It wouldn’t take quite so long, she realised, once she’d mastered the intricacies of the stove top, the open and shut grate before which it was necessary to hold the bread to toast. She rummaged in Ann’s small stock cupboard while the tea was brewing, and found a small pot of sweet jam, a flavour she had never previously tasted, and another small jar of some savoury paste, very close to a proprietary brand of meat essence which her mother bought at home, and which Jane was especially fond of on either supper-time or morning toast.
She completed her preparations, set the whole on the small table close to the bed-chair where Ann reclined, apparently having slept all too well this time, and then gently touched the other girl’s shoulder.
“Breakfast’s ready, Ann,” she said, smiling. “I’d like you to show me the way to Dr. Lowth’s office, please!”
“What time is it? My goodness!” Ann was sincerely shocked as she was instantly alert and looking at the clock. “Didn’t that thing go off?” she demanded. “I was afraid of that! It’s so seldom I’ve had to use it it’s probably given up the ghost. Normally I waken just before whatever time it’s set for, and then I switch the handle down, so it’s maybe gone wrong from lack of use or something.”
“I don’t think so.” Jane sugared her tea and passed the basin to Ann. “I must have caught your habit without even knowing it. I woke ten minutes or so before the time you’d set the alarm to go off, so I made certain you wouldn’t be disturbed and got breakfast ready. I hope you’re not one of those hearty people who like a three-course breakfast,” she went on anxiously. “I just didn’t know where things were kept, so I did what I could from the contents of that small cupboard. I hope it’s all right.”
“It’s fine,” Ann told her, munching her third piece of toast. “Normally I just manage one piece, and not always that if I’m a little pushed for time. There’s an excellent kitchen in the hospital itself, and a wonderful kitchen staff. Usually there’s a hot snack going around mid-morning. We take it in turns to go for it, and it doesn’t seem worth while getting a huge breakfast ready for oneself, never mind what you were told at the beginning of your training about a good breakfast being essential for the day’s work ahead.”
“I don’t like big breakfasts either,” Jane confessed. “That was one good thing about leaving the General and going to work at the Mowberry. The Matron at the General believed in the old-fashioned breakfast, cereal, hot dish, bacon or fish or sausage, and toast with marmalade. I didn’t always feel I could face it,” she admitted, “but one had to ... so one did.”
“There’s no need now, if you don’t want to,” Ann said cheerfully, slipping out of bed and poking her feet into feathered mules. “Have you found the bathroom?” she queried, trying to remember whether or not she’d explained to Jane how the senior staff nurse was privileged in having a small bathroom suite to herself. The three nurses on the next floor shared a communal one, as did the two English nurses, whose quarters were at the other end of the corridor on the floor above. Kitchen staff, ward maids and so on were housed in the top floor, and Jane had not asked nor had Ann volunteered any detailed information about them.
In a short space of time they were both ready, Jane’s trim blue and white uniform contrasting strangely with Ann’s smart travel-suit of soft green with russet trimmings, a mixture which went well with her auburn hair and deep brown eyes.
“I’m to take you to Dr. Lowth.” Ann sounded to be repeating a well-learned lesson as she ticked the items off on her fingers. “I’m to show you round the hospital, then, if everything’s running smoothly and no emergencies taking place, I’m to take you down town in daylight, show you where it’s permissible to shop for the odds and ends you’ll need from time to time, and, if I’ve time, and unknown to anyone,” she continued darkly, “I shall take you to meet Granny and Grandpa Hansvitch. Then,” she concluded dramatically, “I shall rest until it’s time for Larlez to drive me to the station. And you, I hope, will be sleeping the sleep of the just in readiness for work the following day.”
“I’ll come and see you off,” Jane volunteered, but Ann made a face of mock horror.
“Please don’t,” she said dramatically. “I hate station goodbyes, and anyway you’d have to have a special permit to be allowed on the platform at all at that hour of the morning. A permit or a ticket, purchased at the barrier so that all would know your intended destination!”
“But surely—” Jane was beginning, when Ann held up a restraining hand.
“You saw the care taken as to who comes into the country and for what reason,” she said briefly. “And I’ve warned you to mind your own business and obey their rules. Something’s been going on these last two days; I heard a rumour that there was some sort of a spy scare, and certainly Karl Brotnovitch wouldn’t have been there in person when you arrived had there not been something happening. He doesn’t usually concern himself with small fry, so be careful of him! He’s a strange man, fascinating but strange, and he’s greatly attracted to anyone with fair hair. I often think that’s why Kevin’s got away with so much, because he’s inclined to be fairish, but he’s a young man, not an attractive girl, and there I think is where Karl will, sooner or later, draw a line and take action if Kevin doesn’t mind his p’s and q’s!”
Jane made a mental note with regard to the remarks about Karl Brotnovitch. Unbidden there crept into her mind a mental picture of the man as he had surveyed her from the barrier on the station. He was handsome, that much she had to concede, but he would never have entered into the category, however remotely, of the men Jane would have found personally attractive. There was something too cold and analytical about his eyes, the set of his mouth, which chilled her to the marrow.
She dismissed him from her thoughts and obediently followed Ann downstairs and across the covered walk which led from the flats to the hospital buildings themselves.
She looked about her with interest. Surprisingly the place, even the grass verge, was scrupulously clean and free from litter. The flowers which bordered the drive grew in orderly prim rows like so many soldiers standing guard. The paths had obviously been scrubbed that morning, and Jane felt an unaccountable lightening of her spirits as she accepted this as an omen that at least hygiene was something the Dalasalavians had discovered, and acted upon.
She was not so cheered by the hospital itself. The wards were distances apart. She discovered the men’s and women’s surgical blocks, for example, necessitated a long walk between each, and the staff nurse’s office was somewhere in between.
The medical wards were also long distances apart, and all of them a fairish walk from Dr. Lowth’s sanctum. She commented upon this as she accompanied Ann from ward to ward, and Ann laughed.
“The Dalasalavians,” she said briefly, “have strict ideas as to proper moral codes. That’s why the male and female wards are so far apart. There is talk of children’s wards being placed between, so as to cut out some of the walking—or running, if there’s an emergency—as it is they’re way over there.” She gesticulated to another separate set of low buildings which Jane had at first sight taken to be the outpatients’ clinics.
“They’re cut to a minimum,” Ann said, frowning. “That’s one of the tragedies out here. There isn’t enough money—or enough knowledge—to convince the authorities it would be money well spent—an investment, in fact to continue after-care when people have had either a severe illness or an operation. Dr. Jim does what he can, of course, but St. George’s hasn’t much money from home, the bulk of the running cost is borne by the Dalasalavian government. They only pay out when the results are assured. Now they’re half-way to accepting the suggestions for a physiotherapic unit to be added, but I suppose, judging on past performances, it will be at least another two years before it’s here.”
“St. George’s?” Jane questioned. “Why the name?”
“It was founded by one of the British Ambassadors, donkey’s years ago,” Ann told her. “He was appalled by the way in wh
ich people were, as it says in one of his diaries, cast on one side as soon as unfit to work sufficiently well to benefit the community as a whole, and he started the first hospital, from his own pocket, the story goes. The place has grown—and changed—considerably since those days, of course, but all the same it leaves much to be desired. The main thing to keep on going here is to remember that but for the existence of St. George’s and for the work Dr. Jim and his predecessors have done over the years, a large number of people now actively employed or leading useful lives in some way, would have been left to die or to fend for themselves as well as they could. That always made the whole effort seem well worth while so far as I was concerned.”
“I feel the same way,” Jane said sincerely. “I wanted to come,” she went on pensively, thinking of Dudley and admitting in her mind he had been one of the reasons why she had accepted this position, but not, she affirmed to herself, the sole reason, “because I wanted to do something really well worth while in my nursing life. This seems to be as good an answer as W.H.O. would have been.”
“It is,” Ann agreed seriously, then as somewhere in the distance a clock chimed the hours, she took Jane by the elbow. “Come along!” she urged, although Jane required no urging. “We’re about five minutes late in going to Dr. Jim’s office, and that isn’t a good idea, but I wanted you to look round the wards first, then when you come from his office I’ll show you the theatre and the lab. Right now here we are. Tell him I wanted to go and chat with Mrs. Petrobraun before I left and as I knew he’d be operating later I wanted to go and see her before her pre-med. See you later!” and leaving Jane a prey to sudden nerves she hurried off in the direction of the women’s medical ward.
As Ann vanished from her side Jane knocked tentatively on the door where Ann had left her. There was no distinguishing sign on its surface, merely a small brass plate at the side which gave Dr. Lowth’s name and qualifications in both medicine and surgery. She was rewarded immediately after her knock by an abrupt shout of “Come in!” and entered to find him seated behind a small, scrubbed table, piles of papers and notes on either side of him as he sat with his head propped up on his hands, staring down at a report which lay before him.
“Put it down there, please!” he said, without lifting his head.
Jane was in a quandary. Obviously she was being mistaken for someone else, and equally obviously he had forgotten she had an appointment with him, now almost five minutes late. After a moment of hesitation she cleared her throat, and instantly he looked up so that she was startled by the intent regard of his piercing glance from those widely spaced hazel eyes.
“Staff Nurse Kelsey?” He made it sound like a question, although the fact that he had clearly remembered her name and also that she was the only staff nurse there made the questioning tone out of place. “You’re late!” he said briefly, glancing at his watch. “Any other time I shouldn’t have waited, as it was,” he gesticulated towards the report he had been studying, “this required my attention and I became somewhat immersed in its contents. Have you been round the hospital?” he shot at her abruptly.
“Yes, thank you. I haven’t seen the theatre as yet, or the laboratory, but Nurse Palmer said she would take me round when she’d chatted with Mrs. Petrobraun...”
“That’s where she is now?”
“Yes. At least, that’s where she said she was going, before the lady had her pre-med.”
“And you accept all you have seen?” was his next question.
“I have to, haven’t I?” A small smile played for a moment round Jane’s lips and appeared to annoy him, for immediately he frowned and said sharply:
“If you mean by that remark that it’s impossible to run out and take the next tube or bus home, then I agree with you.”
“But I didn’t mean that!” She was horrified that he should even imagine such a thing, and yet, when it came to the actual moment of putting what she did mean into words, she could not, for a moment, think of what to say.
“What did you mean, then?” Dr. Lowth prompted mercilessly. “That you know it’s there, and if you’d known it was like this then you wouldn’t have accepted the position? Is that it?”
“Not in the least.” Suddenly, and for no reason at all or from where, she knew not, but abruptly Jane had the words to answer him.
“I wanted to come,” she said quietly, “for two reasons. One of them,” she thought of Dudley, “was a purely personal matter and of no interest to anyone save myself. The other was that for some time I’d had the idea of using my nursing training in a wider field. I’d thought of W.H.O., of missionary work, of Oxfam, of tropical nursing—lots of things—but when this happened along it seemed so exactly right—I don’t know how better to put it than that, and now I’ve seen for myself something of your work here, I know I did the right thing in accepting.”
“Congratulations.” She wasn’t certain whether or not she could detect a note of sarcasm in his tone, but he went on: “And the first reason, the personal one which is—or appears to be—so important to yourself? That couldn’t have, by any chance, something to do with a broken romance, a shattered engagement, a love affair which didn’t come up to expectations because your fiancé found someone else? Or could it?” he probed.
Jane knew her colour had risen, and she knew she was suddenly angry. Had she come to Dalasalavia for any of these reasons she could not in the least imagine what that could have to do with Dr. Jim Lowth.
“I really fail to see what possible concern my own private and personal emotional problems have with the work I shall be expected to do while I’m here,” she said with a reserved primness which was not lost upon him. “It may interest you to know I have no boy-friend, no fiancé or intending fiancé. I have a twin sister recently married and now in New Zealand with her husband. I have twin brothers, both of whom are at college and come home for vacations. I have a younger sister, and because she was the only one left at home I hesitated a long time, knowing my mother will be lonely when Dad is out all day. Mother said this was an excellent opportunity to see how well I like this sort of work—being away from home and somewhere none of us knew anything about—and finally I decided to come.”
“I’m not being either impertinent or inquisitive,” Jim Lowth said, suddenly very serious. “You’ll see for yourself the semi-disruption Nurse Palmer’s leaving has occasioned. We have two other British nurses here, you may have met them this morning?” He waited for her nod of assent before continuing.
“Nurse Dawlish,” he smiled a little, and she was amazed by the change in his countenance, “is rather a battleaxe, I agree, but she’s come up the hard way, and she never forgets it. She wouldn’t look twice at anything which even remotely savoured of romance. She’s told me something of her home life, and I can well understand that what her mother must have gone through was enough to scare her daughter from ever even attempting the same mistake.”
He was silent for a moment, and Jane waited. When he had smiled, she realised, she had glimpsed the real man, the humane being behind his brisk, professional mask. That glimpse had been sufficient to convince her that, once he allowed her to get to know him better as a person, if he ever did, she would like him very much, but would he ever allow his guard to fall sufficiently for her to find out what sort of person he really was?
“Nurse Wroe,” he said now, thoughtfully, “is rather another story. She’s been engaged twice. The first fiancé was killed in a car crash. She sometimes talks about him. I gather it took a long time for her to pick up the pieces, and when she did it was to get herself engaged again, this time to a pilot of a commercial airline. He’d been flying for years and had a wonderful record, but, to quote Nurse Wroe, he met his jinx when he met her. They were to be married in the autumn of the year she came out here. She could have married—a Dalasalavian, admittedly, but a pleasant chap—any time she wanted, and have lacked for nothing. Yet she’s shut herself up inside, and all she wants to do, or so she says, and I must admit her
way of life adds proof if such were needed, is to be of use to as many people as she possibly can be in the space of a lifetime, providing, and these are her words again, ‘it doesn’t involve modern living.’ That,” he pressed the tips of his fingers together and leaned back in his chair, raking her from head to foot with the glance from those bright hazel eyes, “is why she’s so identified herself with the people here, and is, I think, one of her main reasons for staying,”
“I see.” Jane felt some response was expected of her, but for her life she could not have said what she thought it ought to be. She wondered vaguely why Nurse Wroe, since she obviously loved the country and the people, and, or so it appeared, the not up-to-date ways of life of the country, had not been suggested as staff nurse. As though he could read her thoughts Jim Lowth rose from behind the desk and pushed the papers to one side as though to give them attention later.
“You probably wonder why Nurse Wroe wasn’t made our staff nurse and someone else—another S.R.N.—asked for in her stead,” he remarked casually. “Nurse Palmer did, at my suggestion, mention it to her, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She said she would prefer not to have the responsibility of being what we all know is Acting Sister, and she couldn’t be coaxed from that standpoint. That was why Nurse Palmer wrote to your friend. I understand that is what happened?” he concluded.
“I see,” Jane said again, and felt inadequate, but Dr. Lowth appeared perfectly satisfied and smiled again, briefly, as he held out his hand.
“Then run along and let Nurse Palmer show you a little of the town,” he suggested. “There isn’t much to see, but one needs a guide as to the ‘rightness’ of certain districts and so on! Tomorrow we’ll expect you to start work as usual and,” he smiled again, but this time there seemed to be a warning behind the smile, “I must admit we work very hard here, Nurse. We’re short-staffed, haven’t a great deal of modern equipment and so on, and yet expect to achieve near miracles. We usually do,” he went on as they left the room, “but until you’ve been a part of it you’ll have no idea just what those miracles take to achieve!”
Nurse Kelsey Abroad Page 6