A Nurse's Duty

by Maggie Hope

  She would brush off the worst of the mud tomorrow, she decided. Strangely, her wild grief had subsided. All she felt now was a numb weariness.

  She made the supper and fed the children and put them to bed. Nick came in and she forced herself to eat a baked potato filled with cheese and drink a mug of tea. Nick finished his off quickly.

  ‘He’s gone off to the pub again, has he?’ he ventured once. Karen nodded, her mouth full of potato which refused to go down her throat. She took a long swallow of tea and at last the potato went down. Sitting back in her chair, she held the mug in both hands, staring into the brown liquid.

  ‘Well,’ said Nick, ‘I half-promised Mr Bainbridge I’d go with him to the men’s meeting at Chapel.’

  Karen looked up, slightly surprised. Nick rarely went out in the evenings. ‘Oh? Yes, well, you’d better be going then.’

  Left on her own in the kitchen, she went over the row with Patrick, bitterly regretting her sharp tongue. Why on earth had she said what she did? Why couldn’t she have kept quiet? And why, oh why, couldn’t Patrick see that what she was doing was for them all? She sipped at her tea, feeling indescribably desolate.

  Restlessly, she took the mat frame and began sorting through the bag of coloured clippings but she couldn’t settle to it. Giving it up, she put it away again and walked out into the dark yard, making her way over the cobbles to where she could see the rowan tree outlined against the sky. She stood for a few minutes, looking up the lane, but there was no bobbing lantern showing Patrick was coming home, only the blackness of the night. She shivered. There was a touch of frost in the air though it was coming up to summer. An early night, she thought, that’s what I need. Going back inside she went up to bed, lying stiff and unsleeping hour after hour. Every little sound from the night outside she thought was Patrick coming home. But there was no clip-clop of hooves, no whinny from the foal as its mother came home. After Nick came in there was only the hooting of an owl in the ghyll.

  Patrick came home in the middle of the day when she was on her own in the kitchen. Brian was at school and Nick was repairing a gap in the drystone wall by the far field and had taken Jennie with him.

  A surge of such gladness ran through Karen when Patrick came in that she couldn’t move for a moment. Then she flung herself at him, wrapping her arms round his neck, laughing and crying into his rough coat.

  ‘Oh, Patrick, I thought you weren’t coming back,’ she sobbed. ‘I’m sorry, really I’m sorry, I won’t take the job, I won’t –’

  ‘Karen.’

  Patrick took hold of her arms and drew them down and held her away from him. At first she couldn’t see his face properly through her tears. She dashed a hand across her eyes impatiently and then she looked at him and she knew.

  ‘Sit down, Karen. Come on, sit down, we have to talk.’

  ‘Talk? Yes, of course we’ll talk,’ she said. Blindly she went to the settee and sat down and he sat in the rocking chair facing her.

  ‘I want you to understand that I will always love you,’ he said. ‘You and the children.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Oh, and Patrick, I love you, I love you. Don’t be angry. I know I’ve made mistakes but –’

  ‘Don’t go on, Karen, it’s no use. I have to go back.’

  ‘Back? Back where? Ireland, do you mean? Your … your Church?’ Her heart thudded as she said it. This wasn’t happening, no, it wasn’t.

  ‘Ireland, yes, and my Church. If they will have me.’

  ‘No! No, you can’t. Not after all we’ve been through, what I did –’

  ‘What you did, Karen? What do you mean?’

  ‘Nothing, I didn’t mean anything.’ She gazed at her hands which were twisting and twining her apron round and round and straightening it out, then round and round again, as though they had a life of their own. She didn’t even see them.

  ‘You only did what a woman in love will do, Karen. Oh, it’s not your fault, any of this, it’s mine. I know that now. My mistakes, my sin.’

  ‘Are you saying that the children were mistakes, the results of sin? How can you, Patrick, how can you? They love you, you know they do. How can you leave them, for God’s sake, man! And why now? You haven’t been to church for years. What changed you Patrick?’

  ‘I have changed, Karen, that’s what matters. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to spring it on you like this but I’ve made up my mind.’

  ‘You’ve made up your mind? I see.’ She jumped to her feet and walked to the window and back, her every movement filled with agitation. ‘What about me? What about the children? Well, you can’t go off like that, I won’t let you. Patrick, you can’t, do you hear me? I’ll go to see the bishop, I’ll tell him –’

  ‘Sit down, Karen, let’s talk this over calmly.’ He thought fleetingly of Sean. She didn’t know yet that he was now the bishop.

  ‘Talk it over calmly? You’re proposing to desert your family and you want me to talk about it calmly?’ Karen was screaming by now, her whole body shaking with passion. Panic filled her mind, preventing any logical thought.

  ‘Please, Karen, please. I won’t leave you with nothing. I’ll be able to send you money …’

  ‘Money? Do you think that’s all there is to this? You’ve had enough of playing at families, now you can leave us and all you need to do is give us money? For the love of God, Patrick, think again.’

  He didn’t answer, just looked at her helplessly. Karen drew in a sharp breath and turned away. She had to gain control of herself, she couldn’t think straight, she had to think. She wasn’t going to give up the fight now, not now. Oh, God, please God, I have to keep him, he is my life, she prayed under her breath. What can I do? No answer came from on high, nothing. It was up to her entirely. Her mind raced.

  Patrick was a sensual man, how could he go back to an arid, celibate existence? That was the way, oh yes indeed, if she couldn’t move him with words she surely could with her body. Behind her, Patrick was silent but she was intensely aware of him. He hadn’t moved.

  Slowly she took off her apron and loosed the top buttons of her dress. She touched her face, peering at it in the window. Was it blotchy, ugly? She pulled tendrils of hair down over her temples and brow and then he spoke.

  ‘Karen?’

  Taking a deep breath she turned back to him. He watched her as she moved towards him until she was standing so close to him she could feel his breath on her neck. He gave a startled movement but she stayed him with a hand to his shoulder and then the back of his head. She brought his face nearer to hers and he did not resist and she was gazing into his eyes and the invitation in her own was open and explicit. She murmured throatily as desire swept through her veins, a desire heightened by her emotional turmoil. Catching his hand she brought it to the open V of her dress, to the swell of her breast.

  His thumb brushed against her nipple and his hand tightened on the soft flesh and he drew her even closer with his free arm. Karen lifted her lips to his. Exultantly she strained herself against him. She had won, oh, he couldn’t resist her. He loved her as much as she loved him, it was going to be all right.

  Next moment he had caught hold of her arms and put her away from him. ‘No, Karen, it’s no use,’ he said calmly, and it was his very calmness which got through to her. She couldn’t believe it. For a moment she stood there shaking, breathing unevenly. And then she looked at him and his face was that of a stranger. Suddenly she slumped, all the fight drained out of her. She had lived with him for almost eight years and she had been as close to him as one human being could get to another and now he was a stranger to her. She couldn’t get through to him, he was implacable. Her humiliation was total.

  ‘Be reasonable, Karen, please,’ he said now, his tone cool, almost impersonal. She couldn’t believe it. ‘You know we haven’t been getting on lately. It’s my fault, I know. I’ve tried, I have really tried, but I should not have married. You are a strong woman, Karen, you will be all right. You should have married your Robert, I see t
hat now. And it’s true what you say – I’m no good on the farm, you have me to rights there. Look, I’ll give you the address of my relatives in London, I’ll go there first. And Sean says –’

  Karen’s head shot up. ‘You’ve been seeing Sean?’ It felt like the ultimate betrayal.

  Patrick nodded. ‘I have,’ he admitted.

  Her heart beat painfully. Sean, his brother priest, he had always been against her. And now he had won. She sat down before the fire, staring into the flames, defeat bitter as bile in her throat.

  Patrick gazed at her, wishing he could help her, knowing he could not. He thought back to his last meeting with Sean. His friend had been so understanding, reminding him of the years they had spent in the seminary, of the hopes and ambitions they had had. And Sean had fulfilled his early promise. Look at him now, a bishop.

  ‘We will pray together, Patrick, you and I. God will reveal his plans for you,’ he had said, and knelt with him before the altar. A peace beyond understanding came over Patrick there, a peace which was still with him. A peace which was carrying him through this scene with Karen. He looked at her as she sat dejectedly by the fire. How he had loved her, beyond all reason. But he had to go.

  ‘Your main duty is to God and the Church,’ Sean had insisted. ‘You pledged your life to his service, he will not let you go.’

  ‘But Karen, the children …’

  ‘They will be looked after,’ Sean had said. ‘She is a strong woman, you have said yourself she is, she will get over this.’ Wisely he said nothing against Karen, not then. Patrick was so close to coming back into the fold.

  Patrick brought his thoughts back to the present. ‘I won’t go until summer, Karen. I won’t leave until I’m sure you will be all right,’ he said, breaking into her bitter reverie. It was enough to shake her out of it.

  Rising to her feet, she turned to face him. ‘No, go as soon as you like. Go now. Why wait for the weather? There’s lambing in the spring and haytime in the summer. There isn’t a good time. If you want to go, you’d best be ganning.’ Unconsciously she slipped back into the idiom of her own people as at last she found her pride.

  I’m tired, she thought, utterly defeated. And she had to face up to it. Just when she thought everything would work out her worst nightmare had returned, and this time for real. Patrick had been reclaimed by his first love.

  ‘You can bring Young Luke in to help you,’ said Patrick. ‘It will be fine, you’ll see.’

  ‘Oh, yes, fine.’

  She gazed at him. He had obviously thought it all out. How long had he been planning this? she asked herself. But she would not ask him. Already she was feeling detached from him. Tomorrow or the day after that she would mourn for him, but now her mind could take no more. Turning her back on him without another word, she went into the scullery, pulled on her boots and took her mackintosh. She walked out and along to the ghyll and sat down on a limestone outcrop, staring at the swollen stream, peaty from melted snow off the high moor. Please let him be gone before I go back, she prayed. She couldn’t bear to see that final act.

  After a while she began to notice the tiny signs of spring: the celandines pushing through the new grass, the scent of wild garlic which hung on the air. Soon the curlews would come crying over the fell, their courting song rising and falling as they danced on the wing. Faintly, she heard the hourly bus go by on the top road. It was time to go back to the farm.

  Walking along, she saw Nick and Jennie in the distance. They would be wanting their dinner, it was time already. By the gate, she gazed up into the branches of the rowan tree. The buds were swelling and tiny bits of green showed at the tips. She leaned her hand against the trunk. It was solid and hard. The mark where the bark had been chipped off that night was damp and brown; the raw newness of it had soon faded.

  Forgetting the need to prepare dinner, she leaned against the trunk and gazed out over the moor, her mind already working, planning what to do. We will be fine, she vowed to herself. I’ll see that we will. I have a job now, haven’t I? Like the rowan tree, I’ll be here, standing foursquare to the wind, no matter what happens. Resolutely she walked to meet the children and took them by the hand, one on either side of her. They chatted excitedly about their day and she listened absent-mindedly as they crossed the yard and went into the house.

  It wasn’t easy, oh no, it wasn’t easy at all. Sometimes she wondered at herself, how she had stood by the rowan tree the day that Patrick went, thinking fine thoughts of how she would manage without him, fooling herself.

  She wondered one day as she walked across the yard and out by the gate, her nurse’s case in her hand for she was on her way to work. She didn’t look at the tree but stared blindly up the lane, concentrating on putting one foot before the other on the path, for the pain was as a knife slicing inside her today. She tried to turn her mind to the patient she was going to see. It was Mrs Gilbey, a housewife who had contracted polio last summer and was now a paraplegic, paralyzed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair. Mrs Gilbey, with her three young children and a husband with a fondness for ale.

  How much better off she was than Mrs Gilbey, she told herself, but it didn’t help cut down her misery, it didn’t help at all. Maybe she was being punished for Dave. That was it, his unquiet spirit could be hanging over the farm, she didn’t know. Such superstition, the Church would say disapprovingly – Robert would say it was not Christian, an echo from pagan times.

  Karen’s muddled thoughts ran on unchecked until she climbed down from the bus at the entrance to the Gilbeys’ farm. Then, miraculously, her nurse’s training took over and she pinned a cheery smile on her face. She attended to her patient’s pressure points and replaced her urine catheter, chatting all the time of the gossip in the dale to the news-starved woman. But at the back of Karen’s mind hovered the black cloud of despair, waiting to take over altogether should she let down her guard.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  KAREN SAT ON the bus going down the dale, staring unseeingly out of the window at the sun-dappled hedges and hills. The bus stopped at Frosterley and a crowd of women got on. They were on their way to Bishop Auckland market. The bus was filling and a stout red-faced housewife carrying an enormous basket sat down beside Karen, jostling her with the basket.

  ‘Eeh, I’m sorry, missus,’ she said. ‘Can’t this bus be murder on market day? I tried to get the nine o’clock but what with the milking and getting the bairns off to school –’

  She broke off as she realized that Karen was ignoring her completely. Offended, she sniffed loudly and pursed her lips. Stuck-up bitch, she thought, who did she think she was? Just sitting there, couldn’t even acknowledge a body when she was talking perfectly civilly to her an’ all. The woman glanced at her neighbour across the aisle, wondering if she had seen her humiliation. But no, she hadn’t noticed.

  Karen was oblivious to everything on the bus. It was three months now since Patrick had gone. Patrick. The name seared through her mind and she closed her eyes against the pain for a moment. For all her determination, in spite of all the times she had told herself she could manage without him, the pain of losing him was always there in her mind, even when she was working. And she worked all the time. There was the pressing need to try to close him out, fill her mind with other things. How long could she bear it?

  Karen shook her head, trying to rid it of her pain. She turned to gaze into the bus and the woman beside her glanced haughtily at her but when she saw the haunted agony in Karen’s eyes haughtiness slipped into concern.

  ‘Are you feeling badly, missus?’ she asked. ‘Is something the matter?’

  This time the question penetrated Karen’s mind and she looked at the woman.

  ‘I’m sorry, did you say something?’

  ‘I was just asking if you felt poorly, like,’ the woman said loudly, forgiving, for wasn’t it obvious that Karen was deaf?

  She winced. Why on earth was her neighbour shouting? ‘I’m fine, thank you,’ she a
nswered and turned her eyes back to the window. The bus was pulling into Bishop Auckland marketplace. She would have to hurry to catch the connection to Morton Main. Pleased to have something to do which stopped her mind dwelling on Patrick, she pushed her way to the door and waited impatiently for the bus to stop.

  The marketplace was fairly busy this Thursday morning. Not so bustling as when the mines were working fully though, except round the stall at the end near the entrance to the bishop’s palace which sold second-hand clothing. There, women were turning over the piles of collarless shirts and suits with shiny elbows and knees. Two women were arguing over a child’s dress, pink and frilled artificial silk.

  ‘I’ll give you two shillings, I can’t afford half a crown,’ the younger one was saying. ‘Come on, man, would you have my bairn go on the Sunday School anniversary without a nice dress?’

  ‘Two and threepence,’ the stallholder answered stolidly, glancing absent-mindedly after Karen. She passed on to where the fish-wives from Shields were calling their wares.

  ‘Caller herring! Lovely fresh cod!’

  She bought a pound of herring and waited impatiently for the fish-wife to wrap the fish up with her red-raw hands, chapped and scarred from the fish pickling. The Morton Main bus was in. Karen paid her twopence and ran for it. At least she had something to take with her to Kezia. She had forgotten altogether to bring the basket of eggs she had intended for her.

  ‘Why, Karen pet, it’s grand to see you,’ Kezia exclaimed, scrambling up from her kneeling mat before the range, black-lead brush in hand for she had been busy buffing up the shiny black fronts of the oven and boiler. ‘Why didn’t you write and tell me you were coming? I’d have had the place nice for you.’

  The sisters gave each other quick pecks on the cheek though their beaming smiles belied the meagreness of their embrace. Kezia’s smile became anxious however as she noted the deep shadows under Karen’s eyes and the hollows in her cheeks. She knew that Patrick had left her, of course. Karen had written her a short note, saying so. But there had been no emotion in the letter and her sister had insisted that she was all right, everything was fine. And Kezia had been busy with the problems of Luke working only three days a week and Young Luke not at all, and had taken her at her word. Karen was not fine, she could see that now, feel it in the nervous energy which pulsed from her.