A House for Sister Mary

by Lucilla Andrews

  The ground was thick with old leaves that crackled as I walked. I disturbed a squirrel but not the birds chatting to each other in the interwoven trees. At present that wood was alive with birds, and at night the nightingales sang in chorus. Last night I had dragged Harriet from the television set to hear them, and counted six different singers before her conversation silenced them.

  I picked an armful of ferns, then sat on a half-buried log in a small clearing listening to the birds, sorting out the species, and thinking how strange it was not to be able to share moments like now and last night with a man. I had grown so accustomed to sharing with David, and though I had got over him I still missed having a man around. A specific man. I had been dated by other men since David. I had quite enjoyed their company, but had always been relieved when the dates ended. Harriet said I had lost my nerve about men. She could be right. Certainly I seemed to have lost more than David when he backed out of my life.

  The village church clock chimed the half hour and reminded me I should get back to the house. I stood up reluctantly, clutching the ferns. It was so pleasant in that wood.

  ‘Hey! No! You can’t move yet! I haven’t finished!’ protested a man’s voice.

  ‘Who’s that?’ I demanded in astonishment, having heard no footsteps. ‘Where are you?’ But as I was looking round wildly I saw him before I finished speaking. ‘What do you think you are doing in that tree?’ I added.

  A fair-haired man was sitting along a lower branch of a large oak a few yards from my log roughly ten feet above the ground. He wore a dark brown sweater and faded grey jeans and was leaning against the trunk as he sketched. The colour of his clothes was a good camouflage in that light, but I had not seen him mainly because I had not been looking his way. ‘Hi, there!’ He waved his pencil. ‘Good morning. What am I doing? Can I be corny and say bird-watching? Or honest, and say sketching you?’

  ‘But you didn’t come here to sketch me. And you shouldn’t be here at all. This wood’s private.’

  ‘Going to run me in for trespassing, Nursie?’ He was smiling. ‘You’ll have to come up and get me first ‒ which does not, if you press, strike me as such a bad idea. If that doesn’t appeal, can we make a deal? You sit down for five little minutes and let me finish my picture, and then I’ll go quietly. What do you say?’

  ‘Sorry. I haven’t the time to waste.’

  ‘Who said anything about wasting time? You’re giving me inspiration. How do you know I’m not another Picasso? One day this could be worth thousands. Do sit down!’

  ‘Are you another Picasso?’ I was now much less surprised by his presence because of that sketching pad. Wylden, being a very attractive and remarkably unspoilt village, was a pet haunt of amateur artists. The members of the Astead Art Society came over in herds on most fine Saturdays and sat around the village drawing pictures.

  ‘That’s not what they called me in art school ‒ go on, Nursie ‒ sit down! My intentions are strictly honourable, if that’s what’s worrying you. If it’ll make you feel any happier I’ll promise not to come down from the tree until you say the word. How about that?’

  I sat down. ‘No more than five minutes.’

  ‘Heaven will reward you even if I don’t. Now, get those ferns in your lap and look down as before. Not that way ‒ turn your head ‒ that’s it.’

  His sudden businesslike air amused me. ‘Do you always climb trees to sketch?’

  ‘Sure. Call me Tarzan. Are you Jane?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No smiling!’ he said sternly. ‘You weren’t smiling before. Brood on him again.’

  ‘On whom?’ I asked, without looking up.

  ‘How would I know his name? I don’t even know yours. I never take my crystal ball up trees. But obviously you were brooding about some man.’

  ‘Why “obviously”?’

  ‘Hey! Don’t look up! Keep still! Why obviously? My dear girl, don’t pretend to be dumb ‒ you haven’t a dumb face. You can look in a mirror. You must know you’ve got a lovely face and glorious hair. When a girl who looks like you sits around sighing, it’s a hundred to one she’s sighing about some man. What’s the problem?’

  I said, ‘I thought I was posing for a picture, not on a psychiatrist’s couch. Are you a Barny’s man?’

  ‘No. I’m no medic. And I’m sorry if I’ve been talking out of turn. Forgive me?’

  ‘Forget it.’ I liked his quick apology. ‘Much longer?’

  ‘Nearly done.’ A couple of minutes later he said I could move. ‘I haven’t got you. This is bloody bad.’

  ‘May I see?’

  ‘Sure. Catch. May I come down?’

  ‘If you like,’ I said absently, studying his sketch. I had expected it to be rough and amateurish, but it seemed to me to be the reverse. ‘This is very good! So good ‒ are you a professional artist?’

  He stood in front of me, his head tilted to one side, his hands in his pockets. He was taller, broader, and a little older than I had previously guessed, since he had been behaving like one of the midder boys. His clothes, carriage, and voice was purely English, but his build, colouring, and features were Scandinavian. That physical type was not uncommon round Wylden. Every invader from the Phoenicians to the Normans had come to trade, burn down, or settle in that part of the country, and it was easy to trace their descendants by looking at the local faces.

  He said a professional artist was not what they called him down at the Labour Exchange. ‘I wanted to be one once. I even grew a beard and got into an art school by shamelessly pulling strings. Unfortunately, I like to eat. So I had to get out and get me a job. I just sketch in my spare time.’ He took back the pad and put it under his arm. ‘And what do you do with your spare time? Apart from gathering ferns.’

  ‘Me. Oh ‒ I pick cow parsley.’

  ‘My, my,’ he said, ‘but you know how to live!’ and we both laughed as if he had made a brilliantly witty observation.

  David had been fairish, but not nearly so good-looking. Even so, I stopped laughing. ‘I must go. I should be working.’

  ‘What at? You’ve no patients left.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Heard it in the village. Everyone knows this place has closed.’

  ‘You live in Wylden?’

  ‘Just down for the week-end.’ He watched me closely. ‘Don’t go yet. Please.’

  I hesitated only briefly, remembering not what my mother told me about picking up strange men in woods, but that the way I was suddenly feeling was exactly the way I had once felt with David. I knew nothing about this man, and I did not want to know more, even though I was badly missing having a man in my life. A man-less existence might be dull ‒ at least it did not hurt. ‘I honestly must go. I’ve left some cow parsley under a tree, in the orchard, and if it doesn’t get into water soon it’ll die.’

  He grinned. ‘I’ll say this for you, Nurse, you give a man the brush-off in the cutest way. May I walk you to the orchard? I do know the way. I have been here before.’

  I turned prim. ‘Doesn’t the fact that it’s private property bother you?’

  ‘Only one thing bothers me. May I tell you what that is?’

  It was one of the oldest lines in the book. I had heard it a dozen times from a dozen men. I reacted like a Victorian maiden threatened with outrage. ‘Not this morning, thanks ‒ must save that cow parsley,’ and I literally fled. I was through the rhododendron bushes before I was able to laugh to myself or look back. He had not followed me.

  I walked more slowly up the path between the terraced flower-beds. The first roses were out, the lupins were every shade of blue, pink, and purple, and the hydrangeas flanking the stone-flagged terrace at the back of the house were covered with flowers. The garden looked so gay and so unnaturally quiet. The three long white ward extensions stretched out from the house like empty arms. All the ward windows were open. There was no movement within. The beds were stripped to their bare mattresses; the ward tables were piled with pil
lows; the lockers we had scrubbed earlier this morning stood in lines outside the wards drying in the sun. The mattresses and pillows were going to be stoved on Monday before returning to Barny’s. The beds, tables, and lockers were remaining for the children.

  The empty terrace seemed much bigger and as strange as the silent wards. On such a fine morning the beds of the Caesar patients in Ward One would have been out in a row. There would have been up-patients in housecoats or smocks strolling along the paths or sitting on the low wall that edged the terrace. Their voices would have floated up to the nurseries on the first floor of the house. The nursery windows were wide. The folding and cradle cots had already gone to the new Mary Block in a hospital van this morning. The disconnected incubators remained until the firm that specialised in shifting heavy mechanical equipment arrived for them on Monday.

  Indoors I had to resist the urge to walk on tiptoe as I helped myself to jugs in the vast kitchen, and was delighted when Harriet’s scooter spluttered into the stable yard. She came in, unstrapped her skid-lid. ‘Sorry I’m late. My heel wasn’t ready. I had to wait, then old Martin came in and kept me talking. Is Hurricane Jill mad at me?’

  ‘She’s still setting her hair.’

  ‘She is?’ Harriet looked up as there was a muffled thud overhead. ‘Then who’s busy up there?’

  ‘She must be starting alone.’ There was another thud. ‘That’s higher than the nurseries. She must be on the isol floor. We’d better join her.’

  ‘Not before I’ve done something about my gastric juices.’ She helped herself to a bridge roll. ‘I’m starving.’

  Harriet was a small, very plump, and very pretty brunette. In our general training she had been two sets my junior, and though we had seen each other around, we had not met until we started midder in the same set. We were now great friends. She admired my wild flowers, asked what else I had been doing, and before I could answer went on talking about her trip to the village. ‘Old Martin’s worse than me! He waffled on and on about some nephew turning up unexpectedly and blood being thicker than water and how was he to know the boy wanted the cottage and did I agree he was letting it go for an absurd price and if I did what did I think he should do about it?’

  ‘A nephew’s turned up?’ An obvious thought hit me. I dismissed it, momentarily, being more concerned for Sister Mary’s future. ‘Harriet! Martin’s not thinking of backing out of his deal with Sister?’

  ‘He can’t.’ She took another roll. ‘It’s all settled.’

  ‘It wasn’t at breakfast. Don’t you remember? Oh, no, you were late. Well, before you got down, Sister said she hoped the final contracts would be signed early next week. She had hoped to have everything taped by this week-end, but Martin’s solicitor is away on business till Monday afternoon.’

  ‘Lor’!’ She choked on her roll. ‘The old boy may be having second thoughts! He said something about the solicitor-whatsit’s absence being highly inconvenient. I wasn’t paying much attention. I took it as his usual hot air. Surely it must be? Sister’s paid a deposit! He must sell to her!’

  ‘I don’t know that he must even with a deposit. Buying a house is a tricky business. My eldest brother and his wife thought they had one tied up last year, and they’d paid a deposit, but a better offer came along at the last moment, and they lost it. Legally.’

  ‘Anna! What’ll Sister do? Shall we warn her?’

  I considered this, then shook my head. ‘There’s nothing anyone can do without the solicitor, and to say anything today would wreck Sister’s party.’ I sat on the table. ‘If Martin is trying to back out we’ll have to stop him.’

  ‘How? And when? The rest of today we’ll need for getting ready for the party. Tomorrow we’ll still have the overnight guests and the clearing and packing. Monday’s going to be hell, shifting the last things out and then shifting ourselves.’ She chewed reflectively. ‘If he’s had a better offer the only way to stop him accepting it would be to outbid it ‒ which neither Sister Mary nor we can do.’

  I thought of that man in the wood. ‘Maybe we can go to work on the nephew? He may not appreciate how important that cottage is to Sister. Just what did Martin say about him?’

  ‘That he had suddenly turned up for the week-end, hasn’t been down for ages, didn’t say he was coming, or even know the old boy was selling up. He seems to be in medicine, but I don’t know his name or line. Martin said the boy worked in that hospital place, St. Whatsit’s.’

  ‘Typical!’ I was rather disturbed to discover that, though in one way pleased to be wrong, in another I was sorry. ‘One thing, he won’t be a Barny’s man. None of our men would hurt Sister Mary.’ There was a louder thud overhead. ‘Oh, dear! We’d better get up them stairs.’

  Harriet said she must have coffee first. ‘You going to pass all this on to Hurricane Jill?’

  ‘Why not? She’s good at bright ideas, and we may need one ‒ fast.’

  She shrugged. She did not like Collins. ‘Then don’t be surprised if all you get is a bawling out for listening to gossip! We all know her anti-gossip fixation! Old Martin could just be having another of his brainstorms. Remember the state he was in when he decided the new motorway was coming through Wylden? When there was never any question of its coming within eight miles of the village. But if this time he is serious and she rushes into battle for Sister Mary, as she will treat all men like small boys, ten to one she’ll rub Martin and his nephew up the wrong way. Perhaps you and I can soft-talk him ‒ Collins can only talk baby-talk! And though she can organise,’ she added calmly, ‘she does it with the finesse of a bulldozer.’

  ‘That’s true. Right. Let’s keep this between us.’

  The second floor had been converted into single-bedded wards for the few mothers who produced raised temperatures or some rare complication like eclampsia, but were more frequently occupied by the main patients we had sent to us with known obstetric complications who were expected to have difficult deliveries. As we were a teaching hospital, with a particularly good Obstetric Department, we had taken a much higher than average number of problem patients than would be found in any normal non-teaching maternity hospital. Tonight we were turning two of those small wards in to cloakrooms, and the rest were going to house our more exalted overnight guests. At breakfast Jill Collins had ordained that the two cloakroom beds must go down to the nursery floor. We were not yet clear how many guests would be staying the night but, if necessary, the nurseries were to be female dormitories. The younger men were having Ward Two. Ward One was our temporary stock-room. Ward Three was the dance hall. When I reached the isolation landing two dismembered beds and one mattress were stacked by the stairs.

  Another rolled mattress appeared in an open doorway.

  I hurried forward. ‘Nurse Collins, you shouldn’t have done all this lifting alone! Why didn’t you call ‒’ I had grabbed the mattress before noticing that the encircling arms wore shirt-sleeves and the legs below trousers. Surprised, I let go jolting the mattress. I then dived for the pair of dark-rimmed glasses that landed unbroken at my feet. ‘So sorry ‒’ I gasped. When I saw who had lowered the mattress I nearly dropped the glasses again. ‘Oh. It’s you.’

  His name was Robert Gordon. ‘And I should have known it was you, Anna,’ he remarked, as if it was five minutes and not over two years since we last met. He replaced his glasses. ‘You never did look where you were going.’

  I made no pretence of being pleased to see him either. ‘Rob! What on earth are you doing here?’

  ‘Toting a mattress.’ He heaved it on to his shoulder. ‘If you’ll get out of my way I’ll put this with the other things.’

  ‘I’m not blind!’ I retorted peevishly. ‘I meant ‒ what are you doing here? In the Mat Unit?’

  ‘I called to see Sister Mary. Jill Collins said she was out and asked me to shift these things. Excuse me.’ He went on down the corridor just as he had walked on down the theatre corridor and disappeared into the surgeons’ room on his last evening in Barny
’s. Then he had not troubled to say ‘Goodbye’. Now he had skipped the ‘Hallo’.

  I leant against the nearest wall. I needed it. If I had listed the people I least wanted to see again Robert Gordon would have been out on top in a class of his own. He was David’s oldest friend. They had met in Oxford and come on to Barny’s together. Long ago, as he was David’s friend, I had tried to like him. I had never succeeded. David had been my shadow for three years, and during all those years Robert Gordon had been a disapproving presence somewhere in the background. It had not been hard to guess he resented my relationship with David, but that also I had tried to overlook until the evening when David was rather drunk and told me Robert had given him a stern warning about getting too involved with me. ‘Poor old Robbie nearly did his nut when I said that it was too late as I’ve asked you to marry me and you’ve said yes. Bit of a giggle, eh, love?’

  For David’s sake I had pretended it was a huge giggle. It was not a joke I cared to remember or had been able to forget. I almost enjoyed thinking of it again now. Now David had gone I no longer had to deal with his old pal Robbie with both hands tied behind my back.

  I waited until he deposited the mattress. ‘I thought you were working in Glasgow?’

  ‘Edinburgh.’ He draped himself against the opposite wall. He was much the same height as that man in the wood, but far less sturdily built. He had very dark hair and a pale, long-jawed face. I had known girls who thought him attractive. I did not.

  ‘A long way from Wylden.’

  ‘Four hundred and thirty-five miles.’

  ‘And you’ve come down for Sister Mary’s party? Well, well. I never thought you liked parties.’

  ‘I don’t. I do like Sister Mary, but her party isn’t my only reason for being in Wylden. I’m spending this week-end with a relative. I walked up to call on Sister Mary in case I can’t make her party. I’m pretty booked up for the rest of the day, and that may happen.’

  I smiled politely. ‘Sister Mary’ll understand. You’ll obviously be much happier curling up with a nice cosy copy of Gray’s Anatomy.’