Visitors for the Chalet School

by Helen McClelland

  She leant on the balcony rail, watching the cold grey dawn, as she tried to straighten things out in her mind. Why did she now feel this curious reluctance to meet the doctor and visit the hospital? It had been possible for her recently to shelve the whole question of her future and simply enjoy the present. That would not be possible any longer. Perhaps, she thought wryly, a swimmer might feel like this, standing down there beside the lake and trying to find courage to plunge into the icy cold, grey water.

  And some icy cold, grey thoughts refused to leave her: perhaps she was not the right person to make a good doctor; perhaps, even if she got the chance, she would fail; then all the battles she would surely have to face would have been fought for nothing. Patricia gave a shiver, caused only partly by the chilly, early morning temperature. Re-opening the French window she went back into the bedroom where Pamela, not by nature an early riser, was still sleeping peacefully.

  Over at the Chalet School Joey Bettany also had wakened extremely early. It was still dark in the Yellow dormitory and very quiet; the only sound, that of gentle, regular breathing coming from the other seven cubicles, told her that everyone else was still asleep. Jo switched on her torch briefly to see the time. Then, it being far too early even to think of getting up, she lay back on her pillow, picturing the coming day’s events, enjoying them in anticipation.

  She had finally decided to invite Frieda and Elisaveta, as well as Patricia, to join the birthday outing. As she had said to her elder sister, ‘If I invite either Marie or Simone it means one will feel left out; and Simone would be upset even though Marie probably wouldn’t be, she’s too sensible. But it’ll be far better all round to choose Elisaveta ‘cos she’s in a different form. Anyway I’d like to have ’Veta.’

  Madge had been interested by Joey’s reasoning. She was afraid that Simone was going to be upset anyway; but she felt strongly that the young French girl should be encouraged to become less dependent on Joey. One thing amused Madge: the thought obviously never entered Jo’s head that anyone would imagine Elisaveta was chosen because she was a princess. This, Madge felt, well-pleased, was a tribute both to Elisaveta herself and to the sensible way she had always been treated in the Chalet School.

  Joey and her friends were to leave the school immediately after Frühstück and walk to Seespitz, where Frieda’s father, Herr Mensch, would pick them up by car and drive them down to Innsbruck. Madge and Jem Russell would have already arrived in Innsbruck and would meet them at the Mensches’ flat in the Mariahilfer Strasse. Then, in the afternoon, off to the theatre, where they would see the marionettes in a varied programme, including a one-act operetta by Offenbach. After that — but, for the moment, Joey had drifted back to sleep.

  By five minutes to nine, she and Frieda and Elisaveta, all looking extremely tidy — for once even Joey’s black mop of hair was neat — were gathered in the front hall waiting for Patricia to arrive from the Stephanie. It would have been too cold to stand around out of doors; but when the hall clock showed ten-past nine, and Patricia had still not appeared, Jo ran down to the school gate and looked out impatiently in the direction of the Stephanie.

  ‘Not a sign of her,’ she reported to the others, when she had rushed back into the house, accidentally letting the front door slam behind her. ‘Sorry about that row! Whatever d’you think can have happened to her? It’s too bad; I’m simply dying to get going.’

  ‘Perhaps she has mistaken the time for meeting here,’ suggested Elisaveta.

  ‘Not a chance of that. I saw her yesterday evening, and the last thing she said was “See you at nine in the morning”. It’s not like her to be late, either. Oh, botheration take it all!’

  ‘I expect some unexpected thing has delayed her,’ said Frieda peaceably. ‘What shall we do, Joey? Papa will be at Seespitz by ten o’clock and I think we should not be late.’

  Joey thought furiously for a moment. ‘If she isn’t here in five minutes, you and ’Veta had better start for Seespitz,’ she said eventually. ‘I’ll run round to the Stephanie and collect Patricia. She and I are fast walkers; we’ll easily be able to catch up with you.’

  Ten minutes later an agitated Jo dashed up to the door of the Stephanie and disappeared inside. Everywhere it was empty and silent. The Grange House party had all left nearly an hour before for their long walk round the lake, and neither Herr Dobler nor his wife was anywhere to be seen. Joey tore up the stairs to Patricia’s room and found it empty. Thoroughly puzzled now, she ran downstairs again to take a look into the big dining room.

  It was quite deserted. The breakfast things had been cleared away, and someone had begun setting out the cutlery for the next meal. Joey was reminded for a moment of the mysterious tale of the ship Marie Celeste, which she had read recently.

  Then suddenly she heard a muffled sound of voices and of someone apparently sobbing; it came from the far side of the room where there was a door leading presumably into the kitchen. Jo was across the room in a second and flung open the door.

  A scene of woe met her eyes. Frau Dobler was sitting on a bench in the middle of the kitchen, her arm round a sobbing girl whom Jo vaguely recognised as Liesel, the hotel kitchen-maid. Patricia, white-faced but calm, was bandaging the girl’s hand; while, in the background, two frightened girls stood, huddled together beside the great cooking-stove and staring wide-eyed.

  The dress of the girl with the injured hand was blood-stained, and part of the table, as Joey saw in her quick glance round the room, was spattered with unpleasantly scarlet patches. For just one moment Jo felt a wave of nausea sweep over her; then it was gone, forgotten in her urgent desire to help.

  ‘Thank heavens you’ve come, Joey,’ Patricia was saying fervently. ‘I’ve been trying to tell them that they must get a doctor for Liesel but I can’t speak German. Herr Dobler did go off somewhere, so perhaps he understood — I just don’t know.’ She turned and spoke for a moment to the injured girl: ‘There now, Liesel, it’s all nearly finished; everything will be all right soon.’ The words meant nothing to Liesel, but the tone of the voice was steady and reassuring.

  Meanwhile Joey, in her fluent German, was asking Frau Dobler whether anything had in fact been done about finding a doctor. She was quickly able to set Patricia’s mind at rest; Herr Dobler had certainly understood her, and he had gone to the Kron Prinz Karl to fetch a doctor who, by great good fortune, happened to be staying there. They should be arriving back at any moment now.

  ‘Oh, thank heavens!’ Patricia said again in obvious relief. Her grey eyes were still dark with anxiety but the tenseness of her expression relaxed a little. ‘I’ve put on a tourniquet, but I’m sure the wound ought to be stitched as soon as possible. And, if the doctor isn’t here soon, I must loosen the tourniquet for a moment.’ She looked at her watch.

  Joey, mindful of her Girl Guide training, had thought of something else. Offering to take Frau Dobler’s place beside the much calmer Liesel, she said: ‘Bitte, Frau Dobler, Liesel darf so gleich etwas warm trinken — und mit viel Zucker. Wollen Sie baldigst Kaffee machen?’

  Patricia had caught the words ‘trinken’ and ‘Kaffee’, and she nodded in approval. ‘Good for you, Jo; I think some coffee would do us all good.’ She smiled at Liesel and patted her shoulder. ‘She’s only a kid, you know. And she obviously got a dreadful fright. Please, Joey, could you tell Liesel I’m very sorry this has to be so tight, but otherwise the bleeding might start again.’

  Joey translated the first part of this sentence but wisely omitted the second, for fear that even the mention of bleeding might upset Liesel’s still precarious control. She then went and found a cloth and a bowl of water and began to try and remove some of the stains from the table. ‘What exactly happened, Patricia?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, I don’t know for sure. I heard a dreadful commotion going on here, and came down to see what it was about. Jo, don’t you think Liesel would be more comfortable in that chair?’ Together they helped the girl to move on to a chair near the stove; then
they wrapped her in a blanket brought by one of the maids, in response to a shouted command from Frau Dobler.

  The latter had been hurrying round preparing the coffee with rapid efficiency. Suddenly she rounded on the other young girls and sternly shooed them out of the room to get on with their work. Then she began to pour out the coffee with a great clattering of cups and spoons.

  Patricia was surprised at the good lady’s outburst. She had never before seen Frau Dobler out of temper and was too young to realise how often people do react after stress by being exceedingly, sometimes uncharacteristically, cross.

  The time, as the girls waited for the doctor’s arrival, seemed to pass with leaden-footed slowness. They sipped the scalding hot coffee gratefully, and Patricia, in an undertone, continued her narrative to Joey.

  She had been in her room, almost ready to leave for the Chalet School, when she heard the piercing screams. She and the Doblers, and the two young maids, had all rushed to the kitchen where (as Joey could guess, though Patricia naturally did not say so) the only person who knew how to cope with the injury was Patricia herself.

  Apparently Liesel had been preparing meat and vegetables, using a large and extremely sharp knife. Something must have startled her, and the knife had jerked sideways, making a deep cut right across her left hand. In terror at seeing the profuse bleeding, rather than at actual pain, the girl had screamed loudly. This at least had had the good result of bringing everyone to the kitchen.

  Patricia had not hesitated for a moment. She had literally pushed Liesel and Frau Dobler on to the bench, indicating that Frau Dobler must support the girl and hold up the injured hand. Snatching a towel, she tore off a corner, folded it into a pad, and pressed it grimly on to the wound; finally she bound the pad tightly with the remainder of the towel. It had not been an easy operation, for Liesel had tended to struggle at first, and Patricia had felt despairingly hampered by her lack of German. Mercifully Frau Dobler had remained impressively calm, managing both to reassure the other two girls and get Liesel to pull herself together. ‘Schweigen, schweigen Liesel!’ she had said firmly but not unkindly. ‘So big a girl of nearly fourteen should not be crying thus over a little blood. And you,’ she addressed her husband,who was hovering near the door, his eyes averted, ‘Ach, du! Geh nun — schnell! Fetch the bandages. And ask the Fräulein if she needs etwas anders. Weisst gut das ich nur Bissel Englisch spreche.’

  Patricia, of course, had only been able to guess at what was being said. ‘But whatever it was, Jo, it seemed to work. And thank heavens someone thought of those bandages.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘I don’t like to think what would have happened if I couldn’t have made the tourniquet — the blood was oozing through the first dressing again in no time at all.’

  Joey hastily changed the subject. And, although, to her and Patricia, it seemed like a hundred years, it was not really long before Herr Dobler bustled in bringing the doctor, an elderly German who was taking a late autumn holiday at the Tiernsee. He was visibly astonished at the youth of the ‘Englisches Fräulein’ who had saved the situation. Indeed Patricia, for all her height, did look remarkably young.

  Even while attending swiftly and efficiently to Liesel, the doctor continued, in heavily accented English, to pour out a stream of compliments about the ‘young lady’s prompt and so-sensible action’. Patricia became crimson with embarrassment, and Joey, who had contrived to remain modestly in the background, had to leave the room altogether on hearing her friend described as, among other things, ‘so noble a bloom of young English womanhood, that shall her motherland forever make proud’.

  Patricia was thankful when she could at last make her escape and collect the spluttering Joey from a corner of the dining-room. Together they shot out of the hotel and started running at full tilt towards Seespitz.

  But when they were nearing the end of the path up to the Chalet School, Patricia suddenly stopped. ‘Hang on, Joey! Where exactly in Seespitz was Frieda’s father going to wait?’

  Jo pulled up with obvious unwillingness. ‘Outside the Gasthaus. Why?’

  ‘Jo, do please wait a second. There’s probably a telephone in the Gasthaus, isn’t there? So why don’t you dash into the school and ask one of the staff to phone a message to Herr Mensch? It wouldn’t take you a sec., and then the others will get some idea of when we’ll arrive at Seespitz. Don’t you think . . .?’

  But Joey, with an admiring ‘Patricia, you really are a brain,’ was already flying up the path at top speed. She disappeared into the school and was back in an incredibly short time. The two resumed their progress though now at a more leisurely tempo.

  ‘I saw Mademoiselle,’ Jo informed Patricia, ‘and she’s going to get a message through at once. She thought it was a jolly sensible idea, I may say. I told her it was yours, of course — well, she’d have guessed it wasn’t mine,’ and Joey gave a rather rueful laugh. ‘I never seem to think of sensible things like that,’ she added humbly.

  It was true that Joey was inclined by temperament to rush ahead at breakneck speed with anything she undertook, often neglecting to inform anyone of what she was doing or even where she was. This trait in her character had frequently landed her in trouble.

  When they reached the end of the fence surrounding Briesau, Patricia glanced at her watch. ‘Can you believe it’s still only ten-past ten?’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Golly, it feels more like the middle of next week.’

  ‘I say, Joey, I’m so sorry to have thrown out all your arrangements for today. Will Frieda’s father be terribly annoyed at having to wait like this?’

  ‘Oh, he’s sure to understand,’ Joey said easily. ‘Anyway, it’s not your fault we’re late.’ And she added, with a warmth that brought an even deeper blush to Patricia’s face than had all the German doctor’s fulsome praise: ‘You were absolutely wonderful, Patricia. And how in the world do you know about tourniquets and things? You haven’t ever been a Guide, have you?’

  ‘No, we’ve never had Guides at Grange House,’ Patricia replied somewhat breathlessly; Joey had unconsciously quickened her pace and it was hard work to keep up with her. ‘But we did have a course of first aid lectures last winter — they were in school hours so my mother couldn’t object — and I was able to attend them. And there are lots of books in the school library on first aid and nursing. I’ve read all those. But I’d have been lost without your help, Jo. You can’t ever know how desperate I was feeling before you arrived.’

  They strode along in silence for a few minutes. Then Patricia spoke, an odd tone in her voice that made Joey slow down and look curiously at her.

  ‘There’s one thing I’d like to tell you — something I’m very pleased about.’ She hesitated for a moment. ‘You see, Jo, I’ve often wondered — I was thinking about it only this morning — whether if it really came to the test I’d have it in me to become a doctor. Sometimes, you know, I used to feel horribly squeamish during parts of the first aid lectures. And there’s something Miss Bruce once said to me.’ Patricia stopped still for a moment as she quoted:

  ’’ “No good trying to be a doctor for the wrong reasons . . . just to show your mother she’s wrong . . . far too important a matter . . . must be certain — unshakeably certain — you’re the right person”.’

  Joey burst out laughing at this quite recognisable imitation of Miss Bruce’s spasmodic way of speaking. She was about to stride off once more when, yet again, something in Patricia’s manner caught her attention. ‘Something hit you?’ she asked curiously.

  ‘More like somebody. I wonder if I could ever . . .’

  But Joey was beginning to worry about the time, and without following up her query she asked hurriedly, ‘Could you manage to run a bit, Patricia? Jog-trot, anyway. We could get to Seespitz in about five minutes if you could.’ Then, on the point of darting off, Jo turned right round and looked her friend squarely in the face.

  ‘Now, listen to me, Patricia Davidson. I don’t know what’s in your mind, but nobody c
ould have watched you coping with Liesel this morning without realising that you’re absolutely born to be a doctor

  . . . not unless they were stone-blind and stark, staring mad, and deaf into the bargain.’

  Having delivered this statement in tones of ringing conviction Joey set off at a run, while Patricia, feeling all of a sudden as though her feet had wings, followed close behind.

  CHAPTER XX.

  SUNDAY AT THE SONNALPE.

  ‘BYE for now, Jem; bye, Patricia! See you at Kaffee.’ Joey, leaning on the garden gate of Die Rosen, her sister’s pretty chalet home, waved as her brother-in-law escorted Patricia down the road towards the Sanatorium.

  Jo watched them for a moment. Then, whistling a gay tune, she turned and went swiftly up the long path back to the house. She noticed, feeling rather guilty, that she had left the front door standing open, and made haste to go inside and close it. Madge would have disapproved of the door being open, for the afternoon, although sunny, was bitterly cold. The snow can’t be far away, Joey thought.

  The house was wrapped in Sunday afternoon tranquillity. As she hurried through the hall, Joey noticed the ticking of a small carved wall-clock; it sounded enormous in the silence. She made for the salon and irrupted into the room, effectively dispelling the peace her sister had been enjoying for a few moments.

  ‘Really, Joey! Do you have to go round like an earthquake?’ Madge abandoned her reading with a slight frown.

  Joey threw herself on to the rug at her sister’s feet. ‘Awfully sorry, old thing! I suppose I was just in a hurry to get back. It’s so gorgeous to have some time together and I didn’t want to lose any of it. What shall we do this afternoon, Madge? Stay here and chat? Or go and take Rufus for a run? You say — I’m happy doing anything.’