by Betty Neels
So at half past eight Polly carried Baby Gibbs to the theatre block, in a panic that she would do the wrong thing or make a fool of herself. But she didn’t; the anaesthetist was a good-natured man who showed her what to do and where she should go, and by the time the small creature was carried into the theatre, she had regained her usual good sense.
The operation was a fairly simple one—Ramstedt’s; the anaesthetist had told her something about it before they went into the theatre. Baby Gibbs had a pyloric stenosis and couldn’t keep his food down; a small incision would be made into his pylorus and a few hours after the operation he would be feeding again. Minute quantities, of course, but he would be back to normal in a few days.
Polly stood where she had been told to and looked around her. This was where Sam spent so much of his time, and because of that everything was doubly interesting. There seemed to be an inordinate number of people there; several nurses, one of whom she supposed was Theatre Sister, reputedly a dragon of a woman, and a number of figures, gowned and masked as she was, who she took to be students. There was an elderly man standing opposite her too; the theatre technician, the anaesthetist had explained hurriedly. Polly wasn’t sure what he did, but she could ask Sister Tutor during lecture.
She felt a tingle of excitement as the Professor came in with his Registrar and Joseph behind him. He wished everyone a good morning, gave her a brief glance, advised Joseph to stand beside him, since he was there to observe, asked Sister politely if she was ready, and picked up his scalpel.
Polly had no idea how she would feel at her first operation. Usually new student nurses didn’t go into theatre for quite some time, but any qualms she might have felt were swallowed up in her content at being there, watching Sam. He worked without haste, talking from time to time; explaining what he was doing and why; she marvelled that he was able to do that and operate as well. She wanted to watch every movement he made and strained to hear every word he uttered, but just in time she remembered Sister Bates’s urgent instructions; that she was to stay alert for every second so that she could do what anyone there told her to do, at once.
Save for handing a swab or two she had nothing to do. The operation took its normal course. Baby Gibbs, looking incredibly small and white, was put into her arms only moments after the Professor had pulled off his gloves and left the theatre. There was a long list that morning; she had seen it on Sister’s desk. She imagined him stretched out comfortably in the surgeons’ room relaxing before the next case.
Back in the ward she handed the baby over to Staff Nurse, gave a careful report to Sister, and was told to go for her coffee break, taken up almost entirely but not wholly by excited questions from her friends who hadn’t been given the chance of going to theatre yet.
‘I wonder why he wanted you there,’ someone asked.
‘Perhaps he’s sweet on you,’ said a voice, and everyone laughed. Polly laughed too, wishing with all her heart that it was true.
The Professor came on to the ward later that day, just as she was leaving it to go to lecture with Sister Tutor. She stood aside to allow him to pass and he smiled faintly at her, then turned to speak to Sister Bates; self-assured and elegant, not a hair out of place, exuding a quiet certainty about everything he said and did. It was difficult to remember him sitting at her mother’s supper table tucking into bacon and egg pie.
Polly sighed deeply as she made her way through the hospital, already late. Life was getting difficult and she would have to do something about it. She had no idea what; she would have to ponder it well later on; just now she must concentrate on thinking up a suitable excuse for her lateness to Sister Tutor.
She was going off duty just after five o’clock, later than the others because she’d had to go back to the ward to collect some notes for Sister Tutor, when she met the Professor. It was an unlikely place for him to be, in the middle of a rather dark semi-underground passage between the older part of the hospital and the new block, and he was strolling along, with his hands in his pockets, apparently deep in thought. Polly slowed her steps when she saw him and for one moment toyed with the idea of turning tail and going back the way she had come, but that would have been silly. As they drew level she gave him a quick look and said, ‘Good evening, sir,’ in a polite voice, and quickened her footsteps, only to find that he had turned round and was walking beside her.
‘You’re late,’ he observed. ‘Were you kept in or something? I promised Grandmother I would take you back for dinner. She’ll be going home in a couple of days and wants very much to see you before she does.’ He didn’t appear to hear Polly’s astonished protest, but glanced at his watch. ‘Could you manage half an hour? I’ll be at the entrance.’
She stopped and stared up at him, delight mixed with annoyance at his high-handed demands. ‘I wasn’t going out this evening,’ she told him austerely.
He smiled down at her. ‘But now you are. Don’t disappoint an old lady—and if I don’t bring you back with me she’ll box my ears!’
Polly laughed. ‘Don’t be so silly! But I don’t quite understand why your grandmother should want to see me again. Is she at your home?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, having a rest after all the junketing.’ He smiled again, this time with such charm that Polly felt all her good resolutions melting away.
‘I was going to bed early,’ she began rather feebly.
‘You shall sleep in the car,’ he promised. They had reached the end of the corridor and there were several people about, going up and down the staircase at its end, looking curiously at them. ‘Make it twenty minutes,’ he said. ‘Please, Polly.’
One of the Office Sisters coming downstairs was looking at them in surprise. Polly said hastily: ‘All right, twenty minutes,’ and walked away trying to look as though she had merely replied to a polite greeting from one of the consultants; certainly nothing more was expected of her.
She showered and changed with lightning speed, fending off interested enquiries from her friends, telling them with perfect truth that she was going to visit an old lady who particularly wanted to see her that evening. Twenty minutes wasn’t long in which to make the most of herself. She put on a plain cotton dress and slung a cardigan around her shoulders, spent a concentrated five minutes on her face and hair and flew back to the front entrance. The Professor was leaning against a radiator, talking to Joseph, and by sheer ill chance, from Polly’s point of view, the very same Office Sister crossed the hall as he advanced to meet her. She muttered a good evening to an outraged face and raised eyebrows as she slid past her, and felt a rising indignation at the amusement on the men’s faces.
‘It’s all very well for you to laugh,’ she hissed at them. ‘I shall be in the Office tomorrow morning, being tried and condemned!’
‘What for?’ asked the Professor with interest.
‘You know quite well—student nurses don’t have anything to do with the consultant staff. I must be mad!’
‘Don’t worry, no one is going to say a word.’ He flung an arm round her shoulders and gave them a comforting squeeze. ‘I’ve asked Joseph to bring you to lunch one day next week— Jane will be there…’
Polly had given up worrying for the moment. ‘Why me? You don’t need me there too.’
‘Oh, but we do—we can talk to each other and leave the way clear for Joseph to get to know Jane.’ He left the radiator and said briskly: ‘Well, come along, or there’ll be no evening left.’ And with a nod to Joseph he whisked her out to the car.
CHAPTER EIGHT
POLLY WAITED until they were clear of the hospital and weaving through the traffic before she spoke.
‘This has to stop, you know,’ she said severely, and was thrown off balance by his ready: ‘I couldn’t agree more. Have you any suggestions?’ He slid past a bus and eased the car into the stream of traffic leaving the city. ‘You could have refused to come this evening,’ his voice was blandly reasonable, ‘but then Grandmother would have been disappointed—one shouldn’t disa
ppoint the old, don’t you agree?’
She sought for an argument and could think of none. ‘Yes, well,’ she conceded at length, ‘but this is the last time,’ she said it twice because he didn’t answer.
Presently he began to talk about the morning’s operation, asking her if she had understood what he had been doing, wanting to know if she had been interested.
‘Oh, yes, though there was an awful lot I didn’t understand…’
‘What, for instance?’ He encouraged her to question him, and they were still engrossed as he turned the car through the gates of his home, and after that old Mrs Gervis took over, greeting Polly with every sign of pleasure and firing a steady fusillade of questions at her until they went in to dinner.
‘Very good of you to come,’ she observed in her resonant voice. ‘I daresay you’ve done a day’s work, and to spend your leisure listening to an old lady’s ramblings is hardly entertaining.’ She shot a look at the Professor at the other end of the table. ‘But I daresay that has its compensations.’
They were eating the trifle Jeff had just served them when she said: ‘Of course you will visit me, my dear. I live in Cheltenham—perhaps Sam told you? When you can spare the time—? I shall be delighted to see you.’
Polly ate the remains of her trifle and thanked her politely. It seemed unlikely that she would ever see the old lady again, but there was no harm in humouring her. Besides, she liked her, mainly because she was Sam’s granny, and anything of his was important to her.
They were sitting in the drawing-room, having their coffee, when Deirdre walked in. The three of them had been talking and laughing and had not heard her car, and they all looked up in surprise as the door was flung open.
‘An unexpected pleasure,’ said the Professor suavely. ‘Do come and join us, Deirdre—I’ll get Jeff to bring more coffee. I thought you were dining with the Symes this evening?’
‘I left directly after dinner. So this is why you cried off?’
‘Yes. I don’t often have the pleasure of Grandmother’s company and she wanted to meet Polly again before she goes back home.’
Deirdre made a sound which Polly took to be derogatory and sat down. ‘Is she spending the night?’ she asked spitefully, and nodded towards Polly.
The Professor had resumed his seat and was lying back at his ease, his eyes half hidden under drooping lids. He said very evenly: ‘Be careful, Deirdre, Polly is a guest in my house.’
Then she gave a little laugh. ‘I wonder what the hospital thinks, although of course I suppose it’s usual—affairs between doctors and nurses, it must relieve the boredom.’
He was on his feet. ‘I’m not at all sure why you came,’ he said silkily, ‘but I can see no possible reason for you to stay, Deirdre. I’ll see you to your car.’
Something in his face brought her to her feet. ‘Don’t think I’m going to apologise,’ she said to Polly.
‘I didn’t expect you to,’ said Polly in a controlled voice, swamped by Mrs Gervis’s decisive tones.
‘You need to wash your mouth out with soap and water,’ she observed icily. ‘If you weren’t a guest under Sam’s roof I have no doubt he would have bundled you out of the door long since.’
Deirdre stalked to the door, then turned to put a hand on Sam’s arm. ‘Oh, Sam, I know I’ve been naughty, but you’ll forgive me, won’t you? After all, we’re to be married soon. You haven’t forgotten that?’
She spoke beguilingly and smiled up at him, no trace of bad temper allowed to show.
He moved away so that her hand fell to her side. ‘I haven’t forgotten, Deirdre.’ He opened the door and followed her out into the hall, and presently Polly heard the car start up and be driven away.
‘A thoroughly nasty young woman,’ said Mrs Gervis sternly. ‘Shown in her true colours too.’ She smiled at Polly. ‘Men,’ she declared, ‘even the best and cleverest of them, need a helping hand.’
‘Here’s one that doesn’t,’ observed the Professor from the door. ‘This one is quite capable of managing his own affairs, thank you.’
He crossed the room and sat down again. ‘I’m sorry about that, Polly,’ and her shocked mind registered the fact that he didn’t seem in the least sorry. He went on: ‘When are you free next week? Could you spare the time to come to lunch, and if you come with Joseph I’ll get Jane up here. I’ll run her home in the afternoon and drop you off as we go, if you can manage that?’
So Deirdre and her disgraceful behaviour were to be ignored. She said with her usual calm: ‘I’ve got Thursday and Friday next week…’
‘Thursday, then. Joseph can drive you here; I’ll see he gets his half day. We’re operating in the morning—a short list, so he can be away by noon and get here in plenty of time for lunch. I’ll go down to Cheltenham and fetch Jane. She’s not allowed to drive her own car yet.’
It was on the tip of Polly’s tongue to suggest that since it was Joseph who wanted to see Jane again it would be a good idea if he went to Cheltenham to fetch her, but that would mean the Professor having to give her a lift, so she didn’t suggest it. She looked up and saw him watching her and coloured faintly, worried that he might have guessed her thoughts. Which, of course, he had.
He drove her back to the hospital an hour later, after a brisk goodbye from his grandmother. ‘I shall be seeing you again, my dear,’ the old lady said positively. ‘It’s been a pleasant evening and a very enlightening one.’ She offered a soft, elderly cheek. ‘You may kiss me.’
Polly sat beside the Professor in the comfort of the big car. There was a great deal she felt she must say, but how to begin? And he wasn’t being helpful, she thought crossly, not saying a word.
‘I don’t blame Deirdre in the least,’ she stated at last, and got stuck. ‘What I mean is—she’s going to marry you… And I meant what I said; this has got to stop…’
He eased the Bentley to a gentler pace. ‘There are some things on this earth which cannot be stopped, Polly. The tides of the sea, the winds, the changing of the seasons—and falling in love. We are powerless against all these!’
‘You’re in love with Deirdre,’ Polly spoke stubbornly, ‘and she’s in love with you; you’re going to get married.’
‘So you keep telling me, dear girl. Have you ever been in love, Polly?’
It was easy to talk to him in the summer dusk, their faces in the dim car. ‘Once,’ she told him soberly, and didn’t add for all time, for she knew that was true, she would never love anyone quite as she loved him; once he was married she would make herself get over it; it had been done before by other women, so she would do it too. He was perhaps a little interested—if not in love—with her, and that was why he and Deirdre were at odds. Before she had met him that day on the way home, his future must have looked settled and happy, and somehow, without wishing to, she had unsettled him. She said out loud without meaning to: ‘Oh, you must get married soon, Sam.’
He laughed softly. ‘Oh, I intend to.’ He pulled into the side of the road and stopped. ‘You called me Sam,’ he observed mildly and leaned over to kiss her, not mildly at all. He drove on again at once, saying nothing, whistling under his breath, while Polly, wordless, sat beside him.
At the hospital he said: ‘I’ll be away for a few days, but I’ll fix things with Joseph for next Thursday.’ He got out and opened her door and went with her into the entrance hall, where he wished her goodnight in the friendliest casual way, then went to speak to the night porter about something or other.
Polly mumbled thanks and a goodnight and hurried over to the Home, hoping her friends would be in their beds so that she could get into her own bed quickly and think things out. But they were still milling around, making a last mug of tea, grumbling about aching feet and hardhearted Ward Sisters and staff nurses. They pounced on Polly, offered tea and settled down to question her about her evening.
‘Was she tiresome, this old lady?’ one of her friends asked. ‘You look all in, Polly.’
‘Actually, s
he’s rather an old dear, but I suppose I was tired to start with and she asked a great many questions. But I do like her.’
They all went to their beds presently and Polly had a long very hot bath which didn’t clear her head at all, only made her sleepy. She got into bed presently and fell asleep, her thoughts in such a tangle she had no idea how to start unravelling them.
Nothing went right the next day. Staff, who had taken a dislike to her anyway, kept pouncing on her, finding fault with the smallest thing, and to make matters worse she tripped up with a bowl of water in the middle of the ward and sent the contents in all directions, just at the very moment that the Professor came in. It was a splendid opportunity for Staff to bawl her out in her ladylike tones, highlighting the unfortunate episode for everyone excepting Polly’s benefit, but the Professor didn’t appear to notice or hear anything amiss. He turned his back and walked to the other end of the ward, deep in consultation with his Registrar and Joseph, and stayed engrossed in his small patients until Polly had taken herself and her mop out of the ward.
And Sister Tutor, usually a long-suffering though stern woman, grumbled at her; her notes had been badly written, and by now she should know the bones of the body—and she a Latin scholar, and her case history of a child with whooping cough was far too scrimpy. Polly ended her day convinced that she was never going to be good at anything; she’d end up as a mother’s help or a companion to some old woman. She wasn’t sure if there were still companions about, one never heard of them these days, but they just happened to suit her remarkably depressed spirits. Tomorrow, she decided, getting ready for bed, no longer bolstered up by her friends and mugs of tea, she would go to the office and ask to leave.
Nine o’clock was the time appointed for nurses to go to the Office, either to make requests for themselves or to be lectured for a crime so heinous that Ward Sister was incapable of dealing with it. She would have to get permission from Sister Bates, of course, and Polly kept an eye on the clock while she cleaned up the toddlers after their breakfast, only to be stymied at the last minute by the abrupt departure of Sister from the ward. Staff was in X-Ray, getting some necessary films, and Nurse Honeybun was bathing babies. Of the other two nurses, one had gone to change her apron after a disastrous episode with a bowl of porridge and the other one had days off. Polly, having screwed up her courage, felt let down. She tied a clean bib round the last toddler and started to walk towards Sister’s Office on the landing, glancing with pardonable pride at the row of clean little faces in their cots. Only in the last cot of all, the small face wasn’t only clean, it was a nasty blue colour as well.
