The Nurse Novel

by Alice Brennan

  “Ah, that reminds me,” Jacques replied as he signed his chit. “I have a pair for the fights tonight and cannot go. Can you use them?”

  “You bet,” the bartender quickly answered.

  Jacques looked in his wallet and found no tickets. Then he searched the pockets of his jacket, also unsuccessfully, and finally found them in his right-hand pants pocket encased in a roll of bills.

  “Frenchmen are methodical,” he said as he placed them on the bar. “But not me about tickets and notes. I put them in any pocket and then I can never find them… Well, have a good time…” and he walked over to the cocktail table by the southern window.

  * * * *

  The moment that Alice had expected had now arrived and Morgan asked her to dinner.

  “I’d love to, if you don’t mind cutting it short. I have to be at the hospital early.”

  She had wanted to suggest they go dutch, but she knew he wouldn’t allow it. Later, she would return the invitation—she would ask him to dinner at the apartment on Seventy-ninth Street with Patricia. Patricia should have a beau.

  “Let’s,” she said, “eat right here at the club. And then I’ll go home.”

  “No. We’ll eat at a better place. This is a celebration. I’ve just met you.”

  And then Jacques Stern came to their table.

  Morgan O’Neill looked at him with what surely could not be taken for pleasure.

  Alice looked at him and her heart fluttered (“It actually fluttered,” she later told Patricia—“after all, it is psychologically and physiologically possible”) and something seemed to tighten in her throat. Jacques Stern was unquestionably the most attractive man she had ever seen.

  “Please forgive me for intruding on you and your charming companion,” Jacques said. “But we have three for bridge tonight and we need a fourth. Perhaps the two of you would join us and we could cut in? You play bridge, Miss…?”

  There was nothing to do about it. Morgan made the introductions. “But,” he added firmly, “we can’t join you. We have an appointment. And anyhow Miss Smith has to report for duty early tomorrow.”

  “That is a pity. Our bridge table would have been graced.” Jacques flicked a white linen handkerchief from his breast and dabbed at his mustache, and a calling card fluttered onto the table.

  “Forgive me,” he said. “It is always so with me. Cards, notes to myself, tickets… I stuff them in any which pocket and I lose them. I was just saying so to the bartender. I promised him two tickets to a prize fight and then nearly couldn’t find them.”

  Jacques picked up the card with a smile of apology, peered at it, and read aloud:

  JAN VAN DER MEER

  47 West 47th Street

  Diamonds—Precious Stones

  “Ah, yes. I am trying to assemble a necklace. For my sister,” Jacques added pointedly to Alice. “Do you know Mr. Van der Meer?” he asked Morgan. “He’s a member of the club, but comes very rarely.”

  “No. I don’t know him,” Morgan said.

  “What do you mean ‘assemble’ a necklace?” Alice asked, quite fascinated. “I thought you just bought one.”

  “Oh, no, you should pick the stones so they match. You see, my sister has an important birthday coming up. Her thirtieth. She is going to admit this one. Actually, between us, it is thirty-three. But I am giving her a necklace of thirty diamonds and that will make it official for her.

  “You can do much better, you know, on Forty-seventh Street than by going to the bigger jewelers on Fifth Avenue. They are for the plush, the swank. They have to pay all that overhead, all that inventory. Women like the names of the great jewelers and the beautiful cases in which even minor jewels come, but my sister will get diamonds just as good without the case. I shall give them to her with a bouquet of yellow roses—my favorite flowers. You like yellow roses, Miss Smith? But, of course, who doesn’t? And I shall pay less. That is the businessman in me. Besides, I have an interest in jewelry. It is one of my many weaknesses. I thought I should like to call on Mr. Van der Meer, whose card was given me by a friend. I have some interests in Amsterdam and perhaps I could go into stones, too. It would be exciting, hein? And profitable too, perhaps. I am sorry you do not know him, Mr. O’Neill, for you might have given me some advice—if I do not presume too much.”

  He sure can rattle on, Morgan thought, but all he’s doing is treading water in order to impress Alice. Curtly he answered, “It’s not the kind of advice I could give. And anyhow I don’t even know the gentleman.”

  “Well, remember the name. Van der Meer. Like the painter. I shall go and see him tomorrow and because you have been so courteous I shall tell you about the visit. You, too, may want a necklace or a ring sometime and perhaps I could be of help. For I am really searching for a partnership in a diamond concern. Industrials, as well. But please forgive me for rattling on so…”

  The man, Morgan thought, is not only trying to steal my girl, he’s reading my mind.

  “…it is a failing of the French. I am not selling anything, although I sound like it. So sorry we couldn’t play cards. I am very happy to have met you, Miss Smith. And excuse me again for intruding, O’Neill.”

  And he left them, kissing Alice’s hand.

  Alice, titillated, was almost out of her mind.

  Morgan, irritated, was almost in a temper. “We shall now go,” he said in a firm lieutenant commander’s voice that brought her quickly back to earth, “to The Pub.”

  Alice gasped meekly at the name of the world-famous restaurant and excused herself to go to the ladies’ room for the ritualistic nose-powdering.

  Morgan, scowling, asked the bartender to bring him another martini.

  * * * *

  The Pub is a myth, larded with legend and built with an extraordinary apperception of good business and human frailties, the chief of which is vanity. It is a restaurant, terribly uncomfortable and overcrowded, unless you are in a private room, in which case it is unctuous and subtly condescending.

  In any restaurant a headwaiter bows not to the customer but to the wallet in his pocket, and The Pub follows this wise custom also. But in The Pub the fact is that the headwaiters, and the doorman, too, are richer than two-thirds of their patrons. Their great virtue is loyalty, although it must be recognized that loyalty can be misplaced and therefore become no virtue at all. But they are loyal to old patrons—even those who are not rich, although no one is poor who goes to The Pub. The old patrons are those who knew the proprietors when they were on Forty-ninth Street and before they bought the swank houses on West Fifty-sixth Street.

  The old customers do not bother—but the tourists do—to go downstairs to the cellars where the booze was stored in Prohibition days. The cellar is at first sight empty (this was for the benefit of the cops) but there is a whitewashed brick wall, and a lady’s hairpin in one of its pockmarks is all that is necessary to open a vault that would do credit to the Chase Manhattan Bank. Therein one finds one of the best cellars in America—a veritable museum of wines, liqueurs, and spirits. It is properly impressive.

  The food at The Pub is rich, heavy, and of course expensive. There are, it seems, myriad dining rooms, including private and what one might term semiprivate. But there are only two that count: the downstairs one where the bar is and the front one upstairs. To be seated elsewhere means you don’t count, but the thousands of persons to whom The Pub is legend do not know this, and the lesser rooms are always filled.

  By a marvelous innate sense of public relations, by an incredible ability to remember the names and foibles of customers who may come there but one week of the year, by their willingness and success in producing “hard tickets” for the most popular shows, the proprietors of The Pub have made themselves indispensable to a sizable and choice group of United States restaurant-goers.

  It is the place to take an out-of-town guest; it enjoys the same kin
d of world-wide reputation as, say, La Tour d’Argent in Paris, to which it bears spiritual kinship. No Hollywood star or producer would dream of visiting New York without being seen at The Pub. It is a Mecca and it was one to which Alice had never made a pilgrimage.

  It was evident that her companion rated. The headwaiter showed them to a good table and one of the proprietors passing by slapped him on the shoulder and called him “Morgie.” Alice let him order as she relaxed in unashamed admiration of the elegant place and its elegant customers.

  “This is quite a spot for a farmer’s daughter from Alexanderville, New York,” she said. “They knew what they were saying when they coined the phrase ‘Join the Navy and see the world.’ But I don’t see any celebrities.”

  “Well, it’s too early for movie stars, if that’s what you mean, and too late for the Broadway crowd. But there are quite a few important people around here. That grizzled man over there in the maroon shirt and white tie owns one of our biggest newspaper empires. And just beyond him, that man with horn-rimmed glasses who is cupping his ear because he is somewhat deaf, is an important movie producer who has won two, maybe three, Oscars.”

  “I think it’s all wonderful and I’m impressed with ONI’s knowledge. And speaking of that, who is Mr. Jacques Stern?”

  Alice knew when she asked the question that she would provoke the classic “shade of annoyance” that crossed Morgan’s face, but nonetheless she had to ask.

  “You found him pretty attractive, didn’t you?”

  “Frankly, yes. Don’t you, too—really?”

  “Oh, sure. But I thought you were sort of my discovery for the evening, so why should I welcome Mr. Stern? And, incidentally, I’d bet you that if we’d accepted his bridge invitation he would have had to run around like crazy to find a fourth, let alone a fifth.”

  “I think it’s sort of cute,” said Alice, giggling despite herself.

  “It’s cute all right. I don’t really know much about Stern. He’s in perfume, I think, and some other export-import enterprises. He’s popular all right, and I guess he plays the field. Come to think of it, I’ve never seen him bring a girl to the club. I’ve played bridge with him a few times and he’s good. Do you want me to find out something about him?”

  “Oh, certainly not,” Alice dismissed the question easily, feeling somehow sure she would have an opportunity to do some investigation of her own.

  And for the rest of the evening, eating a delicious dinner, she occupied herself with Morgan, knowing she had been rude to show interest in another man when it was he, Morgan, who was her host and he, Morgan, who after all—no matter what he or she said—had indeed picked her up.

  He took her home in a taxi and he did not try to kiss her.

  At the foot of Seventy-ninth Street, as Alice got out of the cab, she said, “I want you to meet Pat sometime. My roommate. You’ll like her. Perhaps you’d come to dinner? We don’t do as well as The Pub, but we’ll do our best.”

  “I’d love to and I’d love to meet Pat. But you know it’s you I’d like to see again.”

  “That’s nice of you, Morgan, and thank you for a lovely evening.” She kissed him lightly on the cheek (too sisterly?) and ran inside the building.

  I didn’t even give him my telephone number, she thought. But ONI—he’ll find it if he wants.

  But he already had it. The addresses and telephone numbers of all Pantheon Club members were registered at the desk. When Alice had gone to the ladies’ room before departing for The Pub, Morgan O’Neill had simply asked for, and been given, it. He didn’t even have to pull rank. All Navy Intelligence jobs are not difficult.

  * * * *

  Pat was reading on the couch in the living room. The apartment consisted of this room, two small bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen that, like the bathroom, would admit only one. Like everybody in New York, the two of them were somewhat strapped for closet space, but they made out. Anyhow, they had few clothes and, being the same size, they swapped. Pat, as a matter of fact, was now wearing a pink negligee of Alice’s.

  Pat was a redhead with large green eyes that seemed flecked with tobacco. Her skin was also flecked—with freckles—and it made her look adorable. The negligee on anybody else of the same coloration would have looked awful. It seemed just right on Pat.

  “You look as if you’d just won the Irish sweepstakes,” Pat said as Alice, eyes dancing, feet prancing, almost leaped into the room.

  “Maybe I have. I think I’ve snagged us two beaux. Yours just brought me home. He’s Naval Intelligence. Handsome guy.”

  “He brought you home but he’s my beau? Something’s wrong here. What happened to the other one? Or, maybe I should say, what’s happening?”

  Alice told her story, concluding lamely, “Of course, I don’t know about Jacques. I just feel he’ll call or I’ll see him again at the Pantheon. He goes there often, Morgan says. By the way, I’ve invited Morgan to dinner soon.”

  “That’s great. And who’ll be feeding Jacques?”

  “A girl can hope… What happened at the hospital today?”

  “Oh, nothing much. We’re all overworked these days. It wasn’t really an emergency, but they did ask me to stay, and I was glad to. I knew you wouldn’t mind.”

  And so they talked about their hospitals and particularly about a sudden strike of nonprofessional workers that was hurting Pat’s hospital and putting an extra burden on the nurses. Until Pat said, “Hey, it’s getting late. Let’s get to bed. And if you want to dream about the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, okay. But don’t forget it’s a subway you’re taking tomorrow.”

  Alice fell into a profound and undisturbed slumber. She woke at five-thirty, a half hour before the alarm was set. She took her nap and this time she did dream. She was atop the Eiffel Tower and Jacques was saying, “Over there at the top of the hill is Montmartre, where the night clubs are, and those white domes are the Sacré Coeur, and down there along the river…”

  And then the alarm did ring.

  CHAPTER 2

  Most Navy nurses lived in St. Albans, but the hospital was overcrowded this year and Alice had been given permission to live in Manhattan. She had just completed her indoctrination course and was doing general duty while awaiting a definite assignment which might be anywhere in the world. How longingly she had thought of Hawaii, or Japan—was there anything more romantic than the name Yokosuka, Japan? Or Nice, in France, where, also, there was a Navy hospital? And if Nice, then maybe Jacques. For Jacques was in her mind this morning as much as he had been the night before, and it gave her a warm and wonderful feeling and an equally delicious feeling of slight unfaithfulness to Morgan.

  All of which, she finally reasoned over her second cup of coffee, was nonsense. Morgan had only been nice to a lonely girl and Jacques would probably never think of her again.

  What she had to do was take a crosstown bus to Lexington Avenue, then change buses to get down to Fifty-third Street. There an E or F subway train would take her to 168th Street, Jamaica; and then another bus would take her up Van Wyck Boulevard to St. Albans. That was what Alice Smith, Navy nurse, had to do and that is what she did.

  St. Albans is not a particularly beautiful building like, for example, the wonderful Bethesda Hospital in Maryland. It is built of yellow brick—practical and economical, no doubt, but not the most pleasing aesthetically. Still it always gave Alice a thrill to enter its gateway—two columns surmounted by gold eagles—and to see at her left the heroic white statue of the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima.

  Alice was given floor duty that day—that is, she was assigned to no particular case but was supposed to keep an eye on all the patients on her floor.

  There was Mrs. Ardley Ardleigh, the wife of a rear admiral, who in Alice’s opinion suffered from nothing but self-interest. She was as magnificently wealthy as she was parsimonious. She should not really have been taking u
p the time of a Navy hospital, but this was peacetime and Mrs. Ardleigh knew a lot of people in Washington and it was unwise to cross her. Her demands were constant, but Alice maintained her composure. The old harridan was simply to be pitied.

  Alice’s other patients were less trouble and more legitimate. She had two enlisted men and one ensign recovering from surgery, one Marine recovering from a brawl (“But the other guys are in worse shape than me,” he had grinned), and one darling girl, married less than a year, who was undergoing tests for suspected Parkinson’s disease and was scared to death.

  Alice bathed her three surgical cases, forced food upon them, and comforted and soothed the girl. It was not a taxing day, but she kept busy. St. Albans just now had more nurses than it needed—an unusual situation—but most of them were awaiting reallocation, and when they departed the remaining few would have their hands full. Although you were allowed to, Alice had not put in for any particular station. Let the Fates and the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps decide!

  Almost before she knew it, it was four o’clock and she had completed her eight hours. She retraced her steps past the white statue and the eagle-tipped columns, caught her buses and her subway, and a little after five o’clock was back in her apartment. Awaiting her was a box of flowers. They were yellow roses. She did not have to look at the card to know who had sent them.

  Jacques pursued Alice wittily and charmingly. He did not press. The first time he took her to dinner it was at The Pub, which delighted Alice. Somehow it seemed conspiratorial. The first time he kissed her was on a sight-seeing boat that circled Manhattan Island. It was in full daylight—exactly at noon.

  It was a dear and delightful day and she relived it cherishingly many a time. They met at Pier 83 at the foot of Forty-third Street. She had made a box of sandwiches (“They must be light,” he had said, “something like watercress or cucumber. Nothing to kill the appetite, for we’ll want to eat in a restaurant ashore”). He brought a Thermos of delicious cocktails made of fresh lime juice, Falernum, and Barbancourt rum, the noblest export of the Island of Haiti.