3

The plate outside the surgery in Maindy Road said ‘Dr. Wilfred Graham, Dr. Anthony Laborde, Dr. Jennifer Marshal’ – and in smaller letters and clearly a later addition, ‘Dr. K. Dalpat’.

Whilst she waited to be attended to, Sergeant Montgomery’s wife, Florence, was passing the time discussing the merits of these medicos with the only other occupant of the waiting-room, Shazada Kahn. Mrs. Montgomery was forty-five. On the whole she had stood up pretty well to the delivery of five children: one born dead; two boys and two girls surviving; also to the occasional brutality of her husband. It was mainly verbal brutality, but it was cumulatively wearing and had begun to affect her health.

“The one I used to see,” she said, “was Dr. Graham, but I’m afraid he’s what you might call old-fashioned. When it comes to nerves he’s out of his depth entirely. Or perhaps,” with a smile, “he doesn’t think people like me ought to have nerves.”

Shazada smiled back politely. She was so apprehensive about what lay ahead that she could hardly take in anything Mrs. Montgomery was saying.

“So my husband said, why don’t you change to that woman doctor? That’s what women doctors are for, to look after other women, aren’t they? I didn’t agree with him there. No, I said, you go to a doctor because you think he can do you good. Dr. Laborde’s modern. You can tell that by the way he talks. He understands nerves. Ah well, I suppose you’ll be seeing Dr. Marshal.”

“No. I’m on Dr. Dalpat’s list.”

“Of course, dear. He’s from the same part as you, isn’t he?”

“Not quite,” said Shazada. She was used to the illusion that India was a small green patch on the map and that everyone in it knew everyone else. “Actually he’s a Punjabi. He comes from Rajkot.”

“And that’s different, is it?”

“It’s about a thousand miles south of the place we came from.”

“Well, fancy that.” All this was leading up to what Mrs. Montgomery really wanted to know. She said, “And what can it be that brings a young lady like you to the doctor? I’m sure you look a picture of health.”

Shazada was ready. She said, “It’s a cough. It comes on at night and keeps me awake.”

“They’ve got some very good cough mixtures in the chemists. I always use Dr. Blossom’s Lung Syrup. Have you tried it?”

“I don’t think I’ve tried that one, no.”

“Which one do you prefer then?”

“I’m not sure of its name. It’s dark brown and rather sticky.”

“And is that the only one you’ve tried?”

“So far, yes.”

“Well there now. If your cough really is troublesome, I should have thought you’d have shopped round until you found something that did do it some good.”

“Mrs. Montgomery,” said the nurse, putting her head through the hatchway from the dispensary. “Dr. Laborde will see you now.”

Shazada watched her departure with relief. It wasn’t that she was ashamed of what she was doing. Why should she be? She was doing it for Tim really, not for herself. And anyway dozens of her friends, girls at the school she had just left and girls at work, did it as a matter of course—

“Miss Kahn. Dr. Dalpat is free now. He has the room at the end of the passage, on the left.”

As the newest member of the medical firm, Dr. Dalpat had naturally been given the worst room. Its chief drawback was its smallness. There was hardly space for more than a desk and a chair and the patient was forced to sit on the same side as the doctor.

It would have been difficult enough to say what she had to say across the wide separation of a table. Sitting almost arm in arm made it much harder.

“Well, young lady,” said Dr. Dalpat, “what can I do for you? Let me see.” He shuffled some cards out of the filing cabinet under his left elbow. “Kahn. Bisset Street. Number 16. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Your father is Azam Kahn. Yes? He keeps the garage in Lyndoch Square. A fine mechanic. I take my car there when it makes improper noises. Just as he comes to me when his body behaves in the same way.”

Shazada smiled faintly.

“I see that I have patched up both of your brothers recently. Salim and Rahim. Right? They seem to spend much of their time fighting. Of course, all boys fight. But not girls. Girls fight only with their tongues. The scars that they leave are not visible. So what is it that I can do for—” he looked down at the card and then up at the girl—“the charming Shazada?”

Shazada took a deep breath. She said, “I want the pill.”

“That is a very imprecise way of talking about a medicament.” Dr. Dalpat grinned in a way which lifted his upper lip and showed his white teeth. “I have many dozen different sorts of pills. Pushy manufacturers send me lists of them every week. They assure me that they will deal with every conceivable human need. Now what particular ailment is it that is afflicting you?”

Shazada took another anguished breath. She said, “I want the pill for—I mean, the pill which prevents you from becoming pregnant.”

“I should have thought you were rather young to be married.”

“I’m—I’m not.”

“You’re not married?”

“No.”

Dr. Dalpat looked her up and down. She was, he saw, blushing. This made her look even more attractive. He said, “You realise that the pill you mention is designed for married women. Women who might not – for perfectly understandable reasons – wish for pregnancy at a particular time. They are not intended to encourage promiscuous sex. How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

“The person you should be discussing this with is your mother.”

“My mother is dead.”

Dr. Dalpat, who had their records on his desk in front of him, was aware of this. But he was enjoying the conversation too much to cut it short.

He said, “Your father then.”

“I couldn’t talk to him about “Why not?”

“He wouldn’t understand.”

“Or do you mean, perhaps, that he would understand only too well?”

Shazada had nothing to say to this. She only wanted him to stop talking and say whether she could have what she wanted.

Dr. Dalpat looked at her thoughtfully. He wondered what lucky boy was going to have this treat. It would be agreeable if he could extract one or two – well, one or two details.

He said, “I think I ought to know a little more about what your intentions are.”

“I can’t—”

“You have some definite plan then? Don’t be ashamed to discuss it. I am a doctor. I understand such things. Some boy has gone a certain distance with you and desires to go further.”

Shazada started to get up. It was going to be awkward, squeezing round the end of the desk, but she had to get out of the room.

Dr. Dalpat saw that he had gone too far. He took a form out of the drawer which was partly filled in, scribbled something on it and threw it at Shazada. He said, “Very well. If you want to go to the devil, young lady, I can’t stop you.”

When Mrs. Montgomery got back from the doctor’s she found, not entirely to her surprise, that her husband was not home. His relief, in which he was one of three sergeants and twenty constables, nominally did an eight-hour spell each day, but this was so organised that he could expect either two afternoons or an afternoon and an evening off on alternate weeks. This free time was liable to be interfered with by his special duty at the docks, or entirely abandoned if any of the frequent crises arose which afflicted the life of a policeman.

And his wife, thought Mrs. Montgomery. She was not bitter about it, but thought that when he did get an evening off he might occasionally devote it to her and the children.

He had pushed off after tea without any real explanation of his plans, but since she had seen him get into Drayling’s car which was parked at the end of the road, she had a fair idea that he was making for the Catford Greyhound Track.

She disliked Arthur Drayling for no more particular reason than that when, on a single occasion, he had come into their house he had spent most of his time enquiring about her disciplinary methods. Did she spank all the children when they were naughty, eh? And what did she use? A hairbrush or a slipper? When he had been a boy he had found that a hairbrush was more painful, ha, ha, particularly when trousers had been taken down. Mrs. Montgomery, who very rarely gave her children more than a cuff over the ear when she finally lost her temper, found this sort of talk distasteful.

Also she suspected that her husband was in Drayling’s debt. She guessed this, because the money lost on horses and greyhounds had not come out of the housekeeping. Her husband handed over the same amount as usual every Friday and seemed to have enough of his pay left for his normal drinking and smoking, which could only mean one thing. Someone must be financing his betting and if things went wrong this could produce a difficult situation.

She had a feeling that things had been going wrong lately.

She thanked the neighbour who had been keeping an eye on the kids while she was at the doctor, put on the kettle and settled down to the one sure palliative for all life’s ills, a cup of tea.

When her husband came back she could see that that afternoon, at least, had been successful. For once he was prepared to tell her something. He explained that a greyhound which he had been watching for some time had at last come good. “He was a lazy bastard,” said Monty. “Never exerted himself. Never showed his true form. Unplaced in six races. We had a feeling that seven was his lucky number. Put twenty quid each on him, at twenties. Four hundred smackers. What do you say to that?”

“I’d say it was time to stop.”

Her husband took this surprisingly well. He said, “And you might be right at that, love. The whole game’s as crooked as a corkscrew. I’ve got a feeling that this afternoon’s effort was rigged. They’d been holding this dog back to get the odds right. Giving him something in his feed most likely.”

“If it’s like that you ought to keep clear of it.”

“I can’t knock it off just yet, but one more like this afternoon and I’ll be in the clear and we’ll have something to celebrate. So what did the old medico say to you this afternoon?”

“He said I mustn’t worry so much.”

“Good advice.”

“And he gave me some pills. To make me sleep better at night.”

“I’m glad about that,” said her husband. “At the moment you thresh round so much you keep me awake. Or would do, if I wasn’t so bloody tired.”

“I had a talk with that Kahn girl. She was waiting to see the new doctor.”

“The Jabi?”

“That’s the one. And guess what she told me? Said she was seeing him because of a cough that was keeping her awake nights.” Mrs. Montgomery chuckled. “As if I didn’t know exactly what she wanted. A free handout of the pill. That’s what she was after.”

“Is that the one they call Shah? Sister of the boy I nicked. Rather a tasty little bint.”

“They’re all alike,” said Mrs. Montgomery. “Black, brown or yellow. All they think about is boys.”

“I wouldn’t mind a helping from that particular dish myself.”

“Get along with you. She wouldn’t have any use for you.”

“Oh, what makes you think that?”

“You’re the wrong colour and the wrong age. It’s some black kid just out of school who’s after her, I don’t mind betting.”

She would have lost her bet.

Shazada and Sapper Timothy Sunley were in each other’s arms with only a thin layer of straw between them and the rough planks of the stable loft. They were lying so tightly together that each could feel the other’s heart beating against its rib cage.

She had first seen him in the supermarket. She had been lucky to get a job there after leaving school at the end of that summer term. He was wearing faded blue jeans and a khaki polo-necked sweater and his hair, which he had forgotten to brush, tumbled in a wave over his forehead. She had thought he looked very nice. Tim was on a week’s leave. His platoon was currently mounting the guard at the Royal Arsenal. When the main part of the Arsenal moved away from London some bits had been left behind, including the Explosives Office and Laboratory and a number of Powder Magazines. These had to be guarded and platoons of the local Sapper Unit undertook this in turns.

When Tim had finished his shopping he had wheeled his trolley across to the tills. He had seemed to pick out the one where she was working. When he had smiled at her, her heart had jumped and then seemed to turn right over. After that matters had progressed rapidly.

They couldn’t meet every day, but they met whenever his tour of duty allowed him away from the Arsenal. His desire for her body had been so strong and so straightforward that it had both excited and scared her. The difficulty was finding somewhere they could be together and away from inquisitive eyes.

It was Shazada who had suggested the Old Farm. This was a derelict building on the far side of the track called Picquet Way, which ran north from behind Azam Kahn’s garage. She had sometimes walked up it on a Sunday, with her brothers. For a hundred yards it was a public way, serving a sports ground. After that it was barred by a steel fence and a gate and there was a notice stating that the road was private. It led only to the Proof Butts and Powder Magazines.

“Perfect,” said Tim. “No difficulty for you getting through the hedge on this side. I can come straight across from the Arsenal.”

“How?”

“Easy. Everyone in our section knows about it. It’s a sort of private back door. We use it when we don’t want to go out through the main gate. I’m sure we could find what we want in there.”

What they had found was the stable. It was all that was left of a building that had been destroyed by fire and abandoned fifty years before. The grounds were overgrown with interlaced laurels, elder, thorn, holly and yew, a mingling of the original garden with the invading wilderness. It formed a more effective barrier than the simple wire fence which surrounded it. They had reached the stable with scratched hands and faces. This had increased the excitement.

Well knowing the nosey habits of her family Shazada had persuaded Marlene, her best friend at the store, to alibi her. When she went out in the evening they started together to go to the pictures. Marlene left her when she was safely started up Picquet Way. She was older than Shazada and had her own opinion of Tim. What she thought was, a lot of prick and not much backbone, but she was too nice-minded to express it in such words.

Shazada had reached the stable three times without, as far as she knew, attracting attention. On each occasion Tim had become more insistent.

When she pushed him away, he let her go reluctantly.

He said, “Did you get them?”

“I took the first one yesterday. It was horrid.”

“I thought they didn’t taste?”

“I meant getting them was horrid. It was that new doctor. Doctor Dalpat.”

Tim laughed. “The boys call him Doctor Cowpat – did you know? So he was horrible?”

“Yes.”

“You mean he messed you about?”

“He didn’t touch me. It was the way he looked at me and the things he said. I think he wanted me to tell him all about you.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Of course not.”

Tim relaxed. He said, “I tell you what. I could get one or two of the boys in my section to help me and we could follow him when he comes out one evening and duff him up to teach him manners.”

“No. It’d only make trouble. Our family’s in bad with the police as it is – did you know?” But Tim wasn’t interested in her family. Shazada had all his attention.

“Did he say how long?”

“No. But I asked the chemist. He said a fortnight.”

“A fortnight. I can’t wait that long.”

“You’re rather jumping to conclusions, aren’t you?”

“Am I?”

“I never promised you anything.”

“But you will, won’t you?”

“I’ll think about it.”

He slid his arm round her waist, under her jersey and rucked it up. He could feel her body, warm and soft along the length of his arm. For a moment he wondered: if he insisted would she put up much of a fight? He had just enough sense not to try. He could wait a fortnight, just about, but no longer. It was keeping him awake at night.

He said, “You don’t think there’s anything wrong in it, do you?”

“I don’t know.”

“In your religion a man’s allowed four regular wives and any number of part-timers. It’s to make up for not being allowed to drink. Or that’s what I was told.”

“I expect you’ve been told a lot of funny things about us. Most of them lies, probably.”

“Like you say your prayers six times a day.”

“Our family gave most of that up when we came to England. But they go to midday service on Fridays. That’s just for the men. I’m glad I don’t have to go. It’s a long sermon, really.”

“What about?”

Shazada said, seriously, “It seems to be mostly about what happens if you break the law. Not your law, our law. The law of Islam.”

“What does happen?”

“After you’ve been buried, two angels visit you and ask you questions about how you’ve behaved. If your answers are all right, they carry you off to paradise. If you can’t answer, they torture you by making the earth press down on you.”

“But you don’t believe it, do you?”

“When I was young I did.”

“It’s all nonsense. Like the devil and hell-fire and things like that.”

“Are you sure that they are nonsense?”

For a moment Tim looked worried. Then he said, “Of course they are. No one believes in them nowadays.”

Picquet Way was not a thoroughfare and was only really used when the sports ground was open. On this occasion, as before, Shazada succeeded in reaching the end of it without being seen. As she slipped through the back entrance and into the yard of East London Motors she met her younger brother, Rahim.

He said, “Hullo Shah. Where have you been?”

“To the cinema, with Marlene. Not that it’s any business of yours.”

“Good film?”

Shazada was trying desperately to remember what was on at the local cinema when an interruption occurred. At the back of the yard their father had allowed the boys to build a sort of shack and had supplied some of the wooden planks which walled and roofed it. Salim emerged from it and said, “Hurry up, Ray. Late as usual. Where have you been?”

“Nowhere special. What’s up?”

“Mr. Lee-owny’s coming to see us.”

“What does he want?”

“I expect he wants to tell us all to behave ourselves. Me particularly.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” said Shazada shortly. She was fond of her elder brother and did not like the idea of him being in trouble.