Magnus had been in his right mind all morning. And Jenny. I couldn’t get rid of the mental picture of how well they worked together or my own disturbing sense of personal relief that they had. To cheer myself with gloom, I thought over all I had been told about them since joining the hospital. Then I thought of the endless gossip I had heard in Martha’s and how almost invariably it owed more to imagination than truth. I asked myself what the hell did I care whatever the truth might be? In nine days time I was leaving. I reached the conclusion that while I did not genuinely know, or want to know, why the hell I cared, after this morning, under oath I would have to admit I believed all that existed between those two was a great liking. And then I thought, bloody hell. Bloody hell!
I had been walking to face the sparse on-coming traffic. I didn’t notice the orange car coming up behind me at that point, until the driver hooted wildly, drew up a little way ahead and jumped out. It was Rod Harding in a muddy anorak, black rollneck, and old grey trousers tucked into filthy wellingtons. ‘Hi, Charlotte! What time’s the funeral?’
I cursed again and went over. ‘Where’s your wreath?’
‘In the boot.’ His smile was slightly sheepish. ‘Do I hang it round my own neck and jump into the Sound?’
I suddenly saw the funny side of myself and smiled. ‘Not without your natty gent’s outfit and umbrella. Why’ve you got on that gear? Off a rig?’
‘Yesterday. That’s why I rang you last night. I’ve just called at your place to express my condolences in person and someone said you’d gone walking thisaway.’
‘You didn’t take umbrage?’
‘Thought you showed excellent judgment as you didn’t know your caller’s name. Going anywhere special?’
‘Just walking.’
‘My God, don’t you nurses spend enough time on your feet? Or do you want to be alone? Feel free?’
‘I’ve walked enough. How’s the oil business?’
He opened a car door for me. ‘Come and have tea with me and I’ll show you. Time you saw our project.’
I got in, fixed my safety belt, wondered momentarily if I would run into anyone who had been at Tuesday’s party, then decided it wouldn’t matter if I did as they’d been too drunk to remember what I looked like, and I hadn’t told anyone my real name as no one had bothered to ask. ‘Can visitors get in on your site? I thought that wasn’t allowed.’
‘Not encouraged. You’ll be in the clear as I asked the site-manager last week if I could bring you in. I’ve been meaning to ring you since I got back from London. Things kept happening.’
‘Trouble on rig instead of trouble at mill?’
He laughed as he did up his belt. His face was more tanned and his hair fairer but he looked older as his eyes were tired and when he stopped laughing, curiously wary. ‘Not really. Just routine. Teething stuff. Nothing like a blow-out.’
‘That’s bad?’
‘Only turns the whole bloody area explosive.’ He started the car. ‘How’s the ministering angel business?’
‘Rather fascinating.’ As he knew Jenny, I began telling him a little about my morning until he shouted me down. ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I forgot nursing chat turns your stomach.’
‘When did I tell you that?’ He was curt.
‘Dalry. When we were settling Annie’s saloon. Thought you told me you’d total recall?’
‘Know, oh Vizier, I tell many a fine tale! Sure, I remember now and ‒ and ‒ bully for Jenny and the rest of you lovely girls, but its just that I have this weakness ‒’
‘There’s a lot of it about.’
‘Isn’t that what you’d call a placebo?’
‘Yes.’
‘Think I need one?’
‘I think you probably need sleep more.’
‘Now you’re talking ‒’
‘No, I’m not, dear. I’m giving you some free medical advice. You need some early nights.’
‘Yes, Nursie. Anything you say, Nursie.’
‘Sorry.’
He said oddly, ‘At least you can still apologize as if you meant it. Maybe there’s hope for you yet.’
‘In what way?’
We had driven back and through the town. We were running away from it up another hill and he waited to turn off the main road before he answered. ‘If I answered that truthfully you’d slug me for a male pig.’
‘Then don’t, as I hate driving other people’s cars.’
He glanced sideways as we bounced over a rough open stretch. ‘Sorry, love, but I don’t see you actually slugging me or any man. Far too feminine.’
I was half-enchanted, half-disappointed. I had really thought we were on the same wavelength. I didn’t say anything and about fifty yards on he drew up beneath a huge sign at the main entrance requesting all but official vehicles to state their business to the gatekeeper, please. He got out to talk to the man in the wooden hut, then came back. ‘Security clearance fixed. He’s ringing Tom Craig.’
‘Site-manager?’
‘Yep.’ He drove very carefully through the gates and into a lunar landscape only instead of a world of pale dust against a black sky, the world was of multicoloured mud and the sky was low and grey as the sullen, swelling sea edging the flattened land that had once been a quiet, empty, green Thessa hill. The vast site was no longer quiet, nor empty. An army of massive tractors with caterpillar treads and giant bulldozers lumbered with the ungainly grace of dinosaurs between the gaping cliff that was all that remained of the hill on the inland side and the sea beyond the sea of mud. And like a ballet chorus of flamingoes the great scarlet and yellow cranes at the water’s edge, swooped, poised, swooped again. I had never seen such vast machines or so many men working like machines. Men in mud-spattered track-suits, anoraks, jeans, woolly hats, black crofters’ caps, blue baseball caps, or long young hair tangling in the wind. Heads turned our way but the work went on without pause as our car bumped, slithered, skidded along unmade roads marked only by long lines of blue and white flags stuck in mud. The birds were still there and by the thousand, scrabbling, pottering, perching amongst the half-built warehouses, the piles of timber, wooden boxes, steel girders, new water tanks, lines of terracotta pipes waiting to be buried. By a completed warehouse at one end of the partially constructed quay, three huge metal cylinders towered against the skyline. I grimaced. ‘Hideous!’
‘But very precious.’
‘Why?’
‘They hold the special cement you have to have when you drill for oil.’
‘Why?’
He said, ‘You don’t have to pretend an interest ‒’
‘I’m not. Why?’
‘When you drill for oil, you’ve got to make sure the oil doesn’t come up contaminated, so you have to make a casing of cement as you go down and keep on taking tests to be sure the casing’s alkali as oil must not mix with acid. This particular cement can do the job ‒ so very precious.’ He drove on a little then stopped in the middle of the mud flat. ‘Striking oil in the sea isn’t just a case of ‒ there she blows ‒ jolly good show, chaps, stand back and collect the lolly! First you’ve to find the bastard. One battle. Then you’ve got to bring it out in a usable condition. Second battle. Then you have to land the bloody stuff. Briefly, this lot here, is a landing-stage in the making. A landing-stage for the future. Or to put it another way, you could say that right here we’re building one small corner of the foundation stone of the twenty-first century.’
I looked all around and the inquisitive birds perched on the bonnet to look at us. ‘How long’ve they been at this?’
‘Inside of a year. In the first five months they shifted two hundred and fifty thousand square feet of rock and built four hundred feet of quay space. See that hill back there?’
‘The one the machines are tearing apart?’
‘Yep. They’re using that soil to reclaim land from the sea. Eventually they aim to take fifteen acres from the sea and end up with around two thousand metres of quay space.’
I watch
ed the hundreds of men digging in the black, grey, red, and sometimes near-white mud. ‘What happens to all that quay space when the oil runs out?’
‘Charlotte, before the oil was heard of, this had always been a fishing community. This will always be a fishing community. No fishing community can have too much quay-space’ His gaze followed another convoy of tractors lumbering over to empty their loads at the water’s edge. ‘Every day the sea gets pushed back another yard or so. I’ve noticed the difference even since I’ve been here. The finished quay ‒’ he waved, ‘right along there. And there ‒’ he jerked a thumb at a row of temporary office huts, ‘warehouses, offices, works and engineering shops. Then right back behind the hill, new roads, new houses, new shops, new schools, new prosperity, new health, new hope ‒ and the chaps working here know it. A very fine bunch of workers. Tom Craig says he can’t remember having a single bad worker signing on. This lot get a decent pay, and by God they earn it. I’ve never known men work as they do anywhere else.’
‘Are they local men?’
‘Some. The rest are mostly from the Highlands and other Scottish islands. Until very recently, male unemployment in places like the Isle of Lewis was appallingly high. That’s changing now and fast. Lots of these chaps are now sending for their wives and families. They know what they’re building.’ He paused and his face looked happier and visionary. ‘They’re building for their own, their children and their grandchildren’s futures. I’m not kidding, Charlotte. One day ‒ one day, you’ll tell your grandchildren ‒ I was there on Thessa and I actually saw the men building a dream out of the mud while the seabirds swirled and cried, the wind keened straight from the Arctic and the cold sea lashed jealously at every reclaimed yard and the impertinent humans who dared to steal the treasure beneath the dark waters.’ Suddenly, he blushed. ‘Terribly sorry, love ‒ got carried away! This job’s got under my skin. Stay here much longer and I’ll be writing bad poetry. Do you know I couldn’t even shake it off when I got back to London. The office, my flat ‒ bloody stifled me. I drove everyone crazy singing the Road to the Isles, even though these aren’t those Isles. My boss said I’d better get back to my mud before someone did me grievous bodily harm. I was dead chuffed. I’d like to stay up and see the thing through.’
‘Can’t you?’
He hesitated, ‘Possibly, but I’m not sure it would be a good idea. Most dreams go a bit off if one hangs about. I like changes. Hold it ‒’ he stuck his head out of his window to yell to a man now waving at us from outside one of the office huts. ‘What’s that, Dick? Can’t hear!’ He got out. I couldn’t catch the man’s answering shout, but Rod got back in, grinning. ‘Tea awaits us in the main office. I’ll bet every chap in there’s had his field glasses on you since we got through the gate. Women are scarcer on this site than clean boots. Mind joining a party?’
‘Not at all if its all right with the boss.’
‘Tom Craig’s a very decent chap. He’s got a cousin or someone working at your hospital. He knew all about the new English nurse in Olaf when I mentioned you.’ He switched on. ‘Everyone knows everyone on Thessa.’
‘So I’ve noticed. Hey! Put on your safety belt.’
‘Stop bossing the lad, Nursie! Only a fifty yard sprint ‒ sod the bastard!’ The car was stuck in mud. ‘Keep it cool.’ He revved the engine. ‘I’ve got this technique taped by now.’
What happened next happened too fast for me to tell what went wrong. He managed to shoot the car out of the rut, but then straight into a violent skid which he tried to right, but the steering was out of control. The car spun a complete circle, then shot crabwise across the unmade road, through the flags and was stopped with a sickening clatter by a pile of girders on his side. As my safety belt held me in my seat, I was only winded. Rod was flung forwards, backwards, forwards again and though I grabbed his shoulder I couldn’t prevent his head hitting the windscreen with such a thud I thought the glass must break. It didn’t, and as his glasses had fallen off in the first jolt, there was no flying glass.
He was knocked out for about half a minute, but had recovered consciousness before the men from the nearest machines managed to wrench open the first of the jammed doors. When I told them I was unhurt but thought Rod should lie down as he had had concussion, Rod looked ready to slug me and very much too dazed. Fortunately, Mr Craig had arrived. ‘If you have forgotten your young lady is a nurse, boy,’ he said in a quiet Thessa voice, ‘I have not. First you will have a little rest. Help him on to the couch in my outer office, boys. Miss Anthony, may I offer you an arm?’
Chapter Nine
‘I’ll leave him with you, Miss Anthony and take your advice.’ With a jerk of his head Mr Craig emptied the small reception office of helpful site and office workers and shut himself in his own office to ring the firm’s doctor. Mr Craig told me privately he had never had to call him to the site before. ‘Not one accident of even a slightly serious nature till now. You think it serious?’
‘I think it could be very.’
Directly we were alone Rod swung his legs to the floor and pushed himself to the edge of the small, brand new, ‘executive waiting-room’ sofa. It was brown leather. Everything in that office was brand new and the scarlet metal filing trays stacked one inside the other, still had their paper wrappings. ‘Rod, don’t stand up and walk about. Not a good idea.’
‘Christ, woman! Stop fussing!’ But he had to sit down fast. ‘Only giddy as I’m blind as a bat without my glasses. Like a fool I came out without my spares.’
His glasses had been found in the car with both lenses smashed. ‘I’m sure we can rustle up your spare pair soon. Come on, Rod. Sit back, get your feet up, and relax.’
‘I’m not an invalid and I’m not being raped!’
‘No, but you were concussed ‒’
‘I was only knocked out for a couple of seconds! That’s not concussion!’
‘Listen, dear ‒ just listen.’ I lifted up his feet before he knew what I was doing, draped them over the sofa arm and sat by him. ‘If you’re knocked out for half a second, for half a second you’re concussed. Any clout strong enough to do that to a strong young man, is quite a clout. Treat it with respect ‒ and let me have a closer look at that lump.’ Carefully, with my finger-tips, I examined the size of the still swelling lump over his left eyebrow and temple. ‘Real beaut. By tonight you’ll have a lovely pair of shiners.’
‘Jolly little ray of sunshine!’
‘That’s me.’ His pupils were worrying me as much as his petulance. ‘I’ll now do some more ministering angel bit and take your pulse.’
‘If you must ‒’
‘Union rules, dear.’ I beamed as I felt the beat. It was disturbingly wrong. ‘Feeling sickish?’
‘Always without my glasses.’ He closed his eyes and yawned in a certain way. ‘Know what’s wrong with you nurses?’
‘You tell me.’ I kept my hand on his wrist and did some mental calculations that included my personal experience of the rate at which inter-cranial pressure could rise, the time it would take an ambulance to do the double journey and the chances of the theatre being free of emergencies this evening. Tomorrow was this week’s second op day, which was why this morning had been chosen for Mr Norris. I knew Magnus was on, but wasn’t sure about Jenny. Still, her deputy was pretty good.
Rod talked dreamily. ‘You nurses’ve got a bent power complex.’
‘That so?’
‘Yep. Makes you feel good to have a sick guy in your power, but the last thing you want is a healthy guy on a string. Then you beat it like bats out of hell. Take now ‒ you’ve never laid a finger on me before ‒ now all cool hands on fevered brow and wrist. Just like my wife ‒ as you were ‒’ he blinked and clearly had difficulty focusing, ‘my ex-wife. Legally. Mutual consent. No kids so we behaved like civilized people. Very civilized girl my ex-wife ‒’ he yawned in the same fashion. ‘I’m very civilized. Bully for civilization. Know I’d been married?’
‘No.’ I glan
ced at my watch.
‘Surprised?’
‘No. Lot of it about.’
‘Guess so.’ The words slurred into each other. ‘You married?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Tell you some other time when you’ve got your glasses. Why not have a bit of a snooze?’
‘Might. Still love him?’
‘Over that now.’
He sighed, deeply. ‘God, you are so-something-lucky ‒ so-something-lucky ‒’
‘I know.’ I stroked the hair from his forehead. ‘Rod you’re awfully sleepy. Let it go and sleep. You’ll feel better after a rest and I’ll just nip in and ask Mr Craig to get someone to get your glasses. Just stay put. I’ll be back in a minute. Will you do that?’
‘Uh-huh.’ He caught my hand as I stood up. ‘Don’t be long. Hate being alone when I’m sloshed ‒ never get sloshed alone ‒ why’m I so sloshed?’
‘It was a good party, Rod. I’ll be back.’ I watched him as I backed to the inner office door, knocked and went in without waiting for an answer, leaving it ajar behind me. Rod wouldn’t follow any conversation with any degree of clarity now, and I wanted to hear if he moved while I couldn’t see him.
Mr Craig was holding on the telephone. ‘The doctor’s on his rounds but they’re trying to reach him. Any minute now. You want to talk to him?’ I nodded. ‘Not too well?’ I shook my head. ‘Aye ‒ oh ‒ they’ve got him! Is that you, Doctor?’ He explained briefly into the receiver then held it out. ‘You tell him, Miss Anthony.’
It only took about a minute.
‘Is that a fact? Aye. From the sound you may unfortunately be right. I’ll get an ambulance out, just now. You’ll come in with him, Nurse ‒ ah ‒ Anthony?’
Rod was in coma when he was wheeled into Casualty. Magnus took the history from me and asked me to wait. About ten minutes later he came out into the hall. ‘Straight to the theatre now.’ He dug his hands in the pockets of his white coat and studied me, clinically. ‘Nasty experience. Are you all right?’
In Storm and In Calm Page 15
