‘Enough is enough, Mr Harding.’
I stood up, and she vanished again. ‘She’s right, Rod.’
He took off his glasses. ‘You’ll kiss me goodbye?’
‘Pleasure.’ I did so and he patted my face.
‘Very chaste, Charlotte. Very nice. Don’t pick up any stray oilmen on your return flights.’
I smiled down at him. ‘Not flying. Sea and train. Take care of yourself, Rod, and when you get down on the farm go easy. Don’t leap on tractors or indulge in violent sports too soon, as that’ll help you be the lad you’ve known and loved much more quickly.’
‘Will it be all right if I restrict my sporting activities to only placing one thumb across the palm?’
‘You do that! Cheers, honey!’
‘Cheers, love! See you, sometime, I hope.’
‘I hope so.’ I waved from the door and went out closing it quietly. I knew neither of us expected to meet again, and probably would not enjoy it if we did. Though not on a holiday, there had always been an on-holiday atmosphere about our friendship. Once any holiday ended, most holiday friendships went the way of old travel tickets and luggage stickers, and more often than not, very wisely. People looked different without the sand in the shoes and eyes.
The hospital looked just the same. The usual figures in uniform, overalls, dressing-gowns, clothes a little too big, coming and going, some purposefully, others rather unsteadily. The usual click of rubber heels on rubber floors, rumble of store and food trolleys, the distant persistent ringing of an unanswered telephone, that was as much a part of any hospital routine as the clatter of the empty metal food tins someone in every hospital kitchen dropped every ten minutes of the day. The usual hard-done-by-as-it’s-Saturday expressions worn on Saturday mornings by every ancillary worker I had come across in any hospital. The usual sight of a uniformed sister, white-coated houseman and well-dressed consultant chatting over a patient’s notes at the end of a corridor. On this occasion the sister was Jenny, houseman, Alan, and the tallish man with his back to me obviously Mr Fraser. They were standing just by the main entrance to the Theatre Department. Jenny smiled and Alan winked at me without pausing in their discussion. Once I was out of the front porch, I doubted either would remember my existence. Staff changes, and particularly temporary-staff changes, were generally forgotten within minutes of the event. Kirsty was back in Olaf, so my going left no gap to be noticed, regretted, or enjoyed. Last month, last night, were already old hospital history recorded in the back pages of official report books. Possibly sometime over a drink, or coffee, someone on the permanent staff would ask if anyone remembered the name of the English girl in Olaf last September ‒ or was it October? From Benedict’s ‒ or was it Guy’s? Wonder what happened to her?
George Nicholson was in the yard doing something to an ambulance engine. ‘On your way now, Nurse?’
‘Just about. Sailing at five.’
He wiped the oil off his hands studying the sky. ‘Too quiet. Shouldn’t wonder if we get the wind back tonight, though not like last night. Could mean you’re a bit late in tomorrow.’
‘That won’t matter. The train everyone advises me to take south, doesn’t leave till noon.’
‘Take you straight to London?’
‘Stopping at Edinburgh and a few other places, but I don’t have to change. Gets in about midnight, I gather.’
‘Reckon you’ll be ready to get out of it by then.’
‘I reckon you’re right, George.’ We shook hands, said the usual things. ‘Well. Seeing I must go, I must go.’
‘So you must. Sorry I am to say it, but so you must.’ He glanced upwards and smiled. ‘Take a look up at Olaf first.’
Yesterday I had shaken hands all round Olaf before going off to give Sister my final report. But the patients had heard I was back in the hospital and all the up-patients were crowded in the front windows and waiting to wave me off. We went on exchanging waves and smiles until I stopped in the main entrance of the Home and clasped my hands over my head in a farewell salute. In the lift I dried my eyes and remembered an old, long-retired Martha’s sister whose name I had forgotten, coming to talk to my set one evening when we had been about a month in the Preliminary Training School and telling us that it was the patients, and only the patients, that made nursing bearable. Nursing, and at certain moments, life.
I couldn’t face returning to the hospital to buy lunch, or going elsewhere for it. I had decided to skip it, when Helen, the only other girl off and not already out on our floor, came in with tea and biscuits and cheese. She was free for the weekend, it was Dai’s half-day, and as soon as he was off they were going out for the rest of the day. I quite liked her in small doses and enjoyed the tea and food, but as she would not stop talking about Dai’s book, I longed for his call as much as herself. ‘He writes with such realism, Charlotte. He has real talent.’
‘Jolly good.’ I took my tea to the window. The grey rocks had turned bronze and the Sound was empty. ‘He’s got them all out on another strike?’
‘And the night it is settled, the factory burns down. So exciting ‒ had me twitching! Both the men are killed ‒ burnt to crisps ‒ and the girl, of course, is pregnant. Twins.’
‘Of course.’ I echoed absently, then blinked. ‘Hang about! Dai never told me she was pregnant. Who’s the father?’
‘He hasn’t worked that out yet ‒ is that the ’phone?’
Thank God, it was.
I went down with her. Dai promised me a copy of the novel when published. ‘Martha’s from now on?’
‘Yes. Thanks, and for the nosh, Helen. All the best!’
‘Cheerio, Charlotte!’
‘Cheers!’ And if I said that once more, I’d throw up worse than on the flight out.
I rang to book a taxi before going back to finish off in my room. ‘Just one for the steamer, miss? Four-fifteen. Much luggage?’
‘Not much and, yes, just one.’
I was ready with a few minutes in hand. I would have been ready an hour and a half earlier, had I not decided I must write a ‘sorry to miss you and best of British’ to Magnus. When I made the decision I thought it would take five minutes, I would then stick on a stamp, nip out to the box on the corner and be back in time to dawdle over my remaining tea-bag. For a variety of reasons it did not seem a good idea to leave it for him at the hospital. It would probably reach him on the Black’s island by Monday or Tuesday. There was no hurry, no hurry for anything, until I tore up the fifth attempt and heard four strike. In the end, because the taxi driver looked as if he could be George Nicholson’s brother, I asked him to post it, and if he were related to George. He wasn’t even from Thessa and came from one of the most northern inhabited islands in the archipelago. ‘You managed to get up there, miss? Never mind. Next time.’ He pushed the letter in his pocket, carried my luggage up the gangway and dumped it at the feet of a waiting steward. ‘Here you are, boy!’
That steward was one of his relations and when he later handed me over to my cabin steward, he very politely refused my tip. ‘Much obliged, but not just for this, miss.’
My cabin steward came from Ross and Cromarty. He was a gaunt, grey-haired man and his voice fell like soft water from his tight mouth. He warned me our sailing time had been delayed and that to his way of thinking we would be fortunate to be away by seven. ‘Thessa folk are having no idea of time. If you are asking one ‒ asking any Shetlander ‒ the time he will be telling you it is Saturday.’
He thought it unlikely I would have to share my double berth cabin, as I was the only woman travelling alone on his deck. ‘The other first-class ladies are being with their husbands or together and I could only be putting another first-class lady in with you.’ His gloom over our delayed sailing lightened when he recalled the many first-class oil gentlemen seeking berths they had neglected to book. ‘I am only having this one free, and a Force 7 is being forecast for the night.’
He gave me such joy, and I needed joy, that I would gladly
have given him a double tip, if something in his manner hadn’t convinced me to do so would not only have it returned, but be taken as an insult. I knew I was right when I smiled and thanked him and he bowed. ‘You are being very welcome. Will you be wishing morning tea?’
I wondered what his oil gentlemen made of him, but without real interest as I had even more on my mind than on the journey up, only unlike the journey up I no longer had any desire to escape into mental fantasy. One has no need to escape when on a ship about to perform the job in reality for one. I noticed vaguely the crowd in the lounge and milling about the enclosed main deck when I went outside, but I did not take in one face, or receive one half-interested glance, smile, or unwanted confidence from one fellow passenger of either sex. In the event I gave it no thought. Later I realized that to receive anything, good or bad, from total strangers one must first appear, which means be subconsciously, receptive. That evening my subconscious, as my conscious, was on a frolic of it own.
I went up on the boat deck and had it almost exclusively to myself and the already loaded cars. In the short time I had been below, the quiet afternoon had altered with the startling abruptness of Thessa weather, to a cold, gusty, grey evening. The returned wind was not yet anywhere near gale force, but enough to make the Sound choppy and streak the sea outside with white flecks. I glanced at the empty northern entrance and thought of Miranda Nova’s engines and then of this time yesterday.
Slowly, in turn, the cars waiting on the steamer quay to be loaded on to the stern of the lower deck were moved into position for the cranes. As each swung up, one of the faces in the little group of watching owners assumed an agonized expression and the others looked amused. The cranes were grey and they swung with the same languid, graceful, rhythm, as the yellow and scarlet flamingo ballet swung over the Thessa mud.
One of the ship’s officers paused on his way to the bridge to look over the side. I asked if he knew anything about Miranda Nova.
‘Isn’t she the Portuguese ship that had a wee bit of bother off Valla in the night? Ach, yes. She’s been sighted limping down the north coast with the lifeboat. Her Master’s been offered and refused a tow. Can’t blame him wanting to bring her in himself if he can, but as it is getting a bit fresh outside, he may need that tow yet.’
The lights began to come on in the anchored ships and the tiers of neat, solid, little grey houses rising up the hill. A light or two appeared on the row of larger, tied-up, fishing boats, but the bobbing line of tiny, open, fishing boats remained unlit and empty. Though long after the original sailing time, late passengers were still sauntering up the gangway and the crofters were still-waving their black caps, flapping arms, and yelping encouragement at the reluctant sheep. Once the car owners were aboard, I saw no one on the quay looking at a watch. When the ship was ready to sail she would, until then she wouldn’t, so why waste energy dock-watching? I thought of the elderly women with shopping baskets and brown paper parcels at Dalry and smiled in sympathy, not with amusement. I think it was then I discovered how much Thessa had altered me, and not just by healing old scars and curing old phobias. I owed so much to this gentle, lovely, breeding-place of so much tranquil toughness and so many pairs of calm, pale blue eyes, that it worried me to think perhaps when I was back in London, Thessa would start to fade for me and eventually become again just one of the larger blobs in the little group tidied into a box off the right top tip of Scotland on most maps of the British Isles.
Would that happen? I thought it over very carefully, not as an anodyne, but because having to leave had shown how important Thessa had become for me. I was going to need Thessa on those times in London, when the noise and fumes and crowds seemed on the point of battering and choking the city to death. It would help retain sanity and hope to remember this green island of blue water, this oasis of civilized humans and tame wild birds genuinely existed. It would help at work, too, when the hospital climate altered uneasily, as kept happening in mainland hospitals, including Martha’s, to remember there was one little hospital so isolated from the mainland climate that it remained solely concerned with the fundamental job of trying to save human lives.
No, I thought, no. I won’t forget. One doesn’t forget those who throw one lifelines. Thessa had thrown me one, and Magnus, another. And should events prove him and myself wrong and the oil change Thessa, I could still remember with gratitude ‒ this was how it was. And Magnus? Yes, I thought, yes. That’ll be how I’ll remember him too. And that thought was so painful I was forced to accept the fact that I was very lucky to have to leave without seeing him again. Last night’s trip had rocked me both back on and right off balance. I tried to amuse myself with bad puns and worse jokes about love casting out fear. I didn’t succeed.
The last sheep were aboard, the cranes swung away from the ship and were still, the gangway was taken down, the bridge rang bells, the little crowd of waiting relatives and friends on the quay began waving handkerchiefs and calling cheerios. The steamer crept quietly, almost furtively from the land, from the lines of fishing boats, from the four larger foreign ships anchored in the customary row. I didn’t notice their flags or names, but some of their seamen whistled and waved and some of the steamer’s passengers did the same. I watched without seeing.
‘Excuse me.’ It was the officer to whom I had spoken. ‘You can’t see from here as we’re moving out astern, but I thought you’d like to know Miranda Nova and the lifeboat have just passed the northern light. Making about two knots. We’ll be turning very shortly so if you now go down aft on the deck below, you should get a good view.’
The twilight was darkening swiftly and when I got a place on the aft rail below, the increasing distance made Miranda Nova’s black outline merge into the charcoal background of sky and sea. From her lights she was a fairly large vessel. Harriet Ryan was a couple of stars on the sea. They were still some way from the harbour, moving very slowly, but an ambulance was already waiting and a glowing blue stone was threaded into the centre of the amber string. As we picked up speed the amber turned gold, and all the harbour and town lights turned into a delicate jewelled tiara, silver above, gold below, with the golden side-pieces curving into the water. The hospital stood out with astonishing clarity, two lines of diamonds well away from the tiara, backed by grey velvet. All the land had now lost its colour, and as we sailed on parallel with the southern coastline, the grey deepened into a dark shadow broken by occasional clusters of lights, and then even more occasionally, a solitary light. The great swinging beam of light ahead grew more brilliant, then blinding, then we were through the entrance and immediately felt the ship’s altered rhythm in the rougher water. The deck around cleared, but I stayed at the rail until all the lights, all the shadows of islands and islets, all the sky, disappeared in darkness. No stars in the sky that night: no more stars on the sea.
It was a fairly rough night, but it wasn’t the wind or sea that kept me awake. I still, and probably always would, hate the sea, and might well fear it for others, but no longer for myself. Not after last night. I wished I could’ve shared that with Magnus, or just mentioned it in my letter. There had been so much I wanted to say, so little point in saying any of it, that I had stuck to clichés. On reflection I decided they probably served as well as any, since who really took in the words that added up to the single word, ‘goodbye’. If the goodbye hurt, nothing helped, if it didn’t, nothing mattered.
The steward brought in my tea an hour later than we had arranged as our docking time had been delayed to nine. ‘Will you be wishing breakfast? Serving will be starting in thirty minutes.’
‘I think I’ll get it ashore as I’ll have nearly three hours before my train. I imagine some hotel near the station’ll serve breakfasts to non-residents? Yes? Good. How far is the station from the docks?’
‘To my way of thinking it is not being more than five minutes in a taxi.’
I tried to be intelligent, balanced. I dressed, and did my face and hair with extra care. It was necessar
y as my first glance at my pasty hollow-eyed reflection made me wonder if I’d died in the night. I finished my packing, methodically, went out on deck to get some bracing air and discovered it was pelting. My cabin, being on the inside, had no porthole. The sight of water pouring off the brims of stetsons amused me, momentarily, before I retreated to the crowded observation lounge. The crowd and atmosphere were only vaguely reminiscent of the lounge at Dalry as only about half were oilmen, none that I saw roughnecks or roustabouts, and the others were middle aged couples returning from holidays and honeymooners in unisex Shetland sweaters and woolly hats literally and metaphorically entwined with each other.
The rain stopped as we drew nearer the land, but slow, heavy tears still trickled down the outside of the curved observation windows. The lounge emptied as we reduced speed to enter the harbour, but being ready and in no mood to join the queue already forming, I stayed at the window. The harbour was large and quite busy, though it was Sunday. The anchored tankers, merchantmen, rig supply vessels, were all much bigger than I had seen in Thessa harbour, and there was a great, ugly, grey row of cylindrical containers very similar to those holding the special cement on Rod’s unfinished landing site. I looked at them and wondered about Rod and Jenny and if in the end he would bless or curse Thessa. Then I saw four little fishing trawlers enveloped with gulls fighting for scraps being thrown out by a man in a Thessa fisherman’s sweater and had such a wave of nostalgia mixed with longing for Magnus, that I was unable to think of anyone else. I stared at the city rising up round the harbour, at the many delicate church spires between the white towers of flats and tall, surprisingly graceful, pale granite houses, but all I saw was his face and so clearly in my mind that it could have been only a few inches away.
The engines stopped. I went back for the luggage outside my cabin and had to search for my steward. From his bow and polite spiel, he could retire on my fifty pence. He carried my luggage to the back of the now moving queue and advised me not to be hurrying for a taxi as one would be coming eventually and many were already standing waiting in the taxi queue. ‘Better be sitting in the reception room.’
In Storm and In Calm Page 21
