The Secret Armour

by Lucilla Andrews

  I called, ‘Would you, darling? Thanks.’

  Old Gugson, who had delivered our letters as long as I could remember, scratched his head with the stub of pencil he always kept for registered letters and said I had always been a great hand at baking when I was growing up, he recollected.

  ‘I’d best be off, miss.’ He looked up at the sky with melancholic satisfaction. ‘More rain coming along there soon! Mr Howard’s not going to be pleased,’ he added sadly, as he heaved himself back on to his bicycle. ‘It’s been a wicked year, this has, for farmers.’ He propped one foot against the grass bank beside the road. ‘Proper cruel, it’s been. But them Michaelmas daisies of Mrs Howard’s are a fair treat ‒ made ’em thrive, it has. It’s what I always say to Mrs Gugson, you’ve got to take the good with the bad.’

  I picked a large bunch of mingled cornflower blue and bronze, and carried them in to the kitchen. I told my mother what Gugson had said.

  She smiled. ‘It’s all very well for Gugson to be so merry and bright, Maggie. But he hasn’t had to see his next year’s bank balance laid flat in front of his eyes. Do you know we even had hail in August?’

  ‘I can believe it.’ I sat on the kitchen table. ‘I had forgotten about weather; it’s only the sun that bothers us in town. The wards get so hot. But since I’ve been back I’ve shed the last two years. The weather now registers again in its right and vital proportions.’

  My mother hung up her glass-cloth.

  ‘ “Vital” is the word. I was afraid your father would have a stroke if he saw any more mud. I’ve been feeling like Mrs Noah ‒ without an ark. But, to be serious, have you any ideas about all these apples? I’ve made’ ‒ she ticked off on her fingers ‒ ‘chutney, jam, jelly, rings, store. What have I forgotten?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what I’ve forgotten.’ I reached in my pocket. ‘The post.’

  She went through the small pile quickly. ‘Two for you. One readdressed from the hospital.’

  I held out my hand incuriously. ‘One will be from Alice. She said she would write and tell me where I’m going next. The list was due up yesterday. Probably, nights again.’

  Mother nodded; she was reading her own post. I turned over the two envelopes. One was in Alice’s handwriting. I recognized the other as well, the postmark was Hampshire. I nearly fell off the kitchen table as I realized that David had written to me at last.

  Chapter Ten

  CASUALTY LEAVES NO TIME FOR UNHAPPINESS

  David wrote:

  This letter is nine months overdue. In fact, I hardly dared to write it at all. But I must.

  Alistair has told me that you know I’m back at work again. This is my last week-end at home, and I’ve been temporarily posted to the Admiralty. Which means, of course, that I’ll be living in town. I know I have no right to ask, but, just as I must write, so I must ask, can I see you again?

  There is so much I have to explain. So much I have to tell you if you will let me. Will you, please?

  Mother said, ‘Darling, do you feel well? You look so white.’ She looked at the letter in my hand. ‘Anything wrong?’

  The kitchen was revolving slowly round me; I had to hold on to the rim of the table. I was not surprised to hear I looked white. I felt green.

  I said, ‘Nothing wrong, Mummy. I’ve had a bit of a shock ‒ that’s all. A nice shock, but a shock.’

  She filled the electric kettle deliberately and plugged it in before she spoke again. When she turned round her eyes were anxious.

  ‘I expect you can do with a cup of tea, Maggie. It’s a good while since we had breakfast.’

  She moved quietly round the kitchen, collecting cups and saucers, sugar and milk. When the kettle boiled she heated the pot, made the tea, then closed the scullery door.

  ‘If the men have to come in and wash they won’t disturb us in here,’ she said; ‘even your father hesitates to open that door when he thinks I’m baking.’

  I smiled. ‘I can remember how he and I used to peer through the windows when you had closed that door before we dared come in. It’s only two years that I’ve been away ‒ not two hundred.’

  ‘It might be two hundred,’ she said placidly, pouring the tea. ‘You left here a child. You’ve come back a grown-up young woman; and you’ve done your growing-up away from us. That’s a big thing for a parent to realize.’ Then she said, ‘Would you care to tell me about the shock, Marguerite, or is it a personal affair?’

  My mother was like that. She had never forced my confidence, or hustled me into confessing a secret as a child. Now, she had given me time to think over my letter. I knew if I said I did not want to talk about it she would leave the subject. I also knew that she thought it something serious, because she called me Marguerite.

  She lifted Rudolph, our cat, out of the wooden armchair and sat down herself, still holding him and stroking him gently, to show me that she was in no hurry to cook or do anything but listen to me, if I wanted to be heard. On an impulse I handed her David’s letter.

  ‘You are sure you don’t mind my reading it, dear?’

  ‘Quite sure. I think I want some maternal advice. I don’t seem very successful at coping with my own little problems.’

  She read the letter carefully, then folded it, and gave it back to me.

  ‘Is this the young man you were in love with on your last holiday?’

  ‘How did you know I was in love?’

  ‘My dear,’ she smiled up at me, ‘you are my daughter, you know. And you are the right age to be in love. Everything was golden during those ten days, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ The memory of that wonderful period was like a pain. ‘It was.’

  ‘But it isn’t any more? No, you don’t have to tell me. I saw that the moment I set eyes on you this time. I hoped you were just tired, but even your few good nights’ sleep hasn’t made any difference. I was afraid from your letters,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘that it was something of this kind.’

  ‘I never mentioned David in any of my letters.’

  She said, ‘For the past few months you haven’t mentioned anything in your letters. Not until you got to that children’s ward, and then the children crept in. Henry and I both noticed it. And we guessed, rightly, it would appear.’

  ‘How could you guess?’

  She smiled again. ‘I hate to use platitudes, as you know ‒ but, Maggie, your father and I were young once. And it’s not all that long ago!’

  ‘Darling ‒ I’m sorry.’ I crossed the room and sat on the arm of her chair. ‘I’ll tell you about it.’

  When I had finished I said, ‘Now, what do I do? Do I answer this? I want to. But how about his fiancée? And does he mean this? Or is he merely short of a girl-friend in London, and thinks I’ll do until he finds a better?’

  She said, ‘If you want to see him you might as well. If you don’t you’ll be worried by a host of what-might-have-beens. About his fiancée, it’s difficult to say. That might be one of the things he has to talk about. I sincerely hope it is. She should be discussed, poor girl, for her sake as well as your own. This is no more fair to her than it is to you. Less, in fact, since she is supposed to have the sole claim to his affections. That is, if they are still engaged.’

  ‘You think they aren’t? Alistair Corford said ‒’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, you’ve just told me what his brother said. But that was a week or so ago, and he said then that there were “complications”. This young man may be trying to solve those complications now. This way.’ She frowned. ‘I can’t say that I approve, but I can understand a little of the way he feels. Breaking an engagement, particularly when it concerns an old family friend, is never as simple as it sounds. If I were you,’ she went on briskly, ‘I should write quite simply, ignoring the implications in his letter, merely saying that you are glad he is well again and would be glad to see him if he ever comes to Benedict’s. That will mean nothing beyond the fact that you are willing to forgive and forget, which I gather you are.’ She
glanced up at me. ‘Now, what’s wrong?’

  ‘Alice would say my pride should stop me writing.’

  ‘Alice might be right,’ she said, ‘but perhaps not for you. Still, she does know him, and I only know you. And I don’t want you to be hurt. But I would rather you were hurt than caught up in some dream that has no reality. That would be worse. For you, or any girl. If this David is doing what my mother would have called “trifling with your affections,” then the sooner you find out the better. I wouldn’t worry about Alice; and I should not worry too much about your pride. Love and pride seldom go hand in hand.’

  Mother came up to my bedroom that night as I was brushing my hair.

  ‘You absurd child. No wonder it always stands on end if you treat it that way.’

  She had brought me a cup of steaming cocoa; she waited while I drank it.

  ‘I think you need building up, Maggie. You look smaller than ever.’

  I laughed. ‘You’re a fine one to talk. Twenty-five years a farmer’s wife, and you still don’t weigh eight stone.’

  After she had kissed me good night and gone I opened my window and prepared for my usual leap into bed. Then I remembered my view of the bottle-factory in London, and stayed where I was.

  My room faced south, over the marshes. A mist was coming up now; it had reached the side of the road away from the house. The solitary oak-tree in the opposite field was already only a sketch of branches, but beneath me, in our garden, the shadows from the trees were long. The wind had gone, and the night was quiet. No traffic, no voices. Only a cricket singing in the grass below; the faint, shrill shriek of a terrified rabbit, the occasional sad moan of one of the cows, broke through the gentle darkness. The mist thickened as I watched; it crept up the side of the house and hung outside my window.

  I lay in bed, listening to the night and thinking about the hospital. At this moment in every kitchen in Benedict’s the night juniors were cutting the bread and butter, the orderlies washing cups, seniors writing their everlasting reports, Night Sister and the men in the middle of their night rounds.

  I thought about George. I wondered about his home, and whether he felt about his the way I felt about mine. I knew he would understand this other life of mine ‒ this steady, weather-regulated existence that I loved and that was a part of me, but which would never wholly satisfy me again.

  I had been badly homesick during my first few months at Benedict’s; now I realized that I had as strong a tie in the hospital. But if I married David I should have neither the farm nor the hospital. I was too sleepy to worry over this, and, anyway, nothing was important where David was concerned but David.

  My holiday was over before I had time to take in that it had begun. The air was full of bonfire-smoke, the fields turned over, and even in that short period, by the last day, the weather ceased to be important. It was something to talk and grumble about, but not to insure against. All round the farm there was a feeling of men straightening their backs, dusting their hands, and saying, ‘That’s that. Nothing more to be done outside. Now, how about the roof of that barn?’

  My father drove us ‒ Mother was coming to see me off ‒ to the station on my last evening. ‘September may be over,’ he said, ‘and the work in, but summer’s still here. I saw five swallows this morning.’

  In the train I remembered my first journey to hospital, and how, much as I had longed to be a nurse, at the same time I had longed to live at home for ever. I should never be content to do that any more. And if I had to choose between the two I would rather choose to spend my life with the untidy sparrows in the park, the dusty plane-trees, and the faint scent of ether in the hospital air. I had lost my swallows for ever. Even were a miracle to happen, and David love me as I loved him, now that I was not sleepy and stunned by that first joy at his letter, I knew I would not be able to give up the hospital easily. I could give it up ‒ you can give up anything if you have to ‒ but even for David it would not be easy.

  Autumn, and the ghost of summer might linger in Kent, but winter had come to London, and the street-lamps outside Benedict’s made yellow circles in the October mist.

  I had written to David the day after getting his letter; so far I had no answer. I was so used to silence from him that I scarcely expected him to reply. I merely haunted the pigeon-holes outside Matron’s office three times each day. As I was at present working in the Casualty department of the hospital, and had to pass the office on my way to meals, there was no obstacle to my post-searching, as there had been when I worked in one of the far-off blocks.

  Rose was working in Casualty with me. We were very pleased over this, since we had never worked together before. Alice was back in Ed Donell, where she had worked as a first-year pro.

  ‘In fact,’ said Alice, ‘everything in the garden is lovely. Rose has her George. You have ‒ or almost have ‒ your David. And I have all my kids in Ed Donell. Heard from him yet, incidentally?’

  I said not yet. I had told her about my letter, and what my mother had said.

  She laughed, not unkindly. ‘One thing I must hand to you, Maggie. Patience is your middle name ‒ but really you must wear away a packet of shoe-leather on your trips to the office.’

  I smiled. ‘It’s good for the figure, if nothing else.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ agreed Alice, ‘and a girl needs exercise when she’s working in Cas.’

  Casualty was stimulating and often very amusing. It was always interesting and always busy. The pace at which all Casualty nurses worked left no time for private thinking.

  The work varied from dealing with a cut finger to coping tactfully with the inevitable chivalrous policeman, who sat outside one of the many little rooms off Casualty Hall, helmet in hand, saying he wouldn’t go in there, miss, if he was me, as these young ruffians could do ugly work with a razor in a fight, and it wasn’t a pretty sight for a young lady, he was sure.

  ‘One of the students is in there, miss. You best leave it to him.’

  ‘I simply adore the police,’ said Rose. ‘They make me feel like a frail and delicate little flower. And then Sister Cas. bellows, “My good man, what do you think Nurse is here for?” and all our feelings are hurt!’

  Rose looked so like a flower herself at that moment that I forgot to laugh.

  ‘What are you staring at, Maggie?’ she asked.

  ‘You,’ I said. ‘You are quite incredibly beautiful, Rose. How do you do it at this hour of the morning?’

  ‘Maggie!’ She was genuinely embarrassed. One of the nicest things about Rose was her astounding lack of personal vanity. She knew she was the best-looking girl in the hospital, she knew, because she could look in a mirror, but I don’t think she ever remembered this fact, or thought it at all important.

  Sister Casualty swept into the cloakroom at that second, and said, ‘Well, Nurses, do you propose to wait until midday before you come on duty?’

  We chorused, ‘No, Sister,’ meekly, and followed her into the hall, as the clock over the door chimed half-past seven.

  Sister Casualty, a middle-aged lady of tremendous vitality, had become a Benedict’s legend in her own working life in the hospital. The patients treated her with terrified admiration.

  ‘That Sister,’ they would say, ‘she carries on a proper caution! The things she says to the poor young gentlemen (the students), and the poor nurses! It’s not right. But there, that Sister, she knows her job an’ all. Got to hand it to her. But it’s not right!’

  As they waited on the benches the patients spent a lot of time assuring each other that things were not right; but they were invariably charitable.

  ‘Ever such a lovely lot of girls, the poor nurses! And, well, I mean, you can see the poor young gentlemen are doing their best!’

  The medical students, who worked in rota as dressers in Casualty, were always known to the staff as the Y.G.s.

  Sister herself sent me off for the post that morning.

  ‘There is a registered letter for me in the office, Nur
se Howard. You may sign for it. But don’t dawdle!’

  I said, ‘No, Sister,’ thankfully, and vanished as quickly as I dared.

  ‘Haemorrhage or fire, Nurse Howard?’ asked a voice behind me as I shot out into the main corridor. It was George.

  ‘Neither.’ I stopped for breath. ‘Sister Cas. has told me not to dawdle!’

  He laughed, and fell into step beside me. ‘How do you like it there?’

  ‘I’ve only been there a few days,’ I said, ‘and so far neither Rose nor I have found time to draw breath, much less think if we like it.’

  ‘Rose working there with you?’

  ‘Yes.’ I was surprised, remembering what Alice had said. ‘Didn’t she tell you?’

  He shook his head, and his mouth turned down at the corners.

  ‘I haven’t seen her since the Nurses’ Dance, and then you were all supposed to go on nights. Give me a chance, Maggie. I know your intentions, but I do have to flog the books in my spare time, and my boss is quite keen on my doing an occasional job of work for him. He’s odd that way.’

  ‘George,’ I said sternly, ‘it’s no good using that tone to me. You know me, Maggie, the dumb country girl. Sarcasm and irony just roll off. I don’t understand them. Face value or nothing, that’s me. I forgot that it’s only a couple of weeks since I saw you last.’

  ‘Nineteen days,’ he said. ‘And I’m not so sure that I do know you ‒ you look different after your holiday. Was it fun?’

  ‘Yes. I love autumn. It’s my favourite season.’

  ‘That’s funny,’ he said, ‘it’s mine too.’

  ‘What’s so funny about that?’ I had reached the alcove that led to Matron’s office.

  ‘That we should have one mutual point of agreement. It’s something.’ He hesitated, as if he was going to say something else, but as he said nothing, I said, ‘I must fly. Sister Cas. will skin me alive if I’m not back on the double.’

  ‘Give her my regards,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Be seeing you, Maggie.’

  Sister met me at the entrance to Casualty Hall.

  ‘Room 31 for you this morning, Nurse Howard. Look sharp, and get those benches dealt with.’