The Gentle Surgeon

by Hilda Pressley

  “Oh yes, I expect so.”

  “Will you be seeing her when she does?”

  It was a stupid thing for her to say. She knew it as soon as the words had left her lips.

  Robert flicked her a brief, sideways glance. “I expect so, from time to time. What made you ask?”

  Christine was silent for a moment. There was no doubt about it. Sandra was a disturbing influence in their lives. One way or another, she had already caused small rifts between them. Before it was too late, Christine decided, she must say what was on her mind.

  “I don’t think you should see Sandra at all, Rob,” she told him quietly. “She may have been a child when you knew her before, but she certainly isn’t now, and she has designs on you, that’s for sure.”

  He gave an exasperated sigh. “That’s absolute nonsense, Christine. Really, I don’t know what’s come over you.”

  He stopped the car and turned to face her. “Now look here, Chris. You’ve got a bee in your bonnet about Sandra. She’s a nice kid. I’d no idea you had this jealous streak in you. So far as she’s concerned it’s entirely unnecessary, and I’m not going to pander to it.”

  There was a short, ugly silence. Christine was appalled. She had never dreamed he could be so blind, so unreasonable. While she was searching for the right thing to say, Robert spoke again.

  “We might as well get this thing straight here and now, Chris. I’m not going to be dictated to about my friends, even by you. If I were carrying on an affair with Sandra, I’d expect you to complain. As I’m not—well, what’s married life going to be like, for goodness’ sake, if you’re going to carry on like this every time I so much as look at another girl? I think the best thing we can do is not see each other for a while. Because I’m telling you, Chris, I just don’t feel like naming the day and going ahead with plans for a wedding the way things are at the moment.”

  Christine could scarcely take it all in. It was simply incredible that Robert could be saying these dreadful things to her.

  “You see, Rob?” Her voice trembled. “You’d rather quarrel with me than promise not to see her. I don’t know how you can be so blind. Or are you?” she said suddenly, anger and a fierce resentment pushing themselves up from her heart, demanding expression. “I’m beginning to think it’s not just Sandra, after all, because anyone can see with half an eye what she’s up to. Perhaps you want to be attracted to her. Perhaps what you’d really like is to break off our engagement. Is that it?”

  He drew an angry breath. “I’ve had just about as much of this as I can stand!”

  He started up the car again and drove furiously the last few miles to the hospital.

  “Well, Chris, what are we going to do?” he asked roughly.

  If he had taken her into his arms or spoken in a softer voice, Christine would gladly have responded. As it was, she couldn’t help thinking of the way in which he had behaved ever since Sandra had come into their lives.

  She wanted to say, “I haven’t changed. I still love you, Rob.”

  But it was obvious that he wanted his freedom. If she made a fuss or tried to force herself on him he would be embarrassed. In any case...

  Pride came to her aid. “As I see it, Rob, the only thing to do is break it off.” She tried to keep her voice steady, the tears from her eyes. “Do you want me to give you back your ring?”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Chris, don’t be so ridiculous. Keep the damned thing or throw it away. I don’t care what you do with it.”

  Christine could feel her control in danger of breaking. She got out of the car swiftly and made her way to her room feeling as though her heart would break. She could hardly believe this had happened to Robert and herself. It didn’t seem possible. They had been so terribly in love. Had she really imagined all that about Sandra?

  But she knew she hadn’t. What puzzled and hurt her was how easy it had been for Sandra to come between them in this way. Had their love, then, been so frail and shallow that they hadn’t been able to weather a thing like this?

  She had been right to break off their engagement. If this could happen before their marriage it could happen afterward.

  For a few days, she still hoped that Robert would phone to apologize, say he still loved her, that Sandra meant nothing to him, that it was unthinkable that she should be allowed to come between them. But he didn’t, and Christine could only conclude that he really wanted things this way. He was attracted to Sandra and wanted to feel free to see her again.

  Once they came face to face on the main hospital corridor. He stopped, and her heart lurched sickeningly.

  He gave her an embarrassed look. “Chris, I’m sorry if I was rude the other evening. I’ve been thinking things over and I think we’d best leave things as they are for a while. Maybe we’ve waited too long. I don’t know, but...” He broke off and looked down at his feet.

  Christine felt all knotted up inside. She forced herself to speak.

  “But you don’t want to go ahead and get married.”

  He looked at her worriedly then. “That’s about it, Chris. I guess I’m just not ready to settle down yet.”

  “All right, Rob. If that’s how you feel, there’s no more to be said.”

  She turned away. This was worse than a violent quarrel. After three or four days’ deliberation he still did not want to go ahead and arrange their wedding.

  “Chris—” She half turned and waited. He said awkwardly, “We are bound to keep coming across each other. Let’s just be friends, shall we? At least—”

  “All right, Rob. But I must go now.”

  She hurried away, wanting to go somewhere and curl up and die. If he loved her he couldn’t say those things. It was as simple, as heartbreaking as that.

  “Good morning, Nurse Townsend,” a voice said behind her. She turned swiftly and her eyes met those of the new surgical registrar.

  “Oh, good morning, Dr. Taylor. I didn’t see you.”

  He smiled gently. “Dr. Marston is a very lucky man.” Christine made no reply. Obviously Dr. Taylor thought he had witnessed a téte-a-téte between lovers. Her thoughts became bitter, but somehow the presence of the surgeon helped her to dismiss them, at least for the time being.

  “Dr. Marston and I are no more than friends, Dr. Taylor,” she said quietly.

  “Oh, really?”

  Surprise was evident in his voice, but they reached the entrance of Simpson One, and their conversation came to an end.

  Christine decided to go and see Matron. She knew that, before long, the fact that she and Robert were no longer engaged would leak out, and for a while be the subject of gossip.

  “If you please, Matron,” she said, “I’d like permission to live out.”

  Matron looked at her for a moment. “Certainly, Nurse. Will you be living at home with your parents?”

  “Yes, Matron.”

  “I see. And will it just be a temporary arrangement? I understood you were hoping to be married soon.”

  “I—I’m afraid I won’t be, after all. Dr. Marston and I have—broken off our engagement.”

  “Oh, Nurse, I am sorry,” Matron said quickly. “Was it just a quarrel, or—”

  “Not exactly, Matron. It’s really rather difficult to explain.”

  “Yes, Nurse, I expect it is. Well, I won’t press you. These things happen, I suppose.” She glanced up at the ward plan on the wall of her office. “Well, Nurse Tebbs is due back from holiday at the weekend. Theater will be rather short handed, so will Harvey. I think, Nurse, that under the circumstances I’ll put you in theater. Will that be all right for you?”

  “Yes, Matron, I’d like that—thank you very much.”

  Matron nodded. “Right, Nurse. Report to Sister Kelly on Sunday at one o’clock. Staff Nurse Larcham is off for the weekend, and Sister is due for a half-day. That will be all Nurse.”

  Packing her belongings gave Christine something to do for the remainder of the week, during her off-duty time. Her father had promised
to bring the car for the heavy things such as books and winter clothes, but his job at the colliery kept him busy during the day, and for several evenings he had some kind of meeting.

  Nor realizing how much baggage she had collected during her years of training, she was carrying a couple of light cases down the drive one afternoon to catch a bus when Dr. Taylor drew up in his car.

  “Can I give you a lift somewhere, Nurse Townsend?”

  “It’s all right, Dr. Taylor. I’m just going to catch the bus. They’re not really heavy.”

  “Nonsense.” He got out of the car and picked up the cases where she had rested them momentarily. “Get in, and I’ll take you to your bus at all events.”

  He put the cases in the back of the car and helped her into the passenger seat. Christine could barely suppress a smile. Obviously he was used to having his own way.

  “Going on holiday?” he asked as he started the car again. She shook her head and explained; then he asked her where she lived.

  “Oh well, I might as well take you there. I’m going into town. It will only be a slight diversion.”

  Christine murmured that she didn’t really want to put him to the trouble.

  He smiled. “It’s no trouble at all. Indeed it will be a pleasure.” After a moment or two, he said, “So you’ve decided to live out. Any particular reason?”

  She hesitated, then shook her head. “Most of us do, if we can, as soon as we’ve passed our finals.”

  She caught a swift, sideways glance from him.

  “One of the residents told me you were engaged.”

  Christine closed her eyes momentarily. “I was.”

  “Oh. Oh, I see.” Then, after a slight pause, “Look, I’m terribly sorry. I had no idea. Broken engagements are never very pleasant things.”

  “That’s all right, Dr. Taylor. Everybody will know sooner or later, I suppose.”

  At her direction he took the left fork leaving the town suburb behind and straggled through semi-country to a small housing development built by a colliery company some thirty or forty years ago.

  “I was wrong the other day, it seems, when I said that Marston was a lucky man. Is there—someone else?”

  She shook her head. “Turn right here, Dr. Taylor, then down the hill and past the colliery yard. Our house is about a quarter of a mile farther on around the bend.”

  He didn’t speak again until they were actually passing the colliery yard. He looked interestedly at the pit-head gear. “Have you ever been down, Nurse?”

  All at once it seemed odd for him to be still calling her Nurse when they were so close to her home. Yet it might be presumptuous if she asked him to call her Christine.

  “Once,” she said. “I went down with my father one Sunday morning. We went quite a long way in—right to the workings.”

  “I should imagine it’s rather like the London underground. At least, some of it.”

  “Yes. What they call ‘the pit bottom.’ Farther in, of course, you have to get down almost on your hands and knees.”

  “Weren’t you scared?”

  She laughed. “The worst part was going down in the cage. The speed’s terrific. I nearly died. After that—well, the rest was nothing.”

  “I expect you—or rather we—get accident cases in the hospital from time to time, though there haven’t been any yet since my arrival. Has there ever been a really bad accident in the pit?”

  “A—a disaster?” She felt suddenly cold. The bogey of a pit disaster was an ever-present one. During the time her father had been manager of the mine—ten years or more—there had not been a large-scale disaster, but to say “no” to the question would be too much like tempting fate. “It’s something we don’t like to talk about,” she told him.

  They turned a bend in the country road and came within sight of Christine’s home. It was an attractive, gabled house standing alone in generous grounds, its lawns and garden beautifully kept.

  “Only just out of sight of the pit-shafts and the slag-heaps,” laughed Christine. “Won’t you come in and meet my mother, Dr. Taylor? I don’t suppose my father will be home. He’ll most likely be in his office at the pit top.”

  He turned the car into the small drive. “Yes, I’d like to, thanks very much. And by the way, couldn’t you call me John, away from the hospital?”

  Christine warmed toward him. “Why, of course, Dr. Tay—” She broke off and laughed. “John,” she corrected herself. “And you must please call me Christine. My mother hardly ever calls me Nurse.”

  “You do surprise me,” he laughed.

  Mrs. Townsend was in the garden, a slender, attractive woman who looked years younger than she actually was. Her hair was the same rich brown as Christine’s with no. sign of graying.

  Christine had not yet told her mother about her broken engagement. There had been no real opportunity. She had, however, intended to tell her this afternoon. But if Mrs. Townsend was surprised to see a stranger instead of Robert, she gave no sign of it as Christine introduced John.

  “This is Dr. John Taylor, Mother, our new surgical registrar. He gave me a lift with a couple of my cases.”

  Mrs. Townsend took off her gardening gloves and shook hands. “How do you do, Dr. Taylor? Won’t you stay and have some tea with us?”

  John said he’d love to, and Christine showed him around the garden while her mother went indoors to prepare tea.

  “You know, this is the first time I’ve been in a mining district,” he told her. “I’m surprised to find everything so clean.”

  Christine smiled. “What did you expect? Dirt and squalor everywhere?”

  “Well, lots of smoke. And the houses dirty and grimy-looking. Those houses in the development look like any others, their gardens cared for and cultivated. I noticed some washing out on a line, too. Whiter than white!”

  “If you went inside, you’d find most of the homes spotless, too. Even before the advent of pithead baths the men used to shed their pit clothes, as they were called, in the scullery, and change into clean clothes and wash or bath before going into the living room. And they must have been darned hungry when you think they’d been down the pit for eight or ten hours with nothing except sandwiches—snap, as it’s called.”

  He smiled, eyeing her with interest. “But how do you know all this, Christine? As the manager’s daughter, you don’t mix a great deal with the miners, do you?”

  “I used to help run the Girl Guides, and a retired miner’s wife works for Mother in the house. In any case, I did mix quite a bit with some of the miners’ daughters. One girl I knew became an opera singer, another a writer, and some of the miners themselves are among the most gentle, the most intelligent—”

  Her mother called them to tea. John’s hand lightly touched Christine’s arm.

  “All right, Christine, all right! You don’t have to justify either them or yourself. All the same, I think you’re a very nice person, you know.”

  Her mother had brought tea out into a small sun porch overlooking the rose garden. It was a bright day, and though still a little cool out in the open, the sun had sent up the temperature under the glass, making it seem almost like summer.

  John told them a little about himself and his background. His father was just an ordinary country doctor, his mother an ex-nurse.

  “Father had a busy town practice at one time, but it became too much for him. He caught a severe dose of pneumonia one year and found afterward he couldn’t stand the fog and the smoke of town life.”

  “And what about you, Dr. Taylor? Are you aiming any higher than you are now?”

  “Probably, not, Mrs. Townsend. I don’t know. I’m not an ambitious man. If I ever do go on to a higher position—such as consultant in general surgery—I’d prefer it to be a natural progress rather than a conscious aim.”

  Mrs. Townsend nodded. “That’s an admirable way of looking at things, Dr. Taylor. An ambitious man is often a ruthless one.” About an hour later he rose to leave. “I really m
ust go. Thank you so much for the tea.”

  Christine and her mother saw him to his car.

  “Do come again, Dr. Taylor, won’t you?” invited Mrs. Townsend.

  “I’d love to—if Christine will bring me. Goodbye!”

  They waved goodbye. “What an awfully nice man, Chris,” her mother remarked as they walked back to the house. “I’m so glad you brought him.”

  “He brought me, really. Almost insisted. He’s a curious mixture. He knows what he wants, yet he’s so nice.”

  “Where strength and gentleness are synonymous, therein lies true greatness,” her mother said with a smile.

  Christine received this in silence. After a minute or two she said, “Mother, Rob and I have broken off our engagement.”

  Christine!” Her mother turned to her with swift concern. “But when did this happen?”

  Christine told her as briefly as she could. It was still a painful subject and would be for a very long time.

  “You think he’s fallen in love with Sandra?” asked her mother.

  “Well, no, Mother. I don’t think it’s gone as far as that. It’s just that he seems to want freedom.”

  “Freedom for what? Doesn’t he know his own mind? There’s an awful lot of poppycock talked about ‘freedom.’ To some, it simply means freedom to do as they like, irrespective of the feelings of anyone else.”

  “Please, Mother. I’m still in love with Rob.”

  “But not, I hope, for long—unless he soon comes to his senses,” Mrs. Townsend said with all a mother’s natural concern for her daughter’s happiness.

  On Sunday morning Christine reported to Theater Sister. Sister Kelly, whose hair had started out life as a brunette, was now a blonde. She had not trained locally, and though she had been at the hospital over a year now, she still addressed her staff nurses by their full title instead of just “Nurse” as was the hospital’s custom.

  She eyed Christine in the cool, slightly disdainful manner she affected with most people, in particular anyone whom she considered junior to herself or otherwise inferior.

  “How long since you did any theater work, Staff Nurse?” she asked in a chilly voice devoid of friendliness.