Nanny by Chance

by Betty Neels

  It seemed sense to knock, and, bidden to go in, she opened the door.

  The woman behind the small desk was middle-aged with a pale face and colourless hair, wearing a dark maroon uniform.

  ‘Araminta Pomfrey? Come in and shut the door. I’ll take you to your room presently. You can leave your outdoor things there before you go to see the Principal Nursing Officer.’ She shuffled through a pile of papers.

  ‘Here is a list of rules. You are expected to keep them while you live here. When you have completed your first year you will be allowed to live out if you wish. No smoking or drinking, no men visitors unless they visit for some good reason.’

  She drew a form from a pile on the desk. ‘I’ll check your particulars. You are twenty-three? A good deal older than the other students. Unmarried? Parents living? British by birth?’ She was ticking off the items as she read them. ‘Is that your case? We will go to your room.’

  They climbed the stairs, and then another flight to the floor above, and the woman opened a door halfway down a long corridor. ‘You’ll have your own key, of course. You will make your bed and keep your room tidy.’

  The room was small and rather dark, since its window overlooked a wing of the hospital, but it was furnished nicely and the curtains and bedcover were pretty. There was a washbasin in one corner and a built-in wardrobe.

  Araminta was handed a key. She asked, ‘What should I call you? You are a sister?’

  ‘I am the warden—Miss Jeff.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Come back to my office in ten minutes and I’ll take you for your interview.’

  Left alone, Araminta turned her back on the view from the window, took off her jacket and tidied her hair. She hoped she looked suitably dressed; her skirt was too long for fashion, but her blouse was crisply ironed and her shoes were well polished. She went out of the room, locked the door, put the key in her shoulder bag and found her way to Miss Jeff.

  The Principal Nursing Officer’s office was large, with big windows draped with velvet curtains, a carpet underfoot and a rather splendid desk. She herself was just as elegant. She was a tall woman, still good-looking, dressed in a beautifully tailored suit. She shook Araminta’s hand, and told her crisply that she was fortunate that there had been an unexpected vacancy.

  ‘Which I could have filled a dozen times, but Dr van der Breugh is an old friend and very highly thought of here in the hospital. He assured me that you had given up your place in order to cope with an emergency in his family.’ She smiled. ‘You are a lucky young woman to have such an important sponsor.’ She studied Araminta’s face. ‘I hope that you will be happy here. I see no reason why you shouldn’t be. You will work hard, of course, but you will make friends. You are older than the other student nurses, but I don’t suppose that will make any difference.’

  She nodded a friendly dismissal and Araminta went back to her room, where she unpacked and took a look at the uniform laid out on the bed. It was cotton, in blue and white stripes with a stiff belt, and there was a little badge she was to wear pinned on her chest with her name on it.

  The warden had told her to go down to the canteen for her tea at four o’clock. She made her way back down the stairs and into the hospital, down more stairs into the basement. The canteen was large, with a long counter and a great many tables—most of them occupied. Araminta went to the counter, took a tray, loaded it with a plate of bread and butter and a little pot of jam, collected her tea and then stood uncertainly for a moment, not sure where she should sit. There was a variety of uniforms, so she looked for someone wearing blue and white stripes.

  Someone gave her a little shove from behind. ‘New, are you?’

  The speaker was a big girl, wearing, to Araminta’s relief, blue and white stripes, and when she nodded, she said, ‘Come with me, we have to sit with our own set—the dark blue are sisters, the light blue are staff nurses. Don’t go sitting with them.’

  She led the way to the far end of the room to where several girls were sitting round a table. ‘Here’s our new girl,’ she told them. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Araminta Pomfrey.’

  Several of the girls smiled, and one of them said, ‘What a mouthful. Sister Tutor isn’t going to like that.’

  ‘Everyone calls me Mintie.’

  ‘That’s more like it. Sit down and have your tea. Any idea which ward you are to go to in the morning?’

  ‘No. Whom do I ask?’

  ‘No one. It’ll be on the board outside this place; you can look presently. Have you unpacked? Supper’s at eight o’clock if you’re off duty. What room number are you? I’ll fetch you.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The big girl grinned. ‘My name’s Molly Beckett.’ She waved a hand. ‘And this is Jean, and that’s Sue in the corner…’ She named the girls one by one.

  ‘We’re all on different wards, but not all day, we have lectures and demonstrations. You’ll be run off your feet on the ward, and heaven help you if Sister doesn’t like you.’ She got up. ‘We’re all on duty now, but I’m off at six o’clock; I’ll see you then. Come with us and we’ll look at the board.’

  There was a dismayed murmur as they crowded round to look for Araminta’s name.

  ‘Baxter’s,’ said Molly. ‘That’s Sister Spicer. I don’t want to frighten you, but look out for her, Mintie. She’s got a tongue like a razor and if she takes a dislike to you you might as well leave.’

  Araminta went back to her room, put her family photos on the dressing table, arranged her few books on the little shelf by the bed and sat down to think. She had very little idea of what hospital life would be like and she had to admit that Sister Spicer didn’t sound very promising. But she was a sensible girl and it was no use thinking about it too much until she had found her feet.

  The other girls seemed very friendly, and she would be free for a few hours each day, and she could go home each week. She allowed her thoughts to wander. What was the doctor doing? she wondered. Had he missed her at all? She thought it unlikely. I must forget him, she told herself firmly. Something which should be easy, for she would have more than enough to think about.

  Molly came presently and, since it wasn’t time for supper, took her on a tour of the home, explaining where the different wards were and explaining the off duty. ‘You’ll get a couple of evenings off each week. Trouble is, you’re too tired to do much. Otherwise it’s a couple of hours in the morning or in the afternoon. Days off are a question of luck. We come bottom of the list, though if you’ve got a decent sister she’ll listen if you want special days.’

  The canteen was full and very noisy at suppertime. Araminta ate her corned beef and salad and the stewed apple and custard which followed it, drank a cup of strong tea and presently went to the sitting room for the more junior nursing staff. Molly had gone out for the rest of her free evening and she couldn’t see any of the other girls she had met at tea. She slipped away and went to her room, had a bath and got into bed.

  She told herself that it would be all right in the morning, that it was just the sudden drastic change in her lifestyle which was making her feel unhappy. She lay thinking about the doctor, telling herself that once she started her training she wouldn’t let herself think of him again.

  Marcus van der Breugh, dining with friends, bent an apparently attentive ear to his dinner companion while he wondered what Mintie was doing. He had told her that he didn’t think she would make a good nurse and he very much feared that he was right. Possibly it was this opinion which caused his thoughts to return to her far too frequently.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  LYING in bed at the end of her first day at St Jules’, Araminta tried not to remember all the things which had gone wrong and reminded herself that this was the career she had wished for. Now that she had started upon it, nothing was going to deter her from completing it.

  Of course, she had started off on the wrong foot. The hospital was large, and had been built in the days when long corridors and unexpected st
aircases were the norm. Presumably the nurses then had found nothing unusual in traipsing their length, but to Araminta, who had never encountered anything like them before, they’d spelt disaster. She had gone the wrong way, up the wrong staircase and presented herself at Sister’s office only to be told that she had come to Stewart’s ward; Baxter’s was at the other end of the hospital and up another flight of stairs.

  So she had arrived late, to encounter Sister Spicer’s basilisk stare.

  ‘You’re late,’ she was told. ‘Why?’

  ‘I got lost,’ said Araminta.

  ‘A ridiculous excuse. Punctuality is something I insist upon on my ward. Have you done any nursing before coming here?’

  Araminta explained about the children’s convalescent home, but decided against mentioning her work for the doctor.

  Sister Spicer sighed. ‘You will have to catch up with the other students as best you can. I suppose Sister Tutor will do what she can with you. I have no time to mollycoddle you, so you had better learn pretty fast.’

  Araminta nodded her head.

  ‘If you don’t you might as well leave.’

  Once upon a time Sister Spicer had probably been a nice person, reflected Araminta. Perhaps she had been crossed in love. Although she could see little to love in the cold handsome face. Poor soul, thought Araminta, and then jumped at Sister Spicer’s voice. ‘Well, go and find staff nurse.’

  The ward was in the oldest part of the hospital, long, and lighted by a row of windows along one side, with the beds facing each other down its length occupied by women of all ages. There were two nurses making beds, who took no notice of her. At the far end Staff Nurse, identified by her light blue uniform, was bending over a trolley with another nurse beside her.

  She was greeted briefly, told to go and make beds with the nurse, and thrown, as it were, to the lions.

  Araminta didn’t like remembering that rest of the morning. She had made beds, carried bedpans, handed round dinners and helped any number of patients in and out of bed, but never, it seemed, quite quickly enough.

  ‘New, are yer, ducks?’ one old lady had asked, with an alarming wheeze and a tendency to go purple in the face when she coughed. ‘Don’t you mind no one. Always in an ’urry and never no time ter tell yer anything.’

  Her dinner hour had been a respite. She had sat at the table with Molly and the other students and they had been sympathetic.

  ‘It’s because you’re new and no one has had the time to tell you anything. You’re off at six o’clock, aren’t you? And you’ll come to the lectures this afternoon. Two o’clock, mind. Even Sister Spicer can’t stop you.’

  She had enjoyed the lectures, although she’d discovered that there was a good deal of catching up to do.

  ‘You must borrow one of the other students’ books and copy out the lectures I’ve already given,’ Sister Tutor had said. This was an exercise which would take up several days off duty.

  ‘But it’s what I wanted,’ said Araminta to herself now.

  She had to admit by the end of the week that things weren’t quite as she had expected them to be. According to Sister Spicer, she was lazy, slow and wasted far too much time with the patients. There was plenty of work, she had been told, without stopping to find their curlers and carry magazines to and fro, fill water jugs and pause to admire the photos sent from home of children and grandchildren. It was all rather unsatisfactory, and it seemed that she would be on Baxter’s ward for three months…

  She longed for her days off, and when they came she was up early and out of the hospital, on her way home as quickly as she could manage. She scooted across the forecourt as fast as her legs could carry her, watched, if she had but known, by Dr van der Breugh, who had been called in early and was now enjoying a cup of coffee before he went back home.

  The sight of her small scurrying figure sent the thought of her tumbling back into his head and he frowned. He had managed for almost a whole week to think of her only occasionally. Well, perhaps rather more than occasionally! She would be going home for her days off and he toyed with the idea of driving to Hambledon to find out if she had settled in. He squashed the idea and instead, when he encountered one of the medical consultants on his way out of the hospital, asked casually how the new student nurses were shaping.

  ‘I borrowed one of them for a few weeks and she’s been accepted late.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I remember hearing about that. They’re quite a good bunch, but of course she has to catch up. She’s on Baxter’s and Sister Spicer is a bit of a martinet. Don’t see much of the nurses, though, do we? If I remember she was being told off for getting the wrong patient out of bed when I saw her, something like that. Rather quiet, I thought, but Sister Spicer can take the stuffing out of anyone. Terrifies me occasionally.’

  They both laughed and went on their way.

  Araminta, home by mid-morning, found her cousin and Cherub to welcome her. Over coffee she made light of her first week at St Jules’.

  ‘Have you heard from your mother?’ asked Millicent. ‘She phoned, but they were still busy with some new Celtic finds. She said they might not be home yet…’

  ‘They’ll be back before Christmas, though?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure they will! It’s still October. Will you get off for the holiday?’

  Araminta shook her head. ‘I don’t think so, I’m very junior, but of course I’ll get my days off as near to Christmas Day as possible.’

  ‘You like it? You’re happy?’

  Araminta assured her that she was.

  The two days were soon over, but they had given her a respite, and she went back on the ward determined to make the week a better one than her first had been. It was a pity that Sister Spicer was bent on making that as difficult as possible.

  Molly had told her that Sister Spicer, if she took a dislike to anyone, would go to great lengths to make life as unpleasant as possible for her. Araminta hadn’t quite believed that, but now she saw that it was true. Nothing she did was quite right; she was too slow, too clumsy, too careless. She tried not to let it worry her and took comfort from the patients, who liked her. Staff Nurse was kind, too, and the two senior student nurses, although the other student nurse who was in the same set as she now was, did nothing to make life easier for her.

  Melanie was a small, pretty girl, always ready with the right answers during the lectures they both attended, and, since Sister Spicer liked her, the fact that she sometimes skimped her work and was careless of the patients’ comfort, went unnoticed. She was young, barely nineteen, and made it obvious that Araminta need not expect either her friendship or her help on the ward.

  When once she came upon Araminta speaking to one of the house doctors she said spitefully, ‘Don’t you know better than to talk to the housemen? Is that why you’re here? To catch yourself a husband? Just you wait and see what happens to you if Sister Spicer catches you.’

  Araminta looked at her in blank astonishment. ‘He was asking me the way to Outpatients; he’s new.’

  Melanie giggled. ‘That’s as good an excuse as any, I suppose, but watch out.’

  Thank heavens I’ve got days off tomorrow, Araminta thought. Since she was off duty at six o’clock that evening, she would be able to catch a train home. She hadn’t told her cousin, but she would be home by nine o’clock at the latest…

  The afternoon was endless, but she went about getting patients in and out of bed, helping them, getting teas, bed pans, filling water jugs, but it was six o’clock at last and she went to the office, thankful that she could at last ask to go off duty.

  Sister Spicer barley glanced up from the report she was writing.

  ‘Have you cleaned and made up the bed in the side ward? And the locker? It may be needed. You should have done it earlier. I told Nurse Jones to tell you. Well, it’s your own fault for not listening, Nurse. Go and do it now and then you may go off duty.’

  ‘I wasn’t told to do it, Sister,’ Araminta said politely, ‘and I am o
ff duty at six o’clock.’

  Sister Spicer did look up then. ‘You’ll do as you are told, Nurse—and how dare you answer back in that fashion? I shall see the Principal Nursing Sister in the morning and I shall recommend that you are entirely unsuitable for training. If I can’t train you, no one else could.’

  She bent her head over her desk and Araminta went back into the ward where there was a third-year nurse and Melanie, who had taken such a dislike to her. Neither of them took any notice of her as she went to the side ward and started on the bed. She very much wanted to speak her mind, but that might upset the patients and, worse, she might burst into tears. She would have her days off and when she came back she would go and see the Principal Nursing Officer and ask to be moved to another ward. Unheard of, but worth a try!

  It was almost seven o’clock by the time she had finished readying the room and making up the bed. She went down the ward, wishing the patients a cheerful goodnight as she went, ignoring the nurses and ignoring, too, Sister’s office, walking past it, out of the ward and along the corridor, then going down the wide stone staircase to the floor below and then another staircase to the ground floor.

  She was trying to make up her mind as to whether it was too late to go home, or should she wait for the morning, but she was boiling with rage and misery. Nothing was turning out as she had hoped, not that that mattered now that she would never see Marcus van der Breugh again. The pain of loving him was almost physical. She swallowed the tears she must hold back until she was in her room.

  ‘I shall probably be given the sack,’ she said out loud, and jumped the last two steps, straight into the doctor’s waistcoat.

  ‘Oh,’ said Araminta, as she flung her arms around as much of him as she could reach and burst into tears.

  He stood patiently, holding her lightly, and not until her sobs had dwindled into hiccoughs and sniffs did he ask, ‘In trouble?’