Nurse Jess

by Joyce Dingwell

  “Fine.”

  “The babies?”

  “All four small, but not all that small.”

  “Girls? Boys?”

  “Two of each. You never asked about the father.”

  She laughed and said, “Dad?”

  “Doing best of all.”

  Jessa looked through the window at the country below them. It was late afternoon and the southern plains lay drowsy and shimmering after a long day’s sundrenching. There were occasional threads of shining watercourses between their gold-green flats. Everything in this mellow hour was as soft and dreamy as a gentle water-colour.

  “I’m very happy,” Jessa said.

  She could not have said whether she was thinking of

  Mrs. Winthrop, or Mr. Winthrop, or the four new babies, or herself having the luck to look after them, or whether it was just that brand of happiness that sometimes springs without any explanation into the heart.

  She only knew it was pleasant here, the engines whirring evenly, Professor Gink talking in a relaxed way he never did at Belinda—his big arm companionably against her own.

  She was aware suddenly that at this moment she would not have minded if it had gone on forever... but the moment was ending... the sound of the engines was altering ... they were descending and running along a huge country strip dotted with white thistle and dandelion.

  “We’re here,” said Professor Gink, and that little intake of breath, if she had been imaginative, thought Jessa, could have been called a sigh. Probably, however, it was some scientific device to clear the ears or the sinuses—or something. From height to ground level, that sort of thing. Ba always blew his nose.

  They climbed out.

  Jessa said, “I like this hour,” and the Professor nodded.

  There was an enchantment in the air, even on this field with its patches of grease and its encroachment on nature. From a leafy hedge at the end of the strip came the sleepy twitterings of nest-going birds, and far away in some boggy place a curlew sent out a goodnight call. The bramble and hawthorn and sloe on the runway’s verge already stirred with little night things—frogs, field-mice, crickets.

  “This is for us,” said the Professor, and he nodded towards a big car that had come right on to the tarmac apron for them. We’re important, thought Jessa, very pleased with life. It was gratifying to be called for and bowed to and helped in and seated like this.

  The car moved off.

  It was a dirt road and flat country, in the half light she saw the usual dozens of varieties of gums, red, silver, umbrella, scribbley, then as they approached the little town the inevitable old peppercorns appeared.

  Professor Gink said, “It wouldn’t be a country village without a pepper. I grew up in a peppercorn town like this.”

  She was not surprised, for although his learning could only have been gathered in big cities he still retained that country-boy air. She would have liked to have known where, and when he left, and whether he ever wanted to return to it, but the car was turning into a drive of more peppercorns, and at the top was the Curry Bulla’s cottage hospital, a one-level building of weatherboard with wide verandahs and sprawling outhouses, and surely incapable of accommodating more than a dozen inmates at once.

  The Professor must have read her thoughts. “These hospitals are never over-taxed,” he explained, “the population is small, remember. Usually four patients and they consider they are well filled.”

  “There are five at least now,” reminded Jessa with a smile.

  “Indeed we hope so,” returned the Professor gravely. “You don’t think—”

  “I certainly don’t think, Nurse Jess, but as I’ve always told you, I like to get over that first forty-eight hours.”

  The car pulled up at the front entrance. The matron was there, a little group of doctors...a prescribed distance away men, by their, notebooks and cameras, apparently of the press.

  Matron was very respectful to the Professor; very friendly and not at all superior to Jessa. If only she knew how junior I am, smiled Jessa to herself.

  “This way, Sister. Have you everything you want, Sister?”

  “Yes, Matron,” replied Jessa in a voice she hoped was self-assured. “I’ll be ready to take over in a few minutes.” Matron nodded. “That will be a relief, I can tell you. Everything looks fine, but I’m a little out of my territory. Ordinary confinements, cuts, snake bites—even a severed leg from a reaper accident once—and I know my way about, but four prems at once, oh, dear!”

  “Don’t you go worrying, we’ll do that for you. And after what we get at Belinda I don’t believe there’ll be any worrying to do.”

  “No,” said Matron with an admiration that made Jessa feel she was still in her high heels and not changed into her service flats, she felt so proud and tall. “You do miracles there.”

  Jessa fastened on the sister veil, feeling sorry it was too warm really for the coveted cape. It would be cool later, though—these country nights grew quite chilly—and meanwhile the veil cascaded down and made her feel even taller still.

  “The babies,” she said.

  A special room had been fitted out as well as Matron and staff could manage it. It was pleasant and bright and warmed with oil-heaters—just as well she hadn’t succumbed to that cape—and the four babies were in their cribs.

  The Professor was there already. Jessa saw that the isolets were not in use, and looked at him in enquiry.

  “I spoke with Doctor Brennan on the phone before we left and we decided they may not be necessary. We’ll keep them by for emergency, of course, but these babies are almost four pounds each, Nur—that is—” For a moment his eyes behind their owl spectacles estimated her veil very gravely.

  Jessa felt herself flush.

  He looked about to comment, then must have changed his mind.

  Quietly, so that the matron and sisters and doctors could not hear, he repeated, too gravely, “Four pounds apiece—or as you would put it, a piece of cake, Sister.”

  “Yes, sir,” agreed Jessa too gravely back.

  She checked the temperature of each crib, checked the room temperature, then set about showing the nurses how to prepare in advance the daily requirements of food.

  When she looked up again the doctors and matron and Professor were gone. The nurse she was instructing said wistfully, “I suppose by now the wires are running hot. They were only holding back the news until you and the Professor arrived, Sister. It’s been terribly hard not shouting it out at once. There’s an awfully nice reporter out there; I’d have loved to have seen his face when he learned.”

  “You’ll see him,” cheered Jessa. “They’re sure to stop around for some pictures, even if it’s a picture of a pretty nurse.” She smiled at the girl. “Now come here while I demonstrate the essentials of an oil and lanolin bath.”

  When Jessa went along much later for supper, the evening had fulfilled her expectations and become gratifyingly chill. Especially on the verandah where the buffet was set.

  She held her head proudly in its snow-white veil and walked like something charmed in her scarlet cape.

  All the medical staff and visiting honoraries not required to be attendant on the patients were drinking coffee and eating sandwiches. Jessa found herself being introduced to important people whose names she had only read or heard of before. But the most important of all, she realized proudly, watching him being referred to here, questioned respectfully there, was her Professor Gink.

  Hers?...No, Belinda’s, of course, but up here she represented Belinda, so she could call him, just for a little while anyway, my Professor Gink.

  She leaned against the verandah post, thinking of all the exciting things that had happened today. Happened since this afternoon really... this morning she had been merely bathing the Beresford baby and coping with Nurse Gwen. She smiled impishly. Wouldn’t Nurse Gwen stare if she could look at her now!

  But someone was looking at her actually, not just in her thoughts. She felt it ra
ther than saw it. She turned.

  He had come to the edge of the verandah to stand beside her.

  “You awe me, Sister,” said Professor Gink.

  Jessa straightened her veil, adjusted her cape. “I believe I awe myself. Do you like it?”

  “I like you as little Jess.”

  It sounded little Jess, the same as it had sounded little Jess on the plane, but it couldn’t be, of course, it must be Nurse Jess. Nurse Jess made sense.

  “We can’t stop humble always,” she told him practically. “We must progress.”

  “No,” he agreed, but without enthusiasm. He looked at the sky. “Nice moon.”

  The moon made her think at once of what she had planned for him and Margaret... a gold moon, silver stars, the scent of jessamine. But now it was being participated by Meggy and Ba.

  “Anything wrong?” he asked.

  “I was thinking of Crescent Island,” she returned quietly. “Margaret—Nurse Margaret went there.”

  As quietly he said, “With your pilot, Mr. Burns.”

  “Yes.” Someone came over with more coffee and sandwiches. When they had gone he said, “Why are you frowning, Sister? Does that displease you?”

  She looked at him in enquiry, though she knew what he meant.

  “Your fellow nurse and your—friend visiting your home together.”

  She was surprised at his perception and stammered, “Why of course not,” knowing it must sound quite the opposite by the way she spoke, but how could she explain, “Yes, it does displease me, because, dear dedicated Professor, I was reserving Crescent Island’s moon for dear dedicated Margaret and you, not him”?

  He was looking at her closely, searchingly, seeming about to tell her something.

  More sandwiches arrived, and after that it was time to check on the nursery again, give the reliefs their instruction, go to bed.

  She was on once more at seven and went straight to the babies. Again the Professor had beaten her to it. He worked professionally and rather remotely and had nothing at all to say.

  That evening the press were allowed to take photos. To Jessa’s little nurse’s gratification the nice reporter took hers.

  Jessa visited Mrs. Winthrop and was introduced to Mr. Winthrop.

  “We’re including yours and the Professor’s among our four names for our quads, Sister,” Mr. Winthrop told her eagerly. “We feel we owe a whole lot to you. The other two names will be my wife’s and my own.”

  Jessa, thinking of the “piece of cake” it had all turned out, and not so sure that it had been such a lot on hers and the Professor’s part, warned him, “What if you don’t like my name?”

  “Is it Ermyntrude?”

  “It’s Jessamine.”

  “That’s fine, I like it a lot. That makes Nancy, Jessamine, Barry, Peter.”

  Barry...She had never considered B for Barry somehow. She had thought of Bertrand, Boris, Benedict, but never Barry Gink.

  She remembered those notes of his concerning his spectacles. “As beautiful as an appendicostomy. My thanks, B. G.”—“My second pair call also for operation. Yours, B. G.”

  So he was Professor Barry Gink.

  The day went quickly. She found time to slip into her gay cotton and go down to the little main street to buy a gift for her quad namesake. There she met the nice reporter, who bought her a soda and sent a message to the nurse.

  There was a more formal supper that evening. Jessa wore the ballerina silk. She did not see the Professor, however. She felt absurdly disappointed. Apart from their trip up to Curry Bulla he had only ever encountered her in a starched pinafore. Somehow she would have liked him to have seen her like this, if only to—to—well, to know she would make a nice bridesmaid for Margaret one day. That was her only reason, of course.

  Then she learned that the Professor had departed, in the quiet way he always departed, and for some reason she felt more deflated still.

  “He was so satisfied with everything, he saw no reason in stopping,” said the matron. She added a little eagerly, and Jessa did not blame her for everyone likes to be a queen in their own palace, “And I don’t think we need detain you longer, my dear.”

  Jessa delivered her present to little Jessamine the next morning, said goodbye to her sister Nancy, brothers Barry and Peter, wondering what titles the Belinda girls would have given them instead, then took the hospital car back to the air-strip and the Sydney-bound plane.

  It was an even trip, but a dull one... a very dull one.

  And that comes, Jessa thought determinedly, putting all other ideas on the subject right out of her mind, of leaving as a sister and returning as a nurse. Demotion is always a difficult thing.

  She thought about the trip up, later on the hospital verandah, when she had almost believed it was little Jess the Professor had said, not Nurse Jess.

  Then she remembered something else she had tucked away in her mind for consideration... what was it now? She frowned and recalled.

  She recalled that earnest, “Two jiffies ... but surely you’re wrong ... already it has taken me a thousand years...

  A thousand years, she asked curiously of herself, to kiss whom ... or for whose kiss? And had he been only laughing at her?

  When she reached Sydney her spirits soared again. She hailed a taxi to be at Belinda the sooner to tell Margaret about her two enthralling days.

  She told her mother and father that evening long after she had told Margaret. The telling to Meg had taken many exhaustive hours.

  She told it to them in a letter that was to have been filled with details, but in the finish, through sheer weariness, covered all and everything with a rapturously brief but comprehensive:

  “Darlings, darlings, on Wednesday I underwent my first multiple birth.”

  CHAPTER XIII

  MATRON lost no time in packing Jessa home for her seasonal leave, so that what had been left out of the written letter was soon being conveyed by the spoken word.

  In fact Mrs. Barlow thought her daughter would never stop.

  “I only hope, Jessamine, you never have quins,” she commented feelingly.

  “But Mummy, it would be wonderful.”

  “You’ve been telling me so and nothing else for fully two hours. Do you realize you haven’t once asked about the hotel?”

  Jessa gave her a squeeze. “It’s booming. My eyes saw so at once—and besides, Margaret told me.”

  “Yes ... Margaret...” Mrs. Barlow looked shrewdly at Jessa. “Darling, do you ... I mean ... well—” It was no use. Mrs. Barlow did not know what she wanted to say or how to say it when she finally got round to it. “Margaret enjoyed herself,” she said lamely instead.

  “Mummy, that’s an understatement,” smiled Jessa happily. “She’s simply sold on Crescent. Mummy, when is the infant convention? I want Meggy to be here again then ... Margaret South and Professor Gink.”

  “Margaret?” echoed Mrs. Barlow, rather startled. “Margaret and—” She paused, then tried a second time. “Darling ... I mean ... well—” Once more it was no use. She simply had no words.

  “You see,” her daughter was babbling, “Margaret’s a very dedicated person and just the type for dedicated Professor Gink.”

  This time Mrs. Barlow did find words.

  “Perhaps, but not in this hotel, Jessa,” she said sternly. “I simply won’t have you scheming things here.”

  “It has to be here.”

  “And why?”

  “Because—” Jessa thought quickly a moment—“well, because of the picaninnies, Mummy.” She brought it out triumphantly. “They’d both be extremely interested in the babies’ welfare, both being such very dedicated types.” Something disapproving in her mother’s face had decided her not to mention the Crescent Island setting she had really prescribed for Margaret and the Professor, that romantic setting of golden moon, silver stars and scent of jessamine.

  Mrs. Barlow said, unimpressed, “And what about you, aren’t you dedicated as well? I think you
gave up as much as Margaret when you went on to Belinda, Jessamine.”

  Jessa hunched her shoulders. “I try, but I make lots of mistakes, get oceans of chids. I’m very ordinary, Mums. Don’t forget my Average Only. Meggy is entirely different, you see.”

  Mrs. Barlow did see. She saw something that undoubtedly Jessamine had not wakened to yet. She hesitated, then again did not speak.

  Very casually she asked, “Did you fly over with Barry?”

  “No, he’s on stand-down, and he’s having it in Sydney.

  Rather unusual for him.” Jessa shrugged, then added, “I must say the Tourist Bureau are doing things very nicely there—in the plane, I mean. Cushiony seats, hostess in a green uniform, and the loveliest tea. I had wafer cucumber sandwiches and a chocolate éclair. But”—with a sympathetic sigh—“it will make it all the harder for old Matthew Flinders.”

  “How can it make it harder when the plane’s run is now finished?” asked Mrs. Barlow.

  “It will make it harder when Barry comes back on the, run. And Ba believes he will. He believes Crescent is simply undergoing a temporary boom and that one day soon the tourist trade will collapse and the island become the old island again. What do you think, Mums? And do you like the Jessamine this way or not?”

  Mrs. Barlow sighed. “I wouldn’t be human if I wasn’t entertained,” she admitted. “It’s really a different world these days. But I’m afraid it will pall in time. It has on Father already. He’d give anything for his old island trading inn once more.”