‘Twenty minutes. Want to come in and wait?’
‘I’ll sit in the car. Nurses’ Homes aren’t my scene.’
When I got back he was standing by the car talking to Sister Pringle. She welcomed me with unnerving warmth. ‘Off to live it up, I hear, Staff.’
‘So I gather, Sister.’
‘Have tremendous fun!’
I waited till we were in the car. ‘What gives with her? And how come you know her? I thought you didn’t.’
‘She was at school with my sister. I recognized her at once the other day, but as she showed no sign of wanting to know me, I played along. Don’t ask me why ‒ we’ve not met for years. It’s back in the dim dark days beyond recall when we were young … boom, boom … that she spent school hols down on the farm with us. Her old man and my father were in the same regiment. Satisfied?’
‘Yes and no.’
‘What does that mean?’ he asked curtly.
‘Yes, you make sense, but not her loving me.’
‘Maybe she’s feeling happy. Loves everyone.’
‘You could be right. The girls in the Home like her a lot. Where are we eating?’
‘New hotel just along here.’ He turned into a large car park. ‘I had dinner here last night. Like sea-trout?’
‘Yes.’
‘Great! You’re about to have the best you’ve ever tasted in your life.’ He braked, switched off, and kissed me. ‘Are you really as honest as you make out?’
‘Hell, if I say yes?’
‘Bloody hell. Let’s get at the sea-trout.’
Next day he sent me a huge box of soft-centred chocolates and a note. ‘Inevitably ‒ the boss wants me back in London today, but hope to return sometime next week. I enjoyed last night and hope you at least like soft-centres. If I can’t get back before you leave, hope to see you in London and should you by then have difficulty placing me, don’t worry. I won’t forget you. Not only myopic, rugged yet sensitive, but gifted ‒ if that’s the right word and I’d not bet on it ‒ with almost total recall. Love, Rod.’
‘P.S. Any guy ringing up in my absence suggesting a date and claiming to be my good friend, is lying.’
The French seaman was in the theatre five hours that day, but came back to Olaf with both legs. Sister was not surprised. ‘Mr Moray doesn’t fancy amputations.’ From her tone, duty alone forced her to overlook such idiosyncrasies. ‘I’ve only known him do the one here and that was on another trawler.’
I looked up from the operation notes. ‘He just about rebuilt the right leg, Sister.’
‘He knows his job, Staff. Get on with yours.’
The Frenchman’s name was Jean-Pierre Daniel. He was Danny to the ward before he came round from his anaesthetic. He was a large young man, dark as Tex, with a fringed beard and small, deep-set eyes. He spoke quite good English with a strong American accent he had picked up from television and film movies. He had a very quick ear. Inside of his first week he sounded nearly as Scottish as Alan Donald. Our youngest State Enrolled Nurse, Maggie McEuan, was also from Glasgow. She was a pretty, plump, blonde and only just an S.E.N. She was a very good nurse. ‘Staff, a wee word! Am I daft or is my watch? Danny’s got no temp. His pulse can’t be 144.’
‘How long did you take it?’
‘The full minute!’
I studied Danny covertly from the doorway. ‘Give it two, then start counting. By then he should be off the boil.’
She rolled china blue eyes. ‘Is that a fact?’
‘It is, Maggie. Tell me what it drops to.’
She exploded into the office a few minutes later. ‘Seventy-two! The dirty bastard!’
‘Just human and fancies you, Maggie. With both legs strung up, he can’t be too much of a menace, poor lad, but if his roving hands become a problem, tell him he’s the dead spit of your brother. And whether or not you’ve got a boyfriend, invent a huge one and make him a cop.’
‘Polis?’
‘Yes. On Thessa.’
She went off to think this over then put her head back round the open door. ‘What if Danny were older?’
‘He’d be the dead spit of your dad. And that one, my child, kills it stone dead. Have you got Tex back to bed? Do that, then get to supper.’
Tex was flown home during that week and the day he left an English tourist with a strangulated hernia came in to the empty bed. He was a Mr Smythe, a retired Civil Servant, and at last, he said, able to follow his true metier. ‘Painting. My raison d’être.’ On admission he had managed even in a state of collapse to be annoyed by our lack of private beds, but later discovered he enjoyed life in a small general ward. ‘As I remarked to my dear Susan this morning, Staff Nurse, one rests content dans ce meilleur des mondes possibles.’ His conversation was far more sprinkled with the French language than Danny’s. Sister said she could get by with our Dan, but needed the dictionary our Mr S. had swallowed.
He got on fairly well with the other men and was a tremendous success with the women up-patients in the communal sitting room. Owing to his age and portly build, it was vital that he sit out of bed for hours every day, and he sat at the sitting-room window painting identical pictures of the view for the knitting ladies. His wife brought in one of his smaller sketching blocks and paint-boxes. Sister said it was right classy to have a bit of culture around the ward, then shuddered in the privacy of her office when I said I thought his pictures pretty. ‘Staff! Clear as the nose on your face you know nowt about pictures.’
‘Afraid not, Sister. You know a lot?’
‘Not as much as I could wish. When I was a lass at school, I’d a notion to be an artist. Won a Scholarship to Art School. My dad’d not hear of it. Nursing was my next choice, so nursing it was.’ She shook her head at her thoughts. ‘Maybe my dad was right. Our Mister’s dad was right. No real talent there, but it keeps him happy and lets his wife get on making her sacks.’
Mrs Smythe had brought her loom to Thessa. She said she never travelled without it, had woven all her own clothes since she was a girl. When not weaving she picked, dried, skewered and painted the nuts she hung in rows round her sturdy, tanned neck. Mr Smythe had been a widower with married children when they met and married three years ago. She was about fifteen years his junior and he was her first husband. She had, she said, weaned him on to proper food. ‘Vegetarian, of course, and all compost-grown.’
‘I took one look at that sack,’ said Sister on another occasion in her office, ‘and knew we’d have a right do with his diet. No surprise to me she’s his dear Susan, but t’other’s his beloved Maud. Maud’ll have fed him steak. Have you done Mrs Laurne’s dressing?’
‘Just about to, Sister.’
‘I’ll do it. I want another look at that wound and Mr Moray’ll be late for the evening round as he’s got a meeting. Get our Mister back and get off. Going to pictures with young Alan, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, Sister.’ I wondered how she knew since Alan Donald had only asked me when I was on my way over just before two and he was going out for his half-day.
‘Do him good to have a lass for company once the while. Being a steady lad he’s had to miss that mostly here, seeing he’s engaged. Thessa folk are close-knit and there’s not so many of ’em. They’ll gossip no more and no less than t’other folk, and it’d not be fair on a local lass to have folk wondering if he’s courting when he’s not. Different with a lass passing through same as yourself. Happen you’ll enjoy the pictures too, but not on your own. Have you set Mrs Laurne’s trolley?’
‘Yes, Sister. I’ll get it ‒’
‘There’s nowt wrong with my legs, Staff!’
Mr Smythe was in his favourite armchair by one of the sitting-room windows. He had finished painting for the day and was gazing out with his balding grey head tilted to one side and an expression all Olaf now recognized. He wore it when being transported by that view. This happened roughly five times a day and lasted approximately three heavy-breathing minutes. I waited in the sympathetic silence of
the knitters for the final exhalation. ‘Just transported! And I’ve kept you waiting, Staff Nurse! But I know you’ll forgive the artistic temperament. Time for Bedfordshire? Au’voir, ladies, au’voir!’
Alan called for me in a rather battered, white estate car that smelt vaguely fishy. It belonged to Mr Fraser. ‘Magnus uses it while he’s over and as old Ian lets me have it, said I could take it for my half-day. Sorry about the wee pong, but he’d a good catch last night.’
‘Doesn’t bother me. I forgot he was off-call last night. Does he always fish when he’s off?’
‘Aye. What else is the man to do? He and Jenny can’t be off together as she’s head of the Theatre Department. Her deputy’s good, but not in Jenny’s class so Jenny stays as Mr Black’s right hand.’
‘Isn’t he an M.Ch.?’
‘And Fellowship. Senior Surgical Registrar in St Benedict’s, London, before he decided to opt for G.P.-ing. Very lucky for Thessa General that he did. If not I don’t see Ian Fraser, or his locums, ever getting any time off. Old Black brings himself over in his wee boat for the odd evening, night off-call, Sunday rest-days ‒ unless there’s a crisis.’
‘On his island or the hospital?’
‘Both. But it works out well, and the better for old Black being a fine seaman. He can get across in just about anything. Once he did it in a Force 10.’
‘Is he a Shetlander?’
‘English. Devonshire. Been sailing since he was a wee laddie and has a passion for living on islands. His wife’s a Shetlander. Been here a long time.’ He drew up in the cinema park and nodded at a poster advertising next Saturday night’s Joint-Hospitals Ball. ‘Black’s coming over to us for that night. I’ll be the one exception to the rule as anyone who’s anyone on Thessa’ll be there. Magnus has to attend and is taking Jenny along. They were thrashing it out with Black last evening.’
After the film he took me to the same hotel restaurant as Rod. ‘A wee bird tells me you like sea-trout, Charlotte.’
‘Which wee bird?’
He did not answer until we had been shown to the one empty window table apparently reserved for us. None had been free when Rod booked. ‘Sister Olaf.’ He grinned at my reaction and turned to the waitress. ‘How’s the good man’s hip now, Mrs Cameron?’
‘Twinging, Doctor, twinging, as Mr Fraser said was to be expected the first few months. But not so bad it couldn’a be worse.’ She was a slim, striking, youngish woman with very dark hair and dramatically dark eyes. ‘How’s yourself?’
‘Grand, apart from wishing I looked like Paul Newman. Or would you say I’ve a wee touch of the Robert Redford’s, Charlotte?’
‘Gladly, as you’re going to feed me sea-trout.’
‘Crafty lot, you English! I’m out of my wee mind to think of marrying one. What more do you recommend, Mrs Cameron?’
When she left, he added, ‘Cameron had an arthredesis of the right in Olaf and always takes his evening dram with Sister’s husband.’
‘Are they from Glasgow?’
‘She is. He’s from the Isle of Lewis. They’ve been here some years, I forget how many. He worked in the fish meal factory for quite a while, then moved to an office job in one of the knitting factories. He’s back at work now. He likes the job. Knitting’s booming and so is fish.’ He looked out of the window. That dining-room, as the wards, faced the Sound. ‘Thessa’s booming without oil.’
There was a faint mist. It blurred the moon, the lighthouses’ searchlights, the outlines of land and sea, and accentuated the impression of secret, silent islands floating alone and serene on the edge of the world. ‘How do you feel about the oil, Alan?’
‘Greatly confused.’
I looked around. The only other woman dining could have been Klondyke Annie’s sister and there was just room for a few more sequins on the left shoulder of her lemon evening blouse. Her escort was a little younger than Annie’s had been, but he had the same disgruntled, well-heeled aura. All the other tables were filled with men and again reminded me of Dalry and old television movies, but not the gold-rush epics. This was a war-time officers’ mess, with everyone for some reason, in mufti. The young and youngish English, Scottish, American faces were tanned, smooth-shaven, slightly tense, and though the hair-cuts were not actually military, their uniform neatness gave the overall impression of short back and sides. I said, ‘You and me, Alan.’
‘Surely not! Seeing how England keeps shouting for our oil!’
‘Maybe some of England’s shouting, but to be honest, now I’m up here I’m a bit ashamed about how uninterested my personal England is in oil, or anything that goes on north of the Thames.’
‘Or even remembers that England ends at Berwick and Shropshire!’
I smiled. ‘I’ll not fight that one, Alan. Some love nothing more than a good row. I don’t. Let’s change the subject, as there’s something I do want to know. How did Sister Olaf know you’d asked me out this evening?’
He coloured faintly. ‘It was her idea.’
‘What? She lumbered you? Poor man!’
‘Wasn’t like that.’ He hesitated. Then, ‘I wanted you along, but I didn’t think you’d come until she said this morning as you were off and new to Thessa, why didn’t we gang up? I still thought you’d turn me down. That’s why I hung around to catch you. I didn’t fancy being told to drop dead over the switchboard.’
‘For God’s sake! Why should I tell you that?’
‘Why do you always walk around like you’ve a bad smell under your nose unless with the patients?’
‘I ‒ do?’
‘Aye. And talk with that toffy-nosed boarding-school accent ‒’
‘Don’t be so bloody silly, Alan! I’m no more to blame for my accent, than you are for yours! Can I help being born into a middle-class English family or sent to an English girls’ boarding-school ‒ which I detested from first term to last! It’s as irrational and childish to discriminate against me for being what I am, as it would be to do so to you for being a Glaswegian! And if you are thinking my father was wrong to decide to buy his only daughter a private education ‒ I couldn’t agree more! With much better reasons! As I told him after seeing the telly series, my boarding-school fitted us for life in one place only ‒ Colditz! Actually, he understood. He said he’d always been sure that had he first not endured the horrors of his English public school, he wouldn’t have survived being a P.O.W. of the Japanese. Not that it did his health all that good. He’s six one. When he was released he weighed just under five stones.’
He closed his mouth and swallowed. ‘How’s he now?’
‘Fairly fit. No visible long-term after-effects so long as he keeps on his shirt.’
He looked at the table cloth for a few seconds then refilled our glasses. ‘Seeing you don’t fancy a wee scrap, mind to ask me around when you do. I’ll bring my bike chain.’ He raised his glass to me. ‘Parents in London?’
‘Gone out to retire in Melbourne as Dad needs the sun and my only brother works and has married out there. Got any snaps of Liz?’
He smiled. ‘No more than a dozen on me.’
I thought over our conversation in bed that night, and again next day when passing another poster for the Ball in the front hall of the hospital. I was free on Saturday night and though the girls in the Home knew this, no one had asked me to change. In Martha’s on similar occasions, anyone free and not booked would have been deluged with such requests. I had vaguely assumed things must be different on Thessa, and let it ride. When I got on-duty, I asked Sister Olaf’s advice.
She sniffed. ‘This’ll mean my re-doing the week’s off-duty rota I’ve just finished.’
‘You’d rather I didn’t change, Sister?’
‘That’s not up to me. Mrs Brown’s problem.’ She reached for a blank rota sheet. ‘Stuck in glue, again? This is the time Mrs Brown’s in her office to sort staff queries. Get on!’
‘Thank you, Sister. I can say you don’t object? Even if it means nights?’
She
actually smiled. ‘If I did, think you’d have to ask?’
Mrs Brown smiled. ‘How nice! I can now release my newly married Casualty night staff nurse. She’s been longing to show us all her new husband at the Ball. I feel like the fairy godmother! But down to business. Cas. here covers all emergencies and admissions, but you’ll be quite at home having had an Accident training. I’d like you on Saturday and Sunday nights. Take Saturday as your first sleeping day and I’ll have a word with Sister Olaf about the missing time being made up to you later. Will you tell Sister Olaf?’
The living-in Sisters had rooms on the first floor of the Home. On Saturday night the lift was busy when I went down to go over to night nurses’ supper-cum-breakfast and I used the stairs. When I reached the hall, Magnus, in a dinner-jacket, was waiting in the shelter of the potted palm. ‘I’m trying to recall the name of this creature, Nurse Anthony. Can you assist?’
‘I’m afraid not, though, personally, I think it’s a triffid.’
‘That had occurred to me since it very much resembles John Wyndham’s description of his mythical species.’ He glanced round as Jenny stepped out of the lift. She wore a long, black velvet sheath of a dress with a halter neck and a green brocade cloak over one bare shoulder. She looked wonderful and for about thirty seconds he looked human. ‘Jenny, I’m sorely tempted to wolf-whistle!’
I walked on entranced and shocked by this unbridled display of manly passion. Of course, it was Saturday night. And in Casualty, according to the Night Superintendent, ‘Starting early, Staff. Though Mr Black’s here, it was after eight before Mr Moray could away to change. It’s to be hoped we’ve not to call him from the dancing.’
‘You think that’s likely, Sister?’
‘Maybe so, if Mr Black and Mr Donald are held up with a long case in the theatre.’ She showed me all round the small department, then we returned to the complex, electronically fitted counter-type desk. It was bolted to the floor. ‘You’ve worked with one of these wee monsters?’
I examined the rows of switches, bulbs, and the squat multi-channel transceiver. ‘I’ve worked on almost similar sets, but this one has more outside lines.’
In Storm and In Calm Page 7
