Coronation Wives (26 page)

Slamming the door behind her, Janet ran up the spiral stairs until her head was level with the attic floor and she could see the bed, her mother and Ivan.

Her mother was bending over the bed. Ivan was lying on it, arms flung above his head, one leg trailing on the dull green lino floor.

‘What are you doing with him?’

‘Trying to get him into bed.’

A pair of boots were swiftly untied and placed on the floor.

Janet held back. This was not the scenario she had envisaged.

Ivan muttered something about lost countries, lost causes and absent friends.

‘Let’s just make you comfortable, shall we?’ Charlotte began undoing the buttons on Ivan’s flies. She pushed aside locks of hair that had fallen over her face. ‘Ivan’s been drinking.’ She indicated an empty decanter on the bedside table. ‘It’s annoying, but well … what can one expect with all that he’s been through?’

If only you knew what
I’d
been through, thought Janet, and suddenly felt jealous rather than fearful of the man lying on the bed. ‘I need to talk to you.’

‘Not now, dear. Do you think you can give me a hand to get his clothes off?’

Had she misheard? Janet looked from Ivan to her mother. ‘No! I couldn’t.’

Charlotte looked disappointed. ‘Janet, whatever is the matter with you? He’s hardly in any state to pose a threat.’

Janet pursed her lips, but didn’t move – petulance, stubbornness rather than anger.

‘Never mind. I’ll do it myself.’

Charlotte pulled off Ivan’s top clothes, folded the dark green pullover, the striped shirt and put them on a chair, draped his fawn trousers over the back of it. Once he was stripped to his underwear and army grey socks, she covered him with the pink satin eiderdown and reached for the empty decanter.

Janet remembered her mother covering her up like that when she was younger. But Ivan was not a child. Why did her mother have to care so much about people who should be able to take care of themselves? Her own needs were just as pressing. ‘I need to talk to you,’ she repeated. ‘It has to be now.’

‘I’m sorry, Janet,’ said her mother, looking down into the stairwell at her as her head poked up like a rabbit from its burrow. ‘I’ve got rather a lot of work to do, and this event with Ivan—’

‘Damn you, Mother! Will you please listen for a change?’

‘How dare you speak to me like that!’

‘It’s the only way I can make you listen!’

Charlotte’s shoulders drooped and she sighed heavily. ‘Oh dear! I do get carried away with other things at times. I apologize.’

Other things? She certainly did, thought Janet. The world gets priority, her own family … oh, what was the point? She went on with what she had to say. ‘I’ve been offered a new job.’

‘Then I can only wish you good luck, my dear.’

‘It’s at Saltmead Sanatorium.’

There was a sudden change in her mother’s expression, perhaps because Ivan was muttering again between bouts of singing some Polish song in a loud, drunken voice.

Janet continued. ‘They specialize in treating polio.’

‘I know.’ Her mother’s tone was very soft. Janet wondered whether she’d known someone who’d worked there – or died there, but thought it best not to enquire.

‘Don’t tell me that polio is contagious. I know it is, but I’m willing to take that risk.’

‘Obviously I’m concerned, my dear, but if it’s what you feel you must do, then I certainly will not stop you. I was just wondering how you were going to get there. Dropping your father off at his consulting rooms is one thing, but driving all the way out there is another matter entirely and I do have my own work—’

‘There’s a flat with the job,’ Janet blurted, and prepared herself for an adverse reaction.

‘Ah! Then may I ask you to consider whether it is the job you’re going for, or is it something to do with this doctor Edna told me about? I do think you should have told me about him.’

Janet mumbled an apology, then added, ‘It’s not serious.’

‘Does he have a flat at Saltmead?’

Janet felt her face getting hotter. There was no doubting her mother’s inference. ‘I don’t think so, and even if he did, there is no cause to read anything into it. Jonathan isn’t like that. Our relationship isn’t like that. We are both interested in medicine, in fact he tells me far more about his job than Daddy ever has.’

‘I’m glad for you. But do think this through, darling. Bear in mind you will be away from home and although I’m sure your doctor friend plays the gentleman at present while you enjoy the protection of your parents’ roof, it doesn’t mean to say he’ll be the same when you’re living alone.’ She looked like a Madonna and sounded almost condescending.

‘He recommended me for the position.’ Janet was indignant. ‘His name’s Jonathan Driver.’

Ivan fell suddenly into deep snoring. Both women looked over at him, silence falling as they considered what to say next. It was Charlotte who spoke first.

‘Jonathan Driver? I met him and his parents at a charity ball. His mother was in a wheelchair if I remember rightly. A forceful woman. She reminded me of Boadicea – without the knives on the wheels of course.’ Charlotte’s face clouded and she headed back down the stairs.

Janet was first out onto the landing. ‘What was she like?’

Charlotte stepped quickly down the next flight of stairs, then the next. Intent on hearing more about Mrs Driver, Janet followed.

‘I told you. She was in a wheelchair.’ Charlotte Hennessey-White rarely said bad things about people, but you could tell when she was thinking them. Janet had recognized that look back up there in the attic. She knew her mother had formed an opinion of Mrs Driver and it wasn’t a good one.

They were in the sitting room now. Charlotte began fussing with a mix of Michaelmas daisies and chrysanthemums arranged in a blue and orange Imari vase that had dragon handles of royal blue and gold.

Janet watched her intently. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me. Is she awful? Terribly ugly?’

Charlotte stopped fussing and frowned at her daughter. ‘She was a charming woman. Her hair was dark. So were her eyes. I don’t think she wore make-up, though it seemed from the length of her lashes that she did. But there, some people are like that, aren’t they? Honoured by nature so to speak.’

‘So what didn’t you like about her?’

Charlotte shook her head as if she’d made a grave misjudgement. ‘I’ve never seen a woman so totally detached from
her husband and absorbed in her son. Stay friends with him, but nothing else.’ She left the flowers, settled herself in a chintz-covered chair and pretended to flip through a copy of
Good Housekeeping.

Janet’s shadow fell over the page Charlotte was pretending to read. ‘I want to know.’

Charlotte put the paper down and looked at her daughter despairingly. ‘He’s a womanizer, Janet.’

‘I don’t believe it.’

Her mother smiled ruefully. ‘Dashing, confident and seemingly interested in your career?’

‘He is interested!’

‘I doubt it from what I hear. He has women all over the place, but he doesn’t commit himself to any one relationship. His mother won’t let him.’

If Janet had been in love with Jonathan she would have called her mother a liar. Obviously she was not in love. Jonathan had talked medicine and encouraged her to make more of herself without attempting to seduce her. Having a good bedside manner inspired confidence in the patient. In this context, Janet had been the patient and, without Jonathan knowing, he had made her feel better about herself.

‘I know what I’m doing,’ she said.

Her mother took hold of her hands. They were cool, long and elegant, the nails polished and neat, not blunt and stubby like Janet’s. ‘You’re old enough to make up your own mind.’ She smiled as if remembering something exceptionally sweet. ‘I was married at your age. Just be careful.’

‘I want to see the flat before I make a decision,’ Janet told Jonathan.

‘I’ll pick you up from work on Tuesday.’

The crisp smell of autumn fought against the exhaust fumes of city traffic when she stepped out from the top entrance of the hospital. Normally she would have used the bottom entrance, but she couldn’t face meeting Jonathan among the bins and laundry dollies of the Housekeeping Department.

‘Yoohoo!’

She knew the voice even before she turned round.

Dorothea had a sly grin on her face. ‘I couldn’t resist,’ she said with a girlish giggle.

Janet instantly regretted telling her all about it over lunch that day. ‘Are you referring to my meeting Jonathan, or the man, correction, men in your life?’

Dorothea giggled some more. ‘You know me. I’m just here to help.’

‘You didn’t need to.’ She made an attempt at being dismissive. ‘Haven’t you got a bus to catch?’

The hint was ignored.

‘Darling, you must be like a boy scout – well prepared.’ She leaned close. Her hair smelt of Vaseline shampoo and her neck of Evening in Paris. She glanced furtively around her. ‘Luckily for you, the barbers up the road sell French letters.’

Janet reddened. ‘How do you know?’

‘Because I went in there and got some.’ After a short rummage in her bag she nudged her folded fist into Janet’s arm. ‘Here. Take them. I got them for you.’

‘No! I can’t.’ She kept her voice low. A determined Dorothea continued to thud her arm. Janet glanced wildly about her, concerned lest anyone was watching and had seen what they were doing and heard what they were talking about.

Reluctantly she took the proffered packet and slid it among the folds of a blue and white polka dot scarf that almost filled her handbag. Swiftly and carelessly, she snapped the clasp shut then scanned the traffic.

Jonathan drove a grey Humber Hawk, a car big enough to stand out in a whole heap of traffic.

‘There he is,’ said Janet.

Dorothea bent from the waist as the car pulled into the kerb. ‘He’s just as good-looking as I remember him,’ she said throwing a wink at Jonathan.

‘It’s the job I’m after,’ Janet hissed.

Just as her fingers touched the door handle, Dorothea grabbed her arm, pulled her close and whispered into her ear. ‘I still think he wants to give you more than a job, darling. Good luck. I hope the flat suits.’

Dorothea waved them off as if they were a couple going away on honeymoon. Jonathan had a broad grin on his face. Janet felt obliged to apologize.

‘Sorry about Dorothea. She’s a good friend, but a bit over the top at times.’

‘Seems fine to me.’

Thank goodness he hadn’t heard their conversation.

‘You look amused.’

‘Just happy. We’re going to get you working at Saltmead, aren’t we?’

On the journey out to Pucklechurch, he asked about her day, and then talked non-stop about his. The more he talked what nestled among the folds of her scarf was forgotten.

The flat was in the original house at the end of a driveway, which connected it with the single-storey huts that formed the hospital. The building was Queen Anne in style, crisp and inclined to geometric brick patterns between each gleaming window.

They parked in a cobblestone courtyard that was shiny and slippery with age. Janet tripped awkwardly on getting out of the car and a buckle on her ankle-strap pinged onto the stones. Jonathan retrieved it then took hold of her arm and guided her
to the door. ‘Despite that little mishap, I’m sure you’ll like it,’ he said, his voice full of enthusiasm.

The door was large and as green as the ivy that grappled upwards over weatherworn trelliswork. A lion’s head, its teeth bared around an iron ring, formed the knocker.

“Won’t be a minute.’ He brought a six-inch iron key from his pocket. There was a sound reminiscent of old cogs grating in a disused mill. The lock refused to budge.

‘Damn!’ He pushed at a stray lock of hair that had slid over his brow. ‘Why can’t they get a bloody new door or a bloody new lock!’

‘Perhaps if you didn’t try to force it so much …’

‘Don’t worry your pretty little head,’ he said breathlessly, then shot her a quick smile as if to say,
This is a job for a strong man. Lucky I was here!
Like one of those men posed in a Charles Atlas advertisement, ‘You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine’.

Something dripped onto her head. She stepped back and looked up over the massed foliage to the gutter that squatted close to the red-tiled roof. The house was old but, from the outside, not disappointing. Would she like the interior?

The door banged open. More water dripped from the gutter and onto her head.

‘Something else that needs fixing,’ said Jonathan.

‘As long as it’s not leaking inside I don’t care.’

He laughed. ‘I almost feel I should be carrying you over the threshold.’

Janet laughed too.

An arched window on the quarter landing where the stairs turned upwards offered an aspect of green lawn interspersed with flowerbeds over which deciduous trees were shedding leaves of yellow, orange and burnt umber.

‘It’s lovely,’ she said. She edged away as Jonathan’s arm wound around her shoulders.

‘Just here,’ he said, his confidence undiminished, and led her to a broad, four-panelled door with a brass lock and a Bakelite handle.

Unlike the door, the inside was unspoilt. The flat was on the first floor and full of light. The ceilings were high, the walls painted eggshell blue. Three windows looked out over the garden to the grounds of the sanatorium where low buildings strung in rows of mathematical precision hugged the ground. An ornate cornice ran around the room matched by a central arrangement of grapes, vines and sprawling leaves, a masterpiece of plaster relief.

‘I feel like a princess,’ she whispered. In her mind she had envisaged a squat bedsit with flaking paint and brown walls, windows running with condensation, gaps around windows and threadbare carpets.

There was a kitchenette with a small gas cooker and, in the living room, a gas fire in what must have once been a beautiful open fireplace with a white marble surround. Chairs with gilt frames, cabriole legs and faded brocade upholstery served to give the room a look of genteel shabbiness.

‘The bathroom’s down the hall,’ Jonathan explained.