by Sheila Burns
‘What about my cheeks, Nurse? Ought I to look pale but interesting? What ought I to do? I am wondering what will look best.’
And there were people on the same floor who were really ill! People who wanted so much to get better that they did not care how they looked. All this fuss for Bill. She would not have done it for her own husband.
Eventually she was settled and I was sent scuttling to the house ’phone to send down word that Captain Dawson was to come up.
I saw him arriving up in the lift and carrying a sheaf of flowers wrapped in tissue paper. I had to wait for him.
‘This way!’ I said curtly. I was very much on duty. I disapproved of his visit, seeing all that he meant to her, and how much he would have hurt Dr. Harper, and I did not care if he realized how I felt.
‘I say,’ he said, ‘you have forgiven me for the other night, haven’t you?’
‘We won’t discuss it,’ I told him.
‘One minute before I go in. I know that you have been awfully good to Iris; she is full of all that you have done for her, and it was nice of you bringing me that message. As I came down Bond Street I saw this little trinket, and wondered if you would like it. My arms are awfully full with these flowers, so do relieve me of it?’
He held out a small jeweller’s box, and on the lid there was inscribed a magic name, the sort of name that girls dream about and too seldom find on their own belongings. I knew that inside there was some fascinating gift, something that, if once I saw it, I should want to keep desperately for my own.
The whole of my life I have never had pretty things. I have been extremely hard up. My people were hard up before me, and all my youth had to a large extent to be shorn of its trimmings. I am not the type to whom people give pretty gifts. My patients nearly always send me a serviceable handbag, neat hem-stitched hankies, something which, as they (to me, rather tragically) put it, ‘looks like you’.
I handed the box back.
‘I am afraid that it is against our rules for a nurse to accept presents in this way,’ I said, and so that there should be no more ado, I brushed past him and on into Iris’s room.
‘Here is someone to see you,’ I said.
Then I left them alone.
I brought the flowers out with me to arrange them into vases for her. They were perfect. Here were white lilac and Spanish irises mingling together with the snow of whiteness and the spires of soft blue and mauve.
‘She is a lucky girl,’ said Tenny, passing me on the way to one of her patients, ‘she doesn’t know when she is well off.’
‘She seems to have got most of the things that she wants.’
‘Most of them? I should think that she has! Married to that marvellous man for one thing! and then to have boy friends as well.’
‘You have boy friends,’ I reminded her, for Tenny was pretty as a picture.
Instantly her face clouded.
‘There was one, and it seems to me that he was her sort too, the sort that never means anything by it. He was happy-go-lucky, just like that. He used to bring me flowers and then one day he deserted me when I was in the most dreadful trouble. Never again, thank you. No more boys for me,’ and she went on her way.
Somehow I felt that I had pried in upon some intimate part of poor Tenny’s life, something that still hurt her, and I niched in my mind the reminder that I must not talk about boy friends again. Tenny had once had a bad let-down.
I arranged the flowers, taking as long as I could, and then I went back with them to Iris’s room. Captain Dawson was sitting beside the bed holding her hand, and I knew by his face that he had been making love to her. She looked enchanted as she lay there. Silly little Iris! Stupid little Iris ‒ and with Ray for a husband, too!
When I went back to my post on the landing my heart was heavy, and I knew that I should not be happy until the Captain had gone again. I heard the bell go; they rang it three times on our landing to tell us that a doctor was on his way up. Somehow I guessed who it was, and I thought, ‘This is sheer bad luck again. He will think that I am trying to cheat him and yet what can I do about it?’
I wasn’t going to risk anything else, and I whisked into Iris’s room.
I burst in upon them both so quickly, that I found Bill with his head on her pillow, and his hand holding hers fast.
‘Quickly,’ I said, ‘a doctor is coming up the stairs, and it may be Dr. Harper. Captain Dawson had better slip into the nurses’ sitting-room and wait there for a few minutes.’
It was the only thing that I could think of, and you may be sure it was not because I had any sentimental feelings for him. They had been going to argue, but I would have none of it, and I bustled him out pretty fast. It was only just in time, too! I got him pushed into our sitting-room, and shut the door, turning to meet Ray Harper coming up the last flight.
‘These stairs!’ said he and he laughed, ‘I must be getting an old man, for they knock all the stuffing out of me.’
‘Everybody gets puffed on them,’ said I.
My own heart was hammering so hard that I was afraid that he would hear it, though outwardly I suppose I looked calm enough. A nurse’s uniform helps in that. Prim. Starched. Aloof. Anyway he did not seem to notice anything amiss. We stood there in the alcove which is at the stair head, with the tea-trays laid on the side table, and the drip of a tap from the distance.
‘How is she to-day?’
‘She is much better. Her temperature is keeping down beautifully.’
‘We don’t want any more relapses. She is highly strung and emotional, you know, and takes things to heart. She lives on her nervous energy. She gives way easily and then flops. You will take care of her, won’t you?’ he added.
‘I am doing all I can.’
A look passed across his eyes, as though he felt that I was offended, then suddenly he put out a hand, a hand slender like a woman’s with finely pencilled fingers, the hand of a wonderful surgeon.
‘You know I don’t mean it that way. You know that I have infinite faith in you. I knew the first time that I ever saw you that you were a great woman.’
A great woman!
I wondered for a moment if he were laughing at me, and then I dismissed the idea and choked down the longing to cry, the keen desire to hide my face in my two hands in case my eyes should admit the truth.
I was taking care of her for him. But it was costing me far more than I liked to admit. I wanted to say then and there, ‘There is a man hidden in the nurses’ sitting-room, and it is the man you hate and have forbidden her to see again. Can’t you do anything about it?’ But I could not.
Making mischief would not help any of us very much, and I knew that. He stood there staring at me, as though he had forgotten time, and was thinking something which I could not fathom. I think I knew then, perhaps for the first time, that he had thought of me a little when he had been away from me. I think I was frightened, afraid lest this should go further, it was something that was too big for me, and which, once it escaped me, might hurt more than I liked to think.
He turned and went to her room.
‘What lovely white violets! Where did you get them?’ was the very first thing that he asked.
I closed the door on him discreetly. After all, it was only fair, even if she were ill, that she should get herself out of her own scrapes. I hated seeing him so cheated, so blind to her shallowness because he himself was so much in love. When you care for anybody it complicates life enormously, and it is almost worse for a nurse, who should behave like a machine, her stiff starched uniform, and her face trained so that never a flicker passes across it.
Very often she has to inflict pain that actually hurts herself too, but the patients only think that she is hard-hearted and cruel; they do not seem to realize that under it all she is also a woman and may suffer herself.
I thought as I closed the door upon the two of them that I could not bear this much longer. I’d do something desperate. I’d resign my post and go away, right away
into the blue. Then I told myself not to be such a little fool; posts like the one at Miss Vaughan’s are not to be picked up on blackberry bushes, and I had done awfully well to get into the home at all. To throw it aside because I happened to have felt foolishly about Ray was an incredible piece of folly which I should regret all my life.
I thought of Ray in his white coat and mask working against time in the theatre, a man with a set face and with his eyes showing his determination. I thought of him as he had been just a few minutes previously, standing in the niche and touching my sleeve. Surely he would not have done that if he had not thought about me?
Ray, the first time that we had met, doing that intricate operation, fighting for his patient’s life. Ray, with only his eyes showing, yet those eyes telling so much. Yet here he was now deluded and tricked by his own wife, and I hated it.
I went back to the nurses’ sitting-room, very small and snug, and I saw Captain Dawson sitting in the one easy chair.
He got up as I came in.
‘Is the old man likely to be long?’ he asked.
I resented his speaking of the doctor like that, and I dare say I showed it.
‘You mean Dr. Harper?’
‘You’re very professional, aren’t you?’
I disregarded his flippancy and the way that he looked at me with amusement, because everything that he did made me childishly angry. He was flauntingly impertinent, although he never said anything that was actually impertinent; it was more the manner in which he said it.
‘The doctor usually stays about half an hour.’
‘Oh, Lord!’ Down he sat again.
I tried to forget he was there and went about the little sitting-room putting on the kettle for tea, yet horribly aware that he was eyeing me.
At last he spoke.
‘I say, I do wish you would relieve me of this beastly little box.’
I did not attempt to parry it, but told him quite plainly that we were not allowed to receive gifts like that.
‘No, but rules are only made to be broken. You could waive the point, and you know that. Won’t you do it for me?’
‘Certainly not.’
He gave a sigh and put the box back into his pocket again; it seems absurd to admit it, but I was aching to know what he had got inside it, only I realized that it would have been fatal to look closer.
He started in a new vein.
‘Iris looks fine. It is all your nursing, so she says. It was your nursing that brought me along to-day. You know, I had made up my mind to break off the affair and never to see her again.’
I did not want to go into these very private details of their personal affairs, and I said so.
‘I wish you wouldn’t tell me these things.’
I believe he had tried to lead me into saying that, for now he ignored it.
‘When you came with that message I felt differently. You know, Nurse, if I had not given you that letter myself I should never have come round here to-day. Not on your life. It was just that I was itching to see you again.’
‘I’m sorry you troubled yourself to come.’
He was the type of man who flirts with anything in a skirt. The sort of man who simply has to make love or he isn’t satisfied.
‘You’re being very cold to me.’
‘Well, what else do you expect?’
‘You must be interested in me, or you would not take the trouble to hide me here so that the irate husband does not catch me. You help Iris …’
I rounded on him then.
‘A nurse’s duty is to her patient. She is in that state now when it would be quite wrong to allow her to cry or to upset herself in any way. She tried to have a relapse the other night, and I have a certain duty to perform, which I am performing, but only to the limit of that duty.’
‘By George!’ said he, and then, ‘What a little spitfire it is!’
You could not do anything with him.
I went on with the trays, and all the time I tried to pretend that he was not here at all, and to keep my ear on sounds from Iris’s room. Would Ray never go? And, what was worse, I was now worried to death that he would come down the landing to have a word with me before he finally left. If so, he would be sure to see Captain Dawson sitting here, and would think that maybe he had come to see me.
Then I heard Tenny coming along.
‘Tea for the troubadour,’ she called gaily from outside. ‘Tea for the hungry! Open the door for me, Katy; I’ve got my hands full.’
As I opened the door I caught sight of Captain Dawson’s face. It had gone sheet-white. I thought that the man must be going to faint, but I had no time to do anything about it.
The door swung open, and there was Tenny, with her little white cap perched on her hair, and her merry eyes laughing above the great tea-tray that she held. She took one look into the room, and then, seeing me, she dropped the complete tray in a heap. It made a sound like one of the big guns.
Then she turned on me.
‘How did Bill get here?’ she demanded.
Two of us standing there in the doorway, two of us, not knowing what had happened, and between us the fragments on the floor, the broken china, and the tea seeping away on to the linoleum. I had no idea what it was all about.
I think that my memory of what happened next is all very confused. I know that I heard a murmur from behind me, and realized that Captain Dawson was making some excuse as he got up and went out. He stepped across the debris on the floor, and we were both of us too disturbed to stop him.
I was listening to hear if Sister had heard the crash; it would, of course, be that dreadfully starchy Sister Johnson on duty, one of those women who can never forgive anything, and we should never hear the end of this if she came up.
Apparently she had not heard it.
Captain Dawson went across the landing and down the stairs. I think that I had been too horrified by the smash to worry whether he would run into Ray Harper. I think I had forgotten everything save that almost all of a tea-service had gone, and that Tenny was standing against the door, not making any attempt to cover her tracks, but staring helplessly into space.
There must have been something between these two, something that I did not know about; something hidden away in that part of Tenny’s life at which she had hinted vaguely from time to time. It was a shadowy part. Though she was such a bright little person, I had always known that she had had suffering and difficulty and that there had been something which she kept from everybody.
Well, Captain Dawson had gone down the stairs before you could say Jack Robinson, and there were Tenny and I with the cups smashed to bits on the floor between us. At any moment Sister might come up the stairs and catch us. And Tenny was doing nothing about it. I dropped to my knees and began picking up pieces.
‘That man,’ said Tenny, and she began to cry half hysterically.
She went forward into the sitting-room and sat down at the little table there, with her head flopped forward into her hands. I had never seen her in such a state of collapse before.
‘That awful man! And I thought that the whole thing was dead and done with. I thought it was all over for ever, and it isn’t. I don’t believe that anything is dead and done with.’ She went on sobbing.
I was still on the floor trying to shovel the bits out of sight in case Sister suddenly appeared from nowhere, for she was one of those women. I bundled them back on to the tray and rang down for the food lift to send up another tea. It was not till then, when I had more or less covered all tracks of the accident, that I could go across to Tenny and take her hand.
‘Tenny, my dear, what has happened? What was it? Tell me all about it?’
She turned on me instantly and challenged me quite sharply.
‘You brought him here?’
‘I brought him into this room, yes, but he isn’t a friend of mine; he is a friend of Mrs. Harper’s.’
‘Her friend?’ Tenny was twisting a wet little wisp of a hankie round her fingers.
‘But he couldn’t be anybody’s friend. Listen to me, Katy. He was the man I knew before. He came to visit somebody in the hospital where I was working, and we fell for one another. Oh, I dare say it sounds ridiculous to you, but he is the kind who sweeps you off your feet. I used to go out and see him; he was terribly nice to me and took me out on my days off. He gave me chocolates, great big boxes of them, and flowers, always the most expensive kind. I remembered him for ever by the white violets that he used to send me. No other man in the world would ever think of sending a girl white violets.’
I thought of this morning and the little silver basket full of them which he had sent to Iris, and the silly sentimental message that they carried her, saying that he was coming to see her. So he had played with poor little Tenny the same way, too!
I said, ‘But that is all forgotten now, Tenny dear?’
She shook her head.
‘No, there are some things that you can’t forget. We got engaged; it was to be a secret and nobody would know about it ever. Then one night we went for a motor ride. We went down to Hindhead ‒ such a lovely starry night, it was. He was wonderful and so kind to me. He said all the adorable things that girls ache to hear a man say. He had a way of kissing you ‒ oh, it sounds silly enough now, but it was something that you could not resist. It was something that made you forget that there had ever been a time before or that there was ever going to be a time after.’
The fresh tea came up, carried by George the porter.
‘Been a h’accident?’ he asked, and when I nodded, ‘My, there’ll be a rumpus when that Sister knows!’
I said, ‘She isn’t going to know if I can help it,’ and George, who is an awfully good sort, took the bits down in his food lift so that I breathed freely for the first time and hoped that was another hurdle safely crossed.
Tenny went on: ‘We stayed there late and the car broke down. Now it seems to be such a silly stereotyped old story, but it did not seem to be silly at the time. I don’t suppose such things do. We stayed the night at a hotel he knew of, and oh, Katy, you mustn’t think too badly of me. I don’t know how it happened, but it just did. You see, we were going to be married soon, he said, and nobody would ever know. I dare say I behaved badly, but I defy any girl to have been alone in the country with the man of her choice on a night like that and not to be carried away. I could not regret it in the morning either. I dare say you think me wicked, but this was something from which you cannot escape.’
