Nurse Trent's Children

by Joyce Dingwell

  “Aunty, too,” said a voice. “If she poses nicely some susceptible paper might even add that she looks little older than her charges herself. Smile sweetly, Aunty Cathy.”

  “Hello, Dr. Jeremy,” said a dozen little girls.

  “Hello, Dr. Jerry,” shouted the boys.

  “How long has this fraternization been going on?” whispered Cathy to David Kennedy as they tried to reassemble the children. The doctor had gone to the rail. Each hand held the trusting hand of a small child.

  Kennedy looked surprised. “Right throughout the voyage. Didn’t you know?”

  “I hadn’t met him until a few minutes ago.”

  “Really? Now that’s extraordinary. He looked me up the first day. I was sure he had looked you up, too. Most extraordinary.”

  “He couldn’t,” smiled Cathy impishly, “have liked my appearance.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it wasn’t that,” said Mr. Kennedy. He said it warmly. He considered that Miss Trent looked everything she should.

  “It could be that other business, though...” He pondered, adding cryptically, “A pity if it is. A pity to carry a chip on your shoulder.”

  Cathy would have liked to know what business, what chip, but she was determined to evince no interest.

  Crossing to the rail, she stood by the little girls and stared out at this new country that would soon be her home.

  The children and Catherine Trent were alike, she was thinking, they were all alone in the world and they faced new pastures. What lay ahead for them in this vast place of red roofs and blue sky and people they did not know? The children at least had their friends around them, most of them had brothers or sisters. They, too, had the resilience of green youth, the loving protective wisdom of kindly adults. She had nothing and nobody.

  She turned away slightly and found to her discomfort that the doctor was regarding her speculatively.

  “If you were intending to slip down to your cabin for a quick puff of powder, let me assure you your nose is quite mat. Anyway, it will not show in the picture.” He waved a lazy arm in the direction of an approaching press photographer.

  “I don’t wish to have my picture taken.”

  “Come now, that’s bad policy for Little Families. It’s from charming publicity like this they rake in the public’s shekels. Didn’t you know?”

  David Kennedy must have known. He was busily grouping his boys together. “Mingle your girls among them,” he called to Cathy. “It looks more family and makes for better reader reaction.”

  At that instruction the doctor’s face changed noticeably. He almost glowered at the girls that Cathy obediently “mingled” among the boys, and turned quite furiously away.

  Cathy was so puzzled that the photographer had to call twice for a smile, and when she did, it was to a camera behind which a sardonic onlooker watched with a distinctly unamused expression.

  “Apparently Mr. Malcolm is no Little Families fan,” she murmured to David Kennedy.

  David opened his mouth to tell her something but—the way it always was with children around—they were interrupted.

  “Uncle, can I have my sixpence now?” asked Tony Curtis, brother of Cathy’s Brenda and Shirley Curtis.

  “Uncle David, where is Sydney?” inquired George Bannerman, who had twin sisters in Cathy’s group.

  Mr. Kennedy had no time to comment on her statement regarding the doctor. Neither of them had much time ever for conversation, thought Cathy with sincere regret, for she liked and respected David.

  The ship was passing beneath the bridge. “We’ll be off in half an hour,” said Kennedy. “I’ve gone through all this before.” He was, Cathy had learned, a New Zealander who had lived equal parts of his life in England, Australia and his own birthplace. Wherever boys were, he always said, was his home.

  “You’d better take your girls below for a final brushup,” he advised Cathy. “There’s sure to be a welcoming party, including some VIPs.”

  Cathy nodded and shepherded her wards downstairs. She hurried them along to the dormitory that had been set aside for the girls’ section of Little Families, twenty beds in a row and a bed with a partition around it for herself.

  Twenty beds? But once more there were only nineteen children. Oh, dear, thought Cathy, where is Christabel?

  CHAPTER TWO

  There were several VIPs as Mr. Kennedy had warned; also, and much more to the children’s liking, vast quantities of pink-iced cakes and lemonade, and two waiting buses.

  Cathy kept one eye anxiously on Christabel and the other politely on a patronizing VIP. She kept the girls reasonably quiet through several addresses of welcome, meanwhile eyeing the two buses with certain misgiving. As soon as she could, she edged around to David Kennedy.

  “Why two conveyances?” she whispered.

  “We’re going to different homes.”

  “What?” Cathy could not help that. She was astounded.

  Mr. Kennedy looked at her sympathetically. “I really should have prepared you for this.”

  “You should have. Why the separation?”

  “You should have said segregation. It’s an Australian custom. In time our children will come together again, but never, according to rules, under the same roof. The boys and girls are always kept apart.”

  “But that doesn’t follow the English foundation.”

  “My child, out here it has to follow the Australian foundation. You must remember that such things are more or less in their infancy in the Commonwealth. They have not progressed to the small mixed house units we have in Little Families in England. They have not reached the stage of accommodating together, as in a real family unit, both sexes.”

  “Oh, dear,” fretted Cathy, “that means the Curtises and the Banner-mans are split up.”

  “Luckily they were separated before Little Families selected them in London, so they are inured to it. There is still plenty of the old system left there, don’t forget. One thing, they are well broken in. Don’t worry, in a few weeks the nippers will at least be on the same grounds, if not under the same roof. Besides, you might have noticed that none of these children are particularly sensitive types.”

  “No thanks to the Australian system,” frowned Cathy. “I’d hate to have a child who did feel strongly about it.” She felt rather strongly about it herself. Those few weeks spent with Little Families before sailing had given her some very definite ideas regarding child welfare. It grieved her to think that brothers and sisters were ever separated. Of course, as David said, it still existed in England today, in the mid-fifties, but never in English Little Families. They, she thought proudly, were more enlightened. A pity the enlightenment had not reached these shores. She sighed, then brightened determinedly. It appeared there was nothing at present she could do about it, and since the children’s hosts seemed so kind and genuinely interested in their new wards, she decided to look at things in the same light that David Kennedy did—that child study was still comparatively in its infancy here—that there was time and space to expand.

  “Where are the girls going?” she asked him.

  “Place called Redgates, subrural, about twelve miles north. Quite charming. You’ll like it.”

  “And you?”

  “Temporarily in the midsuburbs. The boys’ wing at Redgates is being renovated.”

  Cathy felt suddenly lonely. She wished David was coming, too. “I don’t like it,” she sighed. “It’s too bad the children are not being kept together.”

  “You must try to keep in mind that most of these kind people don’t like it either. It just happens to be an Australian law. Give Australia time, Miss Trent. It’s very young, remember.”

  “Shouldn’t it have a wider outlook then?”

  “When it gets around to matters like this I believe it will have, it’s the getting around that takes time. There’s so much more to be done in a young country.”

  A VIP came up to Kennedy and Cathy edged away, suddenly concerned because she had lost Christab
el.

  She found her, as she had found her on the ship, in the company of Dr. Malcolm. She looked at the ship’s surgeon in surprise. The rest of the passengers had quickly dispersed in waiting cars and taxis. “Still here,” she said.

  “Just as well for Christabel,” he returned coolly. “Small girls do fall over edges of wharves or run into busy streets, even if housemothers are ‘never long absent.’ ”

  Cathy flushed. His would be an unforgiving nature, she thought. “I was tied up with the welcome,” she said unwillingly.

  “And the future housefather?” he insinuated; then, before she could answer him, “How was the welcome? Sufficient iced cakes and soothing syrup? I must say the natives don’t stint on that.”

  She regarded him speculatively.

  ‘You must be a native yourself by now. When were you brought here?”

  “At the lowest age Little Families transport their experimental young.”

  “Five,” murmured Cathy, ignoring his sarcasm. “Then you are an Australian. This country must have made you what you are.”

  “You praise the result?” One eyebrow had tilted upward. It gave him an almost sardonic look.

  Cathy flushed. “I think it unfair to deride a place that at least has afforded you success in life.”

  “Am I a success?”

  She shrugged. “The Winona is a considerable ship. I should scarcely say ship’s doctor was a pauper’s position.”

  “Couldn’t I have the credit?”

  She stuck her lower lip out obstinately. Hers was a full mouth, he thought detachedly, the fluted, bee-stung shape that had given way nowadays to wide toothpaste smiles.

  “Not entirely,” she argued, “someone—some institution—must have stuck by you.”

  “Quite right. Little Families did.”

  “The Australian branch of Little Families?”

  “Quite right again.”

  “Then...”

  “I know what you are going to say. You are going to ask why I dislike them then? I don’t. Not entirely. I just can’t stomach some of their outmoded rules.”

  “A country must grow to a certain stage, not arrive there.” Cathy was echoing David Kennedy’s tolerant words.

  “You sound like a very tolerant person, Aunty Cathy.”

  “I hope I am, with twenty girls in my charge.”

  “There will be ten more when you get to Redgates.”

  She looked at him in astonishment. “How do you know that?” She had believed by the way he spoke that he had washed his hands of any association with Little Families.

  When he answered her she saw that her conjecture was still correct in a way. “I happen,” he drawled, “to be Redgates’s medical adviser. Obligatory, of course. I have the mischance to have a practice at Burnley Hills.”

  “Burnley Hills?”

  “Where Redgates is located.”

  There was a pause.

  Cathy said impulsively, “How can you be so sarcastic about it all? You are established in the world. You even have your own practice, and I thought that practices were not come by cheaply in Australia.”

  “This one was. It cost me exactly nothing. Burnley Hills ten years ago consisted of perhaps twenty houses and one institution belonging to the Little Families foundation.”

  “You started your own practice?”

  “Yes. People laughed. They said Burnley would not be ready for one for years. They said the place was stagnant. I thought differently and I was right. When building started seriously again a year or two ago new districts were opened up. Burnley was one of them. I now have more patients than I can comfortably cope with, and the place is still growing.”

  “So,” said Cathy, “the credit is entirely Dr. Malcolm’s.”

  He inclined his head toward the crowd. “One of the VIPs seems to be looking around for you. Probably has some more pink icing. I’ll wait, Miss Trent.”

  “No need to.”

  “There is need. I am transporting you to Burnley Hills.”

  “But why?”

  “Why not? I live there, and my car is much more comfortable than that bus. Besides...”

  “Yes?”

  “I was particularly requested by the authorities to oblige. They are very anxious to give you a good first impression. They decided my car and my company would do that beautifully. To keep the peace I complied.”

  “That must have irritated you, when you wanted to be on your way.”

  “Not unduly.”

  “Then it must be annoying for you to have to stand around and watch something you do not believe in.”

  “On the contrary, I find it rather amusing. Also, Christabel has stopped me from becoming bored.” He patted the little girl’s head.

  “She must come along now and join the others.” Cathy’s voice was definite. One of the things she had learned in England was never to give one child more liberties than another. She did not know what was in Dr. Malcolm’s mind, but if he had intended allowing Christabel the privilege of traveling in the car, she had no intention of permitting it.

  He looked at her through narrowed eyes. “You don’t believe in spoiling children, do you?” he taunted. “You welfare workers always run to the same pattern. A practical mind and a heart of flint.”

  Cathy bit her lip. “It’s the others I am considering,” she defended. “It would not be fair if one was chosen to travel differently.”

  “I want to go in the bus,” clamored Christabel in a definite tone.

  “Then that, at least, is settled,” said Dr. Malcolm.

  Cathy did not answer him. She went back to the party on the wharf.

  A round of handshakes, a rather wistful goodbye to David Kennedy, then the girls were settled satisfactorily in the bus.

  “Dr. Malcolm is taking you, Miss Trent,” fussed one of the VIPs. “We’re terribly proud of the doctor. He’s one of our most famous boys. He’s been in England for nine months doing some sort of postgraduate work, but of course you would know all about that, traveling out on the same ship. I believe he worked his way back the same as he worked his way over. That would be typical of our Dr. Jerry.”

  Cathy smiled politely and murmured something suitable, shook the last of the hands, then waved away David and the boys. She was relieved to see that neither Tony Curtis nor George Bannerman seemed at all upset at being parted from their sisters; nor had the sisters evinced any undue concern. Slowly and a little unwillingly she made her way back to where Jeremy Malcolm waited.

  “Are you filled up with cake and lemonade, or do you think you could manage some tea?”

  “I would love a cup of tea. Can we? Hadn’t we better push off and catch up with the rest?”

  “The girls will go first to Hope House for a few preliminaries.”

  “Such as?”

  “More welcome talks, probably more pink icing, then such articles of clothing as the English foundation omitted to include.”

  “They didn’t omit anything,” defended Cathy indignantly.

  “They have bathing suits? Sandals? Shorts?”

  As Cathy looked surprised, he said, “I thought not. We’re in Australia now, remember. The emphasis will be on outdoor exercise, not snakes and ladders. I believe we have ample time for tea and can still reach Redgates before them. Anyway, I have to go to the other end of town to pick up my car.” He had hailed a taxi and was helping Cathy in.

  They left the waterfront and climbed a steepish hill into the sophistication of the southern city. The taxi left them off at a busy comer, and Jeremy Malcolm put his fingers under her arm and guided her through the dense crowds. “I didn’t think it would be as busy as this,” said Cathy ruefully. She was glad when he led her into the cool seclusion of a small lounge.

  “What brought you out here?” he asked after the tea had arrived. “Love of children, desire for fresh fields, or simply a job?”

  “The last,” she said briefly.

  He raised his brows. “You could do better than Li
ttle Families then. Steno jobs, for instance, are extremely well paid in Australia.”

  “I am not a stenographer. I have never done any typing.”

  “No? I suppose you were a lady of leisure then.” He did not make it a question, so she did not enlighten him. “Do you think you will like being an Australian?” he asked.

  Her retort was quick. “Like you, I am not an Australian.”

  He looked up spontaneously at that, as though to protest, and she laughed.

  “I don’t think you know what you are,” she accused.

  He sat silent a while, frowning.

  “I served with the R.A.A.F.,” he said presently, “and I was proud to. However...”

  “Yes?”

  He pushed aside his cup as though he was vaguely irritated. “Are you finished?” he said almost brusquely, “because if you are we’ll push off.”

  At a car showroom on the outskirts of the city proper he took delivery of a big green convertible.

  “It’s new,” she exclaimed with surprise.

  “Almost. I shipped it from England on the journey before ours so that I’d be sure I would not be held up. It’s been run in, so we’ll make Redgates in reasonable time.”

  They came back to the city’s center and joined one of the lanes across the great bridge.

  “There’s your late home,” waved Jeremy Malcolm, and Cathy looked and saw the gleaming white bulk of the berthed Winona.

  They left North Sydney and plied along the smooth Pacific Highway through the prosperous-looking suburbs of the upper side of the harbor.

  Dr. Malcolm watched her admiring glances at the beautifully appointed houses with a significant curl of his lip. “It’s not typical,” he stated flatly.

  “Is anything typical?” she flung back. “It makes it no less gracious.”

  “You are determined to be kind to the natives,” he sneered.

  “I realize I only receive what I give,” she returned. “I want the natives, as you call them, to be kind to me.”

  For a brief moment his brown eyes left the road and looked fully into her blue ones. “Do you?” he said, and for some reason she felt oddly disconcerted.