“Do you want a boy or a girl?” Compton asked, changing the subject.
“I don’t mind at all,” I said, and to my surprise I found for the first time that I really didn’t mind. Whether it was because I had so much and Compton so little, I don’t know, but I knew now that I would be equally thrilled about either.
We reached the hospital in twenty-five minutes from leaving Hoxley.
As I got out Compton said: “I’ll do your calls for you tonight and tomorrow. Stay with your wife.”
My answer was lost in the roar of his engine, and as he snaked away all I could see through the back window was a flash of yellow glove. For the first time I felt no envy; only shame.
Twenty
In a small room which looked out on to the well of the hospital Sylvia was lying placidly in bed, timing her pains.
“Sweetie!” she said, holding out her arms, “I was so worried. What happened to the car?”
“It broke down,” I said. “It looks as if we’ll have to get another one, but never mind that now. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I just sent for the ambulance as you said. Iris came in with me; she really is sweet, that girl, and now she’s gone back because of the telephone.”
“And the pains?”
“A little worse than they were but not too bad. There’s nothing to it. I don’t know why everyone makes such a fuss.”
I kissed her for her optimism.
“What was the matter with Tessa Brindley?”
I took her hand. “Nothing very much.”
“You were so long.”
“I had to stay there for a while.”
“Is she all right now?”
“Yes,” I said, “she’s all right now.”
I waited while Sylvia struggled through a pain. Out of the window I could see directly into the ward opposite. A nurse was arranging some flowers; there were red blankets on the two neat rows of beds.
“Was it bad?”
Sylvia shook her head and lay back to rest.
A nurse came in with a covered surgical trolley. She showed me all her teeth.
“We’ll wait in the waiting-room now, shall we?”
“Don’t go, Sweetie!” Sylvia said.
“I’ll come back soon.”
“Don’t leave it too long. Your son might have arrived.”
“Darling,” I said, “it takes a long, long time.”
Downstairs I rang up George Leech about a new car. He spent nearly ten minutes saying, “I told you so,” when I explained what had happened to the old one, then he said it was fortunate that I’d phoned up at that moment as he had the Very Thing. As well as being the Very Thing, it was Very Heavy on petrol and Very Expensive. I told him to forget it and to find me a small saloon within my price range. “Oh!” he said, why hadn’t I told him I was thinking along those lines. He had the Ideal Car. The only trouble was that it was plum-coloured and he didn’t know if I cared for plum. I settled for the Ideal Car in plum.
Sister told me that Humphrey Mallow was on his way. The nurse was still busy with Sylvia so I left a message that I would be back in half an hour and went out to find something to eat. At the Brindley’s I had completely forgotten about lunch and now my rumbling stomach reminded me that I had had nothing since breakfast.
At a grubby café, since there seemed nothing better in the neighbourhood, I served myself with beans on toast, a dejected salad and coffee turned grey by the strip lighting, and sat down to eat it at a table littered with dirty crocks and a half-eaten sandwich left by the last customer.
By the time I got back to the hospital Sylvia was working in earnest to produce our baby. I was too upset by the sight of her pain to stay with her, and she was quite glad to see me go so that she could get on with it. I had a word with Humphrey Mallow who had just arrived, then went downstairs to find the waiting-room. I looked through an old Tatler, a motor magazine and the Saturday Evening Post before I realised that I wasn’t taking in a single word that I read.
It was a long night. I suppose that once or twice I must have dozed off although I wasn’t conscious of doing so.
I made frequent journeys down the silent corridors lined with the flowers that had been put out for the night to Sylvia. She was too busy to notice me. From time to time Humphrey Mallow came down to tell me how she was getting on.
“Will it be before breakfast?” I croaked, my voice hoarse with anxiety, on one occasion.
“It depends on what time you have your breakfast.”
“It seems to be a rather prolonged first stage, doesn’t it?”
“Not at all. Not at all. Why don’t you go home to bed? I’ll look after your wife and let you know the minute anything happens.”
But I couldn’t go home. Although I had brought some hundreds of babies into the world myself and watched many others being born, this was different. It was terrible.
Night Sister brought me cups of tea and bright layman’s talk about how “nicely” Sylvia was doing, and that “it shouldn’t be long now.” When I asked her if she was fully dilated she didn’t answer, but I didn’t really want to know.
I had plenty of time to think. Most of the time I thought about Sylvia, but the image of Tessa Brindley, her face still, but her pretty hair shining with life, kept creeping into my mind. Her death seemed so unnecessary. I thought of all the patients in my practice who had to die before their time and didn’t want to: a young schoolboy with leukæmia, a middle-aged woman trying to cling to life long enough to see her first grandchild born, pitting her will against the malignant, inexorable growths in her chest; the small baby with congenital heart disease who had hardly lived. I almost hated Tessa for throwing away the gift to which so many people pinned their hopes through pain and illness, poverty and despair. Her death must have been in the order of things, but in spite of her wrongdoings the judgement seemed harsh.
Sister rushed by and said: “The head’s appeared. Won’t be long now.”
A prickle of excitement went through me. I was grateful to Humphrey Mallow for staying with Sylvia. It was common practice for consultants to arrive only to deliver the babies. I felt sorry for keeping him from his bed, as my patients so often felt sorry for me. As an obstetrician, he probably spent more hours out of bed than I, although his life in general was far more leisurely.
For the fourth time I tried to count the elusive roses on the curtains and thought that while the whole world was tending towards automation, the GP’s job remained a twenty-four-hour one, and made demands upon us which had no parallel in any other profession. Rain, hail, snow or fog, we were on duty day and night responsible for our own deputising arrangements. We were presumed to be fit at all times and mentally alert, even though after several hectic days and possible night calls we might be at the point of exhaustion. Occasionally at this low ebb, with brain fuddled from lack of sleep and body aching with weariness, we were called upon to make a decision on which a patient’s life might depend. Such was the life I had chosen, and there was little in it of the old-time drama. With antibiotics and steroids, with hospitals, ambulances and auxiliary services at the end of the telephone, the minor, kitchen-table surgery, the pneumonia crises and the difficult births were a thing of the past.
A large proportion of my work was a direct result of the intense pressure of modern life, the speed of movement and action, the altered social standards. I dealt with demands for stimulants, the fight against depression and insomnia, the craze for slimming and tranquillisers. I still had to leave my warm bed in the night, though, and still had to turn out whether I liked it or not. The profession had, now that medicine was no longer a mystery, lost a lot of its glamour, but none of its arduousness. I felt sorry for myself but knew I would never find such contentment doing anything else; I grumbled at the hours, the Health Scheme, the stupidity of the layman, but I was never bored because I never, ever, had a dull moment; I knew that according to statistics I might drop dead of coronary thrombosis in early middle-age, yet
I didn’t care. I loved my work – a state of affairs which was becoming, according to what my patients told me, increasingly rare.
I must have hypnotised myself to sleep counting roses instead of sheep because, when I opened my eyes, the birds were singing and the first light creeping through the curtains. Sister was standing in front of me.
“Congratulations!” she said.
“What?”
“It’s a boy!”
I grinned like an idiot. I had a son.
“My wife?”
“She’s fine. Mr Mallow sent me to give you the news. He’ll tell you as soon as it’s all right for you to go up.”
I think I cried with happiness, but when Mr Mallow came down, immaculate in spite of his night’s work, I was composed; for the first time in twenty-four hours I was able to relax, and was feeling upset that Sylvia who had done all the work hadn’t got the little girl she wanted.
Humphrey Mallow looked odd.
“Is everything all right?” A cold sweat of suspicion trickled down my back.
“Fine!” he said. “But something rather strange has happened.”
I waited, hardly daring to think. The baby, Sylvia…
“There were two babies,” he said, looking at his nails.
I sat down, quite unable to speak.
“One must have been lying posteriorly. I never felt the second one at any time. They’re both splendid. Not very large, but splendid. Incredible! Nothing’s ever straightforward in doctors’ families. They invariably do peculiar things.”
“The second one,” I said; “is it a boy or a girl?”
“I really don’t know,” Mallow said. “I was too astounded to notice.”
“Excuse me.” Rudely, without even thanking him, I left him there.
On Sylvia’s floor the babies in the nursery were crying for their early-morning feeds. A probationer carried a tray of feeding bottles down the corridor. A woman in labour called out.
Sister was closing softly the door of Sylvia’s room. Beaming, she opened it to let me in.
Sylvia, still dopey from the anæsthetic she had received, watched me as I came near to the bed and into focus.
She held out her arms for me.
I hardly dared to ask.
“Darling,” I said, “what was the second one?” I had only to look at the smile on her face to get the answer.
“Blonde?” I said.
She nodded.
“What about the pony-tail?”
“Give her time.”
We were too happy and for a while neither of us could speak.
“How is it that nobody knew?” Sylvia said a little later.
“That there were two babies?”
She nodded. “I haven’t got over the shock yet.”
“It’s rare,” I said, “but it happens. Sometimes one is lying posteriorly and it’s not possible to feel it.”
“It seems too good to be true.”
“You’re a very clever girl,” I said.
She was getting drowsy after her tiring night with no sleep.
“You’ll have to get another cradle, Sweetie…a laundry basket if you like…I don’t care…and another set of vests and nighties… Sweetie?”
“Yes.”
“Tessa Brindley’s dead, isn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“I knew you didn’t want to upset me. But I guessed. You forget I love you.”
I knew she meant it. For the first time I was certain that I had worried unnecessarily about making her my wife, about tying her down to the wearing life of general practice.
She read my thoughts.
“I never could have been happy with Wilfred,” she said.
“No regrets?”
“No regrets. Don’t tell anyone but it was rather boring being a model.”
“You’ll have no time to be bored now.”
“I don’t mind. I love it. The practice, the people asking my advice…” She was practically asleep.
“The phone?” I said.
“Who cares? I want to see my children.” She closed her eyes.
“I’ll ask Sister,” I said, but by the time I got to the door she was fast asleep.
I sat down in the armchair and waited for her to wake up.
Humphrey Mallow came in to say goodbye.
The sunlight streamed over the blue blankets and washed the floor with light. The night staff went noisily off duty. The breakfast trolleys rattled down the corridor, and Sister sent in a tray of coffee and toast for me. The babies cried for their feeds and then were quiet again. The cleaner came in with her toothless grin and her clumsy broom.
It was midday when Sylvia woke. Together we looked at our son and daughter; minute, wrinkled and ugly, but the most wonderful babies I had ever seen.
Grinning inanely, I walked briskly along the rubber-floored corridor, tripped gaily down the stairs, whistled tunelessly through the hall and blinked out into the sunlight.
Opposite the hospital where a large notice said: “No Parking. Ambulances Only,” George Leech was polishing a plum-coloured car.
“Congratcherlashuns, Doc!” he said, flicking an imaginary speck of dust from the mudguard.
“Thanks. Is this mine?”
“Asright. Ideal car for your job. I told you you’d have trouble with that other old iron.”
I walked round the car, inspecting it.
“George,” I said, “there’s something I’ve been telling you for long enough but you take no notice at all!”
He scratched his ear. “Smatterofact,” he said, “I changed me mind.” He jerked a thumb towards the hospital. “P’r’aps I could go in now and book up for me op before I get second thoughts.”
“I shouldn’t go in there if I were you,” I said. “You might come out with a baby! I’ll fix it up at St Anthony’s for you.”
He held open the driving door. “I’ll be all right, won’t I?”
“If you don’t change your mind again. You don’t want to be dead in a year, do you?”
“Nah,” he said. “Me daughter’s getting married. Sybil.”
I wondered if Sybil was aware that she had probably saved her father’s life.
“I’ll see to it straight away, George.” I turned on the ignition and the engine purred softly. “Can I drive it home?”
“Natch.”
I pulled out into the sunlit side street. I had a new car, a new son and a daughter, a wife who loved me, and a life to save.
I was happy.
On the corner a raucous-voiced vendor was selling newspapers. I pulled up and he handed me one through the window.
“Wall Street Fall,” read the headlines. “Shares Hit.”
A look inside confirmed my worst suspicions. I had hung on too long to my wonderful shares.
There was no chance that I would be retiring from general practice just yet.
But then, one can’t have everything.
About the Author
Rosemary Friedman has published 25 titles including fiction, non-fiction and children’s books, which have been translated into a number of languages and serialized by the BBC, while her short stories have been syndicated worldwide. She has also written and commissioned screenplays and her stage play Home Truths and An Eligible Man toured the UK. She writes for The Guardian, The Times, The TLS and The Author.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
ALSO ON EBOOK BY ARCADIA BOOKS
THE COMMONPLACE DAY
AN ELIGIBLE MAN
THE FRATERNITY
THE GENERAL PRACTICE
GOLDEN BOY
INTENSIVE CARE
THE LIFE SITUATION
THE LONG HOT SUMMER
A LOVING MISTRESS
NO WHITE COAT
PATIENTS OF A SAINT
PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT
PROOFS OF AFFECTION
ROSE OF JERICHO
A SECOND WIFE
TO LIVE IN PEACE
VINTAGE
WE ALL FAL
L DOWN
Copyright
Arcadia Books Ltd
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First published in 1958
This Ebook edition published by Arcadia Books 2013
Copyright © Rosemary Friedman 1958, 1959, 2001
Has asserted his moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
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Love on My List Page 18
