A Blessing In Disguise (6 page)

Once inside the school it is not at all like a fortress, it is all light and colour, with children's paintings and vividly illustrated poems pinned up everywhere; mobiles hanging from the ceiling. The secretary takes us down two corridors to Mrs Sharp's room and the Headmistress comes out from behind her desk to greet us. She is tall, has dark, wavy hair, a bright smile and a gap between her two front teeth, which makes me think – the gappy teeth, that is – how well she will match with some of the children.

‘How nice to meet you both,' she says, holding out her hand first to me and then to Becky, who suffers herself to be touched without actually flinching, but looks down at her feet and says nothing.

‘Shall we sit down?' Mrs Sharp invites, and we move to three low chairs set informally around a small table away from the desk. I approve of that. ‘I'm sorry I wasn't in church yesterday, Mrs Stanton,' she continues. ‘I was away for the weekend, though in fact I don't attend St Mary's regularly because I live over the far side of Brampton. But I would have been there yesterday to welcome you.'

There are papers on the table, which Mrs Sharp shuffles through before selecting one. ‘Well, Becky,' she says, ‘I had a nice letter about you from your school in Clipton, from Mrs Porter. She was your Headmistress, wasn't she?'

She doesn't wait for an answer. Just as well.

‘She tells me you are a bright girl, that you worked hard and you were friendly. So it seems to me you'll fit in well at St Mary's. You'll be in Year Five when you start here next Monday. I'm sorry you couldn't be here for the beginning of term but I'm sure you'll soon catch up. Who knows, you might be ahead!' Mrs Sharp has a voice which is at one and the same time both businesslike and soothing. I can imagine her dealing exceptionally well with playground disasters. However, Becky is unmoved.

Mrs Sharp hands the letter to me so that I can get the whole story while she tries, with little success, to chat with Becky. What the Head at Clipton has also said is that since her father's death Becky has become a difficult child whom some of the staff have found hard to handle, though they understand why. She hopes allowances will be made for her and that she will be sympathetically treated. ‘You can be sure of that,' Mrs Sharp says to me as I hand back the letter.

‘So have you bought your uniform yet?' she asks Becky, who shakes her head.

‘We're going into Brampton for it tomorrow afternoon,' I tell Mrs Sharp.

‘Good! It's a rather pretty shade of blue this year. We change colours every two years so you don't get bored with it. And don't forget, Becky, you can wear any combination you like, as long as it's the school uniform. You can wear the shirt with or without the sweater or the sweater without the shirt, or the pleated skirt or the plain. Whatever takes your fancy on the day.'

A bell rings, loud enough to waken all Thurston.

‘Break time!' Mrs Sharp announces. ‘So Becky, why don't we go into the playground and I'll introduce you to your class teacher? Mr Beagle his name is.'

She ushers us out into the playground, espies Mr Beagle who is keeping an eye on a group of boys and girls kicking a ball about, and summons him.

‘This is Mrs Stanton, our new Vicar and, more to the point at this moment, the mother of Becky who, as you already know, will be in Year Five from next Monday.'

Mr Beagle shakes my hand with a grip so firm that I wonder if he has broken one or more of the small bones, then turns to look straight at my daughter and says ‘Hi, Becky!' His look is so direct that she can hardly avoid it and before she can control herself I hear her saying ‘Hi!' Not with any enthusiasm of course, but she has actually spoken. She has not totally lost her voice from lack of use. Well done, Mr Beagle!

‘Why don't you introduce Becky to a couple of people?' Mrs Sharp suggests to him. ‘Just for a minute or two.'

He looks at Becky. ‘Yes or no?' he asks. ‘The choice is yours!'

She is faced with a question she must answer and, to my astonishment, she gives a faint nod, which Mr Beagle chooses to treat as a wholehearted ‘yes', and off they go. As they walk away, against his height – he is tall and broad – she looks small and vulnerable and my heart aches for her.

‘Don't worry, she'll be all right. We'll look after her,' Mrs Sharp assures me. ‘I'll keep an eye on her myself. And if any problems do crop up please let me know and I'll deal with them. We're a happy school on the whole and I don't see why Becky shouldn't enjoy herself once she's got to know people.' Then, changing the subject, she says, ‘I'd like to talk to you some time about the school vis-à-vis the church. I have a few ideas in mind, a few things I thought we might do, if you're in agreement. In spite of being a church school we've never had as much involvement as I could wish with St Mary's.'

‘I'd like that,' I tell her. ‘We didn't have a church school in my last parish so you'll have a lot to teach me.' Then the bell rings and the break is over. Mr Beagle delivers Becky back to me and a few minutes later she and I leave.

‘So there you are!' says my mother when we return, as if we were a lost parcel she'd been looking for. ‘Would you like a cup of coffee, love? What about you, Becky?'

Becky's answer is to disappear up the stairs. My mother shakes her head and makes the sound usually written as ‘tut tut'.

‘Dad and I will take her out this afternoon,' she promises. ‘We'll drive into Brampton, look at the shops, have an ice cream. At least it'll make a change.'

I feel like asking if, while she's there, she could exchange Becky, swap her for an all-smiling, all-talking model. What I actually say is ‘Thank you. Yes, I would like a cup of coffee but I mustn't dawdle, I have to be at the surgery at eleven-thirty.'

‘It won't take a minute, love,' my mother says. ‘Dad has gone off to wander round the village. He'll be back for his dinner. Will you? Shepherd's pie. Shall you go into Brampton with us?'

‘I think the Brampton trip would be smoother without me,' I say. ‘And I'd like to take the time to have a really good look at things in the church. Open drawers, peer into cupboards, find out where everything's kept. Of course I've been shown, but I'd like to go over it on my own.'

I swallow the coffee and eat a Shrewsbury biscuit my mother's made – I shall miss her when she returns to Clipton but at least I'll lose a bit of weight, no longer being tempted by her baking – and now I'm on my way to the surgery, which turns out to be in a largish semi in Downs Way, a road which leads off the north end of the High Street. The small reception area opens off the hall. One elderly woman is still waiting there. I go to the desk and give my name to the receptionist, an efficient-looking, middle-aged woman sitting in front of a computer.

‘Ah yes!' she says. ‘Doctor Leyton is expecting you. She has a patient with her at the moment but she shouldn't be long. Would you like to take a seat?'

I take a seat three chairs away from the elderly lady, not wishing to crowd her, and I smile at her. Until I'm more sure of myself I suppose I shall smile at everyone, just in case they attend St Mary's, and if they don't know who I am they'll think I'm barmy. The lady immediately turns to speak to me.

‘Are you waiting to see Doctor Leyton?'

‘I am.'

‘I thought you must be. She has someone with her. Mrs Gregory with her little girl. I'm here for Doctor Baines. They say Doctor Leyton is very good but I'd rather have a man. I don't know what's the matter with the little Gregory girl. She looked very pale. Probably something she ate. I'm here with my legs.' She pauses for breath, clearly waiting to know which bit of me I am here with, but before I can enlighten her what I assume is Mrs Gregory, accompanied by a child who is decidedly pale and looks as if she might at any minute throw up on the grey carpeted floor, emerges from what must be Doctor Leyton's room. The receptionist nods at me, which I take as a signal to go in. Neither Mrs Gregory nor the elderly lady with the legs has shown any recognition of me so I take it they are not members of my flock – though members of the flock is an expression I don't normally allow myself to use, assuming that it makes them no higher than sheep while I am something superior. Shepherd, or perhaps a nice black-and-white collie dog?

I knock, and enter. Sonia Leyton smiles at me, a sort of lopsided smile which lights up her face but doesn't entirely disguise the fact that she looks tired, shadowy and a bit puffy around the eyes.

‘Come and sit down, Venus,' she says. ‘Would you like some coffee?'

‘Thank you, no, I had some just before I left home,' I say. ‘My parents are staying with me at the moment. My mother gives me tea or coffee every hour on the hour.'

There's a cafetière on a side table and she moves across and pours herself a cup from it. ‘I think I keep going on it,' she admits, ‘which is not a thing I'd advise any of my patients to do. Doctors do a great many things they wouldn't advise their patients to do.'

‘Priests are much the same,' I tell her. ‘Have you had a busy morning?'

She stirs sugar into her coffee, but no milk, and takes a couple of gulps.

‘The usual. We're always busy, being just the two of us.'

‘And you can't get another doctor, I think you said?'

‘Oh, I daresay we could,' she answers. ‘But as I told you yesterday, we don't have the room. We'd need another consulting room. I suppose it might look as though we would have, but you see I also live here. I have a bedroom, a living room and a kitchen, so there's no spare space unless I were to move out, which at the moment I don't want to. Nigel doesn't live here, of course. I'll introduce you to Nigel in a few minutes.'

‘He had a patient waiting,' I tell her.

‘Mrs Thwaites with her legs. Whoops! Sorry, I shouldn't have said that. Most unprofessional!'

‘She did actually tell me herself,' I assure her. ‘I mean that it was her legs. I'm sure she'd have told me more if I'd waited longer.'

‘She would indeed. But Nigel's very good with her. He has a way with elderly ladies. And most elderly ladies seem to prefer a male doctor, which always surprises me. You'd think the opposite would be true. Modesty and all that. Though it shouldn't surprise me. My grandmother was a doctor . . .'

‘Your
grandmother
?' I can't believe it.

‘Oh yes!' Sonia says. ‘She was one of the really early ones. She qualified in the nineteen twenties. She knew what opposition was all right. It dogged her most of her professional life. Very few people wanted women doctors then. Now I suppose it's only the Mrs Thwaiteses of this world who don't.'

‘Perhaps the same will happen about women priests,' I say. She raises her eyebrows in a question. She has expressive eyebrows, but I don't pursue the question. ‘And did anyone else in your family go into medicine?' I ask.

‘No-one else at all,' Sonia says cheerfully. ‘No-one in my mother's generation, and neither of my two brothers. They're both university lecturers. No, it had to wait for me. But I caught it early. When I was small I had a family of dolls and my fantasy was that they were usually ill – measles or some exotic life-threatening disease or they had multiple injuries from a car smash. My dolls were always in bandages or splints. And there was Gran – she was in her seventies by this time – deeply interested in all this, discussing the symptoms with me, deciding on the treatment. And of course she and I between us cured them all.'

‘Not like real life?' I find myself saying.

‘No, not like real life,' Sonia agrees. ‘But more than Gran was able to cure in her day. Who was your GP in Clipton?' she asks, changing the subject. ‘It was Clipton, wasn't it?'

‘Yes. Doctor Henry Mackintosh. He was very good to me, especially when Philip was ill, and after he died. And Becky liked him.'

‘That's good! How long since your husband died?'

‘Just over a year.' Sometimes I feel so raw that it might have happened only yesterday. At other times . . . well . . .

‘It's still early days,' she says. ‘What was it?'

‘Leukaemia. It was so sudden. It seemed to come out of the blue. He was very tired a lot of the time but we didn't take that seriously, not until he started vomiting. When it was diagnosed he had all the treatments: injections, blood transfusions, drugs – but the illness was always two steps ahead.'

‘Wasn't a transplant – bone marrow – suggested?' she asked.

‘Oh yes! But we couldn't find a matching donor. And the time was so short, I mean from beginning to end. I didn't . . .' I hesitate.

‘You didn't have time to get used to it,' Sonia prompted. ‘That's often the way with terminal illnesses which advance quickly. There's no space in which to adjust, either for the patient or the family. Strange though it may seem, it's sometimes easier to deal with a long illness – at least for the one left it is. So you made a swift move into another job?'

‘Another parish,' I correct her. ‘It's the same job, just as yours would be if you moved to another practice. Though in another place and with other people.'

What I had wanted in Clipton after Philip's death was to be wrapped in a warm blanket of love and, except with a few people, it hadn't happened. It wasn't that they were purposely unkind, or even unthinking. I learnt by experience, though I don't know if it's always the case, that after a bereavement a lot of otherwise quite nice people take a step backwards, especially if it's been an untoward death; unexpected, someone too young, someone who had seemed healthy. You see it when children, of whatever age, die before the parent. My mother-in-law felt that keenly in people's attitudes towards her after Philip died. They would cross the road to avoid speaking to her, I suppose they didn't know what to say. It's a happening against nature and other people find it too much to cope with, as if one's misfortune might be infectious.