‘I wish you’d go on. I’m interested. I love shop talk.’ He looked at me hard, realized I was being honest, and did as I asked. I guessed that was in part to help me over my shock, in part as I was Margaret’s niece, but also, as I was now discovering, because, though a naturally reserved man, having once forced himself to open up, in common with most reserved people, he was now having no difficulty in talking. As hospital ‘shop’ fascinated him, he was very interesting, and surprisingly amusing. I enjoyed that drive, and when it ended was more anxious than ever to shake some sense into Margaret. I thought he would make me a delightful Uncle Richard.
Chapter Five
THE GENERAL COMES TO TEA
There were two cars outside the cottage that evening ‒ Old Red’s grey and a new black Rolls which I assumed belonged to Mr Remington-Hart. Whilst I had changed into my second set of wedding clothes Margaret had explained that the Remington-Harts had bought a country house in Downshurst in the last year. They were childless. Mrs Remington-Hart was qualified and did public health in London. Bernard Remington-Hart had originally started at Benedict’s in the same year as Simon Ellis.
‘In here, Jo!’ called Margaret from the sitting-room. ‘General Francis and Corporal Wix have been hoping you’d be back before they had to leave for London.’
I was delighted to see the General again, and not merely as he was Bill’s father. Though he did not make me as starry-eyed as Daisy Yates, he was the best-looking man of any age I had ever seen, and I adored his old-fashioned manners. Though crippled, he managed to give any woman in his presence the conviction that she was delicate, helpless, and ultra-decorative, and could rely on him to shelter her from life’s cruel blows. ‘General, how nice to see you! Hello, Corporal!’ Rather unfairly, as he had been very nice that morning, it was a few minutes before I remembered there was a third guest present. ‘Hello, again, Mr Leland.’
He nodded amiably. ‘Good wedding?’
‘Splendid, thanks. They’ve now gone on a fishing honeymoon. Not my idea of romance ‒ takes all sorts.’ Everyone smiled. Richard admitted he liked fishing.
‘Me too,’ put in Dickie. ‘It’s smashing!’
General Francis said it so happened that he owned the fishing rights on a fairly respectable stretch of water. ‘As you’re a fisherman, Mr Leland, if you’d care to come down to Devon during this present season I’d be most happy to offer you unlimited fishing.’ He smiled at Dickie. ‘If your mother can spare you, boy, perhaps you’ll visit us?’ He turned to Margaret. ‘I feel sure you’ll understand that it will give me great satisfaction to entertain your niece’s young cousin. We can fit him out with rods and waders, and Wix’ll look after him well. We’d enjoy having a boy around the house again, eh, Wix?’
‘That’s right, sir! Be like old times!’
Margaret said warmly, ‘This is very kind, General.’
‘It would give me great pleasure.’ General Francis looked from Margaret to Red Leland.
The latter had been watching General Francis and Margaret alternately. I amused myself watching all three and rather cruelly thanking God for the poor old General’s disability. Margaret, out of uniform, was still shy with strangers. How she had survived a nurse’s training and remained shy was beyond me, but the fact remained she had. I had seen shyness stiffen her into a quite absurd primness. Had General Francis not had his two sticks propped against his chair as a tangible reminder of his condition, and had he not, as had now been explained to me, been making this social call to thank me for nursing his son after paying a second professional visit himself to Bernard Remington-Hart, his appearance and that Rolls outside would have frozen Margaret into a prissy caricature of her normal self. Fortunately, being a nurse, she had the built-in weakness for the sick that belongs to all nurses. I did not know if she was aware of the fact, but she was treating the General like one of her patients. She was an excellent nurse and sweet to her patients, which was why she was in constant demand in the neighbourhood as a private nurse. But for her insistence on being free for Dickie’s holidays she could have had a ward sister’s job in Benedict’s by just picking up the nearest telephone.
I suspected it was Margaret, rather than the General, who was responsible for the continued mellowing of Red Leland. He looked and sounded now so unlike Old Red, the reputed scourge of Benedict’s, that I couldn’t wait for my holiday to end to let me get back and tell the girls. But before our guests left I had reluctantly decided this was one story not for telling. It could be a very important story, and, knowing the damage our grape-vine could do with any story, the only way to stop that was to keep this one to myself.
And they call the young mixed-up! I smiled grimly to myself, still watching the trio holding one conversation aloud and a second with their eyes. Compared to this little middle-aged lot, we didn’t get to first base! It was so fascinating to observe that I was very sorry when the party broke up, and even more so when Margaret did not ask her old pal Richard to stay on for supper with us after the Rolls drove away.
‘Why,’ I demanded as the grey car disappeared, ‘didn’t you?’
‘Darling, you know very well he’s got to be back for his night round.’
‘That’s not till eleven. Three hours.’
‘He’s S.S.O. S.S.O.s aren’t supposed to cut things so fine.’ She turned to go inside. ‘Has Dickie told you yet you had a phone-call?’ she asked over her shoulder.
Bill Francis had rung me from Marcus half an hour before I got back. Dickie said, ‘When I heard them say it was St Benedict’s Hospital I thought it must be for Mr Leland, so I called him. But he said it was for you and gave me the phone back to take a message. Your boyfriend said to say he was sorry he had missed you, and he’d be writing and was doing nicely. He said he was a Bill Francis, so I told him we had a General Francis talking to Mum in the sitting-room, and he seemed ever so surprised! The General,’ he added chattily, ‘was surprised too.’
‘Honest to God!’ I sat on the stairs. ‘Margaret, how did your chum Richard take my being rung up by a patient?’
‘I don’t expect he liked it, darling, but you are on holiday, and though it was very naughty of that boy to risk ringing you from a ward, you can scarcely be held responsible.’
‘I hope you’re right. Luckily Old Red was in a very good mood.’ Bill’s call had shaken me in more ways than one, so I dispensed with discretion. ‘Thanks to you. He likes you a lot.’
‘We’ve always liked each other.’ She went into the kitchen to prepare supper.
I followed her. ‘How well did you two know each other? Was he one of your boyfriends? Did he date you?’
‘We went out together. He wasn’t so much a boyfriend as a boy who was one of my friends.’ She began cracking eggs into a bowl. ‘He’s nearly a year younger than I am, but we always got on very well. And that doesn’t mean what it would mean if said by one of your generation!’
‘Come off it, Margaret! You’re not that old!’
‘I feel it, when you tell me of the apparently acceptable behaviour amongst your contemporaries.’ She smiled. ‘I feel I must have trained in the Dark Ages. But when I started at Benedict’s nineteen years ago, and during my training, though a few forced the pace, no-one thought one odd, or sick, if one didn’t leap into bed with one’s boyfriend, or indulge in violent necking sessions on every date. You may not believe this, but though Richard and I have now known each other for eighteen years on and off, the first time he kissed me was in the car-park last Thursday.’
‘You’re not serious?’
‘Perfectly.’ She laughed. ‘Shall I shock you more with another truth? I was engaged to Simon for six months and a virgin when I married.’
‘You were? Wasn’t it a hideous strain?’
‘Possibly. But not unenjoyable. You kids must miss an awful lot in your eagerness to sip the heady cup of life, as your grandfather used to say. How can you get the taste at a gulp?’ She beat the eggs. ‘Mind if I ask, have you gulped?’ I shoo
k my head. ‘Why not?’
I said slowly, ‘It could be because I’ve never been dated by anyone I liked enough.’ I winced at a memory. ‘It could be Rosie.’
‘Who was Rosie?’
‘She was twenty-four. She came into Dorothy when I was on days there at the end of my first year.’ Dorothy Ward was gynaecological. ‘She had had a criminal abortion somewhere. She would never say where, or who did it. She collapsed, they turned her out of the house, and literally left her to die on the pavement outside. She was given five pints on admission. The cops searched the house. They found instruments, but were never able to pin it on anyone.’
‘She die?’
‘Not at once.’ I stared out of the kitchen window. Dickie was standing on his head in the garden. I did not see him. ‘She was doing quite nicely when she suddenly developed gas gangrene. Dirty instruments. She was plugged with everything we’d got. It wasn’t enough.’ I paused, looking backwards. ‘She was very pretty. She had long brown hair. We did it in two plaits with huge white bandage bows. I’d never met gangrene before. The smell was terrible. She wanted to live. She fought like hell. She’s the only person I’ve seen die really horribly. We got rather matey. I don’t know if this was true, but she told me she had only slept with the man once. He never came to see her.’
‘Could have been true. Once is enough.’
I nodded. That was something else I had learned in Dorothy Ward.
Dickie appeared at the window. ‘I say, wasn’t that Rolls a smashing job! Are all generals loaded?’
Margaret said she thought General Francis must have more than his pension to run a Rolls, own fishing rights, and pay a full-time manservant. ‘Did you realize Bill Francis had a wealthy father, Jo?’
‘No. Neither the General nor Bill gave me any hint of lolly.’
‘I think that reflects rather well on them both. Lay the table, children. I’m about to cook omelettes.’
I had a postcard from Aline next day. She said she was enjoying Marcus, but not working with Humber again. ‘Gwenellen’s on sick-leave and going to O.P.D. on days when she gets back. You are going to Cas.’
I passed the card round the breakfast table. ‘Isn’t that life? I detest departmental nursing, so whenever a department’s short, there they send me!’
The following morning Margaret had two letters. The one in Richard Leland’s handwriting she kept to herself. She handed round the ‘thank you’ letter from General Francis.
Hoping for another letter from Bill, I began watching our post as closely as Dickie. Neither of us had had the letter we wanted when the penultimate day of my holiday arrived. Margaret and Dickie were in the garden playing badminton when Mr Remington-Hart rang up and asked to speak to my aunt.
Dickie was taut as an overstrung violin that day. His examination results were now overdue. I took Margaret’s place to keep him occupied. She was away some time, and returned looking thoughtful.
‘What did he want, Mum?’ asked Dickie.
‘To discuss a patient I nursed for him years ago. Let’s have that racket, Jo. I know you want to wash your hair for tomorrow.’
She roasted a chicken and made a fresh fruit trifle for supper as it was my last night. Both were Dickie’s favourites, and though normally he ate twice as much as his mother and myself put together, he refused second helpings. When Margaret said, ‘How about bed, darling?’ instead of his usual protests he obeyed immediately, and even agreed to have a bath.
She was silent until we heard him upstairs. ‘Poor little thing, he’s so on edge! Going to Simon’s old school is his Big Dream. I’ve been thinking, Jo. If I work through the holidays as well as the terms, and get another mortgage, perhaps I can manage those fees. It’ll mean seeing so much less of him, and God knows I seem to see little enough already, but being an only boy I’ve felt I must pack him off to boarding-school to get some men in his life and break the apron-strings. I’ll tell you this; every term when I watch that school train go out I feel as if its taking two-thirds of me with it.’
‘I’ve always known that. But if you work in the holidays, what’ll you do with Dickie?’
‘Holiday camps or something. I dunno. I’ll have to think about it. I’ll get the coffee.’
She was in the kitchen and Dickie in the bath when the telephone rang. I answered it, then put my head round the kitchen door. ‘Dickie’s headmaster.’
Margaret stared at me, then shot by me into the hall. I did not know how Dickie heard over the noise of the running taps, but at her ‘He’s got it! Oh, Mr Perkins, thank you for ringing tonight!’ he appeared swathed in a towel at the head of the stairs. Two minutes later, in damp pyjamas, he was swinging Margaret round and round the little hall.
‘Bully for old Perky!’ he chanted. ‘Bully for old Pongy Perky! He said I’d be a sort of ape not to get a sort of scholarship as I sort of could if I sort of used my noggin! I say, Mum, I’m starving! Can we have a celebration nosh?’
He ate three-quarters of a two-pound fruit cake, six thick jam sandwiches, four apples, two oranges, and finished off the chicken and the fruit trifle. ‘That’s better. May as well go to bed now.’
Margaret went up with him. I heard yells of laughter. On her return she flopped into an armchair, and we smiled at each other.
She said, ‘I’m so glad to have you here to share this, Jo. I often think I miss not having someone with whom to share the joys of Dickie, far more than I miss having someone with whom to share my worries. I’m so proud of my son tonight! Bursting with pride, and I can say it to you! Think of this, darling! My son! And he’s got the highest marks of any candidate taking that entrance exam! In all England! My Dickie! His Head is as thrilled as myself. It’s only a small prep school. He said, “Your boy obviously has the ability to give of his best when his best is required. A boy with that ability is a boy who should go far.” Oh, Jo!’ Tears poured down her face. ‘I’m so happy. I feel twenty years younger.’
She looked it.
Much later I asked, ‘Do you still miss Simon a lot?’
She hesitated. ‘Twelve years is a long time. There are times now when I can’t even remember what it was like to be a wife. When I look back, the me of those days bears no relation at all to the me now. It’s odd how much one changes without being aware of it. I didn’t realize how much I’ve changed, until I was back in Benedict’s the other day. And seeing Richard in a white coat.’ She paused. ‘My God, how it all came back!’ she added softly.
‘Too much?’
‘Much too much for comfort.’
‘I can imagine. Yet, is that such a bad thing?’
‘That’s roughly what Richard said when I dined with him. He asked why I never took a case in Benedict’s Private Wing. I said I didn’t hold with raising ghosts. He said nor did he, but sometimes one had to raise ’em to lay ’em.’ She fiddled with the arm of her chair. ‘He gave me quite a stern lecture on the subject. I don’t know whether he’s responsible for the offer I had from Bernard Remington-Hart this morning. I’ve a notion he is.’
‘Offer? I thought you said R.-H. rang to talk about an old patient?’
‘He did. We discussed a man I nursed for him about seven years ago in a London nursing home. The man had an aortic aneurysm at the base of the spine. Bernard excised it and put in a piece of nylon.’
‘Automatic Heart job?’
‘Of course. Bernard did a very good job. He’s done some very good spinal work. He’s got another spinal problem at the moment. He’s not yet sure if it’s operable, but if it is he wants me to take the case. It has to be in Benedict’s Wing.’ She shot me an almost scared glance. ‘Can I face it, Jo? I don’t know.’
‘Margaret, you must! After all, why not? Yes, of course, I know your reasons ‒ but be honest! Is there a nicer hospital to work in? Haven’t you always said the more you’ve seen of other hospitals the more you’ve realized there’s only one Benedict’s?’
‘Yes.’ Again she hesitated. ‘You haven’t asked who’
s the patient?’
‘Should I? Anyone I know?’
‘General Francis. That’s why it has to be Benedict’s. Bernard says he flatly refuses to be done anywhere else. He now trusts Benedict’s. And that wretched Richard,’ she added impatiently, ‘has got me right in a corner by bringing that nice man here and letting him invite Dickie down to Devon. I’m going to feel so ungrateful if I refuse. As Bernard said, and I had to agree, private nurses with the right technical experience for such a case don’t grow on gooseberry-bushes.’
I said very carefully, ‘Yes, I do see that if your pal Richard is behind this he has put you in a corner. But it might not be his fault, and it would be wonderful if something could be done for that old General. He is such a sweetie. When do you have to make up your mind?’
‘Not for some time. Bernard won’t be doing him until after Dickie’s back at school. I promised to think it over and let him know.’
‘Margaret,’ I coaxed, ‘say yes, if only for the General’s sake. Didn’t you think him a doll?’
She smiled faintly. ‘No. Just a very nice man.’
‘Well, then! Oh, this is fab! Bill’ll be so thrilled!’
‘Hey, Jo! This is a strict professional confidence! No raising of false hopes. This is just for the trade, still all very much in the air,’ she warned, ‘and not the trade at large. You’re not to say one word of any of this to your pals when you get back to Benedict’s.’
‘I won’t, I promise.’
Before I left for London next day Margaret had the official confirmation of Dickie’s examination results. The delay had been caused by one set of papers going temporarily astray in the post. Each of us in turn read aloud the splendid sentence ‘The Board of Governors have pleasure in offering your son, Richard Simon Michael Ellis, the following School Scholarship.’
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