sUnwanted Truthst (14 page)

‘Maybe, but not in the same way that Mike is; he's involved in marches and protests, that sort of thing. He's always talking about policies and politics. I feel that I can't compete with his friends at Reading.'

‘You don't need to Jenny. You're just as good as they are, probably better. Anyway I must get back; everything seems to take so much longer at the moment.' Gail stood up. Jenny noticed how she could only fasten her coat by the top button, her fecundity advertising itself to the world. ‘You will come and see the baby won't you? I'll drop you a line.'

‘Yes, I will,' said Jenny as they walked to the door. Ensuring she left first, she peered left and right along the pavement before turning to Gail. ‘Well, bye for now then.' Not knowing what else to say they parted, each to their separate futures. Jenny felt the lightness of freedom in her steps as she walked away.
I should have said more to her
.
She's leaving work, getting married, leaving home, and worst of all, having a baby in eight weeks, and I didn't even say good luck.

*

‘Did you meet your friend?' Dido said as Jenny walked into the office. ‘You haven't met up for ages.'

‘Yes, it was good.'

‘Well, perhaps I can come along next time?' Dido smoothed her blonde fringe across her forehead with her fingers.

‘There won't be a next time; she's leaving her job at the end of the week.'
I was right in thinking she'd want to come
, thought Jenny. Before Dido had a chance to ask why and where Gail was going, she added, ‘I'm thinking about sitting the exams.'

‘What an earth for? You don't need to be promoted. You'll get married won't you?'

‘Well, yes sometime, I hope. But I need something to aim for. I can't just carry on processing these applications forever. I'd like to earn more money as well, so I can travel.'

‘I'd rather aim on finding a rich husband. It's more fun and the result's the same.' Dido laughed out loud.

*

‘So, why haven't I seen you lately?' asked Peter, as Jenny sat beside him sipping her cup of coffee.

‘Mike's been home, but he's gone back now.'

‘Ah, the mysterious Mike, so he's the reason. How could he leave you alone again?'

‘Don't be so obtuse Peter. He has to go back, to study, not everybody's like you,' Dido said.

‘I know that. I was just teasing our little friend here.'

‘He's working really hard. He didn't want to go back,' Jenny added.

‘I'm sure he didn't.' He stared at Jenny until she was forced to lower her eyes to the forest of black hairs in the triangle at the top of his open-necked shirt. ‘Well if you get bored with waiting, you know I'm here.'

Jenny applied to sit the exam in October. To pass the time and to feel closer to Mike she spent most evenings studying with The Beatles strumming their guitars and shouting their lyrics in the background. She wrote to tell Mike of her decision and four weeks later a letter lay on the doormat.

‘You'll be engaged by September,' Dido said breathlessly as she read Mike's letter over her typewriter. ‘I can't have you beating me to the altar.'

‘You think so?'

‘Definitely, that's why I said you don't need to bother about those exams. He'll get a good job and you'll be married in a couple of years.'

Jenny thought that if she married she could leave home. She hated the atmosphere there now and remembered the previous evening.

The three of them were watching television when a programme came on about adoption. She was about to leave the room when her father had said, ‘There's something I want to watch on the other side.' He then changed channels to a programme about gardening. He hated gardens. He only went down there to take the rubbish out.

A few weeks earlier her mother had cornered her and said, ‘Jenny, I found out today that that family opposite have an adopted son,' and she had wanted to reply, ‘oh, yes and I expect they told him he was adopted. Not like you, leaving me to find out.' But she didn't say anything, and had left the room.

She hadn't given marriage a thought until now, but the more she thought about it, the more it seemed the answer to everything. She even found herself peering in jewellers' windows. She was careful not to mention any of her thoughts when she wrote to Mike. She kept the tone light, but always mentioned Peter being at the Gondola, just to keep him interested.

Then one week after his second letter Jenny was surprised to receive a third.

Jenny wasn't unduly concerned that Mike wasn't coming back immediately; but she was disappointed. She wondered what they would do at Jillian's house; whether it was large or small – and decided on the former. She would have to be patient. They would have so much to talk about when he returned. They might even arrange a holiday together. He did ask her if she had been abroad. For three weeks she remained buoyed up by memories of their time together and rushed down the stairs every morning to check the post. One day she received a card from Gail informing her that Mark Jonathan had weighed in at 6lbs 8 oz. and gave her new address near Brighton Station. Jenny decided to distract herself by paying her a visit.

The thermometer on the landing showed seventy-five degrees. Jenny wore a simple blue shift dress and clutching a paper bag caught the bus to the Clock Tower. She was walking towards the station when she noticed a young man with hair that flopped over his forehead standing outside a music shop. He was talking in an animated way to a shorter man with brown hair. ‘He's back!' Jenny said out loud as she ran towards them.

‘Mike, Mike you're back. Why didn't you let me know?'

‘Well, well, look who it is?'

She held her face up for his kiss. She waited, her heart thumping. His face reddened. Nick took three paces back, leaving them facing each other.

‘I'm sorry I didn't tell you I was back, Jenny. Only I'm going away next week to France for three weeks, and I knew you'd be disappointed. We only decided last week.'

‘Oh,' Jenny panicked. This was not how she had imagined their reunion.

‘I'll ring you at work when I get back,' he added.

‘We could meet up this weekend. It's been so long, and I've really missed you,' she said softly.

‘I can't Jenny; some people from Reading are coming down.'

‘Well, I could come too. I can come with you to France. I can get the time off work.' Jenny knew that she sounded clingy, but couldn't help herself.

‘I don't think so. You don't know anyone.'

‘I know you, and Nick.'

‘He's not going.'

‘But…'

‘Look, Jenny, I'll get in touch with you when I get back. I promise. You know I like you.'

‘Like me, like me! I thought you loved me,' she screamed. The pavement moved closer and people swayed. Forcing herself to remain upright she caught her breath, turned and ran back to the bus stop, colliding with an elderly man.

When she reached the bus stop she found that the paper bag she was carrying was empty. She walked back a few steps. ‘There it is,' she muttered. The blue matinee jacket was lying in the gutter. She picked it up and brushed it clean with her fingers. Gail was expecting her, she'd already let her down once, she couldn't do it again.

*

‘I knew you'd come out with me eventually. That Mike didn't know how to treat you; he's just a boy.' Peter's dark eyes smiled at Jenny as he turned in the driving seat. ‘I'll give you a good time, I promise.'

JFK ASSASSINATED – the billboards screamed the atrocity at passers by.

The conversation that morning was of nothing else. Dido had even forgotten to back-comb her hair in her rush to come to work. Jenny thought that her aura of glamour had disappeared, as if in sympathy with the American people. ‘I couldn't believe it. I still can't. I'd just got home from being out with Reza when my dad told me.'

‘I was in my room when they announced it on the radio,' said Jenny. ‘I couldn't believe it either. I couldn't sleep for thinking about it.'

Every possible reason for the assassination, and the subsequent shooting of the perpetrator was discussed and dissected.

‘Of course, these things happen in America. That's what you get when the right to own a gun is written into the constitution. It could never happen here,' said Mr Winstanley, twirling the watch chain that threaded through his waistcoat. ‘They're hot-headed, not like us British.'

Jenny decided to walk into Brighton at lunchtime. It had just started to drizzle. She felt uneasy. She thought that if the President of America – who was so young, handsome and popular – could be shot dead, anything was possible. Everything could change in a flash, like her relationship with Mike. Then she remembered her adoption and her legs weakened. She swayed and collided into a woman who was emerging from Hill's of Hove department store.

‘Look what you've done. Why don't you look where you're going?'

‘I'm sorry. I'll pick them up for you.' Jenny scrambled around picking up the packages that lay scattered on the pavement. She thought the woman looked familiar.

‘Look they're all wet now. Haven't I seen you before? Weren't you a friend of my son – Michael? Yes, that's it, you came to our house, didn't you? I'm sorry I was sharp with you just now, it's been one of those days.'

‘No, it wasn't me,' Jenny mumbled. She replaced the parcels in the stiff carrier bag, straightened herself and hurried away. Her heart raced. She felt dizzy. There was a sudden screech of brakes and a horn hooted loudly.

‘Are you blind?' A man's head poked out of the driver's window.

She ran to the pavement. Her chest tightened. She was sweating.
I must go back to the office
.
It's safe there.

‘That was quick.' Dido looked up from reading her magazine. ‘You look as if you've seen a ghost.'

‘I've just had a funny turn, that's all,' Jenny said leaning back in her chair. ‘I'll feel better in a minute.' Her heart gradually resumed its normal rhythm, as she sat in familiar surroundings.

‘It's all that studying. It's affected you. I told you it wasn't a good idea.'

‘The exam was over a month ago, Dido. I can relax now.'

‘Good, because I've got something exiting to tell you. I would have told you earlier, but we were all so busy discussing the shootings. I'm thinking of going to work in Germany. There's a secretarial job going in Wiesbaden – working for the American army – if I get it, it would be the most amazing thing. You could come out and stay. Think of all those gorgeous men in uniform – Elvis Presley doubles – what a brilliant time we'd have. I can just see us both now, sitting in a Jeep being driven all over Europe – you'd like that – and I've heard that German night-life is something else.'

‘Oh, no, you can't leave Dido. It won't be the same here without you.'

‘That's why you should come out and visit. You can update me on all the news from good old Brighton and Hove.'

‘What about Reza? You really like him.'

‘Oh, I'm getting a bit bored with him – you know me.'

*

It was still drizzling when Jenny left. She waited in her usual place to cross the road and ruminated on Dido's news. Her heart thudded until it was all she could hear. She felt faint. Was she having a heart attack? Beads of sweat lay on her forehead, belying the November temperature. She sat on the low wall outside an estate agent's office. She couldn't cross the road. The bus stop was only ten yards away, but it might as well have been behind the Berlin Wall. Jenny panicked.
What is happening? Am I ill? I am going mad? If I can get halfway, I can rest there, and there won't be too large a space to cross.
She crept along for about a hundred yards, steadying herself on the walls that edged the pavement.

‘Are you alright dear?' asked a middle-aged woman peering through misted glasses.

‘I just feel a bit faint; I'll be alright in a moment.'

Jenny spotted a bollard in the middle of the road, just before the town hall. Her breathing became shallower as she wobbled on the edge of the kerb. There was a gap in the traffic. She ran across and clutched at the bollard, then took a deep breath and dashed to the other side of the road.

She leant against a shop window to steady herself until her bus appeared. Sitting downstairs she clutched the rail of the seat in front of her and tried to relax. She would soon be home. Relieved, she spotted the dark outlines of the sails of the windmill. Walking unsteadily to the bus platform she swayed and the conductor put his hand out to steady her.

‘Too early for drinking,' he chuckled.

She ran across the road. Her hands trembling as she struggled to put her key in the door. What was happening to her?

By the time dinner was ready Jenny felt calmer.

‘Yanks, what can you expect, always bloody trigger happy. There was that incident in France during the war, four of our men mown down. Friendly fire the papers said – not in my book – bloody carelessness I call it. No discipline that's their trouble, not trained properly – not like our troops.'

Jenny thought that her father's comments on John Kennedy's assassination were much the same as Mr Winstanley's, only blunter.

‘Be quiet, Charlie, eat your dinner, we're watching the funeral.'

‘I don't know why they're having it so soon. Bloody Papists I suppose, all that superstitious clap trap.'

‘Charlie, that's no way to speak at a time like this. Look at that dear little boy saluting his father's coffin, poor mite.'

Jenny thought how glamorous Jackie Kennedy was, even when mourning her dead husband. She looked so composed under her black veil. She doubted if she could ever be like that. She was a nervous wreck just trying to get home from work.

*

The next day Jenny decided that what had happened to her was a one off, and put it down to bumping into Mike's mother. That wouldn't happen again. But that evening as she tried to cross the road, the palpitations began. She was suffocating and was going to collapse in the street, and die. She sat on the low wall until she felt calmer, and then edged her way along the pavement until she teetered on the edge of the kerb opposite the bollard.

*

‘Hello Jenny, I haven't seen you for a while, take a seat.' Dr Marks smiled at her across his desk.

Jenny took a deep breath and explained her symptoms. How for the past two weeks she had been terrified of leaving home, and when she did, she had the ordeal of getting back.

‘Your mother's been a lot better these past few years, hasn't she? You're not worrying about her are you?' Jenny fastened the buttons on her blouse as Dr Marks folded his stethoscope and returned to his chair.

‘No.'

‘Has anything happened to you recently?'

‘What do you mean?' Jenny thought that quite a lot had happened, but that was months ago. She couldn't tell Dr Marks; he had been their family doctor for as long as she could remember. Anyway she would need a lot longer than a few minutes.

‘Well, have you had a shock, been upset about something; for example has a man, interfered with you?'

‘No, no,' said Jenny.

‘I'm glad to hear it.' Dr Marks smiled and scratched his forehead. ‘I expect you have a boyfriend now? It seems only a short time ago when you had the measles.'

‘I did have, until recently.' A few weeks ago she had woken up one morning and realised that she had nothing in common with Peter. Their affair had run its course. She had told him that she wanted to concentrate on her coming exam. He wasn't upset or even surprised. It was as if he was expecting it.

‘You're not in any trouble are you?' he spoke softly and leaned across his desk towards her.

‘No, I'm not.'

‘Good.' He ran his fingers through what remained of his hair. ‘Well, I can't find anything physically wrong with you. From what you've described, they sound like severe anxiety attacks, but why they should start now, I don't know. There doesn't seem to be any reason. I don't want to prescribe you tablets, so I think I'll refer you to a colleague of mine at the County Hospital.' He scribbled a few lines on a writing pad, folded the paper inside an envelope and handed it to Jenny. ‘Post this and you should get an appointment soon. In the meantime I recommend that you take a couple of weeks off from that job of yours. I'll give you a sick note. Please give my regards to your parents, won't you?'

*

‘A psychiatrist, Dr Marks has said you have to see a psychiatrist. What on earth for?' Alice stared at Jenny in amazement. ‘You're not mental. You've just had a few funny turns. Perhaps you need to see someone else, another doctor?'

‘It was Dr Marks' suggestion, not mine. I can't carry on having these attacks, they're so frightening.' Once Dr Marks had reassured her that there was nothing physically wrong, she knew that his suspicions were right. The attacks were related to the events earlier that year.

‘Goodness knows what your father will say.'

*

‘Bloody load of rubbish. What good will going to see a shrink do? Your granddad, aunts and uncles all went through the war, not knowing if they'd have a house, or even be alive the next morning. Bombed out twice they were; lost everything. They never saw no psychiatrist,' Charlie sighed and picked up his newspaper.

*

A strong smell of disinfectant wafted past as they waited in the narrow corridor. Jenny hadn't eaten since nibbling a slice of toast earlier that morning, but she wasn't hungry.

‘Miss Porter, Dr McCaffrey will see you now,' a brisk voice echoed down the corridor. Alice stood up. ‘No, just Miss Porter please.'

A man wearing a white coat, his face half-covered with a black beard, sat at a desk and invited Jenny to sit beside him. ‘I have a letter here from Dr Marks; now you tell me in your own words what has been happening.'

Tears streamed down Jenny's face as she described how she felt whenever she tried to cross an open space.

‘What else has happened to you in the past year?'

Jenny broke down. She poured out the discovery of her adoption to this stranger, and how she no longer knew who she was. How she couldn't face talking about it to her parents or anyone else. She told him about her mother's ill health and how she had always worried about her. Then after she had heard about the death of President Kennedy the attacks had started and she didn't know why. Dr McCaffrey handed her a tissue from a box on his desk and took her hand.

‘What you've described, Jennifer, are panic attacks; caused by severe anxiety. They are usually triggered by a shock of some kind, such as the one you had. They don't always start immediately; sometimes, something quite trivial will trigger them. I don't think these attacks will improve while you remain at home with your parents. So, I would like you to stay for a short while in a hospital in Hove. It's not a hospital like this one; basically it's a large house. That will have the effect of removing you from surroundings that you are finding stressful, and enable us to talk in depth about what's happened. I'm sure you'll find that therapeutic.' He reached for a prescription pad. ‘In the meantime I'll prescribe some tablets which will help, and you'll receive a letter from us shortly.'

*

‘What! He wants you to stay in hospital, move away from home. Why?'

‘I told you, I keep having these panic attacks every time I leave home.'

‘Well, then, surely you need to stay at home, not go somewhere else?'

‘He said it will only be for a short while. He said he can't help me properly unless I go.'

‘You've got two perfectly good parents. You don't need to go anywhere else. I'm going in to speak to him, Nurse.'

Jenny sat in the corridor wishing that she had never been to Dr Marks. This wasn't what she had imagined would happen.

Alice's lips were set in a thin line and her face was ashen, as she emerged from the consulting room. ‘Come on, let's get home.' They travelled home in silence.

*

Jenny strained her ears at the door of the sitting room.

‘It might be something to do with that Charlie, but I've been trying to get her to talk about it for almost a year, she didn't want to. Perhaps we should have told her earlier, but I never thought she'd find out. I don't like to think this Charlie, but perhaps it's something in her blood. We don't know everything about her do we?'

*

Screams echoed along the corridor. Jenny stood at the tall window and looked across the frost covered lawns that stretched to New Church Road. Cars and the occasional bus made their way along, carrying people with lives outside the grey stone walls of Aldrington House.

It was Rosemary who was screaming. Her bed was next to Jenny's in a dormitory they shared with four other women. She was married and in her early twenties, and told Jenny she had become depressed after her baby had been born. She said that they had forced her to come here. Jenny wasn't sure who “they” were. Three times a week Rosemary was wheeled screaming into a small side room where wires were placed on either side of her head. She told Jenny that they gave her electric shocks to make her better, but Jenny saw the terrified look on Rosemary's face as the nurses held her arms down to sedate her. When they wheeled her back to their room, she would say her head hurt. Jenny would talk to her, but she couldn't remember things, and Jenny wondered if she would forget that she had a baby. Perhaps that was the idea. For the first two weeks of her stay Jenny had been petrified that she too would be wheeled on a trolley into a side room. She had wondered if that was what Dr McCaffrey had in mind for her – electrical currents to make her forget?