‘Right. Sealed lips.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘You give her the benefit of the doubt, my lovely love.’
‘I, my darling man,’ retorted Catherine with spirit, ‘am nutty as a fruit cake, as you bloody well know.’
Mark shouted with laughter and didn’t cough. Neither dared tempt providence by remarking on this. They sat holding hands and smiling at each other.
Still in silence, MacDonald and Ruth backed away and she led him towards the side passage between the single-wards and Villa 2, as if leading him out of her ward. At the turn into the passage, she glanced back. ‘That view always reminds me of a picture postcard,’ she announced brightly. MacDonald looked at her and walked on in silence.
The men on the grass turned onto their backs, and pulled their hats over their faces to speculate lasciviously on those legs. The one newcomer said some chaps had all the luck. ‘Glamour-girl wife that sleeps days. Glamour-girl girlfriend to nip in when the wife’s kipping and it don’t look as she’s wasting her time neither.’
His companions raised their hat-brims with their thumbs and glanced at him without comment. He was only in his second week at the San. If he wanted to think the Doc. a bit of a lad it wouldn’t hurt the Doc. or Mrs Jason and if he couldn’t see what was plain as the nose on his face that was his look-out. Too hot to put him wise. Best just to talk about the legs ‒ and think. Thinking was all any of them could do till their final tests were clear for three months running. When they first got down here the old Med. Super had given it to them straight, same as he always did to newcomers. You chaps know what tuberculosis is. If you want to pass it on, a kiss is as good as a cough in the face of an uninfected person. If you love your wives and girlfriends, as long as you are with us, just hold their hands and make sure they wash theirs after they’ve said goodbye and before they leave. There are visitors’ sinks in every ward and villa in this establishment. Don’t let them kiss your hands, the back of your heads, or any part of you. It takes twenty minutes boiling to kill the tubercle bacillus, and don’t you forget it. Be patient. You’re all doing well and you’re young. You won’t be here very long. Plenty of time to make up for all you’re missing later.
MacDonald’s Rover, Ruth’s new black Ford Popular and the Medical Superintendent’s car were alone in the small park beyond the bicycle racks. ‘How do you find Mark looking, Mack?’
‘Much as I expected.’
‘Yes.’ She took rather longer than was necessary to find the car keys in her handbag.
His gaze searched her downcast face for something he no longer expected to find. She looked older than her age out of uniform, as her own clothes were too youthful and she had never used face cream. She still had her clear fresh complexion, but the youthful roundness of her face when she had infatuated him, was no longer present and the strength of her jawline was much more apparent. ‘How’d you find your cousin?’
‘Much as I expected from your call.’ She looked up. ‘Thanks for ringing me. Clever of you to spot him. You only met him that once in our canteen last year.’
‘I’m only sorry I didn’t catch on last night though possibly the shock was a little less in the morning.’
‘Wasn’t really a shock,’ she said placidly. ‘Not once I’d taken it in. David’s always driven like a banshee. Quite scared me when he drove me down last month whilst my car was having its first service. I’d hoped his National Service might have taught him to take a grip. Crazy as ever. I told Sister Men’s Surgical.’ She paused and blushed. ‘I ‒ I didn’t say you’d rung me. Just, a friend. Knowing hospital grapevines, I thought ‒ better not.’
‘I guessed that. And you didn’t tell them your job.’
‘No. Not yet. It always makes the staff a bit edgy when they know relatives are trained nurses or doctors. They expect one to keep finding fault, but ‒’ she shook her head, straightened her back and in her sister’s voice went on, ‘really, Mack ‒ that ward’s a disgrace! Sister seems competent ‒ but there was fluff under the beds ‒ dust on the bedtables and half the lockers out of line.’
‘The lockers are scarcely surprising since half the men in that ward are orthopods, as you must have noticed,’ he replied drily. ‘As to the rest ‒ they’re still using brooms on ward floors.’
‘That’s no excuse. The ward maids and the pros swept our wards with brooms throughout my training. Except after air-raids, you never saw dust and fluff in Martha’s wards. I’ll tell you why not. The wards were swept three times a day, and hot-wet and dry dusted by the pros, three times a day.’
‘And every Martha’s ward had a flock of pros but from what I’ve seen, The Garden has roughly two per ward on days and one on nights. They call ’em juniors, not pros.’
‘I daresay. It’s such a little hospital.’ Her tone dismissed The Garden’s staff problems. ‘I know I can get David a bed in my ward. All you’ll have to do is pick up a phone but I must have your consent as he’s under you. Will you arrange to have him transferred to Martha’s as soon as he can be moved. Around Tuesday or Wednesday, I should say.’
‘By which time he could be Gordon’s patient.’
‘If you’ve already arranged the transfer I’m quite sure he won’t mind.’ She sounded sure. ‘Sister Men’s Surgical told me her beds are in great demand.’ She waited but MacDonald kept quiet. ‘You know he’ll get better nursing in Martha’s. So would all those patients but I can’t take them all into Walter Walters and he is my cousin, Martha’s is my hospital and it is a Martha’s tradition that it looks after its own and not even the wretched Health Service can stop that one. And you are a Martha’s man.’
‘On paper, pro tem. Hartley can’t be moved yet, Ruth. Leave it there just now. If he goes on as at present, he’ll do. He’s a damn sight better today than anyone would have anticipated last night in Cas. and that means good nursing.’
‘Good surgery and ‒’
‘Rubbish.’ He was stern. ‘You know as well as myself that the finest surgery can be wrecked by five minutes bad nursing. We’ll leave this one as something’s more vital. Have you cabled his parents?’ She shook her head. ‘Why the devil not?’
She was unrepentant. ‘I’ve decided it’ll be better to write. My uncle retired this year and this is their first holiday since before the war. They’ve been looking forward to it so much. From my aunt’s last letter now they should be somewhere on the road from Durban to Cape Town. The next address I’ve for them is in Cape Town. A letter’ll probably reach them soon as a cable and be far less upsetting. Cables make people flap.’
‘How about their son’s angle? Their only child, you said.’
‘David won’t mind. He’s not a child, he’s a young man. He’s fond of his parents but he’s never seen much of them. They sent him to the States during the war and then what with the Army, a couple of years in France or somewhere, and his Chelsea flat, he’s hardly lived at home. He’s always gone his own way ‒ masses of friends ‒ a bit wild some, I’m afraid. He said this morning he’s been visiting old Army chums in Arumchester and was driving back to some party in London but I needn’t ring anyone as he only decided to accept at the last minute and hadn’t warned them he was coming to the party. I’ve promised to keep an eye on his flat and let his firm know. Training to be an accountant. I didn’t let him talk much. I said I’d pop back later today and during tomorrow. I’ll probably drive into Arumchester tomorrow morning to break the news in person to my Great Uncle Gervase. He’s so aged, he flaps if he has to go out of the Cathedral Close. Only my Great Uncle by marriage. His wife was my mother’s only aunt. My mother’s only sister married David’s father.’
He smiled briefly. ‘That explains it.’
‘What?’
‘My dear girl, no blood relative of yours could know the meaning of the word “flap”.’
She smiled, not displeased. ‘You’ve always teased me about that.’
‘I know. Where’re you staying tonight?’
‘Catherine Jason’s room in the
vicarage.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Vicarage?’
‘Yes. I’ve stayed there before. The vicar’s wife doesn’t mind. She’s quite sweet. The vicar and Catherine’s father were at Oxford together, and as all their family have married she’s had digs with them since she moved down here. She says she prefers living out. I can’t imagine why. She only had her own home for about a couple of years when Mark was a GP.’ She looked back at the San. ‘I’m jolly glad Catherine was able to get a job so near. She hasn’t any money of her own and as Mark can’t earn ‒ but bit of a waste of her training. Luckily, in a way, she never took nursing seriously. I mean, she only trained because of the war.’
‘I didn’t know that.’ He thought of last night and glanced at his watch. ‘What are you doing about lunch?’
‘All organized. I booked at “The Lamb” before I came up. Only three-star but the vicar’s wife says the food’s good and advised me to book early because of this Fair.’ She saw he wanted to get away but was not yet ready to let him go. She said more softly, ‘Mack, there’s something I must say. We’ve been friends for so long ‒ I must say it.’
They had never been friends, but only he knew it. Friendship could grow from love but not infatuation. The roots were too shallow. She didn’t know it because she didn’t know there was any difference between love and infatuation. It was all love and love was all-pure and beautiful and never more so than when safely forbidden by convention, hospital etiquette and her own inclinations. Once she had thought she loved MacDonald, but what she had loved had been the belief that she was loved and the previously unknown experience of feeling herself desired. She regarded desire as synonymous with love. From the night MacDonald had been free to marry her, her predominant reaction had been ‒ if I marry I’ll have to leave nursing. She loved nursing too deeply ever to leave it for any man. She and Aggie Martin had a great deal in common, but this didn’t include the small private income Ruth had inherited from her maternal grandfather and accepted as her birth-right. She couldn’t understand and was profoundly shocked by all the new talk ‒ even in Martha’s! ‒ about nurses needing more pay. Nurses that loved nursing weren’t interested in such things. She knew that from her own experience. Only at the last Sisters’ Meeting had she said, ‘I’m sorry to say this, Matron, but I’m afraid the wrong attitude is beginning to seep in …’
She said now, ‘I’m sorry to say this, Mack, but I think your resignation was the greatest mistake of your life.’
He bowed slightly. ‘You’re entitled to your opinion, my dear. If you’re right ‒’ he shrugged. ‘I’ve made others.’
‘You won’t even think of taking it back?’
He shook his head. ‘When I say “no”, Ruth, I mean it too.’ They looked at each other in silence.
In the Matron’s Office in The Garden, the Assistant Matron and Joe Rolls were looking at each other in silence. At last the Assistant Matron whispered, ‘I’m very sorry, Mr Rolls, but we have no alternative. All gynaecological patients now have to go to Arumchester General. You’ve just agreed it would be neither advisable nor kind ‒ without the new rule ‒ to admit this girl to Women’s Surgical. You know our only empty room in Maria is booked from tomorrow ‒ and we do not take gynaes any longer. Once her transfusion has run through in Casualty you’ll have to send her straight on to Arumchester.’
Joe glared. Over his dead body. ‘Sister, the girl needed the blood, stat., but she also needs a D. and C. (Dilatation and Curettage). God alone knows what the ‒ the character with the knitting needle has left inside. Mr MacDonald must see her before she moves anywhere.’
The Assistant Matron looked pained. She appreciated Mr Rolls’ feelings but really there was no need to be so crude. ‘Mr MacDonald is a general surgeon, not a gynaecologist.’
‘He’s a Master of Surgery and FRCS, Sister. I expect he knows his way around,’ Joe retorted. ‘May I use your outside phone please?’
He heard the church clock chiming half-past one whilst he waited for the elderly portress at the Sanatorium to find out if Dr Jason’s gentleman visitor had left. A minute later the grandfather clock in the hall gave the odd click that announced the half-hour chimes weren’t working. Bloody typical, thought Joe savagely.
‘MacDonald speaking, Rolls. Well?’
‘No, sir. I’m on an outside line. Can you get back here, stat.?’
MacDonald glanced at the bent grey head busily fussing over nothing at his elbow. ‘Yes,’ he said and rang off.
Joe was so relieved he grinned.
Chapter Five
Catherine heard the church clock chiming half-past one and the feminine monologue floating out of the open study window next door and in through her open french window without paying attention to either. It wasn’t the temperature that was keeping her awake. Her room was pleasantly cool and her white cambric nightie with broderie Anglaise shoulder straps and trimmings that had been her mother’s Edwardian bridal under-petticoat, was ideal in that weather. Normally, on her first sleeping day after nights off, as she never had more than a couple of hours sleep on the previous day and spent most of it in the San., she was asleep before she turned over twice and didn’t stir until her three alarm clocks went off together at seven. She had reached the stage where the abnormal was her normal, her over-tired, over-active brain reflected, but last night had been abnormal, plus. And this morning. MacDonald could conceal what had to be concealed from his patients, but he couldn’t lie to friends or foes and that, she thought, is why he has so few of the first and so many of the last. But his friends were his for life and Mark was one. Oh, God. Please don’t let Mark ask him. Please.
Her large, high-ceilinged room was on the ground floor of the vicarage and had been the second sitting-room until a previous incumbent with a weak heart had had it converted into a bedroom. She had learnt this in her initial interview with Mrs Weston, the vicar’s wife. When Catherine arrived for that interview, she had been unaware her late father and the vicar had met at Oxford. The interview had been arranged by Dr Skinner, the Medical Superintendent at the San. ‘I shall pull the C. of E. Old Pals Act, Mrs Jason, and mind you do the same. Not that I envisage your having any difficulty. Mrs Weston’s a good soul. Runs her husband and the parish and never stops talking but she’s nobody’s fool and now her five have married and gone, I think she’ll enjoy having a young face around again.’
Over the telephone to Mrs Weston, Dr Skinner said, ‘This girl has a lot to carry and needs a bit of help, Maud. If the PCC makes noises about lodgers in the vicarage remind ’em she’s a parson’s daughter nursing at The Garden and charity begins at home.’
In that first meeting Mrs Weston’s sharp eyes had given Catherine an X-ray glance and she had then led her straight into the former second sitting-room. ‘Our young used this as a schoolroom till they grew out of it. If you don’t mind sleeping downstairs, could be just the job. There’s a key to that french window somewhere. I’ll find it and you can come and go via the garden when you’re not feeling like facing the vicar, myself and the hodge-podge of jumble, leaflets and parishioners always cluttering the front hall. Even a hand-basin! The only other one in this house not in our one bathroom is the cloakroom beyond the study. Such a blessing when our young were small and being at the back,’ she rattled on without pause for breath or Catherine, ‘you won’t hear the High Street traffic nor,’ she threw down her ace with a cheerful smile, ‘be troubled by funerals. Those oaks enclosing the back lawn screen us off splendidly from the churchyard. So much nicer for the mourners. Who wants to see children standing on their heads or fighting over whose turn it is for the badminton racquet? We’ve rooms galore upstairs, but now our young have flown I keep all but our bedroom firmly shut and under dust-covers. Not one in which you couldn’t start a mushroom farm. Such a salve to my conscience for having so much room. I wish we could move to a smaller house but you know the Church Commissioners! And if we had anyone unused to country parsonages in our bedrooms, it would be into
The Garden with double-pneumonia or rheumatic fever or both within a week. Was your father’s another draughty, icy mausoleum? I’m sure it was! My dear, do you remember that terrible winter of ’47 when the whole country ran short of coal and had long daily power-cuts? In this house, we didn’t notice the difference and the vicar kept saying we were singularly blessed to have grown so acclimatized to the Arctic conditions. Such a saintly man ‒ but as I tell him ‒ there are times when living with his saintliness would try the patience of the Archangel Gabriel. I deviate ‒ one of my many sins ‒ about this room. The study on your left always has to have a fire in winter and the kitchen on your right has one all year so some warmth gets in here. If you’re with us in winter I expect you’ll find your bedside glass of water only freezes over, not solid. And ‒ er ‒ perhaps now we should ‒ er ‒ would a pound be too much? Thirty shillings! Every week? Are you sure? And feeding yourself? Dear me. It seems far too much ‒ you’re sure? Very well. I won’t pretend it won’t be most welcome, but I insist you use the kitchen and bathroom as if in your own home. Just one warning. Our bathwater never gets very hot but if you never run the cold ‒ you did that at home? How splendid! I must reassure the vicar. He’s been worrying about the hot water as he says hospitals always have lashings and it might distress you to ablute in lukewarm. What’s worrying me more is, will you be able to sleep by day? The parish are forever coming and going and I’m afraid the verger’s wife who comes alternate weekday mornings is a little deaf and so is the vicar and the parish knows it and always gives the bell a good long ring ‒ and then there’s our vacuum cleaner. Our young used to call it our doodle-bug and they’re sure one day it’ll electrocute one of us and I do pray it’ll be me and not the verger’s wife though I’m not sure the verger would mind as she is an exceedingly trying woman. But I’ll do my uttermost to keep the house quiet whilst you’re sleeping.’
A Weekend in The Garden (The Jason Trilogy Book 2) Page 9