Nurse in Waiting

by Jane Arbor

  “Well, I didn’t lunch at all. I looked in at Mikey Mo’s quoits stall and I spent more than I meant to, throwing for a powder-bowl I wanted to give to Mums. That’s what I call Mrs. Carnehill,” she explained with rapid politeness to Joanna. “But whenever I nearly got the range of it, Mikey began to say, ‘Arrah, the divil take this dust’, and he went round flicking everything with a piece of rag and managing to move the bowl a bit farther away. So I didn’t really have enough money left for lunch; I bought some chocolate and ate it on the way home. But I’m still starving. Pass me a biscuit, Roger—there’s a dear!”

  She munched greedily and then said again: “What do you think? Wait now, till I tell you! I’ve told the whole of Bambino’s next litter—when it arrives!”

  “Who to?” asked Roger ungrammatically.

  “That woman-breeder from Athlone who bought the others. She was in Naas today, and I met her.”

  She stirred one of the dogs on the floor gently with her foot.

  “Be an angel, Bambina, and produce a lot!” she urged.

  Again Roger Carnehill glanced obliquely at Joanna, a look which she caught, but which for the moment she did not understand. It was with a kind of impish provocation that he said meaningly:

  “Maybe Bambina will, maybe she won’t. The even tenor of her way is likely to be upset. At any minute now she may be dismissed from the presence!”

  Shuan had knelt in order to caress the dog’s silky golden ears. But at his words she looked up sharply. “Dismissed? What do you mean? What has she done?”

  He shrugged his shoulders and threw another significant glance in Joanna’s direction. “I’m not dismissing her!” he said.

  The girl’s look of inquiry shifted too, while a dark flush rose slowly from her throat to her face.

  “But Bambina is always allowed in here,” she protested. “So are the other two. Have you said they are not to come any more?”

  For a moment or two Joanna did not reply. She felt puzzled, and she was annoyed with her patient for having twisted this barb of irritation from something she had not said. Perhaps this was indeed evidence of the ‘black mood’ dreaded by his mother. If so, as she herself had assured the older woman, it was no more than a sick man’s caprice and must be dealt with accordingly. So, as equably as she could, she said:

  “I’ve given no orders about the dogs!”

  “But you’ve wanted to! Your first impression was—quite obviously—‘Too much furniture. Too much dog.’ Wasn’t it, now?” challenged Roger.

  Aware that her first thoughts had indeed been along such lines, Joanna still managed to say evenly: “I didn’t realize that I was so transparent, and first impressions aren’t always to be relied upon, are they? In any case, I haven’t any authority to give orders, except under Dr. Beltane’s instructions.”

  Shuan was looking from one to the other bewilderedly.

  “Well, Beltie knows all about the dogs,” she put in defiantly. “They’ve always been here when he has come to see Roger. Surely you don’t mean to put it into his mind now that they oughtn’t to come in—that they’re unhealthy or anything!”

  Calmly Joanna held out her hand for Roger’s cup, set it on the tray which she picked up. As she turned towards the door she smiled at Shuan, deliberately leaving Roger out.

  “Do believe that I’ve said nothing at all about the dogs being here or not,” she said in a conciliatory tone. “Mr. Carnehill knows that quite well. I daresay he is only teasing.”

  But there was no answering smile from the girl. She looked hurt and apprehensive—far more so than the little misunderstanding warranted. It was as if she had suddenly seen Joanna as an intruder, as a threat to some way of life or habit which she treasured. At a gesture from Roger she moved over to open the door for Joanna, but she said nothing at all.

  Outside, Joanna was surprised to find that her hands holding the tray were trembling very slightly.

  She disliked scenes and was inclined to blame herself completely for any which involved a patient. But had the one which had just passed been in any way her fault? Surely not. It had been Roger Carnehill who had used his too-keen perception to bait her upon some dictatorial attitude which she had been careful to avoid, but against which he was overready to defend himself in advance. He had deliberately created that ‘brush’ of hostility between her and the younger girl!

  She began to think about Roger Carnehill, being caught into the interest of him as a ‘case’, and being anxious, out of her newly awakened liking and admiration for his mother, to do her very best by him.

  She was going to succeed with him—she must! But first of all she must get his co-operation. Was he going to give that easily—or not?

  Before she went back to the sickroom she rang up Dr. Beltane’s Tulleen number.

  He answered the telephone himself, inquired briskly about her journey and when she had arrived, and then said:

  “Frankly, I’m glad you are there, Nurse. I think we may see some improvement in the patient now. But I warn you—he may need handling. Part of his difficulty is psychological as much as physical, I suspect. But I’ll be over at Carrieghmere in the morning. I’ll talk to you then.”

  “Thank you. Doctor,” replied Joanna. “I’m afraid I am rather in the dark as to the history of his case. Mrs. Carnehill seemed to imply that he gets depressed and moody.”

  “Yes. he does. I tell you—he wants handling. Any difficulties so far?”

  “No—none,” hedged Joanna. “I’m going back to him now—to make him ready for the night.”

  “Good. Well, I’ll see you in the morning, Nurse. Goodbye.”

  She returned to Roger to find that Shuan was no longer with him. He was reading and did not at first look up when she began to move about, doing some deft and unobtrusive tidying of the room.

  But when she had finished and turned round to ask him about the making of his bed she found that his eyes were upon her.

  She put her question, and he replied laconically:

  “Shuan and Cook—being the sturdiest members of the household—usually do it between them. If you yank twice at that bell-rope someone will come. It’s a recognized signal.”

  He watched her find the bell-rope and pull it. Then he said;

  “Don’t you think I paved the way rather well—for the ultimate dismissal of Bambina and Co., I mean?”

  “If that was your object, I think you did it extraordinarily clumsily,” retorted Joanna briskly. “You upset Miss Ferrall quite unnecessarily.”

  “But you mean them to go, don’t you? Don’t you?” he persisted.

  “I certainly don’t think that three dogs of that size are suitable as permanent inhabitants of a sickroom,” Joanna admitted. “But—”

  “But you meant to go about their dismissal oh so tactfully and quietly! Almost so that no one would realize they had gone—until they had! But I warned you that you would have to fight Shuan about it—”

  “—And proceeded to make quite sure that I should!” put in Joanna imperturbably. “It doesn’t matter about me. I can take care of myself. But you knew Miss Ferrall would be hurt at the suggestion that I—”

  “Oh, call her Shuan, for goodness’ sake!” It was his first sign of ordinary irritation since the scene with his mother. Joanna wondered whether it was a healthy sign or not, but felt that she would rather deal with plain irritability than an oblique kind of hostility which it was difficult to pin down.

  “Well, ‘Shuan’, then,” she said. “You knew that she wouldn’t like the idea. So why did you do it?”

  He looked at her oddly. “Shock tactics—for you!” he said unexpectedly. “I was having a small bet with myself as to whether, being put to it, you would go all briskly professional and show the courage of your conviction that all that dog was too much of a good thing, or whether you would back down. You backed down, of course. I was disappointed in you.”

  “Indeed!” Joanna did not know whether to be annoyed or amused as he went on calm
ly:

  “Yes. And you needn’t suppose Shuan would have been really hurt. She would merely have enjoyed a fight. We all do. Haven’t you heard of that as being a characteristic of our race?”

  “Yes, I have. But I didn’t know you indulged it in your private lives. Nor that it would be considered quite fair to involve a stranger who couldn’t be expected to know the rules of the game!” retorted Joanna.

  The blue eyes flashed mockingly. “But my dear Joanna, in an Irish fight there are no ‘rules of the game’! The only concern of anybody is whether it is a private affair, or whether anyone can join in! Your own cartoonists have been telling you that for years!”

  Baffled as to how far to take him seriously, Joanna gave it up and was saved from further argument by the appearance at the door of the fat cook who had shown her to her room.

  Together they worked at the task of making her patient comfortable for the night, and then Joanna went to her room to change for dinner.

  While she dressed she remembered her cavalier of Tulleen station—Justin McKiley—and his suggestion that she might want to seek at the Dower House some light relief from her job at Carrieghmere.

  She smiled to herself. Was it possible that he guessed some of the difficulties she was going to encounter at what he called “The House” before she became used to its casual, unconventional atmosphere and to the moods of her patient? Perhaps that had been his method of holding out a friendly hand to a stranger; perhaps, too, she would be glad to take advantage of it one day even though at first she had not been sure that she liked him.

  Remembering the chilly atmosphere of the dining-room, she put on a warm dark frock and went downstairs to find that Shuan was there, wearing a grey woollen dress which was too colourless for her and In which she looked gauche and slightly uncomfortable. Mrs. Carnehill had merely discarded the check apron and had the appearance of having powdered her nose too hastily.

  She seemed to have recovered her spirits, and at sight of Joanna she smiled warmly.

  “D’you see now,” she asked rhetorically, “what a help you have been to me already! I’ve been able to catch up on work which should have been done days ago, and when I looked in on Roger before I came in to dinner he seemed quite cheerful!”

  “I’m glad of that,” said Joanna, not without irony. Cheerful—at my expense! was what she was thinking.

  “Yes. You know, I ought to be frank with you and tell you that when the suggestion of having a nurse for Roger was first mentioned by Dr. Beltane and backed up by Colonel Kimstone, I didn’t like the idea at all. Maybe I was even a bit jealous at the thought of anyone else—a stranger—helping to look after him! But now I believe it will be good for him to have him someone as fresh and young as you are.”

  Shuan’s head, which had been bent over her soup, came up sharply. Mrs. Carnehill looked at her questioningly and then, with a smile, reached over to give the girl’s cheek a gentle pinch.

  “There, alannah!” she said. “We know Roger has you too! But between us, we haven’t got him to the point where he is able to get about again and so be free of the lot of us. Maybe now, with Joanna to help us, we’ll see him improve beyond recognition!”

  It was clear to Joanna that Mrs. Carnehill was courageously trying to convince herself that a hope she had cherished for a long time was about to be fulfilled. And she began to wish, both for the older woman’s sake and her own, that Roger Carnehill’s illness was an acute one, instead of one over which hung, like an ominous warning, that suggestion of his doctor’s that his trouble was ‘psychological as much as physical’. That might mean anything. And as Joanna knew only too well, a sick mind could hinder a sick body indefinitely.

  She was glad when her hostess changed the subject by asking her ward how she had fared at Naas market.

  “Well enough,” returned the girl listlessly. “I think I remembered everything I went for. And I’ve sold Bambino’s next litter.”

  “You have, so? That’s grand news. And how much did you spend with Mikey Mo on the strength of it?” teased Mrs. Carnehill.

  “Not too much. But I didn’t get anything.” From Shuan’s eyes flashed a note of warning which Joanna took to mean that the elusive powder-bowl was not to be mentioned, and Joanna reflected that the girl was as vulnerable and as single-minded as a child. Her reaction to Roger’s ill-timed piece of mischief had been a childishly defensive one, and so too had been her sharp lift of the head at Mrs. Carnehill’s innocent suggestion that Roger needed someone ‘fresh and young’ about him. And now even the gift which had not materialized was to be kept a secret.

  “I believe we can like each other, she and I,” thought Joanna. “After all, it isn’t her fault that we stepped off on the wrong foot almost as soon as we met!”

  Mrs. Carnehill was teasing: “I can’t think why you bother with that black thief of a Mikey! Couldn’t you buy in a shop, for the price of one of his quoit-rings, all the rubbish on his stall?”

  “Not in Naas,” objected Shuan quickly. “Nor in Tulleen. Now and then he has lovely things!”

  “Well, in Dublin then?”

  “But I hardly ever get to Dublin! I haven’t been since—” Shuan stopped and threw a swift glance in Joanna’s direction.

  “You mean—since you chose the furnishing for Joanna’s room? Why, neither you have.” Mrs. Carnehill turned to Joanna. “Did you like your room? Do you know, Shuan arranged it all herself?”

  “I thought it charming,” said Joanna quietly. And again found herself puzzled by this new facet to Shuan. She could consider a trinket on a quoits-stall “lovely”, and yet she had maturity enough to furnish a room in quiet good taste. What an odd mixture the girl was!

  “You’ll have to go to Dublin,” Mrs. Carnehill went on, turning to Joanna. “Justin would take you both in his car one day. I wonder what you’ll think of the city?” she added. “We love it, of course. But people from England usually consider it dirty and slovenly, compared with English cities or even with Belfast. I admit that its slums are rather in evidence—”

  “Are they?” asked Joanna interestedly.

  “I’m afraid so. Streets of fine Georgian mansions have become slums, and only within a hundred yards or so of O’Connell Street, bless its heart!”

  They compared cities during the rest of the meal. Then Mrs. Carnehill announced that she was going to spend an hour with Roger.

  When she had gone Shuan said ungraciously:

  “You didn’t say anything about the powder-bowl to Mums?”

  “No. I didn’t think you wanted me to,” said Joanna gently. “You didn’t, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t.” Then, as if ashamed of having entered into alliance with Joanna even by so much as a glance, she added with assumed carelessness: “Not particularly, that is. But it didn’t matter really. If it’s still there, I dare say I can get it for her next week.”

  “I hope you will,” Joanna assured her. But to that there was no reply, so after a minute or two’s silence she tried again.

  “Do you know, I admired my room directly I saw it? I remember wondering who had arranged it for me. That particular shade of green is awfully restful.”

  There was a pause. Then Shuan said sullenly: “You don’t have to be polite about it, you know.”

  Taken aback, Joanna still managed to reply gently: “You mean—you didn’t do it for me personally, so that there’s no need for me to pretend I like it if I don’t? But that seems to make you all the more clever—to have arranged a room as tasteful and as pleasing as mine, for someone you had never seen!”

  Shuan, however, would not come even half-way to friendship. She muttered: “I didn’t do it for anyone but Mums—because she wanted me to, and she gave me a free hand. Whatever she may say about being ‘jealous’ of a nurse, once Beltie and Colonel Kimstone had talked her into it she clutched at the idea. But I never wanted you, and neither did Roger really. For her own sake Mums pretends that he did, but Roger hates being interfered with and ‘manag
ed’. We didn’t need you; Roger would have got well without you!”

  The childish show of petulance left Joanna almost speechless. But she said coolly: “Aren’t you making a lot of difficulties where they don’t exist? And magnifying my importance? Of course Mr. Carnehill’s recovery doesn’t depend on whether I’m here or not! But isn’t it—his recovery, I mean—something we can all work for and share in when it happens? I should like to think it would be so—”

  “But it won’t! It can’t be the same any more!” broke in the girl passionately. “It will be you who will take Beltie’s orders about Roger; it will be you who will try to rearrange everything about him. Look at the dogs, this afternoon! You must have said something—Roger wouldn’t have made it up! I’ve always heard that about nurses—they never can leave things as they find them. But it won’t work with Roger—he hates change, and if you try to force it on him you’ll only make an enemy of him in the end!”

  “My dear Shuan—I may call you Shuan, mayn’t I?—do realize that if I made a habit of making ‘enemies’ out of my patients, soon I shouldn’t have the chance of attending anyone. After all, one of your own friends. Colonel Kimstone, did suggest to Mrs. Carnehill that I might be of help to her with Mr. Carnehill. And that’s all I can be—a help, another pair of hands, perhaps a bit more skilled than yours or his mother’s. But I can’t take your place with him—or hers. She realizes that—so why can’t you? Why, you’ve known him since you were a little girl, Mrs. Carnehill tells me. You’ve grown up beside him, and he must be like a brother to you now. Between you there must be a hundred links which, however interfering I tried to be, I could never hope to break—”

  She stopped at sight of the girl’s widely staring eyes and rapidly blinking lashes. Shuan said quickly: “You—oh, you don’t understand—!”