Nurse Kelsey Abroad

by Marjorie Norrell

  There lay her biggest problem. Jane adored her parents, both of them—her quiet, thoughtful father, who worked as accountant in one of the largest firms in Rawbridge, and her merry-eyed, laughing mother who did not look by any means old enough to have a grown-up, almost independent family.

  “She’ll say ‘go’, of course,” Jane reasoned. “She wouldn’t put out a finger to prevent any of us doing anything we think we want to do, let alone something she knows one of us has always been keen about. I must say, though,” she reflected as she hurried to say good-bye to Matron and then back to where Dudley waited just round the corner from the nursing home’s portals, “I’d rather be going anywhere under W.H.O. than to some place I’ve never even heard of, whether it’s an important or attractive place or not!”

  Dudley wasted no time in getting the car away from the vicinity of the nursing home, and Jane suppressed a desire to giggle as it struck her that he was extremely anxious to avoid being noticed by his sister.

  She made no comment, however, and he turned the nose of the little saloon towards Wetherlay Crescent where Jane’s people lived, changing direction abruptly at the top of the hill. She still made no comment when he halted the car, as she had expected he would do, just round the first bend in Honkers Lane, a small, leafy lane along whose paths so many of the local young people walked when discussing their problems. Jane had never walked there since she had used the lane as a short cut home from school, years before. Now she sat quietly, her hands resting in her lap, and waited for him to begin.

  “Cigarette?” Dudley proffered his case, knowing she seldom smoked, but just now she felt the feel of a little white tube of tobacco in her fingers might ease something of the nervous tension which seemed to have been mounting within her ever since Angela Power’s news, and, judging by Dudley’s face, was about to reach its peak any minute now.

  “Thank you,” she said quietly, surprising him.

  She bent her head and inhaled as he lit it for her, and then she relapsed again into her old position, hands clasped, waiting.

  “Jane,” Dudley’s voice, she felt abstractedly, was so different from her father’s. Her father’s was at once businesslike and in some strange fashion reassuring. Dudley’s tone always sounded as though he were on the edge of something momentous, yet never quite reaching whatever it was. “What do you really feel about this ... this talk of Angela’s? You say you’ve always wanted to travel, there’s the rest of your life to do that in, and not working your way, either. I shall be junior partner before much longer, and while that isn’t the world, I know, it’s a good step towards achieving what we want.”

  “What you want, Dudley,” Jane surprised herself by saying, but having got so much said she was in no hurry to withdraw from the slight advantage she thought was hers, to judge by his look of utter astonishment. “I still want to travel, I still want to use all I’ve been taught as a nurse, for those who need it, wherever they are and whoever they may be. Maybe that’s not the end of the line either, but I feel it’s a worth-while job, and your sister’s friend seems to have come through all right,” she smiled.

  “But what about ... us?” Dudley said abruptly. “You’ll be changed when you come back, and I don’t know whether the change will be a good one or not, do I? I’ll be changed too. We shall not be the same people any more, and all we’ve gained in knowledge of one another will be forgotten, gone as though it had never been.”

  “In that case I don’t think it’s been very important, then, do you?” she questioned gently. “We’ve had a good friendship. My Aunt Ruth always said a real friendship was one where people could part, not see one another or even correspond for years and then meet and carry on as though they had only just parted. That, she used to say, was real friendship ... and I think I know what she means. If a few thousand miles, a few years of parting are going to mean death to the friendship, then it couldn’t have been so very much alive in the first place, do you think?”

  “I don’t know, Jane, I really don’t.” He looked suddenly so abjectly miserable that she was suddenly afraid he was about to immerse himself in one of the sulky moods he affected when he badly wanted to gain his own way about something.

  “Let’s talk about it after I’ve told Mum and Dad,” she suggested brightly, drawing deeply on her cigarette. “I shouldn’t go if they felt I ought not to, you know. I’d rather not discuss it any more until we’ve chatted with them about it. All right?”

  She smiled and, after a moment’s hesitation, he nodded.

  “All right,” he agreed, and switched on the engine, but although for the moment a crisis had been averted Jane wasn’t comfortable about him. She knew without his saying one word that he was definitely against her leaving the nursing home at all, let alone going to the other side of the world where he could not simply pick up a telephone and speak to her whenever he so desired for the mere expenditure of a few pence.

  Mrs. Kelsey, forewarned by Angela’s telephone call, had prepared a sumptuous high tea, always insistent that, no matter how good and nutritious the food at any hospital might be, it always lacked what she thought of as “the individual touch.”

  It was useless for Jane to explain that in a small nursing home such as the Mowberry, so many people had their own individual likes and dislikes and, where their illnesses permitted, these were catered for as they would have been in any small, well-run hotel. Because of this, as she repeatedly assured her anxious mum, the meals of the nursing staff were a little more varied than the meals at the General had been, where emphasis was laid upon energy-supplying foods rather than on those likely to tempt the palate.

  Mary Kelsey enjoyed cooking. Nothing pleased her more than to have her family pass up their plates for second helpings, and when one of them came home unexpectedly, as Jane had done today, she always put herself out to do something special. After Angela’s phone call she had studied the contents of her larder, fridge and cupboard, and the result had ended triumphantly with a luscious-looking glazed bacon loaf, a mocha trifle, a good idea, Mary thought, as it disposed of the half sponge cake she had despaired of ever being eaten, and a selection of home-made biscuits, a speciality of hers, and a well-filled apple pie, always a family favourite.

  She was putting the finishing touches to the table as Dudley drove into the small, curved driveway. At the sound of the car she switched on the light below the kettle. Jane always liked a “good cup of tea” the moment she came in.

  It was at that moment the phone rang again and this time it was Angela once more, but telling her briefly just what she had offered to Jane.

  “She’ll hesitate, of course, Mrs. Kelsey,” Angela’s brisk tones came clearly over the wire, “but that’s only because she wants to make quite certain her going so far away won’t leave you so bereft now that Betty’s gone from home. Of course, as I pointed out to her, you’ll still have Susan and the boys, and Mr. Kelsey, of course. I don’t think, from what I know of you, you’re likely to allow missing Jane for a time to stand in the way of something I know that, in her heart of hearts, she would really like to do.”

  “Of course I wouldn’t stand in her way,” Mary said, a little bewildered by the suddenness of the statement. “But where is this place? Sounds to me it may well be behind the Iron Curtain.”

  “I think it may well be,” Angela said vaguely, “but that hasn’t prevented my friend from enjoying every minute of her stay there, and I do know Jane has always longed to travel and to nurse at the same time. The hospital is quite a well reputed one, you know. I met the doctor in charge, a Doctor James Lowth, when Ann went out there. He’s English. His people come from somewhere in Surrey, I believe. He has an assistant who is also English, Irish or something like that, and there are two qualified English nurses on the staff as well as the girls who’ve been recruited and trained in the hospital itself. I really think Jane would enjoy the whole thing tremendously. She can always have an agreement for so long, and then it will give the authorities an opportunity
to look out for someone else to take her place if she decided her first engagement was long enough. Ann signed to stay six months at first, then re-signed for another two years. She ought not be leaving for another three months or so, but her fiancé will lose the position open to him in Australia if they leave matters so long, and that would hardly be fair to him or to Ann herself. That was why she wrote to me to see if he could recommend someone to take her place immediately. Of course I thought of Jane first and foremost.”

  Mary Kelsey, who didn’t much care for Angela Power but who respected her for her nursing capabilities as well as for her businesslike approach to life in general, merely made a sound which might or might not have signified agreement, but it was an extremely thoughtful woman who soon replaced the receiver and turned to greet the two young people who had just entered.

  “Hello, darling,” she greeted her daughter with an affectionate kiss which was returned with unexpected fervour. Jane was normally an affectionate although not

  a particularly demonstrative person, and the unmistakable urgency in the way in which she responded to her mother’s greeting told Mary better than words could have done how deeply disturbed her child was about the opportunity presented to her..

  She made no comment, however, merely greeting Dudley and, as a matter of course—for her hospitality was famed—inviting him to their meal. In common with Jane she liked this young man, but there was something too pedantic in his approach to life, something to which she could not put a name but which instinctively removed him in her mind as a suitable life companion for her gay, personable Jane.

  They didn’t mention the reason for Jane’s unexpected forty-eight-hour leave as though by mutual consent, not until the key turned in the lock and Edwin Kelsey came home.

  Tall, broad-shouldered and with a rapidly thinning thatch of silvered hair, Edwin was the epitome of the successful business man who has managed his private and his business life to his own and others’ complete satisfaction.

  He appreciated young Dudley Power’s genuine gifts in accountancy, but Edwin’s had been the stolid, gradual path to advancement, and he had an instinctive deep distrust of men like Henry Crabtree and all his associates, men on whom fortune always seemed to smile. Life, Edwin was wont to say, wasn’t always like that for anyone, not without a little “jiggery-pokery” here and there!

  Nevertheless he greeted the young man pleasantly enough, and when they were all seated round the table and Mary had placed the glazed bacon loaf before him to carve while she served the varied and attractive-looking salad, he spoke directly to Jane.

  “You’re not supposed to be home until next weekend, are you, love?” he queried. “What’s the matter? All your patients cured and gone home, so that you’re free until the next batch come in?”

  Edwin had made such jokes about the nursing home often since, really without his approval, Jane had thrown in her lot with Angela and left the General for the private nursing home, where, Edwin was secretly convinced, her gift for nursing was not so greatly needed as in the wards of the infirmary in the town.

  “I’ve got a special forty-eight-hour leave, Dad,” Jane told him. “Miss Power thought I should come home and discuss it with you and Mother before really deciding, but I know what I’d like to do—I didn’t say why, did I?” she laughed at herself. “I’ve the opportunity to nurse abroad, and to replace a friend of Miss Power’s who’s coming home to be married. I think it sounds perfectly wonderful,” she added, more for Dudley’s benefit than because she had by any means made up her mind. “I wanted to see what you and Mum had to say first, though, Miss Power would like my answer when I go back.”

  “What does Miss Power think?” Edwin sliced the last of the loaf and apportioned it on to their plates. He had always been a believer in “fair shares for all”, and knew that if he left it to the others to help themselves both his wife and daughter would have insufficient, each of them inwardly making certain there was more than enough for the menfolk. The boys would be in later, and Susan had a music lesson straight after school which meant she would not be home for some time. Edwin made mental calculations and left on the dish the amount he anticipated would be sufficient for them all, then helped himself to salad as he sat down and waited for his daughter’s reply to his question.

  “I think—I know—she would like me to agree,” Jane said slowly. “I can understand that well enough. This girl who’s leaving was at P.T. School. I understand they were friends, and that’s why she’s relying on Miss Power sending her someone on whom the people out there can also rely. I understand the hospital is staffed mainly by people from this country and that the British Embassy have something to do with it. I don’t know much about it, really, but it certainly sounds interesting.”

  “And a way of escape!” Mary thought, looking at her daughter and guessing more correctly than Jane would ever realise how the girl felt about the young man who sat beside her now, putting aside his meal for the moment, the better to talk easily and forcibly about what seemed to him a very vexed question indeed.

  “There are equally interesting positions in the nursing world in this country, I feel sure,” he said primly. “Jane,” he smiled, showing his excellent white teeth in a wide smile which Jane had always disliked although she had never said so, “has a great sense of loyalty, you know,” he informed her parents, scarcely realising that they both knew this even better than he did himself. “I’m quite certain she thinks she ought to say ‘yes’ to please my sister. That’s utter nonsense, of course. Angela will soon find someone else, put herself about a little, maybe, but not too much, to find exactly the right sort of person. She’s simply picked on Jane because she was nearest, and,” he coloured slightly, “because she wants to break things up between us.”

  “I wasn’t aware there was really anything to break up, as you put it,” Mary said sweetly, making one of her apparently innocent remarks-which scored so directly on whatever point she was trying to make. Even after twenty-five years of marriage Edwin wasn’t in the least bit certain whether or not these remarks were intentional or whether they emerged by pure chance and somehow or other usually had their desired effect.

  “There isn’t really, at least nothing more than a friendship I value more than any I’ve ever made. It’s Janey’s fault there’s nothing more to it than that!” he protested indignantly.

  “Friendship is all I feel adequately equipped to cope with at present,” Jane said promptly, thankful for the opening her mother had given, whether knowingly or not. “I haven’t time to give to anything deeper than that, I’m afraid. And there’s so much more I want to fit into living before I even attempt to settle down or anything. So many places I want to see, visit, get to know, so many new developments in the nursing world, I want to see as many of them as possible, know what people are doing in places other than Rawbridge.”

  “Even in Dalasalavia, love?” Edwin regarded her gravely through his spectacles. “It’s just inside the Iron Curtain, remember!”

  “Ann Palmer’s been all right, and she’s been happy enough,” Jane held his glance with her own steady one, unconscious of the appeal in her eyes for his understanding, an understanding which had never failed throughout the twenty-two years of her life and which didn’t fail her now.

  “I can understand your feelings, love,” he said sympathetically. “When Mum and I were your age we had the world to visit, but the occasions were seldom pleasant ones! You young people have a world to explore and, heaven be thanked, so far without a war to send you exploring. It’s a pity Betty couldn’t have heard of something where she’s gone, you’d have been company, for one another then, but I suppose as you grow up more and more your paths’ll divide, and so they should. You miss her badly, I know,” he sighed, “just as we do, but we always realised it would happen one day. I only wish,” he sighed again, “the pattern had repeated itself for Susan!”

  There was a little general laughter. The family “pattern” of the Kelseys was one
which had afforded them all endless amusement at times. Alan and Barry had come as a surprise to Mary, who had never even imagined having twin babies. A study of the family tree on both sides, after they were born, more or less prepared her for the arrival, some eighteen months or so later, for the twin girls who were so alike in features and so opposite in temperament. Susan, when she made her appearance after five years or so, was a solitary little person from the start, and indeed rejoiced this was so. Remembering her defiant “there’s only one like me,” when she was much younger, Mary laughed now, more gently.

  “She’d have hated it,” she observed. “At least her being alone so much in the family has meant her having more time with me than any of you, for which I’m thankful. She’ll be thrilled, and she’ll want all the information you can give her.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know very much more than I’ve told you,” Jane announced, “but I think I’d like to try it ... maybe for the six months’ trial period first, before I sign on for the two years they expect anyone to stay, just to see if I like it.”

  “That’s a good idea, love,” Edwin glanced round the table. “We’ll all help clear, then get the globe out and have a look at where this place is exactly and just how far away from us you’re likely to be. I presume telephonic and radio communication will be possible, since there’s a British Embassy?”

  “I still think this is only Angela’s way of getting Jane out of orbit,” Dudley grumbled, but both Edwin and Mary had sensed the message their daughter had done her best to transmit, and he was gently but firmly cajoled into believing it was all for the best and very good experience for Jane.