I looked at the garden while Robbie rambled on about what he had said to the Dean and the Dean to him. ‘… if we don’t turn out more qualified men per year, then we may as well face it, this Health Service of ours is going to grind to a halt. What we’re trying to do is run a twenty-four-hour service with what amounts to a twelve-hour medical staff! Any self-respecting trade-union official would shout for a general strike if the members of his union were asked to work half the hours we expect of our young men. A forty-hour week indeed! Tell that to the average house-surgeon, who calls a fifteen-hour day a normal day’s work!’
Eventually the conversation returned to Geraldine Easton. Sir Robert agreed with Joe about her returning with us. ‘Let’s settle everything this end while we’re here and in easy reach of London by telephone.’ He pushed back his chair. ‘Be back for ye later, m’dear. Come on, boy!’ He stomped off without waiting for Joe or even looking back, which allowed Joe to follow at his own speed.
He took his time. He stubbed out a cigarette, got on his feet using the same methods as before. ‘So you really didn’t know, Maggie?’
‘No. Did you ask the boys at Barny’s not to talk? Believe you me, they did not.’
‘That was decent of them. Not many knew.’
I asked, ‘Joe, why? You didn’t want pity?’
‘I don’t know about not wanting that.’ His smile was self-derisive. ‘I do know one doesn’t honestly need it. One gives oneself so much. I think ‒ I had better get after Robbie before he starts bellowing for me.’
‘Yes.’ We both knew he had not answered my question. I did not intend to repeat it. ‘He detests being kept waiting.’
I made myself watch his walk clinically. It was good. According to all the books I had read on what I now knew was the right subject, most patients at this stage would still be using two sticks. ‘… but the more the patient can be encouraged to rely on his own muscles, the better the ultimate prognosis.’
There was good as well as bad in his knowing so much. He had read all those books, and seen for himself on hundreds of occasions the quite astonishing physical difference the right mental approach to an illness can make. He had the right temperament, build, and previous physical condition to make a good operation subject. All those were tremendous assets now, and when he had to have the second-stage operation. The books I had managed to get hold of had said approximately 20 per cent of all such cases could be cured surgically. But most of them had been written five or more years ago, before Buckwell’s breakthrough with his then very new technique of grafting. Sister Orthopaedic Theatre had put the figure up to fifty. And old Robbie had been genuinely pleased just now. He was far too shrewd to have attempted any form of an encouraging act. But a cure still meant being left with a permanently weakened back. Joe was a surgeon. Surgeons have to have strong backs. If Robbie was right ‒ and he was seldom wrong ‒ Joe should get away with it, and with his qualifications he could always earn some sort of a living. Yet unless something not far short of a miracle happened, I could not see how his particular talent was going to be much use to him, or anyone else, again.
I was nearly falling over backward mentally in my efforts to view things with the detachment I had learned from my job. Suddenly, I could no longer keep it up. I was too distressed, too bitter, even to remember that before I was out of my first ward I had learned never to ask why. And I understood why he had not said a word about this at Barny’s, and had asked the boys to keep it quiet. I understood, because I had seen pain, real pain, the type that takes over the individual so often, in the wards. That type, whether of the body or the spirit, is a very private affair. It turns a human being into a statue who scarcely dares to risk movement even by breathing, and while it lasts the sufferer is drawn into a secret, silent world of one inhabitant. It is not a question of not wanting to share it: it cannot be shared.
In his place, I would have done as he had. I would have wanted to get away even from him. Then, for the first time since our meeting, I remembered Frances, and that this must be as much hell for her as it was for me. They must have met and fallen in love when he went over to Martha’s path lab for the various tests he must have had before Buckwell was willing to touch him. Those were the ‘injections’ Dolly Bachelor had let out. ‘Injections’ was a useful euphemism frequently used by hospitals, since it covered a lot and explained nothing.
But all this did explain why she had not yet given up her Martha’s job. I thought she was right to do that, to stay right away from him ‒ if she had ‒ while he was still warded, but if I were her now during these waiting weeks, I would be out here, fine job or no fine job. Possibly that was because I was a nurse and not a doctor. Doctors saw patients at regular intervals, but for comparatively short periods. Nurses were with them all day, or all night. It was not nearly so easy to remain academic about a patient once he or she turned from a patient into a person, as happened after only a couple of days in a ward. And people during convalescence need the comfort of understanding companions very much more than when at the height of their illness. Then they need skilled care.
Joe would probably deny this strongly. That must have persuaded her. The way I felt that morning, it would not have persuaded me. Matron would have had to find herself a new theatre sister fast, I thought fiercely. And then I thought no, she wouldn’t. If Joe and I had been still engaged when he went into Martha’s I would not have been Sister Theatre. I would have known he was ill, and when Matron offered me the job would have turned it down as I did before, thinking I was getting married. Matron would have understood. So the question would not have arisen.
Nor did it now, I reminded myself bleakly; nor did it now.
Chapter Nine
A SPRING MORNING IN SPAIN
The sun shone as we drove slowly down the already crowded main street. The lights were off in the all-night cafés, the doors wide open. The scent of fresh coffee roasting, of baking, and scrubbing soap mingled with the scent of musk from the Indian shops.
Joe sat between Sir Robert and myself in the back of Miguel’s large and much worn American car. Sir Robert had arranged the seating. ‘Sister and I are the tourists. Be sure and tell us what to look at, boy!’ He smiled across at me. ‘As it would look as if this may turn into a fine old wild-goose chase, m’dear, the least we can do is get in some sightseeing.’ He peered suddenly through his window. ‘Take a look at that, Joe! Over there by that window with all the brasses! What’s a youngster like that doing with an arthrodesed hip? But that’s what some fool of a surgeon’s done to him, eh?’
‘Looks like it, sir. Could be a pin, of course, or a plate in after a road accident.’
‘Possibly.’ Sir Robert continued to look put out until he spotted an untreated bursa on a youngish woman’s elbow, then an early case of disseminated sclerosis.
As we slowed at the Gibraltar frontier, Joe murmured to me, ‘Any passengers left undiagnosed on your plane out?’
A stream of Spanish workers was pouring in over the border, each holding the permit that allowed its owner to pass in for a day’s work. A solid, delightfully incongruous figure in the blue uniform of a London policeman watched the Spaniards with a typically impassive face.
The Spanish guards at the second frontier delayed us only briefly. The customs check seemed more a social occasion than anything else. Neither Sir Robert nor myself spoke any Spanish, but Joe had acquired sufficient at one time and another to translate for us and answer their questions. Before finally waving us on, the guards asked several questions that, from their bows in my direction, seemed to concern me. As we drove on into the small frontier town of La Linea, Sir Robert asked why those amiable fellows had been so amused.
‘It wasn’t amusement, sir. Admiration.’ Joe glanced my way, smiling slightly. ‘They decided your Sister Theatre has the complexion of a lily, the eyes of an angel, and the ankles of a racehorse ‒ amongst other attractions.’
‘Is that so? Most observant fellows, if I may say so, m’dear!
Most observant! And what was all that business about a novice? Didn’t I catch that word?’
‘Not novice. Novio. That’s a ‒ oh ‒ serious suitor. My Spanish isn’t up to much. I had tried to explain you were visiting your niece. They got hold of the impression that had to be Miss Lindsay. This is still an old-fashioned country, and as they saw from my passport that I’m single, they assumed that as I was travelling with an uncle and niece, I must qualify.’
‘They did, did they? Hm. It must save a great many complications having things so cut and dried. I have often observed‒’ But we never heard Sir Robert’s observation in that context, because just then our driver swerved violently to avoid a little group of women walking towards the border with baskets of clean linen on their heads. He was flung against his window. I would have landed in Joe’s lap, but for his quick steadying arm round my shoulders.
He had reacted instinctively, but as he gripped me his arm muscles suddenly turned tense, as if he had had an electric shock. And that was how I felt. He removed his arm almost immediately. It was just as well. His nearness was disturbing enough. His touch had reminded me far too vividly of the times he had held me in his arms. I edged as far away from him as possible and stared out of my window until my face grew less hot and my ears stopped drumming. If this kind of thing was likely to happen again the sooner I got right away from him the better.
Sir Robert stifled a yawn and talked of the arrangements he had just made by telephone with Bill Swan to admit Geraldine Easton and her baby to Catherine Ward on the day after tomorrow. ‘Glad we’ve got the ambulance and plane reservations all settled.’ He yawned again. ‘This is very pleasant.’ His eyelids drooped and his head began to nod. In the clear light of that Mediterranean morning he looked much older than he did in London and, despite his sleep on the flight out, very tired.
Joe looked from him to me. ‘Sleepy, Maggie?’
I shook my head. ‘How long from here?’
‘Two to three hours.’
I said quietly, ‘Let’s let him sleep in peace.’
‘Yes. He needs it.’
He was, I sensed, as grateful as myself for an excuse for silence. Sir Robert’s brisk presence awake, even when absent, as when we had waited in that reception lounge, had served as a constant reminder of our professional selves, and consequently allowed us both to retreat behind our professional armour. Asleep, the old man looked oddly gentle and as defenceless as people do in sleep. He looked nothing like the great surgeon with the world-wide reputation for being one of the biggest names in modern surgery. And because his defences were down, ours seemed to have gone too. I no longer felt anything like a theatre sister. I very much doubted Joe now felt anything like a surgeon. I was only the girl he had stopped loving, and he was the man who did not want my love. Our physical proximity must have made the past as embarrassing for him as it was dangerous for me. We had known each other too well to be able to make successful small talk. But unless we talked shop there was now no other kind of talk open to us. Our past hedged our present with forbidden territory and ‘No Conversational Entry’ signs.
The road grew narrower and rougher and for a while hugged the coast. The sea was very blue and flecked with minute specks of white, as it was still early in the year. Offshore, dozens of little fishing-boats bobbed like corks, and behind us the rock pointing like a giant finger into the sea began to merge with the horizon. The mountains we had to cross lay ahead, purple shadows on the skyline. Then we turned inland and the shadows turned to massive black rock.
I tried to think of Mark, to use him as a refuge from Joe and the effect of his silent presence. I avoided looking at his profile, yet was conscious of every slight movement he made, every breath. I told myself I was being a fool and, as Mark would say, rubbing salt into the wound. I reminded myself of everything Ellen and my theatre girls ‒ including Sandra ‒ had ever said about Mark’s feelings for me. I worked hard to get myself in a state of indignation for Mark over my own behaviour towards him. Dolly Bachelor thought me a-human. Was it any wonder my relationship with the poor man had been so bogged down? He was a good man, a kind man, and he had been quite incredibly and uncharacteristically thoughtful to me ever since Joe left. He might have been a big brother, only he was not my brother. I had no brothers, but from observing those of my friends, I had noticed the only men who behaved to girls like brothers were their brothers. Yet Mark, for all his talk, had never once persuaded me he felt more for me than a great kindness. Perhaps that was his way of loving. And then I had to look briefly at Joe. It might be Mark’s way, and a good way. It was not my way ‒ yet.
The car bumped and jolted. Sir Robert slept on. We passed small villages with white-walled and flat-roofed cottages; larger villages with the roofs of the houses all shining brown tiles; skirted the high wall of a monastery or convent on a hill; caught the occasional glimpse of an elegant golden-stone house with iron-grilled windows standing aloof at the end of an avenue of eucalyptus-trees.
The mountains were very near. The last valley was carved into pocket-handkerchief fields, each neatly edged with a low rough-stone wall. The women working in the fields looked round and then waved as we went by. Miguel drove more slowly and waved back vigorously.
Joe said quietly, ‘His mother comes from here.’ He jerked a thumb. ‘Her sisters, cousins, and aunts.’
In one field a young man was ploughing rhythmically, his plough drawn by a solitary ox. He looked as if he had all eternity in which to finish that field and had been there since eternity began. I watched him and thought, I’ve got until the day after to-morrow.
The mountain road was cut out of the rock face, and the drop on the off-side was sheer. I never had a head for heights, and for most of that winding, tilting climb and then descent sat with my eyes closed.
Joe’s voice said, ‘You can open them now, Maggie. We’re nearly down.’
Beyond the mountains the country was flat and yellow, and then it grew more undulating. We drove up a hill to yet another white village, which at first sight looked more African than Spanish. Joe told me it was the last village. ‘Seven miles more, that’s all.’
The Eastons’ house stood on a terrace half-way up a hill. At the foot was an olive-grove; above was a carpet of thyme and heather. The house was much bigger than I had expected. It was built of yellow stone with a long, low flat roof, and stood round three sides of a patio tiled with red and white diamonds. The patio had a trellis of vine as a roof, and the vine was in flower. The afternoon sun filtered through the trellis and set the diamonds dancing.
A girl lay reading in a bed pulled outside one open doorway. By an open window a few yards from her, an attractive dark-haired younger girl sat sewing. Behind her was a basket-work cradle on a truckle stand. Through the wide door of a room across the patio we could see the back of a fair man in a blue shirt and jeans working on a canvas fixed to an easel.
Joe at my elbow read my mind. ‘I’ve never been able to blame them for taking risks to live here either.’
Geraldine Easton was twenty-seven and the mother of two sons. She had been married ten years. She looked a young seventeen. Her longish, light-brown hair was tied into a schoolgirl ponytail. She put down an erudite-looking book on political economy to welcome us warmly.
‘Now you are back, Joe, I’m getting up,’ she announced later when we were all supplied with long glasses of fresh lime juice. ‘I only stayed in bed because I promised you I would until your return.’
Her uncle put his glass down on the tiles. ‘None of that nonsense, young woman! You’re staying where you are!’ She smiled as if he was a sweet but tiresome child.
‘Darling Uncle Robert, don’t fuss! I’m not ill now. I’ve only had a baby.’
Sir Robert turned to me. ‘Didn’t I tell ye how it would be! How can one begin to teach those who will not learn! Well! Where’s that husband of yours, gel? Let me talk to him!’
‘Darling, we can’t disturb David yet! He’s working.’ Geraldine w
as adamant. ‘He’s having trouble with the new picture.’
‘And that permits him to ignore our arrival?’
‘He’s not ignoring you, Uncle Robert. He’s just not aware you are here.’
Joe agreed. ‘Once David’s working, the house could fall in without his being aware of it ‒ provided it didn’t knock down his easel with the rest.’
Sir Robert said no doubt that was all very fine if you were one of those artist fellows, but such an attitude was beyond the comprehension of a simple surgeon. Joe and I looked at each other, then away, quickly, as Sir Robert produced all his favourite ‘simple surgeon’ cliches, ending as we expected with ‘… and a stitch in time saves nine on the operating table as elsewhere, young woman!’
Geraldine patted her uncle’s arm. ‘Darling, you mustn’t be cross or think I don’t appreciate all you’ve done for me. You’ve been simply wonderful, thinking of everything, rushing out here with Miss Lindsay, and I really am grateful, and so will David be when he realizes everything. But the baby and I can’t possibly leave him and fly home with you. There’s no need now I’ve had the baby, and I do so hate hospitals. I’m not letting you or anyone else cut me up ‒ but that doesn’t mean I don’t adore you!’
The New Sister Theatre Page 15