These Good Hands

by Carol Bruneau

  Tapping her foot, Head sighed with impatience.

  “An emergency?” I said. I’m not sure what overcame me. “If not, perhaps it doesn’t need fixing quite this second.”

  The look she gave me was doubtless deserved. Without a word, and in an obvious huff, she slipped out.

  When I emerged, she was parading up and down the corridor as if guarding a cell block. The soiled gauze in my kidney basin had a faint but unmistakable odour that, of all things, reminded me of the cat, which I suspect has an abscess, the result of some injury from fighting with toms on its forays outdoors.

  No such forays or escapes for moi. Tailing me downstairs, Head wasted no time getting to the point. “It seems, Poitier, that Mademoiselle’s letters are getting out, without being screened.” She waved an envelope, the pale blue check of its graph paper and red zigzags starkly recognizable, and allowed the note inside to flutter out. “You realize how distressing this is for the family. You understand the light this puts us in, puts you in …”

  Her look was cauterizing as she pushed both pieces at me. Scrawled across the name of Mademoiselle’s friend and her address in England was Return to Sender. Recipient unknown.

  “Deceased,” my supervisor said, her certainty quite rattling. She clearly had something else on her mind. “I never accuse anyone falsely, but it’s come to my attention that you’ve been seen. In the village. Drinking.” She peered at me.

  As if sipping coffee in a café was a crime! As if this were a hundred years ago, and Florence Nightingale and Maman Marguerite had no sway, and all nurses were, if not nuns, drunks and whores. Novice, passing with a cart piled with supplies, stopped, eagle-eyed.

  Head raised her voice. “You of all people, Poitier, should remember: virtue isn’t just a word, it’s a practice. A nurse’s is reflected by the company she keeps.”

  Shooting me a sympathetic look, Novice tugged a small paper sack from her cargo and, wincing a smile, passed it to Head. Impatiently — stiff with irritation, actually — Head opened it, looking befuddled. It was a present from a guest on the first floor, explained Novice, pushing off. Head thrust the bag at me. Inside was a tangle of greyish hair, nail clippings, bits of grass and toilet paper.

  I’m afraid I couldn’t help myself. “Useful, if you’re building a nest.”

  Head gave a chilly nod. “I strongly suggest, Poitier, that you mind your lip.”

  “SO MY FRIEND IS too busy to accept mail from her poor forgotten chum,” Mademoiselle said. “This is why you must write to her, Miss Solange, and demand to know what they’ve done with my statue! Very likely she knows.”

  “Whatever you wish.” It’s no great hardship, being agreeable. “Have you seen the bridge, the one people sing about?” Saint Benezet’s bridge, the business end of which had washed away, rendering the thing useless. Hundreds of years, modern equipment, and nobody fool or genius enough to rebuild what he’d supposedly constructed single-handedly, stone by stone — go figure. A safe change of subject.

  “The only bridges that matter are the ones across the Seine,” said Mademoiselle, and closed her eyes. “What’s the point of a bridge going nowhere? Write to her, will you.”

  ***

  BY THE END of my shift I was resigned to spend what remained of this evening doing some reading, but my best efforts to ignore Mademoiselle’s request ended up driving me to the village and the café. Let Head think what she wants about her girls’ after-hours activities.

  I nursed a cup of tea sitting as far as possible from the bar, keeping to myself. The mystery of who’d seen me and, worse, had reported back to her, was baffling, not to mention troubling. Was it someone from Admin or another pavilion? An orderly, another nurse? Personnel from kitchen or laundry? Except the refectory has no use for Head, it’s obvious, from the way they ridicule her devotion to the Maréchal — meaning no disrespect, the one cook is quick to add.

  Tonight the only familiar faces were the barman’s and Renard’s, leaning over a beer. I took pains to avoid Renard’s gaze, but he came over.

  “They let you out again,” he said — his idea of a joke?

  I eyed him as Head might, but with a touch of Sister’s quiet reserve. It was and is more than a bit unsettling and unseemly, this perfect stranger knowing what I do and where I do it, when the most I know of him is a name — the one he gave me. I figured I’d return his interest, just to be polite. “What line are you in, do I dare ask?”

  “Designing things, building them — things like bridges,” can you believe he actually said, the odds suggesting he was talking through his hat.

  “You’re kidding.” I was thoroughly unimpressed.

  “Not really,” he insisted. “I follow their engineering — you understand me?”

  “Oh? Well. I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “Afraid? Oh, but it seems to me you’re brave, Mademoiselle. Quite brave, doing what you do. Some might say fearless, or cra —” He was teasing me, and testing my patience.

  And yet I didn’t mind the company, not so much — its novelty, perhaps, its unlikeliness, and maybe, just a little, the feeling of thumbing my nose at Head’s wackiness. Yes, definitely a bit of that. Whatever. I heard myself babble, a little inanely, about Benezet’s miraculous — crazy — construction. A blunder, because Renard eyed me as if I were an aliénée and belonged where I work.

  “You don’t look religious,” I think he said. It was hard to hear, our voices competing with the radio, Pétain’s hogging the airwaves yet again — Travaille, Famille, Patrie — an old speech being looped and re-looped.

  I made the mistake of wondering aloud, “Do they think we haven’t heard it? At work we’d call it ‘echolalia.’ Well, some of us would.”

  “Who wouldn’t?” Though his smile was friendly enough, encouraging even, it was also as wary as it was baiting, begging more.

  “A love of babies and motherhood and unleashed patrimony is quite darling — if you’re an eighty-year-old with a functioning penis,” I couldn’t help blurting out, hardly seeking his or anyone’s approval.

  Looking a little surprised, Renard studied me and laughed. “Pétain’s days are numbered, you know.” A daring comment — but possible, I gathered, if what the orderlies say is true, that with les fritz pushing deeper and deeper into the free zone, there’s less news of the Maréchal on air aside from the regurgitated speeches.

  “Busy taking the waters in Vichy, is he?” I said. “And Monsieur de Gaulle urging the rest of us to reclaim ‘our France.’”

  “From the safety of England, easy for him.” Renard snorted unpleasantly. Far be it for me to be critical, but not only could he have used a hot shave, the hair in both his nostrils needed clipping.

  “Better that, I guess, than a geriatric kissing Hitler’s derrière.” I punctuated this with a snicker, not wishing to sound obtuse or ingratiating.

  Renard barely cracked a smile. “Using us to wipe the Nazis’ boots and their shitty arses — I guess you’d know about that, wiping arses.” His look was indulgent, or rapacious — in either case, eager enough to make my skin crawl slightly, although, if he were better groomed and dressed, he’d have been halfway attractive for someone short and rather lizard-like.

  But what was I thinking? Under the circumstances — being virtually under a microscope, subject to who knows what scrutiny and for whatever reason — entertaining any such notion amounts to willingly swallowing a scalpel. Never mind that most share his and my contempt for Vichy, the government no more than a poultice, as far as I can tell, on a dreaded contagion.

  Don’t say anything else, I thought, yet heard myself pontificate, “Evil is rather pustular, when you think about it.” Good heavens, and I hadn’t had a trace of anything remotely alcoholic.

  Renard eyed me quite earnestly, respectfully even. “The only one we could trust, you know, was Moulin. Resisting les fritz from the ditches and upwards. There’s no running away for a true son of France. Even in death.”

  And a true daughte
r? I might’ve asked. But he was clearly highminded and meant well. Though good intentions pave the road to hell, Sister sometimes said. Alternatively, a straight road could get tedious.

  “It’s all the same, politics,” I said. “One bunch as bad as the other, and no worse time to show for it than war.”

  “You’d feel different, I’ll bet, if you had a son.”

  At that I stood up, such rankling presumption suddenly eating my patience. “As you must, I take it, in order to be so sure.”

  “Flesh and blood, no.” He laughed, self-conscious. “Plenty of young fellows in my line, though. I see them all the time. Nice fellows. There’s a few you should meet — one I know of could use your attention right now. Your help, actually. Smart enough to dodge the rafle, but not enough to escape getting hurt.”

  “If you’re thinking you’ll enlist me” — being forthright, direct, is something I continue to work on — “I’m sorry, you’re mistaken. Sixty need me to do slightly more than dress a few wounds and wipe their bottoms.”

  “Miss Poitier,” he said, a poor listener, apparently, or a poor learner, “in this war if you’re not for us, you’re against us. You’re saying you won’t help?”

  “Not won’t. Can’t.”

  “Suit yourself — if your conscience is your guide.” He waved down the barman to pick up my tab. I left enough to cover my tea and escaped outside, a little the poorer but free of him.

  ***

  AT THE GATES — a welcome sight — the attendant nodded vaguely as he let me in. Lights blazed from the directeur’s villa. Was he hosting a party, perhaps, to wine and dine real guests? Several vehicles flying Vichy’s colours were parked along the curving drive. I hastened past, acting as if they weren’t there. But in the backseat of a large black one a couple caught my eye. A couple, I assumed — why else would they be sitting like that?

  It took a few seconds to recognize her: Head Nurse! She looked different out of uniform, almost glamorous, at least in the dark and shadowy depths of the car. She was leaning in close, speaking to the man, who was wearing an officer’s cap, a member of the Milice by the looks of it. They stopped talking, peering out as I passed.

  Don’t borrow trouble, I thought, striding off, then slinking past a stretch of shrubbery. It isn’t out of the ordinary to feel jumpy when crossing the grounds at night, even while exercising caution and vigilance. Certain secluded footpaths are well shaded and in some cases poorly lit.

  I was aware of someone behind me but maintained an even pace, mindful not to show any bodily indications of fear. I’d almost made it to the dorm’s entrance when her voice rang out.

  “Nice to see you out and about, Poitier. It’s important, isn’t it, that we keep up with the world.” Head smiled half pleasantly, catching up. Missing was the officious tone that precedes a “strike,” as Novice dubs her fault-finding. She sounded out of breath. “I must tell you, that wasn’t what it looked like, back there. You needn’t think it was anything untoward.”

  Then what was it, it was all I could do not to ask, restraint being, of course, character-building. “Dinner at the directeur’s? I hope he fed you well,” I quipped at his expense, recalling his stale croissant, and not even a speck of jam with it.

  I was instantly corrected: “Now, Nurse, we must think beyond our stomachs.” Yet she said it with a smile, and continued smiling as she, completely without warning, invited me up for tea.

  To what do I owe this audience? was on the tip of my tongue, excuses winging through me. A deaf mute, honestly, would’ve heard my dismay when I said, “Right now?”

  “No time like the present, Poitier.” She adjusted the sparkly clip in her hair — rhinestones, not diamonds — and her bodice, which only emphasized the broadness and boniness of her chest. Yet she almost beamed with unusual kindness. “A nightcap will do us good. Tea and a chat — you look like you could use some company? Lately you’ve seemed, well, somewhat morose.” Eyeing me, she produced her key from the depths of her little beaded clutch, nudging mine away, and lowered her voice.

  “What you saw outside the directeur’s, I trust, stays between us. I’m not in the habit, you know,” she actually chuckled, “of fraternizing with strangers, particularly men.”

  She led the way upstairs, her dusty-rose dress swishing against her stringy calves. Her stockings bagged at the ankles, their seams twisted and a ladder starting at one heel. The stairwell’s brightness perked up the grey, though, in her blondish spit curls.

  Head’s quarters are one floor above mine, off-limits to all but her favourite colleagues. Formerly the Mother Superior’s, they are twice the size of mine, but seemed gloomier and no less cramped, owing to a hotplate and two shabby wing chairs flanking an electric fire. Its fake logs gathered dust, the walls too, loaded with scenes of puppies and children done in needlepoint. Crochet adorned every other surface, the radio cabinet graced with a runner.

  “Just finished,” Head said. “It relaxes me, my handiwork.” She cleared a spot for me to sit, then fussed with the radio’s knobs. A rousing march leapt out and she hurriedly lowered the volume. “Some girls will be trying to sleep. But there’s a program I think you’ll enjoy. If you’re not in a hurry. Make yourself at home.” She rushed to fill a kettle.

  I had to say something. “Nice digs.” A cup of tea, a few wellpicked words, then I’d make my excuses. Switching to some silly old ragtime, the music lent the scene a certain giddiness that pushed Renard from my mind and made it slightly easier to overlook Head’s oddness, if not deny it altogether. Be consistent in your treatment of others; cut a clear path, Sister’s words echoed.

  Head doled out our tea like medication, half-filling two dainty cups. “Everything all right with you, Poitier? You’re liking the work? More used to it now? Getting ample rest?”

  The word rest triggered in us both a yawning fest, contagious. I struggled to contain mine — as well as the urge to ask, as strong as the need to urinate: Why did you invite me? Was she lonely after her tête-à-tête, needing amusement?

  She put both feet up, working off her stubby-heeled pumps and finally noting the run. She rummaged for a bottle of nail varnish, clear, and painted some on it. “These do’s at the directeur’s — he means well, perhaps.” She looked at me, almost sympathetically. “It would help if he were more … competent. Co-operative, perhaps, is a better word.”

  “Oh?”

  “Attuned. To how things work. For everyone’s benefit. We are, after all, wheels in a cog.” Her voice was so chummy, as if our being on staff forged some unseverable bond. Did she want a confidante? A good nurse is a good listener. But being a good listener gets old, and feeling trapped into being one can be unsettling. “So, Poitier. I’m dying to know. What drove you to nursing?”

  It was not what I was expecting. “I really … couldn’t, can’t, say.” As if I’d tell her the truth.

  “Oh, come on — false modesty? It doesn’t suit you.”

  “Charity. The sisters’ charity.”

  “Ah.”

  “So — you’re seeing someone?” I asked, perhaps more pointedly than was wise. “Your … escort this evening, your friend, I mean. He’s nice? A nice fellow?” In the Milice? I was thinking.

  She gazed at me intently, a little smile on her lips. Seeing it made me leery, if I wasn’t leery enough already. Then she closed her eyes, seemed to drift off. Had she been drinking? I’d have smelled it, though.

  In the lamplight the corns on her toes showed through her stockings. She looked thinner and more worn out than she did by day — something gentle, gentler, almost winsome about her “letting down her hair” like this, save for how awkward it made me feel. Horribly awkward.

  It seemed the perfect moment to escape. Except her eyes fluttered open, fixing on me — forcing all my attention to a doily on the little table before me. The music changed to someone’s warbling in German.

  “What’ll we discuss?” she said, quite amicably.

  I raised the topic of ph
obias, heard myself babble on about how there must have been some reason for the directeur’s gettogether besides socializing, some more serious, pragmatic one. Perspiration tickled my sides. As long as I kept talking she couldn’t raise the issue of Mademoiselle’s letters. I talked through the singing and after it ended.

  When the Maréchal’s speech came on, Head turned up the volume, cutting me off. Perched on the edge of her wing chair, cradling cup and saucer in her lap, she listened as if he were the great Piaf. I didn’t dare interrupt.

  France is sick, Pétain wheedled. She will take a long time to recover … the worst lies ahead … Never doubt her survival, which will continue long after we’re dead … Every nation at some point suffers defeat. Think of our occupiers.

  The same old same old, it was enough to put anyone to sleep or worse.

  If we maintain our unity … our faith, France will emerge victorious!

  Not soon enough it was over. Another march filled the airwaves, its jaunty notes emphasizing the brewing silence which only deepened and swelled when Head switched the radio off. Sitting back, she eyed me accusingly.

  “What more does anyone need, to be convinced? The Maréchal has our best interests at heart and merits only reverence.” Her tone suggested that I aligned myself with imbeciles.

  I found it hard to keep my lip buttoned. “I can’t see how this helps with our job.” I carefully set down my cup.

  Head leaned so close I could see the spidery blood vessels in her nose and cheeks — perhaps she had a mild case of rosacea? “Respecting our duty to those properly in authority is how we advance, Nurse Poitier. Despite what you think, Monsieur Directeur is far too lax in his policies — especially those meant for guests that don’t belong here.”