The Quiet Wards

by Lucilla Andrews

  ‘Ghastly. Too hearty to bear. I wish I had stayed here and slept all yesterday, instead.’ She flopped on to the foot of my bed. ‘Matron rang me yesterday, and I had to call her back. Did you hear? She was in a state about how much we had given the Admiral that first night. I said a quarter and only a quarter. What’s wrong? Is he supposed to have had an overdose?’

  ‘No. Didn’t Peter tell you?’

  She shook her head. ‘We didn’t really discuss you ‒ beyond him telling me you were proper poorly. No,’ she said again, ‘we didn’t discuss you. He was being rather nice about my father. He said he had only just heard who Daddy was.’ She turned to look at me as I sat sewing in the armchair at the opposite side of the room. ‘I’m beginning to alter my opinion of your young man,’ she added slowly. ‘I could never quite see what you saw in him. I do now. For all his gay chatter, he is rather kind, isn’t he?’

  I said yes. I was fond of Carol. I saw no reason why she should be disillusioned about Peter.

  ‘But you still haven’t told me what the flap was about?’

  I told her.

  She gaped. ‘Oh, no! Gillian! You couldn’t!’

  ‘I certainly didn’t take it myself, if that’s what you mean.’

  She said it was not. ‘What’s shaken me is your making a mistake. You’re the bright girl of the set ‒ don’t forget you’re in running for the Gold Medal. You aren’t the type to drop your keys around for anyone to pick up!’

  ‘You couldn’t be more wrong, ducks. I did just that. I’ve had that medal. I’ve very nearly had my job. Matron calls it criminal carelessness. She won’t be pinning a medal on me after this. But what I could do’ ‒ I snapped the thread with which I was sewing, in my sudden fury ‒ ‘with the fiend who’s helped himself to my drug cupboard is nobody’s business.’

  She said softly, ‘Poor old Gillian.’ She lay back on my bed and closed her eyes. ‘But who?’

  ‘Search me.’ I told her Kirsty’s theory, but she thought little of it.

  ‘The boys may be nuts, but they aren’t as nutty as that.’

  ‘Then who?’

  She was silent; then, ‘How about the S.S.O.?’ she suggested.

  ‘John Dexter?’ I put down my sewing. ‘Why ever him? He doesn’t have to pinch the stuff. He can get it for the signing any time he wants.’

  She said she had not meant that he had taken it for his own use, but to teach me a sharp lesson. ‘Perhaps he saw the keys around and thought you needed a jolt to show you how dangerous that was.’

  ‘But, Carol ‒ I was his little shadow. He didn’t have a chance.’

  She said pertinently, ‘You weren’t his shadow when he came back to watch Kerry coming round. And he wandered off alone to wash his hands at the far sink before he left, because I heard him. Weren’t you nattering to Peter in the doorway? I thought I saw you down there through a crack in the curtains?’

  I was worried. ‘Yes, I was.’

  She said, ‘John D. was drifting round Robert alone, and he’s mighty quiet for all he’s so big. He might easily have got at the cupboard.’

  Something was wrong here, and I knew it was not only her idea about the S.S.O.

  ‘I’m in a complete muddle,’ I said, ‘but I do think you’re wrong. I can’t say I go for that man ‒ never have ‒ but I must admit that the boys all say that he’s a good type. He might have lectured me to hell for leaving my keys around, but I don’t see him as a petty thief.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right.’ She did not sound at all certain. ‘Only I wouldn’t underestimate him. I’d say he was rather thuggish under his smooth surgical exterior.’

  ‘Thuggish no doubt, but not mean! This is such a mean thing to have done! The S.S.O.’s too big to be mean. Haven’t you noticed how it’s always a small person’s line?’

  She grunted without answering. A few seconds later she sat up, ‘Which reminds me. If you are really off nights there’s something we have to settle.’

  I guessed what she was about to say and said it for her.

  ‘We don’t have to settle a thing about the rugger dance, honey.’

  ‘Of course we do. I meant to tell you he’d asked me before I went away, but I forgot. I wouldn’t dream of going with him now.’

  ‘You might just as well. Peter won’t want to take me now.’

  She looked at me curiously. ‘He won’t? Nonsense. He always takes you if you’re free.’

  I grimaced. ‘Them days is past.’ I explained what had been his attitude yesterday in the canteen.

  She said, ‘I never thought of that.’

  ‘Why should you? Nor did I.’ And so much, I thought, for my noble resolutions about not disillusioning Carol. But it was a relief to have told her.

  ‘Gill dear,’ she said gently, ‘I am sorry. How miserable of him.’

  She looked very upset about all this, and I was touched by her concern. I was glad that she was back in the hospital; I felt stronger and more able to manage my problems now Carol was again on hand to listen to my worries but the situation was not without irony. Our normal relationship had become reversed. Usually I was the one to lend the shoulder or the ear. I was very grateful for the comfort of her presence.

  She got off my bed and offered more tangible assistance.

  ‘Want any books? Cigarettes?’

  ‘No, thanks. I’ve got all I want. This is a homely gaol. No bars. I can come and go as I like. Only thing I can’t do is nurse again until Matron and the Committee decide that I’m fit to be let loose among the patients. The snag is,’ I added, ‘that I can’t blame her, or them. Those drugs were my baby.’

  She seemed very preoccupied with the S.S.O. ‘I wonder what our John will say about it all?’

  ‘Probably suggest bread and water,’ I said gloomily.

  She tidied her hair at my dressing-table. ‘Have you thought,’ she asked quietly, ‘that it might have been me? I went to your cupboard.’

  I smiled. ‘It might indeed! Or Peter. Or Tom Thanet disguised as an oxygen cylinder. Only snag is, none of you dope. Your pupils are all too big! Pity, but there it is!’

  She giggled, ‘You are a goon!’

  ‘Only crafty. Don’t forget I’ve worked in Matthew and Mark. After four months’ hard among assorted alcohol, morph., coke, and heroin addicts, I can recognise them in my sleep. You don’t forget Matthew and Mark in a hurry,’ I added grimly.

  ‘That’s true.’ She fiddled with my brush and comb. ‘Listen, Gillian ‒ perhaps it’ll all blow over. Perhaps Matron doesn’t take quite the serious view you think. In a week or so you’ll find you’ve come out of the cloud and gone back to square one.’

  I shook my head. ‘She takes a serious view, all right, and she’s got to. This is a pretty serious thing. Of course, if she doesn’t give me the bird the cloud will move off eventually; the sun will rise; the birds will sing; the patients will burst their appendices and chop themselves into little pieces; but it won’t be back to square one for me.’

  ‘Are you talking from Matron’s angle, or Peter’s?’

  ‘Both. But mostly from Peter’s.’

  She left me after that. I sat on sewing for some time, then decided I must get out of the hospital if only for half an hour. It was tea-time, but I could not face any more sympathy or any more questions from my friends, so I took myself out to tea.

  It had rained that morning, but the September afternoon was golden. In the park the chrysanthemums and Michaelmas daisies blazed in the flower-beds; the grass was thick with yellow leaves, prematurely torn off by the gales of the last week. The trees were still green and heavy with soaking leaves from the rain this morning. The afternoon sun turned the raindrops to topaz. There were more leaves floating in the lake. I stopped on the wooden bridge and leant over. The scent of wet grass and soaking wood filled me with nostalgia and a sadness I had hoped forgotten; but in my new despondency that old unhappiness returned, and I remembered my home and how my father’s land had smelt at this time of the year.r />
  I thought of the birds on the marshes, and of the floods that would already be out after a wet summer such as this last one; I remembered how the men cursed the water and how they all worked overtime on the pumps. My father’s land had been reclaimed centuries ago, but it still needed frequent pumping and drainage to save it from the hungry sea that thundered against the sea-wall only a couple of miles away. I closed my eyes momentarily and caught a faint tang of salt in the breeze that drifted parkward from the river; at home the wind tore inland over the dykes, and when you licked your lips, your tongue tasted fresh sea-salt.

  I turned from the bridge and walked on slowly.

  The restaurant was very full, and the food was very expensive. I did not expect to see anyone I knew, so I did not bother to look at anyone but my immediate neighbours. Later I wished I had been more curious. As I was leaving I recognised the voice of a man behind me.

  ‘Sorry I can’t join you at that show,’ he was saying, ‘but I only arranged for Henderson to stand in for me a couple of hours.’

  I longed to be able to look round and see to whom it was John Dexter was talking, but since I could hardly do this I pretended to be engrossed in one of the display counters, and hoped to see them when they had passed me.

  This was not a good scheme. An assistant came up to me at once. ‘Can I get madam anything?’

  I asked for some chocolates, then looked round quickly, but I was too late. The S.S.O. and his companion were outside the glass front door, and he was handing her into a taxi. I saw only a small black feather hat and a wing of gold hair. It was an attractive hat, and that hair was a glorious colour. I mentally reviewed the entire nursing staff at Joe’s. Who had hair that colour? Or had I stumbled by chance on John’s secret love-life?

  The assistant broke into my thoughts by asking if I wanted all soft centres.

  ‘Yes, please.’

  While she weighed them I glanced back at the front door, and was pleased to see that John had vanished. He had probably taken a second taxi and was already half-way back to Bill Henderson (the senior surgical registrar at Joe’s). Good. I had come out to get away from the hospital. I should be back soon enough.

  ‘Good afternoon, Miss Snow.’

  My head jerked sideways and upward. I was so surprised to find that I had somehow missed John’s large, dark, grey figure that all I said was ‘Oh.’

  He smiled. ‘I apologise for my intrusion. I wanted to buy some of these chaps.’ He touched a glass jar filled with gold-papered chocolate coins as the assistant handed me my parcel.

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  He bought a pound. ‘Bribery,’ he murmured to me.

  ‘Bribery, Mr Dexter?’

  ‘I’m teaching in Christian (the children’s ward) in the morning.’

  ‘I see.’ I smiled, I hoped civilly, and added that I was just leaving. ‘Good-bye.’

  The assistant was a quick worker, and she had dealt with his parcel and change before I reached the door. He caught up with me and held it back for me. ‘Do you want to drive back?’ he asked.

  I gathered from this that he had his car and was offering me a lift. I thanked him, but said that as it was such a lovely day I thought I would walk.

  He looked down at me calmly, ‘I was going to walk back myself. May I join you?’

  I wished I had the courage to refuse. I did not want to talk to him or anyone else. If he had been any other man I might have been able to think up some fairly civil excuse, but in his case I could not do it. I should as soon have told Matron that I should prefer to dispense with her company. I said, ‘Please do.’ He thanked me, and we walked away from the restaurant together.

  Chapter Three

  A WALK IN THE PARK WITH THE S.S.O.

  We talked about the weather.

  ‘It must have been a grim summer for farmers,’ I said.

  ‘But surely they always complain that there isn’t sufficient rain?’

  ‘Depends just when it rains. This year they can’t have had time to cut their hay, much less dry it. And the wind will have ruined the fruit.’

  He said curiously, ‘Wasn’t haymaking over weeks ago?’

  ‘Should have been, but I expect it went on into August because of the rain ‒ and that does no one any good but the game.’

  ‘Why the game?’

  ‘The young partridges and pheasants don’t get disturbed so early when the hay is late and that gives the birds a chance to grow bigger.’

  ‘You are very up in all this, Miss Snow. Is your father a farmer?’

  ‘Was.’

  He nodded. ‘What part of the world do you come from?’

  ‘The south-east coast.’ I told him about our marshes. ‘It’s a pleasant part of the coast and the birds are wonderful.’

  He said he could believe that. ‘I’m afraid Kent is not a county I know well. What’s your nearest town?’

  I told him. ‘It hardly rates as a town. No chain-stores, not even a weekly market ‒ but it’s an attractive place.’

  He glanced at my face. ‘It sounds it.’

  We fell silent again; then, for something to say, I asked where he came from?

  He raised his stick and pointed in the direction of the hospital. ‘My father had one of those houses that front on the river ‒ the hospital bought it and uses it as flats for the married staff.’

  ‘Was your father a Joe’s man, Mr Dexter?’

  He smiled slightly. ‘And his father before him. My father used to take me on his Sunday rounds of the hospital when I was a small boy. My grandfather always took him, so he decided to carry on the family tradition. It served its purpose. It broke me in early.’

  ‘Yes.’ I did not ask the obvious question, and we were silent again.

  This time he broke it by asking if I was in a hurry to get back. ‘Or would you mind if we sat down on one of those benches for a few minutes. There’s something I want to discuss with you.’

  I groaned inwardly. Once more. I should have guessed he had not chosen to accompany me because he wanted a walk in the sun. I had not the courage to invent an excuse so I said I was in no hurry and walked meekly over to the nearest bench.

  He took off his hat and put it on the bench beside his stick.

  ‘I am exceedingly sorry about all this, Nurse Snow,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you.’

  He frowned at his stick, as if he disapproved of the way in which it was behaving. ‘I’m not throwing platitudes about, Nurse Snow, for the pleasure of hearing my own voice. I’m very sorry that a sensible young woman like yourself should have run into this mess.’

  The Committee had obviously met. I wondered what conclusion they had reached. I knew he was not going to break down and tell me that: that I would hear from Matron in her own time. I was pretty sure that his soothing opening was merely his technique to show quite how inexcusable my behaviour was. To forestall him I said:

  ‘It was my own fault. I should have hung on to those keys.’

  ‘You should indeed,’ he said casually. ‘Who do you think used them?’

  ‘I can’t imagine. I only know it wasn’t myself.’

  He leaned on his stick with his hands clasped on the handle. His hands were the only small things about him, despite his boxing past ‒ if boxing enlarges hands! All good surgeons have small hands and not, as is popularly supposed, long, thin, tapering ones. John’s were very small for his height, broad and incredibly strong. In the theatre I had seen him lift a man off the table without apparent effort, and as easily as I could pick up a baby.

  He said, ‘Clearly it wasn’t you, since you are carrying the can. Who was in the ward with you that night?’

  He must have known my list as well as I did. Matron would have told the Committee. I repeated it again.

  He told me he had seen the keys on the desk when he was writing his notes. ‘I was just about to remind you of them when you picked them up and pinned them on yourself.’

  ‘So I did leave them there earlier.’
I explained how I had not been certain. ‘I’m always doing it.’

  He said casually, ‘Most of you nurses do. Foolish young women, aren’t you? Oh, well, you won’t do it again. I’ve often thought of mentioning it, but then I felt it was rather a nursing point, and I can’t say I like getting involved in that side of things.’ He glanced sideways at me. ‘I rather wish I had now. It would have saved a good deal of bother.’

  I agreed that it would. I was thinking of what Carol had suggested, and how wrong she had been.

  ‘You don’t sound very certain?’ He looked my face over coolly. He had brown eyes. I had never bothered to notice the colour previously. I was surprised to see that his brown eyes could look as cold as Matron’s pale blue ones. ‘Was I’ ‒ he spun out the words as if he had all eternity in which to complete his sentence ‒ ‘on your list of suspects? Did you think I took the stuff?’

  He said, ‘I might have done it to give you a fright. Was that what you thought?’

  ‘Look,’ I said sharply, ‘I’ve thought of everything. I’ve had nothing else to do since yesterday morning.’ I had never spoken to him like that before, but then I had never discussed anything but patients with him before, apart from his slight lapse in Robert the other night. ‘I’m sorry,’ I went on, ‘I don’t mean to be impertinent, but do we have to go into all this? It’s happened, and there doesn’t seem to be anything anyone can do about it. It’s just one of those things.’

  He said quietly, ‘Don’t be childish, Nurse Snow. It is not one of those things. Morphia doesn’t get up and walk away from the drug cupboards as a routine occurrence. And at the risk of being really trite, of course one can do something about it. One can always do something ‒ although not necessarily the right thing.’ He moved his hands, propped his stick carefully against the seat, and took out a cigarette packet. ‘Will you?’

  I kept forgetting that I was in mufti on a park bench. I refused automatically. He held the packet in front of my face. ‘I should if I were you,’ was all he said, so I fell back into routine and did as he said.

  His expression reminded me of something Peter once said: ‘You girls suffer under constant delusions concerning old Garth. He may be mighty quiet, but he’s rousable all right. And roused he’s quite something. Personally I’d sooner cope single-handed with an H-bomb explosion. Easier to put out.’