The ghost of a smile hovered in her eyes now. ‘Poor Nurse. I would not wish to get you in trouble. Would you be the Nurse Fraser who often does things wrong?’
‘I certainly am.’ I laid her tray on her locker top, took out her table napkin and was delighted to see she was watching me without any further refusals to eat. ‘I just live in the doghouse. Do you take salt?’
‘Only a sprinkling over the chicken, please. Why are you so despondent?’ she asked interestedly.
‘It’s a long, long story.’ I fed her carefully and spun out my words intentionally. ‘I think my trouble is caused by my clumsy hands and my too long legs. I have always preferred running to walking, and I can’t help dropping things.’ I gave her a drink of lemonade. ‘Also, I’ve got a jinx with machinery. I only have to touch something and it stops working or falls apart.’ And to keep her mind off her lunch, I told her about the lift gates and my bedroom window, and my bedsprings.
She shook her head at me when I had finished, and did not notice that she was eating the final mouthful of her first course. ‘Och, don’t tell me more now, Nurse, or I’ll be splitting my stitches!’ She chuckled. ‘Did the young man really not say one word when he mended those gates?’
I picked up her empty plate. ‘If you don’t mind waiting while I fetch your sweet, my story will be continued.’
She glanced at her plate. ‘Have I had all that?’
I smiled. ‘One of us must have eaten it ‒ and it wasn’t me. Not with Sister looking on.’
She returned my smile. ‘Will you be in trouble if I don’t have any sweet?’ she asked, almost cheerfully.
‘Shocking trouble.’
‘Then you had best bring me a wee helping of ice-cream. I’ve always been partial to ice-cream. But not much, please, Nurse.’
When I returned to Jean with her sweet, I took up my story.
‘I wish I could have seen all you nurses rehearsing on your bed,’ she said as she took the last spoonful of ice-cream. ‘No wonder the poor Home Sister was cross!’
Sister appeared at my side. I did not know how long she had been standing behind me. She dismissed me with a brief nod, and smiled at my patient. ‘Well, Miss MacCrombie, and how are you feeling now, my dear?’
In the kitchen, the Staff Nurse was discussing Jean’s condition with Chalmers. ‘I don’t know why that girl is not picking up as she should. Sister and the S.S.O. are getting quite worried about her. Her op went splendidly, and on paper there is nothing at all to hold her up. Yet something is. She doesn’t seem to have any interest in getting well. She is far too passive. She acts as though she has no desire at all to make the effort. I would so like to know what’s bothering her; I’ve tried to find out tactfully, and I know Sister has, too, but we’ve both drawn blanks. She just closes up like a book.’ She noticed me then. ‘Did you get her to take the ice-cream as well, Nurse? Good girl! You ought to be quite pleased with yourself. Miss MacCrombie can be a meal-time problem, as Nurse Chalmers and I know to our cost.’
The next day Sister handed me Jean’s tray again, as if my feeding her was now a matter of course. She ate as well as the day before, and we chatted pleasantly, but not so brightly as on that first day, because Chalmers was feeding the lady in Bed No. 17 and was well within earshot. Chalmers’s presence had a constricting effect on me. When Jean’s lunch was over I returned to Sister, who was serving the main sweet course. She exchanged a glance with Dexter, then handed me another tray. ‘I would like you to see to Mrs. Verity now, Nurse. She likes to take her time, and has a very poor appetite, so let her be as slow as she likes.’
Mrs. Verity occupied the bed next to my friend Mrs. Ellis. She was a very old lady, who had had a major operation that had greatly taxed her strength. She was now recovering very slowly, and, like Jean, she had been too ill for me to do more than exchange smiles with her, and once refill her feeding cup with lemonade. Today she was propped only on two soft pillows. She lay very still. Her beautiful long, white hair had been neatly plaited round her head; her eyes were very blue and shadowed with illness, her skin was white and thin as paper. She greeted me with a smile. When I announced that I had brought her a little minced beef, she seemed pleased. ‘That will be nice, dear. I do not care for chicken. Sister is so good at sending me what I want. I’ll try to take a little.’
At first I did not like to chat with her as I had with Jean, who was around my own age. Mrs. Verity looked so very ill, and old and fragile. I helped her in silence. It was apparent that she had little appetite, and after a very short while she gave her head a shake. ‘No more, thank you, dear.’
‘Perhaps just a tiny bit more?’ I suggested, thinking wildly of some way to help her forget her lack of appetite. Then I remembered my own Granny. There was nothing Granny loved more than a good homely chat, so as I coaxed Mrs. Verity to eat more, I launched into the kind of conversation I usually had with my Granny.
She accepted a drink of milk absently. ‘You must be Nurse Fraser. That nice Mrs. Ellis has told me all about you. She told me how you got all the flowers mixed the very evening she came in. Did you really throw away the Sister’s gladioli by mistake?’
‘Yes, I did!’ I helped her to take more beef. ‘And I wouldn’t like to tell you what the Sister said to me! Not that I blame her; they were lovely gladioli, but I was in such a hurry that I pitched them into the incinerator chute before I realised what I was doing. Since then I’ve been much more careful.’
She accepted a finger of bread-and-butter, and nodded gravely, as I added, ‘I now look at every bloom twice to be on the safe side.’ Again the thought of my own Granny and her love of handing on her items of gossip prompted me to say, ‘Did you ever do awful things like that, Mrs. Verity?’
‘My child, I most certainly did.’ She stopped to think and ate a little more as she thought. ‘I remember once, when I was very young and my mother-in-law visited us unexpectedly, I planned to exhibit my culinary skill and make a famous omelette. My mother-in-law was very partial to egg dishes. I used twelve eggs for the three of us. Just think of that! But I was in such a tizzy that I emptied the bowl of eggs into the rubbish, and was left with a mass of shells and not another egg in the house. My poor husband was so distressed; he had wanted to show off his bride’s cooking. And all I was able to produce was the end of a cold shoulder of mutton!’ Her laughter was soft as a tiny silver bell’s chimes. ‘He never let me forget that omelette.’
I laughed with her, then stood up. ‘Talking of eggs, how about a little egg custard to follow? The kitchen has sent up some lovely, ones. I’m hopeless. Mine always curdle. I can’t think why.’
‘I am not really hungry, dear,’ she said, ‘but if you can bring me a very little custard, you can sit with me and I can tell you how I always made mine. I know I must not keep you talking unless you are working, too. You nurses all have so much to do. I have seen the way you bustle up the ward ‒ as if all the winds of heaven were blowing you on your course.’
When her custard was finished and Sister appeared, we could have no more conversation. Mrs. Verity thanked me as I moved away from her bedside, then turned her serene blue eyes on Sister. ‘Nurse and I have had a merry little chat, Sister. I feel quite young again.’
Later that afternoon, I was working in the bathroom when Sister came in. ‘Nurse Fraser, I have a question to put to you.’
I thought: ‘Oh, dear, now what?’ I asked, ‘Yes, Sister?’
‘Would you oblige me by telling me precisely how you persuaded Mrs. Verity to have a merry little chat at luncheon today? She is not in the habit of talking freely.’
I said, quickly, ‘I hope I did not tire her, Sister.’
‘If you had tired her, Nurse, I would have stopped your conversation,’ was the dry retort. ‘Now perhaps you will be good enough to answer my original question?’
I did not know how to answer; so I told her the truth.
‘You talked to her as if she was your grandmother?’
‘Yes, Siste
r.’ I hesitated. ‘Sort of.’
She looked at me; her expression gave nothing away. ‘Nurse Fraser, are you in the habit of thinking of our patients as either old friends, or members of your family?’
I was sure I was going to meet with her disapproval but there seemed no point in pretence. ‘Yes, Sister. You see, I ‒ er ‒ keep forgetting they are ill and think of them as just people. I’m awfully sorry.’
Sister said, ‘Nurse, when I want an apology from you, I will demand one. Rest assured of that.’ She actually smiled. ‘I do not feel you have any cause to apologise this afternoon for anything but the state of your hair. Are those curls natural?’
I said weakly, ‘Yes, Sister.’ I could not believe my ears.
The smile remained on her pretty plump face. ‘Then I suppose I shall just have to endure the sight of them! I have noticed that you are now able to control your cap, Nurse Fraser. I think that may give us reason to hope that in the fullness of time you will also learn to control your curls and your habit of rushing up the ward “as if all the winds of Heaven were blowing you on your course”.’ She walked out of the bathroom.
Jill was incredulous when I told her what had happened. ‘Sister really smiled at you, Sue? And teased you about your hair?’
‘She did. She honestly did. I am basking in the sunshine of Sister Catherine’s smile.’
Jill said she wished she felt as cheerful as I sounded. ‘I’ve got to do the dressings with Chalmers this evening, and that means that she’ll get crosser and crosser as the evening progresses, because she is so quick and I just can’t keep up with her, and she doesn’t hold with helping the slow.’ Her slightly anxious face relaxed in a smile. ‘Unless the slow is Thomas. He came in while you were doing the bathrooms this afternoon. Just before I went off. He could only come into the flat as the ward was closed. He said he had lost his stethoscope and thought he might have left it here. Chalmers came up when he was asking me, and, of course, had to know what Mr. Dillon wanted. She listened to him with the sweetest of smiles, and then pottered off with him to the clinical-room and hunted in there, exactly as if she were looking for the needle in the haystack. I tell you, Sue, she even had the dirty linen out! And she was supposed to be in a hurry! As if he couldn’t have looked for himself ‒ if he really had lost it.’
I turned from my shelf to look at her. She had an odd, enigmatical little smile on her face. I asked, ‘Well, hadn’t he?’
She looked at me, and her eyes shone with laughter. ‘Not unless he owns two. He had his jacket open and his hands in his pockets when he first spoke to me, and there, sitting in one of the inside pockets of his jacket, exactly at my eye level, I saw the two ear bits of a stethoscope. So I didn’t waste much energy in the search. Now what do you make of that, Sue?’
I shook my head. ‘It doesn’t make sense to me. Why would he do that?’
The same odd little smile appeared on Jill’s face again. ‘I’m not quite sure. I’ve got a few theories. I’m hot on my detecting line again. I’ll let you know when I’ve come to a conclusion.’
Sister appeared at the splint cupboard door. ‘It is high time you nurses finished in here and got on with your other work. Nurse Fraser, when you make up the beds of the up-patients taking baths, will you make the beds with clean linen, and save the night nurses having to do those few beds in the morning?’
There were only four patients fit to use the bathroom that night. As we had seven bathrooms in the annexe at the end of the ward, this meant there would be no delay caused by waiting. I told the four ladies concerned that I was going to prepare the bathrooms for them and would come back to fetch them when the baths were drawn. Then I collected a wheel-chair and trundled it on to the annexe and the airing cupboard where I planned to use it to carry the clean bed linen that I would need. Sister was always telling me to let my head save my feet, and I felt positively smug to think that for once I had remembered this of my own accord. I left the wheelchair outside each of the four bathrooms in turn while I closed their windows, laid out bath mats and turned on the taps. Then, still feeling enchanted with my new found efficiency, I pushed on to the airing cupboard. I took out the sheets and under-blankets, and was counting pillowslips when I thought I heard someone call my name. I stood still and listened. Surely I was not hearing right? I must have been imagining that I heard a male voice hissing my name in a loud stage whisper; no men were permitted in this annexe when the ward was closed at this time of the evening. I returned to counting the pillowslips.
‘Nurse Fraser!’ There was now no mistake. I heard the whisper clearly. ‘Over here. Third window on the left of the fire-escape door.’
I spun round, clutching a bundle of pillowslips. The fire-escape door was directly behind me and, framed in the third window on its left, I saw and recognised the owner of the voice. Mark Jonathan had pushed the bottom sash of the window up about a foot and smiled at me as he rested his chin on the ledge. ‘Good show! You’ve spotted me. And good evening!’
I waved him back frantically. ‘What do you think you’re doing? Go away! You can’t come in here.’
He ignored my protestations, pushed the window up still farther to allow his head more room. ‘Nurse Fraser, be a good soul and pipe down. I want to ask you a favour.’
I advanced a couple of steps towards the window. ‘You can’t ask me a favour now. Please go away. Ask me some other time.’
‘No time like the present, dear Nurse. We want you to do us that favour right now.’
His face disappeared from the window and he seemed to be talking to someone below him on the fire-escape. Then his face reappeared. ‘Old Tom says there’s no time like the present, either; particularly as it is now coming on to rain good and hard. Look here, all we want you to do is to nip down your back stairs to the Path Lab that’s directly underneath this annexe and open their fire-escape door for us, will you? Some lunatic has locked it, and we can’t get in.’
‘Nip down and open ‒ What in the world for?’
‘For Tom and me,’ he replied patiently. ‘We’re getting wet out here.’
‘But why must you creep up fire-escapes? Why not go down and use the front entrance?’
‘Because we want to get into the Lab. Hang on,’ he repeated as he removed his head once again. When he reappeared he had another message to hand on. ‘Tom says he hates to rush you, but could you get a move on as he’s getting cramp? I’m sitting on his shoulders, dear Nurse. Come now, you know Tom ‒ Tom Dillon? Well, though he’s no fragile creature, he is feeling the strain slightly. You’d feel the strain, now wouldn’t you, if I were sitting on your shoulders?’
‘But why are you sitting on him?’ I demanded. ‘Aren’t you standing on the escape staircase?’
‘If you’ll look out and see for yourself, dear girl,’ he said, ‘you will note that the escape stairway goes to the right of your door, and not the left. You will also note that it is lighted. If we were standing on the stairs, Sister Catherine would be bound to spot us. We’re on some sort of buttress affair.’
I took another step towards his window and peered over his head. I could see nothing as it was dark and now raining fairly heavily, as he had said.
‘But why do you want the Lab escape door open?’
‘Oh, deary me!’ He sighed sadly. ‘This is where we came in. We want to get into the Lab because the chaps have bet us we won’t get into the building on this side tonight without using the ward escape doors. They forgot the Lab was on this side of the building. So could you get a move on, dear, kind Nurse Fraser? And by the way,’ he added cheerfully, ‘your roof must be porous. The rain’s coming in somewhere. That’s quite a flood I see rising in your corridor.’
‘Flood? Oh, no! My baths! I forgot they’ve been on all this time!’
I rushed away from him, leaving him with his mouth wide open in amazement. There was ‘quite a flood’ in the corridor. There was more than that in each of the four bathrooms when I hastily and belatedly turned off the tap
s and pulled out the bath plugs. For one horror-struck moment I surveyed the scene. Then I took a deep breath, dried my hands, stepped gingerly through the flood, and went into the ward. Sister returned with me. At the entrance to the annexe she hesitated momentarily. Then she recovered herself and repeated the questions she had already asked me. ‘You say you left all the taps full on, Nurse?’
‘Yes, Sister.’ I was hollow with misery.
‘You simply forgot they were on?’
‘Yes, Sister.’
‘What were you doing to forget them?’ Her voice was far colder than the rain outside.
‘I don’t know, Sister. Getting out clean linen.’
‘I must tell you, Nurse Fraser, that never in all my years at St. Joseph’s have I been called upon to witness such a disgraceful occurrence. Do you appreciate how much heat and water you have wasted? Do you realise the damage this may have done ‒ or yet do ‒ to the ceiling below? You may not be aware that the Laboratory lies directly beneath this annexe,’ she added with unconscious irony, ‘so allow me to inform you that it does. If that ceiling has been damaged you will cause a considerable amount of inconvenience and expense to the whole hospital. You will also ‒’ she looked severely at me ‒ ‘have to go to Matron to apologise and explain your conduct. What Matron will see fit to do in the circumstances I would not care to say.’ Her expression froze still more as she looked beyond me to the fire-escape door. ‘Is that someone knocking? Is someone thinking of entering my ward at this hour and by this means? Open it at once, Nurse!’
Before I had time to obey her, the latch of the door clicked and the door was pushed slowly open. Sister and I stood transfixed with amazement as two damp figures, one very large, the other not quite so broad, stepped into the annexe corridor and closed the door on the rainy night I closed my eyes. The appearance of the two young men now was going to seal my fate. Matron would be sure to hear that all this had come about because I had been wasting time talking to students on duty. With this last added to everything else, I was certain that she would dismiss me from the hospital.
The Fair Wind: A moving 1950s hospital romance (The Anniversary Collection Book 6) Page 5
