Ring O' Roses

by Lucilla Andrews

  Joss handed me a clean handkerchief. ‘Haven’t seen you weep since you got measles on your eighth birthday.’

  ‘Ninth,’ I wailed. ‘And what’s wrong with my fancying a bit of slop?’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong, dearie. There, there ‒’ he patted then gripped my hand and his manner changed. ‘You’re running a temp,’ he said very quietly.

  Nina had remembered us. ‘Come in! Come in!’ My face caused no comment as every woman present was now happily mopping her eyes. After one, and dynamic, drink to the Professor’s return and a fresh orgy of handshaking and congratulations, we were taken to our rooms to change for the massive dinner party due directly the smaller children were in bed. ‘Late for them,’ said Nina, ‘but a great family occasion they had to share.’

  Arne put down my suitcase. ‘Speaking frankly, we are a family-minded people. You join us soon, no? We will have a great celebration!’

  I smiled till they closed the door then flopped on the bed. The aquavite had finished me off. Incapable of thought, I lay with my eyes closed listening to Arne explaining to Joss the finer points of the new bathroom they had installed between the guest rooms that were later to be the girls’ bedrooms. Then Joss said something about remembering he needed something I had for him in my case and had knocked on my door and come in before I was off the bed. He shut the door and leant against it. ‘Second time round?’

  I flopped back. ‘I’ve been hoping not all afternoon, but I’m horribly afraid so. I could kill myself for bringing it here. What am I going to do?’

  He did not answer, at first. He came and sat on the side of the bed, took my pulse, felt my forehead with the back of his hand, looked down my throat, then fingered the glands in my neck. He produced a thermometer, shook it down and smiled very kindly. ‘Speaking frankly, darling, I suggest your best bet is to call me Sister Florence.’

  Chapter Twelve

  The house had been built on a small plateau blasted out of the side of a mountain. The window of my room overlooked the roofs of tower flats and box houses similarly perched and a fjord below. Across the water were high green hills and then mountains rising one behind the other as they had from the sea, and their colour kept changing. Black, blue, sepia, purple; each time I looked a different shade, each time the same impression of continuing to eternity.

  From Friday night to Tuesday morning that was my only view of Norway. By mutual consent, since the elderly and very young are particularly susceptible to ’flu and its complications and the household included both age groups, Joss was my only human contact. The very little nursing I needed, he did very well. And he never came in without a message of regret and sympathy from one of the family. On Sunday evening he delivered another from the Professor with my supper-tray. I said I was sorry to be in purdah, but even yesterday when I had felt like death, it had been a tremendous relief that the family had the intelligence to realize that this was the only way to cut down the risk.

  ‘That doesn’t so much need intelligence as imagination. Much rarer, but they’ve got it.’ He put the tray on the dressing stool he had turned into a bed-table. ‘Not hungry? Don’t let it bug you. What you can’t eat I’ll get rid of before anyone sees it when I wash up.’ He sat on the foot of my bed. He was wearing a white drip-dry, scarlet cravat and black cords and looked very nice. He tanned easily and after the sea and northern air he could have been in the sun weeks. ‘Nina’s given me a fish-kettle as my crockery sterilizer. I now know why nurses have asbestos hands. Two days on the job, and I can pluck anything from boiling water.’

  My temperature an hour ago had been normal for the first time since I took it in Stavanger. We hoped that was because I had the forty-eight-hour type, but as I was packed with aspirin and prophylactic antibiotics it was too early to tell. Joss, like every other doctor I knew of, never travelled without his private emergency supply of the latter. That saved us bothering Nina’s doctor, and as I had started coughing on Friday night, very probably saved me from having bronchitis. I now had no trace of a cough and was feeling sufficiently better to be conscious I looked a wreck and thoroughly peevish. ‘Your halo, Joss, is blinding me.’

  He laughed. ‘Thank God, yours has slipped! Your unnerving docility has had me wondering if I should ring Canada. Did I tell you Arne’s contacted the shipping company? Sorry, thought I had ‒’ he added before I could raise an objection. ‘Obviously, you can’t travel tomorrow ‒’

  ‘Joss, if it’s the forty-eight hour ‒ can’t I?’

  ‘Over my dead body, dearie,’ he said pleasantly, ‘and Arne’s, and Nina’s, and the Prof’s ‒ may I go on?’ I nodded, glumly. ‘The company have been very decent. If you’re clear, they can fix us up on Wednesday, if not on the next ship back, which’ll be Saturday. The Alesunds are hoping that’s what it’ll be ‒ my God!’

  ‘Wednesday you’re due in Edinburgh?’

  ‘No. I’ve written to Naomi and chums. But I haven’t written to Miss Evans. Could be time, but to be safe I had better cable. What time are you due on on Wednesday?’

  ‘I’m not.’ I fiddled with my salmon mousse and explained. There was a short silence. Then, ‘That’s handy.’

  I looked up and he looked out of the window. ‘Miss Evans didn’t tell me what domestic reasons.’

  ‘She wouldn’t, as they’re strictly personal. Not that I feel the cloak and dagger are necessary, but I’m not Naomi.’ He faced me, slowly. ‘Handy, but the hell of a waste of a holiday.’

  ‘Not exactly fun for you, home-nursing in foreign parts. Dead bore.’

  ‘That what you think?’ He winced extravagantly. ‘There goes my ego! I’ve been fancying myself with my lamp!’

  ‘Joss, to be fair ‒’

  ‘For God’s sake, don’t now tell me I’ve got a vocation, or I’ll know you’re having a relapse. Oak or elm? As you were ‒ wrong country ‒ pine? And do you positively insist on brass handles?’

  I smiled weakly. ‘You are a fool! No. You do lay a real cool hand on a fevered brow.’

  ‘Watch it, or you’ll get my cool hands round your fevered throat.’ He stood up, smiling. ‘We ministering angels have our feelings. I shall now go and soothe mine by having the remains of my ego hammered by the Prof.’

  ‘More chess? But you’re very good.’

  He shook his head. ‘Not in his league. Whatever ails his leg, his brain’s first-rate.’

  ‘Is his leg playing up?’

  ‘No more than one would expect seeing what he does with it. He’s scaring the daylights out of us all with the chances he takes, but as he says, plenty of time to rest when he’s dead.’ He nodded at my tray. ‘You eat all that up and you’ll grow into a big strong girl and be able to go home on Wednesday.’

  I did a Dolly with my eyelashes. ‘Yes, Sister Florence.’

  ‘Wait.’ he said, ‘wait until you see me in my purple satin. That’ll really send you.’ He blew me a kiss and went off smiling. I went right off my food, but forced it down. He was being so damned kind, I had to co-operate. For the same reason, when he tentatively suggested next day ringing his mother and my going straight to the vicarage to convalesce until the weekend when he presumed I would want to be back in London, I agreed. I would have done so had he suggested I convalesced on the next moon-shot. He promptly took my temperature. ‘I thought so. Subnormal. Depression setting in nicely. Whose throat do you want to cut first? Yours or mine?’

  My temperature stayed down and none of the family showed any signs of catching my ’flu, or went down with it later. At the farewell dinner-party on Tuesday night, Arne’s brother Olaf suggested I had picked up an indigenous variety from some fellow-traveller and that could account for them all having some immunity. Olaf, a lawyer, was the elder and better-looking brother, though neither could be described as anything but plain. They were both large men with powerful shoulders, egg-shaped heads with scrubbing-brush hair-cuts and pale blue eyes that in repose had the same strange innocence I had first noticed in Nina’s, but seemed even
stranger in obviously successful professional men in their mid-thirties. I had never seen that innocence in the face of any adult Englishman of any age or background.

  Joss said, ‘This is quite possible, Cathy, and why it hit you so hard, though it’s obviously a milder, shorter variety.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you get it?’

  ‘I just don’t get ’flu now.’

  There was a universal groan. ‘Joss,’ I exclaimed, ‘how can you so smugly ask for trouble?’

  ‘I wasn’t being smug. Just stating a fact.’ He looked round the candle-lit table. Being a gala occasion, the cheap electricity was turned off. ‘English hospitals have some kind of ’flu epidemic every year. Don’t ask me how I’ve missed out, year after year. I just have.’

  Nina said, ‘I know why! There is an English poet ‒ what is it ‒ a pure heart?’

  ‘His strength,’ observed the Professor drily, ‘is as the strength of ten because his heart is pure. Alfred Lord Tennyson.’

  Joss raised his glass. ‘Skål, Nina.’

  The Professor’s blue eyes had seen too much for innocence. He glanced from me to Joss. ‘I have known learned psychiatrists who would say you owed your good health not to any immunity from any virus, but from an immunity to the desire to escape into illness. Is that so? Ah, no!’ He answered himself. ‘That is a foolish question since such desires are too deep in the sub-conscious to be ‒ to be ‒ fished up, at will. Or even for us to be aware of their presence. The layers of the sub-conscious go deeper than the depth of the Atlantic and are as crowded with blind, unknown shapes as are the deep waters. But, I tell you something! Something less serious but of great interest. Have you looked upon an octopus, eh?’

  ‘Octopus?’ Joss echoed as the entire family bellowed with laughter.

  The Professor said they could laugh, but only because the octopus had not climbed out of the sea before man. ‘I tell you! Such is the intelligence of that marine creature ‒ nothing in the sea can compare. Such grace, such delicacy, has the suckered arms of that mollusc ‒ such wisdom in that head ‒’ he turned to me. ‘You have not seen our Aquarium. Next time, I take you. Next time, we will have a great party. In Bergen we know how to give great parties, no?’

  ‘Speaking frankly,’ said Arne, ‘yes! Bring Cathy back soon, Joss!’

  ‘Very soon,’ added Nina.

  ‘You understand, Yoss? We will not wait too long for this next party. No waiting.’ The Professor raised his glass. ‘Now we drink a little toast to our English guests.’ He hauled himself up on the arms of his high-backed chair and balanced on his good leg and one hand on the table. Joss and I alone remained seated and staring at our plates. ‘To Cathy and Yoss, but for whom three of us would not be here tonight. Skål.’

  ‘Skål,’ chorused the family.

  We thanked them and rose with our own glasses.

  ‘One minute, Yoss.’ The old man looked at us with an odd little smile. ‘One more, then you may make a pretty speech, eh? First, I ask you two something. At Christmas, you’ve seen the tree from Norway in London?’

  ‘Every year.’

  ‘You know why it is there?’

  We both flushed. Joss said, ‘Well ‒ er ‒ nice gesture after the war.’

  ‘A nice gesture?’ The Professor nodded to himself. ‘Very English. So, I tell you something, my young, very English, friends.’ He looked slowly at the faces of his family. ‘It is my belief and one I share with all here old enough to remember, that we are in this room tonight, because of your country.’ He paused as the elders nodded, then went on in an unemotional tone that heightened the emotional moment. ‘We saw our world collapse. We heard the world say England must collapse and our hearts were sick with the despair men only know when hope is dying. But England did not collapse. And we could hope again. Without hope, man is finished. With hope, the impossible is possible. Your country ‒ do not forget ‒ your country alone ‒ gave back hope to Europe and maybe, the world. So, we send you a tree.’ He lifted his glass. ‘The toast is England.’

  Leaning on the rail as the ship inched from the land next morning, Joss said, ‘Follow that, he said.’

  ‘You did all right.’ I borrowed a handkerchief to wave back at the farewell party on the quay. The turn-out was even larger than on our arrival, as it now included the elder Alesunds and two little girls. Arne’s mother had kissed us both. ‘Such a heavy boy for you to carry. Such a heavy boy! Not goodbye. Until next time!’

  Every adult repeated those last five words. The children echoed them parrot-wise, shouting them over and over through the fine rain as they waved wild, macaroni arms. The Professor was doing his stork act on his good leg and had his second crutch tucked under his arm like a walking stick to free his hand waving a red-spotted handkerchief. Joss said we had better get behind the sun-lounge glass before the old man finally broke his back slipping, or I got pneumonia. ‘Feeling like chewed string? Sit down and I’ll get us a drink. Or are you too wet?’ He seemed about to touch my coat then changed his mind and put his hand in his pocket.

  ‘Hasn’t gone through.’

  I sat on the arm of a chair, watching the tugs pulling and pushing our ship right across the harbour to turn us round. The rain turned much heavier, the fjord was gunmetal, and the greyness matched my mood. And Joss’s. When he came back with our drinks, he stood fairly near, but we did not talk.

  The huge warehouses on the waterside shrank to matchboxes; the yellow, the blue, the green, the tan, the white box houses changed back into toys; the seven mountains of Bergen receded behind the curtain of water and the ship’s screws began to throb. The dark mountains round the entrance to the fjord were ominously close and their crests were hidden in the low sky. Just there, the fjord turned a dramatic emerald green, and the alteration of the ship’s motion was as dramatic when we moved into the cold grey and impatient sea.

  I steadied myself against the gentle roll as I got off the chair. ‘Would you mind if I go and get things organized in my cabin?’

  Joss shot me a rather peculiar look but only said that was a good idea and he’d do the same.

  We were returning by another ship, but being from the same company our single berth upper deck cabins were almost identical with those on the outward voyage, though now side by side. This had vastly amused our hosts. ‘Boy and girl next door again, eh?’ I had laughed dutifully, but felt if I heard that corny joke again I would probably scream. When we reached our doors, Joss unlocked mine for me, handed me back the key and unlocked his own. ‘I’ll give you a shout for second lunch,’ he said as the occupant of the third in the trio came into the narrow corridor.

  She was a solid lady in sensible tweeds with short iron-grey hair battened down with a black velvet bandeau. ‘Fellow Brits homeward bound? Miss Bilson!’ Her handshake hurt. ‘Just down from the Arctic Circle. Been up there? You should! Wonderful skies, wonderful sunsets. D.V., I’ll go back! Always return when possible. First ‒ look-see; second ‒ get the feel. Used to tell my girls ‒ taught forty years for my sins ‒ you can’t get the feel of a poem, picture, or place at first sight. Get the taste second time and never gulp. No taste when you gulp.’ Her small eyes appraised us and my ungloved hands with interest rather than curiosity. ‘Only done this crossing once? Mind some advice from an old salt? They say the sea may be choppy, which means roughly a Force 7 to 8 gale. Take a couple of anti-seasick tablets before we leave Stavanger and you’ll enjoy your dinner tonight ‒ particularly you, young woman! Bit green round the gills, already ‒ but forgive me! First sitting! I must rendezvous with the cold table!’ She bounded off.

  I leant against my doorway. ‘Never have I felt so inadequate.’

  Joss smiled politely and suggested I put my feet up until lunch. After lunch he suggested I had an afternoon snooze. Whilst the ship was in Stavanger we drank coffee in the lounge and read good books. He provided me with a social history of England and himself with one on Scotland. ‘I thought you only read history before and during exams, Joss?
’

  ‘No.’ He didn’t look up. ‘To each his own form of escapism.’

  I watched covertly his intent, unguarded face. With his present tan he could be a southern Italian until he opened his mouth. Not really good-looking, but the type of looks that turned every female head in the dining-room and this lounge. I thought of a remark some woman made to Byron. ‘I shall long remember the gentleness of your manner and the wild originality of your countenance.’ I knew what she meant.

  He glanced up. I looked quickly at my book until my ears stopped drumming. We continued reading till the ship sailed. Watching the whole process while we were at supper, Joss switched back to the fraternal heartiness he had brought to a fine art over the weekend. As we knew each other too well, I knew we were equally relieved when I went to bed early.

  One of the things that weekend underlined for me was the effect of early childhood on adult character. Being the eldest child in our two families looking after the girls had been bred into Joss before he lost his milk teeth. Also, consideration. As children we had known ‒ as children invariably do ‒ that while his parents loved him, his father had preferred Ruth, and his mother Danny. They were a singularly devoted couple and possibly when Joss had been born had unconsciously resented his intrusion. My father frequently said the odd child out in any family generally ended up the pick of the bunch if only because he or she early learnt the necessities of adaptability and unselfishness. ‘Providing the child’s character is strong enough to shrug off the inevitable chip.’ Having been the apple of his eye and Paul of my mother’s, in his lifetime I had not properly understood that. I had begun to do so in Canada, and, as I only clearly saw now, that was mainly why I had returned to England. Finding oneself for the first time in one’s life as an outsider in one’s own family was a disturbing experience. In my case, so disturbing that I had not dared face it until I got right away. As my bunk pitched and rolled, not unpleasantly as I had taken Miss Bilson’s advice, I wondered uneasily how far I would have to get away from Joss, before I could view him as dispassionately. Then I wondered about Naomi’s problem and Joss’s burying himself in Scottish history. If the past was any guide to the present, all three of us had our problems, right now.