The black car was leaving when we went outside. The girl was driving, and she glanced at me briefly, but so curiously that it seemed obvious I had already been identified as a filler of paper bags. I didn’t think Rod noticed as he was swapping more cries with the German ladies, but I told him about my touchdown in the car. He yelped with laughter. ‘Poor old McPeck took it on the shoulders!’
‘As a good man should. Actually, he was quite sweet.’ I buckled my safety belt. ‘Far to the hospital?’
‘Just this side of twenty-five miles as it’s just this side of Thessa Town.’
‘Know the way, already?’
‘Can’t miss it.’ He jerked his head at the only road leading off the narrow isthmus. ‘A third of a mile on that hits the main road. All we have to do is turn right there and stick on the main road till we hit the town.’
‘Jolly good. How’d the business deal go?’
‘Hard to say.’ He started the engine. ‘I wonder what you’ll make of Thessa?’
‘What’s your snap reaction?’
‘I don’t bloody believe it.’
Inside of a few minutes from the airport I knew exactly what he meant.
The main road was grey, narrow, and it ran up and down, up and down, over the empty, treeless, green-brown hills, or curved round the empty stretches of bright blue water. Suddenly the whole world was composed of green-brown and bright blue, as between every fold of the hills was a loch, or a fjord reaching in from the omnipresent surrounding sea. Every now and then loch and fjord met to be divided only by the road running on over a low stone bridge. Sometimes a few small, sturdy, grey or white stone houses dotted the hills, or clustered in the folds, but generally well away from the road. We met a few private cars, a few heavy lorries, but no pedestrians and often for miles we had the road to ourselves, the hills belonged to the curly white or brown coated sheep, and the thousands of seabirds owned the land, the water and the great, clean, gentle sky.
‘They don’t call ’em fjords here, Charlotte. Voes.’
‘Is that a Scottish word?’
‘Shetland. You’re not in Scotland now, love!’
‘Surely this comes into the Highlands and Islands?’
‘Yes, but that doesn’t make the Shetlanders Scots. Scots are Celts, Shetlanders are Norse, and don’t forget it or eighteen thousand Shetlanders’ll put you straight with one voice. Historically, Scotland only acquired the Shetlands comparatively recently. 1469 to be precise.’
‘I never knew that! How’d they do it?’
‘Royal marriage settlement. When James Third of Scotland married Margaret of Denmark, her old man Christian of Denmark, ran short of cash for her dowry. He handed over Orkney to cover a bill for fifty thousand florins, but was still eight thousand short, so he threw in the Shetlands. I’ve been doing some homework.’
‘So I see. Rod ‒ could this ever make any difference to who actually owns the oil found round Shetland?’
He shrugged. ‘Not being an historian, nor an international lawyer, I can’t answer that.’
‘And being in oil yourself, would you if you could?’
He smiled without answering and we drove on in silence until he drew up on the crest of the last hill before the road ran on down and then up again into the neat little grey town, that had grown from a fishing village round the harbour on the far side of the town hill. ‘Take a look,’ said Rod, ‘just take a look at Thessa Sound.’
From the air it had looked small, blue. It was now a vast silver mirror protected by the two long curving, green arms tipped by white lighthouses. Between the arms, smaller green fingers pointed into the mirror and on the far side the offshore island that almost shut out the sea, floated greenly against the limitless blue sky. The serenity was as tangible as the salt in the air.
‘See that bit jutting out near the northern entrance, Charlotte? When the project we’re building on its far side is ready, the tankers’ll be able to load there without coming into the fishing fleet’s harbour. Quite deep enough. A naval fleet could and has dropped anchor in this Sound. It’s one of the world’s great natural harbours. Talk about a bonus! This! Just sitting here, waiting!’
I didn’t say anything but he didn’t notice as he was seeing his own visions and dreaming his own dreams. I watched the birds, wheeling and gliding, sliding like snowflakes down the shafts of sunshine and wondered uneasily how much longer their world would be theirs.
Rod sighed, restarted the car. ‘Less than a mile on for you.’
Thessa General Hospital stood facing the Sound on an incline at the foot of the town hill. It was a solid three-storey building with wide ward windows on the two upper floors. There were stone steps leading up to a front porch framed by stone pillars, and to the left of the porch a tiny Admissions Yard, and a sloping stone ramp running into the double open doorway labelled Casualty Department. Two parked ambulances blocked our view of the other side of the porch until Rod crawled round them. The black car was parked by the right foot of the steps and Moray and the redhead were unloading the boot. They glanced round incuriously, then did the same double-take as myself, but before we had time to close our mouths a youngish woman in a blue two-piece came briskly down the steps.
‘Welcome back, Mr Moray! Welcome to Thessa General, Miss Anthony. I’m Mrs Brown! Thank you so much for your help, Mr Harding ‒ such a pity I hadn’t realized Miss Pringle was fetching Mr Moray, or I could’ve saved one of you a journey. But as this is my Sister Theatre’s day off, I never thought to ask if she was going to the airport. Can I now ask you another favour, Mr Harding? Could you kindly drive Miss Anthony to that newish building across the way? That’s our Staff Home, Miss Anthony. The housekeeper is expecting you and will show you your room and provide your belated lunch. I expect what you want most is tea! Settle in, quietly, then come over and have a chat in my office. Shall we say four-thirty? Don’t bother getting into uniform ‒ just as you are!’ She dismissed us with a pleasant smile and turned to the other two. ‘You can imagine how delighted and relieved we all are to see you, Mr Moray! Your brother-in-law and sister can now start their holiday. As always Mr Fraser has refused to pack his bag until hearing his locum has actually set foot on Thessa! And how was the flight over eventually?’
Rod had backed us out of earshot. ‘I wish,’ I said, ‘you’d waited.’
He grinned. ‘Man is not put into this world for pleasure alone, love.’ We had to wait to drive over the road. ‘My Yank chap told me this morning this local surgeon Fraser was held up waiting for his holiday relief. Never struck me it could be McPeck, though this explains his unblemished hands. Think he’s any good when he’s sober?’
I slapped my forehead as my mental blank suddenly evaporated. ‘I’m a rip-roaring nutter! God knows I’ve seen enough Martha’s residents flake out at all hours in office chairs to recognize the fatigue syndrome! Man was just tired, not stoned. Any idea where he’s from?’
He nodded and named a world-famous Scottish teaching hospital. ‘Consultant general surgeon, the Yank said.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘there’s a jolly thought.’
The Staff Home outwardly looked very like the hospital, aside from having no steps to the porch and facing the road, not sea. It stood well back from the road and at a much lower level than the hospital and when the housekeeper took me up to my second-floor room I discovered the rear of the building was only about fifty yards from the sea-wall, rocky beach and Sound beyond. The housekeeper said all the bedrooms shared my view. ‘Many’s the night you’ll think yourself on a ship, Staff Nurse!’
Directly I was alone I closed my window, sat with my back to it to eat the cold chicken salad and drink the hot tea she had left for me on a tray. I presumed I’d survive the next month if only as I’d no alternative, but the prospect appalled. I wondered wearily if there was a good psychiatrist on Thessa. ‘Doctor, I have this problem …’
‘Are you sure that’s your problem, my dear? Or is your fear of the sea merely a convenient
self-deception? Isn’t it your excuse for avoiding a much more basic fear?’
I gave up and got on with my unpacking. If there was a psychiatrist on Thessa, or anywhere else, who wouldn’t inside of two minutes leap into the Freudian theory of water, the sun wouldn’t rise tomorrow. And tomorrow, in Olaf, presumably I’d be working with, or for, Mister Moray. I wondered how he’d like that, and then what his registrar, houseman, and Sister Olaf were like. Kirsty hadn’t had time to tell me.
After Mrs Brown’s opening remarks, my expression amused her. ‘Poor girl! I’m not surprised you’re surprised. Everyone who’s come straight to us from a teaching hospital is initially staggered by the numbers at our disposal. To repeat myself. We have at present just the one resident house-physician and the one resident house-surgeon. We have no registrars. Our Medical Superintendent is also our Consultant Physician. We’ve just the one Consultant Surgeon, and he deals with every aspect of surgery. Every.’ She paused to let that sink in. ‘For example, Mr Fraser ‒ or Mr Moray as his locum ‒ may often have to include on the same theatre list, heads, gastrointestinals, gynaes, orthopaedics. Both Consultants have to be their own registrars and in tight moments the Medical Superintendent turns extra anaesthetist. For the normal routine theatre lists, one of our local G.P.s who is also a qualified anaesthetist, comes in to give the anaesthetics. And in the same fashion my small trained nursing staff often have to play as many parts as a stage crowd.’ She smiled. ‘Can be very stimulating, I assure you. As you are an experienced surgical nurse, naturally you’re more likely to be used in Olaf, Casualty, the theatre but you may find yourself doing medical nursing, or the odd bit of midder, though we do not now have any maternity beds in this hospital as a new Maternity Hospital has been opened just the other side of the town. I must say I miss our mums and babes, though, of course, we still do the Caesars here.’ She sat back, watching me. ‘I’m sorry you’d this delay getting here, but possibly it’s given you a much clearer picture of how isolated we can be.’
‘Yes.’ I told her some of my thoughts on the subject. ‘Quite honestly, I couldn’t think how you managed.’
‘Obviously the isolation presents us with problems unknown to mainland hospitals, but fortunately, somehow ‒’ she tapped her wooden desk top ‒ ‘we manage. We get a tremendous amount of help from our local G.P.s, welfare services, the police, lifeboatmen, the chopper crews, and, of course, from the Thessa folk and other islanders. But we have to be able to stand on our own feet as a hospital, and as one unit, not a series of units. We have to know we can depend on each other, and bluntly, that means we all have to get along well. One needs a very large staff,’ she added drily, ‘to be able to afford the indulgence of temperamental incompatibility. There simply is no time for such trivia in a wee skilled team dealing with any type of medical or surgical emergency ‒ and not only inside this hospital. The emergency can take place on the deck of a trawler, in the cabin of a lifeboat, a moving ambulance ‒ ours can all be turned instantly into portable operating theatres ‒ or it may be in some crofter’s wee butt-and-ben up the hills. If so, we go out to it. Anywhere, any time.’
‘I see.’
She glanced at an open file on her desk. ‘You’ve just been working as deputy to Sister Accident Unit. Presumably you’ve been out to many Crash Calls?’
‘Yes, Mrs Brown. Very many.’
‘And during your midder? Often out on district in the ‒ what did you call your ambulance emergency team?’
‘The Flying Baby Squad.’
‘So did we.’ She was a Scot, married to an Englishman and had trained in another London teaching hospital. She talked quite a bit about her training and later posts in Scottish hospitals and her husband’s work as a schoolmaster. I gathered indirectly they had no children. ‘To get back to Thessa,’ she continued, ‘there is one big difference you will notice here. On Thessa, our ambulance drivers answer all routine calls alone.’
‘Just the one man?’
‘Yes. But if we know he’ll need skilled help ‒ and being a small place we always do know if the call is in the town and never take any chances if it is outside ‒ one of the doctors goes out with him. However, it can be that a trained nurse is needed as well, so out one of us goes. I always have an on-call rota, and generally we manage to keep to it, but if there is a rush on, we don’t! I go out ‒ or my deputy ‒ I’ve been out frequently and a very interesting and helpful experience I’ve found these outside calls. I enjoy admin but it is very nice every now and then to get away from a desk and back to real patients. I still miss the bedside, and so will you, Staff Nurse, when you move up after your move to Victoria Ward. Have you looked that far ahead, yet?’
‘Occasionally.’
‘And decided you’ll never move away from bedside nursing?’
I hesitated. ‘Well ‒ yes.’
‘Most of us do that at your stage, my dear! But when the time comes, and we have to face the choice of standing still professionally, or rising, most of us go on up, leaving behind our patients and our uniforms, and always secretly hankering for both. One must progress, though sometimes I wonder why ‒ there it is ‒ and I must stop drifting off on tangents, pleasant though this is as I’m due at a meeting, shortly. Now, where was I?’
‘Ambulance calls, Mrs Brown.’
‘Ah, yes! Well, then expect to find yourself taking them all round Thessa, and possibly even going on by lifeboat to bring back a patient from one of the other islands. I’ll show you something.’ She got up and beckoned me to join her by the large, framed map fixed to one wall. ‘We admit patients from all these islands and ‒’ her hand sketched a huge circle over the glass, ‘all these seas. Up here ‒’ she tapped the frame, ‘are some of the world’s busiest fishing grounds. Here ‒ here ‒ here ‒ here ‒ rigs, rigs, rigs, rigs. Consequently, in addition to our own islanders, we are always admitting patients from the seas around us. Norwegians, Danes, Germans, Swedes, Russians, Americans ‒ there is no limit to their nationalities, or the injuries and illnesses they suffer. They come to us by trawler, tanker, merchantman, lifeboat, chopper, ambulance. They come to us at all hours, in all seasons, in storm and in calm. They need us,’ she added simply, ‘as you’ll see. Tell me, did you expect this? Or a quiet little cottage hospital?’
I blushed faintly. ‘I’m afraid ‒ the last.’
‘Don’t look so guilty, my dear! You’re not alone! All my incoming trained staff have said the same. I hope you’ll enjoy this month as much as the others enjoyed their spells with us. It is very nice to have a friend of Staff Nurse Manson’s and another St Martha’s nurse in our midst.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I’m afraid I must leave now or be late in Mr Moray’s office. I’ve just one final detail to add ‒ as you already know Sister Olaf doesn’t require you in the ward until eight a.m. tomorrow, and I hope you’ll have a quiet evening, but as I am very stretched for trained nurses on-call I’ll have to have you in reserve until midnight, so please don’t leave the Home. If I need you, I’ll just ring over.’
She did that an hour later. Ten minutes after her call, I was in the front seat of an ambulance between a driver called George, and Magnus Moray. By then the girl in the room next to mine had told me his full name, amongst other details of his private and professional life. All she seemed to have left out was his reason for changing from his dog-toothed tweeds into a grey suit, but unless Thessa General was even more unique amongst hospitals than Mrs Brown had said, my neighbour would have the inside story on that by tomorrow’s breakfast. Moray noticed my automatic upward glance as we drove away from the hospital. ‘No, Miss Anthony. We don’t sound the klaxon or dash the blue light for an emergency so far out. We’ve a seventeen mile drive west. How’s the traffic that side now, George?’
‘Not too bad yet. But you’ll notice a lot more in the town since you were last over. Many more heavy vehicles and many more to come, they say, when the oil starts to flow. That’ll be a day to remember, so it will.’
‘Indeed. One
can but hope, without regret.’
‘Aye. I kent some as say it’ll be the blackest day and others as say it’ll be the grandest day. No pleasing all folk.’
‘No, George.’
I kept quiet and waited to be told just why we were going out. On the ’phone Mrs Brown had said she would leave it to Mr Moray to save time. The girl in the Home said Highlanders had no idea of time, and that a Highland quarter-hour was never less than forty-five minutes. I glanced sideways at him as he stifled a yawn. ‘Sorry ‒’ he rubbed his eyes, ‘travelling always makes me sleepy. Feeling better just now?’
‘Yes, thanks.’
‘Good. Mrs Brown hasn’t put you in the picture?’
‘No, Mr. Moray.’
‘I’d better do it,’ he said, and nothing else, for the next five minutes.
Chapter Three
The road to the west was as empty as the road from the airport and again rose and fell over bare hills and wound round lochs and voes. The orange sun was low in the sky and streaked the blue water with crimson.
‘A Mr Peterson, a man in his fifties who farms his small-holding with his three sons, has fallen off his tractor, clean fractures to right tib and fib, some bruising, but according to the report, no haemorrhage or undue degree of shock.’
The driver said, ‘Peter Peterson’ll not shock easily, Mr Moray, but he’ll fret over the shock to his old Mary’s heart.’
‘This is the main reason for your coming along, Miss Anthony.’ He explained Mrs Peterson’s cardiac condition in detail, and though this was the kind of medical history I had been listening to for years, I needed extra concentration, as his fascinating voice kept adding new dimensions to the clinical terms. From him ‘valvular discrepancy’ sounded the title of a piper’s lament. ‘She’s been in and out of Haralda for years. Haralda Ward, as I expect you know, is Olaf’s medical opposite number.’
In Storm and In Calm Page 4