Work Text:
She couldn’t manage the steps up to the front door. Marcus had to carry her up them. They laughed about it, Marcus joking about carrying his lovely wife over the threshold, but Bernie felt humiliated. None of this was right. Everyone was so happy she was home. Charlotte came to the hospital with Marcus to collect her, then had insisted on sending her father away for half an hour while she straightened her mother’s hair and bundled her into a heavy cardigan (“Mum, it’s February and you’re used to the desert”) before dashing off again to bring the car round to the pickup point to collect her parents. Bernie knew how much Charlotte was looking forward to driving her mother for the first time. Cameron was at home preparing afternoon tea. He helped her with her coat then ceremonially ushered her into the dining room while lah-lah-ing the theme from “Fawlty Towers”. Her sister, Deborah, had visited the house the day before to help Marcus and Charlotte turn the sitting room into a temporary den for Bernie with warm throws, audiobooks and a tea tray to hand. She’d generously stumped up for an inexpensive laptop for Bernie, explaining over the phone to her that she’d thought Bernie may want to Skype her “army pals”. Even John and Thelma, the older couple next door, wanted to welcome their wounded heroine home: John had left a beautiful pot of fragrantly blooming early spring bulbs from his greenhouse for her while Thelma, whose cooking was legendary on the avenue, brought two casseroles and an apple crumble. Everyone was pleased. Everyone except Bernie herself.
It wasn’t that she didn’t love her family. Cam and Charlotte were everything to her. Deborah – Del - while annoying in the lofty way only a big sister can be had always been there for her, even when she thought Bernie’s decisions were wrong. She’d given her opinion, then had loyally supported Bernie through whatever consequences befell her. Marcus, kind, dependable Marcus, was an excellent father and a caring, if sometimes slightly needy, husband. Yes, she loved them. It was just that it wasn’t her home, it was Marcus’s and the children’s. Bernie had liked and respected her mother-in-law and had sincerely mourned her passing, but Virginia Dunn had always been the woman of the house. Bernie had never felt able to move into the role, even when Virginia was no longer there. This occasion was no different, worse probably because her presence was now permanent. However, she rose to it like she always did, being pleased with and interested in everything. She didn’t cry until much, much later when she was certain Marcus was fast asleep.
As the days passed she started to feel better. With her body and mind still recovering from both trauma and surgery her energy levels were depleted but as a doctor she knew that was to be expected. She also knew she was making good progress. She could shower and care for herself completely independently now. She still had to take stairs carefully but she was no longer using the walking stick around the house. The physiotherapist was satisfied with how things were going. The surgical wounds were healing very well and she only needed pain medication on the odd occasion, usually if she pushed herself too much. The mornings were the worst. It took so much effort to gather herself to face the day. How messed up was that? She was alive, she was not paralysed and she was going to get better. She was back home in England with a family who loved her and who she loved in return, yet she felt utterly isolated. She knew what a close call it had been, how lucky she was compared to so many of the poor souls she had treated in the field. She was damaged and weakened but essentially intact. The shell was healing, and healing well, it was the Berenice Wolfe who inhabited it that was adrift and directionless.
She found her way back by an unexpected means a week after her discharge from hospital. Marcus was at work, Charlotte had returned to university and Cameron had been away since the day before, doing whatever it was he was doing at the moment. Bernie had not quite got to the bottom of that yet. It was wet, cold and miserable outside, not at all the weather for a cautious walk to the local shops and back or a turn around the park, so she was in the house on her own. She’d completed the crossword in today’s newspaper, done some gentle housework (bugger the risk of Marcus noticing and telling her off when he got in, she was going mad doing nothing), read a couple of research papers online, made and eaten a sandwich and watched the one o’clock news. She was now at a loose end. She was just considering braving the rain and going for a short walk when her phone pinged. It was Del. She opened the message.
Del: Thought you might like to see this. HGH 1979. Gaynor Barrett, was Ryman, posted it.
She’d included a link to a Youtube video.
Bernie: Thanks. Good timing. Bored stiff.
Del: Enjoy.
Bernie clicked on the link and watched as an obviously old 8mm film began to play, all exaggerated colours and faintly blurred shapes. The opening bars of the Isley Brothers’ “Summer Breeze” trilled from her phone. A green signboard with gold lettering appeared on the screen:
HODNETT GROVE HALL
Boarding and Day School for Girls 11-18
Headmistress: Jean M. Ranger M.A.
Their old school.
Bernie saw a few seconds of a netball match. She recognised the faces of the players in the school colours but could only put names to two of them, Kezia Monckton and Stephanie Lant. They were all older girls from the established elite netball squad. They would have been her sister’s contemporaries, sixteen-year-old fifth formers, when the film was taken if it was the summer of 1979. Bernie was finishing third year then and Del had just taken her O levels and was about to move into the Sixth Form that coming September. Next came footage of the annual garden party. Bernie tapped her phone and stopped the video to scour the crowd for her parents but did not see them. The camera lingered on Gaynor Ryman and her mother, understandably, then Bernie found herself smiling at her friend Joanne Graham’s younger sister Penelope poking her tongue out at the camera over the top of a large ice cream cone. She smiled even more as the slightly eccentric art teacher, Mrs Walden-Loos, appeared to have difficulty fending off a persistent bee. Poor old “Toilet” was always the butt of the girls’ humour yet appeared eternally oblivious to that fact. There followed scenes of older girls relaxing in the gardens after their exams, of Jenny Hislop of Year 4 winning the 800 metres, of some of the older girls – Del included – and a group of boys in St. Columba’s uniforms waving at a steam train on the heritage line that ran along one edge of the grounds. As the end of the video approached Bernie saw Miss Ranger, the headmistress, shake hands with Rosemary McDougal, the departing head girl. The camera then panned to the smiling new incumbent, Christine Baker-Norris, and the film abruptly ended. Bernie wondered briefly if there was a reason behind this, then remembered how little time you could actually film for on an old 8mm reel. She stared at her phone for a moment (“up next, Rochester Castle 1976”) then closed the app.
Bernie had liked school, mostly. The routine and the clear expectations had suited her and she’d enjoyed learning very much. An unusually observant girl, she had realised almost immediately on starting year one that the way to navigate school life with the minimum amount of stress was to be unremarkable in all ways. She was competent on the sports field without being anything special and was reassuringly average at practical and creative subjects. Neither her wit nor her looks really became evident until she was halfway through the sixth form so she had very few issues socially; pecking orders had been firmly established long before she could have been considered a threat to any status-conscious peer’s position. She dealt with her exceptional academic ability by treating it as if it was of no consequence, never sharing her marks and making sure not to be caught reading or studying outside of prep time. The more school years she went through the more private she became. She knew how things could be if she wasn’t. She learned that at the end of her third year from what happened to Christine Baker-Norris.
Bernie’s phone pinged, distracting her from the familiar cold screw of anxiety twisting in her stomach. It was her sister again.
Del: Watched it?
Bernie: Yes.
Del: Lots of the old gang there.
Bernie: Yrs, not mine.
Del: U see Ranger + old Toilet? Ha ha!
Bernie: Yes.
Del: + CBN? Remember the scandal?
Bernie: Yes.
Del: Mother went mad!!
Bernie: Yes.
Del: B/hell sis, is it Short Answer Tuesday??
Bernie: We r txting.
Del: Can I ring u?
Bernie: Later pse, abt 2 do physio.
This was a lie. Bernie had completed her prescribed exercises for the day before lunch. Dishonesty was nothing to be proud of, but thank god she was so good at it. She didn’t want to talk to her sister about the scandal. She didn’t want to listen yet again to Del rehashing the tales and lurid gossip of three and a half decades previously. She didn’t want to remember her mother’s disgust. She buried her face in her hands as the well-worn parade of memories marched through her head yet again.
Del was on the telephone in the hall talking to her best friend Nicola Wells. Bernie, aged fourteen, was in the sitting room, ignoring the phone call as she was immersed in reading “Wuthering Heights” for the first time. Del’s voice suddenly shot up in volume and pitch, breaking into Bernie’s awareness.
“What? NO! Who was it? NO! Really? I’d never have guessed! Who told you? Oh, your mum, of course. Letters home? Shit, they must be rattled. I can’t believe this, I really can’t. Who else knows? Oh right. Look, if I ring Tracey and Philippa will you call Sue and Jackie? Yep, after dinner, ok? Right, talk to you later.”
Bernie wondered vaguely what drama Del was involving herself in this time, then returned to “Wuthering Heights”. There were only five days remaining of the summer holidays and she wanted to finish it before term began again.
The following morning Del went to town. Shortly before eleven their grandmother dropped in. That was nothing unusual. She and Bernie’s mother had their coffee in the kitchen, not the sitting room. That was out of the ordinary. Bernie and Del had worked out some time previously that they only did that when they wanted to discuss something they didn’t want the girls overhearing. Unfortunately for Bernie’s mother this particular morning it was Bernie’s turn to polish the silver. She was working silently away at it at the dining room table and could hear every word the adults were saying through the closed serving hatch.
“I don’t know what to do for the best, Mum,” Bernie heard her mother saying. “I want to take the girls out, but Robert won’t hear of it with Deborah’s A levels.”
“I agree with him,” her grandmother replied. “You won’t get her into a proper school this late in August. It’s a complete overreaction.”
“Overreaction!” cried Bernie’s mother. “Mum, one sniff of something like this could ruin their prospects!”
“Oh don’t be so melodramatic Pamela,” Bernie’s grandmother said. “None of this has anything to do with Deborah or Berenice.”
“But that letter -”
“The letter simply said that term will be starting one day later than previously stated. Anything else is else is word of mouth and therefore hearsay. It may not even be true.”
“Oh it’s true alright. I rang Deborah’s friend Nicola’s mother. She’s on the Board of Governors. She came out with some rather fuzzy tale about plumbing. I asked her about the rumours the Baker-Norris girl had left and she said she’d changed schools suddenly due to personal circumstances and a new head girl would be appointed at the beginning of the new term. I think we can infer from that that it’s true. I hope the other party has gone too, I don’t want that kind of influence around the girls.”
“It’s as plain as day that Deborah is a perfectly normal, healthy sixteen-year-old, and Berenice never takes her nose out of a book long enough to notice anything,” said Bernie’s grandmother.
Even at fourteen Bernie was aware that she tended to notice things others didn’t, so she felt this was unfair. It did seem that this time she had missed something though. In the kitchen her mother was still in full flow.
“I don’t understand how the school could have let this happen,” Bernie heard her say.
“Well I very much doubt they actively encouraged it, but it’s not something that can be completely avoided in an all-female environment. You used to see it during the war more than you might have expected. It happens.”
“Not to my girls it doesn’t!” Bernie had never heard her contained, cultivated mother sound so harsh. “Hodnett’s need to make sure this disgusting episode isn’t repeated. Those poor parents. Imagine finding out you have that under your roof!”
Young Bernie may have been bookish and somewhat introverted, but she was not naïve. She suddenly realised what the adults were discussing, what Del and Nicola had been talking about with such shocked delight. She approached her sister as soon as she returned from town.
“What did Nicola tell you on the phone last night?”
“Big girl stuff,” said Del.
“Don’t fuck me about Del, just tell me.”
“Woah, calm down little sis. OK, Christina Baker-Norris got expelled. It seems she and Rachel Straker were having it away. You know they both got picked up by their parents two days before the end of term, well the chicken pox thing was a lie, they’d been caught in bed together. Ranger hushed it up. It’s come out now though, Nic overheard her mum and dad talking about it. Everyone knows”
The word “expelled” started to repeat itself in Bernie’s head. “Expelled. Expelled”. Another voice countered that with “it wasn’t you. It wasn’t you. It wasn’t you”.
“Bloody hell,” she said. “That’s – that’s -”
“It’s hilarious,” grinned Del. “Just think about it a minute -”
“I don’t want to think about it,” Bernie snapped. This was not true. She wanted to think about it very much, for more than one reason.
It wasn’t you. It wasn’t you.
Del’s eyes narrowed.
“Why so wound up, little sis?”
Bernie had anticipated a question like this and had an answer prepared.
“Because Mum was telling Granny this morning that she wanted to move us from Hodnett’s. I don’t want to move. I want to do as well as I can and get really good O levels and A levels and go to medical school. I don’t want that screwed up because of what someone else does.”
“Yeah, that would be fucking crap, wouldn’t it,” Del agreed. “It’s still funny though. Philippa and I were talking about it yesterday. We were trying to decide which one was the man.”
Expelled.
It wasn’t you. It wasn’t you.
Bernie noticed she was starting to hyperventilate. She could feel pins and needles in her hands. This was stupid. Thirty-eight years had passed since those two unfortunate girls were spirited away from school. She herself was a grown woman, an educated, highly qualified professional whose skills were in great demand. She was married with two adult children. Her credentials were faultless.
Weren’t they?
It wasn’t you (Alex’s face). It wasn’t you (Alex’s eyes).
Expelled (Alex’s hands. No, no . . .).
Bernie made a conscious effort to slowly and deliberately moderate her breathing. She had to stop this. She had to regain control. Control was the only thing that stood between her and what happened to Christina and Rachel all those years ago. She’d already slipped up once, but she could salvage this, be in charge again. It was almost like the IED had been a warning, showing her how fragile her reality had become, how dangerous being Alex’s lover was. She hadn’t responded well to being without Alex. She had allowed herself to become weak and aimless without the strength or the energy to keep up the discipline necessary for self-preservation. Well not anymore. She needed to be herself again. She couldn’t go back to the RAMC, but she was still a doctor and a bloody good one, far too good for any civilian hospital to pass up. She was almost certain Holby City Hospital wouldn’t.
Invigorated by the decision she switched on the laptop Del had given her. While it was booting up she opened her bag and retrieved the envelope containing the forms and job description Jac Naylor had given her. She sat down at the laptop, opened Word, clicked on a CV template and began to type.