‘You’d better!’ snorted Sister. ‘As if your lot isn’t ‒ who is? Right, then! Time I was off!’
Alan had come in to Olaf and was in the men’s ward. He watched them leave together then came into the office to ask if I thought he should take the hat round for the wedding giftie. ‘The lovely Jenny must’ve burnt her lib card. Magnus never sits around blethering but he was at it in Haralda this morning and just now here. Gurrrl! The man’s mellowing while you watch.’
‘Jenny mellowing?’
He hesitated. ‘Not so you’d notice. But who’s to tell with you women? No stability.’
‘That means Liz hasn’t written. Have you written to her?’
‘When’ve I had time?’
‘Isn’t she a houseman too?’
He shook his fist at me and pottered off towards the stairs. He must have met Maggie on the way as I heard her stifled squeak.
It was open visiting afternoon and the entire ward was full of relatives coming and going. Tea was going round when Mrs Brown rang me. ‘Quiet moment? Splendid! Business first then I’ve some nice news for you. I had a word with Sister Olaf on her way out and it will suit us both if you take your extra time off this coming Sunday and next Wednesday? All right? Good. Now the news. In the mail that has just flown in I’ve heard from Nurse Manson. Sister safely delivered of a baby girl, both flourishing, and Nurse Manson sees no reason why she should not return on the expected date. All well in Olaf? How nice. Thank you. Staff.’
‘Mr Donald gone, Staff?’ Magnus was back in the doorway looking and sounding singularly unmellow.
‘Some time back, Mr Moray.’ I turned from the telephone, smiling. ‘Can I help?’
‘No, thanks.’ He vanished with such uncharacteristic speed when in Olaf that I was puzzled. The theatre was quiet, Casualty had not warned us of any incoming surgical patients, the place couldn’t be on fire as no alarm had sounded and l had not heard any maroons. As the office was at the back I went to one of the front windows to check the ambulances. The two below were empty and stationary. It was a grey blustery afternoon. The sky was heavy with dark, moving clouds, the Sound had an ugly swell and the birds, hugging their wings, were jostling each other for standing room on the rocks. The wind sounded gale force to me but presumably could not have been so for the afternoon plane to land. I stopped a part-timer. ‘Heard any maroons?’
‘No. The wind could be in the wrong direction ‒ och, no, it’s not that! There’s been no lifeboat call! There’s Mr Ferguson sitting with Mr Norris. If you heard a report it’ll have been an explosion from the project the oil companies are building up the coast. They’re constantly letting off charges, but we can’t normally hear them from here. Probably a trick of the wind.’
‘Probably. Excuse me ‒’ Alan had charged up the stairs. ‘Mr Donald! Do you know Mr Moray’s looking for you?’
He turned on one foot. ‘Do I not! My machine had a short.’ He charged on to collect the pen he had left in the men’s ward, and on his way out popped his head round the office door. ‘No hat required this day!’
‘Hang about! What’s going on?’
‘How’d this wee man know? Just the skivvy!’ His head vanished as one of the relatives arrived to talk to me.
I forgot my unsolved problem until I was off-duty and went down to the cloakroom for my cloak. Jenny Pringle, in uniform, was in there alone and sitting on the bench against one wall with her face in her hands. She did not hear me and I hesitated, momentarily, thinking she was crying. She was not, but when she dropped her hands her colour was pale grey. ‘Did you pass out, Sister?’
‘No. Just taking five. I’m all right.’
That was nonsense and we both knew it. ‘Are you coming off or going on?’
‘On, but not till five-thirty. I’ve to see Mrs Brown first.’ She looked at her watch. ‘In a few minutes.’
I took the drinking glass out of my locker, rinsed, filled and handed it to her. ‘Or would you prefer something from the machine? I’ll nip over to Cas ‒’
‘Don’t fuss, Nurse! This is all I need. I’m not ill. Just dysmenorrhea. Often have it. Thanks.’ She drank the water then forced an apologetic smile. ‘Having spat at you’s good therapy as it’s sent up my adrenalin. Don’t I look better?’
‘Not quite so grey.’
‘Let’s see.’ She checked in the mirror. ‘Yes. Good. Mrs Brown has enough problems without having to cope with her Sister Theatre’s attack of the girlie vapours. Thanks for your glass.’ She swept out leaving me still uneasy and relieved Mrs Brown would have a look at her before she went on-duty. That no operations were scheduled did not cover emergencies.
When I got back to the Home I went first to look at the Telephone Notices Board. Rod Harding, as far as I knew, was still in England, but I now had several friends amongst the married nurses living out who regularly rang to ask me to meals. Linda, the girl in the room next to mine, was already at the board. ‘No one loves me either, Charlotte.’
She was engaged to a man working at the airport. ‘Doesn’t Pete know it’s your half-day?’
‘Of course he does! He’ll need a good story to explain why he’s not rung. I’ve hung around since three. I didn’t expect before then as he’ll have been bringing in the afternoon plane, but no excuse since! And nothing wrong with our outside line. I should know! Four times I’ve answered some eager Englishman wanting Jenny Pringle. She was out for a walk but I caught her coming back to change at his fourth attempt. He wouldn’t leave his name or a message. Has she any English relatives?’
‘Sorry. Don’t know.’ I was on the point of asking if she knew if Jenny regularly suffered from gynae problems, then changed my mind as I belatedly realized what a handy alibi was dysmenorrhea when used inter-staff in a hospital. Few things are more certain to stop nurses or doctors asking sympathetic, but awkward questions, than a colleague complaining of a spasmodic condition shared by the overwhelming majority of women from puberty to the menopause. The professional reaction being simply: if it is bad, see a gynaecologist, and if not, belt up. There was no doubt that for those few minutes she had looked and felt ill, but an emotional shock could have had the same physical effect. And though her earlier walk could have been sensible therapy to pep up her circulation, as she might have to stand for hours this evening, an afternoon on her bed with a hot water bottle would, I should have thought, been more her choice. Then she had that ’phone call. From whom? Old friend bearing bad news? Old friend who was himself bad news? I went up to my room thinking it all over and wondering if it somehow tied up with Magnus weighing into Alan.
‘Charlotte! Now for you! Alan Donald!’
‘What the hell? He’s on!’
Alan wanted me to save what remained of his neck and his hopes of matrimonial bliss. ‘I’ve only just remembered tomorrow is Liz’s birthday. Will you get down to the shops before they close, buy me a bonnie birthday card and drop it up here at the hospital this evening. Mrs Ferguson is escorting a man from Haralda to Glasgow tomorrow by air and she’s promised to stop by with it at the hospital for Liz.’
‘Sure. Incidentally, can you explain what exactly ails your neck?’
‘Acute attack of celtic haemadementia. There’s a lot of it about, just now. Thanks.’ He rang off.
Linda’s Pete had come round and taken her out when I returned from my errand and though we lived next door, I did not see her again until Saturday night. I saw nearly as little of Alan during the time as the following was an op day, and the next, his free Saturday and he spent it sailing with Mr Black in an effort to conquer his sea-sickness before settling in the Islands. ‘Lad’s got guts,’ said Sister Olaf. ‘He’ll do. What are you doing tomorrow, Staff?’
‘Catching up on all the letters I should’ve written, Sister.’
‘Don’t get writer’s cramp.’
I was lying on my bed listening to a radio concert when Linda came in on Saturday night to ask me to zip her dress. ‘Not going out, Charlotte? I wish I’d known! I was sure you’d
have a date, or I’d have got Pete to fix something. All his pals are panting for female talent. With all the spare men incomers, the shortage of girls is acute. What’s happened to your boyfriend Rod Harding? Pete says he’s flown in again.’
‘I didn’t know that. No reason why I should. He’s sweet, but we aren’t old chums. I expect he’ll ring up sometime. Hold still!’ A telephone was ringing. ‘Helen’ll answer it.’
Helen was a theatre nurse and Dai Evans’s girlfriend. She was a serious girl with a literal mind, tight bun, and trendy spectacles. She joined us looking perturbed. ‘Why does Magnus Moray want a word with you, Charlotte?’
‘God only knows! Maybe he wants me to buy Jenny a birthday card?’
‘Can’t be that,’ said Helen, ‘the shops are shut. Anyway, she had a birthday last month.’
Linda insisted we stopped blethering and I got a move on. ‘I’m not leaving till I find out what this is about.’
Magnus wanted my views on a luncheon picnic in Thessa’s northern hills. ‘If you have not yet seen them, they are worth a visit. I was wondering if you would care to drive up with me tomorrow? Or are you very probably otherwise engaged?’
Suddenly my life appeared crowded with those who erroneously believed my off-duty to be one wild, action-packed whirl. The crowd did not include Sister Olaf. ‘No, I’m not booked and ‒ thanks very much.’
There was a faint, and rather unnerving silence. ‘Good. Ten-thirty? And may I advise, whatever the forecast, a stout raincoat and sturdy shoes. I thought we might take a wee stroll over the hills.’
I said that would be very nice, we exchanged a couple more clichés and he rang off. It was only the shock of the realization of what I had done that prevented my ringing Sister Olaf immediately. Since this was obviously another of her ideas, I wanted her advice on what in the world I was going to talk to him about over our picnic luncheon and stroll over all those hills in our stout raincoats and sturdy shoes.
Chapter Six
By the first thirty minutes of our drive we had fallen back on the weather. ‘No sign of rain,’ I said.
‘Not yet, Charlotte.’
When he initially suggested we used first names I’d been relieved. Events were proving us both wrong, as the false informality for some reason wrecked the mild professional friendship we had recently developed in the hospital. This was probably because on-duty we spoke the same professional language, but in that car though English was our common tongue, it failed as a means of communication. I did try, but I couldn’t get through to him at all. Every subject I started he killed with a short sentence, or more frequently, a bored monosyllable. He gave me the impression he considered his presence sufficient joy for any girl, and the conceit so irritated me that, had the scenery not been so good I’d have invented one of my nasty headaches and demanded to be driven back to the Home.
After miles over hills similar to those in the south, we drove through a fertile green valley between brown hills that reminded me of the Sussex Downs. I told him so. ‘Do you know Sussex, Magnus?’
‘No.’
Beyond the valley were more peat hills and more acres of emptiness with the hills ahead rising up one behind the other. As we drew nearer and the ridges grew higher, the outlines were more rugged, the hills more splashed with heather than streaked with peat scars and the water in the lochs and voes was a darker blue and seemed much deeper. In every loch the hills were mirrored and the pale sunshine shimmered on the surface and the distant hills were purple shadows against the parchment sky. By then the estate was the only car on the road. There were no more isolated grey or white stone houses; no more long black scars, or long low walls of neatly stacked lifted peat left out to dry. The fewer sheep scrambled with the agility of mountain goats and the clouds of birds dappled the hills with moving shadows, and when a cloud settled, with a pristine patch of snow.
After another hair-pin bend at the foot of another hill, Magnus stopped the car near another little loch so narrow that I first took it for a voe. The slender strip of brilliant water was fringed with golden rushes, brown reeds and bright green grass. The birds rose protesting until our engine was off, then floated back to the rushes and the water. I thought aloud, ‘It looks untouched and untroubled since eternity began.’
‘I fear you’re mistaken.’ He got out, came round and opened my door. ‘See those stones up there?’
He had parked off the road and on turf at the foot of the highest surrounding hill. A shepherd’s track ran drunkenly up to the half-circle of uneven stone blocks on the crest. ‘Prehistoric?’
‘Yes. A broch.’
‘That a fort?’
‘Fort plus communal home and cattle-shelter. Humans have lived here, died here, so there’s little of the ugly side of human nature this wee loch’ll not have seen. Civilizations change, but not human nature. Greed, murder, rape, pain, death. All here, once.’
‘Then also joy, courage, hope, love.’
He looked at me. ‘So you’re an optimist?’
‘You’re not?’
‘No.’ He turned his attention to the sky. ‘Consequently, though I hope those clouds over the Atlantic will keep moving south, were I interested in gambling which I’m not, I’d put my shirt on the wind switching due west. But I think we’ve time to reach the top before the next downpour and you might enjoy lunch up there as the view is remarkable. Once up, if it does rain, an overlap on the far side provides a surprisingly dry shelter. Can you manage that hill?’
‘Sure. Doesn’t look very steep.’
‘It’s steeper and longer than it looks from here.’ He opened the back of the car to get out the picnic things. I glanced at my watch ‒ with luck, perhaps not more than another three hours.
‘Want any help, Magnus? ‒ hang about!’ I went round the bonnet for a better look at a small speckled bird on the water. ‘What’s that one there? Doesn’t look like any bird I’ve seen up here so far.’
He looked over the roof. ‘No, you wouldn’t. We’re lucky to see one here so late in September. It’s a red-necked phalarope.’
‘A phalarope? Honestly?’
He stiffened. ‘Yes.’
I smiled at myself. ‘Do you know till now I’ve never actually believed the phalarope existed? Mentally I’ve grouped it with the phoenix.’ I took a long, slow, look up all around, and the hills all around looked down at me. ‘Rod was so right! I just don’t bloody believe this! Rod Harding,’ I added over my shoulder, ‘the man who flew up from London with me. Works in oil.’
He nodded vaguely, but didn’t look as if he had heard, or been listening. He was staring at the loch, but not as if he saw it. And in that clear, sharp light, I saw every line, every angle of his face, the texture of his skin, the faint blue of his smooth chin, the extraordinary blackness of his hair, and the private hell in his eyes. Knowing so little of his personal background, I couldn’t guess at the association that had evoked the recall, but I didn’t have to guess at that expression in his eyes as I recognized it. I had seen it in too many other eyes in hospital, and for a period in my own in any mirror. I turned away without his noticing and went closer to the loch, ostensibly for another look at the phalarope. I knew he ‒ anyone ‒ when suddenly pitched back into the bottom of a mental pit, needed a few private moments in which to climb back out.
He heard the rustle of disturbed moorhens scuttling over the water. ‘Careful, Charlotte, that green is bog!’ The warning was too late as I had already stumbled and as my feet stuck, I fell on my face. ‘Och, no!’ He hauled me out at once, and sat me on the floor of the open back of the estate before I got my breath. From his new expression, he was just waiting for the hysterics. ‘Charlotte, I’m sorry! I should’ve warned you! Your bonnie outfit is wrecked ‒’
‘My fault for wandering ‒’ I caught sight of my reflection in a window and shouted with laughter. ‘Wow! Behold Thessa’s own friendly neighbourhood Loch Ness Monster!’ My face, hair, the front of my blue trouser suit and hands were dripping g
reen slime. ‘Magnus, I wonder you didn’t chuck me straight into the loch and reach for your camera. You could’ve made a fortune!’
He smiled slightly, reluctantly. ‘Maybe you’d do as a wee loch sprite. Let me help you ‒’
‘Wee sprite my foot!’ I leapt back into the road spattering slime. ‘We monsters have our pride, Magnus! Let me tell you from now on old men of Thessa in their chimney corners will chill the blood with their tales of the strange English female monster ‒ the horrible green Thing that walks by day round the wee loch in the northern hills ‒ like so!’ I extended my arms and did a kind of slow spaceman’s walk round him. ‘And when there’s an R in the month, I’ll wail. No ‒ for God’s sake man, keep off!’ I backed from him. ‘I’ve already streaked your smooth suede jacket with slime. If you’ve much more to do with me you won’t have a jacket fit to wear! I suppose you don’t happen to have a paper bag on you?’
I had never seen him smile as he did then. It was a glorious smile that transformed his face and made him look younger, and relaxed, and happy for himself and because I was happy and it was a lovely day and we were in an exquisite place and the moment was too golden to be shadowed by past or future. When the smile faded from his lips it remained in his eyes. ‘Naturally. But for present purposes a towel might be more useful.’ He produced a smallish clean bathtowel, handed it to me, removed his suede driving coat, rolled up the sleeves of his fawn rollneck. ‘Now let me help you out of your jacket. I’ll see what I can do with it while you have a wee wash.’
‘How can I get close enough to the loch to wash?’
‘You don’t. We’re not swimming today. There’s a burn back here.’ He showed me to the little stream running down the hill then went back to the car. I knelt on the turf and washed my hands, face, as much slime as I could feel on my hair in the icy, soft water. Next I mopped my trouser legs. My shoes and jacket had taken the greater bulk and as the latter had been buttoned, my sweater was only spotted. He came back carrying a thick natural wool fishing sweater. ‘All off?’
In Storm and In Calm Page 10