Nurse Jess

by Joyce Dingwell

  In which case she felt that a pre-ten visit, although in civilian clothes, would not be frowned upon, so took herself down the stairs and along the corridor.

  Her baby was in the same cot in the same corner he had shared with the injured hot-rodder. She wondered if young Jill and Jim had married yet...bought a secondhand car... put a deposit on a block of land. Somehow she felt that everything had turned out right for them. Babies were magic, they achieved results that nobody and nothing else could.

  The Foundling, the Perfesser, Master X, whatever it was you chose to call him, was asleep. Jessa looked at the little face that was actually beginning to take shape and felt that familiar stab of love in her heart.

  It was really too bad to call a baby the Perfesser, she decided. One must be young before one grew wise, and it seemed like burdening him before his time.

  And yet, she thought, I can’t call him Master X or the Foundling. To me he is somebody, he has always been somebody, he has always belonged.

  In an inspiration she bent over the bassinet and said aloud, “Hullo, Barry Boy.”

  “Barry?”

  The interrogation came at the same time as the steps came. She had not heard him walking down the long corridor, through the arch, not until he arrived arid questioned her from the other side of the cot did she recognize Professor Gink.

  “Barry?” he repeated. “Is that his name, Nurse?”

  She felt the colour coming up into her face like a sunrise. He had not minded that jocund the Perfesser, she thought, but how would he take to this more personal Barry Boy?

  “Is it?” he was persisting quietly.

  Jessa said, “Well—yes.”

  “Matron’s choice?” After all, the Professor was thinking, the baby had no background, and it was only natural that Matron Martha would insist on something more dignified than an absurd nickname.

  “No—no, not Matron Martha’s choice ... mine.”

  “Yours, Nurse—but why Barry?”

  Jessa grew redder than ever. He didn’t like his name being used, then. It was all right when it was all in fun, but when one became more pertinent it was a different thing it seemed.

  “Why, Nurse Jess?” asked Professor Gink.

  She could not say, “Because it’s yours, sir, and because somehow I have always associated this baby with you,” so she just stood and said nothing.

  The Professor said nothing, too.

  The silence grew between them. Perhaps it might have been broken in time by another persistent query from the Professor, an impulsive explanation by Jessa, but Nurse Gwen came out on to the verandah at that moment, gave Jessa a cold look for visiting at eight a.m. in a skirt and jumper, gave the Professor a respectful if reproachful look for not visiting with a stethoscope and a remote air, and whisked the young man in for his bath.

  The Foundling, Master X, the Perfesser, Barry Boy, whatever you liked to call him, shut his eyes and opened his mouth and yelled.

  The Professor jumped. You would have thought he had never heard a baby cry before, the way he started. With a mumbled apology to Nurse Gwen he hurried off.

  Waiting for him to clear the long corridor but not waiting for Nurse Gwen’s censure, Jessa went as well.

  She met up with Margaret at lunch, and together they took their trays to their favourite nook by the window. It was a long time since they had eaten together like this—even prior to the quads, Jessa’s break, and later, her Nights, they had been on different rosters—but Meg now happily confided that they would be eating together for the next few weeks at least.

  “We’re rostered from eight a.m., Jessamine, and in the same wards; we’re workmates again at last.”

  “Yes,” said Jessa, and tried to make it sound as enthusiastic as Margaret sounded. She looked at her uncomfortably, hoping she had noticed her slightly dubious note. Somehow she could not help feeling different with Margaret. It was absurd, it was more than that, it was really unfair and unkind of her. Margaret had done nothing except let something happen that she, Jessa, had been wishing upon her ever since they had come to Belinda. Margaret was sweet and sincere and lovable. How lovable, Jessa’s heart tried not to ask.

  Margaret had not noticed anything. She was her usual gentle self. She drew Jessa’s attention to some delphiniums enamelling the plot beneath their window with heraldic azure.

  “Wait till you see Gainsborough,” she told Jessa. “We called it that because its eyes are as blue as the sky.”

  Jessa’s interest was captured. It always was with a new baby. “How big... when... girl or boy?”

  “Boy, of course,” laughed Margaret, answering the questions in reverse. “Remember Gainsborough’s ‘Blue Boy’? ... and he came in Sunday, and he’s quite a large specimen, four pounds.”

  Since nurses’ coming off Nights were not expected to start till the next day Jessa decided to spend the afternoon mending and brightening her summer wardrobe in the back garden.

  This garden was kept sacred to the nurses. Other parts of the grounds were open to parents and visitors, but this pocket handkerchief of lawn was enclosed by a private thicket and one could sun-bake, lounge, sleep, read, or in Jessa’s case, sew to one’s heart’s content.

  Spring was touching hands with summer. The air was soft and caressing. Shrubs were losing their buds for little tongues of green growth.

  Jessa looked down on the pink cotton dress she had just finished making gayer with a white, rose-embroidered collar.

  It was a pretty young pink and it made her think of babies, and consequently of Barry Boy. She hadn’t bathed him yet ... that was a pleasure in store ... but she knew when she did that he would emerge from his water bath just as pink and white and fresh as this dress.

  All at once she wanted to put on the dress and wheel him out in the Belinda perambulator. She knew the only objection Matron Martha would find—Matron liking her nurses to take after-duty interest in their babies as well as during-duty—would be possible fatigue following a roster of Nights.

  This called for a little white lie, and Jessa told it glibly.

  “I’m very fresh, Matron Martha, you see, I rested as soon as I came off.”

  ... So she had, Jessa salved her conscience, she had sat on the bed.

  “Very well, then, Nurse Jess. I need not tell you to be careful with him. Although he’s normal weight now he is still a very small infant.”

  “Yes, Matron Martha, thank you, Matron Martha.”

  Before Matron could change her mind, Jessa ran off.

  Nurse Gwen was on duty and took a very dim view of Jessa purloining Master X. Not that Nurse Gwen was particularly fond of the foundling, but the sight of Jessa in a fresh pink and white frock about to push a fresh pink and white baby into the fresh summer air for some reason annoyed her.

  She looked at the pink frock.

  “Personally, I never renovate. I think it just screams last year.”

  “It is last year.”

  “That’s what I said. And Nurse “

  “Yes, Nurse?” (Professor Gink liked his nurses to be called by name, Jessa knew, but if Nurse Gwen didn’t, then Nurse Jess wouldn’t.)

  She waited.

  “Pink,” considered Nurse Gwen weightily, and glanced meaningly at Jessa’s hair. “Do you think you should?”

  “I have,” said Jessa cheerfully, and picked up her baby. “Come on, young man, you and. I for the bright lights—or rather the corner gardens, to be precise.”

  Nurse Gwen tried to think out something else, but failed.

  “His bottle,” she called finally and disapprovingly, “is at four.”

  Jessa called back, “We’ll be home by five to, spit my death,” and though she had rounded the corner by this and could not see Nurse Gwen she felt her shudder of elegant distaste.

  The Belinda pram proved large and cumbersome. Sister Helen warned her that it lagged uphill, tore downhill, had a tendency to make towards the gutter and stopped with a shudder guaranteed to curdle the milk formu
la within any young baby.

  “I think his bottle is digested by now,” said Jessa. “Next feed is at four.”

  She was determined not to be discouraged, though certainly that bumbling baby carriage would have discouraged anyone.

  “When you are mine, Barry Boy,” she promised, “you’ll have a lightweight canvas in burgundy and white and a row of rainbow dangles hitched across the foot at which to kick your toes.”

  She was glad that no one was out to see her rather wobbly journey to the front gate. Once on the kerb, she thought, it will be plain sailing, but when she reached the footpath that led to the corner gardens she found it was not.

  Not only did the pram veer gutter-wards, it bounced, bumped, shuddered, shook, it was abominably heavy to push. She looked fearfully ahead to where the slight rise she was ascending at present descended. What goes up must come down, she trembled, and wondered whether she could hold the pram steady or whether the pram would take her along as well as Barry Boy.

  She was just considering retreat, and wondering at the same time, keeping in mind the gutter-wards veer of the wheels, how she was to turn, when a car pulled in at the kerb.

  The Professor sitting in the driving seat took her completely by surprise. Somehow she had never visualized him driving a car, and certainly not a luxury model like this.

  He was amused...no, that was an understatement. He was so convulsed with laughter that he had to take off his owl glasses and wipe his eyes.

  Jessa was annoyed. She had thought she made a cheerful picture in her fresh pink frock pushing a fresh pink baby, but she had not believed it was that cheerful.

  She waited for him to control his mirth.

  “Sister Helen called me to the window,” he said between fresh spasms (so someone had seen the departure!). “Are you pushing the pram or is the pram pulling you?”

  “I’m taking the baby for a walk.”

  “Oh, no, you’re not, you’re taking him for a ride, a car ride.”

  He had got out and opened the passenger’s door. “This is the Duchess. I call her that because she’s so grand. Get in, please.”

  Jessa reminded him coldly, “The baby?”

  He answered patiently, “You and the baby, of course.”

  “But the pram—”

  “We’ll leave it right here on the footpath. No one will steal it, of that we can be assured.”

  “But “

  “Look, Nurse, this is a prohibited parking area. In one moment I am going to qualify for a blue form asking me to Please Explain, and then fining me ten and six. Will you kindly step in at once”

  Jessa gathered up her baby and stepped in obediently. The Professor wheeled the pram to where it should not trip any pedestrians, and got back into the car.

  “Any preferences?” he asked.

  “What do you mean—sir?”

  “You’re not on duty even if you are giving a patient an outing, so you can forget that formality, and by preference I meant any particular place you want to go.”

  “I was going down to the corner gardens. I’ve been instructed to return—him”—she paused a significant moment—“back by four.”

  He knew she was avoiding calling the baby by a name. “Him?” he asked.

  Jessa flushed and did not answer that. “Nurse Gwen says his bottle is due then.”

  “His?” persisted the Professor.

  Again Jessa did not reply.

  “We’ll run out to South Head,” decided the Professor. “There’s time to look at the sea, have a cuppa, and be back by four sharp.”

  Jessa felt a little dubious. Her baby was still a very tiny baby. “Do you think—” she demurred.

  Professor Gink let out the clutch. “This,” he reminded, “is not my first child, Nurse Jess.”

  No, remembered Jessa, you had a quiver-full, didn’t you, and all of them prems.

  They weaved their way through the city. Once past the snarl of traffic at King’s Cross it was pleasant going.

  They rose above that space of beauty and light and blue transparency that is Sydney Harbour until they came to Watson’s Bay. They did not have tea at once. The Professor drove down to the pier and they sat in the car looking beyond the foreshore that was as yellow as a ripe cornfield to the lapping water, the baby asleep on Jessa’s lap.

  The harbour wavelets reflected the sky and the clouds and the flapping wings of seagulls. The low murmur of the tide dragging lazily over a patch of shingle made a peaceful sound.

  Jessa glanced down at her baby and then covertly at Professor Gink.

  His was never a handsome face, rather it was a little ugly, but it was a face to live with, she thought with an ache in her heart, day in, day out, a face for wear.

  She had not thought he noticed her scrutiny, but the next moment he disconcerted her with a direct, “What’s the verdict, Nurse Jess?”

  “I—I—what do you mean, Professor Gink?”

  “Were you estimating me or merely wondering if I knew I had a black smudge on my nose?”

  “You haven’t a smudge.”

  “So you were estimating me. What is the sum total?”

  To escape replying Jessa settled the baby more comfortably. “He’s an affable soul,” she said conversationally.

  She did succeed in evading his question, but at the same time she drew focus to another subject—little Master X.

  “So you call him Barry now,” remarked Professor Gink uncompromisingly.

  “Well, not exactly—I mean—”

  “But I’ve heard you, I’ve heard you several times. Why, Nurse Jess?”

  She still could not answer as she could not answer once before: “Because that name is yours and because I’ve always associated him with you,” so she said instead, “Do you mind?”

  He did not hesitate with his reply. “Yes, I do, I mind a great deal. I don’t think it at all suitable.”

  “Oh,” said Jess. After a moment she said, “I’m sorry, sir.” This time he did not remind her she was not on duty, and Jessa felt as well as his censure because she had made free with his name the solid separation of their respective ranks.

  To make the situation more uncomfortable Barry opened his eyes at that moment and howled.

  She decided to un-wind him, but there was no wind to fetch up; she patted him here; stroked him there; fumbled and bumbled inexpertly; and all the time she was acutely, uncomfortably aware of the Professor’s unblinking stare.

  “He must be hungry,” she blurted unhappily at last, “but he shouldn’t be, because Nurse Gwen said he didn’t have his next meal till four.”

  “Have you considered,” drawled the Professor, “that he might be damp?”

  He was damp, and taking out the necessary articles from the dilly bag that had come along with him, Jessa changed him, all thumbs, all awkwardness, surely at no time in her nursing career less adept.

  When she had finished, Barry still crying truculently, though in a slightly lower voice, the Professor said hatefully, “I would not pass that.”

  Furious with her bad display, Jessa retorted, “I thought this was a tea party, not an examination.”

  “It was to be. I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to put you on trial. Blame—Barry for that.” The pause before the cold emphasis on the name was intentional. You snob, thought Jessa, you might be a great doctor, but the greatest doctor on earth is a big step down the ladder of life from an innocent, helpless little babe.

  “However,” resumed the Professor glibly, “I must make up the tea deficiency at once. Come, Nurse Jess.” At her hesitation he added, “The pier cafe is a family restaurant. I assure you we would look more odd without a baby.” He helped her out.

  Barry was unsettled and had no intention evidently of suffering in silence. He subsided a little as Jessa carried him to a seat at a marble-topped table, but the moment she sat down he yelled again.

  The waitress approached and smiled on the three of them.

  “New baby,” she said sympathetic
ally. “Takes you a while to get the knack, doesn’t it? Don’t worry, love, he’ll be as easy to manage as his dad in no time.” She winked across at the Professor.

  “Here,” she said, “give Junior to me while you and your hubby decide what you want. Come on, Bubbles, goochi, goochi, goo.” She bore him into the kitchen with her.

  Miraculously Barry’s howls ceased.

  The tea was strong and hot the way she preferred it, the scones had wings and she had always liked strawberry jam, but Jessa tasted nothing. She ate and drank and said, “Yes” ... “No”... “Really”... at regular intervals—and never once looked up.

  She was glad when it was all over and she was bearing her baby back again to the car.

  They returned to Belinda in comparative silence.

  As the Professor had said, no one had touched the pram. He got out and reversed its direction for her, and Jessa put Barry in, said a muffled, “Thank you for the tea,” then added a rather mutinous “sir.”

  Coldly, as from a long way off, the Professor answered, “That’s quite all right, Nurse.”

  She reached Belinda with five minutes to spare.

  Nurse Gwen grabbed Barry from her and began to feed him. Barry promptly bubbled it all back. Nurse Gwen glared at Jessa.

  “He always takes his food. Surely, Nurse, you haven’t given him an in-between?”

  “Of course not—” began Jessa, then she remembered the pier waitress and how suddenly Barry’s cries had ceased.

  She saw Nurse Gwen’s horrified eyes upon her, mumbled something incoherent about having left the pram in the corridor where someone might trip over it, and fled.