by Sheila Burns
Suddenly in that prim little room I saw a new woman look out of the glass at me, a woman with a slick figure, shown off to the best advantage in a suit which was cut on good lines. A woman with poise.
‘Oh, it can’t be me,’ I gasped.
We had an easy train journey and crossed to the Island in the most perfect weather. I had never been there before. In fact I don’t think I had ever crossed the sea before, and it seemed to me like going to a foreign country. I would not have dared confess that I felt like this, one has a natural reticence and hates confessing to a childish emotion, but that was the way I did feel. A sea which was pale blue like turquoise, and a sky flecked with little apricot clouds; it was one of the most perfect afternoons that I can remember. When at last we settled ourselves in a ridiculous little train, it was to see the green island stretching on either side, and the downs at Brading, and the sea again at Sandown.
‘It’s nice,’ I said.
Iris glanced out of the window indifferently. ‘Oh, it is all right,’ she agreed.
She was looking tired, as though she had done too much, and I told her that the moment we got to the hotel she would have to lie down. She had better have her dinner in bed, as if she over-tired herself now it would only retard her convalescence.
‘If you are going to be dragon to me, I shall wish you hadn’t come,’ she said, but I knew that she did not feel too well, because she drooped more and more, and when the train came ultimately to a standstill at Ventnor I think she was quite glad to know that bed was so near.
We went straight up to her room, a large double room looking across the English Channel. As I entered with her leaning on my arm I gave a quick start. There was a faint unmistakable essence which pervaded the place, and I glanced across to the bed. By the side of it was a bowl full of white violets.
‘Yes, they came for Mrs. Harper,’ said the manageress, who had shown us up. ‘They were marked “flowers”, and they were likely to die, so that we took the liberty of opening the box and putting them in water. We looked amongst the wrapping but there was no card with them.’
‘No card,’ she said. ‘How odd!’
But it wasn’t odd at all. They were the white violets which were to tell her that Captain Dawson himself would be down with us before very long. I might have guessed that she would not keep her promise, she wasn’t that sort of woman. Iris had had life run all her own way and she expected it to go on playing into her hands.
I said nothing at all until the manageress had gone, and then as the door closed on her I rounded on Iris.
‘You promised me that he wouldn’t come down here.’
‘Can I help it if he comes? After all this hotel is open to anybody who chooses to book a room at it. It isn’t my fault.’
‘But you did promise.’
‘I’m tired, you can’t badger me now. I don’t know what is happening, nor what he is doing. I don’t understand why the violets are here, I don’t care much. Oh, I am so tired, so dreadfully tired.’
In spite of that she insisted that she would come down to dine. I used every argument in my power to try to dissuade her, realizing the foolishness of such a move after the journey, but she looked like working herself up into a fury over it. I knew this would be far worse for her than letting her come down, so I gave way, I am afraid with a bad grace. It was quite obvious to me that she was going to be a very troublesome patient. Although I had chafed against the monotony of the home, and everything that it stood for, the main joy about it was that it was easy there to keep your patients in control. It wasn’t so easy when you got them away, and they were determined to get the bit between their teeth.
I did not wear uniform, because she had said she preferred plain clothes in the hotel. I wore the evening frock that she had given me, the one so different from anything I had had before. I sound so vain about all this, but it wasn’t vanity which stirred me when I saw myself in new clothes. I was proud to put them on, and proud to go down for the first time in my life not so noticeably labelled ‘old maid’.
The moment I got into the room I saw Captain Dawson sitting at a table, and I felt instinctively that he saw me. He was the kind of man who would never miss the sight of a woman. He made me feel actually sick, because I knew that my hands were tied, and that there was very little I could do. I could, of course, threaten to leave her, but then she was not really strong enough to do without me, and in a sense this would be letting her husband down.
He talked to her, but all the time I felt that his eyes were wandering round to me again. I suppose he could not make head or tail of my being out of uniform, and looking so different. He said nothing. It was horrible, but I kept feeling his eyes on me; it was the knowledge that he looked at me furtively, never so that I could actually see him, but with the appreciation which is not a compliment, and which you feel instinctively.
Afterwards we three had coffee in the lounge.
‘So you got the white violets that I sent you,’ he said, ‘I wasn’t very long in following them up, was I?’
‘No.’
He turned to me.
‘I suppose you like flowers, Nurse, or do you get your fill of arranging them for other people? Have you any favourite ones?’
I seized the opportunity and said, ‘Oh, yes, my favourites are white hyacinths,’ and I thought he could take it or leave it as he felt best.
He had the grace to blush a little, and I knew that he had got my meaning. Yet he went on glancing at me doubtfully as though he wondered if I knew or had made a lucky shot.
It was most uncomfortable for me sitting there that evening wondering what I ought to do about this. Was a nurse’s first duty really to her patient? I did owe Ray Harper something. I did not know what to do, and when the clock struck nine I went upstairs to get the room ready for Iris. She knew that she must be in bed early, and that she was not yet allowed to stay up late, and she had promised me that she would come up in a few minutes.
Of course she didn’t.
When I went down to look for her she was not in the lounge where I had left her talking, but I peeped on to the terrace and saw her curled up in a corner, wrapped in a big coat and sitting close to Captain Dawson.
I went to her deliberately, and I admit that I was really very angry.
‘Mrs Harper, it is time that you came to bed.’
‘I’ll be up soon, Nurse.’
‘You really must come up now with me,’ I insisted.
She was very annoyed at being spoken to like that, and she turned sharply towards me. ‘I’m not coming and you must go away. How dare you come here and disturb me?’
I took her arm.
‘Now, don’t be foolish, I am here to see after you and you have had a tiring journey. You don’t realize that you have done more to-day than ever since your operation. You will do yourself harm if you don’t come to bed. Please, Mrs. Harper.’
I must give Captain Dawson that much due, for he did see my point and try to help me.
‘Yes, Iris, you must do what the little dragon says. Fancy it being such a little dragon!’
She was not going to accept the decree as easily as I had hoped, and she behaved like a naughty spoilt child.
‘You are all against me and are being unkind to me. How can you do it?’
However, I insisted, and I got her upstairs. In the lift I had a pretty shrewd idea that she was bottling up a scene for later, and I was only too right. In the big bedroom she rounded on me in a fury, I don’t think I have ever seen anyone angrier.
‘How dare you? Whatever made you do such a thing? You know as well as I do that you have no right to treat me like a child, and if you think that I am going to put up with it you make a huge mistake.’
I stood my ground.
‘I am here, Mrs. Harper, and I hold myself responsible to your husband for your well-being.’
‘My husband!’
‘What is more, you promised me that Captain Dawson would not be coming down here, and yet
I actually find him in the very hotel the moment we arrive. You must admit that it isn’t very fair of you.’
‘Why shouldn’t I have my own friends?’
‘Why should you promise me one thing, and then quite deliberately break it?’
She was more indignant than ever over that, and started a tirade. ‘How dare you appoint yourself as my keeper? You and my husband have been talking about me behind my back. You think that I don’t know about it all, but there you are wrong, because you cannot cheat me as easily as you think.’
I realized all too well how bad a scene of this sort was for her, but although I did my best to calm her, it was quite apparent that she had gone beyond all bounds, and that there was nothing more that I could do. Finally, my patience gave way.
‘Look here,’ I said, ‘I won’t be responsible for you any more. I promised Dr. Harper that if anything went wrong I would wire for him, and I shall send the telegram in the morning.’
‘You’ll get him down here?’
‘I certainly shall.’
‘You little cat!’ That was the first time that she had shown herself in her real colours, but of course in her present temper she hardly knew what she was saying. ‘As if I didn’t know all along that you were in love with him, and wanted him for yourself! As if I hadn’t seen it sticking out a mile, and you supposing that I was blind as a bat all the time! Oh, you think you have been very clever, but you haven’t done as well as you think you have. I can promise him that. If you do send for him, I shall tell him that you are in love with him.’
I don’t know what I said.
It was a ghastly night and I sat up with her until it was almost dawn, when at last I persuaded her to take a sleeping draught. Later I tiptoed out of the room when she was safely asleep, and I telephoned to the doctor. It was all very well, but I dared not hold myself responsible if she was going to fly into hysterical outbursts of this kind. If she upset herself so violently she would do tremendous harm, and I seemed unable to control her. It would probably mean that she did carry out her threat, and that I went back to London quickly, and it was the end of our friendship, but I don’t think I cared. I did not want to stay down here and have Captain Dawson making eyes at me, and all the while knowing that we were hoodwinking her husband. I wanted to get away, and to make the clean break as quickly as I could.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you at such a time,’ I told him when he came to the telephone, ‘it’s Nurse Day. Mrs. Harper isn’t very well. She got worked up last night, and there has been a frightful scene.’
He asked me tersely for technical details. Her pulse. Her manner. What dose had I given her? I explained that she had had one of her medinals and would be unlikely to wake before midday.
He asked then about Captain Dawson.
‘Is that man down there?’
‘Yes.’
I’d said it now. I might be a traitor, and what I said might worry him, but it was better to speak the truth than to let the matter drift as it was doing.
‘Right, I’ll be down about one o’clock. That is the earliest train that I can catch,’ and he rang off.
I went back to my patient, who slept heavily on through the morning. She was so fast asleep that I left her to go downstairs for my breakfast, and Captain Dawson was just going out riding. He was at the next table, and he glanced across at me at once. He was a fine-looking man in his riding kit, if you cared for the type, but I hated him. He was so florid and brazen-looking, so horribly, impertinently sure of himself.
‘What a little dragon it was!’ he kept saying, ‘what a little dragon! I wonder if you would be like that to me if I were your patient. Wonder if you wouldn’t be a little kinder to a mere man, eh?’
I did not encourage the conversation.
‘I’m afraid a nurse very often cannot afford to be kind.’
‘I’m sure that you could be lovely.’
Again those eyes which I knew thought of me only as a woman. They were horrid eyes, and they gave me that nasty squirmy feeling inside which a woman so often gets when a man looks at her in that particular way. He was detestable.
I could not stay there a moment longer than I could help, it was too uncomfortable a breakfast for me, so I got up and went back to Iris. She slept on and on.
The horse came for Captain Dawson, and I watched him ride away and up the side of the hill on his way to St. Boniface Down. He glanced back once and saw me there and waved to me. I was angry with myself that I should have pandered to idle curiosity and had watched him at all.
I tried to forget everything but my patient. Soon the doctor would be down, and even if she did tell him everything that she had promised to tell, it would be a help to know that he was here and to hold him responsible for her. It would be a help to know that he was in the place.
It seemed hours waiting for the time when Dr. Harper’s train would come in. Presently, half an hour before he was due, Iris started stirring. She woke heavily and slowly.
‘Oh, my head, my head,’ she said.
I took her the eau-de-Cologne.
‘Now don’t worry, Mrs. Harper, you are quite all right and here is a cup of tea all ready for you.’
She moaned as she lay there, letting me bathe her forehead with the eau-de-Cologne, and making no attempt to help herself at all.
‘Is that you, Nurse?’
‘Yes, I’m here.’
‘Something happened last night.’
She had her eyes open now, and they were sullen as she lay there staring into space. I went over to the gas-ring and stopped the kettle which was on the verge of boiling over; I made her a cup of tea and brought it to her side.
‘Drink this before you attempt to talk. You will find that it makes you feel quite a different woman.’
She tried to push it away.
‘I don’t want it.’
She was one of the most childish people when she started, and had to be coaxed into drinking it, for all the world like a very little girl.
‘Come now, it will do you lots of good, and ease that headache. You want to get rid of that head, don’t you?’
I think she lay there trying to recall all the details of the night before, because after a bit she seemed to remember.
‘I know. I remember it all now. You came down and made me come up here to bed when I didn’t want to do it. You were beastly to me and rude. Oh, I don’t know what I couldn’t have done to you.’
‘You were already over-tired, and had done far too much for one day.’
‘Yes, you turned all prim and grand about it. I suppose it is that you don’t like Bill being down here, you want him for yourself, I suppose. He is far too good-looking.’
I was very angry at the mere suggestion.
‘You mustn’t think such things,’ I said. ‘Captain Dawson is hardly the kind of man that I should ever think twice about. You have no right to say such stupid things even if you are angry with me.’
She eyed me over the cup of tea which at last she had consented to drink, though I don’t suppose she even tasted it.
‘Oh no, of course. You pretend to be so virtuous and so grand about it all, and really it is my husband that you want. A nice thing that is, a very nice thing! You and Ray. Don’t make me laugh!’
It seems absurd that one can be so bitterly hurt by people saying things like that. She was quite beside herself with fury, and a sick woman to boot. It is ridiculous that the silly remarks of angry, jealous women like Iris can cut so deeply, but I knew then the meaning of the old proverb which says that words can kill you. I tried to keep my temper. I tried to tell myself that she was ill, and that you could not pay any attention to the things that she said, but all the time it seemed that something inside me was hurt desperately badly, and that I would never forgive her for it.
‘I hate you,’ she screamed, working herself into a furious passion. ‘You care for Ray. You want to get him from me. You know that all the time you are scheming and plotting to get him for yoursel
f. You think I can’t see it, think I don’t know. Don’t be funny! I know that you are in love with him. I know that you despise me because I can’t think of him as being anything but a sententious fool. I can’t stand his quietness, his reserve, his coldness. He isn’t a man, he is a chunk of marble. Go on! Be in love with him! A fat lot of good it will …’
Then she stopped short.
I saw her eyes staring at the door behind me and turned intuitively. There, standing staring at us both was Dr. Harper. I don’t know how long he had been there, but I do know that he must have heard every word.
Just for a moment she seemed to be paralysed to find that he had heard her, then her eyes goggled and she turned, her mouth sagging.
‘Well, I don’t care. Now you both know that I know. Go on being in love with each other. I shan’t try to stop it. Go on!’
She turned her face to the pillow, sobbing violently. I thought she would hurt herself badly, and I got up to go to her, but my knees seemed to be wobbly and weak; I had little control over myself. That was when Dr. Harper went to the bed.
‘That will do, Nurse,’ he said.
It was my dismissal.
Well, anyway I could not have stopped on after this horrible scene. I could not have stayed even if I had wanted to. If it hadn’t been true, the accusation would not have mattered so much, but it had been true. I did love him, and she had recognized it.
I went off quietly to my own room and put my things together. It would not take me very long to pack, for my belongings were few. I always travel lightly. The one wisp of an evening frock, a coat and skirt and an afternoon dress. They were all that I had brought with me. I would not accept her clothes, but would leave them behind for her; I must have been mad to have taken them in the first place.
