The epidemic died down and by the week before Easter all the patients who had been thus afflicted were once more back in their own homes, all of them equipped with dietary sheets worked out by Dr. Lowth and Jane, and painstakingly copied by the nurse, using Jim’s old typewriter.
“Sometimes,” Jim Lowth admitted, sitting back in his chair for a moment and running his hands through his hair, “I wonder if it is all really worth while? I know your admirer thinks so,” he shot a mischievous glance in Jane’s direction, knowing she could never resist rising to his bait, and that she was as embarrassed by Karl Brotnovitch’s attentions almost as greatly as he was amused by them.
“He quite possibly believes it too,” Jane answered quietly. “At least he’s sincere in trying to do what he believes to be the best for his country and its people!”
“And don’t you think he’s equally sincere in ... other ways?” Jim teased, but today, for some reason, she refused to be provoked.
“Maybe,” she sighed, “but he knows it’s all ridiculous,” she said firmly. “I shall go back home when my two years here are ended, and that,” she added with a sort of flat finality, “will be the end of that!”
“You’ve made up your mind to stay the two years, then, Jane?” Jim gave up trying to tease. For weeks now he had wondered what she would do when the six months’ term of trial came to an end, but life at the hospital had been too busy for any private conversations, and on the rare occasions when they had both been off duty for a short time, they had been too tired for discussion of any than a purely routine kind.
“I think so, yes.” Jane had suddenly made up her mind. Her thoughts returned to a letter she had received from her mother the previous morning. Mrs. Kelsey had written, lightly but precisely, that “according to rumour, Dudley is acting as Heather’s permanent escort. They say he’s taking her to the Mayor’s charity ball, and you know what that means in the eyes of Rawbridge!”
Jane did, and she did not mind, in fact she was more than relieved to know that Dudley appeared to be consoling himself with Henry Crabtree’s niece. That, she decided, should help him enormously in the career of his choice! To return very shortly, when her six months’ trial period was at an end, might be to unsettle Dudley and cause a rift between himself and Henry, Dudley and Heather, and to stir up anger in his sister, who, Jane reflected with an inward smile, must often have congratulated herself on the way in which she had managed to get Jane out of Dudley’s orbit for a time.
“Why do you hesitate?” Jim persisted. “You’re not worried about old Karl, are you?” he went on, suddenly anxious. “You don’t have to be, you know. I’ll tell him to take himself off, if he bothers you unduly. I can quite see,” he went on solemnly, “he’s not exactly the sort of chap any girl like yourself would want hanging around all the time. The trouble here is there’s no choice! The only other possible escorts are the chaps at the Embassy, and most of them are married or have fiancés at home, and Kevin, and I must say he always strikes me as still too much of a student to appeal to anyone with a real sense of responsibility!”
If he could see all that, Jane thought, suddenly angry, then why on earth couldn’t he see who was the one man in Seonyata to whom she would have been both glad and proud to say “yes” if he were to offer himself as an escort? Why couldn’t he see, there was no beating about the bush where this was concerned, in her own mind at any rate, that he, Doctor James Lowth, was not only the one man in Seonyata, or in Dalasalavia for that matter, who would ever count at all! He was, in fact, she admitted to herself for the first time, the one man in the world who would count with her, now and for ever, whether he ever knew it or not.
Strangely shaken by the sudden storm of her own emotion—an emotion for which she had been totally unprepared, since this was the first time she faced the truth even to herself—she sat still and silent, and Jim once more looked anxiously in her direction.
“I know what’s wrong,” he exclaimed with the air of one having made a great discovery, “we’ve none of us had much fun these past weeks. This morning I received the official invitation to the Embassy Easter ball. The locals make a great thing of the Easter festival, and all the time there’s been an Embassy here it’s been the custom for a ball to be held on Easter Tuesday. I’ve only looked in on previous occasions. I’m not much of a dancing man myself, and Nurse Palmer felt if she couldn’t dance with her fiancé then it wasn’t worth dancing at all, but if you’d like to go, Nurse Kelsey...?” he ended.
“You mean ... with you?” Jane breathed, sitting up straight. “I’d like to go very much,” she admitted. “Thank you. But not if you’d rather just ... look in, I think you said?”
“It’s time I made myself more popular,” Jim Lowth laughed. “I want some new equipment next year, and acting the hermit isn’t exactly going to help my getting, permission granted! I'd like to go too, Nurse!” he admitted, surprising himself almost as much as Jane. “I think if we could persuade Nurse Wroe to accompany us, and Dr. Dean, of course, we should make a quite presentable party. There’s no point in asking Nurse Dawlish. She doesn’t approve of such ‘goings on’ on principle!” he grinned, looking suddenly much younger. “By the way,” he rose and prepared to resume his round, “has anyone else asked you to accompany them as yet?”
“Karl Brotnovitch,” Jane admitted quietly. “I told him I was not certain whether or not I’d be on duty.”
“Well, he’s always on duty,” Jim laughed. “Even if he did accompany you, ten to one he’d be called away on some urgent business or other before the night was through, and what sort of an evening out is that, I ask you?”
He went away, humming to himself as he invariably did when he was particularly pleased by events. What, she wondered as she sat on for a few moments, thinking, could he have found to be so suddenly and so completely pleased about?
“Maybe the thought that he’s apparently scored one over the redoubtable Karl,” she reflected, then her own smile vanished as she remembered Karl’s invitation, given in such a tone that it had seemed almost more of a command.
Perhaps he couldn’t help his manner, she thought. When a man was accustomed to interrogating people, to watching for the slightest deviation from what constituted the law of the land in this part of the world, he must be apt to let his profession more or less rule his daily approach to living.
Repressing a slight shudder, she thought over the times she had seen Karl Brotnovitch since the evening he had come to her flat. Twice in the street the long black police car had slid to a halt beside her and Karl’s head had appeared, asking if she required any assistance, offering her transport back to the flat.
Twice too, he had been to the hospital; on each occasion it had been to see one of the important officials who had fallen a victim to the epidemic, but on each occasion, too, he had tried to talk to Jane alone for a moment in the office on the first occasion, hastening along one of the passageways on the second.
On both occasions she had been, with perfect truth, able to plead enormous pressure of work, and Karl had said he understood, mouthed fulsome words about her devotion to duty and her work for his beloved country, clicked his heels, bowed and withdrawn. Fortunately on the first occasion, Jane giggled as she remembered, her hands had been full of soiled linen, and on the second occasion she had been propelling a trolley, a duty which Jim had forbidden, no matter how many of the staff were ill or off duty, but on that instance she had been only too thankful to have escaped the hand-kissing she knew would have been hers in any other circumstance.
Then there had been the matter of the gift of flowers, sent to the flat without a card or note, but somehow she had sensed from whom they had come. No one else, she reflected, knew or cared where she lived. No one else, either, would have sent her a canister of tea or a box of the local iced cakes-cum-biscuits which she had grown to love.
“I expect he’s quite a nice person really,” she thought now, rising reluctantly as Nurse Dawlish approached, rustlin
g the extra sheets of dietary notes she had been working on earlier in the day.
With an effort Jane took her thoughts from Karl Brotnovitch and the problem of how she would deal with the situation which might arise when he saw she had, after all, attended the ball. Time enough to meet that difficulty when it arose, she consoled herself, and settled down to trying to sort out how best they could substitute for the citrated or peptinised milk required for the patients now recovering, until further supplies came through.
It seemed in some strange way that the advent of the Embassy ball was the signal for new life to flow through St. George’s. Not until she found herself caught up in the preparations for the great night did Jane admit, even to herself, how drab life had become during the weeks of the epidemic. Busy, rewarding, since only two patients had died out of all the number afflicted by the disease, but drab just the same. Each day had been one ceaseless round against the infection, each night a counting up of how they were faring in the battle. Now, with no new cases reported in the last ten days, and almost all those remaining in St. George’s now on the convalescent list, life began to take upon itself a more rosy hue.
A week or so before the great night Jane was sitting listening, for more than the hundredth time, she reflected, to the small store of records Ann had left behind along with her record-player. She did not hear the sound of anyone approaching her door, but there was an unmistakable tap, repeated again as she rose and went to see who was there.
“It won’t be Karl, anyhow,” she reminded herself. “His tread’s unmistakable.”
It wasn’t Karl; outside, looking as remote from the world and from everyday living as she always did except when on duty, Dorothy Wroe stood, holding a brown paper parcel.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you, Staff Nurse,” she said in her customary quiet voice, “but Mother’s always sending me parcels of material. She is a dressmaker,” a slight smile turned the corners of her mouth upwards for a moment then was gone again, “and when things go wrong for her she always finds relief in what she calls ‘creating magic.’ She doesn’t seem to realise I’ve neither the gift nor the inclination, but although I write and tell her not to do it, she persists in sending me these really beautiful materials. We couldn’t get anything like them here, and I don’t want them. I usually give them to one or other of the patients, but,” the smile again, but even fainter this time, “Nurse Dawlish says she saw the last piece of material I gave to someone up at a house as a pair of curtains, and with this,” she held out the parcel, “that would be almost sacrilegious. Look.”
She unfastened the string which bound the parcel, and Jane caught her breath as a long, shimmering roll of material escaped from its confines and spread itself before them. It was of a woven metallic fibre, shining, even in the poor light from the bulb which illuminated the stairway and landing, like a cascade of silver shot with all the colours of the rainbow.
“It’s beautiful!” Jane said gently. “That should make a really gorgeous dress!”
“For you,” Dorothy said gently, “not for me! Will you accept it, please, Staff? I’d hate this to go as someone’s curtains or bedcover—and I know two parcels I’ve handed over have ended that way.”
“Your mother would be grieved.” Jane thought of her own mother and of how hurt she would be did she dream any of her children might dispose of her gifts in the same way, but Dorothy shook her head.
“She would rather you had it, that’s true, than it went to make curtains or bedcovers,” she said sincerely. “She won’t stop sending pieces, as she calls them. She buys odd lengths and hopes,” the little smile was back and gone again almost immediately, “one day she’ll send something which will inspire me to make myself a dress which will really help ... by that she means ‘take me out of myself, another favourite expression of hers. She’ll have as much joy as I shall myself if you’ll take it, do what you can with it, and wear it to the Embassy ball. Nurse Dawlish has an old sewing machine, it was her mother's, and she brought it with her. It’s old-fashioned, but it does work, if one has a little patience.”
She was still holding out the parcel of material, and Jane did not know quite how to refuse to accept without seeming churlish. The shimmer of the material delighted her, and she knew she could make the most marvellous dress from it, if one of the others would fit her, but she could not bring herself to take it. She looked up into Dorothy’s anxious face.
“Couldn’t you—wouldn’t you—like to give it a try and make this into something for yourself, my dear?” she asked gently. “If you’d let me help you, we could make it into the perfect ball gown.”
“That’s why I want you to have it,” Dorothy’s rather sallow-complexioned, thin face puckered suddenly, almost childishly. “You are the loveliest person I’ve ever met, Staff, and I mean that. I’ve' heaps more material tucked away. Nurse Dawlish won’t have any of it, she says it’s all too frivolous for her taste, and I think she’s right. She wouldn’t go to the ball in any event, someone has to stay here on duty and she would be happier that way. I want you to have this, please! It was made for someone like you, and for that someone to wear to attract the abstract attention of the man she loves and who doesn’t see her as anything other than a starched uniform and a pair of ministering hands! Dr. Jim’s not human sometimes,” she went on with a totally unexpected, passionate bitterness. “I suppose the correct term is he’s dedicated, but that’s small comfort, as I well know. If my second fiancé had not been so ‘dedicated’,” she said very quietly, “he wouldn’t have been killed. He took someone else’s flight because his friend was facing a family crisis. If he’d not done that...”
“I’m sorry.” Jane knew her face had turned white and that, for no reason at all, she was shaking from head to foot. It had been a great shock to realise that Dorothy Wroe had guessed what she had believed to be her secret and hers alone. Now the other nurse was looking compassionately at her, and Jane wondered wildly how much anyone else guessed of the secret she had not admitted, even to herself, until earlier that afternoon.
“Don’t be,” Nurse Wroe said quietly and calmly. “It was all over a long time ago, but that was the second time, and I know I can’t be meant for love. I wouldn’t have experienced this same defeat twice, and with two such wonderful men, otherwise. It’s different for you,” she suddenly sounded much more confident. “I’m of Scots descent, and I’m supposed to take after my great-grandmother who was said to be ‘fey.’ You are meant for love, Staff. You are intended to have a happy, successful and emotionally trouble-free life. I feel it in my bones Dr. Jim’s the one for you, but I know he’ll need that pointing out to him by any means in our power. That’s what made me thing of this material,” she admitted, returning to the subject of her visit and holding out the parcel once again. “Please take it. I’m not so clever as my mother, not by a long way, but it would give me great pleasure to help you make this into something you’d normally only dream about!”
Jane, who never in her life had spent much time dreaming of clothes and their effect on other people when worn by herself, could only think of the more personal side of their discussion.
“How did you know?” she asked in awed tones. “And does anyone else ... guess? I didn’t realise it myself until a little while ago,” she admitted.
“No one else has guessed,” Dorothy said simply. “I think only those who know what it is to love wholeheartedly and with a sense of devotion ever know when it’s happened to someone else. That’s how I knew, I’m certain. Nurse Dawlish, poor soul, doesn’t believe in love of any kind.” A wry smile touched her mouth for a moment. “She believes all love between men and women is a matter of biological expediency, or so she says. The love of parents for their children has never touch her. She had a most unhappy home-life, and her brothers and sisters were sent to various institutions at an early age, so there’s never been any knowledge of family love.' She would never believe it, not even if you told her yourself.”
“Th
ere isn’t anything to tell,” Jane said flatly. “And I don’t suppose there ever will be! Dr. Jim’s much too busy for that sort of thing.”
“All the more reason he needs convincing there’s a place for love in the busiest of lives,” Dorothy said firmly. “And you’d be so good for each other, as well as for the community at large, working as a team.” Despite herself Jane’s attention was caught and held. In the dim light from the weak bulb above, the material shimmered and gleamed, and, after all, it seemed unkind to refuse an offer so generously made. She heard a slight movement in the hallway below and knew the caretaker was watching and listening, even if he didn’t understand most of what was being said. She acted—and spoke—on impulse.
“Come inside,” she invited. “There’s a better light, and we can think what is the right thing to do with this wonderful gift.”
She wasn’t ever really certain how she was persuaded into doing all this, but persuaded she was. Perhaps the beauty of the material itself wove a spell, perhaps Dorothy Wroe’s undoubted enthusiasm for her idea served its purpose. Whatever the reason, the two of them spent the following two to three hours, pinning, snipping and tacking the gleaming fabric, moulding it to Jane’s slender form so that it clung to her figure most of its length, then splayed out into a fuller skirt which caught the light in shimmering beauty as, insecurely tacked as it was, Jane tried it on and paraded before Dorothy’s admiring if critical gaze.
The sewing was less troublesome. Although she remained as firm-lipped and off-hand as ever, Nurse Dawlish proved surprisingly helpful when it came to the actual work.
Nurse Kelsey Abroad Page 10