‘Dave,’ I said, ‘I have been rushing most of to-day, and now it’s over I must have a few minutes to get my breath.’
Aline put her head out of the theatre. ‘Tea going in the duty-room. Help yourselves.’
‘Tea I must have.’ I wanted time to work out some excuse for avoiding the rest of the party. ‘Let’s have some.’
As always after a long, tense case at night, now it was over and the clearing up was on there was an atmosphere of high summer in the theatre. Nurse Lester was humming to herself as she went by with a mountain of sterile towels for the laundry. Sister and Aline in the theatre proper had their masks down, their turbans pushed back on their heads, and from their animated expressions when we went by the glass portholes they were having a fascinating post-mortem on Paddy Joe’s skull.
Over tea Dave told me he had returned that evening. ‘I’m due in town on Monday. How about a date, angel?’
‘Angel, my dear, is Sister Mark over the weekend. If I have time to get a meal I’ll be lucky. And how come you were in on Dolly’s party? You know Henry Gray?’
‘No. Johnny had an invitation; he didn’t want to use it, so Sonia Dinsford said why didn’t I come along in his place. Quite a girl, Sonia!’ His eyes danced wickedly. ‘Not sure I’d quite care to be her ever-loving, but that’s his look-out, and she certainly can Twist.’ He took my cup from me, hauled me to my feet. ‘Arise, Kirsty my love, and fly with me. I’m all for tall, willowy dolls, but I like the half-pint variety.’ He patted the top of my still turbaned head. ‘You really are a cute little doll. Come on. It’s time you and I had a ball.’
‘Then why not get up to that ruddy party and have it there? Then maybe we could have some peace here.’ Johnny was in the doorway. ‘This is supposed to be a hospital department, not a blasted palais.’ He stomped off to the surgeons’ room.
‘Get him! He is in a filthy temper.’
‘He’s just had a very long day, Dave.’
‘It’s not just that.’ Dave frowned to himself. ‘Poor chap’s obviously frustrated as hell. Ah, me ‒ go and get changed, lovey.’
‘But don’t you wait. I’ll come on up later.’
He did wait. He was sitting on the bench outside the theatre when I came out. He stood up, patted the bench affectionately. ‘When old Johnny quits the annexe I’m going to put up a plaque ‒ “Johnny sat here”.’
I said slowly, ‘He likes that bench?’
‘Kirsty, dear Kirsty, don’t you ever use your eyes? As you were ‒ of course you don’t. So let me tell you Johnny’s been sitting here on and off for years ‒ or is it months? Anyway, I know he was more or less a permanent fixture on it when I was last down here, and I left him on the very spot thinking beautiful thoughts when the beauteous Sonia and I went up to the party this evening.’
I remembered my conversation with Richard. After overhearing that, Johnny would not only be perfectly justified in thinking me capable of writing that letter, he could easily believe it the first of many.
‘Dave. Don’t get mad. I just can’t face that party. I am so tired I could cry.’
He stooped for a good look at my face in the ramp light. ‘My poor girl! That’s how you look. Not to worry. Uncle Dave will see you home. We’ll have a ball some other time. Deal? That’s my girl.’
Chapter Nine
A SHOWDOWN WITH JOHNNY
Patrick Joseph O’Leary made a very slow but moderately steady recovery. His age and physical condition were his great allies. Before he had been in Mark a week his parents were old friends of us all, and he was Paddy Joe to the whole annexe.
It rained non-stop the first half of December. The starch in our caps and aprons was limp within five minutes of wear, umbrellas became as much a part of our outdoor uniform as our cloaks, and White renamed our changing-room Wellington Barracks. ‘If we get much more rain,’ she remarked one drenching morning, stepping out of her boots, ‘the annexe’ll need anchors. It’s beginning to get me down.’
I sympathized, though the rain matched my mood, and I would have been really put out by brilliant sunshine. I was as bogged down in gloom as the duckboards from the ramp to our Home were in mud, and the fact that I had a very good idea why I was so gloomy was no help at all.
The weather put an end to outside meetings in the annexe grounds, so I never saw Johnny with Sonia. Through Aline I gathered the general situation was unchanged.
‘Men never cease to amaze me,’ she said reflectively as we drank cocoa one night. ‘No matter how sensible and bright they may be normally, when it comes to women they use as much intelligence as a moronic five-year-old. You take Johnny Druro.’
‘You take him, dear. Who’s he being moronic about?’ I helped myself to more sugar. ‘Or do we all call her X?’
She did not answer at once. She just looked at me in a very queer manner. ‘X reminds me of something I should have asked you before, but forgot. Sister Theatre wants to know what we can make to help with your Mark Christmas decorations. We’ve some real talent on hand this year. Lester makes really professional artificial flowers out of paper, and of course Sonia can draw just about anything.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘It’s true. A talented girl, that. Sister Tutor once said Sonia did the best anatomy illustrations she had ever had from a junior. Sonia used to copy from Gray’s so well Sister Tutor first thought they were tracings. That girl can copy anything.’
Including my handwriting, it seemed.
The rain stopped the week before Christmas. The sky was cloudless and all one colour ‒ parchment. The pines looked dejected, more black than green. The hedges up our lane were washed a yellowish spiky brown. It was hard to believe a single green leaf would ever grow on them again. The flower-beds by the wards were mud pools, and the faded grass on the tiny lawns stuck up through brown water like young rice.
In the wards the lights were on all day. Mark was going to be full for Christmas, and as that week progressed patient after patient in for a first Christmas told me behind his drawn curtains that it was not that he minded for himself, but for the missus and the kids. ‘Christmas won’t seem like Christmas for them visiting in a hospital.’
The only two ‘second-timers’ grinned at each other. ‘Just you wait, mates, that’s all, just you wait.’
When Sister marched in with an armload of crepe paper, tinfoil, and a basket of scissors on the day before Christmas Eve, the men watched her tackle the two old hands with assumed unconcern. Then: ‘I may as well give you a hand with those streamers. Sister,’ said Miller in 8. His neighbour in 9 decided to try the tinfoil. ‘Stars, eh? Right. Hey ‒ Nobby! You over in 22! You want to have a go?’
In no time streamers, stars, and cotton-wool snowballs were being mass-produced all round the ward.
Next morning the students arrived with step-ladders, fresh holly, ivy, and mistletoe. The men eased themselves up on their overhead pulleys, adjusted plastered arms, legs, bandaged heads and middles, and settled back to watch and advise. The ward echoed with yells of ‘Left hand down a bit, mate.’
‘Take it up on the right, son.’
‘That’s it, Doctor. Loop in the middle. Lovely!’
The Professor did his usual round, stepped over baskets, avoided ladders, and ignored the hammer that nearly crowned him, with a nonchalance that entranced the men. He was just leaving when the tree arrived. Sister held up an arm. ‘Gentlemen! Away with the piano to the far end,’ she ordered dramatically, waving the students onwards as she cantered ahead.
Paddy Joe beckoned me. ‘Will you tell me, Nurse ‒ when do the U.S. Cavalry arrive?’
‘Any minute now, Paddy Joe. How’s the head? Better? Good.’
Our fairy doll was thirty-five years old. Sister unwrapped the purple tissue-paper lovingly, then herself climbed the ladder to fix the doll in place. The ward gave her a magnificent and very relieved cheer when she came down.
‘Enough of that, you naughty boys! Save that for tomorrow!’ she scolded,
beaming with delight.
Johnny carved the turkey, wearing a chef’s cap and apron, and brandishing carving-knife and sharpener. ‘Just in your line, eh, Doctor?’ queried the men. ‘You’ll want to keep your hand in.’
Dr Spence was Father Christmas. Our patients’ children were well pleased with him, and with the food served at our mammoth Christmas afternoon tea-party when all visiting restrictions were removed and we entertained just under a hundred and fifty people in Mark alone. But what made the afternoon for the children was the inadvertent breaking in two of one of the reindeer, and the two sets of legs subsequently ambling up different sides of the ward.
I thought about the reindeer that night in bed, and then of the strange, sad quality of men’s voices singing in unison at our Service that morning, and then of Johnny kissing me under the mistletoe in the ward doorway. An orgy of kissing was expected from all our residents on Christmas Day ‒ an orgy to which, to be honest, I had never yet seen any one resident take exception. Johnny had had to kiss the whole Mark nursing staff, and that had to include me. It was as much part of the routine as his chef’s cap and carving the turkey. It had left a lot to be desired as far as a kiss went, and I knew I should have had more pride than to enjoy being kissed by a man who was in love with another girl. For all that, I loved it.
Boxing Day over, the hospital returned to normal. Not the weather. From extreme wet we suddenly found ourselves in an extremely cold snap. It snowed, went on snowing. The ambulance convoys from town had to be cancelled three times running, because the by-pass over the downs was impassable, and our lane nearly so. A snow-plough cleared it for local traffic three times daily. The annexe looked more Alpine than ever; the path down through the woods from the top of the hill became a ski-run, and anoraks, trousers, fur-lined boots, and mitten gloves were the universal off-duty wear.
Sonia appeared in a superb scarlet-and-white check anorak and black stretch ski trousers. Owing to the cancelled convoys, the theatre was enjoying a rare very slack spell. Whenever I went on or off duty I seemed to see Sonia surrounded by an assorted crowd of drooling students, with Johnny, nine times out of ten, watching from Casualty doorway. Cas, being so central, and at that moment so incredibly quiet, was the unofficial meeting-point for the annexe medical staff.
David had sent me a Christmas card and a letter asking me to the New Year’s Eve Ball at Simeon’s. I could not accept as the Eve was a Friday and it was Sister’s weekend off. Sonia went up. From the grapevine I heard she had been to the Ball with Richard.
I did not expect David to try to date me again, but he answered my letter by return. ‘You must come up for the Hockey Club dance, last weekend in January. I have been working it out. You should be free and the old girl on. I will wine you and dine you first. Date? It had better be.’
I wrote accepting, since to do anything else would be rude under the circumstances, and I liked Dave too much to wish to be that. I was puzzled why he should be so anxious to date me. I ruled out the obvious reason. We got on very well, but we just were not each other’s type.
Aline vanished to London to become a junior Sister Theatre. Phil returned from Eire in tremendous form. ‘It’s sheer luck your still being with us. How long are you staying in Mark?’ she asked some time in her first week back.
‘God knows! Not me. Officially I’m just standin for Staff Nurse Dinsford.’
‘Huh. Her!’
‘Don’t you like working with her? Aline Sands said she was good.’
‘She’s that, all right. I’m already fed up to the back teeth with her love-life. If I hear much more about ‘darling Johnny’ this and that I’ll do my nut ‒ and, much as I like our Mr D, I’ll do him, too!’
The snow stopped during the second week in January, and spring-cleaning started at the annexe. At Simeon’s spring-cleaning of the wards included the repainting and rechecking of all equipment. In Mark the first was the responsibility of ‘repairs and works’, the second was mine. On the Friday morning of the hockey dance Sister Mark told me to concentrate on my final checking ‒ linen. According to my list, by lunchtime we were four sheets short. Sister Mark was going to take me apart if I could not account for them before disappearing to London for my weekend off.
I was sitting alone at lunch puzzling where they had gone, and how I was going to break the news to Sister, when Phil stormed in looking pink with indignation. ‘The Surgical Unit up at Simeon’s proper are the end! Why can’t they cope with their own crisis, instead of bawling for us? We don’t bawl for them!’
My mind was still on linen. ‘The old firm is bigger than we are. Phil, have we lent the theatre any sheets since you’ve been back?’
‘We don’t borrow, duckie! We’re the mugs that do the lending! Guess what! We’ve just sent one registrar, one houseman, and one staff nurse horsing up to London by car to hold the hands of that flaming Unit in town. It’s going to mean a ghastly weekend for those of us left behind, particularly now we’re busy again!’
I forgot sheets. ‘Who’s gone?’
‘Our Mr Druro, our Mr Brewster (another house surgeon), and our Nurse Dinsford are all on loan.’ She smiled reluctantly. ‘And all off in darling Johnny’s car. My only bright spot this morning was seeing how narked Sonia looked when she realized poor Paul Brewster was going along with them.’
I helped myself to water none too steadily. ‘I thought this was Sonia’s weekend down here?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And didn’t you say something about Richard being free?’
She nodded. ‘He was coming down. He’s probably having to work because of this crisis. The whole place is down with ’flu, or something. Now ‒ what was that about sheets?’
Sister had discovered the discrepancy when I got back, and was very annoyed. ‘Where have they gone, Nurse Francis? Linen is your responsibility! Recheck, at once!’
I found the error in my own figures some time later. Sister gave me a stern lecture on careless handwriting, then mellowed to the extent of telling me she had made much the same mistake as a staff nurse. ‘I read my eight as a three. Very slipshod!’ The ward was much less busy. Before tea Sister asked if I was going away for the weekend, I told her about the dance. She said I might as well go to early tea and stay off. ‘The slack period will not last, Nurse. As well to take advantages of it while it does.’
The annexe that afternoon seemed suddenly empty without Johnny, which was quite absurd, since often whole mornings or afternoons went by without my seeing him, and on his weekends off he generally went home. Absurd or not, empty was how it felt to me.
Sister Mark had given me a more accurate version of the staff crisis in London. ‘Four surgeons and two theatre staff nurses are off sick. Sister Annexe Theatre tells me the Unit in town could have managed had they not happened to be having one of those rushes of work we had before Christmas. Fortunately this ’flu seems a minor three-day type. The situation should return to normal very shortly.’
I had written to Home Sister in town, and she had promised to lend me a room for that night. There was a fast evening train up from Hilldown, Albert had arranged a taxi for me, and David was calling for me at the London Home at twenty to nine. As Sister Mark had let me off early, my taxi was not due for an hour, and, all necessary packing done, I lingered over tea and wondered again why David wanted to date me, and then why it was always the wrong man who did that. David was a nice boy, but his also being the wrong brother was just about the last straw. I could not conceive why I had ever accepted his invitation. Surely there was still time to miss that train? Sprain an ankle? Be taken queer? Have to be mighty queer to fool Dr Spence down here or the S.M.O. in town, and if I developed any kind of ailment one of the two would certainly be summoned to my bedside by an anxious Home Sister. I began to appreciate Sonia’s sunstroke at home.
I left the dining-room still trying to make up my mind. It was made up for me. David was waiting outside in the yard.
‘Dave! What are you doing he
re?’
‘Waiting for you, my sweet.’
‘But why?’ I demanded.
‘To escort you in style to the big city. I came down with Richard Bartney, meaning to cadge Johnny’s car for the return journey, but, alas! the birds have flown! Old Richard is now beating his breast with rage at having driven all the way from town unnecessarily, and at the prospect of driving back.’
‘How come he’s free? I thought the Surgical Unit in town was hectic?’
‘You can say that again, sweetie. The theatres are turning out the customers like so many factory belts. Richard’s out of it as he’s a septic finger since Wednesday. They told him to get some fresh air to-day, so he had lunch with me at my digs, and was then coming on down for a jolly weekend. When he last spoke to his ever-loving Sonia after breakfast this morning she said she’d be here.’
‘She wouldn’t have known she was leaving then. I suppose she couldn’t reach him to cancel things, as she didn’t know he was with you.’
He said slowly, ‘Actually, she did. He told her on the phone that he was bringing me down, but asked her to keep it to herself, partly because I wanted it to be a surprise ‒ surprise for you ‒ and partly because I thought it would be better to wait until I got here to ask old Johnny for his car. He doesn’t lend it all that easily. Ah-ha! Here’s our wandering boy now!’ He waved to Richard to join us. ‘All set for the long drive home?’
Richard was very peeved. ‘This is a bloody awful waste of time. Oh, hallo, Kirsty.’
‘Hallo.’ I sympathized with him, asked after his finger.
‘Hurts like hell after all that driving,’ he grumbled. ‘Why couldn’t Sonia have contacted me through Albert? Albert can always reach everyone.’
That had already occurred to me. I did not say so. ‘Dave, I’ve got a taxi ordered. I had better cancel it.’
He told me to leave that to him. ‘Go deposit your lamp, darling, get into normal clobber, and join us at the gate. With luck we’ll be in town in time for me to borrow some lolly from Johnny with which to pay for our fine dinner.’
Flowers from the Doctor Page 13