He gave her a long clinical look. ‘Of course you don’t.’ He took out his cigarettes, lit two together and put one between her lips. ‘Smoke that and answer me this; when’ve you met any patient in acute delayed-action shock who was capable of coherent thought?’
Momentarily, the training he had evoked, took over. ‘Never. Yes. You’re right. Always lasts longer when it has to be postponed. I can’t think.’
‘No.’ He inhaled deeply. ‘Until you can, I’d advise you to make no decisions, just carry on here.’
‘Here?’ She glanced back at the vicarage then lay back and tilted up her head to look at the tower towering above the oaks. ‘How can I?’ It wasn’t a trained nurse asking, it was a grieving, lonely girl.
He had now met both Westons on several occasions. ‘If you mean, how can you, personally, you alone can decide that and we’ve just agreed you’re in no condition to make decisions. If you’re thinking the Westons mayn’t wish you to stay on, I can tell you first-hand they are sincerely hoping you will and that the same applies to the Matron of The Garden. Personally, I think, if necessary, she’d gladly keep you on a weekly contract. Understandable,’ he added unemotionally. ‘You’re a first-class Night Sister able to double as Sister Theatre. Invaluable ‒ to any Matron.’ He looked up at the tower above the trees. ‘I know you’re not from Kent, but is Oakden so very different to your old parental home in Norfolk?’
‘Not all that different,’ she muttered, staring at the package in her lap.
‘How long’s that church been here?’ he demanded abruptly.
Her head jerked up and she spoke without thought, ‘Church or tower?’
‘There’s a difference?’
‘Yes. the church was built by the Anglo-Saxons to replace the wooden church they’d had till the Danes burnt it down in the tenth century. When the Normans came over in the eleventh they put up the tower and added bits to the church. Saddens the vicar that they only started keeping written records a thousand years back and he thinks either before they didn’t bother, or they got burnt or lost when the monastery that was here first over the road, got dissolved. Why do you ‒’ she broke off as she suddenly understood. ‘Yes. Seeing every day something that’s stood so long and survived so much is some ‒ er ‒ some ‒’
‘Reassurance?’
‘Yes.’ Momentarily she saw the compassionate concern in his face. ‘I’ll call in to see Matron during Monday. She said not to think of going back till that night and then only if I felt up to it. I’ll take your advice. Thank you.’
He stayed only another couple of minutes. Directly he walked away, over his shoulder he saw her cradle the package in her arms and lower her head with the shining roll pinned up the back. He knew she was weeping from the heart and that she must weep. He knew this was a time for tears and had seen more women in such a time than he could bear to remember, or in the event, bear inwardly. He hadn’t shed a tear himself since he was a small boy and learnt first to dry and then control his own. When he got into his car and drove away, his eyes were still wet.
The rustle of starch kept echoing through the silent church. The Garden nurses came singly, or in pairs, and most came shyly and recognized with relief friends from their respective years sitting automatically in order of seniority and leaving an empty pew for staff nurses between their Matron, the Night Superintendent and two day Sisters. The Assistant Matron wearing her most martyred expression and Joe Rolls his most mutinous, were left in charge of the hospital with the day staff on-duty that morning.
Nurse Blake’s watchful hazel eyes noted the whole night staff had now arrived, even the girls on nights off. Only the ones on holiday were missing. Her eyes were grave, but her mouth was less wary. It wasn’t just to her. Happened to others, and even if it wasn’t quite the same, it must be the same kind of feeling. She’d talked a bit about it to Shirley last night when she relieved the senior’s meal-break. Shirley was much better, didn’t need a special, but she had specialed Shirley for three nights and they’d become kind of special friends. Mr and Mrs Sanders had told Nurse Blake that Shirley thought her wonderful and so did they, and Shirley’s elder brother had come into Cas. last night with a huge bunch of roses for her from the Sanders family. She had wanted to send some of the roses to Sister Jason but hadn’t liked to as she had already subbed to the Night’s wreath and was afraid Sister Jason might think she was smarming.
She watched Aggie Martin bustle up the aisle, every yellow curl in place and her cap from the back looking about to be airborne. Aggie led three other day staff nurses and before she knelt perfunctorily caught the eye of her elder sister sitting in one of the slowly filling pews on the other side of the nave. Last night Aggie and her sister had agreed they must show up. Mrs J. wasn’t a local, she’d have it tough enough without an empty church and it was no use something kidding that Oakden couldn’t be sticky as hell to outsiders. This was a lot better than they’d expected. Hell of a lot, and still coming in. That bunch up front over there must be from the San. Yes. That was Dr Skinner sitting with the Edgehursts, old Smythe and the vicar’s wife, and if those two sitting in the pew behind weren’t the San Matron and Night Super, Aggie didn’t know how many beans made five.
From professional necessity the Sanatorium nursing staff were out of uniform. Nurse Ash and her friend Teresa were amongst the last to arrive and in their tearful confusion squeezed in beside Nurse Geraghty and the other juniors in the back row of The Garden pews. Nurse Geraghty immediately recognized the very pretty auburn-haired girlfriend of Mr Hartley in 5. She’d only seen her for a few minutes a night or two back when she had been visiting him so late that the night staff were already taking over, but hadn’t Mr Hartley himself told her his girlfriend had been poor Dr Jason’s night nurse, and it was no wonder at all the terrible state she was in seeing they all said he’d been a grand good man and wasn’t her mother right when she was forever saying the good died young. She’d told that young Mr Hartley that there’d be no danger at all of that for him and she’d be thanking him to keep his hands to himself but she’d not tell his girlfriend he was a terrible man with a roving eye. She’d a nice look to her. Soft, but nice. Nurse Geraghty kindly pressed her spare clean handkerchief into the Sugar Plum’s hand.
Henry, in his demobilization suit and a black tie, sat with his wife and Mrs Ford. The latter was unrecognizable in a smart black two-piece, court shoes and long dangling jet earrings that swung every time she dabbed her eyes. Mrs Ford’s daughter hadn’t wanted her to come. ‘You know you, mum. Funerals upset you cruel as weddings. She’ll understand seeing as you work nights.’
‘That’s for why I got to go. I’m nights ‒ and she’s ever such a lovely Sister, poor young duck.’
Mrs Parsons, her cousin Mrs Ellis and Mrs Barnes sat together. Yesterday, the cousins had spoken for the first time in years to plan this arrangement. Blood, Mrs Parsons told Angela, was thicker than water. Nice show of flowers, she noted. She’d take a proper look after. Harry’d want to know the Nurseries done a proper job. It had been Harry that first thought of flowers from Men’s Surgical, then word got round, all the wards wanted likewise, so Harry got the collections written down proper, got Henry to do the ordering and fetch round the cards for all to sign. Firstly, Harry said, there’d been more than a few in The Garden wards as couldn’t rightly place Sister Jason till the others told them of last Saturday night and then they couldn’t fetch their wallets out their lockers fast enough. Harry didn’t like to think on that night, he said. Not right. But he, for one, had not been surprised seeing he’d seen plenty of folks having to keep at it no matter what in the war. Put him in mind of the war, that night had, till Sister Men’s knocked him cold with a jab, but there wasn’t no war now and it wasn’t right.
Iris Gordon kept glancing over her plump black duster-coated shoulders. She sat between her husband and Ruth, who was flanked by MacDonald staring fixedly ahead into the middle air. ‘All these girls from The Garden?’ she whispered to her husba
nd.
‘The mufti are the San.’
Her eyes widened, ‘Raa-ather unusual for a patient?’
‘Doc. There a long time. She’s a nurse.’ He glanced at Ruth. They had just been introduced outside and Ruth had apologized for her inability to accept Iris’s invitation to lunch as she had to drive straight back to London being on-duty in her ward that afternoon. ‘Not only the medical profession that knows how to close ranks,’ he murmured into Iris’s ear.
‘Somehow one didn’t imagine ‒’ She was silenced by a friendly tap on her back. She turned. ‘Miss Franklin! And Miss ‒ Er ‒’ she never could remember the companion’s name. Miss Franklin was one of Mummy’s bridge chums. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Well, dear, as poor Mrs Jason is a stranger and was so sweet to me we thought that as I’m an ex-patient we should make the effort.’
Others had thought the same. Alex Gordon, glancing back, exchanged a series of ‘Pity it had to be here but how nice to see you again’ nods all round the church. Then he saw Ruth’s discreet, graceful backward glance and MacDonald slowly standing up. They were all standing in silence when Nurse Geraghty pushed her remaining clean handkerchief into the Sugar Plum’s hand and surreptitiously used the hem of her crumpled but clean apron skirt on her round eyes.
MacDonald leant back against the seawall and outstretched his legs on the broad bank of pebbles about thirty yards back from the high-water mark. The tide had turned, was going out and taking the wind with it. ‘Am I right in getting the impression you regard this re-shuffle as the beginning of the end of The Garden?’
Catherine sat forward, hugging her knees, gazing at the busy shipping-lane on the horizon. ‘Yes. Events may prove me wrong.’
‘Even Homer sometimes nods,’ he observed drily, ‘but you don’t think you’re nodding. Why not?’
She turned to him the face he found transformed since their last meeting. The tension, the glaze of shock, the deep etching of grief had vanished and left behind a sweet serenity in her eyes, and a courageous upcurving at the corners of her soft sweet lips. There was no trace of bitterness, despair, or self-pity and the new short hair-cut made her look enchantingly youthful. An enchanting young woman, not a girl. A woman with the courage to accept that love and pain were inseparable and unavoidable unless life was to be no more than mere existence. He knew she had come to love that ramshackle wee hospital, without being blinded to its shortcomings, or what she saw as its future, and that her answer would hurt her. But she’d give it.
She said, ‘I’ve just told you Wilverden’s closing early September. Uneconomic. I think that’s the first wedge and The Garden’s next on the list ‒ but this is purely my personal opinion and you’re the only person getting it. Not even Ruth. She’s London top brass now and it’s only what I’ve sensed from the wind. No grapevine rumour and no one to me, has ever suggested The Garden’s for the chop. One breath would dynamite Oakden. The press and our M.P. would be bombarded with protests from the R.D.C., P.C.C., British Legion, W.I., Working Men, Mothers’ Union ‒ you name it ‒ the lot’ll be carrying their banners in Parliament Square. I don’t think it’ll come to that as I think they’ll run us down very gently. Starting in September.’
‘When this big hospital they’re building in Arumchester opens?’
‘Yes. It’s already official gen that the new hospital will take all the acute surgicals in the Group. General, orthopod, urological, cranial, ENT, the lot. Not to worry. That’ll leave a nice lot of room in our garden wards for all our medicals and plenty in the medical wards for Wilverden’s geriatrics. Of course, we won’t then need our new R.A., so he’s going to the new hospital ‒ as he’d been warned ‒ to his joy ‒ before being appointed, and is why he applied in the first place.’
His narrowed steady gaze was on her face. ‘How about the theatre staff?’
‘Sister Theatre’s retiring. The rest moving over en masse, plus all equipment. The theatre, God help us, is going to be converted into a television-cum-social centre for our medical up-patients. How many rheumatic fevers, coronaries, acute pneumonias and bronchitics have you seen just longing to leap out of bed and play ping-pong? We’re getting a ping-pong table. And I’ll bet by January when the medical wing of the new place opens, they’ll take all the acute medicals. Officially, pro tem., Maria remains Private and Amenity, but without anyone actually saying anything, I’ve noticed we’re now only getting medical PPs.’
‘Private wing in the new hospital?’
‘No. New private nursing home ‒ a very good one ‒ to all intents a hospital ‒ just opened in Arumchester. No one mentions it, of course.’ She smiled ironically. ‘You’re a pundit. You know when you lot close your mouths, in comparison, clams are blabbermouths. Iris Gordon says darling Alex is too frightfully maddening. Won’t tell her anything. And he can’t have done, or I’d have got it out of her. We’ve become sort of buddies. Only sort of, as by some strange coincidence I’m always too frightfully tired and just have to go to bed on her coffee mornings.’
Again his pleasant smile was guarded. ‘Alex Gordon is a canny Scot. How does your new houseman like the notion of being left behind?’
‘Not much but not too worried as he’s off into the Army in January. Oh ‒ did I tell you Joe Rolls is doing his two years in the R.A.M.C. in Germany? Last card I had from him was from Berlin.’
‘You mentioned this at Christmas, but I think he was then at some military hospital in or near Bonn.’
She had forgotten that, too. She looked back at the sea. ‘Where was I?’
He said evenly, ‘Denuding The Garden of surgical and resident staff.’
She blinked. ‘Yes. Yes.’ She faced him once more. ‘Take away the acutes, leave geriatrics and possibly younger long-term sub-acutes, and you then leave only a limited training in The Garden for student nurses. That’ll mean less than now, and God knows we’re stretched thin.’
‘Staff shortage still acute?’
‘Worse. At all levels. We’ve lost two of our best nurses since last year. Aggie Martin from Cas. ‒ remember her?’ He nodded. ‘Did I tell you at Christmas she sailed to Australia in November?’
‘Yes. You hadn’t heard if she’d got there. She like it?’
‘Loves it. Working in Sydney. And last month,’ she added hastily, ‘Janet Blake ‒ you mayn’t remember her ‒ she was the third-year who specialed Shirley Sanders.’
He met her eyes. ‘I remember. What about her?’
‘She married Roger Sanders, Shirley’s elder brother, last month. I went to the wedding. She’s a sweet kid and he’s a very nice lad. Fitter in a big Arumchester firm that makes farm machinery. Shirley was a bridesmaid. Fine now.’ She looked out to sea. ‘It was a lovely wedding.’
He watched her averted profile. ‘Good. Young Mrs Sanders isn’t returning to nursing?’
‘She’d love to, part-time, but the Group won’t have that. Full-time or nothing. The kids are in love, they want to see each other around the house, or rather two-room flat. So she’s gone, and if it weren’t for the Irish and few West Indian girls we’re now getting, The Garden would grind to a halt without any help from the NHS.’ She paused for thought. He didn’t interrupt or take his eyes off her. ‘My guess is, slowly The Garden will get smaller and smaller and then, like Wilverden, be rated uneconomic and emptied for good. Old Sam Garden’s endowment, like Martha’s, and all the other rich voluntary hospitals, was long sucked into the NHS funds. If you ain’t got the cash, can’t have the cottage hospital. Sorry, folks. Nice little cottage hospital ‒ lots of nice little cottage hospitals strung around in villages and little towns, but all too far away, too small to attract staff, jolly sad but let’s not be sentimental. What we want in our fine new NHS is everything and everyone under one fine great big roof. There you’ll get the best treatment as there we’ll have the best staff with the best equipment.’ She smiled and shrugged. ‘I can see that angle, having been in Martha’s. No doubt in my mind that it’s safer for the
patients and infinitely easier for the staff to have anything and anyone you need within shouting distance. That’s a vital angle, but not the only angle and being country-raised, I can see another. For instance ‒ take what I told you about Arumchester General turning all gynae in one block, all midder in the other. Yes, in theory, ideal to have all the obstetricians and gynaecologists and everything to hand. I’ve not done midder, but every midwife I’ve met insists all first babies are safest born in hospital. Obviously the better the hospital, the better for mother and baby. Medically, that is. How about the physical and mental strain on the ante and post-natal women living in Oakden or the villages further out? Think of the distances just to the clinics. This is a farming area. Farmworkers don’t own cars. They get to work on bikes or motorbikes. Their wives, as the majority of village and Oakden wives, get around on the buses. And in the country when someone has a baby, it’s not just hubby that wants to pop in and out, it’s mum and dad, gran and grandad, aunties and uncles. I think this fine new aseptic world we’re so busy building is going to stop a packet of fun; I’ve never had a baby, but I’ve been told too often it’s sheer heaven as well as sheer hell, not to believe it. But ‒ maybe if they produce the promised fleet of ambulances and maternity coaches, it’ll work out.’
‘I take your point, but on balance, I have to disagree. I think the safety of mother and child must come first. I know if I’d a wife having a first baby only over my dead body would she have one out of hospital.’
‘Remember you and I’ve been raised in large hospitals and aren’t frightened of them. Old hospital hands don’t mind them, but they scare the daylights out of new patients and their relatives. Going into hospital anywhere is upsetting enough, but some of the edge comes off if it’s that little place up the high street where dad and his rupture mended lovely and Johnny had his tonsils out.’
A Weekend in The Garden (The Jason Trilogy Book 2) Page 18