by Hilary Neal
He smiled, and then shrugged. “Let’s not overdramatize the matter,” he said, “but I imagine you just about saved his life, as they say.”
Her eyes widened. “I did, sir?” But how?”
He spread his hands eloquently. “If you hadn’t been available—he wouldn’t have had blood as early as he did. Then either he would have gone to the theatre in poor shape—which I wouldn’t have allowed—or he’d have waited for the blood van. And if he had waited, there would undoubtedly have been an extremely tricky perforation, an infected peritoneum, and a lot of trouble for everybody, especially him. That’s logic, isn’t it?” He nodded again, and went out as quietly as he had come.
She sat beside the bed, with the light dimmed above David’s head, for a long time. Every half-hour she reached out for his clammy wrist, checked his pulse with her watch, and entered it on the temporary chart. Slowly, very slowly, his breathing deepened, and the faint color began to return to his cheeks. Once, after she had sat there for more than an hour, he-opened his eyes briefly and closed them again. Now and again Mair or Nurse Dennis would peep quietly over the screen, and tiptoe away again. There was a sense of timelessness, and the little hospital sounds seemed very far away.
It was dawn when he moved his head for the first time. He twisted his face towards her, frowning, and she turned up the light two or three points, so that he could orientate himself.
“You’ll be fine now,” she told him. “Don’t bother to talk.” She reached out for ice from the bowl on the locker, and put a chip of it on his tongue. “I expect your mouth’s horribly dry.”
He sucked it slowly, and his sunken eyes never left her face. Then he said: “Go away, Fenella.”
“Don’t be idiotic. I can’t leave you.”
“Go away.” His voice rose, stronger. “I won’t have you in here.”
He said it so vehemently that she drew back hastily from the bedside. Inevitably her elbow caught the ice bowl and sent it crashing to the floor. Before she bent to pick up the scattered ice she saw the painful start, and for a second a look almost of terror transfigured his face. Then he controlled himself again. Somehow she apologised. “I’m so sorry—I”
“Please. Go away,” he repeated. He turned his face away from her wearily, and one fist was beating nervously on the tightly tucked-in sheet.
Mair, alerted by the clatter, came round the screen. She looked down at Fenella where she was scrambling for lumps of ice on the parquet floor. “I should think so,” she agreed. “That wasn’t very clever of you, was it?” She turned to David. “Feeling better now?” she asked gently. Fenella, flushing, went out with the bowl.
When she had put it away, and collected fresh ice from the refrigerator outside the theatre, she hesitated. How could she go back in there? He had told her to go away. Playing for time, she went into the little office and powdered her hot face in the mirror, mentally kicking herself for her clumsiness. “If he hadn’t snapped at me...” she thought. And then she dismissed the excuse. She had been in the wrong. She had failed him.
She was not cheered when a few moments later Nurse Dennis ran her to earth. “Oh, there you are, Staff!” she exclaimed. “Nurse Lewis says she’s staying with Sir David, and will you carry on. I’m just going to feed the pyloric baby for her.” She grinned. “I don’t know what you dropped, Staff, but you seem to be in black books with him.”
“I do? What makes you say that?”
Dennis shrugged. “Seems he told Nurse Lewis he wouldn’t have you to special him at any price, and said he wanted her instead. That’s what she said, anyhow.”
Fenella tried to pass it off lightly. “Oh, well. If Sir David can’t choose his own nurse, I don’t know who can. He’s much more used to Nurse Lewis than he is to me. I expect that’s it, really. He feels at home with her.”
But as she began the early temperatures in the medical ward she was on the verge of tears. What was the use of being a nurse at all, she asked herself, if she was too clumsy and inept to be of service to David when he needed care? She was furiously impatient with herself. And, childishly, she thought of the blood she had given him. Was this his thanks? To ban her from his room as though she were some clumsy untrained probationer? As though she were no more use to him than Nurse Minner?
She reached Gilda’s room before she recovered her poise. Gilda smiled up sleepily. “Nice night?” she asked.
Fenella put the thermometer jar down on the bed-table, shook one down, and slipped it under Gilda’s tongue. “Not terribly,” she said. She kept her eyes on her watch. Gilda made querying noises, and raised her eyebrows in vain. But when Fenella took the thermometer away again, she demanded: “Why not? Busy?”
There was no point in not telling her, after all, Fenella thought. The day nurse would give her some garbled account that might worry her. She moved towards the door. “Sir David’s been warded,” she said casually.
“David? But why? What have they been doing to him? I know the theatre’s been working, because I heard the trolley coming from the male ward.” She sat bolt upright and pulled her fluffy bed--jacket round her shoulders. “You can come right back here and tell me,” she persisted, “or I’ll ring and ring until someone does, so there! Is he all right?”
Fenella sighed and went back to the end of the bed. “He’s all right,” she said. “But it was a near thing at the time. A nasty appendix. Fortunately Mr. Glanville Duncan took it in time. We were lucky to get him.”
Gilda frowned. “But you are sure he’s all right? He’s going to be well soon?”
“Quite soon, I hope.”
“Nurse Scott! I wonder...” Gilda’s eyes narrowed, and she stopped.
“You wonder what? Whether you can have a cup of tea? If so...”
Gilda flapped a white hand. “No, no. I wonder whether Mr. Parsley foretold this? He was so interested in Aries types, wasn’t he? He told David they were ‘kings among men’, you know.”
“Did he?” Fenella had her hand on the door knob. It was as she made her escape that Gilda said: “Well, after all, David’s Aries himself, and you must admit he does have a sort of regal touch at times...”
The morning routine kept her fully occupied until the day nurses came on duty, and Mair had still not put in an appearance. She handed over without comment, until Matron unexpectedly strode into the office, and demanded: “Well, Nurse Scott? And what’s all this about Sir David? Why wasn’t I called, may I ask?”
“Good morning, Matron. I don’t know—it all happened so quickly, I expect Nurse Lewis thought...”
“Then Nurse Lewis shouldn’t think. Where is she? Why are you giving the report?”
“She’s with him, Matron, in Ward Five.” Fenella waited for Matron’s question. Surely she would ask: “Why are you not with your own patient, Nurse?” But it didn’t come. Matron merely, nodded approvingly, and turned to go down to the private wards, straightening her already perfect cap as she went.
Somehow a meal was the last thing Fenella wanted. The very thought of food sickened her. She crossed the hall quickly, and turned up the Home stairs instead of going to the dining room. It was only when she reached her room that she thought again of Mr. Parsley, and remembered Mair’s reference to his missing will.
It was unlikely that there would be any mention of it in his letter to her, she told herself, but she opened her writing case and took out the thick envelope nevertheless. There was a tightly folded wad of paper inside, quite unlike the neat letter Gilda had received. She opened it out and sat on her bed to read it.
She blinked. It was not a letter at all. It was a carefully engrossed document, and the heading read: “This is the last Will and Testament of me, Bernard Athelstane Paget Parsley...” She jumped to her feet.
Across her office desk Matron looked at Fenella curiously, and then bent over the paper in front of her again. “Do you mean to tell me, Nurse Scott, that you knew nothing of this until this morning?”
“Well, Matron, I knew I had the en
velope in my room, yes. But I thought it was a letter. I had no idea it was his will or I would have handed it over at once, naturally.”
Matron made an impatient movement with the reading glasses she had snatched off. “I don’t mean that, Nurse. I mean, are you telling me you knew nothing—absolutely nothing—of the provisions of Mr. Parsley’s will?”
Fenella was puzzled. “Of course not—I...”
Matron tapped the paper crossly with the back of her hand. “You swear to me, Nurse, that you knew nothing of what is written here?”
“Of course not, Matron. I still don’t. I haven’t read it. I brought it straight to you as soon as I saw what it was.”
Then Matron did an unprecedented thing. She took off her cap, put it down carefully on her desk, reached into a drawer and brought out a silver cigarette box and offered it, open, to Fenella. “Take off your cap, Nurse,” she said in a slow, incredulous voice. “You know I don’t allow smoking in uniform.”
Automatically Fenella did as she was told. In a daze she took one of the proffered cigarettes. Wondering if she were dreaming, she bent forward to the flame from the Matron’s big desk lighter.
“Then let me be the first to congratulate you, Nurse Scott,” Matron’s voice was saying, a long way off. “What a very, very lucky girl you are!” She drew on her own cigarette deeply, and gave a queer little laugh. “You know,” she said, “when I was a young nurse I used to get over the bad patches by telling myself that one day I would get my reward; money.” She shrugged. “I soon learned not to indulge in such mercenary daydreams. They aren’t worthy of a nurse. But I’ve heard of it happening to other people, and...”
Fenella stubbed out her cigarette quickly in the big brass ashtray. “Matron,” she began urgently, “you’re surely not trying to tell me that Mr. Parsley has...”
Matron’s smile was beatific. “He has left you—if this is indeed a valid will, and I see no reason for it to be anything else—a sum of twenty thousand pounds, Nurse Scott! I’m quite sure I have no right whatever to disclose the contents of this will to you, no right whatever. But as it was given into your keeping, we must assume you were meant to see it, musn’t we?”
Fenella wasn’t listening. Matron was just in time to push her head down between her knees, and say: “Deep breaths, Nurse!”
CHAPTER IX
MATRON had advocated fresh air and, still with a numbed feeling of unreality, Fenella muddled her way through a prolonged, dreaming hot bath, and got into her green tweed suit and daffodil blouse. Outside in the brisk air and sunlight, with the insistent traffic noises about her, she began to feel the impact of real life again. As she paused at the bottom of the hospital steps she saw Mrs. Hackett hurrying towards her across the road, dodging the buses and cars and waving a detaining hand.
Fenella went forward to meet her at the kerb. “Good morning, Mrs. Hackett. You’ll be wondering...”
“How is he, Nurse? Is he resting comfortably?”
Fenella nodded. “I think so. He made good progress during the night. He should be all right now, with care.”
“Thanks to you, I don’t doubt, Nurse.”
“Why me?” Fenella shook her head. “Nurse Lewis has been looking after him too, remember. And if anyone saved the situation it was Mr. Glanville Duncan. Another hour, and...”
Mrs. Hackett jerked out a grim little laugh. “Funny,” she said. “That’s just what he said about you!”
“Who?”
“Mr. Glanville Duncan. He very kindly called in last night, before he went home, to save my waiting over there. He said: ‘Another hour might have made it all much more difficult, and Nurse Scott certainly saved the situation by giving us the blood we needed to go on with.’ That’s what he said. No getting away from that, is there?” She squeezed Fenella’s arm. “Bless you, my dear. I hope you’re not feeling any the worse? Now, tell me: what time ought I to go in to see Mr. David?”
Fenella considered. “I don’t suppose you’ll be expected to stick to proper visiting hours. But I should leave it an hour or two—give him a chance to rest a little more. Perhaps if you went in about twelve?”
“I’ll do that. And I’ll take in the rest of his toilet things. Is there anything else he needs?”
“I don’t think so. Nothing in the food line for a few days, anyway. And then, if I know Cook, she’ll be in her element inventing special dainties for him. Perhaps you could have a word with her and tell her what he’s specially fond of?”
“I’ll do that, my dear,” Mrs. Hackett nodded. “If anyone ought to know his little ways, I ought. After thirty years of him I’m beginning to get used to him!” She smiled, and her faded blue eyes twinkled. “Always been a handful, he has; but he’s a dear good fellow for all that.”
“Mrs. Hackett...” Fenella hesitated.
“What is it, my dear?”
“Can you tell me why he’s so sensitive to noise? And why he’s so moody. Matron said it had something to do with the war, but...”
The housekeeper’s face grew serious. “There’s things he never talks about,” she admitted. “Not even to me. All I know is that at times it’s torture to him, anything happening suddenly. Like a pain in his head, he says. But I’ll say this much ...” she leaned near to Fenella’s ear, “he hasn’t been nearly so bad this last week or two, even though he’s been so seedy. Why, only a few days ago I dropped the jam kettle on the quarry floor—a fine old clatter it made, too—and he never turned a hair. In fact, he laughed!”
“He didn’t jump down your throat?”
“No. He said something about what a lovely day it was, and that he’d been out on the Common for some air. And that’s a thing he hasn’t done for long enough, for all his talk about fresh air and exercise. Funny, going off there all by himself, wasn’t it?” She nodded and smiled again, and as she trotted away with her shopping basket Fenella collected herself. She began to think again about Bernard Parsley’s will.
In the little cafe near the library, she found Mair and Nurse Greatrex. They waved her over to their corner table. “Wake up, Staff,” Greatrex urged her. “You’re not with us yet!”
Fenella blinked. “What a night!” she said, and added, mentally: “What a morning!” She stirred the coffee Mair had ordered for her and debated whether to tell them her news. Perhaps if she shared it with someone else it might begin to sound true. And then, to stave off the decision, she said: “I just saw Mrs. Hackett.”
Mair smiled. “Enquiring about her beloved ‘Mr. David’, I suppose?” She looked across at Greatrex. “She dotes on him. You can’t blame her—she’s looked after him ever since he was a little boy.”
“I told her he was making good progress,” Fenella went on. “I hope that was up to date?”
“It was. He’s been sleeping most of the time since your ignominious exit, my girl. You would go and start him off, wouldn’t you? Butterfingers!”
Fenella bit her lip. “I could have kicked myself’—and then she remembered something. “But Mair—he told me to get out before I knocked the bowl over.” Her voice quickened. “Yes, I remember now. It was because he snarled at me that I jumped back and caught the wretched thing with my elbow.”
“Did he indeed?” Mair’s neat dark eyebrows went up half an inch and came down again. “Ah, well! Maybe he doesn’t like the way you part your hair, my dear. Or perhaps he’s allergic to blondes.”
“He isn’t, Staff,” Greatrex put in. “You couldn’t say he was allergic to Gilda Seymour, could you?”
“Oh, that’s different. He’s known her for ages. Old flame, or something. How she can prefer that Stephen Ames to him I can’t think.” Mair reached for the teapot, and poured herself another cup. “Still, there’s no accounting for tastes. And it’s just as well.” She sighed. “Let’s hope he does go straight ahead. If anything goes wrong with him ... I’ve a lot of plans pinned to that man.”
Nurse Greatrex opened her eyes wide. “Have you, Staff? What sort of plans?”
&nb
sp; Mair looked at her watch. “That’d be telling! Isn’t it time you went to bed, youngster? Those pink cheeks of yours must take a bit of keeping up. Shoo! Be off with you!”
“All right, Staff. I can take a hint.” The big jolly girl got up and collected her parcels and handbag. “I’ll see you tonight, then. ’Bye for now.”
They watched her go. “Grand sort,” Mair said. “You’d never think I found her crying over a letter an hour ago, would you?”
“Bad news?”
“I think so. But she didn’t say much. That’s why I dragged her in here. What’s on your mind?”
Fenella said tentatively: “You’ll remember—You see, I’ve had a shock this morning. You remember telling me about Mr. Parsley’s will being adrift?”
“Yes. Has somebody found it at last?”
Fenella nodded. “I did, actually. It was in my envelope all the time.”
“Scissors? What have you done with it? I ought to ring up that solicitor and tell him. He was nearly frantic. There must be a decent sum involved, or he wouldn’t be so anxious, would he?”
“I took it to Matron. She said she’d get on to the solicitor herself.”
“You read it, I suppose? Any little mementoes for the ‘nobly unselfish staff of Bishopsbury Cottage Hospital’? I wonder. Or has he left it all to the Society for Psychical Research? Or to a mystery woman living in a Bournemouth boarding house?”
Suddenly it wasn’t the right moment any more. Fenella shrugged. “I didn’t read it. As soon as I saw what it was I took it straight down to the office. I supposed it was private.”
“Hm! I’ll bet Matron went through it with a toothcomb!” Mair commented. “She’s just living for the day when someone leaves the hospital enough to extend the Home. Are you ready to go back, or are you shopping?”