Vernon’s underlip trembled a little. He was not going to cry – no, he was a big boy and big boys didn’t cry. Nurse said so – and then he knew that he wanted Nurse – wanted her badly. He wanted her reassuring presence, her omniscience, her creaking, rustling majesty.
‘She’ll be coming back soon,’ said Dr Coles. ‘Yes, soon. In the meantime, this Nurse is going to look after you – Nurse Frances.’
Nurse Frances moved into Vernon’s range of vision and Vernon studied her in silence. She too, was starched and crackling, that was all to the good. But she wasn’t big like Nurse – she was thinner than Mummy – as thin as Aunt Nina. He wasn’t sure –
And then he met her eyes – steady eyes, more green than grey, and he felt, as most people felt, that with Nurse Frances things would be ‘all right’.
She smiled at him – but not in the way that visitors smiled. It was a grave smile, friendly but reserved.
‘I’m sorry you feel sick,’ she said. ‘Would you like some orange juice?’
Vernon considered the matter and said he thought he would. Dr Coles went out of the room and Nurse Frances brought him the orange juice in a most curious-looking cup with a long spout. And it appeared that Vernon was to drink from the spout.
It made him laugh, but laughing hurt him, and so he stopped. Nurse Frances suggested he should go to sleep again, but he said he didn’t want to go to sleep.
‘Then I shouldn’t go to sleep,’ said Nurse Frances. ‘I wonder if you can count how many irises there are on that wall? You can start on the right side, and I’ll start on the left side. You can count, can’t you?’
Vernon said proudly that he could count up to a hundred.
‘That is a lot,’ said Nurse Frances. ‘There aren’t nearly as many irises as a hundred. I guess there are seventy-nine. Now what do you guess?’
Vernon guessed that there were fifty. There couldn’t, he felt sure, possibly be more than that. He began to count, but somehow, without knowing it, his eyelids closed and he slept …
2
Noise … Noise and pain … He woke with a start. He felt hot, very hot and there was a pain all down one side. And the noise was coming nearer. It was the noise that one always connected with Mummy …
She came into the room like a whirlwind, a kind of cloak affair she wore swinging out behind her. She was like a bird – a great big bird, and like a bird, she swooped down upon him.
‘Vernon – my darling – Mummy’s own darling – What have they done to you? – How awful – how terrible – My child!’
She was crying. Vernon began to cry too. He was suddenly frightened. Myra was moaning and weeping.
‘My little child. All I have in the world. God, don’t take him from me. Don’t take him from me! If he dies, I shall die too!’
‘Mrs Deyre –’
‘Vernon – Vernon – my baby –’
‘Mrs Deyre – please.’
There was crisp command in the voice rather than appeal.
‘Please don’t touch him. You will hurt him.’
‘Hurt him? I? His mother?’
‘You don’t seem to realize, Mrs Deyre, that his leg is broken. I must ask you, please, to leave the room.’
‘You’re hiding something from me – tell me – tell me – will the leg have to be amputated?’
A wail came from Vernon. He had not the least idea what amputated meant – but it sounded painful – and more than painful, terrifying. His wail broke into a scream.
‘He’s dying,’ cried Myra. ‘He’s dying – and they won’t tell me. But he shall die in my arms.’
‘Mrs Deyre –’
Somehow Nurse Frances had got between his mother and the bed. She was holding his mother by the shoulder. Her voice had the tone that Nurse’s had had when speaking to Katie, the under-housemaid.
‘Mrs Deyre, listen to me. You must control yourself. You must!’ Then she looked up. Vernon’s father was standing in the doorway. ‘Mr Deyre, please take your wife away. I cannot have my patient excited and upset.’
His father nodded – a quiet understanding nod. He just looked at Vernon once and said: ‘Bad luck, old chap. I broke an arm once.’
The world became suddenly less terrifying. Other people broke legs and arms. His father had hold of his mother’s shoulder, he was leading her towards the door, speaking to her in a low voice. She was protesting, arguing, her voice high and shrill with emotion.
‘How can you understand? You’ve never cared for the child like I have. It takes a mother – How can I leave my child to be looked after by a stranger? He needs his mother … You don’t understand – I love him. There’s nothing like a mother’s care – everyone says so.’
‘Vernon darling –’ she broke from her husband’s clasp, came back towards the bed. ‘You want me, don’t you? You want Mummy?’
‘I want Nurse,’ sobbed Vernon. ‘I want Nurse …’
He meant his own Nurse, not Nurse Frances.
‘Oh!’ said Myra. She stood there quivering.
‘Come, my dear,’ said Vernon’s father gently. ‘Come away.’
She leant against him, and together they passed from the room. Faint words floated back into the room.
‘My own child, to turn from me to a stranger.’
Nurse Frances smoothed the sheet and suggested a drink of water.
‘Nurse is coming back very soon,’ she said. ‘We’ll write to her today, shall we? You shall tell me what to say.’
A queer new feeling surged over Vernon – a sort of odd gratitude. Somebody had actually understood …
3
When Vernon, later, was to look back upon his childhood, this one period was to stand out quite clearly from the rest. ‘The time I broke my leg’ marked a distinct era.
He was to appreciate, too, various small incidents that were accepted by him at the time as a matter of course. For instance, a rather stormy interview that took place between Dr Coles and his mother. Naturally this did not take place in Vernon’s sick room, but Myra’s raised voice penetrated closed doors. Vernon heard indignant exclamations of ‘I don’t know what you mean by upsetting him … I consider I ought to nurse my own child … Naturally I was distressed – I’m not one of these people who simply have no heart – no heart at all. Look at Walter – never turned a hair!’
There were many skirmishes, too, not to say pitched battles fought between Myra and Nurse Frances. In these cases Nurse Frances always won, but at a certain cost. Myra Deyre was wildly and furiously jealous of what she called ‘the paid Nurse’. She was forced to submit to Dr Cole’s dictums, but she did so with a bad grace and with an overt rudeness that Nurse Frances never seemed to notice.
In after years Vernon remembered nothing of the pain and tedium that there must have been. He only remembered happy days of playing and talking as he had never played and talked before. For in Nurse Frances, he found a grown up who didn’t think things ‘funny’ or ‘quaint’. Somebody who listened sensibly and who made serious and sensible suggestions. To Nurse Frances he was able to speak of Poodle, Squirrel and Tree, and of Mr Green and the hundred children. And instead of saying ‘What a funny game!’ Nurse Frances merely inquired whether the hundred children were girls or boys – an aspect of the matter which Vernon had never thought of before. But he and Nurse Frances decided that there were fifty of each, which seemed a very fair arrangement.
If sometimes, off his guard, he played his make-believe games aloud, Nurse Frances never seemed to notice or to think it unusual. She had the same calm comfortableness of old Nurse about her, but she had something that mattered far more to Vernon, the gift of answering questions – and he knew, instinctively, that the answers were always true. Sometimes she would say: ‘I don’t know that myself,’ or ‘You must ask someone else. I’m not clever enough to tell you that.’ There was no pretence of omniscience about her.
Sometimes, after tea, she would tell Vernon stories. The stories were never the same two days running – one
day they would be about naughty little boys and girls, and the next day they would be about enchanted princesses. Vernon liked the latter kind best. There was one in particular that he loved, about a princess in a tower with golden hair and a vagabond prince in a ragged green hat. The story ended up in a forest and it was possibly for that reason that Vernon liked it so much.
Sometimes there would be an extra listener. Myra used to come in and be with Vernon during the early afternoon when Nurse Frances had her time off, but Vernon’s father used sometimes to come in after tea when the stories were going on. Little by little it became a habit. Walter Deyre would sit in the shadows just behind Nurse Frances’ chair, and from there he would watch, not his child, but the storyteller. One day Vernon saw his father’s hand steal out and close gently over Nurse Frances’ wrist.
And then something happened which surprised him very much. Nurse Frances got up from her chair.
‘I’m afraid we must turn you out for this evening, Mr Deyre,’ she said quietly. ‘Vernon and I have things to do.’
This astonished Vernon very much, because he couldn’t think what those things were. He was still more puzzled when his father got up also and said in a low voice:
‘I beg your pardon.’
Nurse Frances bent her head a little, but remained standing. Her eyes met Walter Deyre’s steadily. He said quietly:
‘Will you believe that I am really sorry, and let me come tomorrow?’
After that, in some way that Vernon could not have defined, his father’s manner was different. He no longer sat so near Nurse Frances. He talked more to Vernon and occasionally they all three played a game – usually Old Maid for which Vernon had a wild passion. They were happy evenings enjoyed by all three.
One day when Nurse Frances was out of the room, Walter Deyre said abruptly:
‘Do you like that Nurse of yours, Vernon?’
‘Nurse Frances? I like her lots. Don’t you, Father?’
‘Yes,’ said Walter Deyre, ‘I do.’
There was a sadness in his voice which Vernon felt.
‘Is anything the matter, Father?’
‘Nothing that can be put right. The horse that gets left at the post never has much chance of making good – and the fact that it’s the horse’s own fault doesn’t make matters any better. But that’s double Dutch to you, old man. Anyway, enjoy your Nurse Frances while you’ve got her. There aren’t many of her sort knocking about.’
And then Nurse Frances came back and they played Animal Grab.
But Walter Deyre’s words had set Vernon’s mind to work. He tackled Nurse Frances next morning.
‘Aren’t you going to be here always?’
‘No. Only till you get well – or nearly well.’
‘Won’t you stay always? I’d like you to.’
‘But you see, that’s not my work. My work is to look after people who are ill.’
‘Do you like doing that?’
‘Yes, very much.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, you see, everyone has some particular kind of work that they like doing and that suits them.’
‘Mummy hasn’t.’
‘Oh, yes, she has. Her work is to look after this big house and see that everything goes right, and to take care of you and your father.’
‘Father was a soldier once. He told me that if ever there was a war, he’d go and be a soldier again.’
‘Are you very fond of your father, Vernon?’
‘I love Mummy best, of course. Mummy says little boys always love their mothers best. I like being with Father, of course, but that’s different. I expect it’s because he’s a man. What shall I be when I grow up, do you think? I want to be a sailor.’
‘Perhaps you’ll write books.’
‘What about?’
Nurse Frances smiled a little.
‘Perhaps about Mr Green, and Poodle and Squirrel and Tree.’
‘But everyone would say that that was silly.’
‘Little boys wouldn’t think so. And besides, when you grow up, you will have different people in your head – like Mr Green and the children, only grown up people. And then you could write about them.’
Vernon thought for a long time, then he shook his head.
‘I think I’ll be a soldier like Father. Most of the Deyres have been soldiers, Mummy says. Of course you have to be very brave to be a soldier, but I think I would be brave enough.’
Nurse Frances was silent a moment. She was thinking of what Walter Deyre had said of his small son.
‘He’s a plucky little chap – absolutely fearless. Doesn’t know what fear is! You should see him on his pony.’
Yes, Vernon was fearless enough in one sense. He had the power of endurance, too. He had borne the pain and discomfort of his broken leg unusually well for so young a child.
But there was another kind of fear. She said slowly after a minute or two:
‘Tell me again how you fell off the wall that day.’
She knew all about The Beast, and had been careful to display no ridicule. She listened now to Vernon and as he finished she said gently:
‘But you’ve known for quite a long time, haven’t you, that it isn’t a real Beast? That it’s only a thing made of wood and wires.’
‘I do know,’ said Vernon. ‘But I don’t dream it like that. And when I saw it in the garden coming at me –’
‘You ran away – which was rather a pity, wasn’t it? It would have been much better to have stayed and looked. Then you’d have seen the men, and would have known just what it was. It’s always a good thing to look. Then you can run away afterwards if you still want to – but you usually don’t. And Vernon, I’ll tell you something else.’
‘Yes?’
‘Things are never so frightening in front of you as they are behind you. Remember that. Anything seems frightening when it’s behind your back and you can’t see it. That’s why it’s always better to turn and face things – and then very often you find they are nothing at all.’
Vernon said thoughtfully: ‘If I’d turned round I wouldn’t have broken my leg, would I?’
‘No.’
Vernon sighed.
‘I don’t mind having broken my leg very much. It has been very nice having you to play with.’
He thought Nurse Frances murmured ‘Poor child’ under her breath, but that, of course, was absurd. She said smiling:
‘I’ve enjoyed it too. Some of my ill people don’t like to play.’
‘You really do like playing, don’t you?’ said Vernon. ‘So does Mr Green.’
He added rather stiffly, for he felt shy:
‘Please don’t go away very soon, will you?’
4
But as it happened, Nurse Frances went away much sooner than she might have done. It all happened very suddenly, as things in Vernon’s experience always did.
It started very simply – something that Myra offered to do for Vernon and that he said he would rather have done by Nurse Frances.
He was on crutches now for a short and painful time every day, enjoying the novelty of it very much. He soon got tired, however, and was ready to go back to bed. Today, his mother had suggested his doing so, saying she would help him. But Vernon had been helped by her before. Those big white hands of hers were strangely clumsy. They hurt where they meant to help. He shrank from her well-meant efforts. He said he would wait for Nurse Frances who never hurt.
The words came out with the tactless honesty of children, and in a minute Myra Deyre was at white heat.
Nurse Frances came in two or three minutes later to be received with a flood of reproach.
Turning the boy against his own mother – cruel – wicked – They were all alike – everyone was against her – She had nothing in the world but Vernon and now he was being turned against her too.
So it went on – a ceaseless stream. Nurse Frances bore it patiently enough without surprise or rancour. Mrs Deyre, she knew, was that kind of woman. Scenes were a reli
ef to her. And hard words, Nurse Frances reflected with grim humour, can only harm if the utterer is dear to you. She was sorry for Myra Deyre for she realized how much real unhappiness and misery lay behind these hysterical outbursts.
It was an unfortunate moment for Walter Deyre to choose to enter the nursery. For a moment or two he stood surprised, then he flushed angrily.
‘Really, Myra, I’m ashamed of you. You don’t know what you’re saying.’
She turned on him furiously.
‘I know what I’m saying well enough. And I know what you’ve been doing. Slinking in here every day – I’ve seen you. Always making love to some woman or other. Nursemaids, hospital nurses – it’s all one to you.’
‘Myra – be quiet!’
He was really angry now. Myra Deyre felt a throb of fear. But she hurled her last piece of invective.
‘You’re all alike, you hospital nurses. Flirting with other women’s husbands. You ought to be ashamed of yourself – before the innocent child too – putting all sorts of things into his head. But you’ll go out of my house. Yes, you’ll go right out – and I shall tell Dr Coles what I think of you.’
‘Would you mind continuing this edifying scene elsewhere?’ Her husband’s voice was as she hated it most – cold and sneering. ‘Hardly judicious in front of your innocent child, is it? I apologize, Nurse, for what my wife has been saying. Come, Myra.’
She went – beginning to cry – weakly frightened at what she had done. As usual, she had said more than she meant.
‘You’re cruel,’ she sobbed. ‘Cruel. You’d like me to be dead. You hate me.’
She followed him out of the room. Nurse Frances put Vernon to bed. He wanted to ask questions but she talked of a dog, a big St Bernard, that she had had when she was a little girl and he was so much interested that he forgot everything else.
Much later that evening, Vernon’s father came to the nursery. He looked white and ill. Nurse Frances rose and came to where he stood in the doorway.
‘I don’t know what to say – how can I apologize – the things my wife said –’
Nurse Frances replied in a quiet matter-of-fact voice.
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