Nurse Trent's Children

by Joyce Dingwell

Cathy regarded the formidable pile with misgiving. They included a pine needle, a fir cone, a nail from a horseshoe, and a feather found in the poultry run.

  “Oh, dear,” said Cathy.

  Elvira, who was superstitious, was entranced, “Take the whole lot, Aunty Cathy. You can pack them in your, satchel. Best to be sure of your luck.”

  Cathy thought she would sooner be sure of her knowledge, but did not like to disappoint either Elvira or the children. She put them in the already bulging bag, making it bulge to overflowing.

  Dr. Malcolm did not ring that night, and Cathy decided on early bed with no books so that she would be fresh tomorrow.

  The next morning Mr. Monty sat down to a cup of tea poured laboriously by Leila and, rummaging in his bag, handed over a letter addressed, “Housemother.” Inside was a good luck card for Cathy’s exam. “Couldn’t leave you out,” chuckled the mailman.

  “If I don’t pass it will be entirely my own fault,” smiled Cathy, “I’m sure no one could have had more encouragement.”

  Soon after the children’s departure to school she left for the Northern District Hospital, where it had been arranged that she would be examined with the local candidates.

  As she traveled the few miles, she remembered the last time she had faced this ordeal. She remembered Miss Watts’s arm on hers as she had been about to enter the room, the surprise on Helen’s and Judith’s faces. After that she had not thought about exams anymore, or if she had it had been only to assure herself that she would never sit again—not after what had happened. Yet here she was facing the same exam, or at least its Commonwealth equivalent.

  She entered the hospital’s grounds and found her way around to the assembly room. She envied the other candidates standing in little groups and comparing notes. For three years they had studied and worked side by side, and now they would sit side by side in companionable concentration to pass the exam for which their duties and sacrifices had been preparing them.

  She longed for someone to talk to. She would not admit that she was disappointed that Dr. Malcolm had not made an appearance, but her eyes continually watched the avenue and the cars pulling up on it. Many got out—visitors, examiners, no doubt, but none of them the doctor of Burnley.

  “You may come in now, young ladies.”

  The door had opened. The throng was moving forward. Cathy went in, feeling very small and unimportant, and found a table and chair.

  The papers were handed around. Cathy looked at hers eagerly. Around her she could hear gasps of horror and grunts of satisfaction. For her she found it only average. She was confident she could pass, but not brilliantly, as she would have liked if only to show Dr. Malcolm. If she had been like these other candidates with only her work to absorb her and not the eternal internal inferno as to what to do about Denise and how to manage Rita she could have tackled the rather difficult paper with gusto. She knew that. Now, with a past history of study too lavishly embellished with private worries, she could only give it the energy not already exhausted on her two problem girls.

  An hour went by; another.

  The examiner told them how long they had left, and pens flew.

  Cathy left question five till last. It was chapter seventeen, to which Malcolm had directed her attention. She knew it off by heart and put the last triumphant full stop as the order came, “Pens down.”

  The papers were fastened and collected, and the hall gradually emptied.

  A nurse came up to Cathy and said, “Miss Trent? This way, please,” and Cathy was taken up the passage and ushered into a room.

  An elderly man regarded her through thick spectacles. “Sit down, Miss Trent. You have finished your paper?”

  “Yes, sir.” The man looked like a “sir”, thought Cathy deferentially. She had not noticed the lettering on the door, but he appeared important.

  “An unusual instance, yours. We welcome English nurses, don’t be in any doubt about that, but we like to train them in our own way before we pass them.”

  Cathy thought ruefully that perhaps she wouldn’t be passing, but aloud she said, “I was given to understand that Australian training and the training we received at St. Cloud are equivalent, that the finished product would be acceptable to either Australia or England.”

  “By all means. But practical, Miss Trent, how do I know your standard in practical work?”

  “I am a housemother. I shall not be taking up the position of nurse.”

  “So you say. Graduates also tell me that they will not be leaving, after we have gone to the expense of training them, to be married, and then what happens?” The man shrugged his shoulders.

  Cathy sat waiting.

  “It is, as I remarked, an exceptional case. If Dr. Malcolm had not personally guaranteed you we would have insisted that you undergo at least a year of practical training. As it is, we feel we should satisfy ourselves. You understand that, of course.”

  “Of course,” murmured Cathy.

  “Then you will go with the nursing instructor.” He rang a bell. “She will report back to me later. She won’t take long to sum you up.” The old eyes glinted in a way Cathy did not enjoy. “However, she is not all dragon,” he cheered instantly. “Good luck, my dear.”

  “Am I to call back here after I’m finished?”

  “No, you can go home. You’ll hear the results in due course.”

  “Yes, sir.” Cathy got up unhappily. She had believed it was all over, now it seemed, she faced the worst ordeal of all.

  The nursing instructor was small, thin, starchy and efficient. Obviously she liked girls trained her own way and did not approve of this fledgling thrust upon her from another hospital nest.

  “Follow me,” she said bleakly, leading Cathy down a labyrinth of corridors.

  She turned a corner in the labyrinth, and Cathy darted after her, for the instructor was quick of movement, and if she lost sight of her she felt sure she would never find her way.

  At the second corner catastrophe overtook her. As she turned the corner to find the instructor already turning the next one,

  Cathy’s bulging bag gave up the effort of holding a manual, six textbooks, her handbag, a fir cone, a pine needle, thirty assorted pieces of good luck in all shapes and sizes, and spilled noisily and untidily on the bare floor.

  The fir cone rolled under a trolley, the feather settled on a sterilizer, the buttons, twigs, empty cotton reels arrayed themselves over the immaculate polish.

  Cathy grabbed the manual, books and handbag and stuffed them back.

  “Come along, nurse,” snapped the instructor at the other end of the corridor. “My word, you’ll have to step faster here at Northern District, mark my word.”

  Cathy ran like the coward she was.

  She only hoped that a nursing assistant, and not a trainee, would receive the blame for the mess. Nursing-assistant positions in Australia were so plentiful the women could go at will, but trainees were trainees the world over, and discipline remained the formidable same.

  They came into a limb ward. The instructor indicated an apron to Cathy and told her to apply a surgical dressing on the patient in the third bed.

  She stood and watched her as she did, and Cathy worked nervously but fairly efficiently, considerably helped by the patient’s understanding wink.

  “Humph,” said the instructor, “this way, nurse.”

  More labyrinths—had her lucky mascots been discovered yet—and a female ward this time and an alkaline poultice to be applied.

  A few more tests, the final taking of a temperature, and the instructor said, to Cathy’s complete surprise, “You’ll do, though I knew it, of course. I was at St. Cloud myself five years ago.”

  “You were?”

  “I was visiting England and made it a busman’s holiday. Is Superintendent Watts still there?”

  Cathy told her she was soon to visit Australia. “You must come down and see her.”

  “I certainly shall. Edith and I got on very well. That will do,
nurse.”

  “Thank you, miss.”

  Cathy turned to go.

  “One thing more, nurse...”

  Cathy waited.

  “You might retrace your steps and retrieve that odd assortment of bolts and twigs and buttons. They might do at St. Cloud, but here at Northern District they are regarded as foreign bodies.”

  All at once she laughed, and Cathy laughed, too.

  “They don’t call me Hawkeye for nothing,” were the instructor’s last succinct words.

  Cathy returned to Redgates, considerably cheered. “The exam was a bit of an ordeal,” she reported to Elvira, “but I believe I’ll pass, and I believe, too, I can be sure of the practical.”

  “We’ve had an ordeal as well,” informed Elvira gloomily.

  “Mrs. Dubois?”

  “Who else. A preface to the board meeting on Friday.”

  “Is there one on Friday? I’d forgotten.”

  “Fayette hasn’t forgotten. She wasn’t so bad today, however. Only questioned the patent breakfast foods and asked Fergie wouldn’t bread and milk be cheaper, the bread first liberally moistened with hot water to save on the milk. That woman ought to compose an economical cookbook,” and Elvira sniffed.

  “No other complaints?”

  “No. I believe it was housemother she was after. I think—” and Elvira pretended to shoot with her doubled fist and pointed first finger in the way of the small Redgates boys did “—she’s gunning for you.”

  “You’ve been in the company of Ricky Harris,” accused Cathy, laughing. “Wait till Ricky gets his new plaid shirt.”

  “There’s a letter in the afternoon mail. It has a Bayville postmark.”

  Bayville was the suburb in which the infectious diseases hospital was situated. There must be word of Christabel. Cathy ran into the office and slit open the envelope.

  There were weird symbols on the sheet consisting of circles, crosses, wriggling lines and snakelike coils. This must be Christabel’s work. Underneath an understanding nurse had translated: “I am ready to come home on Thursday, and doctor says I can. Please fetch me. Love and kisses, Christabel.”

  “Elvira, Fergie,” shouted Cathy joyously, “our baby is coming home.”

  The late afternoon brought another excitement—a cable from England.

  “Only other time Redgates got a cable was when Doctor Jerry wired Happy Birthday to Betty Willard. Must have cost him a bundle, and she was only turning nine.”

  “This is from Miss Watts. Remember, Elvie, I told you about her. She arrives at Mascot the day after tomorrow. Oh, Elvira, I must meet her.”

  “Of course, Aunty Cathy, love. Why not?”

  “There’s Christabel to be collected, too. Her letter says Thursday.”

  “I can collect Christabel.” A shadow had fallen over the doorway, but Cathy had not noticed it. A car must have pulled up on the drive, too, and been unheard.

  Jeremy Malcolm advanced into the room.

  “How was the exam?” he asked coolly.

  She answered equally coolly, “Fairly satisfactory. There was Chapter Seventeen, as you anticipated.”

  “Feel confident?”

  She hesitated, "I don’t think I’ll set the Thames—I mean Sydney Harbour—on fire.”

  “I never thought at any time you would set it afire,” he said noncommittally, then, “What’s this about being unable to collect Christabel?”

  She told him briefly of Miss Watts and how her arrival coincided with Christabel’s dismissal from hospital. “Christabel is coming home. Did you know?”

  “Yes, the hospital called me. Appears she’s a hundred percent now. Even the scar is fading. She wants to leave, too. Small Irene has been signed out, so Christabel has decided to turn her mothering to Redgates, In short, she is asking for her teddy bear again.”

  “The darling. We must have a joint welcome, both for her and Miss Watts.”

  “Will Miss Watts relish bread and cakes?” asked Dr. Malcolm. He promised he would pick up Christabel on Thursday to leave Cathy free to meet the Skyrover at Mascot, then, murmuring something about a checkup on one of the boys, he departed for the other block.

  Presently they heard his car pulling out again.

  Cathy stood on the pavement in front of the airport office. She watched the great plane taxi down the strip.

  The travelers started to alight. It was quite a while before Cathy recognized the fourth wayfarer as Edith Watts. Had she always been as short and dumpy as that? Divorced from her immaculate uniform, flowing veil and handsome cape, she looked a very ordinary little woman. That crimson cape, once more, smiled Cathy, raising her arm in salutation.

  She was aware again of the difference in Miss Watts as she waited beside her to collect her luggage. The stylish gray suit made her Miss Watts, not Superintendent Watts, but she forgot her civilian status when she said, “And how have you been, Trent?” and immediately checked herself.

  “I should say Miss Trent or Catherine. When will I learn?”

  “You sound as though you have need to learn; as though you are not returning to nursing.”

  “I’m not.” Miss Watts gave Cathy one of her old looks that said clearly, “No questions, miss,” and Cathy, feeling disciplined, left it at that. For the present anyway. She knew she would find out in time what Miss Watts intended to do.

  They were in the taxi and flying to Burnley Hills.

  “Helen and Judith send their love. Helen is amassing a comfortable bank balance by accepting lucrative ‘specials.’ She has been very lucky in her patients. Nursed one in Cairo and one in Marseilles. They both want her back again.”

  “And Judy?”

  “Judy is marrying the medical registrar.”

  “Not Toby Fenwick...?”

  “Dr. Thomas Fenwick.” Miss Watts was superintendent again. She peered out at the passing scenery. “It’s all much larger than I remember. I’m sure there weren’t all these grand houses.”

  “It’s a big city now, and a big country,” said Cathy.

  Miss Watts nodded thoughtfully. “I can see that.”

  After a while Cathy coaxed, “Aren’t you going to tell me?”

  “Tell you what, nurse—I should say minx.”

  “Minx?”

  “You were one, weren’t you? Remember that A.W.O.L. of yours?”

  “I should. Six leaves canceled. Miss ... Miss Watts, you are evading the issue. Aren’t you going to give me the why and the wherefore of this visit?”

  “Greedy girl, you want everything at once, don’t you? But you’re not going to get it.”

  Cathy remembered as Miss Watts said it how Jerry had spoken the same words. He had spoken them when she had asked him what was wrong about her considering her future with David Kennedy.

  He had answered, “Several reasons,” and then, as Miss Watts had just now, “Don’t be greedy. You want everything at once, don’t you? This time you’re not getting it. I’ll keep the other reason for a future occasion.”

  What, she wondered now, was the other reason. When, she wondered, would she learn.

  “I remember this turnoff,” exclaimed Miss Watts, and a moment later she called. “The same red gates.”

  “Redgates greets you,” said Cathy, jumping out when the cab arrived and beating the driver to Miss Watts’s door.

  “Humph,” she observed, “two floors; we only had one. A paved crossing to the boys’ block; we had to wade through mud.” Elvira opened the portals, and there followed an animated discussion of “Do you remember ... and “Have you forgotten...” during which Miss Watts discovered she recalled Elvira’s mother and had bought the household’s eggs from Mrs. Ferguson’s aunt.

  “Any of the old board still sitting?” she asked, following the women into the firelit drawing room where tea was waiting.

  “Colonel Manning.”

  “Really? He must be getting on.”

  “Miss Marriott.”

  “Old camphor-bags.”

  Ca
thy gasped. “Not in your time, too,” she disbelieved.

  “Yes, my dear. Don’t worry, she never gets down to making them. A good heart, Miss Marriott, and that’s the main thing.” They sipped their tea cozily. Afterward Cathy intended to cloister Miss Watts in her old girls’ room and ply her with more questions about the doings of the old girls of St. Cloud. Just now she was content to listen to her reminiscing and Mrs. Ferguson and Elvira putting in eager bits and pieces.

  A car pulled up. Cathy peered through the slats of the blind and said delightedly, “Christabel.”

  She ran out of the room and down the hall, threw the door wide and caught the excited little girl up in her arms.

  “Darling, you’ve grown a foot.”

  Christabel looked at her own two feet a little dubiously, decided Aunty Cathy was being silly, and nestled into her arms again.

  “Where’s my teddy? I like teddy better than Rene. Rene went home to her mommy, but I’m teddy’s mommy. He has no other mommy but me.”

  “All the girls are longing to see you, honey. Avery has built a special sandcastle.”

  “Then I’ll go and play with it now.”

  “Not until you change your clothes. Besides, there’s a coming-home treat. Bread and cake. And you’re to have it with another guest in the front room.”

  “What’s a guest?” asked Christabel, walking ahead in her usual uninhibited manner. Before Cathy could answer she had reached the room, said, “Hello, Elvie. Hello, Fergie,” and then, to everyone’s surprise, “It’s not a guest, it’s Edith. Hello, Edith,” and she went over and climbed on Miss Watts’s knee. Cathy, behind her, gasped, “You two seem acquainted.”

  Miss Watts nodded with maddening calm and fed Christabel a finger of sponge cake.

  “Where has she been?” she demanded.

  “Infectious diseases hospital.”

  “Diphtheria?”

  “Yes.”

  Miss Watts frowned. “There must have been a slipup then, though that fool of a woman assured me she’d had her injection.”

  “What woman?”

  “At the hostel where I’d placed Christabel.”

  “You’d placed her...?”

  Miss Watts did not explain. She looked at the little girl’s throat and commended, “Very neat tracheotomy.”