A Caring Heart

by Margaret Carr

  A CARING HEART

  A CARING HEART

  Margaret Carr

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available

  This eBook edition published by AudioGo Ltd, Bath, 2012

  Published by arrangement with the Author

  Epub ISBN 9781471302480

  U.K. Hardcover ISBN 978 1 445 83678 2

  U.K. Softcover ISBN 978 1 445 83679 9

  Copyright © Margaret Carr, 2010

  All rights reserved

  Jacket Illustration © iStockphoto.com

  ISOBEL DISCOVERS THE CASUALTIES OF WAR

  Winter clouds lay low among the high hills of North Northumberland as District Nurse, Isobel Ross, cycled up the muddy track towards Pine Tree Farm. The farm lay grey and square against the hillside like a piece of geology from another time.

  Below her the road wound along the valley bottom for three miles until it came to the village of Thornbury, while above and around her the hills towered, and enclosed, their tops still capped in snow.

  She arrived puffing and panting at the farm gate and dismounting propped her bicycle alongside the wall. A gaggle of geese came running towards her across the yard.

  ‘Mrs Lewis,’ she called, trying to make her voice heard above the noise of the geese. ‘Mrs Lewis, it’s Nurse Ross.’

  After several minutes a small, grey-haired woman came out of the kitchen doorway and, picking up a broom, shooed away the geese—allowing Isobel to slip through the gate. Keeping on the right side of her rescuer Isobel edged her way to the safety of the house. Once inside she assumed her professional role and crossed to the man sitting waiting in the chair by the table.

  ‘Morning, Nurse. Sorry to drag you up here on a day like this but my ulcer is giving me bother again.’

  ‘That’s fine Duncan, Doctor Turnbull said you had been in to see him.’

  Placing her bag on the table Isobel took off her coat and laid it over a chair before turning to Duncan Lewis’s wife. ‘I’ll just wash my hands first.’

  ‘It’s all ready for you, Nurse,’ she said, nodding to where a new bar of soap and a clean towel lay on the bench alongside the sink.

  Isobel washed and dried her hands then turned to the task of tending to Duncan Lewis’s badly ulcerated leg. ‘I thought it was healing nicely the last time I was here. What happened to make it erupt like this again?’ She had unwound the bandage and was gazing at the weeping sore.

  ‘I don’t know, Nurse.’ He hung onto his hitched up trouser leg and frowned. ‘It’s a real nuisance.’

  ‘I’ll clean it up and re-bandage it, but you must be careful not to bang it or rub it up against anything. The doctor has asked me to call in twice a week and re-dress it, so I will see you again on Friday.’ Isobel cleaned his leg and put on a fresh bandage, before straightening up.

  Mrs Lewis had stood quietly by while Isobel saw to her husband but once she was finished she asked, ‘Can I get you a cup of tea, Nurse?’

  ‘That would be very welcome, thank you.’

  While the tea was brewing she chatted to Duncan about his sheep, the weather and how the new collie pup was working out. Several times as they sat at the table sipping tea Isobel formed the impression that Mrs Lewis had something on her mind. Waiting until they were out of the house and crossing the yard again to the gate, Isobel asked, ‘Is there something I can help you with, Mrs Lewis?’

  The geese came running towards them with outstretched wings and straight necks as Isobel shot through the gate.

  The farmer’s wife clutched the broom to her chest and stared down at her feet.

  ‘It’s our boy, Nurse. He flew bombers but he crash-landed on his way home and was badly hurt. He lost a leg and his face . . .’ her voice drained into a whisper as her expression dissolved and tears dampened her cheeks.

  ‘They tell us at the hospital that they have done all they can for him. They are going to send him home.’

  ‘Well that’s good news, isn’t it?’

  Setting the broom to one side the older woman grasped the top rail of the gate, her knuckles showing white beneath the careworn skin. ‘He’s not himself though, Nurse. It’s like we’ve lost our boy and been given a stranger in his place. Whenever we visit him at the hospital he just sits in his room and stares out of the window for hours at a time. He won’t walk in the grounds with us or anything and he’s as thin as a stick. I’m so worried, I can’t think what I’ll do when he comes home.’

  Isobel could see that the poor woman was beside herself and tried to be as cheering as possible. ‘Didn’t the hospital warn you to expect changes in him when he came home?’

  ‘Well yes, they did say that men who had lost limbs and mobility could take a long time to recover and that they may develop a bitter or difficult behaviour pattern, but we knew our boy wasn’t the sort to cause trouble. I never lost a night’s sleep with him when he was a baby, not even when he was teething. And he never gave us a minute’s worry as a lad. Not like some folks’ families you hear about.’

  ‘Would you like me to talk to your son when he comes home?’

  The woman’s face lit up with relief. ‘Oh, Nurse would you? I’d be ever so grateful.’

  ‘No problem, Mrs Lewis. Now I must fly, I’ll see you on Friday.’

  ‘Goodbye, Nurse.’

  Isobel put her bag into the basket on the front of the bike and climbing on board propelled herself down the steep uneven track to the valley floor. The cold wind nipped her ears beneath her uniform cap and she practised taking one hand at a time off the handlebars to hug it under her armpit for warmth.

  The Lewis’s son was the last thing on her mind as she reached the cosy little cottage known as the Nurse’s Home. She pushed her bike into the garden shed and crossing to the back door went to lift the latch only to have the door open of its own accord.

  ‘Hello, who’s there,’ she called, entering the kitchen and dumping her bag onto the worktop. She picked up and cuddled the welcoming cat. ‘Who have you let into our home, Mr Churchill,’ she asked the round, bewhiskered face of the gold and brown striped cat.

  She looked up at the sound of heavy footfalls and gaped at the uniformed figure in the hall doorway. ‘Alan.’ It came out in a breathless whisper. ‘Oh Alan!’ The cat was dropped as she ran into the arms of the waiting man. His arms came around her and he held her close. When at last he released her she stood back and let her eyes wander over him, assuring herself that he was unharmed.

  ‘How long do we have?’

  He shook his head. ‘Twenty-four hours, I report back in the morning.’ She beamed at him and slowly his mouth lifted in a smile. ‘It’s good to see you, sis.’

  She put everything in her pantry into a slap up meal and brought out a bottle of homemade elderberry wine she had been saving for just such an occasion. They had only each other, their parents having died of cancer one after the other several years ago. Each parent had been an only child and they had never known their grandparents.

  After the meal they sat by the fire and Isobel talked while Alan listened. It hadn’t always been like that in the past. Alan had been the boisterous one, full of fun and mischief, you couldn’t shut him up. Slowly he’d changed as one by one his friends had been lost in dogfights and bombing raids.

  It was during a long silence that Isobel thought of the Lewis’s son again. Had he, like Alan, seen too much and lost too many to ever be the same person he had been before. Would his parents, she wondered, ever truly be able to understand what had happened to him?

  Alan had been taught to fly by their father who had been a pilot in the First World War. He had enlisted in the Royal Air Force prior to the outbreak of war and at the ripe old age of twenty-nine was already considered a veteran of many missions.<
br />
  Clock chimes alerted her to the time. She was due at evening surgery in ten minutes. Alan assured her he was quite happy napping in the chair by the fire until her return.

  * * *

  The surgery was in the back room of the doctor’s house. She made her way through the crowded waiting room acknowledging the nods and murmured greetings.

  ‘Ah, Nurse there are two idiots in need of patching up after a brawl, perhaps you will attend to them.’ Doctor Turnbull snapped on her entrance. He was a small wiry man with a brusque manner that put many people on their guard, but he was the only doctor for several miles and in Isobel’s opinion a good one.

  ‘Certainly, Doctor.’ She called the men in one at a time and cleaned and sticky-plastered their wounds with the exception of a cut eyebrow that needed stitching and a head wound that needed pressure to stop it bleeding.

  The last on the list was Bobby Dunn and Isobel sighed. Bobby lived in a shack on the moors. He was invariably drunk, dirty and lousy. He had been told time and again never to come to the surgery until the waiting room was empty to avoid contaminating everyone else.

  The doctor turned his head and gave Isobel a sympathetic glance as Bobby ambled into the room. For every time the old man came it meant Isobel had to stay behind after surgery and disinfect the whole place.

  ‘What’s wrong with you, man,’ the doctor growled.

  ‘I need something for m’ innards, m’guts is killing me.’

  ‘The only thing killing you is the drink. I’ve told you before cut the drinking; you’ll get nothing from me until you do.’

  The old man bent over the doctor’s desk and cried, ‘It’s not the drink, I tell you. It’s m’guts. I’ve been poisoned.’ He shook his head.

  Isobel could see the lice falling onto the desktop.

  ‘Get across the room,’ the doctor bellowed, wafting his desk top with some papers.

  ‘Just give me something to help, Doc, and I’ll go.’

  Turning to Isobel, Doctor Turnbull said, ‘Give him a bottle of SGM, Nurse, and get him out of here.’

  As Isobel was wiping down ledges, the desk and chairs, the cleaner arrived. Isobel had to smile when the woman said, ‘I see old Bobby’s been here again, Nurse. He’s a terrible disgrace that man. They should lock him up, he’s a health hazard to decent people, he is.’

  ‘It’s the drink,’ Isobel excused him.

  ‘Drink be blowed. It’s all that rummaging around in people’s bins, why he leaves more mess behind him than the deer when they come down off the top, and it can’t be good for him eating rubbish. Why just last night her that lives next to the church put some of that DDT around her bins to keep prowling animals away.’

  Isobel was horrified. ‘She shouldn’t be doing that, anyone’s cat or dog might pick it up.’

  ‘Only strays, mind you.’ The woman commented continuing with her mopping.

  Isobel decided to keep Mr Churchill indoors until she could speak to the woman who so carelessly spread poison around her bins. She finished up what she was doing and left the surgery with a cheery, ‘Goodnight,’ to the cleaner.

  As she walked back to the cottage however, her thoughts kept returning to the poison and just as she reached her door she knew why. Had Bobby taken something from the bins that had been contaminated with the poison? Much as she wanted to spend precious time with Alan, she knew she wouldn’t rest until she had been up to the shack to check on him.

  When she told Alan of her decision he insisted he accompany her. It was dark by now, so armed with two torches they set out along the main street of the village and up the back path to the moors and Bobby’s home. The flame of an oil lamp flickered in the window as they approached the shack. A cold wind made Isobel shiver. There was no answer when Alan rapped on the door.

  ‘We should just go in,’ she said. ‘The chances are that he’s sleeping off the drink.’

  So they opened the creaking door and went in. The air was heavy with the stench of sour drink and body odour. Alan shone his torch around revealing a table littered with empty cans and dirty food packets on which cockroaches were feasting.

  ‘Stay there,’ Alan ordered his sister, as he moved forward to investigate a second room. Moving forward with care he prodded the body on the bed. Bobby groaned.

  Outside for a breath of clean air, Alan told Isobel that the man was still alive but had been sick.

  ‘If there is any chance at all that he has accidentally taken that poison then we must get him to hospital,’ she said. ‘You will have to go back down to the village and phone for an ambulance.’

  ‘Is there no-one in the village who could take him to the hospital?’

  ‘Not in his state, no.’

  ‘I don’t like leaving you here on your own.’

  Isobel gave a gentle smile. ‘I’m in no danger, not like you are every time you fly out on a mission.’

  He gave her shoulder a quick squeeze then turned and headed off down the path back to the village. It was half-an-hour before he returned to tell her that an ambulance was on its way, and a further hour before two men arrived panting up the hill to the shack. One of the men carried a rolled up stretcher and Isobel led them inside.

  When they came out carrying an unconscious Bobby between them, after letting Isobel know what they thought of the conditions they had found him in, they asked Alan to light their way back down the path to the ambulance. ‘I have to go with him,’ she told Alan regretfully as they stood and watched the men loading the stretcher into the ambulance.

  ‘How will you get back?’

  She shrugged, ‘I’ll get a lift back.’

  ‘I’ll be here until noon.’

  Isobel could feel the familiar lump in her throat as she wrapped her arms around his neck. ‘I’ll be back before you go,’ she promised. Then she climbed into the waiting ambulance and the doors slammed shut.

  * * *

  Friday morning saw Isobel back at the gate of Pine Tree Farm waiting for her escort across the yard. Some unseen event had upset the geese that morning for they came charging at the gate heads extended, hissing and jabbing at the rails. Terrified of the creatures, Isobel, after a swift look round to make sure no one was watching, lashed out with her bag at the two heads stuck through the gate. The heads were withdrawn but her swipe at them seemed to have infuriated them more and even Mrs Lewis when she arrived had trouble chasing them off.

  ‘How are you this morning, Duncan?’ Isobel asked upon entering the kitchen.

  ‘Just the same, Nurse,’ he said, pulling up his trouser leg. ‘The wife says you’ll be talking to our Jack when you’ve finished with my leg.’

  Isobel looked up from washing her hands. ‘He’s home?’

  ‘Yes,’ he looked over her head to where his wife stood beside the sink. ‘Thing is, it isn’t easy, Nurse,’ and here he took a deep sigh.

  ‘No of course it won’t be easy at first, but things will settle down.’

  ‘I don’t mean . . . thing is he wants to die, and he’s asked me to help him.’

  Isobel halted in the middle of treating his leg and gazed up at the man’s face, set now in grim lines. Her heart jumped a beat then, settled down again. ‘He’ll be depressed, Duncan, he won’t know what he’s saying.’

  She heard Mrs Lewis’s quiet sobs behind her. Swiftly finishing off her work on the ulcer she stood up and crossing to the sink, washed her hands once more. Drying them on the towel she said, ‘Right, I’ll see him now if you will be so kind as to lead the way, Mrs Lewis.’

  They left the kitchen and walked down an inside passage to the door of the front room. Opening the door and stepping softly inside Mrs Lewis said in a quiet voice, ‘There’s someone to see you, Jack. It’s Nurse Ross.’

  A chair was set in front of a tall window and all Isobel could see of the occupier was the back of his dark head. She nodded to Mrs Lewis indicating that the woman could go now. Then she walked across the room until she was standing alongside the chair. There was a
beautiful view through the window of a river winding its way through the surrounding hills, like a silver ribbon wrapping an untidy parcel. For a while there was silence. Then Isobel said, ‘My brother is a fighter pilot.’

  The man in the chair nodded his head in recognition of her statement. When she looked down at him she knew his mother was right to worry. The skin on his face was parchment thin and stretched over sharp bones. Deep blue eyes were sunk back and stared from dark caverns with a fixed gaze. His clothes hung from his collarbones like washing on a line and thick black hair lay limp and greasy on his skull.

  ‘Do you like what you see?’ The voice was strong but weary.

  ‘It’s a beautiful view,’ she said, deliberately misunderstanding him. He must have been a good looking man once, she thought. Now most of his cheek and lower jaw had been remodelled and looked tight and raw. She gazed out through the window again before asking suddenly, ‘Do you like the countryside?’

  ‘I did, once,’ he said, with bitterness.

  ‘I do a lot of walking in the hills. It gives you a great sense of perspective, I find.’

  ‘Well, I won’t be walking anywhere any more so is there some point to this visit?’

  ‘Only to make you aware of how much your parents are hurting.’

  ‘I am only too aware, thank you.’

  What would I do if he were Alan, she wondered. Alan had changed, she recognised that, but even so he was a fighter. In this man’s place he would fight back she was sure of it.

  ‘Your life is precious to them if not to yourself. They’re lost; they don’t know how to help you. They need you and if you can see that you may also see a way forward for yourself. Please try.’

  Silence was the only answer and eventually she turned and left.

  * * *

  ‘Does your son have any friends locally?’ she asked his mother on her way out.

  ‘He’s always been a quiet boy, didn’t make many friends, but the ones he did make stayed.’

  ‘And have any of these friends been to see him?’

  She looked shocked. ‘Oh no, he wouldn’t let us tell anyone what had happened.’