The Silent Valley

by Jean S. MacLeod

  So that was the reason for Matron's interest in his career! Jane had sensed that Tom Sark meant just a little more to Agnes Lawdon than the ordinary run of young doctors who had followed one another with amazing regularity at Conyers Park, but she could not have guessed that there was any real friendship between them. The very last thing Matron would show would be favouritism.

  Tom led her along the row of cottages until they came to one standing a little way apart, with a narrow lane running between it and its neighbour and surrounded by a red-brick wall. A late hollyhock nodded beside the gate and there were roses still blooming in the neat beds and pansies starring the borders. Rose Cottage seemed shut away in a little flowering world of its own.

  A small, stout figure hurried to the cottage door. Ada Sark had seen them open the gate from the kitchen window and she came to meet them. Generous in her giving, she could not wait to make her welcome felt.

  Fresh-faced, with small twinkling eyes, there was much of Tom in her, although her humour was rich and deep-seated, unsullied by Tom's cynicism. Jane felt that life must have been a great adventure to Ada Sark, her struggles only part of it, and she found herself clasping the plump, work-roughened hand warmly, glad now that she had come.

  Ada set their lunch in the sitting-room, as befitted the occasion, for Tom had never brought a young lady all the way to Crale before and she felt that this must be important.

  She fussed, and Tom chaffed her while they ate a hearty meal. When it was over he went out to inspect the boat which he was laying up for the winter. Jane watched him haul out a big tarpaulin to batten it down over the trestles.

  'Sometimes I wonder if we did right, making him a doctor,' Ada Sark said, coming to stand beside her at the window. 'He would just as soon have gone to sea. When he was a little lad we used to miss him and he'd be away with one of the local fishermen to watch the boats at Avonmouth. The only book that ever got really worn in this house was Treasure Island, and he would haunt the Bristol quays for hours whenever we went there, living the fitting out of the Hispaniola over and over again!'

  'What made him finally decide on the medical profession?' Jane asked.

  Ada hesitated. Her blue eyes scanned the small front garden with a hint of regret in their homely depths.

  'He hadn't complete say. A boy of eighteen can be swayed by firm talk.' She sighed, turning back into the room. 'I suppose they do need guidance, even at that age,' she mused, 'but I never thought he was one to go cutting up folk or attending to the sick.' She smiled at some inner reflection. 'Not that he wasn't a kind enough lad,' she added. 'He could never bear to see an animal hurt, and, fond as he was of the sea, he was never one to go fishing much. Even as a tiny tot he couldn't take a fish off a hook. That's why I've always had my doubts about this doctoring business. I thought him too sensitive for it, and still do.'

  Jane, who wouldn't have called Tom sensitive, found herself wondering about the other influence in his life that had steered him so determinedly towards a profession, but Mrs. Sark had apparently no more to say on the subject. She switched the conversation to gardens, and it was not until they were well on the homeward road that Jane realised they had never once discussed Conyers or her work there.

  The unexpected meeting with Agnes Lawdon dominated her thoughts most of the way back, and she could see in her mind's eye that tall, rather gaunt figure walking away from them, awkward out of uniform and inexpressibly lonely.

  Why should she put that construction on Matron's visit to Crale? There would be no doubt about her attitude in the morning. Stiffly accusing, she would confront Jane with the enormity of the situation, reprimanding her, at least.

  She was prepared, then, for the summons that took her to the room at the far end of the downstairs corridor as soon as she reported for duty the following morning. She had left home without seeing much of Hazel, who had been dressing her boisterous young daughter when she got down for breakfast, but she had ascertained that Hazel's day had been enjoyable. The friend had come to tea, but had left early, before Jane and Tom Sark had returned. His name, Jane had learned, was Eric Bridgewater, and he had been in the Navy, which was a link with Hazel's dead husband, George.

  Jane could not pretend to be thinking of anything but her job as she walked sedately along the corridor, but perhaps that was equivalent to thinking about Hazel, too. Her work at Conyers was the future for them both.

  Or was it? For the first time Jane did not feel quite sure. Security had come to mean much to her, not from any selfish motive, but because security was necessary for Hazel and Hazel's child. If she had only herself to think about her heart might not be thumping so hard now nor would her eyes have held that faint suggestion of anxiety which deepened them to a misty grey. They may have been a little stormy, too, with protest, because she did not consider that she had done anything wrong.

  She tapped lightly on Matron's door and was told to come in.

  Agnes Lawdon raised her head. The stiff white cap on her greying hair seemed to crackle and her eyes under the heavy, dark brows were frosty.

  'You will, I suppose, understand why I have sent for you, Sister,' she began without preliminary. 'I feel that yesterday afternoon must have been a mistake on your part, knowing how strongly I disapprove of any familiarity between my nurses and the medical staff.'

  She fixed Jane with level eyes, a sharp demand in her voice which it was impossible to ignore. Jane felt the hot blood rising to her cheeks and receding again, leaving her drained of sudden anger but with a resolute purpose in her heart.

  'Neither Doctor Sark nor myself was on duty yesterday, ma'am,' she said with quiet emphasis. 'I do not see that any rules which have been made for our conduct in the Home can possibly apply.'

  There was no obvious change in the fixed expression of the woman on the far side of the desk. She moved her hands a fraction of an inch, gripping both ends of a silver propelling pencil, but suddenly the knuckles were white with pressure.

  'Am I to take it that this is a serious love affair, Sister?' she asked.

  Jane swallowed hard.

  'No,' she said, 'there's nothing like that. Doctor Sark asked me to go for a run to the coast with him.' Her lips curved in a smile. 'I believe he considered it in the nature of a celebration. He had heard of my appointment.'

  Matron did not smile: neither did she look particularly relieved by what she had just heard.

  'Considering the nature of that appointment, Sister—the fact that it could be a step to much greater authority— doesn't your conduct strike you as rather odd? You were deliberately flouting rules.'

  Jane flushed.

  'Not as I see it,' she answered swiftly. 'I'm sorry if you feel that I've been indiscreet, but Doctor Sark and I have known one another for over a year, so perhaps that is why I didn't consider it odd to accept his invitation.'

  Matron's eyes narrowed a fraction of an inch, as if by added concentration she might penetrate the armour of Jane's reserve, probing beneath the exterior calmness.

  'Surely you are too sensible to make a mistake of that sort, Sister? You have always impressed me as someone greatly interested in her career. A nurse's whole life is bound up with her duty. Within the precincts of Conyers and beyond it there is a code which must be rigidly observed. Doctor Sark isn't ready for marriage yet. A woman is often asked to make sacrifices for a man's career, and graduation isn't the end where a doctor is concerned. There are further degrees to be had—specialisation to consider.'

  In spite of her justifiable anger, Jane was conscious of a deeper reason for Matron's interference than just the routine one of maintaining the stern set of rules laid down for the nursing staff. It seemed personal, something touching this woman as deeply as she could be touched, and she found herself wondering if Agnes Lawdon had ever known a moment of real tenderness in all her fifty-odd years of living. It did not seem possible that love could have touched her at all.

  'When you have thought it over,' she said in that same coldly precis
e tone, 'you will see that I am right. Men can be such fools and Doctor Sark is apparently no exception, but a doctor, if he is wise as well as ambitious, marries in the right quarter, even in these days!'

  That made Jane really angry. Her chin tilted, she observed as coldly as Matron had done:

  'There is just the possibility that he may be in love with someone.'

  'Love can wait!' Agnes Lawdon cut her short. 'It isn't so important as you young people seem to think.' There was a hardness about her now which could not be denied. 'There are still heights to be obtained in spite of the all-levelling Health Service, post-graduate degrees still continue to speak for themselves.' Her eyes held Jane's determinedly. 'I am sure that you are far too sensible, Sister, to stand in anyone's way.'

  The words found their mark. They had even more than the desired effect, for Jane had suddenly gone deadly pale and any argument that was left in her crumbled before them. She moistened her lips and rose slowly to her feet.

  'I think you had better know, Matron,' she said in a dry undertone, 'that Tom Sark has already asked me to marry him and I have refused.'

  If her confession gave satisfaction at last, there was little sign of it. Agnes Lawdon put down her pencil and lifted a sheaf of papers from her desk which she considered for a moment or two before she made answer.

  'Thank you, Sister,' she said. 'That will be all.' Her voice was almost pleasant now. 'I am quite sure you are far too level-headed to take a wrong view of the situation. Let me see, now. I want you to be in the theatre by eight o'clock. Mr. Hemmingway is operating here for the first time, and he will not have his patients kept waiting.'

  She looked up at the small sound that came from the girl on the far side of the desk, a sound that was like a protest— or pain. Jane's face was completely colourless and every nerve in her body seemed to have been shattered by a commonplace remark. She felt that she could hot move her limbs. Hands, feet, will itself refused to obey her.

  'Is there anything the matter, Sister? Do you feel ill?'

  Coolly incisive, Matron's voice cut in upon her numbed brain and Jane got out of the room somehow. She reached the corridor, forcing her shaking limbs to carry her as far as the refectory door, where she leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes.

  Stuart operating on her first day in the theatre! Stuart there at all! Her pulses began to beat with sledge-hammer insistency, her heart thumping out the heavy rhythm of desperation until she could almost hear its beating in the stillness. She wanted to run from the very thought of meeting him, from the bitterness and rejection that would be in his grey eyes when recognition first leapt between them, yet training kept her there, rooted to the spot, forcing herself to consider it all as no more than a job of work, her accepted duty.

  'A nurse's whole life is bound up with her duty.'

  Matron's words came back to mock her, filling the deserted corridor, and then it was no longer deserted. Two student nurses rounded a far bend, broke loose from each other's encircling arm, and walked sedately towards her.

  Jane should have issued some sort of reprimand, but she was unable to trust her voice. She stood to one side while they entered the refectory.

  A buzz of chatter and laughter issued from the half-open door. She would have to go in some time, but her limbs were still reluctant to make the initial effort and she had to be sure about her voice. Snatches of conversation drifted out to her. It was inevitable. They were discussing the amazing news Matron had just delivered to her in the form of a bombshell. The great Stuart Hemmingway, fresh from his London triumphs, was to operate at Conyers!

  'Why do you think he's come back to Norchester?' somebody asked. 'It's such a hole!'

  'The Cortonwells could be the answer.' The cool, insolent voice was Clarrie Parr's. Jane would have recognised it anywhere. Clarrie's nursing wasn't serious. It was taken as a joke in the family. The Parrs had plenty of money, but Clarrie had wanted something to do, something romantic.

  'Do you mean that Della Cortonwell could be the answer?' someone else asked, taking Clarrie up.

  'Could be.' There was a pause in which Jane could imagine Clarrie lighting a cigarette and flicking the match expertly behind the gas fire, all completely contrary to Conyers' regulations. 'Della's different from anyone else I know. She's a strange girl. All these hare-brained adventures! We often wonder what her next exploit will be, but nobody in their sane mind could possibly guess!'

  Clarrie's 'we' invariably put her less fortunate colleagues at a distance. Quite clearly they did not belong to Norchester's exclusive set. There was a small pause, broken by the entrance of a nurse at the far door. Jane moved just inside the room. She could pour herself a cup of coffee from the percolator on the service table against the wall without exciting any immediate comment. All eyes were fixed on Clarrie and the newcomer, a spectacular blonde, already engaged to be married.

  'Girls!' she exclaimed dramatically, 'you'll never guess who's coming into number seven?'

  'The Queen of Siam, or Methuselah himself,' Paddy Monaghan suggested from her perch on a window sill. 'No one, at any rate, under seventy!' she added disconsolately. 'I know all about Conyers after three years in the place! When you've finished washing napkins over on Maternity, you're transferred up here to chronics and that's that! If one happens to die, you get another centenarian in his place!'

  'You're wrong this time, Paddy!' Her informer looked triumphant, but in no hurry to impart her information.

  'Oh, for heaven's sake, Stephens, spare us the dramatic approach!' Mary Wakeham looked up from her book, a dark line of concentration etched between her heavy brows. 'It can't be all that important.'

  'We're not all immersed in textbooks to the exclusion of everything else,' Joyce Stephens retorted coldly. 'You may not be interested, Wakey, but I'll bet the rest are.'

  Jane filled her cup, carrying it to the end of the long table where the night staff were just finishing their supper. Someone made a way for her, but their interest was elsewhere. Their eyes were fixed on Joyce Stephens, tired though they were, and they were all agog for information.

  'It's Della Cortonwell! Three suitcases and Sir Gervaise's Rolls have just arrived at the front door!'

  There was a rush for the window, but apparently the Rolls Royce contained nothing but the suitcases, and they fell back.

  'How do you know she's coming in?' someone demanded. 'It might be Sir Gervaise himself.'

  'Not with that sort of luggage! The first one Huggins brought up was a sky-blue dressing-case.'

  Huggins was the porter, and Joyce was nothing if not observant.

  The night staff returned to their neglected suppers. It was time, thought most of them, that they caught up with some sleep. Clarrie Parr got up and yawned.

  'Another two days of this and then I'm off for a glorious twenty-four hours!' she observed, stretching luxuriously.

  'You're not on call?'

  'Not me! I've thought up a wonderful excuse.'

  'You'd wriggle out of anything!'

  'So would you, if you had my incentive.'

  There was a lazy exodus towards the door, arrested by a sudden alert from the window.

  'Oh, boy I Look at this!' Paddy had ceased to swing her legs from the sill and was twisting round to gaze down into the forecourt where a big yellow car, long and low and rakish, had drawn up in the space left by the departed Rolls.

  'Oh, boy! Oh boy! I wish we had surgeons like that instead of fat and balding Rory McNichol and old Horatius with his smoker's cough!'

  Clarrie Parr moved swiftly to Paddy's side, drawing back the curtain a fraction to look out.

  'Prepare for it, Paddy!' she announced silkily. 'We have got a surgeon like that. As from this morning, Della Cortonwell's escort consults exclusively at Conyers Park.'

  'Good heavens, Calvert!' Jane's neighbour jumped up to avoid the stream of dark liquid pouring from the edge of the table. 'How in the world did you manage to do that?'

  'I'm sorry!' Jane made a f
rantic attempt to stem the flow of spilled coffee before it could reach the bench and the floor. 'I—it slipped out of my hand.'

  Nobody appeared to be troubling about her explanation. They were crowding to the window again, jockeying for position, peering over each other's shoulder to catch a glimpse of the man and the girl arriving below, and Jane stood behind them, the breadth of the room between her and the triumphant Clarrie, feeling as if her heartbeats were tearing her apart.

  'Do you think he'll marry her?' Paddy's clear young voice with its lilting Celtic intonation broke into her thoughts like splintering ice.

  'A doctor, if he is wise as well as ambitious, marries in the right quarter, even in these days.'

  Matron's cynical observation rang in Jane's ears as Clarrie turned from the window, her lazily-amused glance seeking Jane's across the table.

  'Wasn't there a time when you knew Doctor Hemmingway rather well, Sister?' she enquired placidly. 'It wasn't really so long ago, was it?'

  How deliberately cruel one's fellow man could be! Jane's hand was at her throat, as if she might tear away some constricting band, but she managed to answer calmly enough:

  'It's four years ago now. Yes, we knew each other rather well.' She could marvel at the calmness of her own voice and she was even able to get up and cross the room under Clarrie's derisive stare. 'I'm on duty in half an hour,' she said. 'I must go and change my coat.'

  A trail of coffee-stains marred the crisp spotlessness of the white wrapper she had put on less than an hour ago and she could not appear in the theatre like that, but the whole thing was really an excuse to get away from Clarrie's insolent, doubtful eyes. They had never been friends. Jane had tried, but she had been too much aware of the older girl's jealousy to persist after the first week or two, and she knew that her promotion to theatre sister would not. have improved Clarrie's feeling for her. Yet all that scarcely seemed to matter as she made her escape into the corridor. It went on in a world outside the seething world of her own thoughts, where Stuart Hemmingway's name had penetrated like a burning arrow shot at random from the powerful bow of chance.