He rubbed his face, running his fingers through his hair, looking at her with indecision in his eyes.
‘You – are you trying to tell me it’s finished, Harriet? That you won’t be seeing him again?’
Bleakly, she nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s finished. It’s got to be – I can’t cope any more –’
‘Harriet –’ his voice seemed to be pulled from him. ‘You asked me if I still cared for you. And I said I did, and I mean it. But – but I can’t just pick things up where we left off. I love you – too much for that. Can you understand that, Harriet? I’ll always care for you – not always as now, perhaps, not always with a – with a pain. But I always will care. But it’s too late, Harriet –’
‘Too late?’ she stared at him stupidly.
‘I wanted to marry you, once, Harriet – wanted it more than anything in the world. But what I want from marriage, what I’ve got to give – we couldn’t have together, not now. Whatever has happened between you and Weston has – spoiled things. I’d never be able to make you happy now, Harriet. And – and you couldn’t make me happy. He’d always be there, you see. I – I could never be sure I wasn’t second best, never be certain you’d married me because I was me, or whether I was just – just a bolthole for you. And I’m not the sort of man to settle for second best. Even with you. Forgive me, Harriet, and try to understand. I do love you – if you can believe that. But it’s too late –’
She closed her eyes against the sick pain in her, against the surge of hurt that welled up, and nodded heavily.
‘I – forgive me, Paul,’ she said ‘Forgive me. I – it was an insult. I should have known better. But – you caught me at a bad moment. I hadn’t had time to think. Forgive me.’
He put his hand out impulsively, tried to take hers, but she pulled back. ‘Oh, God, Harriet – maybe I’m wrong? – I don’t know. Maybe it isn’t too late? –’
But she stood up, pulling her cape around her.
‘No, Paul. You were right the first time. It is too late. Goodbye, Paul –’ she stood for a second looking down at him, at his unhappy face and slumped shoulders, then touched his cheek gently. ‘Goodbye, Paul,’ she said gently. ‘Be happy, my dear.’
And she turned and went, ran across the garden to the Home, leaving him sitting in the bright May sunshine, his hair blowing a little in the morning breeze, sitting still on a bench under a green tree.
Chapter Fourteen
Sally came to her room at lunchtime, peering anxiously round the door to see her lying on her bed, still in uniform, as she had lain ever since she had left Paul in the garden.
Sally pushed her to one side and sat beside her to look down at the white face on the counterpane with a thin smile.
‘Well?’ she said.
Harriet looked at her, and managed a smile herself.
‘Well,’ she repeated.
‘So, what’s happened? Have you see Gregory about Tod – I mean, Davey?’
Harriet nodded bleakly. ‘I’ve seen him,’ she said, and told Sally everything, past thinking about her pride, past anything, except the need to pour out her distress at someone’s feet. And she told her why Gregory had asked her to wait, what had happened to his marriage with Davey’s mother.
Sally listened in silence, and when Harriet stopped talking, stirred slightly, reaching in her pocket for a packet of cigarettes.
‘I think I can understand up to a point,’ she said slowly, watching the thin grey smoke curling from the cigarette she lit. ‘Once the seven years were up, once he could feel free, he’d have been able to start – fresh – again. But why give up now? I mean, he is free – really free. Even after the seven years were up, even if the court had presumed her dead and said he was free to marry again, there would have been a chance she’d turn up again. But this way, it’s all right. She’s dead.’
‘I – think it’s because I’ve found out by myself.’ Harriet said painfully. ‘I’ve become involved with Susan, this way. So I’m as much a part of his misery over her, as much a part of his sense of failure with her as – as she was herself. He wants no part of me now because I’m tied up with Susan in his mind, and – and he feels he won’t be able to make me happy because he couldn’t make her happy.’
‘For God’s sake, Harriet! What’s the matter with the man?’ Sally said irritably. ‘All right – so his first wife was nearly a nymphomaniac – does that mean every other woman is, that you are?’
‘Don’t –’ Harriet closed her eyes, tried to close her ears against Sally. ‘Don’t –’
‘Mincing words doesn’t help,’ Sally said briskly. ‘That’s what she was, wasn’t she? Admit it – and Gregory should admit it too –’ she stopped short, and then said wonderingly. ‘There’s one odd thing, you know.’
‘What?’ Harriet muttered, not caring much.
‘Well, if she was – like that – why did she live as she did these last years? You say Mrs Ross told you she had no friends – never went anywhere. It doesn’t sound very logical, does it? She wasn’t the sort of woman to live the life of a celibate –’
‘Christ, don’t ask me,’ Harriet said with sudden violence. ‘How can I know? How can anyone know? Perhaps it was because of Davey that she changed, perhaps because this other man – Brooks – left her in the cart. Who knows? She might have loved Brooks – might have changed because he abandoned her. No one will ever know – and I don’t want to. I don’t want to think about her again.’
There was a long silence, then Sally said, ‘What happens now? About Davey?’
‘He’s going down to Devonshire – Sybil’s going to foster him.’
‘Good for Sybil. Does she know about the story?’
‘Not yet. I’m taking him down there the day after tomorrow. I’ll tell her then.’
‘And what about Gregory? I mean, is he going to – to take any interest in the child? He must be concerned about him. Why else did he buy those clothes?’
Harriet shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t even mention the business of the clothes to him when I talked to him last night. There’s no – legal reason for him to be concerned. The child isn’t his –’
‘No – but he is his wife’s child.’
‘I – I suppose I’ll have to ask him. I haven’t told them – Dr Bennett, or the Children’s Officer – about the relationship between Gregory and Davey’s mother, and there’s no reason why I should, or why they’d ever find out. Even though she gave Davey the second name of Weston, it’s not too uncommon a name. No reason why anyone should ever connect Gregory with the whole mess at all.’
‘But you’ll talk to him about it?’ Sally persisted.
‘I’ll – I’ll probably write a letter. It’ll be easier that way. He – said last night he – wouldn’t see me again. I suppose he’ll refuse that job here, and go on somewhere else.’
‘Always on the run,’ Sally said softly, and stood up. ‘What about you, now, Harriet? What will you do?’
Harriet sat up, and ran her fingers through her tousled hair. ‘I haven’t thought about it yet,’ she said wearily. ‘Stay on here, I suppose. I’ve got a good job – and friends,’ she smiled up tremulously at Sally, ‘and I’ll settle for that.’
‘There’s still Paul –’ Sally began, but Harriet shook her head violently. ‘No – not any more. I – I’ll tell you about that some time – not now. I’m too tired, Sal. But Paul is – finished with me.’
And wisely, Sally said no more.
Harriet slept for most of the remainder of the day, tossing heavily, later to lie awake for the greater part of the night, her thoughts chasing each other through her head with sick monotony. But she was beyond constructive thought, unable to see her way clear, however hard she tried.
‘I’ll see Davey settled,’ she promised herself in the cold light of dawn, when she got up, finally giving up any attempts at more sleep. ‘I’ll see Davey settled, and then just – see what happens.’
She spent the next day
on duty working with automatic precision, going through the motions of showing interest in what she was doing, grateful that Davey slept for most of the day, removed from stress as he was by the tranquillising drugs Dr Bennett had ordered for him. She took no off duty that day, staying in her office to make lists and write down all the information the relief sister would need to run the ward during her absence in Devonshire. She sent most of the nurses off duty early, leaving the ward to the care of herself and one junior as the day came to a weary end at last.
It was half an hour before the night staff were due on duty, when she was sitting beside the bed of one restless child who had had an eye operation that day, that the ’phone rang shrilly in her office. The junior hurried to answer it, and came out to Harriet breathlessly when she had hung up.
‘There’s a child coming up from Cas, Sister,’ she reported importantly. ‘Sister there says he’s got a – a laryngeal obstruction – and could you get a steam tent ready for him, and Mr Weston’ll be up to see him right away –’
As she hurriedly prepared a cubicle for the emergency, sending the junior to get steam kettles, arranging the bed and the tent, checking oxygen cylinders, Harriet found her hands shaking. She had forgotten the possibility that they would meet on duty like this, but she reminded herself that this was work, that this child on his way would be the only point of contact between them. There would be no need for any personal talk, she told herself, almost in panic.
The big double doors swung open, and the trolley from Casualty came through it, a porter at the foot, Gregory at the head, holding onto the child on it.
Harriet could hear the harsh whooping of the child’s breathing, could see the red bhnkets that covered him heaving as the small body struggled for breath. With the smooth speed of long practice, she helped the porter bring the trolley to the side of the bed in the prepared cubicle, gently helped Gregory lift the child on to the bed, and stood for a moment looking down at the face on the white pillows. His grey eyes were staring, tears running from them, down the grimacing face to the drawn back lips, lips blue with lack of oxygen, and his brown hair was sticking to the sweating forehead in pathetic wisps.
Together, she and Gregory straightened the straining body in the bed, arranged the steam kettles so that the tent of sheets that had been erected over the head of the cot filled with the damp greyness of steam.
But it made no difference. The horrible whooping went on, the harsh sound of air struggling to pass whatever obstruction was nearly closing his air passages filling the small cubicle with sound, so that Harriet felt her own lungs constrict, seemed to feel as though she were herself choking, found herself breathing deeply in an impotent effort to breathe for the ill child in the steam tent.
‘It can’t be an infective oedema –’ Gregory muttered. ‘I haven’t been able to look properly – the child’s too ill. It must be a foreign body –’
‘Tracheotomy?’ Harriet asked quickly, and Gregory nodded.
She flew to the sterilising room, to grab the tray that was always ready set up for just such emergencies as these, and hurried back up the ward to the cubicle as though all the hounds of hell were after her.
Gregory was bending over the child, his face white, and for a moment Harriet couldn’t think what had happened. Then, she realised. The sound had stopped. The whooping, that had filled their ears had gone, and the child was stretched rigid on the bed, his eyes wide, his face an ominous blue.
‘It must have moved,’ Gregory said desperately. ‘The obstruction’s complete – I only hope it’s above laryngeal level –’
Swiftly, Harriet shoved the sandbag that was part of the tray she was carrying under the thin neck, a neck now rigid with engorged blood vessels, and held onto the child’s shoulders as Gregory pulled the cover from the tray, and grabbed the gleaming scalpel that lay nested in a piece of gauze on it.
‘Here goes,’ he muttered, and with steady fingers, gently set the edge of the knife on the blue skin at the base of the throat. Smoothly, he put pressure on the knife, and the edge split the straining skin so that it parted, probed deeper, opening a channel straight into the child’s windpipe.
Blood oozed onto the skin, running in purplish streaks down over Harriet’s hands on the small shoulders, and then, as Harriet and Gregory held their own breaths in agonising tension, there was a hissing whistle as the air entered the small incision.
‘Thank God,’ he said. ‘Thank God – it’s above laryngeal level –’ and he reached for the narrow silver tube on the tray. Gently he eased the curving section of the tracheotomy tube into the incision, and pushed the inner tube in, making a clear hole through which air could enter. And slowly, the child’s face lost its blueness, slowly the narrow chest began to heave as the lungs again filled and emptied with air.
With fingers shaking a little, Harriet threaded tapes through the narrow slits at the edge of the tube, tied them carefully round the thin neck, arranged gauze under the edges so that the delicate skin wouldn’t be hurt by the rigid metal, and then straightened her back to look down on the child.
His eyes were closed now, his face smooth again, the look of fear gone as his body greedily took in air, his skin gradually showing a more normal colour.
There was a soft rattle at the door as an anaesthetist came in, pulling his big anaesthetic machine behind him.
‘Casualty told me about this kid.’ His voice sounded oddly loud in the small room. ‘What gives, Weston?’
‘Foreign body,’ Gregory said crisply. ‘I’ve done a tracheotomy. You’re a bit late –’
The anaesthetist grinned cheerfully. ‘Wouldn’t you know it? Dragged this thing right from the theatres like a carthorse, and now you don’t want it –’
‘Yes I do,’ Gregory said with decision. ‘I’m going to find this obstruction right now and get it out before it moves any further. You game?’
‘Sure –’ The anaesthetist pulled his machine to the side of the bed, and began to check the cylinders. ‘Fire away –’
‘Got the gear, Sister?’ Gregory didn’t look at her, turning instead to the washbasin in the corner to scrub his hands.
‘Yes sir,’ Harriet said. ‘I’ll get it –’
As she rapidly laid a trolley in the sterilising room, putting out the special long forceps that would be needed, the mouthgag and tongue holders, Harriet found her head spinning, a combination of fatigue and tension making her whole body ache. But she pushed the trolley into the cubicle with strong arms, scrubbed her own hands steadily as the anaesthetist carefully connected his anaesthetic tubing to the tracheostomy tube in the child’s throat.
‘He’s ready,’ the anaesthetist’s voice seemed to Harriet to come from a great distance, as she stood beside the bed, facing Gregory across it.
‘Right.’ Carefully, Gregory set a mouthgag in position, holding the child’s jaws wide, clipped the tongue holders on, jerking his head at Harriet to take the handle from him, to keep the tongue out of the way as he worked.
Then he went behind the bed, to bend forward to peer deep into the child’s mouth, gently easing the blade of the big laryngoscope Harriet gave him with her other hand into the small throat. The little bulb on the laryngoscope lit the mouth redly, gleaming on the small milk teeth, and then Gregory grunted in satisfaction.
‘I can see it – forceps, Sister –’
She slapped the long handled forceps into his hand, and moving his fingers with the careful precision of a machine, Gregory probed, tensely clipping the forceps closed on the still invisible object that was blocking the child’s larynx.
‘Got it!’ he said triumphantly, and carefully eased the forceps up and out.
‘A marble!’ the anaesthetist peered at it, and laughed loudly.
‘Little devil – a marble! And a king marble at that!’
The big round marble glinted gaily in the teeth of the forceps, the light swirling prettily on the gaudy red and blue glass, and Harriet laughed shakily too.
‘T
hey will do it,’ she said, her voice cracking a little. ‘They will do it –’
Gregory’s voice seemed to come from a great distance as the light in the cubicle began to swirl in front of Harriet’s eyes just as the gaily coloured marble had swirled before.
‘I’ll leave the tracheotomy patient for tonight, Sister – there’ll probably be oedema, and we don’t want to take any chances. Give him a massive dose of penicillin to avoid any sepsis, and I’ll see about closing the incision in the morning. He’ll need a special nurse, and frequent suction on the tracheotomy tube –’
‘They will do it,’ Harriet said again stupidly. ‘Tell children not to put things in their mouths, and they will do it – marbles are dangerous – they will do it –’
And then the light swirled more brightly than ever reddening in sickening circles to disappear in a grateful black wave.
Chapter Fifteen
When she opened her eyes, she was lying on the couch in the dressing cubicle, and she stared round her stupidly, plucking at her collar which was open, aware of the looseness of her belt, which someone had undone.
‘The child –’ she said, suddenly remembering. ‘The child –’ and she tried to sit up.
‘It’s all right,’ Gregory’s voice pulled her eyes round, to where he was standing at the head of the couch. ‘The night staff are here, so you’re off duty now. He’s all right –’
She sat up, her head still spinning a little. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I beg your pardon. I – can’t think what happened –’
‘You fainted.’ His voice was strained. ‘Have you been eating properly?’
‘I –’ she looked up at him, and then dropped her eyes. ‘No – I suppose not. Stupid of me.’
‘I haven’t been eating much either.’ He said, and came round the couch to sit beside her. ‘Harriet – this was my fault, wasn’t it?’
Children's Ward Page 13
