Highland Interlude

by Lucilla Andrews

I asked, ‘Is Gairlie short of men?’

  ‘Och, no!’

  We were in the middle of a delightfully coarse conversation when Miss Donald tapped gently on the half-open door. ‘Room for a small one, ladies?’

  Miss Donald was sixty-eight and a retired school-teacher. She had specialized in the seven-to-eleven age-group, and still tended to treat the whole world as if in those age-groups. She was a quiet, rather shy woman, with a gentle voice and even more gentle air of habitual authority. Her arrival automatically cleaned up any conversation, and as she had the ardent curiosity of the very lonely, that sometimes made things difficult.

  She came in smiling. ‘And how is our little English visitor this morning? Have we had a good rest?’

  Mrs Ferguson’s place had come up in the bath queue. The two others ambled off, and Miss Donald sat on my locker and accepted a piece of shortbread.

  I asked after her night, and then if she was beginning to feel her stitches.

  ‘Pricking a little, dear. But we have to expect a little discomfort, don’t we?’

  She had been operated on for what she described as ‘a small stoppage’. From the few details she had given me, and her general appearance, she had an advanced carcinoma of the bowel. I did not tell her so, and was very sure she did not need telling. She lived alone, as the aged female friend with whom she had shared the last forty years had died a few months ago. She always referred to her with deep affection as ‘Miss Christie’.

  She admired my flowers. ‘We have some very generous admirers ‒ and quite right, too! I saw our Mr MacDonald in the hall yesterday. Such a charming young man, and, well ‒ he can’t really help being American, can he?’

  I wished I could share that with someone. Dougal was the only possible person, and even though he and I had established a new, improved relationship, I doubted it was yet strong enough to take my being amused by the apparent Scottish passion for things Scottish. Also Archie was one of the people Dougal never mentioned. Robin and Maury were two others. It had taken me some time to notice that, but now it struck me as more obvious at every visit.

  That particular morning I had an unexpected visitor. Mrs Pringle arrived wearing her Sabbath best, clutching a basket of fruit, yet another tin of shortbread, and a sponge-cake. She came in tentatively, took one look at me, and burst into tears. ‘Och, lassie! You’re that pale and thin! They canna be feeding you well!’

  It took some minutes to calm and convince her I was neither starved nor on my death-bed. ‘What’s going on at Achnagairl? Tell me all!’

  She dried her eyes. ‘Robbie’s still up at Mr Urquhart’s and liking it fine. The wee twins’ ‒ she sniffed pathetically ‒ ‘are up the glen with the Professor. He’s some business to attend to for Mrs Valentine, seeing she’s away to Inverness herself and was aye a good friend to poor Miss Catriona. Aye, lassie’ ‒ the tears rolled down her lined face again ‒ ‘how you put me in mind of that poor lassie! The Professor says you’ve been spared ‒ but are you really better?’

  ‘Much!’ (I was beginning to doubt it.) ‘I’m glad Robin likes the climbing school.’

  ‘Aye, but much more than the foolish laddie deserves after neglecting his uncle’s words and helping to cause the terrible sadness that came to Achnagairl House. The twins were that distressed! Johnnie was quiet as a wee mousie, and Judy’d not touch one apple. Not even the one!’

  That nearly had me in tears myself. ‘Poor little things. I’m so sorry ‒’

  ‘It was no fault of yours, Miss Elizabeth. I’m well aware of the facts! It’s not my place to speak my mind, or, I’ll tell ye ‒ I’d be saying plenty!’ She was bristling with indignation. ‘That a guest of the house should have been neglected in such a way as to endanger her life ‒ as the Professor says, it doesna bear thinking, and matters not that the neglect was unintentional! That Mrs Valentine!’ She pressed her lips together. ‘It would not be fitting for me to say more.’

  So she liked Maury no more than I did. Interesting. ‘Mrs Pringle, I probably shouldn’t ask, but is the sound of wedding-bells really in the air? Or just in her and my imagination?’

  She looked at me thoughtfully. ‘Och, I’ve not the Professor’s confidence on such matters. I’ll not say you’re wrong. I’ll not say I’ll be surprised. When a wise man loses his head over a bonnie face he can act as daft as any foolish laddie in love for the first time.’ She sighed. ‘Sex. That’ll be the trouble.’

  I was as startled as if Miss Donald had come out with a four-letter word. ‘It is?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Mrs Pringle. ‘Not that I ever had any use for it myself, mind ‒ but the trouble I’ve seen it cause! Terrible!’

  She left a little later, promising to come again and just managing not to add, ‘If you’re still spared to us.’

  Craig saw her out, then returned. ‘What do you think you’re doing, Elizabeth?’

  I had closed my eyes and crossed my hands on my chest. I opened one eye. ‘Oak or elm?’

  ‘Had she got you measured?’

  ‘Has she not! The poor old dear’s off to order the wreath. And, incidentally, she’s ag’in sex. Root of all evil.’

  ‘Is that a fact? Remind me to tell my boy-friend. He’ll not like it at all. What do you want for your sweet? Creamed rice or fruit salad?’

  Smith was on nights off and the alternate night staff nurse, Mrs Lewis, was her opposite in more ways than one. Mrs Lewis had returned to nursing after a thirty-year break, surviving two husbands, bringing up and seeing married five children. She was a stout, amiable woman, with a fixed belief in the therapeutic qualities of hot, strong tea and hot-water bottles; a tendency to regard the antibiotics as newfangled and still largely unproven nonsense; and a strong antipathy to using any drug stronger than aspirin. Directly Dr MacAlistair or Mr Stewart, the one resident surgeon, had done their night rounds she donned pink wool bedroom slippers, which she often forgot to remove before the day staff came on in the morning. Since slippers of any nature were not only against hospital rules, but anathema to Sister Kilsyth, the necessity to remind Mrs Lewis to get back into shoes was one of the farewell instructions passed on from up-patient to up-patient on discharge.

  Mrs Lewis was a superb and very kind, if old-fashioned, nurse. She shared with Dr MacAlistair the ability to inspire genuine love in patients. And even if occasionally at night it sounded as if she were going berserk in the nearest sluice, not one of her suddenly disturbed patients minded. On the contrary. Smith was a very quiet night nurse, so the uproar proved God was in His Heaven and all was well with the world as old Mother Lewis was on the job. Like contented children, contented patients sleep better than the other sort.

  Being a patient in a strange hospital in what I had finally come to accept as a strange country was an interesting experience. And novel, since I now realized that previously as a sick nurse in my own hospital, to the staff, as well as, myself, I had remained one of ‘us’. In Gairlie Hospital I was one of ‘them’. Though the staff and most of the patients knew my job, my home background was sufficiently distant for all to accept me simply as ‘the English lassie with the chest in Isol. One’.

  For the first time in five years I really learnt how patients talked among themselves; the full strength of the interpatient bond; and why every patient I had come across anywhere rated kindness the most important qualification any doctor or nurse could possess. Personally, I would not have exchanged Mrs Lewis in her bedroom slippers for any one of Martha’s high-powered ward sisters. And while I respected and quite liked Martha’s thoracic specialist with his M.D. and F.R.C.P., given the necessity and choice, I’d take my chest to Hamish MacAlistair, M.R.C.P. and sole resident physician in a hospital that could have been lost without trace in one of Martha’s smaller blocks. Every Martha’s main ward held thirty-two beds.

  In all, Gairlie Hospital had thirty-two surgical beds, twenty-two medical, ten maternity, and two isolation. Dr and Mrs MacAlistair lived in a house on hospital property, but just across the road from t
he main gates; Mr Stewart, a bachelor, had a two-roomed flat above the administration offices.

  I had these details from Dougal on one of his evening visits. Mrs Lewis was on, and we were both drinking tea. He asked, ‘Tea doesn’t keep you awake?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘The advantage of being a nurse?’

  ‘No. Nothing to do with that, and don’t ask me why, as I know tea’s a stimulant, but Mrs Lewis can get the entire female side to sleep on one teapot. Her technique may seem out of the ark, but it does work! She’s the best nurse I’ve ever come up against.’

  ‘I agree ‒’ He hesitated for no good reason, then rephrased, ‘Hamish MacAlistair would agree with you. She was on when you were first in. You don’t remember?’

  ‘Not really. Just a vague recollection of great kindness.’ I put my empty cup on my locker seat. He was my one visitor who seldom, if ever, used it. ‘Dougal, I’ve never liked to ask the others. Just how big is this place?’

  That was when he gave me the details. ‘A toy.’

  ‘But a highly efficient toy. What area does it cover?’

  ‘Most of the Western Highlands and the islands. They fly the patients down by helicopter. As the strip’s on the other side of this wing, maybe you’ve not heard them landing?’

  ‘Once or twice, when the wind’s right. Craig calls them the “wee choppers” and regards them exactly as we do ambulances in Martha’s. Dead trendy and space-age this toy!’

  ‘Aye. Trendy, moddy, fab gear, and not to mention grotty.’

  I smiled. ‘Judy has been educating you.’

  ‘Not only Judy.’ He returned my smile. ‘I’m grateful. It’s always useful to enlarge one’s vocabulary, and the knowledge may prove invaluable when I get down to England in October.’

  ‘Afraid you’ll have problems about understanding the natives?’

  ‘Not afraid, convinced. I’d no idea how out-of-touch my years abroad had left me until you and the children came up here. The boys, particularly Robin, may look very changed, but fundamentally they don’t strike me as very different to myself and my contemporaries at their ages. Maybe they’re a bit more open about liking girls. When I was fourteen I liked girls, though it’d have taken a gun to my head to make me admit the fact. But you and Judy’ ‒ he shook his head, still smiling ‒ ‘if you’re typical of your generation of English girls you’re not merely a new generation, you’re a new race.’

  ‘Hey, Dougal! I’m not Judy’s age, and you’re not all that much older.’ As I spoke I recollected my thoughts on this subject while in his house. In an odd way it was rather disconcerting to discover he had shared them.

  ‘At this moment you don’t look more than a couple of years Judy’s senior, and I feel about a hundred. Do you know what those twin fiends have had me doing today?’

  I was still laughing at his description of a quiet afternoon’s fishing with the twins when Mrs Lewis showed him out, beaming approvingly. ‘The Professor’s a fine bedside man,’ she said later as she settled me for the night. ‘He leaves you looking better than when he came, as a good visitor should.’

  He certainly left me feeling better, as he never burdened me with any type of problem, or let fall a remark that could upset me even indirectly. He was pleasant without being hearty, and never overstayed his welcome. A model visitor, I thought, and unfairly grimaced in the darkness. I was growing mildly attached to him, but I would have liked him so much better if only he occasionally slipped up, or at least stopped humouring me.

  I thought again of that row with Maury, and as I was now much stronger, the follow-on, if not the row itself, gave me an ironic pleasure. Her unintentional neglect had proved one nasty boomerang for her. Mrs Pringle was up in arms. Dougal’s stern Calvinistic sense of duty had forced him to appoint himself my official source of support and comfort. Archie, far from avoiding me as she had forecast, was continuing to inundate me with visits, flowers, and candies. Even Smith approved of Archie, and helped herself freely to his candies, since, as she said every time, he could afford to be generous.

  From the little I had seen of Dougal and Maury together, so could she. I did not expect she would be, even if she had sent me flowers and a get-well card. But if Dougal hadn’t used a gun at her head to get both out of her, then it must have been a damned close-run thing.

  But Maury, Robin, Vietnam, and what exactly I was going to do between leaving hospital and being fit enough to return to work were external and still very remote problems. I was far more interested in Miss Donald’s future; the path lab report on Mrs Ferguson’s biopsy; and to hear what kind of night Christine in Bed 4, Women’s Medical, had had. Christine was thirteen. She had acute rheumatism and was on the D.I.L. I had not yet seen her, but I knew as much about her progress as my fellows had known about mine when I was on the D.I.L. Probably Dr MacAlistair and Sister Kilsyth knew more. Only probably.

  My first early callers next morning were medical. ‘The poor wee lassie looks that poorly. Her parents’ve not left her bedside the whole night.’

  ‘And she’s their only child, isn’t she?’

  ‘Aye. And a wee frail lassie, she is.’

  I said slowly, ‘That could be an advantage, Mrs Burns. Small, wiry kids are generally the toughest. Has she been ill before?’

  ‘Her mother says not ‒ apart from the measles and the mumps ‒ the usual ‒ you’ll ken.’ Mrs Burns turned to her companion. ‘Did you manage to get a wee look at the chart on the desk, Mrs Mackenzie? I could not read it without my glasses.’

  ‘I observed it well.’ Mrs Mackenzie gave us the latest four-hourly reading. It was not good, but it was no worse than this time yesterday.

  Mrs Burns sighed and drained her tea. ‘She’s not picking up.’

  Mrs Lewis bustled in. ‘If the Mothers’ Meeting’s about to commence I’d best get you tidied first, Miss Wade.’ She looked at us all as she pushed back her white front curls. ‘And why are you all wearing long faces? It’s not the Sabbath!’

  Mrs Mackenzie said, ‘It’s that wee Christine. It saddens the heart to see a bairn that poorly.’

  ‘That’s a fact,’ agreed Mrs Lewis, throwing me my dressing-gown with one hand and setting a chair at the foot of the bed with the other. ‘She’s an ill bairn, but God willing, she’s on the mend.’

  ‘She is?’ Mesdames Burns, Mackenzie, and I chorused.

  ‘She’s no worse this morn than she was yesterday, and if she’s no worse she must be better. Once a bairn starts to improve, there’s no holding her. A bairn can be nigh gone the one moment and sitting up demanding jelly and ice cream the next. I’m not saying wee Christine’ll be on the jelly today ‒ but it’ll not be long. Will you watch yourself, Miss Wade! Sit you down in that chair and leave that side of the bed to me. If Mrs Mackenzie cares to give me a hand that’ll be fine, but you must away to your bath, Mrs Burns. You’re returning to your home this day, and you’ll have a busy day ahead. Aye, I’m aware your man’s getting the dinner, but I ken well you’ll be back in your kitchen getting the tea before the day’s out. Rest whiles you can, woman. Or you’ll be back in here with that wee ulcer bleeding again, and it’ll not be so wee the next time!’

  When Mrs Burns came to say goodbye to me at noon the cardiac specialist had arrived from Inverness, examined Christine, and was taking coffee with Dr MacAlistair in Matron’s office. Mrs Burns had a chronic gastric ulcer that at intervals turned acute, and was an old hospital hand. ‘There was not a smile from the pair of them, which was a great weight off my mind. It’s when a specialist is awful cheerful that a body has cause to fret. But time I was away.’ We shook hands. ‘Take care of yourself, lassie, and be sure you let me have a card when you get back to England.’

  I had already promised cards to rows of ladies, and we had all asked each other to take care of ourselves. None of them seriously expected to get my cards or see me again, but in that moment, just before discharge, we were even more closely bonded than passengers after a long or short journey in
the same ship. Few shipboard passengers genuinely contemplate the prospect of the ship’s sinking. Fewer still were the patients who survived a period in hospital without once facing the sometimes, but by no means always, irrational fear of not getting out alive. That communal fear was one of the toughest threads in our bond, and one that remained unbroken until the hospital, or private car, carried the discharged patient through the main gates. Every hospital patient sooner or later hears the apocryphal story of the patient who collapsed and died while shaking hands in farewell with the ward sister. Sooner or later most nurses have seen that happen.

  ‘Twice,’ I told Archie that afternoon. ‘I know I’ll see a third, and every time anyone says goodbye I’m on edge until I hear they’ve got right away. I know that must sound like a load of old codswollop and that superstitions are stupid. So what? I’m stupid.’

  ‘I would not say that, Elizabeth, though I am interested that you do not appear to object to facing up to what is, maybe, a weakness.’

  ‘Why? Do you object to doing that?’

  ‘Depends on the context, honey. On the job, no. Outside of my office’ ‒ he shrugged ‒ ‘maybe I do prefer to side-step. I like to take life easy, maybe as mostly I have had life real easy. So, whereas on the job when I have to do something I do not like I just go ahead and do it, when I am on vacation, or merely off for the week-end, I like to relax all along the way.’

  ‘Dead sensible. Keep that up, and you’ll never get ulcers or a coronary.’

  ‘Sensible, maybe, but egotistical.’ He walked over to the window and looked out. I looked at his back. I sensed he wanted me to wait until he was ready to go on, and while I was prepared to do that for his sake, for my own I very much hoped he was not bracing himself to utter words that would in any way alter our very pleasant and ‒ at least to me ‒ purely superficial relationship.

  He turned with patent reluctance. ‘I’ve been side-stepping all afternoon, Elizabeth. There is something I have to tell you.’

  I braced myself. ‘Good or bad?’