Hospital Circles

by Lucilla Andrews

  I hoped I could, as I had to. I knew he now realized this was serious, but I was not sure I had got through to him how serious. For any Benedict’s nurse to entertain socially on duty was, in nine cases out of ten, a sacking matter. The tenth case got off with a very stern reprimand from Matron and a very black mark against her name for the rest of her career. No nurse with such a mark was likely to get a reference from Matron when she left the hospital, or, which was even more important to Benedict’s nurses, a Benedict’s Training School badge. These badges were handed out only on a nurse’s last day in the hospital, after she had taken State and Hospital Finals and accumulated a sheaf of satisfactory ward reports. One bad report could lose a girl her badge. We coveted those badges, and I never realized how much until that night in Casualty.

  I crossed the length of the Hall in a raging temper with Bill Francis. Once I had longed to see him. Not half an hour back I had been dewy-eyed with nostalgia for him. Now I was about to meet him again, it was as if I had suddenly woken up from a syrupy dream. He was not worth my losing my badge! Why risk seeing him at all? Why not go back and let Charlie get rid of him for me?

  I had reached 15. I hesitated outside the door, and for just too long. Sister, Robins, and Dr Jones came out of the latter’s office.

  ‘And where are you off to, Nurse Dungarvan?’ called Sister. Charlie did his stuff before I could answer. There was a crash of breaking glass.

  ‘Not that boy Peters again!’ Sister sent Staff Nurse Robins to investigate. ‘Now, Nurse Dungarvan! Why is there a light on in 15? Has another patient come aboard? If so, may I ask why neither the staff nurse nor myself have been informed? And why use 15 when you are well aware that room is only used at night when the department is crowded?’ She swept by me and into 15. ‘Oh! Oh, it’s you, Mr Leland!’ Her voice altered. ‘Nurse Dungarvan, why did you not explain at once that Mr Leland was seeing a patient in here?’

  Nurse Dungarvan was in no condition to explain anything. Fortunately, Mr Leland did it for her.

  ‘This gentleman is not a patient, Sister. There has been a slight, though not serious, misunderstanding. May I introduce to you General Francis. General, our Sister Casualty.’

  General Francis had risen from his chair by the examination couch and was supporting himself with his sticks. On the couch were two sheaths of flowers. The General wore white tie and tails that accentuated his normal elegance. He looked incredibly distinguished. In comparison, Dr Jones seemed a scruffy, wishy-washy fair boy in a limp white coat, and even Old Red, one of the neatest men in Benedict’s, looked a slightly untidy young man.

  Sister Cas, in general, was impervious to masculine charm, and yet she mellowed visibly as General Francis apologized for his presence. ‘As I have just explained to Mr Leland, I returned to my hotel from a dinner engagement and discovered the flowers I had earlier ordered to be delivered here for Nurse Dungarvan and Nurse Yates had, by some misdirection, been left at my hotel. Since that is very near I came over with them. I was explaining this to your door porters when a most helpful youngster kindly took me in his charge and escorted me into this room.’

  Sister and the two residents exchanged resigned glances. Sister said, ‘I expect it was one of our students at present working here as a dresser. They are a willing bunch of lads, if occasionally over-willing.’

  ‘Precisely,’ said the General. ‘And, to be fair to the boy, I possibly confused him, since when he very properly inquired as to whether or not I was a patient, I had to admit myself in some doubt on the point.’ He turned to Old Red. ‘As I expect you are aware, Mr Leland, my room in your Private Wing is booked from this evening, but as I wanted to attend a regimental dinner tonight, with Mr Remington-Hart’s consent I’m not moving in until tomorrow.’ He then explained why he had sent Daisy and myself the flowers in the first place. ‘I never anticipated the unlooked-for pleasure of being able to deliver one bunch in person. With your permission, Sister, may I do that now?’

  Sister not only gave smiling permission, she allowed me to escort him back to his car. We walked the length of the Hall, instead of taking the short cut though the darkened Ophthalmic Department.

  We walked very, very slowly. The deterioration in my companion’s movements in the few weeks since I had last seen him was distressing to observe. He did not mention his health or coming operation, beyond asking if Daisy and I would visit him once it was over. ‘If that’s permissible?’

  ‘We’ll have to ask Matron. I’m sure she’ll say yes. I know we’d love to come and call.’

  ‘Splendid.’ His smile would have had Daisy weak at the knees. It did not affect mine, though I enjoyed it, vastly. Oddly, instead of reminding me of Bill, it reminded me of Old Red. Then I looked more closely at the General’s face and realized the comparison was not odd at all. Both men in repose looked austere and even severe. Both, when smiling, underwent a total transformation that illuminated an unsuspected streak of gaiety in their characters as successfully as it illuminated their eyes. I saw now exactly why, when General Francis’s name came up, Daisy bemoaned the fact that she had not been born twenty years earlier. Twenty years back he must have been the most exciting man any girl could hope to meet, in or out of the British Army. That had nothing to do with his still almost staggering good looks. It was just something in his eyes when he smiled and his voice when he talked to a woman. Even though he was old enough to be my father and now walking like an old, old man, every feminine instinct I possessed was reminding me most pleasantly that he was neither my father nor an old, old man. Ten minutes ago I had felt angry, rather tired, and very hard done by. I now felt fresh, gay, attractive, and very, very feminine. In fact, I felt so wonderful that I glanced back at Old Red. He did not notice, as he was talking to Sister outside 15. But it struck me then how very wise he was to keep his sexy side so firmly battened down on duty. Life in Benedict’s might be more of a riot if we had an S.S.O. who lived up to his potential, but the effect on our work could be disastrous. All good nurses were trained to keep their minds on their jobs, but even good nurses were human. So it was just as well Old Red never allowed anyone on duty, including perhaps himself, to remember that he also was human ‒ and still a good deal younger than General Francis.

  We talked about Dickie’s visit and success at winning that scholarship. ‘My aunt,’ I said, ‘makes no bones about it. She’s bursting with pride!’

  ‘With every reason. Raising a child alone, and particularly a boy, is no easy job for any woman. Mrs Ellis has done very well by that boy. He’s a good boy, and very much a boy. I much enjoyed having him as my guest. Unfortunately, being a serving soldier whilst my own boys were growing up, I missed nearly all their boyhood. Your young cousin’s visit made me appreciate just how much I missed. However, if there is one occupation in life that is more pointless than others it is regretting the past.’ We were a few feet from the main entrance, but he needed to pause before moving on. He used the pause to say how grateful he was to my aunt for deciding to take his case. ‘I hope I won’t prove a too impatient patient.’

  ‘General, I’m sure you won’t!’ I was about to add his son had been an excellent patient, and found I could not do it. That was not because Bill was Bill, but because it would have been such an outrageous lie, as Bill’s father would realize. Bill, I suddenly saw with that horrible clarity of hindsight, had been a selfish and demanding patient. I took another good look at the General’s face. There was no selfishness there and no weakness. He would not weep on Margaret’s shoulder.

  My impulsive remark amused him. ‘A snap judgement, I fear, but excellent for my morale. Thank you. Do you make many snap judgements?’

  ‘Too many. I don’t mean to, but keep doing it.’

  ‘One does, at your age. I used to pass judgement on sight. Paul, my younger boy, being quite surprisingly mature for his age, does take his time, but Bill takes after myself. I suppose you know he’s now touring through France? I understand he sends regular postcards to his St Benedi
ct’s friends.’

  ‘Yes.’ Surprisingly, I found I was not acting. ‘Nurse Yates has had a few. I hadn’t heard he was in France. He still on holiday? And how’s his leg?’

  ‘Doing very well. The plaster’ll be off in a week or so. I presume he’ll come back for that. His paper have given him another six weeks’ leave-of-absence, so he decided to see France and, I believe, Spain.’

  ‘How very nice for him!’

  In the yard Corporal Wix was showing the finer points of the Rolls to one of our porters. He came over to shake my hand, but had the kindness and tact not to attempt to help his employer’s slow progress. I waved them off, then went slowly back inside.

  Sister, Robins, and Old Red were now standing by the lodge discussing the General’s condition.

  Sister said, ‘So Mr Remington-Hart won’t touch him for at least fourteen days?’

  ‘No.’ Old Red frowned at the floor. ‘He’ll never touch a back until it’s been properly rested.’

  That explained why Margaret was not due for another ten days. It had begun to puzzle me.

  Robins asked, ‘What’s the prognosis, Mr Leland?’

  ‘I can’t really answer that until we see what we find when we get him on the table. If it does turn out after all to be a growth, and the chances are high, then the chances of there being secondaries will be even higher. And an op will almost certainly speed things up. He’s willing to risk it, and he’s been told the risk.’

  Sister sighed. ‘So when he signs his consent form he could be signing his own death-warrant. Poor man! A remarkable face,’ she added briskly. ‘Intelligent. Sensitive. Pity he chose the Army. He would have done well at sea. I hope he does well in the Wing. I wonder who’ll have him?’

  Old Red looked up from the floor, and glanced at me before answering. ‘Mr Remington-Hart is bringing in two private nurses who have worked with him previously. Both are former Benedictines, whom I think you’ll remember, Sister. Miss Kateson and Mrs Ellis.’

  ‘Kateson? Kateson? No. Before my time. But Mrs Ellis, of course, I remember! If we are talking about Maggie Ellis, née Dungarvan? That child’s aunt?’

  ‘That’s right, Sister.’

  ‘Really? I am pleased! Such a charming gal and a very good nurse.’ Sister looked at me, meaningly. ‘Strange thing, heredity. Sometimes a trait gets passed on from generation to generation, and sometimes it can be missed out altogether.’

  It was rather a dirty crack to make in public. Robins slightly endeared herself to me by going a little pink and gazing at the ceiling. Old Red returned to frowning at the floor. I would like to have told them both that on that occasion the crack had sailed over my head. I had other things to occupy my mind. Things like General Francis’s being a widower, with his only other son in Hong Kong, tonight his last night out of hospital, perhaps for ever, and Bill on holiday in France.

  My mind flashed back to those nights in Marcus Small Ward. I could see the General now, sitting so stiffly and so still on that hard chair, with one hand on the bed and the other on his stick.

  I could see Sister’s point. Sometimes some trait got missed out altogether.

  Chapter Nine

  MARGARET COMES BACK TO BENEDICT’S

  I kicked off my shoes, stretched out on my bed, and watched Margaret light a cigarette. ‘Did I ever know this other man?’

  She walked over to my window to get rid of her match. ‘I doubt it. It was all over years ago.’ She leant on the sill. ‘How this place has grown! And altered! Cas seems the only place that’s still where it was. Subway open yet?’

  ‘Royalty’s been invited to do that on the 14th of next month. New caps, aprons, white gloves, and toothy smiles will be issued to one and all.’ I watched her back. ‘What was his name? Or don’t you want to talk about him?’

  She turned, smiling. ‘Darling, I haven’t your passion for P.M.s. Anyway, isn’t one P.M. enough for one afternoon?’

  We had been holding a post-mortem on my dead fixation for Bill Francis, and I had been hoping we could now resurrect her old affair with the man she had mentioned in that letter. I said, ‘Don’t slap me down ‒ but did Old Red ever know about him and you?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  So that hunch was right. ‘Margaret, there’s something else I’ve been meaning to ask you. When was the last time you saw Old Red before you two met up in the car park? When you left Benedict’s?’

  ‘No. It was ‒ when? Six or seven years ago, I think. It could be less. I do remember he was then a senior registrar here.’

  ‘You came up to Benedict’s?’

  ‘No. I met him outside a few times when I came up to the bank.’

  ‘Did you meet before that?’

  ‘Sometimes. When he was an h.s. he used to visit the flat Simon and I had in Fulham. He came to Simon’s funeral.’

  ‘You never told me that!’

  ‘Jo, you were then eight years old.’

  ‘I don’t mean then, I mean now.’

  She looked at me reflectively before answering. She looked older that afternoon than she had when I last saw her at the cottage. Her face was pale and unusually tense. ‘I know what you mean, but as this is probably the first time I’ve mentioned Simon’s funeral to you, are you really surprised?’

  ‘No. Sorry. We’re so alike in so many ways that I keep forgetting you’re not an extrovert nut like me.’

  ‘Is that what you are?’ She sat on my bed. ‘And how does an extrovert nut get on in Cas?’

  ‘Not so hot. I’m now the most senior Hall junior. At this rate my Cas time’ll be through before I’m inside the A.R.R.U.’

  ‘That the Accident Team? Richard explained it to me when he was down at the cottage this Sunday. It’s news to me. Cas, as I remember it, was a free-for-all, with everyone sooner or later doing every job.’

  ‘But in those days there weren’t millions of cars on the roads, we hadn’t a spandy new clearway two miles off, and weren’t the largest general hospital to the London end of a not so new motorway.’

  ‘So Richard said.’ Before I could ask her more about that particular visit she asked what was really wrong about Casualty. ‘Cas? Or Sister Cas?’

  ‘Sister.’ I told her how Sister had seen me chucking a sponge at Charlie. ‘She’d had doubts about me before. That convinced her I’m nutty as a fruit cake. She was so peeved she really went spare that afternoon! Since then ‒’ I gave a thumbs-down sign.

  Margaret remembered Sister Cas from their mutual training as well as Sister remembered her. She said, ‘She was a good, if tricky, junior. I can imagine she’s now even more tricky, particularly to her juniors. I can understand her getting peeved at finding a nurse larking around, but I wonder which it was that really peeved her ‒ your larking, period, or your larking with a young man.’

  ‘Margaret!’ I shouted with laughter. ‘Not even Sister Cas could mistake Charlie for a man! He’s as young as Dickie, mentally! He’s got a girlfriend at home, and she’s all of fifteen! He doesn’t even kid himself I’m his Benedict’s girlfriend!’

  ‘No? Then how does he regard you? Mother figure?’

  ‘More like his passport to puberty.’

  ‘My poor aged niece! Is he still in Cas?’

  ‘No. They found him a ward partner last week. He’s now walking the medical wards, and by some miracle the medical block is still standing. Give Charlie time. He’ll knock it over or blow it up yet. A nice boy, but a menace.’ I turned serious. ‘You don’t honestly think Sister took him and me seriously?’

  ‘That’s not as improbable as you think. You’re the type of girl most women’ll take one look at and instantly assume there’s only one thought in your head. I don’t know the expression you kids now use. In my day you’d have been called “a hot little number”!’

  ‘Turn it up!’ I flushed. ‘I’m no sex-pot! Now, Aline is! She looks so pale and willowy, but, baby, does she knock ’em flat! Not me. All they want to do is tell me their problems and weep on my womanly bo
som!’

  ‘And do you really think the boys would want to weep on you if you’d a flat bosom, darling?’

  ‘Candidly, I don’t think my boyfriends would give a damn! Anyway, if I was that sex-obsessed, why waste energy training? Nursing’s hard work. There are hundreds of easier ways of hooking a man. Why embark on four years’ hard for the doubtful joy of hooking a doctor?’

  She said, ‘Jo, if you think the average woman indulges in logical thought, when confronted with a very pretty girl, then you know even less about your own sex than you do about men. Oddly, as it’s not the accepted notion, I’ve always found men much more ready to believe that a pretty woman doesn’t automatically have to be on the make. Whether that’s because men are more charitable, or can sense the fact, I don’t know. I do know you should never expect any woman less attractive than yourself to give you the benefit of any doubt where men are concerned unless she knows you well ‒ and not always then. This may be a man’s world, but the sex toughest on women are women.’

  I remembered Staff Nurse Humber, and then those speculative glances I had been recently collecting. It had never occurred to me that Sister might have noticed them, or, having done so, given the matter two thoughts.

  Margaret asked if I had acquired any other attendant dresser since Charlie was moved.

  ‘No. Haven’t looked at one. No virtue there, as we’ve not one worth looking at. They’re all so young, and the C.O.s aren’t much better. Most of them look as if they only need to shave once a week. The only man I ever talk to now ‒ and when I say talk we exchange the time of day and sometimes, just sometimes, discuss the weather ‒ is your old mate Richard. Surely Sister can’t have objected? Seeing that he is S.S.O., and to treat the S.M.O. and S.S.O. with civility and respect at all times is firmly engrained in all good little Benedictines before they’re let out of the P.T.S.’

  ‘That’s true.’ She was very thoughtful. ‘Does he talk to the other girls?’

  ‘To the staff nurses, sometimes. Not often. He’s no great talker. He talks a bit to me as I’m your niece.’