‘He wasn’t,’ Lee said loudly and then reddened as everyone turned to look at her. She had been paying little attention to the meeting so far, if the truth were told, still preoccupied as she was with her private concerns, but the mention of the name aroused her. ‘He’s a cousin of mine, on my mother’s side, and very rich indeed. He was manufacturing cement and so forth during the War and he did very well - he’s got a conscience about that, I suspect, so I asked him to help us. He bought a space in the brochure and then he told me we could have a cheque as well, because he thought it was a good cause. I certainly never told him it was for anything but Nellie’s -’
‘But did you warn him that the Government was to take over Nellie’s and that the money would therefore come under their control?’
Lee stared. ‘Of course not,’ she said uncertainly. ‘I had no idea that -’
‘And that is precisely what this article says,’ Max said patiently. ‘That the people who raised this money did so in good faith, or so they imagine, but that it’s time that fundraisers learned more about the uses that their collections were to be put to to avoid the risk of cheating the public -’
‘How can it be cheating the public to collect money for a good cause?’ someone at the end of the table called out. ‘This is the most arrant nonsense, and I vote we pay no attention to it at all - just nasty yellow journalists making trouble -’
‘I don’t think we can set it aside as easily as that,’ Max said, with barely concealed irritation. ‘There is a real anxiety here. People are saying, it appears, that they see no reason why they should hand over their own money for a hospital when the Government which is already taxing us appallingly is going to be responsible for providing all hospitals’ needs out of the income derived from our taxes, after the Act comes in, and I can understand this anxiety. There are other good causes which won’t be getting Government support and people may well prefer to choose to give it to them. The question we now face is how we deal with this situation. For example, do we give back all we raised?’
‘Heavens, that would be impossible!’ Lee said. ‘Have you any idea how many people -’
‘I know,’ Max said. ‘I asked the question simply to make the point that we have raised the cash, that we are now responsible for it, and have to think sensibly about what we do with it. Brodie, tell me how does the fund stand at present?’
‘We’ve done very well, so far,’ Brodie said, rather smugly. ‘The Benefit raised well over ten thouand - a marvellous effort and the ladies are to be warmly congratulated’ - there were murmurs of, ‘Hear, hear!’ - ‘and with our other efforts - the jumble sale and the collecting boxes and the garden party and so forth, we’ve reached almost fifteen thousand. Then there is your good father’s generous gift, so we have done exceedingly well and we’re close to our target -’
‘Mmm,’ Max said and then slowly grinned. ‘Then we’ve enough to start work, you’d say? Enough to put the new block in hand?’
‘We’ve got more than that,’ Brodie said promptly and threw a glance of sheer malice at Molloy. ‘I thought it best to waste no time - I’ve got architects’ preliminary ideas and sketches to show the Board and I’ve also managed to get promises of certain amounts of basic materials. Not easy, you know, these hard times, but I’ve managed it. I have the use of the cash in the Bursar’s Own Fund, as you all well know, and it was in a good state of health - about a thousand to play with - so I used it, as I’m fully entitled, of course, to start the ball rolling. With some of the blocking that goes on here’ - he carefully did not look at Molloy - ‘I thought it best to be discreet. I was waiting for today’s meeting to apprise the Board of what I’ve taken it upon myself to do, but this stuff in the newspapers has rather stolen my thunder.’
He gave a self-deprecating little smile that fooled no one. This was a man who held himself in exceedingly high esteem.
‘But there it is. We could, if the Board give their consent, set the architects to work virtually at once. I’ve taken the liberty of collecting all the necessary paperwork for getting the permits to build and for further supplies, and it also occurs to me that Mrs Harry Lackland could use her good offices with her cousin to get us more, if he’s in the cement business. If she goes to him, explains that the money is for Nellie’s and we intend to spend it right away, before the new Act comes into force, so that no one in any Government office can stop us, that should allay any fear he may have -’ He cocked an eyebrow at Lee.
‘But if he’s already complained to a newspaper that he feels he’s been cheated, won’t going back to him make him furious?’ Johanna asked, before Lee could speak.
‘No - because it will prove to him that we’re acting as we always have, with total honesty and in good faith! We’re not asking him for money anyway. Only for priority with orders of cement and other essential materials.’
‘I’ll go and see him,’ Lee said. ‘I’d have to anyway, to sort it all out - I can’t have him thinking we’ve been in any way dishonest with him.’ She smiled thinly then. ‘My mother will be livid if I don’t. I’ll ask him. He’s a good man and it’s my guess he’ll be willing to help, whatever these journalists may have said to him - or about him.’
‘You see?’ Brodie said. ‘This apparent embarrassment could prove to be very much to our advantage! If we start building now, as I’ve made it possible for us to do, that will be clear proof to the papers and to everyone else that we were raising the cash for the purpose we said. And there’s another thing about starting to build now. If we don’t manage to raise all the rest of the money we need to complete the work before the new Act comes in, well, who’ll be responsible? As I see it, the Ministry of Health will, won’t it? They’ll have to find the money to finish the job - either way, it will be finished, and Nellie’s will have a new block, and this present Board of Governors will go out in what might be called a blaze of glory. The hospital will benefit, the patients will benefit, the Board will benefit!’
The ripple of approval that ran round the table was almost visible as people relaxed and began to smile at each other.
There was a little silence and then Max spoke. ‘Well done, Brodie!’ he said warmly. ‘You’ve really done very well indeed! Saved the bacon, as they say. We’ll put it to the vote then, that we set the building in hand as fast as possible for the reason Brodie gives us. Yes - a show of hands, please, to the motion - well, there’s no doubt about that, is there? No - right, Brodie. Where are these architects’ ideas then?’
No one paid any attention at all when Molloy, with a muttered excuse, got to his feet and left the meeting. They were all much too busy with the sketches Brodie had produced almost by sleight of hand from the briefcase at his feet of a new and elegant ward block to rise to the east of the main Nellie’s buildings to care at all about him, and he went slamming on his way back to his office in a rage.
He’d got it wrong, damn it all to hell and back. He’d got it wrong. He should have taken that damned letter to the Board right at the start instead of lying low and hoping Brodie would hang himself with his own meddling. As it is, they think the sun shines out of his rear end, and there he’ll be handing out the jobs and getting no end of approval from everyone who works on the project and -
At which point he stood very still in front of his desk and stared sightlessly at the window. Perhaps that was what it was all about? He’d never trusted Brodie, never; the man was too self-satisfied altogether, and too well-dressed and - too well off perhaps? He handled a lot of the hospital’s money, after all; who was to say some of it didn’t stick to his over manicured fingers?
Molloy sat down at his desk and leaned back in his chair and thought for a long time, aware of but not listening to the sounds of the hospital around him.
There was the whine of the lift and the clatter of its ironwork and irritable shouts as people on the lower floors called up to previous users to ‘Shut the gates!’ There was the rattle of the trolleys bearing morning cocoa and malted milk from
the kitchens to the wards, and the never-ending rush of busy feet as doctors and nurses, physiotherapists and X-ray staff bustled through their hectic day, all of them set on one thing only; the needs of the patients of Nellie’s. That was how it had always been here. People who worked within these walls did so because they cared. They weren’t there for their own good, but for that of Nellie’s and the frightened, sick, needful people who hid under its brick and cement wings amid its carbolic scented chrome and terrazzo.
So it was, and so it always had been, Molloy told himself, and no self-important jumped-up bursar like Brodie was going to change that, and with a very definite movement he pulled the telephone towards him. It was his duty, he told himself, his bounden duty to do something about this. He couldn’t let that oily character, who was even now sitting up there in the boardroom telling them all to do what he wanted them to do, and having them agreeing like so many sheep, get away with his trickery. Someone would have to look into the matter.
And though Dr Max had said the Old Man wasn’t well, everyone knew how his family fussed over him. He was a tough old chap, well able to look after himself - and to look after Nellie’s too. No one else cared more about the place than he did, Molloy told himself as he heard the distant ringing of the telephone at Leinster Terrace and waited for an answer. If he thinks there’s no harm in what’s going on, well enough. I’ll not say another word about it and let Brodie go on as he is, even if he’s lining his own fat nest very nicely while he’s at it. But if Sir Lewis sees it the way I do, then it’ll be a very different matter indeed.
26
Charlie sat very straight backed against her pillows, embarrassed at the way she had been almost forcibly tucked into the bed in the little cream and green painted room by the officious Sister in charge of the staff sick bay and tried to tell herself that all this was just nonsense. There was nothing at all wrong with her. She was just a self-indulgent fraud who needed nothing more to cure her than an immediate return to work, and she looked at the face of the man who was bending over her so closely, trying to see some sort of agreeing expression on it, but he just sat there, his head bent as he listened to his stethoscope and murmured, ‘In - out - good - again -’ and she looked away.
But this time she caught the frosty glance of the Sister who was standing beside the bed in the approved manner with her toes turned out and her hands clasped against her snowy apron and an air of such forbidding disapproval that Charlie had to close her eyes against it. She thinks I’m a fraud, too, she told herself and felt a spurt of anger at that. Who was she, dessicated old twig that she was, to make judgements about a patient?
‘Thank you,’ Dr Forester murmured and gently pulled her pyjama jacket across her bare breasts and gratefully Charlie rebuttoned it, feeling less threatened now that her nakedness was no longer on display. ‘Well, now, we needn’t keep you here any longer, Sister. I’ve finished my examination, so you can safely leave us alone’, and he smiled at Sister a little crookedly and Charlie thought - I like you! You don’t like that miserable old battleaxe either -
‘Thank you, sir,’ Sister said woodenly and went to the door. ‘I will be in my office should you require any further assistance. Dr Lackland’s notes are there on the locker’, and she clicked the door behind her and they both sat and listened to the clack of her footsteps, receding self-importantly along the corridor.
‘Terrifying, isn’t she?’ Dr Forester said and reached for the notes and opened the folder on his knee. ‘I suspect that she was chosen specifically to frighten all her patients into good health, to get them back to work as soon as possible.’
‘I rather think so, too,’ Charlie said. ‘I think it’s worked for me. I can’t wait to get away from her - and I’m fine, aren’t I? A complete fraud -’
‘That depends on how you interpret the meaning of the word fraud,’ Dr Forester said and closed the folder containing her notes and held it on his knee with his hands crossed over it, so that he could sit and look at her. He had a pleasant face, square and solid under an almost bald head and he wore round glasses through which his eyes, as round as the frames through which they peered, were warm and friendly. She let her own glance slide away, suddenly afraid she would cry if he was too nice to her.
‘It means there’s nothing wrong with me. That I had a silly conniption fit as my old Boston nursemaid would have called it, and the sooner I get back to work the better -’
‘Not quite, my dear,’ he said very gently. ‘Not quite. You do realize that you’re pregnant, surely?’
She closed her eyes against the knowledge that had been beating at her for so long and said loudly, ‘No!’
‘No, you didn’t know, or no, you would rather not know, or no, you aren’t? Which is it?’ He still sounded friendly, but there was a firmness that could not be resisted in his voice and she still kept her eyes tightly closed, needing to exclude him and all his words as well as his face.
‘No, it isn’t possible -’ she said and then caught her breath, knowing how ridiculous that sounded. ‘I mean -’ and then she opened her eyes and stared at him miserably. ‘I mean, it shouldn’t be possible.’
He shook his head, smiling a little. ‘I’m afraid Nature is infinitely more clever than any of her children, my dear. Whatever method you tried to use to circumvent her, you failed. Most people do, in my experience.’
‘I didn’t use anything,’ she said and took a deep shuddering breath. ‘It was all so - unexpected, so -’
He frowned sharply. ‘This was against your will? Have you been abused by someone who -’
‘Abused?’ She laughed then, a sharp little sound in the stuffy room with its high iron bed and forbidding scrubbed furniture. ‘Oh, yes, I’ve been abused. By myself. No, don’t look at me like that - it’s too complicated to explain, and I’m sure I - the thing is, I just don’t see how it could have happened. Once, damn it! Just once and I’m pregnant? It can’t be -’
‘Oh, but it can,’ Dr Forester said. ‘And it is. Haven’t you noticed the changes in your breasts? You can’t tell me your nipples have always been so well provided with Montgomery’s tubercles? You remember your obstetric training, I imagine? You were taught how “the nipples darken, enlarge and develop small white protuberances rich in lubricating lanolin”? I’m sure you do - and as soon as I saw those, my suspicions of the correct diagnosis for your - what was the phrase? conniption fit? - charming - were confirmed. The nausea and vomiting, the fainting - now, when was your last period?’
‘I’m not sure.’ Suddenly she reddened, deeply ashamed of this evidence of her own improvidence. How often had she sat in obstetric clinics in her student days and felt the frisson of irritable disapproval that went through the doctors whenever a woman said that she didn’t have so simple a fact clearly marked in her memory? Women who didn’t know every detail of their own bodily cycles were sneered at by doctors, were regarded as simpleminded, almost, especially if they had pregnancies they didn’t want. Women who behaved as Charlie had -
‘I’m not being stupid,’ she flared, staring at Dr Forester’s mild round-eyed gaze. ‘I just don’t know! I’ve always had a very erratic cycle and anyway, I wasn’t - there was no reason to watch it. I wasn’t - there was no regular - I wasn’t - oh, damn it all, it was only once! Just once! How can I be pregnant after just one episode when so many women complain they can’t conceive when they try for month after month, year after year? It’s mad, it can’t be - there has to be some other reason for the symptoms -’
‘Whenever it happens it only takes once. One single cell out of the many millions Nature sends on their way - my dear, I am sorry. I don’t want to pry, of course, but if it will help you to talk about the situation - is your - is the man in this married? Is that the problem?’
‘No,’ she said and closed her eyes again. ‘No, he’s not married. Nor likely to be’, and she opened them again and looked at him bleakly. ‘Certainly not to me.’
‘But surely, when he knows that there is g
ood cause for marriage and -’
‘It wouldn’t make the slightest difference if he did know,’ Charlie said, angry again. ‘And he bloody well is not to be told! He doesn’t care about me, so why should he care about -’ And she set her hand on her belly, and thought confusedly - there isn’t just me to care about: there are two of us - and then snatched her hand away as though her own skin was red hot and burned her, refusing to pursue that thought any further. ‘I absolutely forbid you to tell him!’
‘Such an injunction is hardly necessary,’ Dr Forester said and smiled so widely that his eyes almost disappeared into the folds of skin around them. ‘I don’t know who the foolish man is, do I?’
‘You think he’s a fool as well as me?’ Charlie said bitterly. ‘But not that he’s as big a fool as I’ve been -’
‘I think he’s a fool for not valuing you more highly than it appears he does,’ Dr Forester said, his smile still lingering at the corners of his mouth. ‘You seem to me to be a very valuable and charming person. I’ve seen you around the hospital and I know your work is well thought of by your seniors, and you are a handsome woman. Any man who doesn’t cleave to a girl like you who clearly cares for him has to be an idiot -’
‘I don’t care a fig for him,’ Charlie said fiercely, and still Dr Forester smiled.
‘No?’ he said gently. ‘You don’t strike me as a woman who would fall into bed with a man she didn’t care for. There are women who do that, who behave like the sort of men I most despise, but in my experience they are few. I certainly don’t think you’re one of them - I think you love the man who has made this baby for you. Don’t you?’
‘Love?’ She laughed again, making that same barking little sound. ‘I don’t know what it is. I’ve been obsessed, I’ll grant you that. I’ve been so stupid and so -’ And then the tears started, slowly at first, trickling down the sides of her nose and then coming faster, wetting her cheeks and filling her nostrils so that she could hardly breathe, tightening her eyes agonizingly. The sobs grew inside her like heavy greasy bubbles made of thick film that stretched and pushed and heaved against her body and thrust at her ribs painfully until they burst into great retching noises that tore at her throat and felt much the same as last night’s sickness had felt.
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