Something Stupid

by Victoria Corby

  I patted her hand, saying what you always do: that it’s a common operation doesn’t even hurt much, nothing to it, she’d be out of hospital within days. But it didn’t seem to console her much. ‘Would you like me to ring Stefano?’ I asked at last.

  ‘Yes, please,’ she breathed, looking as if all her prob­lems were about to be solved for her, but then her face fell. ‘We haven’t done anything about the faun yet.’

  ‘I expect that’ll be the last thing on his mind when he hears you’re about to be operated on. And if he asks, you can always pretend you’re still woozy from the anaesthetic.’

  She nodded slowly. ‘And I do want him here so much,’ she wailed, eyes filling with tears. ‘I’m sorry, Laura, you’re being tremendous, but you aren’t him.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m not at all offended. The card with all his numbers on it is still in my purse, I’ll go and ring him straight away.’

  ‘Do you think he’ll come?’

  I smiled at her. ‘Of course he will, you dolt!’ If he didn’t I’d go around there and fetch him myself.

  The fates must have been smiling on me. The pay phone at the end of the ward wasn’t being used and I actually had enough change for it without making the usual embarrassing journey down to the newspaper shop in the lobby and offering a five-pound note in payment for a packet of Polos. Except that when I rang the flat a female voice said sharply, ‘Pronto.’

  ‘May I speak to Stefano, please?’

  ‘Who is it that is on the telephone?’ asked the voice I guessed belonged to one of Stefano’s sisters. Even if I hadn’t heard Cressida’s descriptions of her sisters-in-law I would still have taken an instant dislike to her on the basis of the cold arrogance of her tone. Mentally I begged Cressida’s pardon for thinking she’d exaggerated.

  ‘Laura Moreton.’

  ‘My brother has no wish to speak to you.’ And the telephone was slammed down.

  I took a deep breath. I resisted hitting the telephone or shouting abuse at it. After all it was quite innocent of any crime. I made a couple of mental wax images of rude, poisonous Italian witches and spent an enjoyable minute sticking imaginary pins into them. Then I took another deep breath and redialled. When that haughty voice answered I said in a broad London accent, ‘Count Stefano Buonotti, if you please, missus. This is Sergeant Caldwell from Kennington Police Station. At once, missus. This is urgent.’

  Much to my surprise it worked. Being Italian she wasn’t able to tell how unconvincing my South London accent is. Stefano was on the line within thirty seconds. ‘What is the matter, Sergeant?’

  ‘The matter is that Cressida’s in hospital and your sister won’t let me talk to you!’ I snapped.

  ‘Laura,’ he said harshly. ‘How dare you—’ Then, ‘What do you mean, hospital? What has happened to her? Where is she?’ There was a satisfying degree of panic in his voice which augured well for reconciliation.

  ‘Can you get here as quickly as possible? Adelaide Ward, Queen Anne’s Hospital. She’s asking for you, Stefano.’

  ‘I am leaving now,’ he said. I presume he really was for I heard a clunk as if the telephone was hitting the floor, followed by the sound of a door slamming.

  I walked back to Cressida. ‘He’s on his way, I hope he was already dressed when he answered the phone. If he wasn’t, judging by the speed at which he seemed to leave, he’ll be turning up in his pyjamas.’

  ‘He’d better have been dressed,’ she said with a weak smile. ‘He doesn’t wear pyjamas.’

  She looked up as the Staff Nurse approached with her clipboard. ‘Doctor’s confirmed you’ll have to be operated on for your appendix, Mrs Buonotti. A nurse will be along in a few minutes to start prepping you.’ She smiled kindly as Cressida’s eyes grew wider and wider. ‘Don’t be afraid, dear. It’s quite a commonplace operation these days and I can promise you there’s very little risk to your baby.’

  CHAPTER 17

  I sat down heavily on the side of the bed. Cressida stared at the nurse, open-mouthed, looking like a fish in shock. ‘Baby?’ she said at last, sounding as if she was talking from the bottom of the bath. ‘Risk to the baby?’

  ‘Really, dear, as I said, there’ll hardly be any,’ said the nurse comfortingly. ‘Of course we prefer not to operate on a pregnant mother if we can, but frankly we don’t have the option where you’re concerned.’

  ‘You’ve made a mistake,’ said Cressida faintly. ‘I’m not having a baby. You must have mixed up the test with someone else’s.’

  ‘Didn’t you know? Oh, my dear, I hope it hasn’t been too much of a shock for you? No, it’s you all right. Doctor could feel it when he was examining your tummy and then it showed up on the scan, clear as anything. About eight weeks, he says.’

  Cressida put one hand gently on her stomach. ‘But how...?’ she began, then giggled faintly. ‘Well, I suppose that’s obvious, isn’t it? The normal time-honoured way. You know that famous letter from my gynae, Laura? It said I should go and see him because,’ she put on a snotty doctorly voice, ‘my “form of contraception had proved itself to be sometimes unsatisfactory and the failure rate to be unacceptably high”. Bit late for the warning, wasn’t it?’ She giggled again and shook her head disbelievingly. ‘Now I look back I should have known, I had all the signs, but I was so tied up with other things I never noticed. Well, I’ve never been pregnant before so I didn’t know what to expect. No wonder I was knackered all the time. Stefano said it was too many late nights. He was wrong, wasn’t he?’ she said in a satisfied tone. ‘That doesn’t happen often.’

  ‘So it’s good news, dear?’ the nurse asked anxiously, voicing my worries exactly.

  ‘Oh, yes!’ Cressida smiled brilliantly. ‘It’s the best news in the world. My husband is going to be so pleased.’ She looked at me. ‘Do you think he’ll believe it was inten­tional?’ she asked in a low voice.

  I shook my head firmly. ‘Don’t even try it,’ I hissed back.

  The nurse was beaming. ‘Well, don’t be surprised if you have a few mixed feelings, my dear. It takes a bit of getting used to even when you’ve been trying for one and are expecting the news. I’ve had six myself and you could have knocked me over with a feather each time I discovered I was pregnant.’ It was difficult to imagine anything less substantial than a forklift truck having much effect on Staff Nurse Rogers. Her voice dropped confidentially. ‘And to be frank, to start off with I wasn’t too pleased about the last two, but that soon passed. It’s difficult to be unhappy about a baby. I just love them,’ she declared in a blinding statement of the obvious. She went all soggy and misty-eyed as she con­templated the baby-powder-scented future for Cressida, then shook herself back into starch and thermometer mode. ‘So don’t you go worrying yourself about the operation. It’ll go right as rain and we’ll have you up and about in one shake of a lamb’s tail, just you see.’

  ‘Operation?’ Cressida said blankly. ‘Oh, I can’t have that until I’ve talked it over with my husband. He might not agree. It’s the risk to the baby, you see.’

  The nurse’s bosom swelled out like a turkeycock’s. ‘I trust your husband’s primary concern is with your health, Mrs Buonotti,’ she said coldly. If it wasn’t I got the distinct impression Staff Nurse Rogers would soon be putting him right.

  ‘Isn’t there more risk to the baby if you don't have the operation?’ I ventured.

  ‘Absolutely,’ said the nurse, looking at me with approval for the first time. Maybe there were some advantages to having visitors cluttering up her ward at nine in the morning.

  Cressida stuck out her bottom lip, looking both obsti­nate and childish. ‘I’m not agreeing to anything until I’ve spoken to Stefano.’

  She was absolutely immovable. Both Nurse Rogers and I tried to make her change her mind, with no success, and the nurse was beginning to mutter about the dire neces­sity of having to call the consultant to come and explain to Cressida exactly why she must have the operation. I gathered one did not disturb this augu
st being lightly. She fixed me with an eagle glare as if I was equally culpable in Cressida’s decision and said coldly, ‘I’ll leave you for five minutes to see if you can talk some sense into your friend,’ then stalked off with her ramrod straight back exuding disapproval to the nurses’ station at the other end of the ward.

  Cressida looked at me with a guilty expression. ‘Do you think I’m being very silly, Laura?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said bluntly.

  She pouted and chewed delicately on the end of her nail. I noticed she never actually bit it or made the end ragged and unsightly, just sort of sucked the end as if it was a grown-up version of a baby’s rusk. ‘You see, I know how Stefano’s mind works. If he believes I’m prepared to put the baby at risk he might think I don’t care for it.’ Personally I would have thought that even Stefano would see that the baby was going to be at far more risk if Cressida got peritonitis but she didn’t look receptive to ideas like that. She pushed herself up in bed, frowning slightly. ‘He seems to think that I’m capable of doing anything at the moment: steal, run off with James... he might work himself up to a point where he began to think it might not even be his baby.’

  ‘Why on earth should he think that?’ I asked, aston­ished. ‘I mean, I know he’s jealous of you, but surely he can’t really believe...’ My voice trailed off as I saw her expression. Was she thinking she might have thrown her arms around James’s neck once too many times and given Stefano real cause for suspicion? ‘It is Stefano’s baby, isn’t it?’

  To my horror she had to think for a moment before she said brightly, ‘Yes, it is.’ After a pause. ‘Definitely.’

  I sank down limply, my stomach churning unpleasantly as I thought of her baby being born with moss green eyes. ‘Who...?’ I asked, swallowing a lump in my throat. ‘Could it possibly have been James’s?’

  ‘James?’ she echoed. ‘Heavens, no. He says he’s got very few scruples but messing around with married women is one of them.’ My heart appeared to start beating again. ‘More’s the pity,’ she added with an impish grin that left me wondering whether she was being serious or not. She looked away, twirling a lock of hair absently around her finger. ‘I had a brief fling with someone else. It didn’t mean anything and it was only a couple of times.’ She shrugged. ‘I was angry with Stefano, I did it to get back at him.’

  ‘You choose some pretty high-risk methods of showing your disapproval with him, don’t you?’ I said at last. ‘In future don’t you think you’d better find ways which don’t have such potentially disastrous repercussions?’

  She nodded thoughtfully. Nurse Rogers advanced towards us, clipboard in hand. ‘Well, Mrs Buonotti, are you prepared to sign the consent form or must I call the doctor?’ she enquired in arctic tones. The swing doors at the end of the ward crashed open and Stefano tore in, looking around frantically for someone to help him. In deference to his sister’s presence in the flat he must have pulled on his trousers before he answered the phone but there was precious little evidence of his doing any other dressing. His bare feet had been pushed into Docksiders, his navy blue blazer was buttoned over nothing more than a hairy chest, his chin was dark with stubble and even his short hair looked in need of a good brush.

  Nurse Roger’s eyebrows shot skywards as she surveyed this disreputable figure. Cressida’s head whipped around as he careered to a halt at the nurses’ station and she leaned forward, calling, ‘Stefano, Stefano!’

  Nurse’s mutter for her to keep her voice down as this was a hospital and not a bawdy house was lost in the answering cry of ‘Cara mia!’ as he bolted down the ward with his arms wide open. He seized Cressida in his arms, hugging her tight and raining kisses on her hair and upturned face. ‘My darling! My loved one! I have been so unhappy without you, I have not known what to do,’ he declared in a loud voice, quite oblivious to the fact that he had company, a lot of company, who could hear every word and were listening eagerly. ‘Don’t ever leave me again, please, please. Without you I am nothing, life is not worth living—’

  Feeling decidedly de trop I got up from my chair and backed off a little. I didn’t want to make it too obvious that I was eagerly attending to every word of this reunion. Judging by the line of interested faces turned towards us the rest of the ward was enjoying it too; one patient had drawn back her curtains so that she could hear better.

  Cressida was returning Stefano’s embraces with enthu­siasm - too much enthusiasm for Nurse Rogers’s outraged sense of propriety. With a flick of her starched cuff she began to draw the curtains around them, much to every­one’s disappointment. But her eyes were twinkling as she whispered to me, ‘Had a quarrel, did they?’

  I nodded. ‘I’ll say!’

  ‘The making up is always the best part,’ she said with a fond smile.

  Annoyingly the drawn curtains muffled the voices within quite effectively, though by straining hard I could catch the occasional phrase such as, ‘…so sorry’, ‘...never again’, ‘I promise never...’, ‘whatever you want’, which seemed to be fairly equally divided between the two voices. It sounded as if they were making up most satisfactorily. But the incredulous cry of, 'You’re preg­nant!’ echoed right around the ward. As did the smacking kiss that followed the news.

  ‘Someone’s pleased,’ whispered the nurse complacently. There was more muffled mumbling and then a clatter of feet as Stefano ripped open the curtains and marched up to Nurse Rogers, eyeballing her furiously.

  ‘What do you mean by telling my wife there is any question of her not having this operation?’ he demanded. ‘That she should put the baby before herself? Call yourself a nurse. You should be torn off your list. You are supposed to care for people, not tell them they should give themselves up for others.’

  Poor Nurse Rogers looked very taken aback at this completely unjustified attack. ‘But I—’ she began, all her starch and vinegar dissolving in the face of Stefano’s anger.

  He swept on regardless. ‘How dare you suggest to my wife that I would care more about the baby than for her?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ said the nurse, beginning to recover herself.

  ‘You must operate at once. At once, do you hear? My wife is worth more to me than one thousand babies ever could be. Do you understand?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ said Nurse Rogers acidly, ‘as does the whole ward and most of the hospital now. We’ve been waiting this last half-hour for Mrs Buonotti to sign the consent form for the operation but she wouldn’t unless you agreed to it.’

  To my surprise Stefano flushed slightly under his vil­lainous stubble. ‘My apologies, Signora. I misunderstood what my wife told me,’ he said quietly. He turned around and twitched back the curtain. ‘Cressida, you are having this operation. Now. No further discussion about it.’ He took the clipboard and form from the nurse’s hand. ‘Sign this. Don’t argue.’ Thirty seconds later he handed the form back with Cressida’s rounded scrawl at the bottom. ‘Here you are.’

  Nurse Rogers beamed. ‘I do like a masterful man.’ All was forgiven. The bustle came back into her stride as she summoned a student nurse to start getting Cressida ready and announced she was going to inform the surgeon at last that his patient would definitely be ready for him this morning.

  I hung around feeling like a complete spare part but didn’t think I could slip away without saying goodbye to Cressida. My tummy gave an embarrassingly loud rumble, pointing out I’d been up for hours with no breakfast. It also served to remind Stefano of my presence. He turned his head and looked at me with eyes that were fractionally warmer than a mountain stream, but not much. ‘Laura, thank you for calling me,’ he said punctiliously. ‘But it is a shame you did not think to telephone me before, then my wife’s life would not have been endangered by your dragging her away on this unnecessary escapade.’ My mouth dropped open in astonishment. ‘She was quite healthy when I left her,’ he added with sublime unreasonableness.

  ‘Hey, hang on a moment!’ I gasped. ‘An inflamed appendix isn’t something you catch. And
even if it was, mine’s in perfect order so she certainly couldn’t have got anything off me.’ Just in time I managed to bite my tongue on a resounding, ‘So there!’

  The student nurse put her head around the curtains and made shushing noises at us, threatening to have us ban­ished from the ward if we didn’t shut up.

  Stefano’s jaw went rigid. I couldn’t bear to think of the damage he must be doing to his teeth with all that grinding. His nose went up and he stared at me down it with centuries of ingrained aristocratic hauteur. ‘I do not see any need to discuss this further with you.’ It nearly worked. Unfortunately for him I’m not sure that even Prince Philip could carry off a supercilious pose like that when he was (a) very hairy, and (b) not wearing anything under his jacket.

  I stared pointedly at his chest, then his feet, then his stubble. ‘Don’t you, indeed? Bit late to take that attitude, Stefano. If you didn’t want me involved you shouldn’t have started threatening James.’

  Oh, dear, I’d forgotten that he wasn’t the type of man to appreciate being answered back by a woman, and one more than twenty years younger than himself to boot. It looked as if an iron bar had just been rammed under the shoulders of his jacket. Steam was metaphorically coming from his nostrils. Tact, sadly, is not my middle name.

  The more sensible part of me, the bit I tend not to listen to very often because its advice is so boring, told me it would be more productive to conciliate Stefano than to drive him into a corner. But my head was too fuzzy from lack of sleep and food and I was frankly too fed up with his belligerence to bother. Fortunately, before he could give in to his baser nature and throttle me as he obviously wanted to, the student stuck her head out between the curtains again and said, ‘Miss Moreton, Mrs Buonotti wants to speak to you. She’s very insistent,’ she added with an expression that indicated she thought Cressida was being thoroughly unreasonable. ‘Could you spare a moment?’