The Silent Valley

by Jean S. MacLeod

  He moved slightly, opening Della's door to let her pass through, but he did not follow her into the room. Della looked up indifferently, waving the tray aside.

  'I don't want that,' she said. 'Sit down and talk to me.'

  Jane stood at the side of the bed.

  'My only excuse for being here would be to make sure that you drank your milk.'

  'If Matron comes along, do you mean?' Della laughed. 'Good heavens, the woman must be a veritable sergeant-major ! Don't you ever relax?'

  'Off duty—quite a bit,' Jane smiled. There was something about Della which she had to like. 'But at the present moment we're hopelessly understaffed and there's very little free time in consequence.'

  Della's finely pencilled brows drew together in a quick frown,

  'Stuart told me about you being in the theatre. I expect you like it much better than lackeying in the corridors?'

  Jane wondered what Stuart had said, in what way he had discussed her with Della. Had he mentioned the past, or had he skimmed that part over, confessing nothing more than the fact that they were old acquaintances? Her heart twisted with the thought of his indifference and the studied hardness about him whenever they confronted one another, and she contrasted it jealously with his manner to Della, yet she could not honestly dislike the girl who lay propped among her pillows watching her with steady, heavy-lidded eyes. The torture of her love was her own undoing, for she knew that she could continue to see those contrasts daily and be powerless to change them. I've had time, she thought—time to school myself against loving like this!

  Della began to drink the milk, turning the warmed beaker round and round in her thin hands, a little, musing smile playing about her lips.

  'Tell me, Jane, what made you take up nursing?' she asked.

  'It was what I wanted to do.'

  'A calling?'

  'If you like. Sometimes I think one could never do it with any success otherwise.'

  'The mop-and-bucket part?'

  'Partly that.'

  'Would you say that your life was complete, now that you've got what you wanted by way of a career?'

  A slow, painful colour stained Jane's cheeks.

  'Do we ever get—all we want from life?' she challenged.

  Della raised herself on the bed, leaning forward with such a look of intensity in her pale eyes .that Jane felt suddenly anxious.

  'No,' she said, 'we don't. It's forbidden by an all-powerful Providence, or what-have-you. It would not be good for us to have all we wanted from life, presumably, not even such little things as happiness or abundant health 1'

  Jane saw it then, the pitiful, groping desire under the bitterness, the tortured indecision with which Della Cortonwell faced the future. The lung infection might or might not be serious, but for anyone like Stuart it would be madness to take a chance.

  The sudden revelation clutched her by the throat, sending the blinding tears into her eyes, and turned sharply from the bed.

  'You'll come again?' Della asked urgently. 'You're so restful, Jane. I can't stand arrogant, healthful specimens like Parr always about. They make me green with envy and retard the cure!'

  She had re-encased herself in her former armour of cynicism, but that one brief glimpse of the frightened soul underneath had been enough for Jane. Della was not nearly so sure of herself as she would like everyone to believe. Deep down in the secret places of her heart she was vulnerable, as vulnerable as Jane herself.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Three days passed in which Jane continued to work like a Trojan. The theatre work was heavy, especially the important hour of preparing and checking before the operation itself. Norman Fash, the gynaecologist, was easy to work for, passing over minor errors with his vaguely tolerant smile, and she began to gain confidence by slow degrees.

  If Stuart visited Della—and she heard that he did-—he and Jane did not encounter one another, even in the corridors. He might have passed completely out of her life again but for the fact that his name was on everybody's lips and there was the certainty that he would operate again very soon.

  When she glanced down the lists each morning Jane read the surgeons' names with a mixture of relief and disappointment, and then, one morning, it was there.

  'Miss Cowrie. Room twenty-four. Mr. Hemmingway.'

  The colour rose to her cheeks and receded, leaving her abnormally pale. Stella Oakroyd had so much confidence in her now that she was allowing her to pass the better known instruments to the surgeons—scalpels, tweezers, retractors— but suddenly it seemed that she had no experience, no confidence. Stuart's familiar name had blotted all that out once more and her nerves were on edge again, her blood pounding madly through her veins. The operation would leave her stripped of her hardly won calm, an easy target for the barbed shafts of Stuart's continuing bitterness.

  The final settling up between Hazel and herself had come sooner than she had expected, too. Eric had decided on an early marriage so that they could be in their own home before Christmas, and to Jane's silent consternation he was preparing to remove her sister and Linda to some considerable distance. He could work quite well, he maintained, from either side of his district, and he had found a house outside Nottingham.

  Jane had tried not to mind, and Hazel was too starry-eyed to consider possible loneliness. She would have Eric and Linda Jane. Her world was, in effect, complete.

  'Will you store a few pieces of furniture for me, Hazel?' Jane asked. 'They could go with your things and you could send them back when I needed them.'

  'And in the meantime?' Hazel had asked guiltily.

  'I'll get a room at Conyers.'

  'An attic bedroom!'

  'They're all right,' Jane had assured her. 'They have the loveliest view between the Cathedral spires.'

  'You'll have more work put on your shoulders, that's all,' Hazel had been quick to object, although she had no alternative arrangement to suggest. 'Matron will be only too pleased to have you on call all the time!'

  'It's my job in life,' Jane had reminded her without her usual buoyancy. 'It's what I can do.'

  And work blots out memory occasionally, she thought.

  When she made her way to the operating theatre she felt tired. It was. something so unusual that she would not let herself admit it and began her preparations immediately. The conversation with Hazel was two days old, but it still lingered in her mind and she thought that perhaps it would be best to ask for a room at Conyers. If she was to become a regular theatre sister Matron would prefer her to live in.

  Tom Sark put his fair head round the door at quarter to nine.

  'I know I'm playing second fiddle to a few swabs and a hank of sutures,' he observed, 'but how much longer am I to wait for an answer to that dinner invitation of mine?'

  Jane laughed. His mockery was only slightly barbed and he was looking at her with a speculative light in his blue eyes.

  'I've been busy at home,' she explained briskly. 'I'm— moving into the top storey.'

  'Here—at Conyers?' He evidently could not believe it. 'But why? You'll get twice as much work to do, Janey, old girl, and twice as little time to yourself.'

  'And twice as many opportunities of seeing you! Just think of it!'

  'It has its possibilities,' he agreed. 'I might even move in myself.'

  'You've heard, of course, that resident physicians are barred? The male of the species can be too much of a distraction.'

  'Surely not to Matron! Anyway, she might be persuaded to make an exception of me.'

  'The decision doesn't rest with Matron,' Jane pointed out. 'It would be entirely one for the Board.'

  'And the Board is sitting tightly under Matron's firm little thumb,' he declared. 'Even the all-powerful Norman Fash daren't cross her too often.'

  Jane frowned.

  'One woman ought not to have so much power.'

  He laughed, perching himself negligently on the end of the wash-basins.

  'It's no use, Jane! You're not cut out to
uphold causes. You're just not the militant type!'

  Tom wandered round the ante-room, picking up this and that and laying it down without interest.

  'I'd never be any use at carving people up,' he said gloomily. 'Someone else will have to gather the laurels in that direction. Hemmingway is doing rather well, isn't he?' he added tentatively, half turning to survey her under lowered brows. 'He has all the cards stacked in his favour, of course.'

  'I don't think so.' Jane had turned slowly, her level eyes on his, her cheeks faintly coloured with her rising impatience. 'Nobody has all the cards stacked for them, Tom. Most of us have to work for what we finally achieve. It's—rather belittling to suggest otherwise.'

  He looked at her for a minute uncertainly and then he laughed, coming up behind her to pinion her arms close to her side.

  'If you were half as efficient a nurse as you imagine yourself to be, Janey,' he said, 'you would imprison that topknot of auburn curls under your coif. As it is, they're more than somewhat exasperating, and, coupled with the flush and the anger, they're irresistible.'

  For one desperate second she fancied that he was about to kiss her and she froze in cold horror at the thought. Not here! Not in the ante-room of the operating theatre, with her tasks only half completed because he had already distracted her. Her eyes widened and she saw him look up and glance over her head. In the next instant she was free.

  Stuart Hemmingway walked through from the theatre, closely followed by Matron. He held one half of the swinging door open and Jane could see the theatre through the round port-hole of the other one—the hooded lamp, the oxygen cylinders, the high, tiled walls with their green patterned dado and the fan-like air-conditioner revolving at the window. It all seemed unreal, like a stage set for some tense drama, and she felt Matron's eyes upon her, scorching in their contempt.

  She could not look at Stuart, but she knew that he had removed his coat and was waiting for someone to help him with his gown. It was her allotted task, but she could not move to perform it, knowing so well the expressions she expected to see in his eyes. Cynicism, and some of Matron's contempt, perhaps.

  'Do you mind, Sister?'

  He indicated the waiting gown and mask, and when she was forced to look at him, at last, she read neither cynicism nor contempt in his eyes. Only a cold and furious anger.

  Of course, he thought that she had encouraged Tom! He would view the incident as nothing but a clandestine affair played out in the worst of taste.

  Matron had come over to check the list and there were still last-minute items to set out. With a sense of relief Jane saw Stella Oakroyd come through from the theatre with the anaesthetist, who had stopped at the pantry for the inevitable cup of tea.

  'All fixed up?' Stella asked encouragingly.

  'I've only the blood plasma to fetch,' Jane said as she made her escape from the room.

  She almost ran along the corridor to the small office tucked away at its far end where the blood was kept, wondering who was on duty and if she could hide her agitation before she got there.

  Tom Sark looked up from the bench beside the window when she opened the door. He had been peering through a small microscope at some cultures and he moved to make room for her beside him.

  'Look here, Jane!' he said. 'Come and look at these bugs.'

  'There isn't time.' Jane knew how irritable that had sounded, but she couldn't help herself. But for Tom, all this need never have happened. 'Can you get me a bottle of blood—A group, please.'

  He looked up at her lazily.

  'What's the hurry?' he asked.

  'It just happens to be rather urgent,' she told him coldly. 'I'm in the theatre.'

  'Oh, I see! The great Hemmingway mustn't be kept waiting, you mean!' He shrugged carelessly. 'Help yourself. The blood's in the fridge.'

  Jane hesitated.

  'Hadn't you better check up?' she suggested.

  Tom applied himself to the microscope with exaggerated care.

  'I'll enter it later,' he said. 'Better not keep the Great One waiting.'

  There was resentment and envy in his tone, the jealousy of a lesser nature for the brilliant surgeon who was rapidly making his mark in the world, but Jane could not take time to think of these things.

  'Which shelf?' she asked, moving quickly to the refrigerator. 'You know the case-history, of course?'

  'Everyone knows the case-history,' he returned almost aggressively. 'No one but the great Mr. Hemmingway himself could operate with any hope of success at this stage! Top shelf, right-hand side.'

  There was a dull red colour in his cheeks and he did not rise from the desk. He kept his eye glued to the microscope, as if the conversation had ceased to interest him and only his 'bugs' held his attention.

  'Some day, Jane, I'll get you interested in these little fellows,' he said lightly. 'So many things show up clearly under a microscope.'

  'So many unpleasant things,' she agreed acidly, wondering in the next instant why she had been so harsh. Tom was comparatively harmless.

  He turned, looked up from the bench, and laughed.

  'All right—you win!' he said. 'There's no harm in being wedded to your profession, but don't let us be enemies, Janey!'

  She hurried back along the corridor without answering him, her breath coming quickly between her set teeth, the high colour of angry impatience still in her cheeks, but she slowed her pace before she reached the theatre door.

  Stuart was still in the ante-room, waiting with his mask ready. He looked down at her, noting the flush and the depths of expression in her anger-darkened eyes, but he did not speak, and for the first time Jane was aware of the strain of these meetings, the constant sense of doing battle with something in him that would not yield. He was stronger than she was, less likely to crack even if their coming together like this did affect him, which she thought unlikely.

  The impervious set of his jaw as she tied his mask only served to confirm her belief. It was like iron, the whole man cast in iron.

  Perhaps that was the sort of control he needed to do his job thoroughly, but he needn't let it bite into his soul. She reached up to adjust the tapes of his mask, her fingers just brushing his smooth hair. This nearness was shattering. She was losing her grip. Four years ago she had known how to keep the clamour of emotion under control, but now she was shaken by the very thought of him. She had become time's fool, but she must not show it.

  'If you are ready, Sister?'

  Coolly, his voice steadied her, but she was forced to grip the end of the towel rail for a second for extra physical support. Instantly he was at her side, not touching her, holding her with his eyes steadily, mockingly on hers.

  'What is it?' he asked. 'I can't believe that you are not level-headed enough to accept all this as a job of work.'

  Too shaken by his nearness to offer any logical reply, Jane shook her head.

  'I'll be all right,' she said. 'Everything is all right as soon as we start.'

  He looked at her again, keenly this time, his eyes probing the surface, but he had given her time to prepare her defences. She was even able to smile with a modicum of assurance as he moved away.

  'Sister Oakroyd calls them "theatre jitters," and we all get them, apparently,' she said.

  He did not answer, waiting in silence while the patient was wheeled in and lifted to the table.

  Jane fixed her eyes on the anaesthetist's steady movements, and as soon as Stuart had made the first incision her nervousness had gone. She had forgotten everything but the task in hand.

  The operation was a deep abdominal, the woman on the table thin, emaciated and very pale. Jane stood beside the suction, watching the diathermy with a concentration as intent as Stuart's own, but once or twice she saw him look up sharply and meet the anaesthetist's eyes. They watched the rubber bulb above the patient's head for a second or two, and once Jane saw it almost deflated and caught her breath. It filled again in the next instant, but she was conscious of doubt in Stuart now. It was a
lmost two hours since the woman had been wheeled in and he was no more than half way through. He worked steadily, but when the breathing flagged again he said briefly:

  'We'll need a transfusion. Better give it now, I think.'

  Jane stepped to the apparatus, adjusting it for height when she had wheeled it into place. It was a job she had done many times before and she performed it now with the swift, sure movements of one accustomed to the task. The anaesthetist moved towards the trolley and lifted the bottle of plasma, checking it against the chart, and she heard a swift, impatient exclamation of disgust.

  'This is wrong,' he said briefly. 'The woman's group is A.'

  Hastily she crossed to his side.

  'Yes, I—I thought I'd brought A ‑'

  She could feel Stuart's gaze fixed upon her flushed face and her eyes were drawn to his by some cruel demand.

  'It's your job to be sure,' he said curtly. 'Get more—and quickly. You can't afford to make mistakes of that kind.'

  As if the woman's life depended upon it—as if her own life might well depend upon it, too—Jane fled from the theatre back along the corridor to the open door of the office. Her face was white now, her limbs trembling as she pushed open the door.

  'What! Back so soon?' Tom asked. 'Don't tell me the bugs hold more attraction than Mr. Hemmingway!'

  She thrust the bottle at him.

  'This is wrong,' she almost shouted. 'There's been a ghastly mistake. Be quick, Tom! They're waiting.'

  'The unforgivable sin!' he mocked, crossing to the refrigerator to bring out another bottle and replace the unwanted plasma on its correct shelf. 'Sorry,' he apologised, 'if it's urgent. Come back and see the bugs another day!'

  There was a sense of urgency about her return flight along the corridor for which she could not account. It took more than an hour for blood to act, so that her hurry was meaningless, but for all that her hands were trembling and there were small beads of perspiration on her upper lip when she opened the theatre door.