The Private Wing

by Claire Rayner

  “That they aren’t really patients at all,” she snapped. “Or that some of them aren’t. And even those that are, well, it isn’t easy to take their problems all that seriously, is it? That woman!”

  “Which woman?” he said with a slightly exaggerated patience.

  “Mrs Bartlett! Her husband’s obviously ill, and she couldn’t care less, that’s pretty clear – and as for Mrs Slattery!”

  The phone began to ring, and he turned his chair towards it, but she went on raising her voice a little above its noisiness, “ – a face lift! It’s all wrong, wasting beds on such things, when there’s so many people on the general waiting lists needing real care – ”

  She stopped then as he spoke into the phone, and turned away, but then she froze, for standing just outside the office door, her frilly pink housecoat clutched around her, was Mrs Slattery, her face bleak as she stared at Tricia.

  Filled with compunction – for whatever her opinion of a patient she certainly didn’t intend the patient to hear it – Tricia opened her mouth to speak, but Mrs Slattery just shook her head almost imperceptibly, and walked on, her head held high. Clearly, she had been on her way from her room to the lavatory, and had passed the door just in time to hear Tricia’s remarks. Tricia stared after her, her lower lip caught between her teeth, and could have bitten her own tongue off, so upset with herself did she feel.

  Behind her, the phone clattered, and Adam’s voice said sharply, “Now, where was I? Ah yes, you were about to repeat your well known views on the patients here – ”

  “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I – shouldn’t have. I was just a bit – ”

  “A bit half-cocked as usual,” he said wearily. “If you’d waited, I’d have told you a little more about these patients of yours. Making judgements on the basis of minimal information is a pretty juvenile thing to do, don’t you think? The essence of good medical care – and that means nursing too – is to collect all the facts, and then act on them. Not to jump to ridiculous conclusions in that immature fashion.”

  “Immature!” she said, stung. “I’m not exactly a child, you know! I’m twenty-two – and you can hardly call someone who’s had three years of nursing experience immature!”

  “Some people can be nursing for thirty years and at the end of it all they’ve done is had the same year thirty times over. They’re still juvenile in their attitudes. You need to watch yourself. You’ve got a lot more to learn about life as well as about nursing. I seem to remember saying that to you before – when the Sandra contretemps occurred. You’d never thought about the problems implicit in abortion, as I recall. Nor about any other such important aspects of life as the effects of illness in a patient on relatives – ”

  “That’s not fair! I’ve often had to deal with relatives of patients – ”

  “No doubt! But you haven’t learnt much, have you? You’re assuming Mrs Bartlett doesn’t care about her husband’s illness because she seemed so – flighty. Isn’t that what you were saying, in effect?”

  “Well, isn’t she? It was more like – like a party in there, when she came in!”

  “What do you expect her to do? Come in tears? Of course her husband is ill. Very ill, and well she knows it. All I can say is that if you think she doesn’t care, you’ve got a lot to learn about people. There’s more to maturity than mere age, I assure you. It’s a matter of understanding people, and how they tick. If you could learn to look outside yourself and at other’s needs with the same anxiety you show for your own you’d be surprised how much better a nurse you could be. And how much more successful a person.”

  He stopped then, and rubbed his face a little wearily. “Oh, for heaven’s sake – why do I bother? I’ve lectured more nurses about nursing than I care to count. And much good it does them or me, as far as I can tell. Get these specimens to the lab., will you? That’d be more to the point right now than listening to me pontificating.”

  He stood up and handed her the last of the specimen forms, and the small bottles of blood he had collected from Mr Bartlett. “And by the way – Mr Bartlett is likely to be a very difficult patient. He doesn’t know how ill he is, and he mustn’t know because I have it on excellent authority that his isn’t a personality that can cope with stress well at the best of times. And his illness is a very severe one. He’s in a very active phase of acute leukaemia. You’ll need all the tact you have.”

  There was a long pause, and then she said softly. “I’m sorry. Very sorry,” and looking more closely at him, added without thinking, “It’s upset you a lot, hasn’t it? Seeing him?”

  He raised his eyebrows at that. “Well, well! So you can be perceptive after all! Yes. It’s upset me. I hate to see a young man, someone with the gifts he’s got, wasted to a disease we haven’t the answer to yet. It’s a wicked, cruel thing – ” He shook his head irritably. “However, the way I feel – or you feel, come to that – is beside the point. It’s his feelings that matter. And he isn’t to know, not by any sign from anyone, just how bad his outlook is. Remember what happened with Sandra, and learn to control your thoughts and therefore your expression when you’re with a patient. You have a remarkably expressive face, you know. Everything you think is written all over it. So remember that.”

  Immediately she went scarlet with embarrassment, and looked down at the floor. “I’ll remember,” she said stiffly.

  He moved to the floor, and then turned back, and suddenly, put his hand on her shoulder. Startled, she looked up.

  “I seem to have done nothing but bully you, one way and another, since you came to this floor. Look, I’m sorry. I don’t know why I should let you annoy me so – but there it is, you did, very much and I indulged myself by showing temper. Just – remember what I try to teach you and we’ll get on much better. All right?”

  She stared at him, and opened her mouth to speak, and then, feeling like a stupid fish, closed it again, and shook her head, bewildered, only to stop, and then nod. And he laughed, his face crinkling at her, and after a split second, she laughed too, and he squeezed her shoulder, and went, leaving the doors swinging behind him, and Tricia a good deal shaken. So shaken and bemused she went off duty shortly afterwards, and quite forgot to go and see Mrs Slattery to apologise. Indeed, for all she was aware of her at that moment, Mrs Slattery might not have existed at all.

  Chapter Nine

  She found a note waiting for her in the nurses’ home when she came off duty, asking her to call David. “Urgent’ the receptionist had written across the top, but after a moment’s thought, Tricia decided to go up to her room and bath and change before calling him. She really needed time to collect herself, and anyway, he’d promised to leave her a full week for study, since finals were looming so closely, and he was cheating to ring her like this. But in case it was really urgent, she would phone a little later on in the evening but too late to be coaxed out for a date.

  She stopped outside Ngaire’s door and tapped loudly, but there was no reply, and vaguely uneasy, she turned away. Where the hell was she? And on an impulse, turned back and put her hand on the knob. Ngaire never locked her door, and if Tricia left a note on her pillow maybe she’d have a better chance of getting her as soon as she did come in.

  She was fumbling in her pocket for her notebook as she walked into the room, so it was a couple of moments before she realised that Ngaire was there, curled up on her bed, lying with her face to the wall.

  Tricia stared, and then crept towards her. Sleeping maybe – perhaps that was why she had ignored the tap on her door. Ngaire’s eyes were indeed closed, and Tricia was about to straighten up and creep out again, remorseful because she had forgotten Ngaire might be sleeping, when she noticed that her lids weren’t really relaxed, that they were trembling a little like those of a child pretending to nap.

  She sat down on the bed beside the small curled figure and looked at her, thoughtfully. And then said gently, “You’d better tell me, Ny. You can’t go on like this. I know it isn’t the bu
siness of theatre last night that’s upset you like this because that’s all settled anyway – and you’re not one to fret unduly about such things. This is something quite other, isn’t it? You’d really better tell me.”

  There was a long silence, and then Ngaire rolled over to lie on her back and stare up at the ceiling, her hands behind her head.

  “I’ve been – it’s been so strange. All day. I’ve been like a sort of robot. Not feeling anything much. But I ought to. I ought to feel a lot.”

  “Why? What happened with – Pete, wasn’t it?”

  “Pete,” she said it softly. “Yes, Pete. That’s who it was.”

  She laughed then, and turned her head and looked at Tricia, but there was no amusement in her laugh, only a brittleness that made Tricia shiver slightly.

  “It’s funny, Trish – how long have you known me?”

  “Almost three years.”

  “And what do you know of me?”

  Tricia frowned. “Know of you? I know – well, that you’re fun. A bit of a nut, often, but fun. That you’re a great friend. Fond of men – ”

  “Fond of men. Yes. That’s it, isn’t it? Ngaire the man-eater, that’s what people think I am. Including you?”

  “That’s not fair! I’ve just always accepted that you like men, that’s all,” Tricia protested. “But I know there’s no harm in it. It’s like playing games with you. That’s all it is.”

  “Really? And what about my morals? Have you ever thought about that?” Ngaire was looking at her very directly, and Tricia hesitated, and reddened, and then spoke a little shyly.

  “Look, Ny, you’re my best friend. You’ve been absolutely marvellous to me, all this time. Without you I’d have gone spare when my parents had their flap, really. And when a person is a friend – damn it, you don’t think about morals! I mean, as regards men, which is what you mean, isn’t it? It’s none of my business.”

  Ngaire smiled then, a little wryly. “Well, bless you for that. But I suppose if it came right down to it, you’d have to admit you thought me a pretty experienced person, as far as sex is concerned, anyway.”

  There was a pause, then Tricia said unwillingly. “Well, I suppose so. If I’d ever thought about it – which I haven’t.”

  “I believe you. Well, Trish, let me tell you something. I am without any doubt as stupid, and naïve, and – and idiotic as any kid of fifteen getting ready for her first date with a fella who’s barely old enough to have started to shave. I knew from nothing – nothing – ”

  She lay staring upwards, in a brooding silence and then Tricia said gently, “Knew?”

  Ngaire slid her eyes sideways, and produced that brittle mirthless laugh again.

  “Got it in one. Past tense. Yes. Knew.”

  The silence came down again, and then Tricia stirred and said with an attempt at briskness, “Well, you’ve gone this far, so you might as well finish. I think you’ll feel better if you do.”

  Ngaire sighed sharply, and then sat up, to fold her arms round her hunched knees, and she began to speak in a flat sort of voice, never once looking at Tricia, but staring in front of her in a blind way that made her seem like a little old woman rather than the bouncy half-child Tricia had always known.

  “I’ve been head over heels in love with Pete as long as I can remember. Ever since school. And then he went and joined the Navy and I died a little, I think. I couldn’t imagine staying in Christchurch without him. I couldn’t imagine living from one trip to the next, seeing him once a year if I was lucky. So I cut my losses. It must have half killed my folks, but I took off. Came to England to train as a nurse, and fill my life with guys and find someone to cure the Pete infection. And it worked fine for a while, in a way. I mean, I found I could get any guy I fancied – but then as soon as one of them showed an interest in me, boy, did I shy off! Talk about the affronted virgin act! But they were nice fellas, most of them. Took it well, treated me like a silly little girl who didn’t know any better than to be a tease, and were – very kind. And there were letters from Pete to keep me going. Every time I thought I was over the – disease – God damn it, he’d write again from Timbuctu or Granada or somewhere romantic, and there I was, crying into my pillow for him again. But I wasn’t going to let him know it, not clever Ngaire. Oh, no! I wrote him great reams about the life I was having. Box of birds, that was me. Box of birds. And now they’re all dead – ”

  She took a deep breath, and then went on.

  “Anyway, that’s how it was up to yesterday. And he called me. First time ever he made Tilbury – he’s done British runs before, to Southampton, to Hull, to Liverpool – but this time, Tilbury. Could I meet him? Could I! I would have moved heaven and earth to meet him – well, God damn it, I did, didn’t I? And copped you with it.” She turned her head briefly and looked at Tricia. “Forgive me for that. But it had to be done. Anyway, I met him – there on the docks – ”

  She stopped, and then went on painfully, “He looked great. Bigger somehow, more of a man than I remembered. I think I could have died when I saw him. He was – there he was, you see, the one man in the world. Mine. My Pete. Oh, hell and damn and – ”

  She put her head down to rest on her knees, and took a couple of deep breaths and then lifted her face again.

  “He took me aboard. He was on standby watch or something – most of the crew were ashore, and apart from a couple of blokes up on the bridge, there was just the two of us, in his little cabin. We had a drink – ”

  Again she turned and looked at Tricia, and her eyes were flat with misery, as opaque as pebbles. “Oh, do I have to spell it out? I loved him, he was there, he was all I’d been waiting for all these years, so there it was. We made love. It hurt and I cried like hell, but it was all right – all marvellous. I loved him, you see. You can’t talk about morals when it’s love. Can you? I never stopped to think. I loved him, and I wanted him, and he loved me – it was all beautiful – beautiful.”

  Tears had begun to trickle down her face now, spilling over as though she had no awareness of them. “It would still be beautiful. It isn’t that I’m mourning my lost innocence or anything of that sort. I’ve more – sense than that. It’s more than that.”

  She put a hand out and touched Tricia’s shoulder, as though she needed the comfort of human contact, and then dropped her hand again.

  “It was only me, you see. Only me who saw it that way – beautiful. Not him. He’s been married more than a year now, got a baby on the way. A girl I knew at home. Great girl, she was. Quiet, but nice. Great. And Pete said – a fella gets lonely. Needs a girl – being a sailor, it’s a tough life for a man. And here I was, old friend, living it up like mad, one of the new swinging set – I mean, New Zealand girls aren’t like your usual swinging London girls, but I’d been here a whole three years, and there were my letters, all about the guys and the parties here – I can’t blame him. He saw it as I suppose I used to with all those guys I went out with. A bit of fun. A way to forget the girl he really loves, just for a while. Only the difference between us was that I – I never had gone so far before. He’s a man, so it’s different. But for me – well, I don’t feel very marvellous any more. So there it is. Now you know. And where the bloody hell I go from here, I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  And she leaned back against her pillows, and then miserably turned her face to the wall and wept, and for a long time Tricia sat beside her in the dwindling light of the early evening, until at last the sobbing stopped, and Ngaire lay asleep, looking as flushed and helpless as an abandoned baby.

  Stiffly, Tricia got to her feet, moving awkwardly for fear of disturbing the sleeping Ngaire, and stood looking down at her feeling a bewilderment and unhappiness for her friend that held a lot of shame in it.

  To have known this girl so long, to have leaned on her and relied on her as she knew she often had, and yet to have known so little of her. It was shaming, deeply so, and suddenly she heard, as vividly as though he were beside her, Adam Kidd’s
voice. “There’s more to maturity than mere age – ” And there’s more to friendship than just knowing someone, she thought bleakly, and then slipped silently from the room, closing the door carefully behind her.

  “Oh, there you are, Nurse Oxford!” the suddenness of the voice made her jump. “Really, it is too bad of you to disappear so thoroughly! Your boy friend has been down the hall waiting for you this past half hour.”

  Home Sister, a middle-aged and exceedingly fussy little woman, peered at her in the dim light of the corridor. “Really, Nurse, you must speak to him, you know. I’ve seen him here many times, of course I have, but he’s never been so discourteous as he has this evening. He suggested the receptionist staff hadn’t given you his message! And really, I would prefer it if these young men did not come here smelling of drink. I’m as broad-minded as the next person, I assure you, but really – you must speak to him. I’ll tell him I found you – ”

  She bustled away down the stairs in a clatter of heels, and Tricia stood still, outside Ngaire’s door, and closed her eyes for a moment. David. He’d phoned and said it was urgent, and then she hadn’t called. And remembering Ngaire’s misery and the look in her face when she had told her sorry little tale of being unloved, Tricia felt a great lift of gratitude for David, for his unswerving reliability, for the way he made her feel, always, loved as well as very much desired. And moving swiftly, she followed Home Sister down the stairs to the hall where David was waiting.

  He was sitting in the big armchair, his chin sunk on his chest, his eyes apparently fixed on the toes of his shoes, which were slowly swinging from side to side as he rocked his crossed ankles.

  He saw her as she came down the stairs towards him, and stood up with an awkward heave, and as she came up to him and opened her mouth to speak, he shook his head, and taking her arm in a tight grip, propelled her towards the door. And not until he had ducked with her under the overhanging branches of the big beech tree and they were both hidden in the dimness against the trunk did he say a word.