by Sheila Burns
I thought of Dr. Harper; I know I had no right to do so, but I did. I knew what it would have been like if such a thing had been possible … of course, it wasn’t, and never would be … but that was how I pictured it. I nodded.
She went on brokenly:
‘Afterwards he started cooling off. The white violets did not come any more. Once he had told me that if ever he fell out of love he would never have the heart to tell me bang out, but would do it by sending me hyacinths. Don’t you remember the other day when I said I hated hyacinths? It was because of Bill. He is a man with the most queer whims and fancies, and he has the most queer ways with flowers. He said if ever you receive white hyacinths from me, you’ll know that it is the end.’
‘And he sent them?’
‘Yes, he sent them all right! It was just at a time when I felt queer and awful. I felt that I could not drag myself about because I was so worried. I felt terrible. I was frightened to go to a doctor in case it was the worst ‒ frightened of the consequence of my own folly, and yet I couldn’t do anything about it. I went on trying to blind myself to it, and it was awful, Katy, just frightful.’
‘But why didn’t you tell Bill?’
‘I did. I wrote to him and begged him to come to see me, only he had gone for a holiday. I got funky and dared not write the words that worried me. I wanted to creep into his arms and tell him and hear him put everything right. I tried to convey all my anxiety between the lines, but I don’t suppose that it made much difference. I seemed to go on changing. I was fighting against that change all the time, but somehow it didn’t work. Then I knew that I was going to have a baby.’
‘Oh, Tenny, how awful!’
She stared at me hopelessly. ‘It was worse than awful. I have often thought how dreadful it must be to be condemned to death and to wait in your cell for that last journey out into the light. Well, I felt that way. I knew that I was in a blind alley and that there wasn’t any other way out. Like a rat in a trap. People who have not been in that position don’t understand how horrible it is. I kept telling myself that the moment Bill got back he would put everything straight and marry me right away.’
I poured out the tea and handed her a cup. She took it automatically; I don’t think she even realized what it was, she was so worked up.
‘Then I got that horrid sick feeling with wondering supposing that he didn’t come and see me, and insist on marriage. I expect in my heart all along I had known that he was a rotter, I had never deceived my real self, and now I was terrified. I heard suddenly that he had been back for over a week and had never sent me a word. That hurt. One of the other nurses had seen him and she told me about it.’
She sat there very still for a moment, and I persuaded her to have some tea. All the time I was wondering what was going on in Iris’s room. Surely Dr. Harper would have gone by now? I hoped they were not arguing, or that he had not suspected Bill Dawson being there. Then my mind came back to Tenny.
‘I had implored him to come to me the moment that he got home, or if this were impossible to let me go to him. So when I knew he was back I went round to his flat. There was some other girl there; I knew that the moment the man-servant opened the door to me, because I could see her bag and gloves in the hall, and I thought then that I should have gone mad about it. I couldn’t get inside. He wrote to me at once, a very stiff and formal letter, saying that I had put him in a most embarrassing position by going round like that, and I mustn’t do it again, whatever happened. I suppose I lost my head; it isn’t easy to keep it when you are going to have a baby, and I was quite frantic by this time. I wrote and told him the truth, and said that he must do something to help me. He must arrange our marriage before anybody else knew. There was Matron, who had the eye of a hawk, and all those sisters watching me all the time. Oh, Katy, I was so frightened! He wrote back and said that he did not know what on earth I meant, and, anyway, he could not be responsible.’
She began to cry again rather desperately. I felt as though she was ripping open a scar, something that hurt most terribly.
‘What did you do?’ I asked.
There was not much that she could have done, poor child, so hideously alone.
‘I wrote again, and begged him to help me, hating myself and hating him too. I don’t quite know what I said because I was so utterly distracted. What do wretched girls do when this sort of thing happens to them? You can’t have any idea how horrified I was, what a nightmare it seemed to be, and then in the middle of it all he sent me a bunch of white hyacinths.’
I think that I personally have always loved white hyacinths, but I knew then that they had suddenly lost their sweetness for me for ever. I would never see them again but what I should think of the agony that poor little Tenny must have suffered at that particular moment when she opened the box and saw the flowers lying there.
‘And then?’ I asked.
There was no sound of Sister’s starched dress on the stair. There was only the light buzz of conversation in the rooms where patients had visitors. Only the high essence of flowers blown across the landing, and with it the faint smell of disinfectants which hung about the theatre below.
‘And then?’ I repeated.
She mopped her eyes. ‘I’m a beast to worry you with this story. It is all over and done with now. It doesn’t matter any more, it doesn’t hurt any more, which is one thing. When I saw those white hyacinths I knew that he had never meant to marry me, and having got all that he wanted, was going to quit. The car had never broken down at Hindhead; it is just that one is so blind when one falls in love. The whole thing had been prearranged. I fainted then, and when I came round I was really ill. Mercifully the whole thing put an end to what I had feared, but I had learnt a dreadful lesson, much worse than anything I could ever have imagined. After that I gave up all my old friends, went away and started again, forgetting the old associations. I’m happy now, and I enjoy my fun, but I’m careful and I’d never trust any man in the world. Although I laugh about it, I wouldn’t even trust anyone like Dr. Harper.’
‘Dr. Harper?’ I repeated, dismayed that she should have followed my own thoughts so closely.
‘No, I wouldn’t! I wouldn’t trust any man. I know what they are. I thought that I would never see Bill again and that he had gone out of my life for ever, but he hasn’t. He wasn’t here talking to you, Katy? You were not believing his stories?’
‘I told you no. He came to see Mrs. Harper, and when the doctor came I popped him in here because there was nowhere else to put him. I don’t like him.’
She shook her head a trifle wearily, as though she grasped something which I had not yet understood.
‘It is because you do not know how fascinating he can be. That is all,’ she said.
A bell rang.
‘Goodness, I can’t answer it like this,’ gasped Tenny, and she tried to repair some of the ravages the tears had made on her face.
‘I’ll go.’
It was the latest operation case asking for a drink, a poor little bit of a body sunk in between hills of pillows, a forlorn little soul, and you could not help but feel sorry for her. Yet when I gave her the glass of water she made a little face, because it tasted horrible, as I had guessed it might. I shook up the pillows and tried to put her a little more comfy; all the while her eyes watched me.
‘You nurses are rather like angels, aren’t you? The way you watch over folks, and do things for them,’ and she tried to smile.
‘I’m not much of an angel.’
‘You looked awfully like one to me when you gave me that drink,’ she said.
‘You’ll be better to-morrow,’ I promised her, and left her hoping that she would doze. You can’t help feeling sorry for people coming round from an op. The minutes seem an eternity, and to-morrow so far away.
As I came out of her room, closing the door softly behind me, I found Dr. Harper on the landing. He turned to me at once, and I knew by his manner that something was amiss. I wanted to get back to
Tenny, and was hoping and praying Sister would not come popping up and catch her with those red swollen eyes of hers.
‘I wanted a word with you, Nurse. My wife’s better, you’ve done a lot for her, you know.’
‘Not very much.’
‘She isn’t easy to deal with, and everything has depended largely on her nurse understanding her. Now she is making excellent progress and she ought to be fit to leave the home and go away for her change soon.’ He paused, and then he looked directly at me. ‘It has made me tremendously happy to know that you are going to be with her.’
Up till this moment I had been making up my mind that I would break it to them both that I could not go away with her. I wanted badly to get out of it, but when he stood there looking directly at me, and saying it in that humbly grateful voice of his, I couldn’t do anything about it. He smiled at me, and then he went on. I might have known that he hadn’t finished yet.
‘Look here, I’ve got to ask a favour of you. If anything should go wrong whilst you two are away, I want you to promise to send for me immediately, whatever Iris says to the contrary. Although I shall be down to see her in the week-ends, Monday till Friday is rather a long time stretching in between, and I want to be quite certain that you will see after her for me.’
‘But she will be quite all right,’ I promised him. It is so queer how doctors always think that their own are going to get some rare relapse. Mrs. Harper had had quite an ordinary appendix, and had been on the table a record short time; it was extremely unlikely now that she would have anything go wrong. To-morrow her stitches would be out, after that it was all plain sailing and there was nothing to worry about.
He said: ‘I don’t mean that. It isn’t her health that is worrying me. It is …’ For a moment he seemed undecided as to whether not to tell me something which went against the grain to repeat or whether to let me wholly into his confidence. Then he broke down that last boundary of reserve. ‘I can trust you, Katy?’ ‒ that was when I knew that I had ceased to be ‘Nurse’ to him for ever.
‘Of course.’
‘It is no good glossing over the fact that Iris and I have not made too big a success of our marriage, though Heaven knows I have wanted to keep that dark. She has different standards, it isn’t her fault, but I am a sombre old stick and she is rather the butterfly type. It is probably all my fault and I accept and bear the blame, but I am so hoping that now perhaps things are going to be different. I once hoped that we should have children, and that they would make things better, but Iris hates babies. Perhaps it is just as well, because most people suffer a lot in this world, you and I in our calling ought to know that, and it seems almost cruel to bring others to it to go on suffering, doesn’t it?’
I did not know what made him talk this way and was shocked at the sudden picture I got of him, the man as he really was, full of pain. I couldn’t go on pretending about it when he looked like that, and I knew that I was caring more for him every day. It wasn’t any use fighting against an emotion like that because it swept me along willy-nilly, and I was powerless to fight against it. It seemed to be all wrong, for only the other side of the door he had closed behind him lay his wife, and she did not care for him at all.
Hadn’t she told me as much? I was torn two ways and I knew then that the way of the man whom I cared for must be the one I trod in the end. I think we both realized that in the one moment we had passed a milestone in our lives, because he put out a hand and laid it on mine with a little gesture of confidence. The feeling of that hand made me want to break down, to run away, to escape for ever, and all the while I stood firm, and tried to pretend to myself that I was a fool and dreaming all this; it was something that wasn’t true, that wasn’t real.
He went on quickly. ‘I’ve got to take you into my confidence. God knows that this looks like giving my wife away, and that is the last thing that I ever want to do, but I don’t want her to see any more of that Captain Dawson. You may think me a prude, but I was frankly horrified to see you at his flat last night. I don’t want that to happen again, because whatever you may say I have a very shrewd idea of how you got there.’
I was horribly embarrassed.
I felt myself swaying between two courses, and then I remembered dear old Matron at the hospital where I had trained. Matron coming between the prim rows of beds, and in those beds patients in little red flannel jackets, and with white peaky faces. Matron, a grand old lady, even if she was a bit of a Tartar, and Heaven knows that she was all that, standing by my side and talking to me about the profession into which I had just recently been admitted. ‘A nurse’s first duty is to her patient; never forget that, Nurse. Your patient must always be your first consideration. Nobody else matters.’
So I said nothing.
He went on: ‘She mustn’t see any more of that man, he turns her head and he isn’t a decent fellow, she will only be hurt by such a friendship in the end. Do you understand that?’
I said, ‘Very good,’ but I knew that my voice was husky.
All the while, almost as though he had forgotten it, his hand rested on mine, and I could feel those tremendously strong fingers which had so often, as though by a sheer miracle, done such marvellous work in the theatre.
‘You’ll take good care of her, won’t you?’ and then, ‘I know that you are keeping something back from me and I do so wish you would drop this veneer and open your heart to me. I wish you’d tell me the truth. I tell you the truth, you know.’
I knew that.
He stood waiting there, as though almost expecting me to say something more, and then, last of all, in a voice which had dropped a tone, ‘The first time I saw you I felt that you were my friend. Why don’t you behave as my friend, Katy?’
Then he turned and left me.
I stood there staring after him. So he had thought about me, so he had looked upon me as being a friend, and he thought that I was not behaving squarely by him. As though I did not want to open my heart to him and tell him everything, yet how could I? The other side of the door was a great bowl of white violets with the idiotic message that had been sent to her by them, and which nobody else understood. Only a few minutes ago Captain Dawson himself had bolted down the staircase to avoid Tenny, to whom he had sent that cruel bunch of white hyacinths.
A nurse’s first duty!
The words spun round in my head and I wanted to admit the truth, but I dare not. My hand still burnt with the feeling of his upon it. I was love-sick as any silly schoolgirl, and I in my position as a nurse who had got past the stupid stage when they believe that every doctor is in love with them.
I gave myself a shake.
The operating theatre bell jarring through the floor brought me back to life with a start, and I bumped down to earth. The theatre Sister had come to the head of the stairs, looking washed-out and tired. Her cap was awry and, seeing me, she sank down exhausted into the one chair.
‘Oh, we’ve had such an awful time,’ she said, ‘the poor chap collapsed on the table, literally stopped breathing. I wish Dr. Harper had been doing the op. You feel so safe with him; it was Treeves Spencer, you know, and he always gets so flustered and is so rude to the nurses. Oh, we have all been capering round on thorns.’
‘Come and have a cup of tea in the nurses’ room?’ I suggested.
From up the stairs there came the smell of disinfectants and the heavy sweet essence of anaesthetic. It clung to her clothes, as she followed me into our sitting-room and slumped down heavily into a chair.
‘I don’t suppose he’ll last out the night, but anyway that has finished my duty for the day. I’ll never get used to that happening! I’ll never become accustomed to it, and with Treeves Spencer too, what a frightful man he is!’ Tenny had recovered. Looking at her now, you would never have guessed that she had broken down so badly earlier in the day. She was her old brisk self.
‘Oh, he’ll be all right,’ she said, ‘he’ll keep his nurses going all night, and probably demand fried eggs and bac
on for breakfast in the morning. I know his sort!’
I left them there comparing notes. After all I had been away from Iris for a long time and I owed her some of my minutes. The moment I popped my head round the door, she turned and smiled.
‘Is Bill still here?’
Her first thoughts were for him.
‘He has gone, he stayed in the nurses’ little room for a bit and then he ran off.’
I wished that I dared tell her the truth, but I dared not. For one thing I don’t suppose that she would have believed me; women in love never believe anything against the beloved; and for another it would only have made her hate me. It was no consolation to know that if Iris bored Bill he would have no compunction in sending her white hyacinths as the gentle hint that he was through with her. He was that sort of man, but her silly eyes were blinded to it.
She held out a little dressing-jacket that lay on the bed, a soft fluffy affair, lined with silk.
‘Poor Ray, he tries so hard, but he just has no ideas.’
‘I think you are very unkind about him.’
She dropped the dressing-jacket and her mouth slowly opened.
‘You think that? Why, though they say that he has never had a nurse nurse for him who didn’t fall in love with him, I never thought that of you. Are you in love with him? How very odd! How very queer! You of all people!’
‘Don’t be silly,’ I snapped, and it was idiotic of me because turning snappy did not help me, and only made her surer that she had smelt the truth out.
She said: ‘I can assure you that Ray is definitely cold where women are concerned. He has had too many after him, he has been spoilt. He is the coldest fish in this world; I’m his wife and ought to know.’