by Paul Kelly
“A Tarzan or a Jane, Frannie? A Tarzan or a Jane?”... Jeremy kept on saying... again and again....
Chapter Eight
The white robed figure came stealthily into Theatre 2, moving silently and with care as he manoeuvred himself around the steel trolley and held his latex-gloved hands in the air for a few moments before uncovering the instruments. He removed the sterilized huckaback towel that covered them and they gleamed in the light of the great lamp that hung above the operating table, sparkling with such deceptive function; so soon to invade the body of their next victim, spilling blood in the hopes of producing a healing cure. I was mesmerized... not by the glitter of the instruments as they sparkled and shone in pristine array, but by the amber-green eyes of the tall man who stood beside them, in total control of what he was about to do. His hands fascinated me in the deft manner by which he lifted each pair of forceps, one after another and presented them to the surgeon.
“Towel clips,” demanded the Colonel... and snap …they were placed into his hands. “Acriflavine rinse,” he commanded again and the saffron sponge splashed liberal balm across the shaven abdomen. “Spencer-Wells forceps... scalpel....” The orders came fast and exacting... and each obeyed with the precision of a robot.
I was dumfounded. I could not believe my eyes as this military drill was enacted before me, as if by numbers. I watched the minute beads of perspiration rise on Colonel Steel’s forehead and I signalled for the orderly to mop his brow.
“Count the swabs... be sure to count the swabs... “
The orderly obeyed, catching each red-soiled gauze piece in his long taloned forceps and hanging them methodically where they could be counted on a hoop-la board of metal hooks
“Twenty four used Sir... One pack complete.”
“More swabs... more... more.”
The orderly moved swiftly across the room
“Second packet in the kidney dish Sir. Total now forty eight.”
I saw Darius blink as the sweat ran down his brow and I moved forward to mop him myself. He bent forward but I don’t think he recognized me and I wanted to keep the swab that I had used, but realized that the count would have been wrong, had I done so. I did so want to keep that swab too....
“Retractors... “
Darius moved into action again.
“Hold these two together. I want to get under the aorta... steady...“
Darius moved again, in silence and in precision to the commands of Colonel Steel and Major Tarapor squeezed his oxygen pump to ensure it was active. He smiled at me... a wide broad-beamed smile, showing white gleaming teeth against his dark skin and I knew that the operation was a success, for an anaesthetist always knows first when things are going according to plan.
I marvelled at the discipline I observed in Darius Crane and after only ten weeks of training....
“Sutures... cat-gut please... not silk.”
“Cut.”
Darius snipped the suture ends in an instant and withdrew the scissors to await the second command. It came again in seconds....
“Cut”
He repeated the same performance
“Tie off at nine o’clock and be sure to count the swabs ...including the one in which you broke the pentothal file ...cutting needle for the epidermis and he’s all yours,” Colonel Steel turned to face me. “Swab... swab, please ...quickly, Sister or I’ll drown in my own sweat.” He smiled the smile of triumph that I had known so well in the past....”And Darius, you can take over the strapping from here, please.”
***
Colonel Steel snapped his gloves from his hands and dropped them into a pedal bin near the drum bank by the autoclave room before he removed his cap and mask. His smile continued over his leather-like features whilst the anaesthetist swung his white booted foot against his chair as he examined the phial he held securely in his hand, later to return the pentothal ampoule to the anaesthetic trolley and checked his drug output. Darius followed the Colonel into the duty room.
“You’ve done a fine job there, Darius... don’t you think so Sister.
Colonel Steel looked at me and smiled, awaiting my approval and I must have blushed a little.
“I’m quite amazed at your progress Darius,” I said, almost in awe of the young soldier who stood beside me. “You conducted yourself in the Theatre like an old veteran... Congratulations. Do you think now... that you might take up hospital work when you leave the army?”
Darius lowered his head and I thought I could trace a slight sense of embarrassment, but of course, he was beginning to acquire quite a fine tan and I could see no trace of a blush on his handsome features. Mr.Tarapor offered his cigarettes around and made his own contribution of praise on the events that had taken place that morning.
“I find it hard to believe that you have never done this kind of work before, Darius. Of course, I do believe you when you say you haven’t but it is really quite remarkable for one to learn so quickly and so efficiently.”
“Thank you Sir....” Darius spoke with appreciation and respect,” I have a little knowledge of music, but that is all,” he replied and I looked at him now that he had removed his face mask and pulled his cap from his head.“Music?” I asked, “In what kind of instrument?”
“The piano, but only very little knowledge, I am no professional in any way,” he replied and his dark hair fell loosely across his smooth, silk-like brow; the smoothness accentuated by the thin film of perspiration that had gathered there, giving his face a satin appearance. He pushed his hair back with an air of nonchalance and I tried to catch his eye but he would not look at me... for some reason or another. I wanted to touch him; to run my fingers through his hair and press those full sensual lips to mine, but I knew I was on a dream-trip again and playing with my stupid imagination, but it was agony for me just the same as I watched his beautiful, magnetic, hypnotic eyes, that showed no particular interest in me whatsoever ...and I ached....
***
I worked with Darius Crane for another five weeks before I was informed that I was to return to England for further onward duties in occupied Germany and I remember thinking very bitterly, that it was hardly worthwhile, the Government sending me all the way back to Iraq again, after my leave, if they knew that I would have to leave again so soon. What a waste of money... I thought... to say the least. My pride would not allow me to bend and I knew that my dream affair with Darius was over as I prepared my mind to accept the forthcoming move to a different climate... but I wasn’t happy. Working with a man like Darius Crane was the dream of any Theatre Sister, I thought as I scrubbed up for the last operation of the day. It wasn’t a major op. and he would assist me, whilst Major Tarapor gave the anaesthetic. I had begun to love him as I had never thought possible and I had to be careful to keep my mind on what I was doing as I held the forceps in my shaking hands and hoped I would see the task through to the end... and with success.
“You doing this one on your own, Sister?” Major Tarapor asked as he squirted the serum from his syringe into a large kidney dish. I noticed it was chipped badly under the rim and made a mental note to dispose of it when we had completed the operation.
“Yes, it’s only a simple I.A.T. I’ve done lots of them before.”
Darius looked at me; his eyes piercing from the space between his mask and his cap and my blood went still. I tried to smile, even if I knew he would never be able to see my shrouded face, from my own confined space... but it helped, if only from a psychological point of view... and I looked down in preparation to start. He passed me the towels and then the towel clips as I squared off the area for incision. The skin looked handsome with its iodine wash and the carbuncle almost winked at me. I steadied my hands and took a deep breath before I cut... and the puss oozed out … laughing at me as it shot itself all over the towels.
“Swab …”
Darius stared at me but he did not move.
“Swab,” I shouted again, glaring back at him and he immediately placed a large gauze swab over the open wound.
“Leave it there for a few seconds to let the poison out.”
The sight of the yellow, green matter that came from the wound made me feel ill and yet I had done so many of those things in my time and hadn’t turned a hair. I looked up at the ‘Eyes’ ... and I fainted.
***
I came-to in the duty room with Darius rubbing my hands …
“Are you alright, Sister?” he asked and almost mocked me with his look.
I wanted to scream... I was so ashamed for the way I had reacted and I hated it when he called me Sister...
“Yes, I’m fine. Sorry to have been such a nuisance in there. Should have had breakfast, but I didn’t feel like it this morning... sorry.”
He smiled... rather gently this time I thought and my heart ached again. Why did he have to do that? Why did he have to be who he was and where he was? Why couldn’t I have been sent to Germany before he came to Basra... and wreck my life. Why ...Why ... Why?
I found it hard, even to address him by his Christian name and yet I detested having to call him ‘Private Crane’... It hurt to think of it, let alone say it but that name was on my heart and lips from the first moment I set eyes on him. I wished Father Garry had been there. He would have understood. He would have known what I should have done and told me and I would have done it ... Private Crane... Private Crane... to this day I shall never understand my attitude towards him, nor my conduct towards him at that time.
***
I learned that Darius was to remain in the Theatre at the 15th General in Basra in the desert and that he wasn’t due for release from the army for at least another three years. Our age difference brought that about, as my time of service was longer and therefore I would be demobbed sooner. I played with the idea of signing on as a Regular, hoping that I might be allowed to remain in Iraq, but enquiries at Baghdad Central Office assured me that I would be sent to Germany, whatever I did ...and Darius seemed well enough disposed to continue as he was doing and took to the Theatre and the work he was doing there, like a duck takes to water. So much so that Sister Jacnara was posted back to her own hospital, the 17th Indian General, in Baghdad and Darius was given the non-commissioned rank of full Corporal, (acting without pay for the probationary period of three months) - a promotion very rarely acquired by medical staff of the R.A.M.C, as I have already said. Everything Darius did was blessed with success. He was a perfectionist in everything he did; in everything he touched, it would seem and certainly for me in the way he walked and talked. I found myself watching his every movement with concern and I became angrily jealous when I saw him in the company of any of the other Sisters. He was gradually chipping away at my aloofness, my stupid dignity and my false pride and yet I was sure he had no idea of the effect he was having on me. I was like a teenager with a crush on a movie star or a schoolgirl besotted by her gym-master and when I saw him swimming one evening in Abedan, at the R.A.F. pool there and he had by this time acquired a premature but quite magnificent tan, I just flipped... He was driving me crazy and my inherent pride would not allow me to bend. He sailed through my life like a Matador... an Astronaut... A GOD… and he broke my heart each and every time he looked at me.
***
When eventually, my time came to return again to England, I felt quite ill. I was going into another world, with new faces and new patients, but without …the one person who was beginning to mean everything to me. The one love of my life ...The only love of my life. I dreaded the thought of seeing Jeremy and Aunt Martha again, even if only for a little while whilst I awaited my posting to the Fatherland... I wanted to get away somewhere on my own, but I didn’t know where I should go and just wished they would send me direct to Germany from Basra and get it over with. I wanted to wait somewhere on a quiet beach for him to come to me, but I was sure that if I took off all my clothes and stood on the highest diving board, ready to jump from a great height, Darius Crane wouldn’t even hear the splash. I was in despair and my heart was heavy... for after the long agonizing months of heartache, I had got nowhere…BUT he did smile at me on my last evening before I was due to leave Basra; a long, lingering, sensual smile, that simply said... Good-bye.
Chapter Nine
They say that man proposes and that God disposes and I’m sure there’s a lot of truth in that, because on my journey back to England when the ship was about fifty knots from Southampton, I received a telegram on board to tell me that daddy and Emily had been in a car accident whilst travelling in the Lake District. The news upset me greatly and I was angry that I was so far away and so unable to do anything about it. I watched the waves beating wildly on the ship’s stern and willed the blasted thing to move faster and get me home, but it sailed on in graceful, mute determination, regardless of my plea; knot after knot in utter and total disregard of my feelings. The deep blue, cooling sky of the night was magnificent to behold, with its mass of stars, scattered at random across the inky darkness. So romantic; so alluring... under different circumstances, but for me at that time, it held nothing but cold fear and apprehension for the future in my anxiety to get home.
The ship arrived eventually to anchor at Southampton on Thursday March 4th 1946 and I caught a train into London, two hours after disembarking at the port. I thought I was going to be delayed there as I saw two military policemen standing waiting at the docks, obviously on the look out for deserters ...but no …Jeremy met me at Paddington Station and we hailed a taxi that took us straight to the hospital where we were told the worst and that the bodies of both daddy and Emily lay in the mortuary. It was difficult for both of us. We said very little in that time as his mother and my father laid side by side almost unrecognisable and so still in that cold and dreary place. Daddy’s face was bloated and pulped and his scalp was ripped out, lying somewhere around the back of his neck. Only a few personal things were there to make a positive identification, but it was my father. I could verify for that, although I was more than a little surprised that he had his wedding ring on his finger... the one my own mother had given him when they first got married. I had thought he would have changed it for one that Emily gave him and which if I could remember correctly was much more expensive and lavish looking than the modest one that now sat firmly on his finger. Jeremy sobbed when he saw his mother... and then he fainted.
***
Aunt Martha took the news with great grief and sorrow, crying most of the day when I arrived ‘home’. She snapped at the servants and shook Marigold’s cage in fury when the poor bird squawked in the middle of her conversation with the Reverend Richard Fotheringay, who had come to console her in her distress and also to partake of a high tea. As it was a Thursday, the Vicar always came to tea on that day, but only once a fortnight. I remember Jeremy used to joke about that and despite my own sorrow and feeling of total dejection, I couldn’t help smile when I thought of his remarks. “Unfortunate, is it not Frannie,” he would say in an over affected voice... “The Reverend Dick can only ‘come’ once a fortnight... poor man,” However the Reverend Dick lost nothing of his appetite for cream buns and doughnuts for tea, smiling through all his adversity even if the cream was only synthetic. Aunt Martha introduced me to the Reverend gentleman, reluctantly, as her niece... through marriage... (She emphasized that point most clearly) and spent the rest of the afternoon lamenting the death of her beloved sister who would have been alive today if she had taken her advice and hadn’t run off with HIM... The Vicar only blinked and pushed his strand of hair back across his bald patch as Marigold said something rude and Aunt Martha hit the cage savagely with her stick.
Daddy never did have a lot of time for me, even before mummy died, but it wasn’t his amorous leap-frogging into bed with the glamorous and gay Emily that made him that way. I just think he didn’t li
ke girls... well, not under the age of twelve... let’s say. Daughters of that age and younger took up so much of one’s time and were always wanting something or other that was usually unobtainable... and they were reluctant to play football... was often heard to say, he wished I had been born a boy, but he was never openly hostile to me, don’t get me wrong... it was just that he simply avoided me when he could and was ‘pleasant’ in his so doing … That attitude kept the peace at home; his respectability in the Chambers and a total and serene happiness for dear Emily Shackleton.
Aunt Martha poured out her sympathies for the deceased with the expertise of a well- practised actress.
“Oh, Reverend Fotheringay, if only she’d listened to me when I warned her of the dangers of this silly attraction she had for this... this creature... and she openly flaunted her stupidity, even before the creature’s wife died... poor dear.”
I smiled sardonically and Jeremy winced.
Aunt Martha couldn’t stand the sight or thought of the ‘poor dear’ when she was alive, but of course, people always have reverence for the departed, regardless of what type of creature they were when they were alive. The dead cannot defend themselves, said a lawyer friend of daddy’s and I could understand the logic of what he said at that time in the circumstances in which we found ourselves then.
***
Jeremy was kind through everything and in every way, in the events of that difficult time. He was genuinely upset and I could see it. He hardly knew my father, as they lived in different worlds and his own mother had never troubled much about him either, preferring to leave all that to Aunt Martha, but Jeremy proved that blood is thicker than water by defending his mother’s reputation and good name, nobly... and in our mutual sorrow and bereavement...we coped.
