Unsettled Ground

remembers. His consultation room was cold and frost patterned the window. He told her to lie on the high bed in the corner and lift up her vest. Behind him, her mother nodded her encouragement, and although shy, Jeanie lay down and revealed her narrow ribcage and the sore little swellings that were developing behind her nipples. She remembers the grey hairs growing from the doctor’s nostrils and the chill of his stethoscope as he pressed it against her chest. When he took the thing out of his ears, he shook his head, and her mother started crying in a way that Jeanie thought might never end. Dot got her handkerchief out from her handbag and covered her face with it, rocking back and forth where she sat on the chair next to the doctor’s desk. He called for the receptionist to come in, and Jeanie was led by the hand back to the waiting room. There, heels on her chair and arms hugging her knees, she stayed until her mother came to fetch her. Was it then, when they got home, that Dot explained that the fever and the aches Jeanie had suffered from when she was younger had weakened her heart and made it fragile, or was it later? Either way, her mother said, “Think of your heart like an egg. You know what happens if you drop an egg?” Jeanie was worried her mother was going to start crying again and if she did Jeanie wouldn’t know what to do. Perhaps the doctor had given her mother a pill to stop her crying when Jeanie had been in the waiting room. As her mother spoke, Jeanie imagined something within her chest the size and shape of a duck’s egg but with a pinkish tinge and its shell so thin that the creature inside was visible: curled, bloody, and featherless, it knocked and scraped on the shell’s inner layer. What mayhem would it cause if it broke free?

Added together, the amount of school she’d missed from rheumatic fever was probably a couple of years, and after the diagnosis of her weak heart she missed more, but Dot was happy to keep her at home tucked up on the sofa or helping out with the easy jobs in the garden. Dot might not have expressed it clearly, but the message Jeanie received was that an education for the kind of people they were—poor people, country people—would only steal her away from where she belonged—at home. Even Julius left school at sixteen having sat and failed two exams.

Outside the surgery, she takes the dog’s lead from her pocket and ties Maude to a metal pole. The dog protests, whimpering at being abandoned, but Jeanie shushes her. At the set of glass doors, she hesitates, her heart jumping at the thought of going in, the way people will look at her, but a woman comes out and holds the door open, and Jeanie enters. The waiting room is filled with rows of chairs with upholstered seats, some of them occupied. The place smells of disinfectant and furniture polish. Easy listening pop music plays over a loudspeaker and a baby is crying.

Bridget, her mother’s best friend, is sitting behind the low desk beside another receptionist, and when Bridget sees Jeanie, she rushes out, her moon-face crumpling and her eyes filling.

“Oh, my love,” Bridget says, opening her arms, and Jeanie lets herself be embraced. Bridget’s hold is soft, different from Dot’s, which was quick and bony, or Julius’s, which is enveloping and tight and expels the air from Jeanie’s lungs. Bridget smells of cigarettes and Polo mints. When she lets go, she says, “Has Dr. Holloway been out to the cottage yet? I was going to come over as soon as my shift finished.” The other receptionist shoos Bridget away and Bridget mouths a thank you. “Let’s go into one of the nurses’ rooms.”

They walk beside the back of a row of chairs where a young man with dirty blond hair and large lips is flicking through a magazine, his boots resting on the chair opposite. As they pass, Bridget gives him a shove on his shoulder. “Feet off!” she says near his ear, and while Jeanie is shocked that Bridget might be this rude to a patient, the man lifts his feet one by one off the seat and puts them on the floor. When Jeanie looks at him over her shoulder, the man gives her a grin—a wide, cheeky smile—and she hurries on.

In the nurses’ room, Bridget says, “Why didn’t you call me? Julius phoned and spoke to one of the women here who was opening up. I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t believe it.” She puts her hands either side of her face and opens her mouth, squashing her cheeks like a cartoon character. Jeanie wonders where Julius phoned from; perhaps he used Craig’s mobile. “Was it a stroke?” Bridget continues. “Oh, I hope it was quick.” She sits heavily on a swivel chair. “Was she taking her medication?”

Jeanie has forgotten how much and how fast Bridget can talk. Just listening makes her tired and she can’t help speaking in a voice that sounds as if she’s falling asleep. “I didn’t know she had any medication to take.”

“I bet she didn’t collect it from the chemist, did she? I kept telling her that it would be free because she’s over sixty. Was over sixty. Oh God. It wouldn’t have cost her anything.”

“Mum didn’t like being given things for free.” Jeanie sits on the chair beside the desk, the patient’s chair she supposes. Behind Bridget are rows of kitchen cupboards and in the corner a high bed similar to the one Jeanie was examined on. Being in this room is making her anxious. “I didn’t even know she was ill or had been to see the doctor.”

“Oh, my love,” Bridget says again, and leans forwards to touch Jeanie’s knee. “She’d had a couple of mini-strokes a month or so