by Maisie Mosco
“Go and set the table for our tea,” he instructed her at closing time. “Mam said we’re to have it if they’re not back.”
She stood watching her brothers bring in the overalls and raincoats which were hung up in the doorway, then went to pick her way through the bundles and boxes on the stockroom floor, breathing in the special, draper’s-shop smell of new clothing, cardboard and dust that she had already come to associate with home. But entering the living room was like stepping into a different world. Her mother had not allowed the business to overflow into her domestic domain. Here, the odours were those Marianne had always known. Mansion Polish and black-lead; damp pot-towels drying off by the fire; the lingering aromas of chicken fat rendered down with onions, and fish fried in oil. And, because today was the Sabbath, the tang of apples and oranges piled in a big glass fruit bowl beside the brass candlesticks on the table.
Marianne eyed the telephone on the sideboard. Her grandmother had no phone, so she couldn’t ring her up and ask if she knew where Mam and Dad were. The square wooden clock on the mantelpiece said 6.15: why weren’t they back yet? Perhaps Uncle David could tell her? His number was written on the front of the directory, with Uncle Nat’s. But how did you make a phone call? She read the instructions and got through.
“Who’s that speaking?” Shirley’s voice inquired.
“It’s me. Marianne.”
“I thought it might be my mam’n dad ringing up from the hospital.”
Marianne’s heart missed a beat. “Has Zaidie Abraham been taken bad with his chest? Is that why there’s no tea party?”
“It’s Martin who’s ill. He’s very poorly.”
“Who’re you talking to, our kid?” Harry said entering with Arnold.
But Marianne was unable to reply, and he took the receiver from her. “We weren’t supposed to tell Marianne,” he said recognizing his cousin’s high-pitched voice demanding to know what was the matter.
“Well I didn’t know that, did I? Marianne phoned me up. Why weren’t we supposed to tell her?”
Harry looked at his sister and saw the distress in her eyes. “Why do you think?” he snapped and rang off.
Arnold put a kind hand on Marianne’s shoulder. “Mam’n Dad knew how upset you’d be. That’s why they decided not to tell you.”
“You’d miss Martin more than you would Arnold and me if we got ill and died,” Harry said gruffly.
It’s true, Marianne thought. They were her own brothers, but she loved Martin more. “Don’t be daft,” she said and avoided looking at them because she was ashamed of it.
“We’d better set the table, Arnold, seeing our kid hasn’t done it,” Harry said.
“I’m not hungry,” Marianne told him.
Arnold got out the plates and cutlery and Harry went into the scullery and returned with bread and butter and a platter of gefilte fish. “You not eating won’t help Martin,” he said ito Marianne in his down-to-earth way. “So, sit down and have something.”
She obeyed his instruction but ate very little. The two boys sat silently munching their food and she could hear the clock ticking away the minutes.
“I wonder if our kid’ll marry Martin when they grow up?” Harry said contemplatively, cutting himself another slice of chalah. He spread butter on the soft, golden-crusted bread. “If he gets better.”
“Of course, he’ll get better!” Marianne flashed fiercely because she could not imagine a world without Martin. “And you’re being daft again, our Harry. People don’t marry their cousins.”
After tea, Arnold got out the Ludo and they had a game, without the squabbles that usually resulted from the three of them playing together, in which Marianne always came off worst.
They’re being nice to me because they know I’m upset, she realized with surprise, and had to admit that there was something to be said for having brothers.
Nathan went to the big ward to look at his nephew and found Sister Reilly, beside the screened-off bed with Miriam and Sammy, taking Martin’s blood-pressure.
“Well, that’s all right, Dr. Sandberg,” she pronounced watching the mercury rise and fall.
Sammy was holding Miriam’s hand, but she seemed unaware of it, her features as well as her body immobilized by fear as she gazed at her son’s face.
“Does that mean he’ll get better?” Sammy asked.
Sister Reilly felt the boy’s steaming forehead, wishing, as she did every day of her life, that medical science would discover a drug to combat what ailed him. “It would if there were nothing else to worry about,” she replied gravely, unwinding the restricting band from Martin’s arm. “I’ll be after having a word with Staff Nurse when she takes over from me, Dr. Sandberg,” she said to Nathan as he left the bedside with her. “About the wee lad’s family being here, as well as his parents.”
Darkness had fallen outside the tall, narrow windows and the day nurses were tidying the patients’ locker tops before going off duty. Nathan glanced at his watch and saw that it was almost seven o’clock. “Who’s in charge tonight?” he made himself ask the Sister, though what he would do if she said it was Mary he didn’t know.
Sister Reilly paused before a long table in the middle of the ward and studied him surreptitiously whilst moving a jar of chrysanthemums an inch to the right to balance the distance between it and those on either side of it. Nathan was standing beside her with his hands nonchalantly in his trouser pockets, as if the answer to his question was of no importance to him, and she could barely restrain a snort. Did these young people think her blind to what went on under her nose? She’d have to be deaf, too! His broken romance had been the talk of the hospital.
“Tis nobody ye know, Dr. Sandberg, so don’t be after givin’ it a thought,” she replied to let him know she was not fooled and had the satisfaction of seeing him blush.
“By the way, Sister, I got married last year,” he said as casually as he could and returned to the side-ward wondering why he had told her.
Lucy, the ward-maid, was pouring more tea into the thick, hospital cups for the family, her freckled face registering her sympathy.
“I ’ope you all ’as a good night an’ t’lickle lad’s sittin’ up ’avin’ bacon’n egg when I get ’ere termorrer,” she said warmly. “Miracles ’as ’appened in this place many a time,” she added, before departing with a rustle of her starched uniform.
Nathan marvelled at how the staff managed to bring to this clinical institution a human touch which had escaped his notice when he was a student on the wards. Perhaps you had to be on the receiving end of it to know it was there. Even the dreaded Dragon was being pleasant to him because he was a patient’s relative.
“Doesn’t that ward-maid know Jews don’t eat bacon?” he heard Bessie say to David, but his brother did not reply. His mother was fingering her brooch pensively and his godfather Sigmund playing nervously with his watch chain. Rebecca was now lying on one of the beds and had taken off her shoes. He made a mental note to tell Lou her ankles were swollen. Doctors did not usually treat their own wives, so Nathan was supervising Cora’s pregnancy and Lou was looking after Rebecca.
He could hear his father’s phlegmy chest preparing for another bout of coughing and saw him take out his handkerchief in readiness. “You need some air, Father, it’s too stuffy in here for you. Why not go for a little walk?” he said, loosening his tie and knowing the suggestion would be ignored. Hunger had begun gnawing at his stomach and the others must be feeling empty, too. “There’s a café round the corner where they make sandwiches. Don’t you think we should have a snack?” he said.
“Who could eat?” Esther exclaimed.
Ben patted her hand and gave Nathan a reproachful look. He received one from Helga, too, and Carl eyed him rebukingly over the top of the newspaper he was reading. Nobody else so much as glanced at him.
“You’d think a ward-maid would know we don’t eat bacon, wouldn’t you?” Bessie harped. “They must’ve had Jewish patients before and they’ll ha
ve them again. Someone should tell her, so she won’t offend anyone else’s relatives.”
“Zelda Cohen put bacon on Yankel’s throat when he had the quinsies,” Sarah said. “But don’t tell her son-in-law Dr. Smolensky, he thinks he cured them. Her Christian neighbour swears by it.”
“I’ve got a patient who thinks wrapping a sweaty sock round his neck will cure tonsillitis,” Nathan revealed. But nobody seemed interested.
“So long as he didn’t eat it, what does it matter?” Abraham said impatiently as his phlegm rolled to a crescendo and was transferred to the square of linen.
“The sock or the bacon?” Nathan inquired facetiously, and everyone immediately fell silent.
What good are we doing sitting here like this? he thought. But nobody would leave until Martin’s medical crisis was over one way or the other, though their presence was serving no purpose. Why didn’t he go home himself? His professional assistance wasn’t required and his concern for his nephew would be no less if he were seated by the fire in his own house. Get up and go then, he ordered his body, but it refused to obey his brain. The inexplicable something, destructive and at the same time sustaining, which he had tried to exorcize from his soul and deny was in his blood, was holding him captive with his fellow-prisoners whose habits and stupidities would probably drive him up the wall before the morning.
Mary Dennis was drying her hair by the gas-fire when her friend entered. “Be a pet and draw the curtains for me,” she requested, grimacing at the rain gushing down the long windowpanes. “I’ve been spending my weekend off doing all the chores I’ve let pile up since my last one.”
“How thrilling!”
“As I’ve nothing better to do, I might add.”
Ann Barker surveyed the lavender curtains with which she had just shut out the dismal night, and the patchwork quilt and cushions on the narrow bed. “You’ve been titivating your room, too. I’m surprised you could afford to on our lousy pay.”
Mary smiled. “Well everyone knows nursing’s a labour of love, don’t they? If you’re interested in money you don’t go into it. Fortunately, I’ve got my Aunt Mabel who lets me rummage through the trunks in her attic and take what I want.”
“It looks a real home from home now,” Ann pronounced.
“It might as well be, as I’m likely to live here forever,” Mary answered dryly.
Ann moved a pile of black stockings and a workbox from a chair and sat down. “What d’you mean, you’re likely to live here forever?”
“I’ll be my brother’s kids’ maiden aunt, like dear old Mabel’s mine, that’s what I mean,” Mary declared with a grin. But her cornflower-blue eyes remained serious.
“For heaven’s sake! You’re only twenty-six.”
Mary began brushing her tangled blonde curls. “So are you. But we’ve been at the Infirmary nine years. I feel like a fixture already. And you’ll certainly be a maiden aunt, Ann, the way you’re going on.”
Ann shrugged her shoulders but said nothing.
“We’re a right pair, aren’t we?” Mary said quietly. “I lose my heart to a Jew and you lose yours to a married man.”
“Rob’s going to get a divorce,” Ann replied defensively.
“Is that why he’s still living with his wife?”
“Stop it!”
“When’re you going to come to your senses?” Mary sighed. “He’ll never leave her. He hasn’t got the guts.”
Ann sprang up from the chair and glared at her.
“He’s been making a mug of you since we were probationers, Ann.”
“Nat didn’t make one of you, I suppose?”
“What happened with us was entirely different,” Mary said, reflecting that everyone else called him Nat, but she had called him Nathan.
“The only difference was he was married to his religion,” Ann retorted.
“That’s one way of putting it.” Nathan had told Mary he wasn’t all that religious and in her view it was his family he was tied to. “But he didn’t promise to marry me.” She avoided Ann’s eye. “He didn’t sleep with me, either.”
“Oh, don’t be such a prude!” Ann snapped, then her voice grew sympathetic. “You still care about him, don’t you?”
Mary stared at the flickering gas-flames. She’d been out with several men since her affair with Nathan ended, but the thought of him had intruded between her and them. A young radiologist who had just joined the hospital staff was pursuing her at present, but she wasn’t interested in him.
“Would you start seeing Nat again if he asked you to?” Ann asked her.
“Probably.”
Ann sat twisting a lock of her long, dark hair around her forefinger edgily and Mary noted the anxiety lines beside her mouth and the hollowness of her cheeks. Her green wool dress hung loosely about her spare frame and the three-quarter-length sleeves revealed wrists thin enough to snap. Ann had been plump and pretty once, but her traumatic relationship with Rob had reduced her to this haggard state.
“Nathan didn’t let me go on waiting forever,” Mary said to her. “Spending all my off-duty time hoping he’d ring up.”
“That was Rob on the phone before,” Ann said, ignoring the inference. “He’s had another bust-up with her and she’s gone to sleep at her mother’s.”
“Well he’s out of luck, isn’t he?” Mary said brutally. “You’re on nights, so you’re not available.”
Ann fiddled with her coral necklace. “I came to ask if you’d go on duty for me.”
Mary picked some loose hairs from her shabby red dressing gown and did not reply.
“You know I’d do it for you.”
Even if you knew it wasn’t helping me? Mary wondered. But she couldn’t dictate her friend’s life. All she could do was advise; and support when the advice was ignored. They had been close since their training days, sharing their clothes and their troubles; had taken their SRN exam on the same day and been Staff Nurses in the same surgical unit, Mary on a male ward and Ann on a female one. Over the years, they had gone together to the weddings of girls who had trained and qualified with them and had each, more than once, caught the bridal bouquet when it was tossed from the going-away car. But this had not made either of them the next bride. Now they were Sisters and sometimes attended the weddings of young nurses who had worked under them. Ann still reached out hopefully for the magic posy of carnations and orange blossom, or whatever it might be, but Mary did not bother. The only man she wanted was forbidden to make her his wife.
“You don’t like Rob, that’s why you won’t do it,” Ann declared, though Mary had not said she would not.
Mary thought of the handsome laboratory technician who was responsible for her friend’s plight. He worked at another hospital, but often came to the Infirmary staff dances, as a senior nurse had told them on the evening they met him at one – without his wife, she had added warningly, but Ann had not heeded the warning. “There’s no harm in dancing with him,” she had said and had been dancing to his tune ever since. How can I like a man I can’t respect? Mary asked herself. But Ann’s dejected appearance moved her to get up and kiss her pale cheek.
“All right. I’ll go on duty for you,” she sighed. “Though it’s against my better judgement. And you can borrow the bath salts and talc Mum gave me for my birthday, if you like.”
Ann watched her getting out her uniform. “Bless you, Mary.”
“I don’t know who’s the bigger fool, you or me.”
Love, Mary thought wryly, as she left her quarters in Lorne Street and cut across the blustery forecourt of the Private Patients’ Home which adjoined the hospital. And the things it does to people, came the bitter addendum as she entered the covered way. Once she’d been carefree and content in this big sprawling place; had walked these long, dismal stretches unaffected by the bleakness. But sharing a bench in Whitworth Park with a boy one autumn morning had changed her, heightening her perceptions and honing her sensations to a knife edge.
The echo of her shoe
s treading the concrete floor increased the loneliness that thinking of Nathan always evoked. Other nurses were going on and off duty, too, huddled into their navy-blue, red-lined capes. Some were walking along in groups, chatting to each other and several exchanged greetings with Mary. It was a familiar scene. The end of the bustling day-stint and the beginning of the long night’s vigil on dimly-lit, hushed wards where some patients would sleep peacefully, set on the road to recovery, and others would breathe their last before the morning.
Why can’t I just take it in my stride, like I did before I knew Nathan? Mary asked herself. When they’d first met, she’d lectured him about his sensitivity and had helped him acquire the dispassionate approach his profession demanded. But he had never lost his deep concern for the human condition and the way that he felt had eventually rubbed off on her.
She hugged her cape closer around herself, but the comfort she needed was not to be found within its sensible folds. She hadn’t found it in an increased dedication to her work, either, though she had sought it there. Work, however rewarding, was no substitute for the right man’s arms. Why had she let herself fall in love with Nathan?
“All he thinks of is his stomach!” Esther expostulated after Nathan had been out and returned with a bagful of cheese and tomato sandwiches.
Everyone else took a sandwich to munch with their third cup of tea, which Staff Nurse Flaherty had just sent in.
“When Martin gets better, I’ll bring a pound of Lyons to the hospital,” Abraham promised.
“If” would be a better word, Nathan thought grimly. His nephew had been delirious and burning with fever when he looked in at the ward before going out to the café.
“A giver-away of tea leaves I’m married to!” Sarah exclaimed glancing at her husband. “Since 1905 he’s been taking tea to the Habimah Shul every week, a present for Rabbi Lensky. And I’ve never known why. Sugar he takes also.”