The Palace of Strange Girls (6 page)

Ruth bites her lip. She is not only capable of pronouncing the name Lebanon correctly, she could point to the country on a
map and quote freely from the Bible on the subject.

“So, whereabouts on the tops are you? Anywhere near the Black Bull?”

It is a common habit locally to tie the location of anything in the town to the nearest pub. Ruth is not prey to this habit.
She allows herself a vague “m-m-m” as she replaces her cup in the saucer.

“Oh, they’re all pastry forks and bay windows up there, aren’t they? Wouldn’t suit me. No, I like to be in the thick of things.
I like to know what’s going on. Don’t you find it a nuisance being so far out of town? It means a lot of traveling,” Florrie
says as she’s sweetening her Alan’s second cup of tea for him.

“It’s nice and quiet on the tops,” Ruth replies, biting back the urge to say that it’s worth a six-penny bus journey to be
away from dirty backstreets and the stink of mill chimneys.

“There,” Florrie says after she’s taken an exploratory sip, “that’s just nice.” She passes the sweetened cup of tea over to
Alan. Ruth can sense her nose turning up. She’s seen her mother do it countless times for her father; indeed, Ruth might have
sweetened and sipped Jack’s tea herself had she not seen the light at night school. Quite apart from what constitutes good
table manners, the practice is unhealthy and encourages the migration of germs. Elizabeth Craig is adamant about this.

“They’re building some new houses up there, aren’t they?” Florrie remarks casually.

“Where?”

“Up on the Boundary. Three-bedroom semis. I told Fred, I said, ‘They’ll never sell them! Who’d pay a fortune to live that
far out of town?’ It’s not even a local builder, is it?”

“No, I don’t think it is.”

Florrie gives Ruth a shrewd look and says, “Got your eye on one of them, have you?”

This is an understatement. Ruth has not only got an eye on one of the new semis, she’s got a copy of the plans and the deposit
as well. Not that she would ever admit to this. Talk of the semi involves two forbidden subjects: family and money. Ruth gets
up from the table, anxious to make her escape.

“She’s small for seven, your little girl. You did say she was seven, didn’t you? She looks nearer five to me. Very quiet,
isn’t she?”

Ruth has heard the same from Beth’s teacher at school. “You know, Mrs. Singleton,” the teacher had ventured, “Beth, er, I
mean Elizabeth is a bit too quiet, if you see what I mean. I’ve known children who appear quiet. But they’re not really. They’re
hiding for some reason. They imagine if they’re quiet no one will notice them. Someone or something has frightened them. Have
you noticed anything?”

“Nothing,” Ruth had replied with a firm shake of the head.

“Well, she may not be breaking her toys or screaming, but this doesn’t mean she hasn’t got problems. She’s likely to tell
you if you find the time to ask and listen to what she says.” Seeing the expression on Ruth’s face, the teacher had added,
“Well, perhaps I’m wrong. Maybe all she needs is a good cuddle and some reassurance. All of us could do with that, couldn’t
we?”

The teacher had said all this in such a caring and reasonable tone that Ruth had been quite worried about it. Until, that
is, she sat down and thought about it. Then she realized that it was all nonsense. Elizabeth is obedient because that’s the
way she’s been brought up. Ruth expects her to be quiet and polite at all times. Who wants a cheeky daughter who’s forever
shouting and misbehaving? Ruth stopped calling in at school after that. But the accusation still makes her angry.

Faced with Florrie’s comment, Ruth pushes her chair firmly back under the table. She gives Mrs. Clegg a bleak, tight-lipped
look but Florrie continues, “The poor mite. She’s so thin and pale. She looks as if she could do with plenty of good food
and a nice bit of sunshine, wouldn’t you say?”

Ruth ignores the remark. She heads out into the lobby, where there is a brief exchange of views between mother and daughter
before Beth drops the newly won sixpence into a collection box for the local disabled.

The revelation of Beth’s illness came as a direct result of Mrs. Richmond having syringed her husband’s ears and thus rendered
audible to him the heart whisper, the rhythmic sigh of a leaking valve and phantom echo of escaping pressure, that had accompanied
the Singletons’ younger daughter throughout her six years. Beth stands before the old doctor as her mother peels off the layers
of sweater and blouse, liberty bodice and undershirt. Dr. Richmond places two pallid fingers above her shoulder blade and
raps them sharply with the crooked fingers of his left hand. The exercise is repeated over the child’s back, Beth alive to
the uneasy vibration and flinching away from the discomfort when her chest is sounded. Dr. Richmond reaches for his stethoscope,
places the steel nodes in his ear and rubs the bright circle on the palm of his hand. There is complete silence. Ruth presses
her lips together, too frightened to breathe, resisting the urge to join in while Beth inhales and exhales to order. Both
mother and child pant briefly when the stethoscope examination is concluded, Ruth for oxygen and Beth with pain.

Dr. Richmond removes the stethoscope from his neck with deliberation and folds it carefully until the ancient black rubber
settles into its accustomed cracks. Ruth immediately stiffens in the hardbacked chair she has been occupying since she and
her younger daughter were summoned from their sojourn in the doctor’s waiting room—a two-hour wait during which Ruth had silently
rehearsed all the reasons why she mistrusts the good doctor. If he’d been faster off the mark when she’d come to see him about
her stomach pains back in 1950 she might have carried the child to full term.

Of course, she doesn’t have any proof that it was a boy that she lost at thirteen weeks. But Ruth knows, as clearly as any
real mother would know, that it was a boy. Sitting again in the same room waiting to see the same doctor, she had felt the
old anger rising.

Dr. Richmond sighs and says, “You can get this bonny little girl dressed again now.”

Ruth has recognized a number of traits in Elizabeth since birth, but “bonny” is not one of them. It makes no difference how
well she feeds Elizabeth, the child remains weak and tires easily. Her shoulders are permanently hunched over her chest, she
sweats too easily and she still asks to be carried up hills. It is a back-breaking task for a woman over forty. Ruth has resisted
seeing the doctor before now. Her relationship with old Dr. Richmond is not an easy one.

In order to cover her impatience Ruth now busies herself with dressing the child, stretching the wool undershirt over her
head and struggling with the curling rubber buttons on the Ladybird liberty bodice.

When decency is restored Dr. Richmond ventures his professional opinion. “There might be a slight problem, Mrs. Singleton,”
he says. This example of kindly understatement is characteristic of Dr. Richmond. He has had cause on many occasions, when
delivering bad news to anxious mothers, to adopt a certain reassuring ignorance of fatal consequences. He has no cures for
pneumoconiosis (a familiar complaint among the miners at Bank Hall Colliery) or pulmonary embolism, or parietal gliomas, or
any one of the number of terminal conditions he is forced to witness within the space of a single day. The varnish of confident
infallibility afforded to the newly qualified has worn away over the years to reveal his humanity in all its uncertainty and
inadequacy. He spends his mornings on call. His white starched cuffs are stained brown with iodine and rasp against his wrists
as he takes pulses, measures blood pressures, pinches swollen ankles and tests stubborn joints. He rubs the folds of his softening
jowls as he considers prescriptions or waits for the arrival of the ambulance. By late evening he has listened to a litany
of complaints and drunk his way through all manner of liquid that passes for tea in the houses of the poor.

Only then does he return home to the silent remembrances of former patients. His house bulges with mortuary gifts: gold watches,
pipe stands, copies of the Bible and amateur paintings of local landmarks. Patients leave wills that afford him war medals
from battles fought in the Mediterranean or North Africa while he was busy delivering the next generation in the cold austerity
of Bank Hall Maternity Home. Financial bequests from wealthier patients are spent on repairs to the roof of his surgery, coal
fires in his waiting room, lollipops for his infant patients, outstanding rent for miners laid up with lung disease and weavers
laid off with mill closures.

Ruth is aware of Dr. Richmond’s reputation but, since she is not in need of charity or sympathy, she persists in her interrogation.
“What is wrong with her?”

“A slight chest irregularity. Probably minor, nothing to be anxious about. I have a colleague who might have a look at her.
Mr. Tomlinson at the hospital.”

“He’s a heart man, isn’t he? Is it her heart? What’s wrong with it?”

“It might be a circulation problem. You yourself have noticed she’s breathless sometimes. I thought I heard a slight whisper
when I listened to her chest, but I could be mistaken. We doctors aren’t infallible.”

“What do you mean, a whisper?”

“Let’s wait until Mr. Tomlinson has seen her, shall we? Then we’ll be sure what we’re talking about.”

“And when will that be?”

“I’ll have a word with him first thing tomorrow. He’s a good man. Can you take this little girl up tomorrow around two o’clock?
Save all the bother of waiting for an appointment. Now I must get on, there are patients waiting to be seen.”

Ruth quits the surgery with some reluctance. She senses that there is something seriously wrong, but can get no further with
old Richmond. She is too clever to be misled by his diagnostic hesitation, or the sudden availability of a hospital appointment.
There is something wrong with her daughter and only Ruth’s iron restraint in the company of strangers keeps her from crying
in the queue for the bus home.

This crab often hides under the sand with just his eyes and feelers showing and so he may be difficult to spot. He can also
appear unexpectedly from under a stone but beware! The green and black shore crab has two very sharp pincer claws; once he
latches on to something he won’t let go! Score 20 for an unexpected appearance.

B
loomin’ ’eck, Ruth, how much longer?” Jack has been hauling three deckchairs around the sands for all of twenty minutes while
his wife searches for a suitable location. The perfect spot has to be at the furthest possible point from the pier (roughnecks),
sewage outlets (polio) and any patch of sand that has even a trace of tar. It’s not an easy task. Jack’s patience, along with
the muscles in his right arm, is stretched to the limit. It is only when Ruth stops, turns and begins to retrace her steps
along the beach that Jack drops the three deckchairs, windbreak and bags in the sand and says, “That’s it! This’ll do, Ruth.”

Ruth looks unconvinced. She stops and assures herself that they are still some distance from the sea. This is important if
they are to get their money’s worth out of the deckchairs. But it is only when she catches sight of the hordes of holidaymakers
flooding down on to the beach behind her that she nods in agreement and Jack sighs with relief.

Jack puts up the deckchairs and windbreak, while Ruth unpacks the bags. Thus engaged, it is too late by the time they notice
Mr. and Mrs. Sykes to take avoidance measures. Harry and Irene Sykes are, to quote their favorite expression, “bang up to
date” as only childless couples in their thirties can ever hope to be. Harry, sporting a pair of black winkle-picker shoes
and green drainpipe trousers, sidles up. He has an extravagant quiff that teeters in the wind, and sideburns a good couple
of inches longer than is decent for a man his age. Harry is foreman at Alexandria, a mill owned by Foster Brothers, the same
company that employs Jack. He and Harry Sykes have known each other since Jack joined the firm but they have rarely, if ever,
seen eye to eye. Despite this, Harry Sykes puts down his deckchairs next to Jack and says, “Fancy seeing you here, Jack. Mind
if we join you?”

“Of course not, Harry,” Jack replies, suppressing the urge to bolt. Ruth meanwhile gives the interlopers the briefest of nods,
then turns her back and begins to empty her gray tartan shopping bag of towels, sun cream, knitting and this week’s copy of
Woman’s Own.

Irene Sykes perches prettily on the edge of the deckchair that Harry has assembled for her with a single flick of his wrist.
She puts the white stilettos she has been carrying since she reached the sands under her chair, opens her handbag and pulls
out a pink enameled compact decorated with the silhouette of a black poodle. She checks her lipstick in the mirror first,
using a brightly varnished nail to wipe away the inevitable smudges of matching pink lipstick from the corners of her mouth.
Snapping the compact smartly shut, she flashes Jack a brilliant smile. In present company Irene may have both youth and beauty
on her side, but still she regards Ruth with a careful eye. “Hello, Mrs. Singleton,” she ventures. “How are you?”

“Very well, thank you, Mrs. Sykes.”

“And how’s little Beth. Getting better now, is she?” Irene gives the child a look of heartfelt concern. Beth is wearing a
blue mohair coat that ends just above her gray ankle socks and her head is wrapped in a yellow scarf.

“Elizabeth is very well, thank you,” Ruth replies in a tone designed to stifle any further questions.

“Poor little mite.” Mrs. Sykes bends down and tickles Beth under her chin. “I knew you when you were a tiny baby.”

Beth gives Mrs. Sykes her whole attention.

“Your mum used to bring you to Baby Clinic every Tuesday. You were so good, you never cried. I had to weigh you every week
to make sure that you were putting on enough weight and then write everything down in a special file. She was very late walking,
wasn’t she, Mrs. Singleton?”