn’t really like biscuits, but she took a chocolate cookie and nibbled at it. Andrew poured some tea for her. She didn’t much like tea either, preferring coffee, but it was comforting to be drinking it and munching a biscuit. The sweetness was cloying but when she’d finished one biscuit she took another. She needed comfort so badly. ‘You look pale,’ Andrew said. ‘Are you OK?’ It was only a casual inquiry but it made her want to cry. She choked on the second biscuit. ‘You’re not crying, Chrissie?’ said Andrew, laughing. ‘Hey, you’re not crying, are you?’ She said that of course she wasn’t, that she had some crumbs stuck in her throat and coughing them up had brought tears to her eyes, that was all. But Andrew had stopped laughing. He was looking at her curiously. ‘You need a few days off,’ he said, ‘it’s getting to you. No good letting all this get to you.’
No good at all. Silly, silly, silly. It was absurd, but she could not get Ms Nicholson out of her head. She wanted to be lying in a cubicle with a man sitting by her bed calling her darling and blowing her kisses.
*
End of clinic, for another week. Rita liked the end of clinic. She and Sister Butler and the two other nurses on duty had a cup of tea and a piece of cake. Rita b
rought the cake, always one she’d baked herself. Gingerbread, this week, with real pieces of ginger generously mixed into it. It was delicious. Cake, Rita reckoned, was wholesome whereas those biscuits Mr Wallis lived on were not, but curiously he did not care for cake, any sort of cake. ‘What an awful clinic,’ Sister Butler said. ‘Everything went wrong from the beginning. That Chrissie Harrison is going to pieces.’ They discussed the scene when the young woman had screamed, and then they discussed the woman who had collapsed, and then it was time to put the lights out and leave. Rita left last. She always did. There was a little tidying up to do and, though it was not her job, she liked to do it. She didn’t mind collecting up the magazines and stacking them neatly, or gathering the stray leaflets and empty cardboard cups together and putting them in a plastic sack to be disposed of. It didn’t take long. The clinic was soon returned to its soulless state. A drab room, not a hint within its claustrophobic walls of the tension which had hung in its air all afternoon. Everyone was always so glad to vacate it. Rita put out the lights and closed the door. All those women, all gone home now, released, if only temporarily.
*
Mrs Hibbert took off her armband and put her jacket on. She’d done some good today. That was all she wanted to do. As she came out of the Friends’ room, she saw Chrissie leaving, head down, hands thrust into the pockets of a rather scruffy navy blue coat which wasn’t long enough to cover her skirt. She thought about calling out her name, but decided not to. Chrissie would be tired, exhausted. She wouldn’t want to be detained. Walking to her car, and keeping an eye out for anyone to whom she could give a lift, Mrs Hibbert reflected that it was more than six months since she and Chrissie had spoken, and then it had only been to exchange a few hurried words. She hardly knew the girl, though they were related by marriage, or had been. Francis, Mrs Hibbert’s late husband, had been so proud of his niece even if he hardly saw her. A clever girl, Cambridge degree, now working in oncology. Wonderful. Mrs Hibbert had agreed with him. Chrissie had done well. She envied the girl her education and training. But there was something lacking in her, as there was in so many of the doctors. Chrissie might smile all the time, that rather silly smile of hers, but she failed to reach out to patients in the way Mrs Hibbert felt she herself could and did. Cleverness wasn’t enough, that was the point. As she got into her car and settled herself, Mrs Hibbert sighed. She was tired. It took a lot out of her, her afternoon at St Mary’s, being a Friend. She thought of all the women she had helped, the ones she had guided to the oncology clinic. Poor things. What were they going home to? What had their attendance at the clinic done to them?
2
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HOW QUIET EVERYTHING everything seemed the next day, how quiet her head, all the worry no longer bouncing about, leaping and jumping from one side to another as it had done waiting in the clinic. Edwina felt dreamy, pleasantly sleepy, all her movements languid and gentle. She didn’t have to do anything. All day, she could do what she wanted to do, whatever she wanted. It was a warm, sunny day. She thought she should be outside, walking along the river, or in the park, but she felt too lazy. She could garden, but there wasn’t much to be done. So she settled herself on the sofa in the conservatory and reached for her book. She couldn’t read in the week leading up to the visit to the clinic. Strange, when she most needed it, reading was impossible; she could never concentrate, the words drifted and floated away without meaning.
Edwina bought a lot of books. Harry didn’t mind, he encouraged her. For years now she’d bought what she wanted to read and hadn’t been near a library. She’d spent all her working years in libraries and they were no longer the places she’d loved. Public lending libraries were no longer quiet. They weren’t church-like. A good thing, she supposed, that they were now what was called ‘user-friendly’ and full of modern technology, but they had lost their appeal for her. She bought what she wanted and loved possessing the books. Mostly, she chose biographies. This was expensive, but then each biography lasted her a long time. She read slowly and carefully, stopping regularly to think about what she was reading, learning so much as she went on. She was particularly drawn to biographies of women whom she felt had had difficult lives, sometimes because of the men they had married. She’d enjoyed Mary Soames’s biography of her mother Clementine Churchill, and another about Jane Carlyle and her husband. She liked to contrast her own married life with theirs. It made her feel fortunate.
Harry wasn’t famous and he wasn’t difficult. He was a cheerful, kind man who liked his job, had plenty of leisure interests, and was devoted to his family. Edwina had nothing to put up with, and yet she was drawn to women whose husbands required great sacrifices of them. It was odd, but she explained it to herself as a feeling that she had something to offer which was not required of her. She felt that she could have been a rock for Harry, or alternatively an inspiration, but that he had no need of either. She was important to him, of course she was, but that was not the point. All that had been required of her in her marriage was that she should be a good housekeeper and mother, a pleasant companion and a willing lover, content to share Harry’s own evident contentment. There had been no challenges, nothing to test her. Harry had never leaned on her heavily, never turned to her in a crisis, never been unable to go on without her support. And, though she fully realised it was perverse, there was something in her that would have relished having to rise to the occasion if it had occurred.
But it hadn’t occurred. She wondered sometimes if what she secretly yearned for was to be the wife of a famous man – but surely not, she was too shy, too diffident, for such a role. She would have hated to be in the limelight, having her clothes scrutinised and mocked. No, it wasn’t fame she wanted for Harry. It was some other sort of importance, to do perhaps with his work, which others would not necessarily know about. It excited her to imagine being the wife of a scientist engaged in medical research, for example, on the edge of discovering a cure for cancer, say. She could see herself taking Harry’s coat in the hall when he came home from spending hours and hours in the laboratory, weary with the weight of the work he was doing, exhausted with the strain. She could see herself soothing him, settling him down to a nourishing meal, patiently listening to his account of what he was doing and the stage he was at (though she did, in this fantasy, have doubts about her ability to understand). He would say he didn’t think he could go on and she would encourage him. Behind every successful man, the saying went, there was a woman, or something like that. She wanted to be that woman, she wanted to be a part of some great scheme, claiming no glory for herself but privately knowing she shared in it. It was, she supposed, a shameful longing but since she never gave voice to it, she avoided shame.
She wondered sometimes if she could even have settled for less than the fame. Maybe this irritating longing of hers would have been satisfied if Harry had become a mayor, or the chairman of some charity organisation, but then she would have had to appear in public, at his side, and it wasn’t that sort of prominence she craved. It was ridiculous in any case to imagine Harry in any such position. He was the most modest and the least public-spirited of men, lacking in ambition and utterly uncompetitive. She’d known that before ever she married him. It had been part of his charm – he had charm – that he was not pushy or aggressive. She’d heard his mother complain about it (‘You’ve no ambition, Harry’) as though it were a grievous fault. As far as Harry was concerned, helping his father to run his business suited him fine. He liked the product (greetings cards, mainly) and enjoyed selling it, and when his father retired, he was perfectly comfortable becoming head of the firm, following exactly the paths well marked out for him. He didn’t talk about work. What was there to talk about, when it was so familiar? He never seemed to have any problems he wanted to discuss with her.
Edwina’s book was still lying unopened on her lap as she stared at a robin perched on the stone urn in front of the conservatory doors. When the bird took off, she would start reading and sweep away these
foolish meanderings of thought. Daydreaming, people called it. She’d always daydreamed. Harry was always snapping his fingers in front of her eyes and saying, hey, daydreamer. He used to be curious as to exactly what she was daydreaming about, but she was never able to tell him. She’d say something vague, like holidays, or Christmas, and that satisfied him. He quite liked her dreaminess. He’d told her once how sweet she looked wearing what he called her ‘faraway’ expression, her face so still, her eyes heavy-lidded. Like the Sleeping Beauty, he said, though she wasn’t asleep. He never got impatient with her, the way her parents had done, constantly urging her to snap out of it, to pull herself together, for heaven’s sake. It had made her feel guilty, Harry’s tolerance of her daydreaming, because she knew he thought her head was full of fairy-tale imaginings. And it was not. It was more often full of dark thoughts and frustrations. Her sweet expression was a lie, it betrayed nothing.
Is There Anything You Want? Page 5
