Silent Song

by Lucilla Andrews

  ‘Sorry, but I have done quite a bit of orthopaedics.’

  ‘So’ve I. Between ‒ er ‒ both parts of Fellowship.’

  ‘You’re an F.R.C.S.?’ I was surprised as I had assumed he was on his present course to help him get it.

  He nodded casually. Too casually.

  ‘You wouldn’t have Mastership as well?’

  There was a longer pause. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well ‒’ I smiled ‒ ‘well, well. Thank God I didn’t know this when handing out the old nanny-knows-best. I have to say I still think we ought to make for a hospital, but if you say not I can’t fight it out with an F.R.C.S., M.Ch. Not on an S.R.N., Part 1 S.C.M.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said dryly, ‘this seems my night for chucking my weight about in every sense.’

  ‘Forget it, as there’s something else I want to ask. You could use an analgesic. Got anything with you?’

  ‘Emergency pack for the major accident we hope to God we don’t meet. I’ll do as I am, thanks.’

  I had seen the rock-like quality now in his face, before. ‘As the shadow of a great rock in a weary land,’ I had thought in Spain. Useful things, rocks, in deserts. If not the cosiest objects about the house. I had a new sympathy for Ruth Hawkins and since she was so bright wondered if this was one reason why they weren’t already married.

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m being very bloody-minded.’

  I would have brushed that under the carpet with a placebo had he not been so tense ‒ and once that great rock. Tension helps neither physical nor mental pain. ‘Yes, but don’t let it bug you. You may’ve treated and operated on orthopods by the hundred, but you won’t have nursed ’em. I have, so I’ll tell you something. I’ve dried the tears of more men with knee problems than with any other form of injury or pain. And soon as the worst began to ease off, the lot were bloody-minded. Yes, they managed to put on an act for the rounds. “Ta, yes, giving me a bit of gyp but better now, Mr Whatsit.” Not even the Archangel Gabriel could keep up an act twenty-four hours a day, and that, in shifts, is how long nurses are with ’em. Want some more coffee?’

  He smiled faintly. ‘No, thanks. How about you?’

  ‘Not now. We’ve still another flask for our last gallant cups before the White Horror closes in on us.’ I put the empty flask and our cups away. ‘I’ll get forward.’

  ‘Know this route?’

  ‘Afraid not.’

  ‘Then I’ll join you and navigate.’

  I opened my mouth to say he would rest his leg better on the back seat, realized I would be wasting breath and closed it.

  Had we kept to our original schedule we would have missed the blizzard. We met it head-on and blowing north in the outskirts of Greater London. The last ten miles took two hours and we were only able to keep going as we happened to be directly behind a huge van. We crawled past rows of abandoned cars transformed into ghostly mushrooms as the van ploughed on through massive drifts and shielded us from a good deal of the driving snow.

  ‘With more luck,’ said George, ‘as Wenceslas is carrying vegetables he’s bound for Covent Garden and’ll take us almost to Martha’s. Very tired?’

  ‘No, thanks. How’s the knee?’

  ‘Stiff as hell but apart from the odd twinge, I’ve forgotten it. Great anti-twinge therapy, a good White Horror. How’s it working on the shoulder twinges?’

  ‘Just the job.’

  Once through the blizzard the snow-muffled quiet of London was uncanny. Every traffic island, road sign, postbox, was obliterated and the traffic lights were startlingly vivid against the whiteness. But snow ploughs had started clearing the middle of the main roads and at last I could get the car out of second gear.

  ‘Right lane this next roundabout, Anne. Thanks!’ He raised a hand to the disappearing rear lights of the van.

  ‘Last turning left coming up. That’s it. Nice driving. Very nice. Where do you live?’

  ‘Corner block directly opposite the main gates so if I drive straight in to Admissions’ Yard ‒’

  ‘We’ll probably stick fast in a drift and both have to walk. Your place first. I’ve only a couple more blocks and first left to go.’

  I was more tired than I realized and my brain took that in slowly. ‘You in the new registrars’ block? How did you manage to swing that as a post-grad?’

  ‘O.P.A. I was at school with the last chap who had my flat. John Lawson. Know him?’

  ‘Just the name. I can’t put a face to him. Was he Benedict’s?’

  ‘No. Martha’s. Still in Ear, Nose and Throat in the old blocks. Moved out to a larger when he married.’

  ‘That’s why I know his name. His wife was in my year. I haven’t seen her or worked in E.N.T.s since my third year.’ I drew up very slowly and reluctantly. ‘This is daft. I can perfectly well walk back from your block.’

  ‘Thanks, but I can manage this stretch.’ He caught his breath. ‘My God! Look over the road.’

  Martha’s sprawled for over half a mile on the other side. I had seen the hospital at all hours and seasons, but never as it looked that night. Under the thick coating of clean snow the rather barrack-like old blocks and two towering new wings were transformed into a huge ice palace strung with rubies and diamonds ‒ the red night lights in the wards, the normal lights in the corridors and stairwells. Every tiered balcony was swamped by a drift, and from every balustrade long icicles winked in the ward lights below. It was pure Hans Andersen and all floating on the great sweeping waves of a petrified white sea that submerged the giant building machines on the site cleared for Wing 3, the cars in the residents’ park, the empty ambulances lined up in the yard. The pointed roof of the gate-porter’s lodge and old Henry on the gate-shift, added to the impression as he pressed his grizzled face to his lighted window to see who we were. I switched on the interior light and waved and he jerked a thumb up at us.

  ‘Shouldn’t be a porter,’ said George. ‘Should be the Snow Queen.’

  I was rather peeved. I felt I had shared quite enough with him without that. ‘Got many stairs to climb?’

  ‘Just a couple of flights.’ He needed both hands to lift his bad leg out of his door. ‘I’ll get your things from the boot.’

  ‘Is that a good idea?’

  ‘Having sat for hours ‒ can you suggest anything better for the circulation?’

  It was his leg, his car, his ego, and Martha’s was just over the road. Henry would watch him most of the way. I let him carry my case to the front door and didn’t remark on the pain it obviously caused him. ‘Thanks, George, and for the lift. Take care of that knee.’

  ‘I will. Thanks very much for driving, all your help and your company. I hope you’re not too tired to sleep.’ His voice was polite, impersonal. ‘Goodbye.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  Spain and England. I went wearily up my own three flights and wondered where we would play out our third All-British farewell scene. Peking, I decided, as I had always wanted to see China. Inevitably there George would say goodbye in Chinese, and prove to be as fluent in Mandarin as he was in Spanish. Why that last I still neither knew nor, ungenerously, wanted to know. Pain remembered as pain present, contrary to the illusions of those lucky enough to have escaped both, seldom ennobles the human spirit. Grief refines, but pain blunts.

  Chapter Three

  I was drinking tea in bed next morning when Alistair rang. He had already heard of George’s accident from Mrs Mackenzie via Ruth’s thank-you call for yesterday’s lunch. ‘George called her before she started work. So he slipped on some ice?’

  ‘Bit more than that.’ I explained. ‘How’s his leg this morning?’

  ‘Just a wee bit stiff and sore. Stepped on a torch in the dark? Isn’t this the way things happen! Same as my father! He survived all World War Two as a submariner with nothing worse than a few drenchings, then broke a leg in two places clearing snow from our drive.’

  I wasn’t properly awake. ‘Sorry, Alistair, b
ut I’m lost. What’s the connection?’

  ‘George didn’t ‒’ he hesitated ‒ ‘no, he wouldn’t. He hates talking about it. Trust me to open my big mouth too wide.’

  I was too curious for tact. ‘On what?’

  ‘You’ll keep this to yourself, Anne?’

  ‘Sure. Go on. Please.’

  ‘So I was just thinking ‒ George crocks up a leg on a drive he roughly does monthly, yet once crawled out unharmed apart from a bad shaking and few scratches, as the sole survivor of an air crash.’

  I sat forward, sharply. ‘When was this?’

  ‘Five years ago. Do you remember a plane filled with winter sporters and so forth coming down off-course in the Greek mountains just before Christmas? At night?’

  I took a little time. ‘Yes. I’ve got the picture now. In Greece.’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘Was George alone?’

  ‘No. He was travelling with his father and an English girl. They were going to spend Christmas with her parents in Vienna. Her father and George’s had been young dons together. Both, as all the other passengers but George, were killed on impact.’

  ‘Oh, God.’ For some seconds we were both silent.

  ‘Alistair, how in hell did he get out alive?’

  He said slowly, ‘I can’t give you the scientific answer though I presume there’s one and it explains how this does happen from time to time. Had he survived to comment, my late uncle would undoubtedly have said George lived because it wasn’t his time to die. Uncle William was a remarkably simple man despite, or possibly because of the great subtlety of his intellect.’

  I felt ill. In Edinburgh he had told me Mrs Farler had died of polio in the pre-Salk era when George was three. I thought aloud. ‘This on a winter night in mountains.’

  ‘And you wonder the exposure didn’t kill him? I’ll tell you why not. Sheer, blind, luck ‒ and that I mean literally. They’d heard the crash in some mountain village and he stumbled into the search party. They carried him down to their village and, as they couldn’t understand a word he said and he didn’t speak Greek, hauled from his bed ‒ get this ‒ an aged Scot who had stayed on after fighting with the partisans in the war. Can you top that for luck?’

  If not top, in some respects, equal. ‘The aged Scot rallied?’

  ‘According to George, from his first “Bide you there and take this dram, laddie.” Just took over. Later, George went back to visit him. He’s dead now, but still has an elder sister living in Aberdeen. I drove up with George to take her the portrait he’d done of her brother. Did you know he paints quite well, particularly portraits? He’s good at likenesses.’

  ‘He’s told me painting’s a hobby. I didn’t know he did portraits.’ He was silent. ‘Was she pleased?’

  ‘With the picture and gesture, but she nearly showed us the door when she learnt my job. I’d to explain hand on heart I’d already promised George I’d not use the story as he’d promised the old man there’d be no publicity. If he knew why the man objected to this, he’s never told me. When he so chooses, my cousin George can make a clam seem a bletherer. It’s my guess the old man probably had a wife somewhere he didn’t wish to catch up with him. I don’t have to guess and would hate to tell you what my features editor would’ve said had he discovered I’d sat on such a human interest item. Not only features. Every Scottish paper would’ve carried it on the front page with banners, details of George’s Mackenzie blood, and in small print a brief mention of his English father. “For many years the late Professor W.G. Farler taught English Language and Literature in various Spanish universities.” Broke my heart to keep it quiet.’

  ‘I can understand that.’

  ‘I thought you would. You’re the only person I’ve told. I doubt even Ruth has all the details, though naturally she knows of the crash. Do you mind my telling you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’, he said, ‘tells me you’re upset but don’t hold it against me.’

  His insight was disturbing. ‘How did you guess that?’

  He said simply, ‘If you’ve no imagination in my job, Anne, you don’t hold down the job too long. Now I’ve news of a different nature. After Glasgow tomorrow I’ve to be in Brussels. I’m not sure how long. Maybe a few days, maybe more. May I contact you on my return and in the meantime send you bonnie picture postcards from foreign parts?’

  I was simultaneously rather disappointed and rather grateful. I felt I needed, if not wanted, a breathing space.

  ‘I’d like both. Tell me something more ‒ did Ruth only say George’s leg’s stiff and sore?’

  ‘That’s all to Aunt Helen. Why? Think it could be more serious?’

  ‘I’m not sure. He gave it a tremendous clout and it hurt a lot. But it would.’

  ‘Don’t I remember from my days of playing rough games? Of course, Ruth could’ve played it down not to worry Aunt Helen. She said he’d just decided to take a few days off and might well be back up here, shortly. That could be true, but also another example of the medical profession’s passion for cloaking ignorance with secrecy. Trust a woman doctor’, he added, ‘to soothe with hot air.’

  ‘Alistair, no! Not male chauvinism before breakfast!’

  He laughed. ‘That how I sounded?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Then I’d best ring off before I do myself more damage in your very lovely eyes. Tell George from me to keep both feet on the ground when you next see him and take good care of yourself. Goodbye for just now.’

  That crash haunted me all morning. As they were going to stay with her family, I guessed George had either been engaged, or as good as, to the poor girl who died. I wondered if she had looked anything like Ruth and decided almost certainly since most people continued to be attracted to the same physical type. Dave had been nearly as dark-haired as Alistair and me, I reflected absently, being too obsessed by the cold despair of that mountain night for the reflection to interest or hurt. In Spain the sun had shone and I was shaken to discover how long it had taken me to appreciate and not resent the difference that had made.

  The sun shone blindingly on the snow when I crossed to the hospital. It seemed a very long time since last night, years since Friday morning, and the week-end long as a separate lifetime. I wondered if this was because Edinburgh marked a division between my various lives, or had been some kind of catalyst.

  I looked up at Wing 2. I had seen the foundations laid in my pre-Dave life, the building go up in my Dave-life, then completed and occupied, post-Dave. I looked back at the snow covered site of Wing 3. Probably I’d see it go up and completed as Sister Cardiac. Miss Evans had offered me the job when Sister’s husband retired at the end of this year and they moved permanently to their week-end cottage in Norfolk. ‘We shall all miss Mrs Bell sadly,’ said Miss Evans, ‘but fortunately we have you to follow on. Turn this over in your mind, Staff Nurse. No hurry. Come and see me when you’ve reached a decision. I will add, if, as I hope, you accept, I have other plans for you once you’ve had a few years as Sister Cardiac Unit.’

  I had been pleased by the offer, and being the most senior staff nurse in our Unit would have been furious had it gone to anyone else, but viewed the eventual prospect with very mixed feelings. In Martha’s, a sister’s main job was administration. Throughout the nursing profession in Britain, a sister’s job was the way to the top, but also the way out of the wards. The closer any nurse gets to the higher grades, the less he or she needs a uniform as the job is done at a desk, or in a committee room, not at the patients’ bedsides. Chief Nursing Officers now seldom, if ever, wore uniforms as they went about their highly skilled, ultra-responsible and purely administrative occupation.

  The one thing I most enjoyed about nursing was nursing, and particularly nursing the very ill. This was why I loved Coronary Care. Being an intensive care unit we only admitted the very ill and more often than not, in collapse. Equally often we sent our patients on, if not on their feet, on the way to full recover
y. It was always a tremendous pleasure to know mine had been one of the many pairs of hands responsible.

  Two men in long white coats waited with me in Admissions’ Hall for the fast staff lift. ‘Which floor, Staff?’ they asked when it arrived.

  ‘Second, please.’

  ‘Right. We’re fourth.’ One pressed the buttons.

  I didn’t recognize either and for once took a good look at their faces to be sure. They were in the early thirties; from their ties, Thomas’s men; from the pristine condition of their coats, post-grads. By lunch, the residents’ coats had begun to look limp and generally had ink stains on the cuffs. By supper, coats and residents usually looked as if put through a mangle and left unironed.

  A list of the twelve floors was fixed to an inner wall of the list. I looked at the lower part.

  Ground: In-Patients’ Admissions. Cobalt and Radiotherapy Units

  First: Gastro-intestinal Unit

  Second: Cardiac Unit

  Third: Thoracic Unit

  Fourth: Heart-Lung Surgical Unit

  George must have used the stairs and avoided the staff canteen. I always used the lift and most working days, the canteen. I didn’t like the idea of him on the stairs today and guessed this was one reason for his decision to take a few days off. Had he been a resident he would have had to report sick, and particularly in Heart-Lung as cardiac surgery involved so many hours of standing and it was one of Mr Roseburn’s many iron rules that his staff must be totally fit.

  It was only at that moment that I recalled George’s higher qualifications and then wondered why a man with them and his interest in cardiac surgery was not already working in some heart-lung operating team. Had he been ten or more years older, even with those qualifications, I could have understood his need for a refresher. Surely, not now? Unless he had a perpetual student’s syndrome? That, in view of his jaw and temperament, seemed unlikely. Like every teaching hospital, we had our quota of perpetual student post-grads, and the one thing all had in common was the way they enjoyed being pushed around. At pushing post-grads around, Mr Roseburn had no equal amongst his fellow consultants in Martha’s. Only very few of his fellows, and those few included Dr Lincoln Browne, the Senior Physician to the hospital and our senior cardiologist, equalled Mr Roseburn in brain-power. We had several highly talented surgeons who were excellent teachers, but none in their specific surgical areas approached his brilliance as a cardiac surgeon. He was the greatest thing that had happened to Martha’s in generations; everyone, including himself knew it, but only Mr Roseburn took it for granted.