CHAPTER 5
It was a good Summer, one I will always remember. It was surprising how quickly the money went, with a car for Roland, the clearance of our debts, and the new things for home and girl, but at last we were on an even footing, and with the steady wages that both adults were now bringing to our life we were as comfortable as we could ever have hoped. And Serge was gone. The first thing Maman had done was to seek out a new medical centre for us, and on the day she insisted I go with her rather than travel alone.

The bus made its way into the port against a tidal flow of cars with their drivers in the wrong seats, heading who-knew-where, and I was using them as a distraction. That bicycle: where would they ride it, and how far? That tent: how safe could one be in such a flimsy thing? Distraction, indeed, for I was in a skirt, as had become normal for me, but this time the people we were to see were official.

I wonder if there is somewhere a plan or pattern for the waiting areas in such places. I haven’t seen that many, but they have all been the same: semi-comfortable or actively uncomfortable chairs, old journals of a sort I have never seen on sale in any shop I have visited, posters advising of illnesses I had thus far been unaware of (so many of them relating to sexual activity)…I found myself giggling as a thought struck me.

“What amuses you, dear one?”

“Sorry, Maman, but I was thinking of what the Father says, about purgatory, looking around this place”

She smiled, catching my reference. “Yes, Sophie, and it may be either place that awaits us beyond that door. Let us pray for higher things, yea?”

I winced. “He may not let me?”

She turned in her seat, and took both of my hands. “Heaven or Hell indeed, my sweet, but remember that Hell for you would also be Hell for myself, and for Rollo, so we will not let that be. We are a family, are we not? Remember what Dumas wrote?”

I tried to look dismissive. “Boys’ books, no?”

She laughed. “And you never devoured them as a child? There is a lot of rubbish written about books, of how they are somehow masculine or feminine, but a good story is a good story, and that man wrote some excellent ones. And you…”

She leant closer and dropped her voice. “My little one, Serge is you and always will be. You will grow, you will be my Sophie, but all of your past lives on with her. You do not have to kill yourself, nor amputate parts of your soul, to be her, for you always were that person. I will have my child, just dressed more prettily, no?”

“Serge Laplace room 3a”

As we stood my mother was muttering to herself, and I caught only part of it, the one about the daughter of a dog that would receive a slap, but she reined in the anger and took my hand again. As we carried the little bottle I had been asked to fill. Room 3a was down a short corridor, where we waited on more oddly-built chairs until the door opened and a small elderly man exited. The doctor stood at the door for a second, holding a small bundle of papers. He looked from them to me, and back again, sighed, and then gave a fleeting smile of politeness before waving us in.

“Not the usual sort of teenaged boy problem, I see. Shall I assume this is no passing charade?”

He sat us down, bringing another chair over for Maman, made a couple of short notes, I assumed time and date, then looked up at me over half-moon glasses.

“So, let us remove the conventional opening, then. What name do you wish me to call you?”

For a second or two I couldn’t answer, but Maman patted my knee and nodded. I gathered my strength. Heaven or Hell. “Sophie…”

“Well, Sophie, welcome to our little place on the edge of the sea. I noticed from your notes that your previous experiences in the beautiful city to the South have been mostly physical injuries. Now, I will ask this only once, and you do not have to tell me, but would those injuries have been received in connection with what I now see before me?”

“Well, yes, I suppose so. I was never…”

The words left me as the memories of the other doctors came back, and the few times I had been taken to the hospital directly. My mother squeezed my knee and leant forward.

“She has been beaten more times than she has told me, Doctor. I have washed her clothes, I have seen the marks of the blood she has tried to wash out, I have repaired the tears she has not managed to fix before I could see”

She looked at me, and her eyes were moist. “This has largely come about because of a torn shirt, has it not? I mean that this is now in the open, and we have a brighter future ahead. Or so we hope”

The doctor looked back at the notes and wrote something else there. “These beatings: other students?”

Maman almost snarled. “Not always. There was that drunken sot of a husband, till he went away with his whore---excuse me, Doctor. Mostly boys at her school, but often her father”

The man stared at me for a moment of silence far longer than I expected, and then in a very quiet voice asked one question.

“Your father, child: was it beatings alone?”

Maman’s eyes went wide. “Sophie, did he…? Ever?”

I knew exactly what they meant, of course, and with two pairs of eyes steady on me I answered that, no, it had only been fists, and feet, and stones, and his belt, never…that. The doctor nodded once.

“Excellent. Pardon me, but I believe you understand what I mean. Now, Sophie, I have some questions for you, personal ones, and then I must examine you. Now, it may be things that you do not wish to discuss before your mother, and I will need you to disrobe for the examination, so if you do not wish to have her present I will call for a Sister to attend us”

He turned to Maman. “She is young, and she is presenting herself to the world as female, so I would need the protection of a witness”

Maman nodded. “Do you wish me to leave, my sweet?”

“No, Maman, these are things we must share”

The doctor was shaking his head and smiling, and from him I also caught a mutter, thanking God for ‘family’. He went through a long list of questions, covering sexual activity (ha!) and drug use among many other aspects of my life, and then completed a sort of multiple choice form. Then, my skirt was removed, and all of the rest, and with gloved hands he explored the parts of me that should not have been there, and felt the knots and bumps where my ribs had been kicked, and the little ridge on my forearm where it had broken as my father had dragged me from the living room one day. He was almost like the car mechanics in comedy films, sucking his breath in every so often or tutting as he found some other old wound.

“Please dress now, and then stand on those scales…thank you”

He poked some paper strip or other into my little flask of urine, and made some more notes, then bundled everything together and clasped his hands on his desk.

“Sophie, Madame Laplace, there are things I am not qualified to diagnose or treat beyond the most basic level. Accordingly, I need to refer them to other more expert people. What I will say…what I can say is that Sophie has given me evidence in her answers of a serious level of depression, which can lead, obviously, to thoughts of self-harm. The evidence in her flesh and bone is quite shocking, and so I will say one thing that is perhaps unprofessional. I have seen people with fewer problems in their lives presented to me for certification of their death, and so I applaud your strength, young lady. You will have need of it, and of your family”

The bridge, the air beneath calling to me. My mother beside me–no, that I could never do to her, and that was a realisation that struck me with physical force. Family, the doctor had said, the duty and the love went both ways. I nodded. “I have my family, Doctor, my mother here, and my brother. I could wish for no greater love than they are showing me”

“Good, then. I will look for someone for you to speak with, so please await my letter. Oh, and on the way out, please speak to the nurse and leave some blood with her”

Maman stood. “Yes, Doctor, and please speak to your lady at the front desk and inform her of how a young girl called Sophie should be referred to, for if I tell her myself it will become a particularly direct conversation”

He grinned. “I can well imagine that, Madame!”

“Julienne, please. ‘Madame’ rather reminds me of the sot”

The doctor raised his eyebrows, and Maman smiled at him. “A mother should have the same name as her child, and he did, despite everything else, give to me my two beautiful children. I owe him that much in respect”

She gathered her handbag to her, and smiled at me. “Now, beautiful child, we shall go and see Dracula, and then it shall be ice creams by the sea and stare at the English lobsters”