settles into its accustomed cracks. Ruth immediately stiffens in the hard-backed 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 recognised 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 vest 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.
SHORE CRAB
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.
‘Bloomin’ ’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 favourite 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 grey 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 enamelled 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.
