Until that afternoon over the North Sea, it had never occurred to me that any British hospital could genuinely be isolated. Britain was so small, that always I had automatically assumed any hospital needing anything in a hurry had only to pick up a telephone to solve the problem in a few hours at the most. In every hospital, big, small, general or specialized, there was bound to be, quite frequently, the urgent occasion when a bit of equipment, a special drug, blood of a rare group or just blood of a common group but in vast quantities, or a specialist, or anything else, had to be borrowed from elsewhere. St Martha’s, London, was one of the largest and best-equipped teaching hospitals in Britain, but in the last year I’d known Martha’s borrowing in a hurry from Edinburgh, Manchester, Cambridge and Bristol. If little Thessa General needed anything in a hurry from the mainland on a day such as this, it would have to manage without. I wondered literally, as well as metaphorically, how they operated. There might not be as many so-called urgent operations that couldn’t wait as the general public often assumed, but there were a few in which speed was essential if either life was to be saved, or later to prove worth having saved.
During my fourth student year I had worked five months in Martha’s Neuro-surgical Unit. If you must bash your head in, the senior surgeon used to say, for God’s sake have your road accident near one of these Units or risk living out the rest of your life as a vegetable. Possibly Thessa General didn’t admit many head injuries. I didn’t know, yet. But the hospital must admit perforated gastric and duodenal ulcers, as every community had its ulcer patients, its acute appendices and some people with unusual blood groups. I had nursed more than a few patients who had each needed over twenty pints of blood, and since there’s a limit to how long whole blood can be stored, emptied our Blood Bank of a particular group and set in action relays of fast police cars, and sometimes helicopters, bringing replacements.
Rod was as silent as myself and by our return to Dalry and normality, very worried about his business appointment. ‘My boss has never been to the Shetlands. He’s heard ‒ we’ve all heard ‒ flying in to Thessa can be a bit tricky, but I’m not sure he’s going to believe it can just be bloody impossible! Not that I’ll blame him, seeing as I didn’t believe that myself when we took off, despite the pilot’s pep-talk. Did you?’
‘No.’
When we left the plane the steward was shaking the Highlander and a petulant voice behind us announced loudly that the chap should take more water with it. Rod and I exchanged another intentionally blank glance and in silence walked down the steps, and over the tarmac towards the green grass and the bronze chrysanthemums.
Chapter Two
The elderly women settled their shopping bags and brown paper parcels into the special coach with the cheerful expectancy of W.I. members starting an outing. The teenage girls giggled and sucked iced lollies on the back seat and the two stout German women squeezed into the seat behind Rod and myself. We had the seat just behind the driver as we wanted a good view of the unknown countryside. We were being driven to an hotel over twenty miles inland as none in the city could provide rooms for us all at such short notice. Our transit party had been reduced to about eighteen, since Annie and her escort, and two or three others, had opted out of the airline’s offered hospitality.
While we waited for the coach, some of the Scots in our party told us it was easier to find a sober man in a Glasgow pub on a Saturday night, than an hotel room anywhere in that area. ‘As for a flat or house, the prices are worse than London, just now! Even lodgings. My young brother, a laddie but eighteen, is paying fourteen quid a week for one wee room and his breakfast. Aye, and he’s in luck! Land, did you say? I’m telling you, land anywhere near this coast that maybe fetched a few hundreds an acre but a few years back is now going for hundreds of thousands!’
I asked, ‘Who’s got that sort of money?’
‘Ach, the big companies, big syndicates from Edinburgh, London, the States, Europe. They say even the Japs are interested.’
Rod listened without comment and watched his feet.
Once we were out of the city the Germans propped their bosoms on the back of our seat and introduced themselves as sisters, widows, going to visit an old friend married to a Scot working on one of the other islands. ‘You have our country visited?’
Rod said several times and I said I was afraid not.
‘To Germany you must your pretty little wife take, young man!’
Our explanation evoked charitable smiles and removed the bosoms. ‘In Germany also many young people holidays together take,’ they assured us, then reverted to their own language to thrash out the notorious immorality of the English. Rod translated under his breath to our mutual joy until he developed a new anxiety-state over the corn. There were cornfields on either side of the narrow country road, bathed by wooded hills and occasional glimpses of distant purple mountains. Most of the corn was uncut and where harvesting had started the stubble was as uneven as a badly cropped head and, even to my urban eyes, the small, untidy, beehive stacks looked faded and brittle.
Rod’s maternal grandfather was a farmer, his father had now retired from the Army, but during the years while his parents had been stationed abroad, Rod and his sister had spent all their school holidays with their mother’s parents. ‘This lot would upset the old boy badly. Soil’s undernourished, yield very poor and it should’ve been cut weeks ago. Leave it much longer and it won’t be worth getting in.’
‘Why’ve they left it? Weather?’
‘Could be. More likely it’s shortage of labour and machines. That field on the left’s been cut by a machine, but this one on the right by hand ‒ couple of hands by the look.’
‘Farm workers coaxed away by oil?’
‘Wouldn’t you be if you’d to keep a wife and kids on the average agricultural worker’s twenty-seven something a week? Hours won’t be so different, nor working in the open in all weathers. Just the pay packet.’
‘Surely there’s more to working the land than that?’
‘Sure! Just as there’s more to nursing than the pay packet! But enough to keep N.H.S. hospitals properly staffed?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘no. Same for farm mechanics?’
‘They’ll get a higher basic rate, but the oil companies’ll offer skilled fitters one hell of a lot more than basic. Snag is,’ he added reflectively, ‘modern farming needs good fitters. My grandfather says to make the farm pay a farmer needs to know how to handle a spanner as well as he does his soil and stock, or pay someone who can. But it could work out pretty well long-term.’
‘By bringing in more money?’
‘That’s right! And if you’re about to say money can wreck cultural values and traditional ways of life ‒ tell me first how much value you place on any culture that accepts grinding poverty as a traditional way of life. And that, love, even in the affluent south-east of England, is what life on the land has always been for all but the squire and his relations, up to the Second World War. My Gran was a stockman’s daughter. A village girl. One of nine. She remembers her mother doing the family wash in water she’d to carry, heat, empty and in winter, unfreeze for herself. At thirty-five she was an old woman. The big breakthroughs were electricity and mains water, and neither come for free. Both only reached our Sussex village in the late ’Thirties, and I promise you, you’ll never hear my Gran or any genuine countrywoman beefing over the unaesthetic aspects of pylons. It’s the weekenders and commuters who get on that bandwagon since they’ve never had first-hand experience of the unaesthetic aspects of an earth privy in summer, or when squelching through rain and mud on a dark winter night particularly if you’re old, sick, pregnant or a kid. Take a look at that crofter’s cottage up here! Bloody picturesque in the gentle evening sun ‒ see those stones holding down the roof? How long’ll they stay put in a winter gale? Remember this is very far north! A good roof costs money. Possibly soon, whoever now lives there’ll be able to afford a decent roof. Not the moon ‒ just a decent roof.�
� He paused. ‘Oh, sorry. I should keep off my soap-box.’
‘I’m glad you didn’t.’
His smile was slightly embarrassed, slightly pleased.
We reached the hotel about ten minutes later. It had once been a large private house and had imposing grey turrets and a stern flat frontage, softened by massive bushes of crimson and pink rhododendrons splashing the greyness to the first floor windows and spilling down over the gravel drive. The manager had a problem: he could not accommodate us all, so had booked four private rooms in what he termed a nearby and most respectable private dwelling house. Our party went into a huddle in his foyer and by mutual consent decided Rod, myself, and two other single men should be boarded out. I did particularly well out of the deal, as the highly respectable widowed owner of the house said firmly there was no doubt in her mind that the young lady would like the best upstairs bedroom next to the bathroom and her own room, and the three gentlemen would like her three wee ground floor bedrooms. ‘Meals will be taken in the hotel but I will supply tea in the forenoon.’
When I went down to go over to dinner Rod was waiting by the flying ducks in the hall. He looked much happier, having had another ’phone conversation with his boss. ‘He’s wangled me a seat on some private charter leaving very early tomorrow, if it can. If it can’t, I fly back to London and we all think again. Either way, the buck’s now his, so can I buy you a drink?’
‘Yes, please.’ His expression had changed. ‘Forgotten something?’
‘Just thinking I’ve not seen you smile like that before. You should, much more often.’
‘Why?’
‘Makes you look astonishingly attractive. Are you now going to take umbrage because I’ve said so?’
‘Just note.’
He laughed, took hold of my arm and we strolled back to the hotel and the happy band of brothers our party had now become. He left by taxi at six next morning and when the landlady brought in my tea, she said he had asked her to say goodbye and the weather forecast was much better. ‘A wee gale in the night has cleared all the mist. You’ll be away on your holiday this day!’
There was no sign of Rod, or Kirsty, when we got back to Dalry. The lounge was as crowded as yesterday, with much the same type of crowd, but it looked different to me. Annie had on a purple trouser suit, and the man called Moray, a french-blue instead of grey tie. As yesterday he was propping up a wall drinking coffee and looking half-awake, but I could no longer think of him as the Highlander or even McPeck. This was partially because sharing that fantasy with Rod had killed it stone dead, and partially because yesterday’s unsuccessful flight had stripped off the protective layer of unfamiliarity. I recognized this scene, I knew it was actually happening, and when anything is actually happening, anything can happen.
The German sisters’ determination to console me in Rod’s absence at first worked as a counter-irritant, then had me near to screaming. I invented a violent thirst and fled for the coffee counter.
‘Good morning. On your own today?’ Moray had drifted up behind me. He reached over and put his plastic mug on the counter. ‘Same again, please Fiona.’
‘Good morning. Actually ‒’ an announcement interrupted me. ‘Isn’t that us?’
‘Indeed. We may as well take our coffee with us. Did your English friend have to return to London?’
‘No. He flew over earlier this morning, or seems to have done as he’s not here.’
‘Very much better weather today,’ he said and we trailed after the other passengers in silence. Being at the far end we were the last to board and of necessity sat in the last pair of empty seats. My brief relief that these happened to be right at the back was wrecked by the sight of the hostess counting our heads.
‘Does she think we’re overloaded?’
‘I would say she is more likely to be checking our numbers against yesterday’s bookings.’ His voice was so slow he could have been thinking in a different language, or trying to handle a bad hangover. His eyes were dark blue and bloodshot, but from the condition of his pupils, he wasn’t under medication. ‘We should have no problem landing today.’
‘Jolly good.’ I wished I’d had the guts to refuse the window seat and pulled out my glasses and book. He was quiet during take-off and, when I next glanced sideways, so flat out that I shoved up my glasses and sniffed him. The only alcohol I could smell was from his rather pleasant after-shave. Vodka? Or just plain tired? And if so, what was a healthy man of his age doing to get so tired in mid-morning when on holiday? I wished I’d had the sense to have a brandy before we left. No refreshments were served on that flight, either, and as far as I could see, there was no galley.
The weather was perfect when we crossed the coast. Much too perfect Not one fleck of cloud to hide the improbable blue miles below. I tried to read, but my brain had become incapable of taking in the written word. It was too preoccupied with the exact words Mrs Warren would use in her cable to my parents in Melbourne, and those of the Thessa police knocking on the doors of the teenagers’ homes. ‘May we come in and have a word with you both? And perhaps W.P.C. Blank could make you a cup of tea first?’ It was only when I dealt with the Thessa police call on Mrs Brown that I recalled there was just a chance I might still work today and returned to my yesterday’s thoughts about Thessa General. I thought them all out again in great detail and this was an anodyne, but I still kept off my shoes, and remained increasingly aware of the pressure of my thyroid and constriction of my stomach.
I had to look anywhere but at the window, so I studied Moray’s unguarded face and from old habit, professionally. A large part of my working life was spent observing sleeping or unconscious faces. He didn’t have a cardiac or respiratory problem, nor from his build and colour, a blood-pressure problem, yet. But if he constantly drank enough to fall asleep in the daytime, ten years from now high blood-pressure wouldn’t be his only problem. Or had he just fished, or lived it up, all night? If either, I decided on the former, as his face in sleep was intelligent, sensitive and surprisingly strong. I didn’t care for the deep cleft in his long jaw, as I never liked clefts, but I liked the way his skin was stretched over his high cheekbones and the soundlessness of his sleep. He kept reminding me of something I couldn’t place but knew I should be able to do so easily. I was still fighting the mental blank when we were asked to extinguish our cigarettes and fasten our seat belts.
He woke up and sat forward. ‘Och, good! The outer islands. Perfect visibility just now.’
I knew I was mad to look down, but the green-brown patches floating on the sea below were merging into the blue with the fragility of colours in a dream. One patch, larger than the others, extended green arms towards a tiny fleck of green and the water enclosed by the arms was bright blue glass. The view was exquisite even if it made me swallow down bile.
‘That is Thessa Sound. Your first visit?’
I averted my face from him and nodded.
‘You can see now the lighthouse at each entrance to the Sound and if you look quickly before we turn for the run in over the sea, you’ll glimpse the wee town ‒ see just before we turn ‒’ The plane tilted sharply, disastrously for me. He grabbed a paper bag first and pushed it open and into my groping hands. ‘Just a turn,’ he murmured placidly, and reached for another paper bag.
I felt too ill to care if we crashed until the bump of the wheels touched down. I mopped my face and saw he was mopping his jacket. ‘Oh no! I really am most terribly sorry!’
‘Not at all. Quite all right.’ He was very polite, and rather amused. ‘Happened to me before, I assure you. Let me get rid of those ‒’ he dealt with the paper bags by handing them to the now hovering hostess. ‘She’ll be all right shortly. Colour’s returning already.’ He studied me almost clinically. ‘Not flown much?’
‘A lot. It was just all that sea coming up at us.’
‘Understandable, if inevitable when landing on a strip of land surrounded on three sides by water. Did you not think of taking an anti-sic
kness tablet? Might be an idea to take one on your return from holiday, or go back by steamer.’ He picked up his rod case from under the seat. ‘Are you being met?’
I had no idea, but wanted a breathing space. ‘I expect so, thanks. I really am so sorry about your jacket ‒’
‘No serious damage sustained. You want to sit a wee while and let the others off? A good idea. Will you forgive me if I’m away as I’m already twenty-four hours late for an appointment?’
‘Of course. Thanks, again.’
‘Not at all,’ he repeated giving me a final, and very wide awake, checking glance: ‘You’ll do just fine once you get out in the air. Enjoy your holiday.’
‘Good fishing.’
He bowed affectedly. ‘Many thanks.’
When I reached the reception hut he was easing two large suitcases through an open glass door at the other end. A strikingly attractive red-haired girl got out of a parked black car and hurried towards him, smiling. He put down his cases to kiss her.
Someone touched my arm. ‘Hi, Charlotte!’
I turned, beamed. ‘Rod! Going back already?’
‘No. I’m your official reception committee.’ He exchanged glad cries with our transit party. ‘Your luggage in yet?’
‘That big blue with the strap on the rollers now.’ We went to collect it. ‘This is fun, but how come it’s you?’
‘I heard this morning a Yank I knew in London last year was flown in to Thessa General from one of our rigs yesterday. Decent guy. Seems he nearly sliced off his left foot, but he’d still got it when l dropped in to see him a couple of hours ago. I met your boss, Mrs Brown, when I was asking which ward he was in. She took me up to Olaf Ward.’
‘Where I should’ve been working this morning.’
‘So she said after we got chatting about yesterday’s hold-up. She had intended organizing transport for you now, and I offered to do the job. I’ve been fixed up with a motor car whilst I’m here. The orange XL out there.’
In Storm and In Calm Page 3
