Nurse Trent's Children

by Joyce Dingwell

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  An extraordinary meeting had been arranged to be held for the next day; the Latrobes were to attend.

  Since there was no more business, Elvira had wheeled in tea, and the board members, with the exception of one, had accepted cups and had begun circulating around the room, and in particular around Miss Watts,

  Fayette Dubois’s big black car had driven furiously down the driveway, in it Fayette. Cathy remembered how the last time the woman had left in a green convertible, in Jeremy Malcolm’s car.

  The housemother mingled with the different groups, answering questions politely, giving her opinion when asked. Miss Marriott cornered her with regard to whether she should approach Mr. Kennedy on the subject of camphor bags for the boys. Cathy suggested she ask David herself, and ignoring the little lady’s shy disclaimers, had the housefather over to give his decision while she escaped to the outside of the biggest circle to listen with eager attention.

  The impossible was coming true. Either that or Miss Watts had gone quite crazy. She stood, cup in hand, talking blithely about new buildings, replenishing sports fields—even a Little Families holiday house for Christmas vacation. The chairman and members leaned deferentially toward her.

  It seemed to Cathy they would never go. Dear people though they were, spending a lot of their own time and much of their own money on something that so badly needed their help, spending it because they were kind and humanitarian, just now she wanted them to finish their tea and depart.

  At length they did, excited, stimulated, any flagging interest they might have known whipped into keen anticipation by this new turn of events. They all promised to attend tomorrow. No one mentioned Fayette.

  The door closed on the last visitor. The last car went down the driveway. The Reverend Mr. and Mrs. Flett, who walked, called cheerily through the window. Cathy turned to Miss Watts. Jeremy Malcolm turned, too.

  “Miss Watts, quickly, I can’t stand it any longer,” urged Cathy.

  Miss Watts laughed. “I intended to make you wait longer still, my girl, but that woman settled it. I couldn’t be quiet another moment.”

  “Is it a fable? Just something you made up to help Denise?”

  “It is every word of it true. There was an adoption.”

  “That is not what I meant. I believed that at once. It was your ability to right matters that I doubted.”

  “Speak clearly, nurse. Don’t hedge. You want to say ‘Is it right you have all that money,’ don’t you?”

  “Y-yes.”

  Miss Watts nodded triumphantly. “I knew it, and the answer is yes. My plan was to settle everything with my solicitor in Melbourne before I made public my intentions. That woman, as I said before, brought on the announcement before I was ready.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me when you wrote? It would have helped such a lot.”

  “I can see that, but I had to be satisfied in myself before I acted. You were a good nurse, but that didn’t make you a good housemother. Redgates was a good place when I left, but that didn’t make it a good place twenty-five years after. There are bad places, Trent, and you know it. There are places of which I am not proud in England. There are places, I am sure, the same here. Even if they are not bad, they are not happy, constructive. I did not want to put my money into something that was just a function and nothing else.”

  “Miss Watts, that money—how, I mean, where—”

  “Where did I get it? Out of the blue, Catherine, as I rather ruefully told all my friends.”

  “Ruefully?” It was Dr. Malcolm’s voice now.

  “Yes, doctor. You’re young. You won’t know what I’m talking about. When you leave sixty behind you will understand, too, that a sudden fortune can be a blow as well as a blessing.”

  “Was it a fortune?”

  “A large one. The last member of the family of the man I was engaged to marry—Cathy knows this story—” Cathy nodded her head “—has died and left the entire family estate to one Edith Watts of St. Cloud Hospital in England. I am Edith Watts and an heiress by all accounts.”

  “But, Miss Watts, you can’t do what you just said—I mean, give all that money. Even amassing a fortune, the patronage you have just promised to Redgates would surely take every penny.”

  “There would be little left over I agree, but I only want a little. I am an elderly woman, and if I retire and sit in a beautiful home in the country and eat beautiful food I’m going to die much sooner, and the only difference will be that I’ll die a rich old woman. But if I have an interest, a big, intense, vital interest like Little Families, I shall be traveling backward and forward to England, supervising, poking my nose into things as Cathy here can assure you only I can poke, striving, agitating, fighting right to the end; then I will live longer and more happily, and die not so rich, perhaps, but fulfilled. Fulfillment is the only thing in the world. It is the only thing I want. Nothing, save a collapse in my fortune, which my solicitor informs me is most securely invested, can prevent me from being fulfilled.”

  She stopped dramatically.

  “Any more questions?” she asked.

  The doctor stepped forward. “Yes,” he said quietly, “Susan.”

  Miss Watts was squinting at him as she had done yesterday. She was trying to find a memory.

  Presently she said gently. “Susan died at Christabel’s birth. Her husband had been posted missing in Korea the week before. It finished Susan.”

  “Is he still missing?”

  “No, at least, not that way. He, too, is dead.”

  “Miss Watts, I believe you said you adopted Susan.”

  “That is true. I finished my term in Australia and took the child back with me. It was unusual, I know. I was a single woman, and Little Families did not sanction adoption. However, I had known Susan’s parents in London. They were both lost on a ship that went down. The mother had been a nurse. I believed some of their brothers or sisters would be glad to have the girl, so I prevailed upon the authorities to let me take her back with me. I recall the task I had getting them to agree. I believe I used almost the same words that Catherine did today: ‘No institution can take the place of parental love in a home ... Nothing has ever been a substitute for a house with a father and mother.’ I talked ardently and without the opposition of a Mrs. Dubois. I received permission. When we got back Susan’s relatives did not want her, so I brought her up myself, f suppose I should have contacted Little Families again, but it would have made me look like a fool. Besides, I loved the child.

  “I put her in boarding school. She did well. She was intelligent. I would have done the same with Christabel, whom, of course, I naturally took over at birth, only that I was now advanced in years and had the knowledge that there would be no one to look after Susan’s baby once I was gone. ”

  “So I sent Christabel out here to Australia,” finished Miss Watts. “I believed it wisest.”

  “There is one thing I cannot understand.” Dr. Malcolm’s voice was husky.

  “Yes, doctor?”

  “How could a woman of your principle, a woman who believes so deeply in the family unit—I gather you do believe in it, madam.”

  Miss Watts’s eyes glinted. “I certainly do.”

  “Then how could you have separated a unit, have stepped so unfeelingly across the chasm of the victim’s emotional stress?”

  “Dr. Malcolm what are you talking about?”

  “I am accusing you of breaking up a family.”

  “I did nothing of the sort. I simply took Susan away.”

  “And why not her ... brother?”

  The plump woman in the gray suit looked sharply at the doctor. Cathy could see a slow understanding in her narrowed eyes. “Susan had no brother,” she said.

  “You’re wrong. I was Susan’s brother. Malcolm. My name is Malcolm. She was Malcolm as well.”

  “I suppose,” said Miss Watts gently, “there are a thousand Malcolms.”

  “Not in the same institute. Not t
raveling in the same ship to the same place. She was my little shipmother. She looked after me. I—I worshipped Susan. She was the only person who belonged to me in the world. You, who have always belonged somewhere, cannot understand that.” He laughed without humor.

  “I see,” said Miss Watts shrewdly.

  He turned on her. “What do you see?” he flashed.

  “Why you sat as you did at the meeting, blank, unspeaking—untouched. It was because you had two minds at the same time. One was love and the other distrust. You would not fight because more than a belief, you had lack of confidence. You did not see faith, you saw only shortcomings. I’m sorry for what I thought of you in that boardroom, Dr. Malcolm. It also made me want to change my mind.”

  “This is not getting us anywhere,” said Dr. Malcolm harshly. “Why did you do it, Miss Watts? Why did you separate a family unit?”

  “There was no unit. Susan was an only child and accounted for. I could account, you see. But you—” she shrugged unhappily “you had no history, no background. I’m sorry to have to break this to you. It is so long ago I could not remember. But I can recall now. It has all come back.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I remember going through the house records. It was, and still is, I suppose, a housemother’s task.”

  Cathy nodded.

  Miss Watts resumed.

  “I would find a parent on one side here, a parent on another side there, sometimes both parents—sometimes blank.”

  “I was ... the last?”

  The woman nodded. “It’s not so bad,” she cheered him, “You have, perhaps, the same instances at Redgates. In time it is overcome. You overcame it.”

  “You mean, Susan’s record and my record were different? Two Malcolms...?”

  “And no relation. I can vouch for that. I told you before I knew her parents.”

  “But on the ship—the way she looked after me—then when we came to Redgates and she looked after me again...”

  “That was Susan’s nature. It was a mothering nature. If it hadn’t been you it would have been someone else. I think Christabel has taken after her. Probably because you were a Malcolm, too, you became a brother to her.”

  He was pacing the room now. “But why was I a Malcolm?” he asked in puzzlement. There was something else in his voice that tore at Cathy’s heart—an emptiness, a futility, despair. “Why?” he repeated, “why?”

  Miss Watts looked at him squarely. “Why is Denise a Lane? Janet a Cuthbertson? Why are those twin girls of Catherine’s sur-named as they are? We’ve gone a long way from naming our children from tombstones, from calling the intake of one week Jones and the next week Smith.”

  Tombstones. Cathy suddenly remembered the little graveyard. “A surname in an orphanage is just something that grows. Unless it is on the record, it implies nothing at all. Perhaps it is the current preference of the receiving housefather or housemother.” Miss Watts stopped and looked at Jeremy.

  There was a silence. Cathy was remembering the tombstone again. She went quietly and unobtrusively out to the kitchen and cornered Elvira.

  “Elvie, you recall once I asked you about a grave in the old cemetery.”

  “Susan Malcolm’s, wasn’t it, Aunty Cathy?”

  “Yes, Elvie. Elvie, who was that little girl?”

  “Little girl? She was a very old lady. The family wouldn’t put her age because the Bensteads boasted they were long living, and if the Malcolms had said their Susan was ninety-five the Bensteads would only have put their Harriet down as a hundred. It was a competition in those days, Aunty Cathy. People were proud of their age, not ashamed of it, and the Malcolms were the proudest of all. Oh, yes, I’ve heard my mother speak of old Susan.”

  And Elvira’s voice roved on.

  Cathy did not listen. She was listening, instead, to steps in the hall—a man’s steps long, decisive, unaccustomedly heavy. A moment later she heard the bang of a car door.

  She went into the room to talk to Miss Watts, but she had departed to continue yesterday’s reminiscences with Jeffreys.

  She listened to the car gaining speed down the driveway, but did not look out. It would not have been any use. There were tears blurring her eyes.

  She could not see it all just yet as Miss Watts had, as something that was soon overcome.

  She remembered Jeremy’s tortured words that evening he had taken her to dinner ... “A child remembers something tender and puts out an eager hand to find emptiness instead.” ... “I believe that you can’t take away from a family without destruction. When Susan was taken it was like tearing a piece off myself.”

  A little lonely boy had grown into a disillusioned man, but for all the disillusion there had been a streak of confidence somewhere, a knowledge in himself, the confidence of family, even a remote family, the knowledge that somewhere he “belonged.”

  Now all that was shattered.

  He had no family. An institution had not cruelly separated him from, his sister as he had thought, for the simple and elementary reason that he had no sister—but he had not realized that.

  He realized now. He was going back to the office his ambition and pride and resource and toil had built, his faith in his own ability and the legendary background that had availed him that ability—the background that was named Malcolm.

  But it was different now. There was no background. There had been no sister. No family. He was empty, rootless; he had never belonged.

  Oh, Jerry ... Jerry... She put her head against the window and the tears did not blur any longer, they fell fast and strong.

  Elvira found her there. Had not Elvie been agitated herself, she would have noticed the reddened eyes. But other matters had claimed her attention.

  “Aunty Cathy, all the children are home, but not Rita. It’s long past her time, and here’s a funny thing. Mrs. Ferguson declares she noticed her in the hall. It was during the debate, but she wasn’t in at brothtime, and none of the other girls can remember seeing her at all.

  Cathy dashed a handkerchief over her eyes.

  The debate ... the movement by the window that she had thought was the wind ... Fayette’s haughty, “I have a home waiting for Rita ... It is the only course” ... the stir in the curtains...

  “There is more,” said Elvira gravely, reading Cathy’s silence.

  “Andrew is missing.”

  “Andrew.”

  “Mr. Kennedy sent a message. Andy is always home by the same train. He walks from the station, so they know the exact time he’ll come. The boys’ cook keeps a snack ready.”

  “And he didn’t arrive?”

  “No, Mr. Kennedy has gone looking for him. He says that if Rita met Andrew’s train...”

  “Rita!”

  Elvira’s eyes met Cathy’s frankly. She did not go into any more details. She knew that Cathy understood.

  Cathy thought a moment. “I expect David took the truck.”

  “No, he left that for you. He says he knows the things Andy is interested in. He thinks he will be faster on foot.”

  “I’ll get my coat.”

  “I’ve got it for you. Here are the car keys, Aunty Cathy. I only wish I could come, too.”

  “You’re needed here. And Elvira, don’t tell Miss Watts...”

  “Don’t tell her! She knows already. She has the garage door open. Aunty Cathy, bring back our girl...”

  “I’ll bring her.” Cathy’s voice was firm. She ran down the steps and around to the shed. She got into the truck.

  Miss Watts was still holding the door. She called, “Don’t look too far afield, nurse. Mr. Kennedy reports that Andrew carries very little money, and Rita, I know, hasn’t any.”

  Cathy considered. “She may have. She may have been saving it with this in view.”

  “She did. She reached thirty shillings.”

  “Thirty shillings!” Cathy was backing now, not very straight in her surprise at Miss Watt’s knowledge.

  “I saw her counting it,” called Edith
Watts calmly, “and I had my suspicions. So before the board meeting today I found her purse and took it out of her bag.”

  “Oh, Edith...” said Cathy, forgetting herself. She could almost have laughed if she had not felt first like crying. She saw Miss Watts rifling Rita’s purse with the same calm aplomb as when she had made a yearly undertaking with an institution for a cool five thousand pounds.

  She stopped reversing, turned the truck, and was out through the red gates in a flash.

  She drove first to the station. That was silly really. If Rita had met Andrew there to report his and her fate, and if they had decided not to return to Redgates, then half a dozen trains must have departed by this time.

  Nonetheless, she got out and scrutinized the little platform. Perhaps they had gone from Gullybank station. She ran the truck a mile and a half to the next railway station, looked carefully around, and received a similar result.

  She drove back slowly, peering along every side street.

  Perhaps a cave somewhere ... Children were so unpractical. They would not remember it was winter and they had no blankets.

  As she approached Burnley Hills again she saw a familiar figure. She could have cried aloud with relief at being able to share her troubles, if only briefly, with David.

  She pulled up the car, and he crossed and stood beside it.

  “No luck, David?”

  “None, Cathy.”

  “I’ve been to Gullybank.”

  “I’ve been every place that Andrew has ever spoken about: the boys’ club, the new sports store with the soccer and angling gear in the window, the gymnasium where they are training for a local boxing tournament, even the fish and chip shop, since children must be filled.”