A stranger to herself, p.15
A Stranger to Herself, page 15
‘Well, Mrs Frazier,’ he said, ‘doctors are bound by an oath which forbids them to reveal their patients’ secrets to anyone else, though in the case of married women it’s usual for the doctor to be quite frank with their husbands. And were your husband to ask me directly, I would feel bound to give him a truthful answer …’
‘That’s nice, isn’t it?’ said Violet. ‘It doesn’t apply the other way about, does it – when the husband’s picked up a nasty disease from a woman and doesn’t want his wife told?’
He studied her with his intelligent eyes and said, ‘I didn’t make the world, Mrs Frazier. Perhaps I’d better just examine you, to make sure you really are expecting a baby, and how far along you are. Would you like to step behind the screen and just take off your lower garments?’
Violet endured this examination patiently, though with a feeling of outrage, then put her drawers, shoes and stockings on again, while he washed his hands.
He told her she was over three months pregnant, and in good health, as far as he could tell. ‘I imagine this was what you didn’t want to hear,’ he said.
‘You couldn’t – arrange anything?’ she said. ‘I’ve got plenty of money.’
He said, ‘No, I can’t. And I advise you strongly not to go to anyone who can. It’s illegal and dangerous. You do understand that, don’t you?’
‘Couldn’t you tell him the baby came too soon?’ Violet demanded.
Dr Smith stood up. ‘Mrs Frazier,’ he said, ‘I’ve told you I cannot lie to your husband. I’m afraid you and I have nothing further to say to each other. The fee is five shillings and I imagine you might prefer to pay me now.’ Relenting, he said, ‘I’m sorry. I can’t help you in the way you want.’
Violet stood up obediently. ‘If I told you I wasn’t married …’ she suggested.
‘It would make very little difference,’ he said, still standing. ‘If you’re a churchwoman, perhaps it would help to see your clergyman.’
Violet, tears of rage and despair suddenly in her eyes, opened her bag, took out two half crowns and put them on the desk. He had pressed her stomach, thrust his fingers into her body, refused to help her and now he was suggesting she saw the vicar. Moreover she now knew no doctor would do anything else, except the kind of doctor she guessed Frederick would find undesirable at first glance, and never let in the house again. She was opening the surgery door when she turned back. Dr Smith was studying her back, not unsympathetically. ‘Oh, well, I’ve got to have someone,’ she said, as much to herself as him. ‘You’d better hear the whole story,’ she said.
He shook his head. ‘No, Mrs Frazier,’ he told her. ‘I think I’d better not.’ It was almost as if he was afraid of her.
‘I can pay you,’ she said.
In front of him, Dr Malcolm Smith saw a small, pretty girl, with eyes the colour of amethysts, wearing a new, well-laundered dress and expensive shoes, no older, he guessed, than his sister Grace, who was still at school in Huntingdon, but, he could tell from her accent and behaviour, from a background which had not been so sheltered. No river at the bottom of the garden for her, he thought, no books, no piano, however much in need of French polishing, no room to herself, with old blue wool curtains at the windows in winter, chintz in summer.
He said, ‘You must understand that members of the medical profession are bound by an oath – there are rules we have to keep. If doctors don’t keep them they are struck off, discharged; they aren’t allowed to practise any more. You do understand me?’
‘Yes,’ said Violet. She’d made up her mind to have him. She’d have to agree with him up to a point and that was that. In the meantime, she listened, because you didn’t interrupt men when they were speaking, even if what they said was off the point, or you knew what they were going to say already. She stood attentively by the door as he continued and watched a beam of sunlight dancing on his narrow brown head, as he sat at the desk.
‘Now, if you wish to become my patient you cannot ask me to break the rules governing my conduct. Or try to persuade me to bend them, Mrs Frazier, for your convenience. Whatever your needs, as you see them, these rules were made for the benefit of all, for the common good, and I must maintain them.’ He privately reflected that these rules, which had once imparted such inspiration, were harder to stand by in practice than in theory. His was a poor neighbourhood, girls of thirteen bore children by their own fathers, women nearing fifty, already worn out by large families, embarked on pregnancies which could kill them, the infant or both of them, leaving behind widowers and helpless children. Here was yet another bitter story, he felt sure. The girl had already told him she was not married. At that age, with a baby on the way and no wedding ring, she was already on the road to tragedy. He frowned and said, ‘If you assure me you’ve understood what I’ve told you, I’ll accept you as a patient.’
Had he finished? wondered Violet. It looked like it. ‘All right,’ she said, sitting down and adopting a respectful tone. ‘I do need a doctor. I seem to understand that you don’t have to tell my … my friend how far along I am, unless he asks. That’ll have to do. Can you get me a midwife, and so forth, for when the baby comes?’
‘I can attend to all that,’ said Dr Smith. ‘I ought also to call on you at regular intervals to make sure that all is as it should be.’
Violet guessed that this was what well-off women did, and what Frederick would expect. ‘You could come in the afternoons,’ she said.
That evening she told Frederick she had found a doctor.
Frederick was doubtful. ‘I’d like to see him when he visits you,’ he told her. ‘Ask him to come next Saturday afternoon,’ Without admitting it to himself he was relieved Violet had appointed a doctor on her own, since otherwise he would have had to find one, almost inevitably consulting Henry Sturgess, to whom he was not keen to reveal Violet’s pregnancy.
Violet, disguising her reluctance, agreed. If he lets on, she thought grimly to herself, I’m o-u-t. And, she added to herself just as grimly, Frederick Levine is going to keep me under wraps as far as his family’s concerned. I’m a bit of fluff tucked away in Belsize Park to him, and all his lovey-dovey business don’t mean a thing. If he falls under a brewer’s dray tomorrow I’d be nobody from nowhere as far as the Levines were concerned, even if it was his baby.
Kate Higgins, April 28th, 1991
After we got back from Spain I stayed at Andy’s flat for a few days. On Wednesday he was due to go off to cover the elections in Belize. After the results were declared, there might be trouble. Andy, as usual, was due to get injured, captured, killed. He decided to give a party the day before he left. I organised it. Fifty people drank champagne, ate snacks provided by caterers amid banks of flowers supplied by florists in his luxurious flat overlooking the church, and the charming little streets of North Kensington. From above, the women with pushchairs, the little knot of black young men outside the domed community centre, the children playing in the square, all looked small and picturesque in the bright spring dusk, as in an old print of Montmartre in the nineties. That all this charm was maintained from a police station built like a fortress, with a yard behind it stuffed with reinforced buses, cars, a basement full of police vans, riot gear and supplies of CS gas, was not worth commenting on. Everybody at the party knew all this, knew the lines they were treading. Everybody, as the saying goes, knew and nobody said.
Dave Gottlieb was there, in an old Fair Isle cardigan, a cap and grey trousers which had seen better days. ‘So how’s Violet Levine?’ he asked me, standing in the window, looking down.
I hesitated, feeling a bit embarrassed to confess to diligent, high-minded Dave that I was planning to give up the project.
Andy came by and put a hand on my shoulder. ‘She’s packing it in,’ he said.
Dave’s eyes went from him to me, back to Andy, in the space of half a second. His face registered nothing. Then he said, ‘Well. It’s a tough proposition. With no co-operation from the heirs. Still, with or without, it would have made an interesting book.’
‘Askew and Askew’ll have to find another sucker,’ said Andy, moving over to another group, saying, ‘Kev. I’m glad you’re here. I want you to tell me …’
I’d told Andy yesterday I was going to ring Roger and tell him I was giving up the biography. But I hadn’t done it.
Dave’s bespectacled eyes circled the room vaguely as he said, ‘Seems a shame. Why don’t you just tell Askew and Askew the family won’t help, but you’ll do it anyway?’
‘It’s not the family, or the publisher,’ I said, and then stuck, realising that I was about to explain what was preventing me from going on with Violet’s biography – except that I didn’t know what to say. It had something to do with Andy, I knew. But what? Then, I suddenly realised, I’d become afraid of what I was doing. But why? I looked at Dave. I think my mouth was open.
Dave, his head on one side, said, ‘Something wrong?’
‘I think so. Maybe I’m not giving it up after all.’ I felt afraid as I spoke.
‘Stay away from Gordon Stone, that’s all,’ said Dave.
All I knew, without even thinking about it, was that I couldn’t decide whether I really wanted to go on with the biography until Andy was gone, and that meant that he was putting pressure on me to give up. Then he claimed me and dragged me off, saying I had to meet someone on his paper, which was either a proposal of marriage, or he was trying to get me a job. It turned out to be the latter. Next thing, I was talking to the editor of the women’s page, suggesting a problem column.
‘A good idea,’ praised Andy in the cab to the airport.
‘Whoever said I could deal with anyone’s problems? It could be fatal,’ I said.
‘Just common sense,’ he declared. ‘And a pack of experts …’ He hugged me. ‘I’ll be back to watch you start it. You can move into a better flat.’
I didn’t say anything, partly because I was concerned about his assignment – anything could happen. Three years as the wife of a soldier in Belfast had taught me not to express my fears.
After he left I went back to the flat. Next day Di had a morning off. I told her about the problem page.
‘Sounds very good,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you could do an upmarket feminist problem page. What about women having ethical differences with a marriage guidance counsellor, or whether it’s right to start a family quarrel on Christmas Day when your brother says he’s going to vote Conservative …’ Then she started to laugh. ‘At least you could give up the biography.’
‘That’s what Andy thinks,’ I told her. ‘But, I feel queasy about – everything. I can’t explain it. As if I’m going the wrong way. D’you know what I mean? Your life’s all of a piece—’
‘Oh, yes. Of course,’ said Di. ‘It’s wonderful.’ She didn’t mean it.
‘No, you know what you’re doing, and what you think is worthwhile,’ I went on earnestly. ‘Whatever happens you know you’re doing right—’ I broke off. Di’s rather small face was frightening. She looked grim, terrifying, very anxious. ‘Well, that’s what it looks like,’ I ended feebly. ‘Perhaps it doesn’t look like that to you …’
‘You couldn’t know,’ she said. She grabbed her bag off the floor and began to roll a cigarette. In a moment she said, ‘You don’t want this job, even if it exists. But do you think you want to do the biography? Because if it’s important to you, you should. On balance, the Witness job is a better earner. Regular pay. And you could go on for another six months with the biography and find somehow you still can’t do it. But there’s such a thing as doing what you’ve got to do …’
Di was thinner, rather frail-looking. Her face was pale under her mat of fair hair. She’d looked awful all winter, but she ought to have been picking up by now. Was she worried? Wasn’t she eating enough? Was she ill?
‘You’re looking peaky,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing wrong, is there? Next time I go to Brighton, do you want to come too, rest and recuperation, sea air, quiet weekend?’
‘Are you going next weekend?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Friday night to Sunday night?’
‘I was thinking – coming?’
‘I can’t, this weekend.’
She’d tried to help me with my dilemma over the jobs, but that obviously didn’t mean she wanted me in the flat for the weekend. If I irritated her, if she was sleeping with a lover, a married man, another woman, even if she was sleeping with my ex-husband, if she was practising the steel drums, running a poker school, forging bank notes, why the hell didn’t she tell me? What hadn’t we told each other over the years? Or was it all my imagination that she wanted me gone? And what could I say? Nothing.
I told her tentatively, ‘Andy said if I took the Witness job I could get another place.’
‘I need your rent,’ said Di, smiling. Then, ‘Just like Andy to try to break up our beautiful relationship.’
Then the phone rang, but no one spoke, so I put the receiver down. It happened from time to time. When it rang again before I went back into the front room I expected the same thing but it was Roger Littlebrown. He began angrily, ‘I’m quite disappointed, in fact I’m very disappointed, Kate. I really think if you were planning to break our contract, you might have discussed it with me first.’
‘Roger—’ I said.
‘Frankly I find it rather discourteous. This isn’t the sort of thing you want to hear from a third party. In any case,’ he said, softening his tone, ‘if there are problems I would have thought the first thing to do would be to discuss them with me—’
I took advantage of his lowered tone to shout, ‘Roger! What’s this all about?’
He paused, then said, ‘Well, Andy rang me to say goodbye before he went to Belize and told me you’d decided to give up the biography. Naturally, I was very upset. You see, Kate, we think here it could be a very interesting book. We were really looking forward to having it on our list.’
‘When did he ring you?’ I asked.
‘Yesterday afternoon, just before five. I tried to call you several times yesterday evening but you weren’t in. He didn’t mention it?’
‘No, actually he didn’t,’ I told him. ‘And as a matter of fact I haven’t quite decided what to do. It’s a bit annoying of Andy to have rung you without telling me.’
‘Yes. So I’d have thought …’ Roger said, coldly.
‘Does he usually ring to say goodbye before he goes off?’ I asked.
‘No, this time he asked me to visit Aunt Jocelyn – his mother – while he was away. But, Kate, if you’re thinking of giving up the book, please come and see me first. Let’s have lunch soon.’
After we rang off I stood looking round the hall, staring at the anoraks on Di’s old-fashioned hatstand and her stupid woolly hat on a brass peg, feeling angry with Andy. He must have felt that having virtually got me the job in the first place he had to take the responsibility for resigning me from it. He didn’t even think he needed to mention it to me. It was a cheek. I went and told Di. She shook her head in amazement. ‘I’ll never understand him. What are you going to do?’
‘God knows,’ I said. ‘It’s getting confusing.’
Violet Crutchley, November, 1913
Violet lay weakly in the bronze-figured bed at Belsize Park, while the doctor said, ‘A healthy little girl, Mrs Frazier,’ the midwife pushed her stomach to release in a final spasm of pain the afterbirth, then her assistant set about washing her legs and rolling her over to change the sheet. The midwife bustled about in a corner to the sound of a baby crying. Violet pulled herself up to see what was going on. ‘Lie flat, Mrs Frazier,’ Dr Smith said, but Violet didn’t and observed her bloodied sheet and the undersheet being bundled away by a tidy girl in a huge, bloodied apron and in the corner a middle-aged woman in a long blue overall, with her hair covered in a white scarf knotted at the back, plunging a small blue and red form into a large enamel basin on a table, then pulling it out, as all the time it yelled a high, agonised cry. She swathed the baby in a big white towel from a wooden airer in front of the fire. The curtains were drawn, although it was only six thirty in the evening, and fog was seeping round the corners of the stiff red brocade. Now she was being put into a clean nightdress. ‘Well done, Mrs Frazier,’ said Dr Malcolm Smith, bending over her. ‘Taken it like a trooper. Anyone would think you’d done it before.’
‘And I won’t be doing it again,’ responded Violet, falling back on the pillows. She hadn’t believed there could be such pain.
The midwife, who had dried the baby and dressed it in a nappy, a soft vest and a flannel nightdress with a sash, placed it on her shoulder, and said, ‘There you are, Mrs Frazier.’
Violet stared at the bawling face, gingery hair and bright blue eyes, looking exactly like Tom Rawlinson, only older, and thought, Oh, Christ, all this – for that.
‘You’d better put your baby to the breast, Mrs Frazier,’ said the woman. She had seen the tough little body and Violet’s small face distorted with pain and determination during the birth. It had been an awe-inspiring sight, as had been Violet’s utter lack of reliance on her, the girl and even her own doctor, as the struggle went on. She knew instinctively that here was a woman who could give birth as easily as a cat, and would show less concern for her children than the cat would for her kittens. She opened the laces of Violet’s nightdress and put the baby to her breast. ‘She’ll do the rest,’ she remarked easily. She glanced at the doctor. He knows there’s something up, she thought.
‘Couldn’t someone open the window?’ remarked Violet. ‘I’m stifling. And what about a cup of tea?’
‘Shall I telephone your husband now?’ asked Dr Smith, and it was scarcely a question. Violet had only sent her parlourmaid with a note at four o’clock. The doctor had not received it until he came in at five. When he told his servant he’d like a pot of tea and some toast before he set out, she told him that Violet’s parlourmaid had said that she thought the doctor ought to come quickly.
