The Quiet Wards

by Lucilla Andrews

  She sat with her work-worn hands clasped in her lap. She listened without comment until I had finished, then she said simply; ‘Ta, duck. I’ll fetch his dad off nights.’ She was silent again. Then, ‘I know from what the doctor’s been telling me that our Cliff won’t never see that telly. But you know what men are, duck ‒ they get helpless when they see illness. And I got a good man. He wants to help out all he can, and this is his way. But I’ll fetch him off. Mind, I’ll be tactful, like, but he’ll come off.’ She looked at me steadily. ‘If we aren’t going to have our Cliff with us much longer his dad’ll want to see all he can of him ‒ an’ if he works the day-shift he’ll get the evenings and nights when the boy’s mostly awake. So I’ll tell him, duck. And ta. Ta ever so.’

  I said, ‘Mrs Brown, I am so very sorry. You know how we all feel about your Cliff. We love him.’

  ‘That’s right,’ she said with a brisk little nod, ‘I know, duck.’ She leant stiffly against the back of her chair as if she needed the support. ‘I never,’ she went on, ‘thought this could happen to me. I never thought as I could stand it. I don’t know as I can. I just knows I will. I will.’ She looked beyond me to where John was sitting. ‘That’s another good man, duck. An’ he talked to me real lovely, just now. Know what he called me, Nurse?’

  I said quietly, ‘Tell me?’

  She looked back at me. She was a young woman, possibly thirty, but her face was middle aged. ‘He said I was the bravest woman as he’d ever seen. He said that of me, duck. Alice Brown.’ Her eyes were puzzled as a child’s and there was no trace of pride anywhere in her face or her voice. ‘He told me as I was to go on pretending to our Cliff ‒ and if I didn’t think his dad could take it I was to go on pretending to him too. For his sake, as well as the boy’s. And he said ‒ I could do it.’

  I said, ‘I think you can too. And I think he was right about you. I never realised that you knew.’

  She smiled; a sweet, shy smile that transformed her tired, homely, unpowdered face. ‘Well, it doesn’t do to make a fuss, does it, duck? But ta. Ta ever so.’

  Chapter Eleven

  THE QUIET WARDS

  I saw Carol that night for the first time since her admission to Susan Ward. She was in one of the small single cubicles at the far end of the ward. She took off her reading glasses when I appeared round her curtains, and smiled.

  ‘Gillian, how nice! How are you after all this time?’

  I said I was fine, and how was she? I had no notion of what I was going to say to her or why I had come. My feet had wandered automatically to Susan when I had left the dining-room after supper, and so I was here. I wished I was not.

  She said she was fine too, but dead sick of injections. ‘I’m a human pin-cushion. But give me the news. How’s O.P.?’

  ‘Quite pleasant ‒ apart from Sister.’

  ‘Foul as ever?’

  ‘As ever.’ I talked ‘shop.’ It was the safest thing to discuss. All nurses, whether ill or well, are content to talk shop indefinitely at any hour.

  I watched her as we talked. She looked better than I had expected to find her; she was thinner, but her colour was good and not feverish, and since she had been in bed for nearly two weeks she was no longer tired. There was something else about her appearance that I could not place immediately. She looked very much alive, and not as if she had been seriously ill.

  I asked if she liked being warded. ‘Sister Susan nice?’

  ‘Sheer joy.’ She almost purred. ‘They all run round you in small circles. I don’t think I’ll bother to get up. I like being the centre of attention, for a change.’

  I let that pass. I said I was very glad.

  She asked after Lisa. ‘Blakelock was up here visiting one of her set who’s warded next door. Miggins. She came and had tea with me. She told me that Lisa Smith ‒ according to Blakelock ‒ had purloined your latest scalp?’

  I was genuinely amused. ‘Not poor old Tom?’ I was academically interested to see how annoyed my obvious amusement made her. ‘Carol, that’s an old affair. He and Lisa have been buddies for years.’

  ‘You never mentioned it.’

  ‘Didn’t think you’d be interested.’

  ‘Why did he take you to the dance?’

  ‘Wheels within wheels,’ I said darkly. ‘A splendid scheme that came off.’

  ‘It did?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. Oh ‒ by the way ‒’ I asked how Peter had known Tom was going to ask me before Tom knew himself.

  She picked up her glasses and tried them on. ‘I probably got that muddled. You know how it is on nights.’

  I agreed, as once before, that I did, and waited for her to go on. She took her time.

  ‘Been very gay lately, Gillian?’

  ‘Not at all. I’ve had one brief dinner date ‒ the night after the dance ‒’ I added casually, ‘and since then my work has been my all. Very tedious.’

  She said it must be, and I stood up to go. ‘Sister Susan will chase me off if I stay too long.’

  ‘But you’ve only just come. Sit down, girl, and wait until she starts chasing. I’ve been so cut off I’ve dropped the threads. Tell me all. Who’s doing what with whom?’

  She sounded so normal that for a brief instant I wondered if I had imagined finding those drugs. I sat down on her locker. ‘What do you want to know specifically?’

  ‘Everything. How’s Peter? If our John and that blonde piece are engaged; where I’m going when I leave here; what’s happening to you; are you staying in O.P.s? Has Matron said any more about Robert?’

  ‘Hey ‒ let’s start again.’ I smiled. ‘Peter I’ve not seen. He must be well, or I’d have heard, but beyond that I can’t say. I haven’t seen him since you did.’

  ‘Since the dance?’

  ‘The next night. He took me out to supper. The night you got ill.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ She sounded relieved. ‘How about our John?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine. And that goes for the other things too. I haven’t seen Matron, and nobody’s said anything about any future plans for either of us.’

  She was still playing with her glasses. ‘We’ll hear in time,’ she said absently. She looked round at me. ‘I’ve been wanting to talk to you about Peter.’

  ‘You have?’

  She nodded. ‘Remember,’ she said slowly, ‘that night in the cloakroom?’

  ‘When you said he wouldn’t harm you?’

  She half smiled. ‘I didn’t think that got through.’

  ‘It did. I meant to ask you what you meant, but you got ill.’

  ‘That’s why I wanted to see you.’ She said she hated to say what she was going to say, but she thought it was something I ought to know.

  ‘It’s odd,’ I said, ‘how people always think you ought to know the unpleasant things, never pleasant ones. What’s on your mind, Carol?’

  ‘Well’ ‒ she smiled in the same way ‒ ‘you remember that night you lost those drugs ‒’

  I said softly, ‘The night my drugs were taken? Yes. I’m not likely to forget it.’

  Her expression never altered. ‘You’ve swung round. I thought you considered it was a mistake.’

  ‘No. No mistake.’

  She did not ask how I knew. If she had I would have told her then. Later I was sorry that I had not.

  Her eyes watched me keenly. ‘So at last we’re getting somewhere. Now ‒ do you understand who took them?’

  I said flatly, ‘No. I don’t understand at all.’

  She sat up suddenly. ‘You must understand if you know it was him. It’s too obvious why he did it.’

  ‘Why? Carol, who are you talking about?’

  ‘But, darling ‒ who else but Peter? Of course it was him. I’ve always been sure. And look how he’s behaved since ‒ dropping you, rushing round after me. Remember that was the night he found out who I was and he must have felt desperate. He had to get rid of you somehow ‒’

  I said, ‘Stop that.’ I used the tone I used when
the children in O.P.s were out of hand, and it worked as well with her as with them.

  She gaped at me. I knew I was white with rage. I do not often get angry, but when I do I make up for lost time. I was flaming. It was not that I still loved Peter ‒ I did not ‒ but I had and would always have a soft spot for him. We had had a lot of fun together, been to a lot of parties, drunk gallons of coffee, and I was not going to allow her to talk of him this way.

  She said hesitantly, ‘Gillian, you look grey.’

  ‘The light,’ I said shortly.

  ‘Why did you stop me? I hadn’t finished.’

  I stood up and walked to the end of her bed. I hung on to her bed rail to remind myself that she was a patient in bed.

  I took a deep breath. ‘Look’ ‒ my voice shook with anger, but I had it under control ‒ ‘there’s no point in chatter. I know Peter did not swipe that stuff; nor did Night Sister or Tom or John or that pro ‒ whatever her name was. I never thought they had taken it. I never thought you had either, until it dropped out of your bed-socks last night.’

  She did not attempt to deny it or seem surprised. She asked, ‘What have you done with it?’

  ‘Smashed the ampoules, burnt the labels, and poured the broken glass and the drug down the bath in our Home. What did you expect me to do with them? Leave ’em there? Take ’em myself?’

  She lay back on her pillows, and then she laughed. ‘Gill Snow,’ she said breathlessly, ‘you ‒ the bright girl of the set! You haven’t the nous of a two-year-old. Now ‒ how on earth can you prove that I took ’em?’

  I said, ‘Why should I want to prove that?’

  She stopped laughing. ‘Well, you must be going to do something about it?’

  I shook my head. ‘Why?’

  I saw she neither believed nor understood; that made us quits. I did not understand her. But I wanted to. I asked why she took them.

  She sat up again. ‘I’ll tell you why.’ Her words were stifled by a spasm of coughing. I remembered that she had been very ill. I was still very angry, but I was also a nurse. You do not shed four years’ training so easily; certainly not a training received in St Joseph’s Hospital, London.

  ‘Don’t bother now. Tell me another time. It can wait.’

  ‘No, it can’t!’ she panted. ‘Don’t you dare go until I’ve finished! I’m not having you brooding over my bed-side as a perfect little ministering angel again!’

  I said, ‘Don’t get so worked up or you’ll cough again.’

  She was furious. ‘Stop being such a ruddy little nurse!’ She spat the words. ‘And just listen to me for the first time in all these years. You’ve always done the talking ‒ now you do the listening for a change! Yes, you! Sweet Nurse Snow! Kind Nurse Snow! Popular Nurse Snow! The Sister’s pet ‒ it’s made me sick.’ She looked as if she could easily be very sick. ‘The whole of our training, that’s all I’ve ever heard. And what was I? Your wretched little shadow tagging along behind, because no one thought I had the personality or the brains to do anything else.’ She coughed again. ‘Don’t go!’ she hissed.

  I waited at the foot of the bed, my hands on the iron rail. The rail was no colder than my hands.

  ‘It was the same with the boys. Tom this and Peter that ‒ you went to the parties and I read the damned good books! And of all the men in Joe’s you had to grab Peter Kier.’

  I got in a word at last. ‘I never even realised you even liked Peter ‒’

  ‘You never realised anything! You never will realise anything! You just drift around being sweet and forgiving ‒ well, don’t start forgiving me, because I’ll never forgive you!’

  I stared at her. ‘For ‒ what?’

  ‘For being you. For what you’ve done. You had everything all taped. You were so sweetly clever’ ‒ her lips twisted ‒ ‘you ‒ the daughter of some insignificant farmer. I’m Ashton Ash’s daughter. My father did something worth doing. I never pushed that around because I thought everyone knew it. I didn’t understand how clever you had been until I discovered how carefully you had kept it dark.’

  I made no attempt to defend anything. ‘Peter?’

  She smiled. ‘Peter. See what’s happened since he found out? He was a changed man. And the hospital has changed, hasn’t it? Since you’ve been found to be fallible? Do you know’ ‒ her smile was fixed to her lips and did not touch her eyes ‒ ‘I never guessed quite what I was starting when I took that grain out of the box on my way back to you and the Admiral. I thought there would be a bit of a fuss ‒ and I thought it would do you good to find life can be complicated at times ‒ but I never thought that Matron would make such a shining example of you.’

  Now I recognised what it was I had not been able to place in her appearance when I first came in. Triumph.

  I did not say anything, and she must have finished, because when Sister Susan put her head round the curtains a few minutes later we were still staring at each other.

  Sister said brightly, ‘That’s enough for one day, Nurse Snow.’

  ‘Thank you, Sister,’ I said. ‘Yes, I think it’s enough.’

  Sister beamed down at Carol. ‘Nurse Ash, you are looking much improved for your friend’s visit. Quite cheerful again.’

  Carol agreed that she felt quite cheerful, thank you, Sister.

  Sister Susan held back the curtains. ‘Come along, Nurse Snow.’

  Carol said, ‘Good night, Gill ‒ thanks for coming.’

  I said, ‘Not at all. Glad you’re better, good night,’ and followed Sister into the corridor.

  Sister Susan was feeling chatty. ‘It does one good to have a cosy little chat with someone of one’s own age when one is ill, Nurse. You must come again tomorrow.’

  I said I would love to come back tomorrow, if my off-duty coincided with the Susan visiting hours.

  Sister said, ‘If not, I am sure Sister Out-Patients will allow you to pop up for a few minutes.’

  I was not sure that Sister Out-Patients would allow anything of the sort, but Sister Susan was a kind old lady, a contemporary of Home Sister’s, so I murmured, ‘Yes, Sister, thank you, Sister, good night, Sister.’

  Susan Ward was on the top floor of the oldest block in the hospital. The block next to Susan had been badly damaged in the war and stood, an ugly, gaping ruin, in the centre of the busy hospital. The block was due to be pulled down and rebuilt any day, and with this object some temporary scaffolding had been erected to strengthen the ruins. But there were so many new wards being opened in the undamaged parts of the building, so many new extensions being added to the departments, to cope with the fantastic increase in the number of our patients that had come with the last few years, that the ruins were left untouched, apart from their ghostly skeletons of steel and wood.

  I walked out of Susan, then stopped at the top of the stairs. My head was hot and my hands freezing. My legs shook. I badly wanted to sit down, and quickly. I could not sit down on the stairs, and if I went back to Susan Sister would start taking my temperature. I remembered the ruins, and the piles of new bricks on the grass between the blocks. I would go and sit there. I did not want to think or talk or do anything but sit.

  I went down by the iron staircase that ran up every block. There was no chance of my meeting anyone there. It was dark outside and very cold; the clouds were low, but it was not raining. There was no moon. Through the moving clouds I saw an occasional star. I was glad the stars were there even if I could not see them. Having been raised in the country, I needed to see stars; I could dispense with the moon, but I felt lonely when the sky was low. My father’s farm had been miles from the nearest village, and street lighting was something that annoyed us when we drove through that village ‒ ‘Can’t see an inch with all these damned lights, Gill’ ‒ but out on the marsh there were only the stars and the very occasional slender gleam of the flickering marsh light.

  I drew my cloak more tightly around me, not solely to keep out the cold, but to hide my white apron. An apron or white coat was visible ag
ainst the black grass from a hundred yards away. Not that what I was doing was against any rule; the grounds were open and the iron staircase was often used in the day time. It was merely that I wanted to avoid being seen.

  I was on the top step of the bottom of the five rungs of stairs when I saw a white coat coming along the grass below me. I stopped, and leant against the wall. My rubber-soled shoes had made no sound on the ironwork, and if whoever it was had not noticed my cap already there was little likelihood that he would do so now I was standing above him.

  The footsteps stopped. John’s voice said, ‘What are you doing up there, Nurse? You shouldn’t use that staircase at night without a torch.’

  Oh, no, I thought ‒ does he have to be everywhere?

  I walked down the rest of the steps, cursing all itinerant doctors in all hospitals and specifically Joe’s. I should have known that this was bound to happen. He was always handy when I was making a fool of myself, which must, I thought savagely, give him a lot of quiet amusement. He was waiting for me, so I went up to him.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Dexter. I came down that way because I wanted fresh air.’

  It was too dark to see his face. That staircase wound round the old block and ended at the path that led through the ruins to the rest of the hospital. There was no light. The ground floor of the block was part of the physiotherapy school and locked at five each evening. The staircase was only floodlit on the weekly fire-practice nights.

  He recognised my voice. ‘Tell me, Nurse Snow,’ he said mildly, ‘are you sure you’re a human being?’

  I said I was quite sure. ‘Why?’

  ‘You keep appearing in such an astounding variety of places. Highly disconcerting. One minute you are hiding behind a child in O.P.s, then behind a mask in the theatre, and now I discover you hiding against the wall on the fire escape.’

  I could not think of anything else to say, so I said I was sorry.

  ‘Why were you hiding?’

  I said obviously, ‘Because I didn’t want to be seen.’

  He said, ‘Why not? You weren’t committing any crime ‒ merely being rather absurd.’