Change of Duty

by Marjorie Norrell

  “I wonder how Hilary is faring now?” Laura mused aloud. “Miss Everett looked capable of another hysterical outburst at any moment. I don’t doubt that Hilary can cope quite well. I just don’t think it’s fair she should have to do so!” She turned as Kate touched her arm, indicating Mark and Simon approaching. “If I thought it would help,” she added, “I’d send them both straight to the first-aid center, but perhaps that would be too much for the lady concerned!”

  It might have helped if Laura could have been granted a glimpse of what was happening in the confines of the first-aid room. Hilary had persuaded Aida to lie down and relax, while she bathed the affected leg with a saline solution before removing the now useless stocking. Gently as she worked, Aida made so much of her distress that Hilary, thinking of all the serious cases she had nursed from time to time, was sorely tempted to bring her to her normal senses by a sharp slap, but she resisted the impulse and finally had the scarlet-looking flesh painted with a triple dye of acriflavine, brilliant green and gentian violet and covered with sterilized tulle gras. She completed her treatment by giving Aida a strong pain killer, advising the girl to rest quietly for a time.

  Most of the fight had left the buyer by now, and she watched Hilary about her work with eyes that seemed dull and uninterested, but some spark of her resentment remained. After a while she roused herself and addressed the nurse.

  “I suppose whoever came to fetch you told some silly story about me, nurse?” she asked very quietly. “What did they say?” She managed a slight laugh. “Whatever it was I don’t suppose it was the truth.

  “Someone phoned from the restaurant, Miss Everett,” Hilary told her, “and said that somehow a coffee percolator had been upset and that the nearly boiling coffee was all over your leg.”

  “And what else?” Aida demanded suspiciously. Hilary’s brows were raised.

  “Nothing else,” she said quietly. “What else was there to say?”

  “Nothing really, I suppose,” Aida said equally quietly, wondering just how she could use this information to the best advantage. Evidently Laura had dismissed her outburst as hysterical, and although she knew this to be true, Aida was by no means grateful, just angry that her words had made such a slight impact on the old lady.

  “I haven’t been feeling very well lately,” she began with what Hilary recognized as all the signs of the self-pitying victim of emotional hysteria. “The responsibility of today, on top of all the spring season’s extra work, which falls on my shoulders and which no one else appears to appreciate ... Oh, yes!” Her voice rose a little. “Everyone knows the salesgirls need rest rooms, some time to themselves now and again and someone to act as relief when things are too hectic! Everyone knows Mark and Simon have extra work and need special looking after, effort saved ... and that’s why they both spend so much time here, I suppose, but not an unimportant person like Aida Everett.”

  The reason for the symptoms of hysteria and the cause of the patient’s inability to face up to the difficulties of life must be investigated.

  The lines from one of her textbooks came back to Hilary with quite astonishing clarity.

  The patient may be difficult to treat as it is not usually in his or her interests to be cured and thus deprive him or her of being the center of attention. To try to help such patients develop a mature attitude to their troubles and to direct their energies into useful channels is essential.

  Aida’s energies were, for the most part, directed into useful channels; the trouble seemed to lie in the fact that her occupation did not occupy her fully, leaving too much spare nervous energy, nervous energy she had, so far, used only to serve her own ends.

  “I think...” Hilary began, wondering just how she could convey what she felt without hurting the other woman when Laura, Simon and Mark appeared at the door of the first-aid room.

  “We’d like to come in, please, nurse, just for a moment,” Laura began quietly. “Please sit down, Miss Everett. This concerns you, too, as I believe you will agree. Close the door, please, Mark,” she ended firmly, and seating herself on Hilary’s chair, she looked, but not without kindness, on the girl whose expressive face told them all she would have given a great deal to be miles away at that moment.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “I brought your handbag along, Miss Everett,” Laura began in a bright, conversational tone. “I expect your diary’s in it. Is that so?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Vale.” Aida looked from one to the other, but Laura’s face looked gravely accusing, Simon and Mark looked painfully puzzled, and Hilary, the unwitting cause of all the trouble, looked plainly worried.

  “Would you like me to leave, Mrs. Vale?” she asked tentatively, but Laura shook her head.

  “It is vital that you stay, Nurse Bell, please,” she said firmly, and feeling like a stranger in her own domain for the first time since she had come to Vale’s, Hilary stood silent, waiting.

  “Miss Everett has a most comprehensive list of all the times and dates you have visited your fiancée, Simon,” Laura said in a conversational tone, but Simon, so seldom angry, leaped to his feet from the lounging position he had adopted on one of the chairs by the wall.

  “What on earth...?” he began, then more quietly, “What is the meaning of all this, Miss Everett? It is true, of course?” he ended, almost on a hopeful note as though hoping Aida would deny the words.

  There was a long wait. Aida looked from one to the other again, but apart from Hilary’s faintly puzzled but otherwise friendly face there seemed nothing to do but to admit everything ... and yet to emphasize that she had truly thought Simon was visiting the nurse.

  “It’s quite true,” she said sullenly. “I thought that...”

  “What did you think?” Simon’s tone was very quiet, and Mark, who had stood as though stunned throughout the discussion, moved restlessly.

  “I thought it was Nurse Bell you went to visit,” she managed at length. “I ... no one knew anything about ... the other Miss Bell ... about your fiancée.”

  Mark seemed to show the relief of his tension in every fiber of his being. From top to toe he visibly relaxed, and his glance sought Hilary’s in such a wonderful look of mingled love and plea for forgiveness that she felt as though her heart would melt in her breast.

  “And exactly what had that to do with you, Miss Everett?” Simon queried, his voice so cold that Hilary, who had never heard him say anything in the least unpleasant, felt her spine chill.

  “It wasn’t ... I mean, I know what you do is your own business, Mr. Vale.” Aida spoke nervously, plainly frightened by this side of an employer she had rather tended to despise as being a tool of his grandmother’s. “It was because of Mark,” she managed at last, and the astonished manager felt the blood rush to his cheeks as the gaze of everyone in the room fixed on himself.

  “I ... I don’t understand,” he admitted. “What had Mr. Vale’s private life to do with me?”

  “It wasn’t Mr. Vale’s private life that was important to me!”

  Suddenly the barriers were down. Everyone was listening to Aida, everyone was awaiting her explanation, and the over-emotional woman could not have prevented the words from pouring forth even had she wished to do so.

  “It’s your future that concerns me, Mark,” she said plainly, uncaring now as to who heard or what they thought of her words. “You work so hard for Vale’s. You’ve helped to make this store one of the most popular in the country, and it’s your effort that has built up the mail order side of things until it’s ... it’s marvelous!” She paused for a necessary breath.

  “And?” Mark prompted, without any expression at all in his voice.

  “Before Nurse Bell came here—” Aida darted one look at Hilary, a look so filled with hatred that the nurse almost shrank from her, but the years of training held, and she stood very still “—you didn’t see me—or any other woman on the staff either—as anyone other than a part of Vale’s. You didn’t even comment on the extra work some people put in
to make success more certain because it was wonderful to work under a manager who was really interested in the store, the staff and the customers.

  “When Nurse Bell came, you changed.” Aida’s tone made the words an accusation. “You let her use the flat. That flat was supposed to be for the use of the manager.” Her words were emphasized by her tone. “As well as that you began to go up with her, after the store was closed. That’s your affair, and if that had been all I wouldn’t have interfered. When I knew Simon was taking her home and staying in her house until all hours of the night, I decided it wasn’t fair to you. That you ought to know about it and take what steps you felt... appropriate.”

  No one spoke for a moment or so. Simon and Mark were all too plainly embarrassed. Aida was still defiant. Hilary, wishing she were anywhere else but where she was, stood still and said nothing. Only Laura appeared to remain unmoved.

  Finally, as though she could bear the tension no longer, Aida spoke again.

  “Well?” she demanded harshly. “If it had been as I thought, don’t you think I did right to let you know what was going on?”

  “There wasn’t anything ‘going on,’ as you phrase it, Miss Everett,” Simon said quietly, suddenly realizing that jealousy and nothing more had been the cause of all this trouble, this unhappiness, for so many people. And it had been jealousy without reason! Like his grandmother, he, too, felt a sudden and sincere pity for the woman.

  “When Hilary—Nurse Bell,” he began, “visited Cresta for the first time, I drove her home, and I met—” his voice softened despite his self-control, “—Miss Iris Bell, nurse’s sister. After that,” he went on boyishly, “I didn’t stop to think about anything else very much, I’m afraid, Miss Everett. You were right there, anyway, I didn’t think of Vale’s in terms of people, only in terms of Iris’s sister and my only means of contact, until I could forge my own. It isn’t announced as yet,” he continued with dignity, “but in view of all that has happened today I feel you ought to be among the first people to know: Iris is handing in her notice this weekend and will leave the college—and the life as a teacher there or anywhere else—when the summer holidays begin. We hope to be married on the day after term ends, July the nineteenth.” He glanced at Laura. He had planned to tell her first that the date had been decided upon, but it was too late now. Laura was, as always, equal to the situation.

  “At that rate,” she said, rummaging in her purse and bringing out her own diary, “we shall have to change the date of the opening of our new branch at Moreby, Simon. If Miss Everett will accept our offer, that is?”

  “Offer? I don’t want to leave Hortown...” Aida began, but Laura’s eyes twinkled.

  “Not even to be the first manageress a Vale’s branch has had, Miss Everett?” she queried. “I ... we thought you would enjoy that.”

  “Manageress?” Aida echoed, her naturally suspicious mind wondering just what objective lay behind this apparently wonderful offer. “Why?”

  “I think you’ll make a good one,” Laura Vale said truthfully. “I don’t think you have had quite sufficient ... shall we say scope, for your undoubted talents here. I think you’ll make as good a manageress as Mr. Dawson has made manager,” she said sincerely, “and I would certainly like to know you are at least willing to try.”

  To the amazed horror of all present with the exception of the nurse, Aida’s face crumpled and she began to cry, not elegantly as she did most things, but with a noisy abandonment that was painful to watch. Laura looked helplessly at Hilary, and was more than relieved when the girl motioned to the two men and herself to leave the room.

  When the door had closed behind them Hilary moved a little nearer to the weeping girl, not touching her, but quietly waiting until the storm of tears had spent itself.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Hilary,” Aida sniffed, taking out her compact and beginning to repair the damage to her complexion.

  Hilary smiled, but reserved comment. She knew quite well the storm of emotion would not have spent itself for a long time had she displayed the slightest sign of sympathy.

  “I know you didn’t,” she said quietly. “Relax, and I’ll make a cup of tea. I was going to make one for you when the rest of them came in.”

  She reflected that the tea, hot and sweet, which she had intended to offer Aida to help offset the emotional storm, would now serve two purposes. Never in her life had Hilary herself felt more in need of some mild stimulant than at present.

  “Thank you.” Meekly, quite unlike her usual self, Aida accepted the cup Hilary offered. “Does it matter a great deal, nurse?” she asked querulously, determined, Hilary thought, to extract the last possible vestige of drama from the occasion. “I mean, do you think anything of Mark? Have I spoiled things for you?”

  “There wasn’t anything to spoil, Aida,” Hilary said quietly and wished with all her heart there had been. “It was a perfectly natural mistake, and you thought you were protecting Mr. Dawson from ... a future hurt.”

  “I’ve been hurt,” Aida was clinging to the limelight of drama, even though everyone else except herself and Hilary had left the room. “Nobody knows...!”

  “I think some people have guessed, Aida.” Hilary’s voice was as quiet as ever, but there was a new resolve in its depth that made Aida look up in surprise.

  “Hurting other people doesn’t cure a hurt done to ourselves, you know,” she said. “I’m not preaching, but I think you ought to try to remember how kind everyone at Vale’s has always been to you. I only know what people have told me,” she said truthfully, “but I think, if someone had given me a second chance, as Mrs. Vale and her grandson gave to you, I’d try to repay them a little and do that bit extra, whatever it may be, they’re hoping for from you.”

  “You mean that offer’s genuine?” Aida said, her enormous eyes open to their fullest extent, her gaze fixed on Hilary’s face as though daring her not to speak the truth. “It’s not just a scheme to get me away from Hortown, away from everyone who knows ... all about me?” she asked insistently.

  “Listen, Aida,” Hilary spoke seriously, firmly, seating herself opposite to the other girl. “Forget the past. Everyone else in Hortown seems to have, so why don’t you? Don’t try to arrange your future. Show a little more trust, in life and in other people! You’re good at your job, you just said so yourself ... and Mrs. Vale said so, too. Try making the most of today every day, and I think you’ll soon find you’re a much happier, contented person as a result. I didn’t always think like this. I thought I knew what was best ... and when Matron told me I’d have to do only light duty for a year, I didn’t want to do as I was told, not one little bit!”

  “That’s why you came here, wasn’t it nurse? Because it wasn’t what you’d call ... a proper job, not from your point of view, I mean?”

  “Something like that, but not quite in the way you say it,” Hilary said, half-amused. She thought of Lilian Baker and the strange way she had helped the worried woman rid herself of the discordant atmosphere that was ruining both her home and family life and her own health. There was Carruthers, too, and his Kitty. Contented and happy now, they were looking forward to an addition to the family later on, and, as the burly porter had said a little self-consciously, “Thanks to what you told me, nurse, I shall not worry whether he’s going to be all right or not ... I just know he is.”

  Sam, recuperating now from his appendicitis operation, was loud in her praise. Carol Wray and many other members of the staff had come to her with some trivial injury, come again and again and grown to be her friend, and while she had done little on the psychosomatic side of nursing, Hilary knew without a doubt she had been the means of helping more than one person over what had seemed a very dark patch of life at the time.

  “It’s not been nursing as one thinks of nursing, Miss Everett,” Hilary said quietly, giving her words and her statement the serious thought she considered it deserved. “But it’s been interesting, and, I think, helpful on the whole. When I’ve gon
e—” she smiled, thinking of Monica and the Intensive Care Unit, “—I hope you will be helpful and kind to the girl who’s to follow me. A nurse on staff is a great help, I think, and I’m not just thinking of myself.”

  “You’ve helped me today, anyway, nurse,” Aida said, rising stiffly and hobbling to the door. She paused and turned to face the other girl. “Why?” she asked frankly. “I haven’t been particularly pleasant to you.”

  “I never really thought about it,” Hilary said honestly. “I don’t, you know. If I feel someone doesn’t like me, then I just do my best to make them change their minds. That’s all, but I don’t, as a rule, go out of my way to attempt it.”

  “Point taken.” Aida managed a real smile this time. “I’ve said I’m sorry, and I mean that. Maybe getting away from Hortown is just what I need, and I know I can make a success of the new branch! Just you wait and see! You’ll come and see me sometime, won’t you?” she asked “You ... and Mark?”

  “I can’t answer for him,” Hilary said quietly, “But yes, I’ll come, Aida. When I get a chance.”

  The door closed at last and Aida’s somewhat dragging step—since her leg was painful—receded. Thank goodness for that, Hilary thought, sinking into the nearest chair and staring at the little reception room which had seen almost the whole gamut of her career at Vale’s.

  I thought she’d never go! Hilary told herself. But I think everyone’s gone now.

  She looked out cautiously. There was no one in sight, and the entire store seemed to be silent. She tidied up, made sure everything was in its proper place, turned down the sterilizer and switched off the lights, closing and locking the door behind her. After tomorrow Iris would be home again for brief vacation and, Hilary felt, she would be thankful! Thankful not to go up to the lovely, compact flat that had been her own for all these months! Thankful not to have to fill in the long hours of every evening, reading and seeing Mark Dawson’s face on the printed page instead of the words she was striving to read.