The Old Girls' Network. Judy Leigh
of the driver over the microphone. The hotel had been plain and lacklustre, the food bland, as bland as the other holiday makers. All those sedentary pensioners with their afternoon cups of weak tea, listening to Frankie Vaughan singing songs about the moonlight, and their non-stop chatter about knitting patterns when she’d wanted to go outside in the brisk air, hiking along the coastal paths.
Barbara wondered what she had been expecting, but the holiday hadn’t delivered anything. She’d set out in the early morning wind and trekked along a muddy path for three miles, dragging a complete stranger behind her, a poor woman called Dorothy, who moaned about her bunions and about being a widow and how hard it was to go on holiday alone. Barbara had to turn back long before she was ready.
Barbara might be seventy-seven, but there was life in the old girl yet. And yet, suddenly, sadly, now there wasn’t. She had slipped down the steps in a faint, a suitcase in each hand, her heart beating too fast and then – nothing. White lights blazed above her. Blindingly white, like the angels at Damascus. Heaven? Surely not – Barbara didn’t believe in heaven, so of course it didn’t exist. White ceilings. A person in shining white clothes, with a halo around her head. Barbara groaned. ‘Who are you? Where am I?’
A firm voice replied. ‘Try to rest. You’re in the hospital, Mrs Harvey.’
‘Miss,’ Barbara grunted and fell back into drowsiness. At least she wasn’t dead, not yet.
When she opened her eyes, she was aware of a young man in a white coat moving around the room. He was writing something on a clipboard, peering across at her slyly. Barbara called out, ‘Hello.’ She was surprised at how croaky her voice sounded. She tried to sit up, and immediately she felt better. She tried her voice again, deliberately adding boom to it. ‘Are you a nurse?’
She frowned at the young man. He couldn’t be more than twenty: he still had teenage spots on his cheeks. He had dark hair, large ears, and huge hazel eyes. She couldn’t read his name badge. He coughed and murmured something back. Barbara had no idea what he’d just said. ‘Speak up, can’t you, young man?’ Her voice had almost regained its resonance.
‘The doctor is come soon,’ he muttered in an accent which could have been Italian or Spanish, and then he shuffled away. Barbara put a hand to her head. There was a rounded bump on the crown, a tender spot, presumably where she’d fallen. Her shoulder ached a little, but otherwise she felt fine. She gazed around her. She was in a small hospital room. Overhead there were fluorescent lights, blinding white against a blank ceiling. The paint on the walls was pale and grubby. Next to her bed there was a cabinet with shelves. She wriggled around in the bed to see if there was anything of interest in the rest of the room. There wasn’t. She breathed out. At least she wasn’t in a populated ward. She had been in hospital once before, in 1953, to have her tonsils out. She had been thirteen; they’d put her in a ward full of sallow ancient women, all trussed up like Egyptian mummies. She had hated it.
She pushed back the starched sheet which held her body tight as a shroud, and swung her legs across the bed, testing her feet against the floor. She felt better. The dizziness had gone. She glanced down at herself; her bony arms stuck out from a pale night dress, a flimsy one that had seen better days and wasn’t even fit for a jumble sale. It had small white flowers on it, the print a relief in the pale blue material. Barbara thought it was ghastly and raked the room with her eyes for her own clothes. She sighed, a sharp, irritated exhaling of breath: her clothing was presumably folded away in the shelved cabinet, probably not tidy and certainly unwashed. She fixed her eyes on a sash window, heaved herself up and away from the bed and moved across the room to look outside.
The window frame was dingy, the paint chipped. She gazed out, across at buildings, roofs: a supermarket sprawled on the other side of the road and cars were crawling along, stopping at red traffic lights and inching forwards. She assumed she must be on the third floor. The sky was pale grey, sombre and cloudless, a cold March day. She folded her arms and sighed again. She longed for some fresh air. The room was too warm and unbearably stuffy.
The door opened behind her and a woman walked in, wearing a white coat, her light brown hair clipped back into a roll behind her head. She was fair skinned, freckled, probably in her thirties. She gestured to the end of the bed. Barbara sat down facing her and said ‘Hello.’
The woman in the white coat didn’t smile. She had a serious frowning face. ‘Mrs Harvey?’
Barbara didn’t smile either. ‘I’m Miss Harvey. I can’t abide this “Ms” business. It’s neither one thing nor the other, is it? Are you a doctor? When can I go home?’
The doctor clipped the stethoscope into her ears and approached Barbara, making a soft humming noise and muttering, ‘I’m Dr North, and I’m here to check you over,’ then pulling the low neck of her blue robe to one side, listening to her heart beat. Barbara was unimpressed. The doctor hadn’t asked permission or even spoken to her properly. She forced her lips together in a grimace.
‘I’m perfectly well, Doctor. I don’t know what I’m doing here. This is just a waste of both our time.’
Dr North frowned, put slim fingers to Barbara’s wrist and seemed thoughtful. She picked up the clipboard and turned to one side.
Barbara said, ‘Well? I’m waiting, Doctor. When can I go home?’
The doctor met her eyes. ‘You are in your late seventies. You’ve had a fall. You were suffering from hypotension.’
‘I agree with you on the first two counts, Doctor. I know how old I am, and I know I had a tumble. Why don’t you just tell me that I’m all right now and I’ll go straight home?’
‘I’m afraid that’s not possible yet. There are many reasons for low blood pressure. We need to run a few tests.’
Barbara leaned forward, chin thrust out, as if she was about to argue with someone who had sold her shoddy goods. ‘What reasons? What tests?’
The doctor’s face remained impassive. She clearly lacked the ability to feel any emotions. Barbara thought she should be able to show empathy, at least, in her job. She wished she wasn’t wearing the silly pale robe. She’d be more dignified in clothes and certainly the doctor would be able to tell that she wasn’t to be argued with if she had on a tailored suit and some court shoes, her hair properly brushed and not flattened at both sides by the pressure of the pillow.
‘Hmmm.’ Dr North was thoughtful. Barbara folded her arms. For the first time, the doctor met her eyes. ‘You had a fall, Barbara. It has to be checked out thoroughly. At any age, but particularly with the elderly.’ She ignored Barbara’s glare. ‘We have to make sure there are no underlying factors: heart problems, endocrine problems.’
‘My heart is fine. And my endocrine system functions perfectly. I’d been on holiday, overdoing things a bit. Now I’m back I can put my feet up.’ The doctor was paying no attention, so Barbara tried again. ‘I can sit at home drinking tea and reading pointless romance novels.’
‘Is there any one at home who can be on hand? A partner? Children?’
‘I have no children, Doctor,’ Barbara said between clenched teeth. ‘And as for a partner, I loathe dancing. If you mean, do I have a husband or do I live in sin with a man or a woman, the answer is no, I’m by myself.’ Doctor North’s face remained immobile so Barbara added, ‘I prefer it that way,’ just for clarity.
The doctor nodded, like she was dismissing an irritating child. ‘We’ll run a few tests. You’ll be here for a couple of days. Is there anyone we can contact?’
Barbara thought of Pauline, how she might panic, take the first train from Somerset and then fly into the waiting room, all fumbling fingers and flushed cheeks, her voice high and shrieking, flapping her elbows like a chicken and causing an unnecessary fuss.
‘No. No one at all.’
The doctor nodded again and moved to the door, pressing the handle, then she was gone and Barbara was alone. She stared down at her bare feet, the long legs dangling below the hemline of the thin robe. She put her