by Sheila Burns
She said, ‘Perhaps, Nurse, I notice more than you think, and it has been very unfortunate that matters have turned out the way they have done. If you think a change will be beneficial to you, then it is a change that you ought to make. I have no more to say about it,’ but I knew that she was most dreadfully offended.
I said that I was sorry and went off upstairs, to find Tenny just coming down for her appointment.
‘What did she look like? How did she take it?’ gasped Tenny.
‘Not too well.’
‘She’ll take my resignation worse. I’ve been here longer than you have, and she thinks that she has got me on a string, which is just where she is wrong. Now for it,’ and she launched herself off towards the little private room.
When she came back again her eyes were twinkling. Tenny was enjoying the chance of a fresh adventure and the hope that now life would jog out of its old routine and give her something to entertain her.
‘She looked sick as mud,’ said she. ‘Now it only needs another to do the same thing, and she will probably swoon. I’m enjoying this.’
I don’t believe that Tenny was ever really cut out for a nurse. She enjoys life too much. Looking at her as she stood there, bubbling over with excitement, it seemed hard to remember that anything so sweet should have suffered so badly with Bill. It seemed hard that she had ever had any of the kicks from life when hers ought to be all fun.
I couldn’t help feeling sorry for Miss Vaughan. She was a stiff old thing, I know, but it must be a pretty responsible job running a nursing home like that, and to lose two of your nurses in one fell swoop cannot be too amusing.
‘You don’t tell me that you like her?’ cried Tenny. ‘Oh, dearie me, whatever next?’ and she went back to her floor singing.
Well, this was all going to end!
No more up and down the stairs, with anxious people arriving and less anxious people going. You do your best for your patients, and their gratitude is your reward; you nurse them back to health, yet they are always glad when the time to leave you comes, and they can pass out of the doors of the home into the world again. I suppose that is only natural, and I should be glad myself.
That day I heard that Ray would be soon well enough to leave. I had the feeling when Miss Vaughan told me that she knew more than I thought, and that she was sorry for me and wanted to help me, yet could not do so. It was merely an instinctive feeling; there was nothing that she did to bear it out, but all the same I was sure that it was there.
She told me on the stairs.
‘As you nursed Mrs. Harper, and have done so much good work for him, I thought that you might like to know,’ she said.
‘I should like to know very much indeed.’
‘I think that I can safely say that all his troubles are ended now; they have made up their differences of opinion. It was a sad thing that his marriage should be so unhappy, but now there is no reason why it should not be quite happy, because the other man is being married at once.’
All the while I knew that her eyes watched mine, and that they were searching eyes, sincere and truthful. She was not saying this with the idea of deliberately hurting me; I knew that. She was telling me because she believed that it would be kinder and wiser to tell me the truth and to allow that truth to close the door for ever on all chances of romance.
Lady! this is love! And down comes the curtain.
She went on quite clearly: ‘I suggested that they should try another honeymoon together and start all over again. They are leaving the home to-morrow, and will be going to the South of France. The doctors want him to have an entire rest away from all work, and there, under happy conditions, they ought to get to know one another better. It ought to signify the fresh start.’
I said, ‘Quite so, Miss Vaughan,’ and hoped very much that my eyes did not show how deeply I felt all this.
There was a long silence, then she said in a low voice, ‘I felt I wanted you to know. You are a very brave girl, Nurse, but you are now running away from something which does not exist.’
I flinched then.
Her sympathy and appreciation was something that was entirely unexpected. Instantly I realized that she had been blind to nothing, and that she had known about us from the very beginning.
She put out a hand.
‘I dare say you wonder how it is that I know, but years ago much the same thing happened to me. I thought then that I should never get over it, and that my heart was broken. It wasn’t. Hearts do not break so easily, and I’ve gone on and I am proud that I have had the strength of mind and of purpose to continue. It was the only thing that I could do, but it wasn’t easy to force myself to it at the time.’
I still stood there, dumbly staring at her. I did not know what to say; there seemed to be no solution.
‘It is never easy to do the brave thing,’ she said, ‘but it is the only satisfactory course to pursue. Now I know that the man I loved is a happy and successful surgeon. He was restored to his wife and they have children, which have made all the difference to their lives. I hope very much that this will happen to the Harpers. If they had children then their difficulties would be smoothed away and they would be happy.’
I agreed with her.
She dismissed me then, going on down the stairs, and I went away to my duties in a daze. After all, she was a great woman. Because of her greatness she understood, and it was that understanding of hers which carried her so far. It was to that understanding that I attributed the success of her home, and her management of her nurses and of her patients.
So she knew!
So she also had suffered!
I wanted to go away and cry all by myself, but I knew that this could not be. I had my patients to consider; perhaps that was the best thing of all. I had to go on as she had to, and perhaps the knowledge of responsibility was going to help me bear my burden in the future.
Only it was awful to think that I should be so alone. So desperately alone for always.
Chapter Five
Tenny and I got out for a couple of hours and went to buy some new uniform, because we should want this for Australia. It is always a joy to get new clothes, even if it is the same old uniform, and for this great occasion I had withdrawn some money out of the post office savings bank for the expedition.
It was a glorious spring day, one of those days when it is good to be alive and when you feel, however drab and dull life has been so far, there is something worth seeking ahead. We went along chattering together, and when we arrived at the shop we had a very happy hour choosing things. I must say uniform has improved enormously since I was trained. Then it was all dull, as dull could be; nowadays it is something that you can choose with a relish. Thank heaven those stiff collars have been abolished, and those starched caps. And those awful strings! When I was first promoted to strings in hospital I thought I could never bear them. They have to be so starched that they cut right into your chin.
‘Like Queen Vic,’ said Tenny gaily, ‘who when she was a child had holly leaves stuck into her bonnet strings to teach her to hold her head up.’
Really, they did do some barbarous things even in her time!
As we came out of the shop with the idea of treating ourselves to tea at a little tea place we knew of where they had the loveliest cream cakes, we ran straight into a very bronzed man who was passing the door. I pulled up with a jerk, but he wasn’t looking at me; he was staring at Tenny.
‘Why, it’s little Jill!’ said he.
It seemed so funny to hear Tenny being addressed as little Jill that I almost wanted to laugh. It didn’t seem at all right. She had come to a standstill and was looking at him with bewildered eyes. I think that was when I smelt a rat, and saw something which at that particular moment was probably not seen by either of them. The man looked as if he had returned from some distant country; he was brown with a brownness that men do not get here even in the summer.
‘It’s Hugh!’ she said.
‘Yes, it’s
Hugh all right. What are you doing here? Not still nursing? Oh, my dear, why ever did you stick to it? What a waste of youth!’ Then he glanced at me. ‘A friend?’ he asked. ‘Look here, we can’t talk in the street. Come along and have some tea.’
Before we could say no he had called up a taxi and we were going off to the May Fair. He was, it seemed, an old love of Tenny’s; they had lived near one another when she was a little girl in sandals, and he a young sub in the army. He had gone to India, and he was home now on furlough. He was a colonel. ‘But pray heaven I don’t look like it,’ he said.
Sitting comfortably in the May Fair, we told him about our Australian project. We were very sick of the home, sick of a life spent in carting about trays and doing dressings, and always the eternal flow of patients, and never getting out for very long, and we had decided to throw our bonnets over the windmill.
‘And very wise too,’ said he; but all the while I could see that he had no eyes for anybody but Tenny.
I realized that I was playing gooseberry, which is not a very nice feeling. I was the third in the party, and I am sure that they would much rather not have had me there at all, but I could think of no excuse that I could concoct whereby I might slip away. I could think of nothing which would give me the chance to escape.
Tenny was dimpling and blushing. She looked very pretty. I have often envied Tenny her looks. Of course, I’m one of those people who never look anything, but she has soft red-brown hair and grey eyes, with a brown fleck in them. Tenny has a dimple, too, a sweet and lovely dimple which pops up whenever she is amused.
It was very restful sitting there in the hotel and knowing no bell could jar in on us, and no lift could arrive demanding immediate attention for some patient. I quite forgot that time was on the wing and that we were both due back on duty.
I sprang up.
‘Good heavens, Tenny, look at that clock.’
‘We shall both be on the mat.’
He said, ‘Look here, it can’t end here. We have got to meet again. What about a dinner ‒ what about a theatre?’ and then, glancing nervously at me, ‘Both of you?’
‘I’m on night duty,’ I lied valiantly.
I knew that Tenny wanted to giggle, but she buttoned her mouth down primly and said, ‘Well, one evening I could get out.’
‘To-morrow?’
‘All right. To-morrow. Is there any show you particularly want to see?’
‘I’ve seen nothing,’ he said.
She was in a hurry to get away because Nurse Tops was looking out for us, and she was one of those martyrish people who make such a frightful fuss if you are five minutes late. We both knew what we should get when we got home, so that we were impatient to start. ‘Shall I choose?’ he asked.
‘Anything will be nice.’
‘Can you manage dinner to-morrow night at seven-thirty?’
‘I don’t get off duty until then.’
He said, ‘Then we’ll cancel the show and go and dine at the Casino. Eight-thirty there? I’ll meet you in the foyer.’
That was when we broke away.
We almost ran back, and there was not time for Tenny to explain anything. It is a very criss-cross journey to our part of London, and difficult to get to from anywhere, I always think, but we managed to get there only five minutes late, and as we went up to our rooms I panted, ‘Who was he?’
Tenny was so out of breath that she could only gasp, ‘Old love,’ and then started laughing at herself, with the result that she had to sit down before she could make the last five stairs. And hadn’t Nurse Tops got something to say! As I went my round of the patients, finishing up it suddenly dawned on me that we might not need our uniform for Australia after all. Supposing that Tenny changed her mind and went off with this man? Supposing she went back to India when the furlough was ended? Tenny as a colonel’s lady. Imagine it!
I was not sure that I would like tackling Australia all alone. It seems a long way off for a woman who has never been abroad before. It seems almost too far. I did not think that the brightness dazzled me quite so much, and yet I could not stay here. I did not want to stay here and go on with a life which had become so difficult. If Miss Vaughan had guessed that I cared for Ray, then it was probable that everybody else had.
They said nothing because they were too nice, but that did not prevent them thinking things.
No, I had got to get away.
I had got to get right away and forget.
The next day the Harpers went off together.
Tenny told me that he was going that afternoon, and I was torn two ways ‒ between the dreadful desire to see him go and the knowledge that it would be an infinite torture.
Then in the end I met them on the stairs, and it had been nothing that I had planned. All their arrangements had been altered last thing of all, it seemed, and they were catching an earlier train.
I was returning upstairs from my dinner, and as I got half-way I saw them coming down. Iris came first, a good way ahead of him. Iris in a perky little frock, sprigged gaily with blossoms, and a mink coat flung over her shoulders with that indolence with which only a woman like Iris wears mink.
‘Oh, you!’ she said, and came to a stop.
She took me entirely by surprise.
She took me so much by surprise that I had not the strength of mind to pass her by, nor to realize that I had to face this thing out. I felt my two hot hands go with spread palms against the wall for support. I was grateful for the coolness of it. I was desperately grateful to feel their firmness.
‘I hope you are better,’ I said at last, and my voice was far away and trembled, quite unlike my own voice.
‘You don’t hope that at all,’ she said. ‘You know perfectly well that you wish I had died. Well, I haven’t died. I’ve lived and now we are starting off for our second honeymoon. What do you think of that, Nurse?’ and her voice defied me.
It was so like Iris!
I wanted to turn and run from her. I didn’t think I could bear more, but there is a certain desperate pride which stands firm in a person, and that held me.
I said, ‘I am very glad, and I hope that you both will be very happy.’
‘That isn’t true,’ she flashed. ‘You don’t hope anything of the sort, and you know it!’
‘Please, Mrs. Harper, do try to think of me more charitably. I did my best for you.’
‘Because you thought you would get round my husband that way.’
‘It was nothing of the sort. It was my duty to my patient put under my charge. I hope that I have never yet failed in my duty.’
Perhaps my quietness surprised her, for she stared at me for a moment as though she could not understand me, and then saying, ‘Oh, you make me tired,’ passed on.
She flounced down the stairs, leaving a trail of gardenia essence behind her. Slowly I went upstairs and that was how I met him face to face.
I had been so disturbed by the stormy meeting with her that I had not thought of this. Even when I had met Iris I had never thought that I should meet him too, because patients always leave us by the lift. I cannot imagine what induced him to come down the stairs, unless it was that perhaps he thought he might see me. But then I may be flattering myself.
He was standing on the top stair, thinner, paler, a little nervous about his feet.
‘Oh, doctor!’ I exclaimed; and then, ‘Won’t you take my arm? You ought not to be coming down these stairs alone; they’ll be too much for you. Why didn’t you go down in the lift?’
He smiled, his old, kind smile.
‘Thank you very much. I got sick of my room, and was trying to follow Iris down. I’m a bad patient, I dare say, but I wanted to see the stairs again, and I hate your lift. They always say that doctors are the worst patients, don’t they?’
There was a certain joy about feeling him as he leant on me. A certain satisfaction to know that my strength could be of use to him, my own full, abundant health help him now. He leaned hard. He leaned, and I could feel
his muscles straining. He must have been considerably weakened by his illness, and have suffered more than I had ever supposed.
He said in a low voice:
‘We are going to make a new start. Miss Vaughan is a very wonderful woman in some ways, a very understanding woman.’
‘She is great,’ I said. ‘She sees more than anybody ever imagines. Now take it gently; there is no need to hurry.’
Down we went very slowly.
‘Perhaps I was a little intolerant of Iris, perhaps I was unkind,’ he said; ‘anyway, I am trying to make up for all that now. Lying up there I have had lots of time for thinking, and perhaps I have seen some of my mistakes. I feel rather a cad.’
We came to the last bend in the stairs. For a moment his hand rested on mine.
‘Katy, you do forgive me?’ he said weakly.
‘I have nothing to forgive,’ I answered.
He was ill. I knew now that he was nothing like as convalescent as the others thought, and that he had no right to be leaving the home at all. Standing in the hall were Iris and Miss Vaughan. Turning, they saw us coming.
Iris gave a little scream.
‘I might have known as much,’ she said.
It was Miss Vaughan who, ignoring that, came forward and took Ray’s other arm.
‘He was coming down alone, and was not fit,’ I explained, and she accepted this explanation.
‘You were quite right,’ she said, and she meant it as a dismissal back to my floor.
I turned and went.
I wanted to look back. Heavens, how I wanted to look back, and yet had to steel myself against it. No, the thing had got to end here. He had his wife, I had my career. He would come back well, and I should go to Australia. We should probably never meet again, which was the best way out.
When he returned, firmly established with his wife, he would be back to the operating theatre, back to haunt the stairs, bringing me into constant and daily contact with him. It had been far better to go. Miss Vaughan had said that I was brave, but this was not courage. I was running away because I was afraid.
‘So that’s the end,’ said Tenny. ‘Never mind, you’ll be gone by the time that he returns. You’ll have forgotten a lot, too. It seems hard now, but time is an enormous healer.’
