Silent Song

by Lucilla Andrews

  ‘I did not! He tell Dick I did?’

  ‘He told Dick you had a heavy date. That’s what I told Paul you should’ve said. Don’t go ‒’

  ‘I must. Got to phone before we go back on,’ I lied.

  I was all for young love, but had spent enough time watching from the sidelines over the week-end. I didn’t notice George and Charlie Lloyd had joined the queue until I was leaving and didn’t think George had seen me as he wasn’t looking my way. Then he rang my flat that night to ask if I had recovered from the fire and wrecked what remained of my morale after the week-end, by saying he had thought I looked very tired in the canteen and couldn’t remember if my eyes were brown or hazel. I said they varied.

  ‘Oh? Then I’d better have one more sitting. Will you be free any time over the week-end? Sunday morning till twelve? Ten, too early?’

  ‘No. Where? Here?’

  He hesitated. ‘Be easier if you could come round to my place. It’s on an easel ‒ paint could be messy.’

  ‘I’ll come.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said and rang off.

  I lay back on my bed and wondered what a phoenix looked like.

  The country twilight had been very quiet when he and I walked back alone to the drenched ruins of the oasts. From anywhere near the cinder-track, the clean air was choked with the sour, acrid smell clinging to the rubble and the backs of our throats. In the field by the Potters’ cottage, the silent curlew watched us with curious, wary eyes from the backs of sheep and a solitary kestrel hovered almost stationary over the lane.

  George stepped gingerly over twisted metal, charred beams, splintered boards, burnt and broken bricks and lifted out the fallen wind-vane. He carried it clear, put it on the grass, dusted his hands without emotion or even expression. He had had a bath, washed his hair, and changed into an old skiing sweater and ski pants left in an attic trunk since his first year at Cambridge. The clothes still fitted him, but the multicoloured boy’s sweater looked incongruously garish beneath the man’s face. In that light his singed hair seemed grey, his eyes less blue, his face more lined. I thought: this is how he’ll look in middle age.

  We didn’t talk much. We had only gone to check nothing still smouldered before we left. The ambulance had returned Alistair and Ruth from the nearest hospital as he had no fracture and was over his slight concussion.

  ‘Ruth’ll see he takes things quietly for a few days,’ said George.

  ‘Roses, roses, from now on?’

  ‘If you mean the ones with tough thorns. Come on. All out. Let’s get back.’

  I didn’t move for a minute. The gaping black scar against the green, the ugliness of the rubble and the foul smell were throttling. I had to swallow to speak. ‘I’m sorry about your oasts, George.’

  ‘They had to come down some time.’ He stooped for the wind-vane then changed his mind. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Going to leave that there to rot or be nicked?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s a fox not a phoenix, Anne,’ he said very drily, but he picked it up and carried it back to the house. He didn’t explain why and I didn’t ask.

  Marlene Eccles was a small, quiet, girl with patient blue lips, short curly hair and intelligent eyes. In bed she looked fifteen. Her husband Trevor had either taken or been given the day off to bring her in. He was a still-growing gangling boy with long dank dark hair, a drooping moustache, bad acne and an aggressive manner. He wore a purple velvet suit, yellow shirt, purple and yellow bow-tie. ‘Trev,’ said Marlene, ‘fancies a bit of colour.’

  Joe and Janet Anstey were with her that evening when Trevor sauntered up to the desk and propped an elbow as if on a bar. ‘Reckon they look to you like a lot of something battery hens, Staff. What’s this then?’ He tapped the electronic panel. ‘Egg store?’

  ‘No.’ He was too young to hide the fear and anxiety beneath the brashness. ‘Don’t you work in a garage?’

  ‘What if I do?’

  ‘You’ll be used to machinery so this’ll make sense to you. Come round this side.’ He came slowly, warily. ‘See how well you can see from here into the unscreened cubicles? Didn’t you notice from your wife’s, how well you can see us? That’s important when you’re ill in what’s not much more than a large glass box, and even with nurse-call buttons in your bedrail. They’re connected to this row of bulbs. These ‒’ I ran a finger over the panel ‒ ‘control the piped oxygen. See those pipes running round the foot of the cubicle walls? This lot, the radios. This ‒ not often used here though all the cubicles have phone plugs ‒ telephones. This side ‒ emergency bulbs. Then, the monitor controls. See the screens over the doors? And you saw the small monitor by your wife’s bed? You know what the graph’s recording?’

  ‘Her ticker?’

  ‘That’s it. So sitting here we can watch all our patients’ hearts beating. Each cubicle is connected with the control here and if any part goes wrong, these bulbs flash red on and off and can’t be switched off until the electronic engineer on call arrives to fix it. They work a twenty-four hour shift which is handy, as breakdowns invariably happen in the small hours of a Sunday morning.’

  ‘Straight up?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He didn’t want to be interested, he was too worried, but for most of our male visitors, irrespective of their ages, our gadgets had the fascination of a toy train set.

  ‘What’s this lot back here then?’

  ‘X-ray screens.’ I showed him how they worked. ‘Some time, when I’m not on the desk and we’re quiet, I’ll take you next door and show you our closed-circuit television. We’ve got a very handy new number connected with the dispensary. We flash down to them the patients’ prescriptions. Saves an enormous amount of running up and down for the nurses.’

  ‘No telly in here?’

  ‘No. You do mean closed-circuit?’ He nodded.

  ‘In some of the operating theatres, admission halls, lecture rooms.’

  He took a long look all round. ‘What’s this lot worth? Few grand?’

  ‘More than a few.’

  He perched on a stool. ‘Foreman, are you?’

  ‘Charge-hand. The Sister you met earlier is in charge of the whole unit. Some units have more than one sister. We just have one and rows of staff nurses.’

  ‘That geezer Lincoln Browne ‒ he’s guv’nor?’

  I nodded. ‘What’s Tubby then?’

  ‘Dr Mathers. Senior Cardiac Registrar.’ I ran through our residents and the Coronary Care staff nurses.

  ‘Where’s this Roseburn fit in?’

  I explained the hierarchy of Heart-Lung.

  He thought things over for some time and then asked the question he had come out to ask. ‘If these tests my Marl’s got to have first are like O.K. and this geezer Roseburn fixes her up like, will she be like all right you reckon?’

  I wanted to look away but I had to meet his eyes. ‘If Mr Roseburn can operate and if the operation is a success, yes. But didn’t Dr Lincoln Browne explain ‒?’

  ‘Something dodgy? That’s right. Can’t promise, he says to me, private. You best know, son, he says. Well, I says, what’s in it for her if you can’t do nothing? Getting worse isn’t she then?’ He paused and I kept quiet. ‘Real made up she was when he says to come in here. They’ll fix me good, she says. Read it in the papers. They fix hearts ever so good up St Martha’s. That’s right, I says. They’ll fix you good.’ He breathed in deeply. ‘My old Dad always reckons I’m a something liar. End up in the nick, he says. Doing time, you and your something lies. Right, isn’t he?’

  ‘I don’t know, Mr Eccles. Not yet.’

  ‘How long then?’

  ‘Few weeks. Can you come and see her often? She’ll like that.’

  He nodded thoughtfully. ‘My mate Bert’s got this auntie out Clapham, see. Bert reckons she’ll not mind a lodger.’

  ‘What about your job?’

  ‘Got a good guv’nor, haven’t I? He reckons I
can use one of his hire jobs if I pays petrol. Commute like. Only fifty miles. Won’t take me long with a good fast job.’

  I said, ‘Long enough each side of a working day. Still pretty dark and cold mornings and evenings. Don’t push it too fast.’

  ‘Can’t can I then? No shocks, the geezer says.’

  Janet removed the screen. ‘Can I go back?’

  ‘Sure, but can you give me Bert’s auntie’s name and address?’ He did so. ‘Later, if Marlene moves to Heart-Lung and you want a bed in our hostel, just let us know, Mr. Eccles.’

  ‘Yea.’ He pushed himself to his feet. ‘Best call me Trevor. That Mister don’t turn me on.’ He ambled off, stopped for a look in at each of the unscreened doors before returning to his seat on Marlene’s locker. He had been offered and refused an armchair.

  Mr Renner had done a double take from the massive balance sheets that were his favourite light reading. Later, when I took in his tablets, he asked, ‘Is that hairy kid the husband of that new kid Mrs Eccles in 5?’

  ‘Yes.’ I had no idea how he already knew Marlene’s name and cubicle but wasn’t surprised he should. It took more than glass walls and a period on the D.I.L. to stop the patients in any ward knowing what was going on around them as soon, if not before, it happened. ‘He fancies a bit of colour.’

  ‘You don’t say?’ He pushed his glasses onto his forehead. ‘If the kid ever decided to look real gaudy, I could have me quite a problem.’

  I shook the tablets into a teaspoon. ‘Why?’

  ‘The good doctor has advised me to avoid shocks as a third arrest will not do me too much good.’ He always called L.B. that, Joe, ‘the Doc’, and our other residents, ‘the interns’.

  I offered the teaspoon and his drinking glass. ‘I’ll bring you a pair of shades for Mr Eccles’s future visits.’

  ‘You just do that, Staff Nurse. Having gotten this far, I am not ready to go below yet awhile.’

  ‘Mr Renner, please! This is St Martha’s Hospital. Our patients may only leave us two ways. On their feet, or upwards.’

  The computer was amused though his heavy features remained dead-pan as he swallowed the tablets. ‘Union rules?’

  ‘Written into all our contracts.’ I put the tray on the mask cupboard as he slid himself down in bed. ‘You mustn’t be so low. Let me get you higher.’

  ‘I like it the way I am. I do not wish to be higher.’ Next to his courage, his greatest ally as a patient was his lucid mind. He couldn’t be coaxed, bullied or babied into accepting treatment, and with anyone who attempted any of those could still behave like a baby in a tantrum, but providing he saw the logic in any suggestion, his co-operation was excellent.

  ‘You may like it, but your lungs won’t and though you’ve shed a lot of unwanted weight, you’re still carrying enough extra to get chesty very easily. A cough will do your heart and my neck, no good at all.’

  The computer had flicked out the right answer before I finished speaking. ‘I would not wish to have you on relief, Staff Nurse.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Renner.’ I pressed the switch controlling his backrest and when it was in the correct position dealt with his pillows. ‘How’s that feel?’

  ‘It will do but I was more comfortable before.’ He glanced over my shoulder. ‘You have company.’

  I glanced round and had a sudden and deep sense of fellow feeling with the one-time citizens of Jericho. Charlie Lloyd, Dr Francis and George were at the desk.

  ‘Just doing our homework on Mrs Marlene Dawn Eccles,’ said Charlie Lloyd. ‘Mr Farler’s come down with us as she’ll be his baby when I go on holiday and it appears unlikely she’ll move up to us before then ‒ if at all. Not too well, she sounds, poor girl. Just her notes and plates, Mrs D. ‒ you know Mr Farler, I think?’

  George and I nodded to show he thought right.

  By the end of that week the three men drifted in and out of our corridor almost as frequently as our own residents. Mr Renner labelled them ‘the posse’. We had had another general post, he was now our oldest patient in time and to Mr Delahay’s quiet amusement, our top buddy. ‘I declare, Staff Nurse, I did not think to see this day.’ His eyes creased at the animated chat Shirley was having with Mr Renner. She was doing most of the talking, and Mr Renner, his glasses on his forehead was nodding sagely and putting in an occasional monosyllable. ‘Back home they would not believe this. They just would not believe this.’ He turned to go. ‘Will Thursday be right for you to dine with Mrs Delahay and myself? That’s just great. We will be so happy to have you join us.’

  Joe was writing notes. ‘Where are they feeding you?’ he asked after Mr Delahay edged out past the posse. My answer made him grin. ‘No wonder poor old Tom didn’t get to first base up against that kind of competition.’

  It had been a heavy day. I was worried about Mr Neal, the new man in C.3, Mr Spark new in C.6, and particularly, Marlene. Her latest test results were poor and, as her door was screened whilst she was being bathed, the monitor-watching posse had grim faces. ‘Don’t think I don’t love you all, Joe, but wouldn’t you say I saw enough of medics on-duty?’

  He glanced at me over his glasses, then returned to writing. ‘Point taken.’

  I was alone at the desk on Saturday evening when Charlie came in alone with the news that a consultation on Marlene had been arranged for eleven tomorrow. ‘Joe knows. He’s on. Will you be?’

  ‘No ‒ But I’ll have to come in for it. Sister and Janet Anstey are off. Mary Richardson’ll have enough running the shop. How about George Farler? Isn’t he off?’

  ‘I’ve just rung him. He’ll be here.’

  ‘Uh-huh. And you don’t want Marlene or Trevor told till morning?’

  ‘No. No fuss. No false hopes. Just a routine Sunday morning get together.’

  As I expected, George rang my flat later. ‘Now tomorrow’s out, can you suggest an alternative this coming week? Must be then, as I’ll have to send it Saturday or be late for Richard’s birthday.’

  ‘What suits you? I’ll have more time off and can probably fit in.’

  He said the only evening he could be sure of was Thursday since it was his half-day. That could’ve been coincidence. The grapevine could’ve gone off form. I thought that unlikely.

  ‘Sorry, George. I’m off that evening but booked.’

  ‘Never mind. I expect I can manage. I’ll try and get it finished tomorrow afternoon. Do you want to see the finished article?’

  ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘It won’t wreck my ego,’ he said, ‘as I do a fine job on that myself by just looking at the bloody thing. The only thing I’ve got right is your uniform.’

  ‘Richard’ll like that.’

  ‘I hope so. I wouldn’t bet on it.’

  I let it go. ‘What do you think Roseburn’ll say tomorrow?’

  ‘That he won’t touch her yet.’

  I sighed. ‘I’m afraid you’re right, and he’s right to be so meticulous. But the waiting’s tough on those poor kids.’

  ‘The alternative could be tougher. When you stop a heart on the table, you need to be damn sure what you’re doing, unless murder happens to be your kick.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ I said, ‘I think I’m in the wrong trade. Sometimes, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘It can happen. See you in the morning.’

  ‘Thanks for ringing. Incidentally ‒’ but he rang off before I could tell him I’d had an ecstatic postcard from Alistair and Ruth. On second thoughts I was glad of that, and to miss tomorrow’s sitting. I knew he wouldn’t show me that portrait, but as I would see it when I visited the Blakes, that didn’t matter. Except to me. I knew very well what was happening to me, but only worked out when it had started, in the bath. That visit to Edinburgh had been a catalyst in my life, but that fire, a catharsis. Now I couldn’t even remember what he looked like in that straw hat.

  Mr Roseburn only stood still in the theatre. On all other occasions he never walked; either he floated, or danced.

  He
was very tall, very thin, and his untidy auburn hair and beaky nose added to his airborne impression. He was very nice to Marlene and Trevor, mostly he talked about cars.

  In our rest-room turned temporarily consultation room, he did a little dance round the note-strewn table. It was neither a joy ‒ nor a war-dance and from George’s impassive expression he had been in Heart-Lung long enough to interpret as easily as L.B., Joe, Charlie, Dick Francis and myself.

  L.B. said quietly, ‘You think ‒ not yet, Bob?’

  Mr Roseburn hopped from one foot to the other. ‘I‘m not sticking a knife into that girl until I’ve a lot more to go on.’ He studied the sheets of graphs, then the three lighted X-ray screens brought in for that purpose. ‘Wont be just this valve ‒ look at that wall there ‒ there. And what’s the condition of the other side?’ He switched off the screens. ‘When I’ve a better idea, I may have an opinion to offer. I’ll see her in another week.’

  Sister was in on the next consultation as it was my week-end off. ‘Another week,’ she said on Monday morning, ‘but as I remarked to Mr Farler I’m much more hopeful as Mr Roseburn sat on the table for a full minute.’

  ‘Sister, that’s good! Has ‒ has Mr Lloyd started his holiday?’

  ‘He looked in to say goodbye Saturday ‒ of course, you were away. Nice week-end?’

  ‘Splendid, thanks, if my feet are killing me.’

  ‘My dear! What have you been doing?’

  I smiled and ticked off on my fingers, ‘The Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s, Westminster Hall ‒ and that was only Saturday. Yesterday we did castles. Dover, Bodiam, and what was the other ‒ Hastings?’

  ‘You’re not serious ‒’ then she understood. ‘The Delahays! I heard they’d whisked you off in a hired Rolls.’

  ‘Not “they” ‒ Mrs: Mr had to work. She’s sweet.’

  ‘Good corset, blue hair and rhinestones?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘unashamedly fat, comfortably dowdy with a white bun and delightful voice. We had a lot of fun. She adores England for three reasons: the London theatres, our castles,’ I used the short a, ‘and Marks and Spencers.’