Salem Street Read online

  Within a week, they had become Jeremy and Annabelle, and were spending most of their time together, unchaperoned, thanks to an Indian summer that tempted even old Mrs Parton to sit outside and doze or watch the ocean.

  Annabelle was no great beauty, which was a good thing, for that would have frightened Jeremy away, but she was slim, elegant and possessed of a great deal of charm, when she bothered to exert it. She was well read and showed a flattering interest in his chosen career. For her part, she found Jeremy fairly ordinary in looks, very tall and over-thin for her taste. His hair was an undistinguished light brown, his eyes were blue-grey and his complexion was pale. His only real beauty was his hands, which had long tapering fingers and were always clean and well-kept. They were wasted on a man, she thought idly, as she creamed her own one night.

  Within two weeks, Jeremy had decided to propose, which he duly did one night as they took the air after their evening meal.

  Annabelle clasped her hands together. “Oh, I didn’t expect – it’s so soon! Indeed, I don’t know what to say, Jeremy.”

  “Say yes!”

  “I should greatly like to, but, forgive me, are you in a position to support a wife, you being so newly qualified?” Her eyelashes fluttered upon her cheeks and a slight flush only enhanced her attractiveness. “Oh, I feel so embarrassed asking this, but since I have no father or brother to speak for me, I must be practical. Mama and I were not left well situated after Father’s death, I’m afraid, and I shall bring my husband very little.”

  “I have a private income of five hundred pounds per annum, savings to the tune of two thousand more and my parents’ furniture waiting in storage. And I shall start earning a living as soon as I find somewhere to put up my brass plate. I’m not a rich man, my dear, but we shall be comfortable, I promise you.”

  Her grey eyes, veiled in those long dark lashes, gave him no clue as to her feelings. He reached out to clasp her hand and she allowed this, but he heard her sigh.

  “What is it, my dearest?”

  “I’m a little worried about the difference in our ages, Jeremy. I’m nearly twenty-eight, you know, and you’re only twenty-four.”

  He laughed aloud. “And are these your only objections?”

  “I have no real objections,” she said in a low voice. “I’m just trying to be – to be practical and honest with you. Give me a moment or two to think as we stroll on.”

  She thought furiously as they walked. Her first engagement had ended several years previously with the sudden death of her fiancé. She had been annoyed about this, rather than heartbroken, because by that time all the other good catches in the neighbourhood had been snapped up. Her hopes had been raised again only two years ago by a gentleman visiting the district, a man rather older than herself, but with a comfortable fortune. The untimely death of her father and her mother’s insistence upon a year of strict mourning and sequestration had nipped that affair in the bud. Moreover, to Annabelle’s chagrin, it had been found that her father had left them less well provided for than they had expected and her suitor had never returned. They had been obliged to move to a smaller house, give up their carriage and live very quietly.

  She had hoped to marry someone of a higher status than a mere doctor, but she could no longer afford to be choosy. As Jeremy had some money of his own, they would not just be dependent upon his earnings and would be able to live in what she considered a reasonable style. And if anything happened to him, that same money would mean security for her.

  “What about your mother?” He felt it his duty to ask, though he did not like the prospect of Mrs Parton living with them.

  “I think she would be much happier in her own home, in the village she has lived in all her life.” Annabelle hid a smile as Jeremy sighed with relief.

  He had intended to look for a practice in a small country town, but Annabelle found out that a local doctor was seeking a partner and persuaded him to try Brighton, with which she had fallen in love. Jeremy found Dr Elmswood to be a very pleasant fellow and at that stage, he could refuse his new wife nothing.

  It took only six months of married life to disillusion Jeremy. In the beginning, Annabelle had kept her temper and tongue carefully under control. The first time he saw her in a rage, he was horrified at the vicious way she berated a hapless maidservant who had spilled tea upon her mistress’s skirt. Seeing his shock, Annabelle explained her temper away quickly, saying she had a dreadful headache, and took more care for a while. The servants could have told him a few tales, but he saw nothing untoward.

  Annabelle was an excellent, not to say parsimonious, manager and enjoyed from the first being mistress of her own house. The physical side of marriage came as an unpleasant shock to her, but she did her duty and counted it a price well paid for the pleasure of being a married lady and independent of her mother’s whims and vagaries. Jeremy, a warm and loving man, was disappointed at her lack of response to his careful love-making, but as his other encounters had been with women of the lower orders, he put Annabelle’s reactions down to her delicate breeding and tried not to force his attentions upon her too often. However, the near abstinence fretted him and made him irritable at times.

  At the end of six months Annabelle found herself to be pregnant. She did not mind the idea of a baby, because the world always pitied a woman without children. She was, however, very sickly, vomiting morning, noon and night, and she soon came to resent her condition most bitterly. No more cosy little tea parties with her lady friends, no more leisurely morning calls, no more elegant little soirées. Even before her condition began to show, her body could not be trusted not to disgrace her.

  All peace was at an end for Jeremy. She moved him out to another bedroom, and treated him and the servants to displays of temper and peevishness that gradually dispelled all his sympathy and sickened him. She made the servants’ lives a misery and twice dismissed maids for the merest trifles.

  A few weeks after the second dismissal, Jeremy saw the girl, destitute and offering her body for sale, when he was returning home one night after a late call.

  “Mary! What are you doing here?”

  Mary burst into tears and tried to run away, but he caught hold of her arm.

  “Can you find no other work?” he asked gently.

  “No, sir. And I did try, truly I did! But the mistress wouldn’t give me a reference an’ no one would take me on without.”

  “Oh.” He saw how white and thin she had become. “Are you hungry?”

  She nodded.

  “Do you know where we could buy you something to eat?”

  “Oh, sir!” She sobbed so bitterly that he put his arm round her to comfort her.

  Within a week, Jeremy had set Mary up as his mistress in a pleasant little room in a back street. He went through agonies of guilt at this, his first infidelity, but he was young and could not deny his sexual needs. And there was more to it than that. Mary’s simple warmth and frank enjoyment of their love-making was the only peace he found during Annabelle’s pregnancy. Without the release of that relationship, he soon realised, he could not have maintained the calm and kindly façade that he showed to Annabelle for the sake of the unborn child which he, at least, desperately wanted.

  During this period he became more and more dissatisfied with his job. Dr Elmswood ran a fashionable Brighton practice and it was tacitly understood that Jeremy was to take it over eventually. But the rich hypochondriacs and elderly attention-seekers who formed a large part of the clientele only irritated Dr Lewis and he longed to offer his skills to people who really needed them. He suggested setting up a free clinic for the needy, but Dr Elmswood instantly vetoed this. Such a thing would harm the practice! Rich patients did not like to think that their doctor had come straight to them from the filth and diseases of the poor.

  Fifteen months after their marriage, Annabelle was delivered, with much screaming and protesting, of a tiny daughter. To Jeremy’s disgust she insisted on hiring a wet-nurse and would have little to do wi
th her infant. When the baby was two months old she was christened Marianne Louise at an elaborate ceremony, which heralded Annabelle’s re-entry into polite society. After the guests had left, seeing his wife in a good mood for once, Jeremy put his arm round her. “Perhaps we could now begin to share a bedroom again, my dear?”

  She turned on him like a she-wolf, throwing his arm off and moving quickly behind a small table in case he tried to paw her again. “No! Never again! I’ll run your house for you, I’ll entertain your friends and I’ll bring up your child, but if you so much as lay a finger on me in that way, I’ll scream and fight every inch of the way!” Her tone was calm, yet vicious, as she added, “You wouldn’t like that, Jeremy, I know you! And I’d make sure that everyone heard about it, too.”

  He bowed his head, knowing that she had gauged his weaknesses correctly. He could never have taken a woman by force and even less could he have borne to have it known that he had to force his attentions on his own wife.

  “I was very ill when I was carrying the child,” went on that hard voice, “and the birth was a painful and degrading experience. I do not intend to repeat it.”

  Apart from the nausea, she had been reasonably well and had produced a healthy child, but if she wished to hide behind that pretence, he was not the man to stop her. “Very well. As you choose.” It was not the denying of her bed which hurt him, but the denying of other children.

  For another eighteen months Jeremy Lewis continued to work in Brighton, sustained by the thought of Marianne, the little daughter whom he adored and for whom nothing was too good. There was also Mary and even the occasional patient who was genuinely ill. At the end of that time Dr Elmswood took him into his study and told him frankly that he would not do in such a practice.

  “Your heart’s not in it, man! And the clients can tell. Oh, they respect your medical expertise, but they don’t enjoy your visits.” He looked at Jeremy across the desk. “And they want to enjoy their doctor’s attentions. They pay very highly for that privilege.”

  “They’re fakes!” said Jeremy, glad now that matters had been brought to a head.

  “But fakes who pay well. Fakes upon whom our living depends. And if I’m to retire on a part share in this practice, then I wish the practice to go on thriving.” He sighed, for he had no desire to hurt his young colleague. “Jeremy, you’re a good doctor, very good. You’ve a lot to offer humanity. Find yourself a real practice, somewhere where you’ll be needed and where you can enjoy your work. Never mind that wife of yours! Think of yourself for a change.”

  “You’re asking me to leave?”

  “Yes. I’m afraid so. I’ll repay your partnership fees. I can easily find someone else to buy in. There’s no hurry. Take your time. Look around. Find something that really suits you. You’ll be grateful to me for this one day.”

  Jeremy sat there for a few minutes, his eyes on the floor. His first feelings of rejection and failure were giving way to a sense of elation. To find a really worthwhile job! To do what he was trained for! He couldn’t believe that this was at last possible. Annabelle would be furious, but even she could do nothing about it if Dr Elmswood asked him to leave. He took a deep breath. “You won’t change your mind?”

  “No. No chance of it. I didn’t think you’d want me to!”

  “I don’t! But Annabelle will take some convincing.”

  “You can rely on me to make the facts very plain to her,” said the older man sympathetically. Neither he nor his wife could stand Mrs Lewis, with her airs and graces and her sly wheedling ways, and he thought it a pity that Jeremy had saddled himself with her.

  “Then I’ll admit that you’re right,” Jeremy told him. “This is not the right place for me. And – thank you for putting it so nicely.”

  “I told you. You’re a good doctor. You’re wasted here.”

  To say that Annabelle would be furious had been a gross underestimation of her reaction to the news. She ran the whole gamut of rage, hysterics, bitter accusations and threats of retribution. She also managed to rouse Jeremy to an equal fury for the first time in their married life, to the surprise of them both.

  In the end he slapped her face to bring her out of the hysterics, then sat her down forcibly in a chair. “For three years I’ve tried it your way!” he shouted, wagging his finger in her face. “Three years of hating my work, hating the fat, self-satisfied fools who waste my time with their imaginary illnesses! Now we’ll try it my way. I’m going to find myself a real practice and we’re going to leave Brighton and live there, wherever it is!”

  She opened her mouth to protest.

  “Not another word!” he roared in her face. “I haven’t finished yet! We should never have got married. I’ve known that for a long time. Presumably you married me for the security, but I married you in the mistaken belief that we loved one another, and it’s been a bitter disappointment to me that you seem unfamiliar with that emotion. Well, we’re stuck with each other now, for better, for worse, and we have no one to blame for it but ourselves.”

  He stared at her so inimically that she flinched. “I’ll do my best to give you the sort of life you want, Annabelle, and I’ll leave your precious body alone – and that will be no penance, for you’ve little joy to offer to a man – but …” he paused and scowled down at her, “I intend to choose my own practice this time. If that doesn’t suit you, you can go back to live with your mother and I’ll not prevent you, though Marianne stays with me, of course. And that, madam, is my final word!” He turned and strode out of the room, slamming the door behind him to emphasise his point.

  Annabelle sank back into the armchair and gave herself up to a hearty bout of sobbing. She couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her elegant little terraced house and carefully-chosen circle of friends. She loved everything about Brighton, the visitors who brought life and variety, the beauty of the sea, the drives along the coast. She knew she could never be happy anywhere else.

  During the next few days she tried several less direct approaches to Jeremy, exerting every ounce of charm, short of allowing him back into her bed, to make him change his mind. But he remained adamant. Weak he might be in some ways, but when driven into a corner, he could be a very stubborn man. In desperation she even went to call on Dr Elmswood, to beg him to make Jeremy see sense, but although he was as polite to her as ever, the senior partner was not to be moved.

  During the next two months Jeremy made several journeys across the country to inspect practices that were for sale. He tried at first to find somewhere near Brighton, for Annabelle’s sake, but soon realised the futility of that. The area was already over-supplied with doctors. It was by sheer chance that he met a businessman from Bilsden at a hotel in London. It seemed that the Lancashire town, which he’d never even heard of before, completely lacked a modern, well-trained doctor. As he questioned Frederick Hallam further, Bilsden began to seem a distinct possibility and one, moreover, where he would not have to buy into an established practice but could just put up his shingle and start practising.

  Jeremy travelled up to Lancashire the following week and Frederick introduced him to some of the more influential citizens, who were equally encouraging about the prospects in Bilsden and who readily promised their future patronage. The only one to whom he did not take was the parson, an old-fashioned gentleman named Kenderby, who had no sympathy for the poorer members of his flock and who displayed a dogmatic arrogance even when talking with his peers.

  In between meeting people, Jeremy wandered round the streets and marvelled at the squalor that lived cheek by jowl with wealth in the town. Claters End was as bad as anything he’d seen in Edinburgh during his training, and although the Rows were a little better, the people who lived there seemed pale and stunted in growth. But they had a friendliness and directness about them that he found very taking.

  Behind the High Street, on a gently rising slope, stood several commodious villas and some terraces of larger houses, each with its own narrow strip of garden, bef
ore and behind, for people of the better sort. Here, he thought, he might make his home, near enough to those who needed him most, but not too close to the unhealthy crowding of the Rows, for he had Marianne to think about. Annabelle, he knew, would prefer to live up on top of the Ridge, where people like his patron, Frederick Hallam, lived in great mansions, but she would be disappointed. He must be nearer to his work than that and besides, he would never be a rich enough man to build a mansion.

  Yes, he thought, as he packed his things on the last night, by most people’s standards Bilsden was ugly, dominated as it was by tall chimneys belching black smoke, and consisting mainly of terraces of mean huddled houses. But to him, Bilsden was beautiful, because the people needed him, needed him badly. He could not wait to start work there.

  Before he left he set in motion the purchase of a largish house near a newly-created park, recently gifted to the town by Frederick Hallam in memory of his father. The price of the house seemed ridiculously low after Brighton prices and there was a builder in nearby Rochdale who would be delighted to erect a new wing for him, where he could have a proper dispensary and receive his patients without disturbing Annabelle. He even found time to order brass plates to be made for the wall outside: Dr Jeremy Lewis, Surgeon and Physician.

  Annabelle, surly and shrewish, took to her bed at the news and informed her husband that she was too ill to move at present.

  “Then the servants shall pack for us,” Jeremy retorted, “for I’ve given notice and we must be out of this house by the end of the month.” He had regained his good humour now that he had a purpose in life and he refused to be shaken from it by anything Annabelle said or did. For him, the month could not pass quickly enough. He tried to be as kind to her as he could, but he was unable to hide his excitement and happiness about the move, and that galled her.