Polly

by Betty Neels

  Not quite true; hadn’t he kissed her once? But did a kiss like that count in any way? She thought not. He was a disturbing element in her life though and far too bossy; a good thing he would be going in half an hour or so.

  In this she was over-optimistic; the Professor, invited to share Sunday lunch, expressed his delight at being asked and accepted. Cora bounced into Polly’s room where she was unpacking, to tell her so.

  Polly frowned. ‘Don’t any of you dare to say a word about my going to Birmingham next week—I’ll never forgive you!’ She was kneeling on the floor putting undies away in a drawer and looked over her shoulder at her sister. ‘You haven’t said anything, have you? I did ask all of you…’

  ‘OK, Polly, don’t get so desperate about it! No one has breathed a word and we won’t. Anyway, he hasn’t asked any questions—he’s been talking about the book with Father and chatting us up—you haven’t been mentioned. He’s outside now, showing Ben how to drive the Bentley.’ She gave a little giggle. ‘Oh, if only I’d been a Greek and Latin scholar, I’d have put it to good use, I can tell you!’

  ‘A lot of good it would have done you,’ said Polly matter-of-factly. ‘He’s engaged. She’s an absolute horror but very pretty in a thin kind of way, and she wears gorgeous clothes.’

  ‘When are they going to get married?’

  ‘I’ve no idea, though Deirdre—that’s her—told Diana that she thought it would be romantic to get married on Midsummer Day. Of all the silly sentimental nonsense, and she’s not romantic either.’

  Cora looked thoughtfully at the bowed head of her sister. It wasn’t like Polly to get so heated about anyone or anything; she was the most level-headed, good-natured girl alive, only the strongest of motives would make her really angry.

  They went downstairs presently and laid the table before Polly went to the kitchen to help her mother, while Cora slipped away to where the rest of the family were grouped around the Professor in the garden. Presently the group split up and the two girls wandered back into the house, though not at once into the kitchen. Cora pushed Marian smartly into Mr Talbot’s tiny study and closed the door gently.

  ‘Whatever’s the matter with you?’ demanded Marian.

  ‘Nothing—it’s our Polly. I’m sure she’s head over heels in love with Sam and hasn’t the faintest idea.’ Cora shook her head. ‘She’s such a child over that kind of thing—her head’s stuffed with Greek verbs and she’s not like us—I don’t suppose she even thinks about him, not knowingly, because he’s supposed to be marrying this twit of a girl on Midsummer Day.’

  Marian giggled. ‘What an idea! Are they in love—he and this girl, I mean?’

  ‘Shouldn’t think so. I mean, if they were, she’d have come too, wouldn’t she? From all accounts he’s away each and every day, so they can’t see much of each other. What shall we do?’

  ‘Nothing, how can we? We’re not even sure…besides, he doesn’t really notice her, does he, or talk about her.’

  ‘No, I’m not sure that that isn’t a good sign. We’d better go and mingle in the kitchen or Mother will want to know where we are.’

  At the door Cora paused. ‘He’d make a lovely husband for Polly.’

  Marian nodded. ‘She’d present him with a row of handsome little Greek and Latin scholars, all very dark, like Dad.’ They laughed softly and then Cora said: ‘It’s not a joke really. Polly’s not like us.’

  Sunday lunch at the Talbots’ was something of a ritual—roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, vegetables from the garden and one of Mrs Talbot’s fruit pies with lashings of cream. The Professor did full justice to them all, complimenting Mrs Talbot on her cooking so that that lady went quite pink with pleasure. ‘Though I daresay you have a cook of your own?’ she questioned.

  ‘Yes indeed. Bessy has been with us for such a long time I can hardly remember when she first came. I should be lost without her.’

  ‘You’ll find her a treasure when you’re married,’ observed Mrs Talbot.

  ‘Er—yes.’

  ‘Perhaps your fiancée is a good cook?’ ventured Mrs Talbot.

  Just for once the Professor was at a loss. ‘I really don’t know,’ he observed, and bore the battery of Talbot eyes turned upon him with commendable sangfroid.

  ‘Oh, well, it’s something which comes with practice,’ said Mrs Talbot comfortably.

  The Professor showed no signs of hurrying away after the meal; he strolled round the garden with his host for half an hour or more before finally bidding all of them goodbye, promising Mr Talbot a copy of Sir Ronald’s book when it was published, exchanging the lighthearted badinage with Cora and Marian that they expected, offering beautifully mannered thanks to Mrs Talbot, giving Ben a manly thump on the back and lastly turning to Polly.

  ‘Many thanks for your hard work, Polly,’ he uttered the words casually. ‘You’ve done very well—Sir Ronald would have been delighted.’

  With which brief speech he got into the car and drove away.

  Polly was kept too busy during the next day or two to have time to think about Professor Gervis, and when she did find that her thoughts were dwelling upon him, she made haste to change them rapidly. He was gone, and that was that, and since they had never got on very well, there was no reason why she should bother with him.

  He might be gone, but the memory of him was very clear in her head. It was disconcerting to find herself thinking of him the moment she woke in the morning, and thinking of him again far too frequently during the day. Even plunging into the task of getting her things ready to go to hospital didn’t prevent her doing that. It was a matter of regret that she hadn’t wished him goodbye—true, she had mumbled something, but he’d paid no heed.

  It was two days before she was due to leave home and she was out walking Shylock in the early morning, still mulling over their unsatisfactory parting, when she stopped suddenly in her tracks, almost falling over a surprised Shylock. Midsummer Day wasn’t all that far off now, and the very idea of the Professor marrying Deirdre on that day made her feel quite ill. Deirdre wasn’t the girl for him; she would be a ghastly wife, and he would become more irritable and impatient with every month that passed. He needed someone sensible, who could ignore his arrogance and ill humour, see that he didn’t work too hard, and run his home for him—something Deirdre would never do—for Bessy and Jeff, already uneasy when she was in the house, would never be happy once she had gone there to live.

  Polly flopped down on a tuft of coarse grass. ‘Oh, my dear Sam, it’s me you need!’ she declared loudly, and then because there was absolutely no way of making that possible, she burst into tears.

  It was silly to cry, she told herself ten minutes later, and mopped her sodden face carefully. Crying for the moon would get her nowhere. Of course, if ever there was a chance… She sat and daydreamed for another half an hour, then shook herself into common sense again, and went back home to breakfast, and if her family thought that she was rather quiet, they put it down to last-minute fears at the idea of taking up nursing, although as Cora told Marian, they couldn’t be sure of that.

  Her father drove her to Birmingham, saw her safely inside the hospital doors, wished her goodbye with the rider that they would see each other again on her days off, and drove away, leaving her in the care of the chief porter, who advised her to take a seat while he rang the office. And after that it was a quick succession of happenings, one after the other, until she found herself at last in her room in the Nurses’ Home—a small room, but nicely furnished, and her uniform was laid out on the bed ready for her to put on in the morning. She unpacked, arranged her few bits and pieces on the window-sill and dressing table and, mindful of instructions, locked the door and found her way downstairs.

  Tea, the warden had told her, was in the hospital canteen, but since she and half a dozen other girls were just arrived, they could have it in the sitting room on the ground floor.

  There were five girls sitting around the large comfortably furnis
hed room, all looking a bit lost and not attempting to pour their tea from the large pot on the tea tray. Polly said, ‘Hullo,’ and gathered a chorus of replies, and then because it was something to do, advanced to the teapot. ‘I’m Polly Talbot, shall I pour for us all?’

  It broke the ice nicely. Names were exchanged, opinions given as to their rooms, the warden, who looked quite nice, and the Nursing Officer who seemed a bit severe. ‘It’s like going to school for the first time,’ declared one girl, pretty and dark with large eyes and a mop of hair. ‘I can’t think why I ever decided to come!’

  Everyone laughed, looking at each other, wondering who would be friends with whom, remembering that they would be seeing a great deal of each other for the next three years. They were really beginning to enjoy themselves when the warden came in to tell them that supper was at eight o’clock and if they wanted to go out before then, they could. Polly, with the plea that she had letters to write, arranged to meet the other girls in the hall just before eight o’clock, and went back to her room. She was suddenly and profoundly unhappy. Though she was certain she had done the right thing, and that after a time life would be fun again, just now there was no fun at all. She had done her best not to think about Professor Gervis, but not very successfully so far; he lived inside her head, his voice was in her ears and the time she had spent at his home unwound itself continuously like a never-ending film. ‘And why I had to fall in love with you, my dear,’ she admonished the wall, ‘I do not know, because we’re quite unsuited and you’ve never even noticed me—well, almost never. Besides you’re going to get married.’ And the thought of that made her feel even sadder.

  They trooped in to supper feeling strange and awkward. The canteen seemed full of nurses, all looking their way, but it was better once someone in an overall had shown them a table where they could sit together. They queued for their supper, ate it in a rather subdued fashion, then left in a body, to crowd into Polly’s room and talk. They were a nice lot of girls, she decided, and a good thing, since they were to spend a good deal of time together. ‘Who tells us where to go in the morning?’ asked someone.

  ‘We’ll get told at breakfast, I should imagine,’ said Polly, ‘Let’s make up our caps and see how we’re going to look.’

  They passed the time happily enough until a rather haughty girl with a different cap from theirs put her head round the door and warned them that lights had to be out by eleven o’clock.

  ‘Who was that?’ asked Polly. ‘And what a fetching cap.’ She was standing in front of the small mirror, turning this way and that, deciding at which angle to wear her own headgear. She had to pin up her hair because the cap looked ridiculous on her straight shoulder-length locks, and she was fairly satisfied with the result. At least she looked older—a good deal plainer too.

  There was no point in lying awake worrying about the morning, she allowed herself a few minutes’ daydreaming about the Professor and then sensibly went to sleep.

  At breakfast, selfconsciously eating cornflakes in her uniform, she was told that she was to go to Beecham Ward. One of the nurses working there would take her—only for the mornings, though; in the afternoons she was to go to the classroom and have lectures from Sister Tutor and she would be free each evening at five o’clock. Polly nodded goodbye to the other girls in her group and followed the hurried footsteps of a tall, thin girl with a face like a friendly horse. ‘You’ll like it,’ she flung over one shoulder as they hurried upstairs along numerous corridors. ‘Sister Bates is nice, Staff’s a bit sharp, but don’t let it worry you. What’s your name?’

  ‘Talbot, Polly Talbot.’

  ‘Like children?’

  ‘Yes—yes, I do.’

  ‘Good.’

  They were almost at a double swing door. ‘Are you—that is, how long have you been here?’ asked Polly.

  ‘Two years. Name’s Honeybun, Freda.’

  The first thing that struck Polly as they went through the doors was the noise—children shouting and wailing and laughing and crying. ‘You’ll get used to it,’ observed her companion. ‘It’s when they’re quiet that you have to worry.’

  She was led to Sister’s Office where the girl who had put her head round the door yesterday evening was sitting at the desk. She looked up as Polly was ushered in and then left. ‘Hullo. You’re Talbot—Polly Talbot, aren’t you? Sister will want to see you when she comes on duty. Ever done any nursing before?

  ‘No, only a small brother with measles and mumps and chickenpox.’

  ‘Oh, well, that’s something, I suppose. Come along, you can help with breakfasts.’

  And that meant gently shovelling food into a two-year-old with a leg in plaster, and then bottle feeding a six-months-old baby, and then a four-year-old had to be helped to eat his porridge between bouts of rage. Polly, having won a limited victory over him, was nonetheless relieved when she was told to go to Sister’s Office.

  Sister Bates was a small round middle-aged woman with a firm chin and a kind mouth. She cast aside the papers before her on the desk and invited Polly to sit down.

  ‘We’re glad to see you, Nurse Talbot—we can always do with an extra pair of hands on the ward. You will be here for three months, for the first month you will spend your afternoons with Sister Tutor, after that you will do normal duties. You will have two days free each week—I make out the off duty two weeks at a time so that you can plan trips home and so on—and you’ll be free each day at five o’clock.’ She looked up and smiled. ‘I daresay you’ll be tired, all you’ll want to do is climb into your bed. Take my advice and don’t. Get out for a walk first.’

  She looked at a paper she had picked up from her desk. ‘You will work with a second-year nurse and sometimes with Staff Nurse Stockley, sometimes with me. Routine jobs to start with, cots and beds, wiping up messes, washing toddlers, bathing babies, feeding…fetching and carrying, too. You’ll learn a great deal from just looking and you may ask all the questions you want to, but you’ll find that your lessons in the Training School tie up with your work.’ She smiled again. ‘You look a sensible girl. Is there anything you want to know?’

  ‘No, thank you, Sister.’

  ‘Good. Go back to Staff, will you, and ask her to come here, and then work with Nurse Honeybun. When she goes to coffee you will go with her.’

  Polly went back into the ward, delivered her message and started making up cots with Freda Honeybun, listening carefully to that young lady’s stream of information and advice, and looking around her at the same time. There were twenty cots and small beds in the ward, although it seemed far more than that, on account of the noise. The ward was divided in the centre by a wide arch, there were large barred windows with cheerful curtains. There were miniature tables and chairs too and gay posters pinned on to the walls. Even with the alarming number of rules and regulations her companion was pouring out to her, Polly knew she would like it.

  It was true, of course, what Sister Bates had told her; she was dead on her feet by five o’clock. The day had been one continuous round of chores, some of them very unpleasant, all of them necessary, and she had only the vaguest idea as to the various ailments the children suffered from. It was a surgical ward, so there were surgical conditions, but she couldn’t see under the bandages and dressings and she probably wouldn’t for weeks to come. All the same, the day had brought satisfaction with it and hardly a moment in which to think of the Professor. Despite cries of anguished protest from the other girls in her set, she doggedly got out of uniform, had a shower, dressed again, went out. The hospital was very much in the centre of the city and there wasn’t anywhere much to go to, but she found a small park not too far away and walked round it several times before going back to have her supper.

  The next three days followed the same pattern, but by now she was finding her feet. She could tell the difference between first and second and third-year nurses, could name most of the Ward Sisters, knew where the Path Lab was and the theatre wing, and no longer looked b
lank when Staff Nurse Stockley told her to feed the intussusception baby. All the same, it was hard going, but she welcomed it; it kept her mind off other things.

  On the fourth morning she went on duty feeling that she was getting the hang of things. It was Theatre day, an important weekly event still to be experienced; it was also round day, whatever that might be, but far more important, she had two free days starting at five o’clock that afternoon. Her father had promised to fetch her, although she would have to wait until the evening, all the same she would be home for supper. She hugged the thought to her as she spoon-fed a toddler with a hare lip, admitted the day before and still to be examined. The houseman had told her that; Joseph Taylor, young and keen and friendly, and not above talking to a junior nurse. The Registrar she had seen from a distance, but he talked only with Sister or Staff Nurse. He was a tall, stooping man, very good at his job, although he tended to ignore the nurses. He was reputed to have a jealous wife, but that could be hearsay.

  Polly finished feeding the small girl, tidied the plate away and wiped the little disfigured face clean and then kissed it. She perched the moppet up against the pillows, arranged a teddy bear and a doll on the coverlet and turned to go, a little flustered because the swing doors had opened and she could hear Sister’s voice and a number of feet. She would have to go towards them, there was no other way. She took a step and stopped dead in her tracks. Professor Gervis was standing there, smiling a little.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  QUITE FORGETFUL of where she was and unaware of the shining delight in her face, Polly spoke. ‘Great heavens, is this where you work? And I thought you were a publisher! What a surprise…’ Her eye caught Sister’s look of outrage and she went slowly scarlet, then darted past the group of people surrounding the Professor, down the ward and into the sluice room, where she shut the door and leaned against the sink, feeling sick with shame and surprise and horror that she would be instantly dismissed. Surely any minute the doors would be flung open and she would be forced to go back to the ward. But that didn’t happen. Through the thick door she could hear voices coming nearer and retreating again, and then only the normal sounds to which her ears had grown accustomed. She had just made up her mind to go back into the ward to face Staff’s caustic tongue—not that she minded that so much; just as long as she didn’t have to see Professor Gervis again; when the door opened and Nurse Honeybun peered round it.