by Mary Renault
She had worked up to second in the queue, with only the thermometer-breaker in front. Whoever was in the office now had been there for some time. She remembered that it was Valentine. Her name had not been on the list, but then she was the charge-nurse. Vivian looked along the line, and found that Colonna had joined it at the other end. She was not speaking to her neighbours, and her face looked set. Vivian felt her own stomach contract with panic. What would become of them? Colonna, no doubt, would dabble with Bloomsbury or the stage, but what would Valentine do? She had been nursing since she was eighteen, and expressed herself too well in it to drift into something else: besides, her people, unlike Colonna’s, were not well off. Three-quarters of the responsibility would fall on her. She was years younger than Colonna, and five minutes’ observation of their personalities made it obvious who must have taken the initiative: but the hospital would recognise only a charge-nurse and a probationer. Valentine would never get another job.
The office door had opened at last. Valentine came out; Vivian hardly dared to look at her face, but, when she did, saw that it was preoccupied rather than disastrous. As Valentine left she caught sight of Colonna in the queue: she seemed not to have expected her, and, when their eyes met, smiled quickly and shook her head.
After that, her own interview was an anti-climax. She knocked and went in, sped by a moue from the thermometer-breaker, who came out, replacement-slip in hand (they were fortunate, compared with a good many other hospitals, in not having, when they broke thermometers, to pay a fine and see the Matron as well). The Matron was a tall, fine woman with a Tudor mouth and scarcely-grey hair; she wore a dove-coloured gabardine dress, eternally immaculate, and organdie veil. When Vivian came in she examined her with interested distaste, as if encountering a depth of human degeneration new in her wide experience. The look was a part of her disciplinary uniform, but one had to encounter it several times before its effect began to wane. She explained to Vivian how what she had done illustrated her disloyalty, her indifference, her lack of direction and purpose. To all of it Vivian made the right answer, which was generally none.
“You are a little older than the other nurses. You should be able to realise that you cannot be an effective member of this profession while your mind is taken up with amusements and outside interests, and with unsuitable friendships with nurses outside your own year. I shall not, of course, expect you to come to me for late leave this week. You may go now, Nurse.”
Vivian went. She would have known better than to ask for late leave in any case, and was too much relieved about Valentine to think of anything else. To make finally sure, she hung about in the passage till Colonna came out. Colonna was laughing.
“What did Matron suddenly want you for? Your name wasn’t on the list.”
“They added it on just before dinner.” Colonna choked with laughter: she looked a little hysterical. “It was about you.”
“About me?” Vivian gasped; then all the complicated emotions she had been throttling down all day detonated, and she laughed till her eyes ran.
“How like hospital, how perfect, it only wanted that!”
This explained the unsuitable friendships. She had thought it meant that she had taken tea with Valentine; but she had not allowed enough for the upward time-lag of hospital gossip. Horizontally, it was a heath-fire; vertically, a time-fuse which sometimes never exploded at all. This was natural; the second-and third-year nurses were forbidden to know the probationers; Sisters were a severely segregated officer caste with their own mess, and of them the juniors, fresh from a modern training, inhabited a different world from the older ones. As for the Matron, anything said to her, even when delivered colloquially by the Assistant Matron, had the status of an official communiqué.
“What did she say?” asked Vivian.
“She said that I distracted you. Did I?”
“Very nearly sometimes. I wonder what she wanted Valentine for.”
“I don’t know, but it’s all right. I must go back to the ward, Sister’s on.” She added over her shoulder, “Better ask the Matron not to tell young Freeborn. He’d be dangerous jealous, I should think.”
Vivian spent the rest of her afternoon out of doors, reading The Tale of Genji. At first she found concentration an effort, but gradually she worked her way into the atmosphere. The exquisite prince was good for her overcharged state, wandering from amour to amour with the composed sincerity and perfect taste of one assembling the pattern on a lacquer screen. She came back to tea feeling pleasantly exalted, living only in the parts of her life that were decorative and gay.
Hurrying back to the ward with only a minute or two to spare she was held up by Custance, the ear, nose and throat surgeon, strolling with Scot-Hallard in open formation so that it was impossible to edge through. As she walked behind them fretting to get on, she heard Scot-Hallard say, “I don’t know. The results will be ready tomorrow, but I haven’t been up there lately. Freeborn’s been looking after it for me. Rather extra for him, of course, but he likes to feel he’s doing a bit of original work, I think. He must find the Path, routine rather a grind.”
“Freeborn? What, the new Path, boy? You surely don’t let him touch stuff like that, do you?”
“Why not? He’s got a perfectly good Cambridge degree.”
“Has he indeed? What’s he doing in this galére?”
“No money or influence, I imagine, and not much push.” They turned off into one of the theatres.
Vivian ran on to Verdun, not feeling sure whether her dislike of Scot-Hallard had been mitigated or increased. Sister was off duty that evening. While she and Valentine were both working in the clinical room, she said, “Nurse” (even Colonna used the formal address on duty), “why do we fall down flat in front of the Honoraries the way we do? Are we doormats, or are they boots?”
Critically, Valentine held a test-tube first to the light, and then against a black door-plate. “No albumen there. We train them to be boots. Take equal parts”—she shook a red crystal out of a jar—“of Queen Victoria, the army under Wellington, sex and pot-hunting”—the room became pungent with the fumes of ammonia—“and there we are. Naturally, after it’s become routine, they take it as a personal slight if anyone—look, there’s a lovely acetone for you.” She held up the tube, a rich clematis purple. “That’s Mrs Curtis. Make her some glucose-water, there’s a dear.”
“All right. But it seems pure totemism. Mr. Scot-Hallard, for instance—I suppose he crawls with his babies and swears at the cat like other people. What does he get out of being treated like something half-way between Hitler and the Archbishop of Canterbury?”
“I don’t know,” said Valentine, measuring Fehling solution, “what Mr. Scot-Hallard swears at when he isn’t in the theatre. But if he crawls with his babies there must be a pretty varied assortment of dust on his trousers, I should think. He isn’t married, by the way. Oh, hell, here’s Matron coming to do a round.” She ran, cramming on her cuffs. Vivian, who had spilt something conspicuous down her apron, found the glucose, concealed herself with it in the kitchen, and thought about Mic.
She had told herself, that morning, she was glad that her next evening off-duty time was not until the following Friday; it had been too sudden an earthquake, the landscape needed time to settle into firm and more permanent contours. But as soon as time and routine began to thrust their meeting backward, she found herself missing him so that, except when she was too tired to think or feel, it was like a constant pain. It had not mattered, so soon after, that she had lost her late leave for the week: but by Tuesday, this forfeiture of an hour began to loom in her mind, an enormous wrong. She tried to push her resentment away and commanded herself not to mind, because she knew it was the beginning of the invasion she had feared.
Mic wrote to ask her when she would be free. He scribbled her something every day, generally on the backs of report forms, from his bench; odd, aimless-seeming discursions about anything that happened to be going on round him at the tim
e, a squabble between two of the physicians, a book he had been reading, or a reproof from the Welshman at the next bench, who knew most of Lenin verbatim, and called Mic a bourgeois intellectual for not believing in economic determinism, and an escapist because he said he didn’t know what class he belonged to.
Apart from information such as this, practically all they told her about him was that he had needed to write to her, and she found it difficult to answer them. It seemed incredible that the intervention of a few passages and stairs could do so much. But his Wednesday note finished, “I hope you can. It would be good to talk to you. Presently perhaps I’ll be able to write you letters. I’ve torn up a lot. One reads them over and suddenly feels like a specimen beetle, pinned out on a sheet of paper—it’s lack of practice, I suppose. But what’s worth keeping will keep till you come. Will you come soon?”
“Yes, I will,” said Vivian aloud.
There was still the greater part of three days to wait. He had asked her when she would be off duty in the evening. He might, of course, as a good many of the nurses’ young men did, have asked her to slip out after she came off the ward at nine: but he knew the rules now and would never ask her to take the risk. No doubt, by Scot-Hallard’s standards, he lacked push.
She sat, with a blank sheet of paper in front of her, biting the end of her pen and trying to make up her mind whether to say she would come that night. It would be futile, she thought, she would be dirty and tired and stupid, and it would mean staying out late again, unforgivable if she were caught. There was, in fact, every reason against it besides the real one. She began to write promising to come on Friday, and tore it up. She would write later, she said to herself; she was off duty in the morning that day. But when she came back to the ward she had written nothing.
She had just finished tidying the patients’ lockers for the afternoon when Valentine came up to her with a slip of paper.
“Oh, Lingard, I was looking for you. Sister wants Miss Bentley’s surgical notes for last year. Here’s the reference number. I shouldn’t waste time going through the shelves yourself. One of the people in the Path. Lab will find them for you.” She smiled quickly, and went off with her tray of medicines before Vivian could answer.
Vivian put the paper in front of her apron. As she went for her cuffs she thought, “She’s too good for Colonna. I wonder how it will end.”
She had fetched notes from the shelves before, and as she was accustomed to the use of reference libraries had done so without assistance: but it was usual to find one of the laboratory assistants, who helped, among their other work, to file them. Sister was off duty, so Valentine must have saved her this from the morning. She climbed through the maze of the technical departments, electric, massage, photographic, avoiding the scurry of the staff who belonged there, and wishing after all that she had not come. It was fluffing and wispy, she thought, to intrude on people at their work, and invited every kind of stupid contretemps. She herself would have felt little but dismay if Mic had appeared unexpectedly in Verdun. Probably she would miss him in any case. By the time she reached the laboratories she had decided to get the notes for herself: but when she got to the door of the pathological department she stopped, knocked once, and went in.
Everything was very quiet and concentrated. Two or three heads looked round at her, in interest or irritation, but not Mic’s. Then she saw him, using a microscope in the window. He had not looked up and was evidently not likely to. In her first glance she received with photographic clearness the outline of his head against the light, the peacefully intent line of his mouth; the bones of his hand just moving as he made a fine adjustment of the screw. Her doubts fell from her, even the need to touch or speak to him. She felt content to have seen him and to have loved him in the stillness of this moment, and was about to turn and catch the eye of one of the others; but before she could move he had looked round, as straight into her face as if she had called his name. He got up and came over to her, seeming in no urgent hurry, but arriving before another man who sat nearer and had risen first.
Since it was evident that she had come on business, he waited to hear it. Though he did not speak or smile or give any sign which the other would have recognised, she knew that he was deeply glad of her coming, and thought how selfish her impulse had been to take her own satisfaction and go away.
She said, as she would have said to any of the rest, “I wonder if you’d mind getting me some surgical notes? The numbers are here.”
“Of course.” He held the door open and they went through to the place where the notes were kept—a queer labyrinth that had been the X-ray department when X-rays were very new. It had taken on the dusty smell and blanketed quiet of all libraries; Mic shut the door and snuffed out the last sounds.
They looked at one another in an eager, watchful curiosity. They had not met inside the hospital since it had all begun. Uniform made them both look altered, Mic aloof to the point of austerity, Vivian a little schoolgirlish. They waited a moment or two to take in and put aside one another’s disguises. Then Vivian put her hands on his white drill sleeves, smoothing them to feel their stiffness, and he caught her quickly into his arms.
“You looked different,” she said, “for a minute.”
“So you do. Can I take your cap off?”
“If you like, but the rest looks silly without.”
“Now I can only see your face. I couldn’t remember, this morning, what you looked like. God, it’s seemed long.”
“I meant to write to you.”
“What about?” He looked suddenly anxious.
“Nothing, now.”
“I couldn’t write to you, either.”
“It doesn’t matter, does it?”
“No. But I shall want to again tomorrow.”
“Do, then. Say anything. I shall know.”
“We think that now.”
“Don’t, darling, it is now.”
After a little while he asked, “Was it all right the other night?”
“What, being late? No, they caught me. She didn’t say much, I’ve not been caught before.”
“You mustn’t be again.” His face frightened her. “It isn’t worth it.”
“Isn’t it?” She looked up, hoping he would smile.
“Not if they sack you. What happens then?”
“I see,” she said, suddenly sobered. “I hadn’t thought.”
“Sometime,” Mic said slowly, “we shall have to think about a lot of things.”
In the pause that followed she could hear from her breast pocket the heavy tick of her watch. She turned a little against Mic, so that the sound was covered.
“We know most of them. It doesn’t make much difference, does it?”
He slid his hand down from her hair and hid her eyes.
“No. I’m afraid not.”
“My late leave’s stopped for this week. I’m sorry.”
“Never mind. You know, your hair where it starts is just like a baby’s.”
“It’s new there like a baby’s, I expect.”
“Do you still want to come?” It was a flat, shadeless question. He had talked like that when they first met.
“Yes. I do. I’ll come on Friday.”
“Two days from now,” he said; but he was looking at her as if he must learn her face before one of them should die. She caught her breath, kissed him quickly and moved away.
“Perhaps we’d better find those notes. Sister’s off, but I daren’t be gone too long.”
“That won’t take a minute.” She could tell by his smile that he knew he had troubled her. “I’ll find you the page too, it’s confusing till you know.”
“Please,” she said, “may I have my cap?”
“I’m sorry.” He had been dangling it by the ribbon that fixed it on behind, and turned it over in his hand, looking at its high starched front and the bonnet-like pleats at the back. “To think of you wearing that.”
“I hardly ever notice it now.” She put it
on.
“Last year’s notes, wasn’t it?”
He got down the thick volume, flipped over the pages, and stuck a scrap of paper between the right leaves. It took both her arms to hold it.
“What a thing,” he said. “I suppose if I carry this down for you there’ll be a fuss?”
“Good heavens, yes. It’s not bad really, if I hold it this way. Thank you, Mic. Good-bye.”
“Till Friday,” he said. It was ending; next moment they would have gone. With a sudden, piercing thrill of panic she felt she could not bear it. She slammed down the book on the ink stained deal table, and ran back to him, her cap falling off of itself this time and lying unheeded on the floor. He held her tightly and kissed her, feeling her fear. She could not speak, only gripped him fiercely.
“What is it, my dear?” he said. “What is it?”
“Nothing. I don’t know.” She slipped her hands over his shoulders, feeling their framework, a clean, reassuring line. Some people’s personalities, women’s chiefly, seemed spread over the surface of their bodies, skin-deep; other inhabited muscle and sinew; Mic always seemed to live from the bone.
“Why are you afraid?” He spoke with a difficult quiet: she could feel his heart like a runner’s. “Is it of me?”
“No. No. Don’t leave me.” She struggled for words. “Of everything but you, I think. One isn’t used to being … so much more in danger.”
