Snowflakes in the Wind

by Rita Bradshaw

  This time Abby was able to do just that, explaining how Joe McHaffie had treated her from the first day she had gone to live with her grandfather until the night of Robin’s wedding. She told the sister about Rachel’s letter, her fear that Joe McHaffie had come to Galashiels on the night of Flo’s murder, and the fact that Flo had been wearing her clothes. When she had finished speaking, the sister sat quiet for a moment. Then she said, ‘I think because of the distress regarding Nurse Kane’s death you have got this out of all proportion, Nurse Kirby. Quite understandable of course, but nevertheless, I fear you are letting your imagination run away with you.’

  ‘So you don’t think I ought to inform the police about Joe McHaffie?’

  The sister looked at her. ‘And say what exactly? Did this man ever threaten to kill you?’

  ‘Well, no, not exactly, Sister.’

  ‘Has he done you physical harm in the past? Assaulted you in any way?’

  ‘Only when he tried to grab me at the wedding.’

  ‘Since you have been residing at Hemingway’s, have you seen him in the area?’

  ‘No, Sister.’

  ‘And could he have known you were due to have leave that particular day?’

  Abby shook her head.

  ‘And why, if he did commit this terrible deed, would he disappear thus bringing attention to himself? Surely he would have simply gone home and acted as normal? You say he has lived with his parents all his life? Then perhaps he just wanted to get away for a time. People do, you know. But with his work commitments it would perhaps have been difficult for him to do so and therefore he took the easy way out. I am sure he will turn up at the farm sooner or later or write to tell his parents all is well.’

  When Abby continued to look doubtful, Sister Duffy patted her hand. ‘I did the same kind of thing when I left home to take up nursing, Nurse Kirby. My parents would never have agreed to it. With my sister and two brothers having left home and married, it was generally assumed I would be the one to remain a spinster and take care of my parents in their dotage. I’m afraid, for my own sanity, that wasn’t an option, and neither was marriage.’

  ‘My grandfather did say that Joe is taking on more and more of the steward’s duties now his father is getting older.’

  ‘There you are then. Presumably he’s lived on the farm all his life? Then perhaps he wanted to see a little of the world before he stepped into his father’s shoes. If you point the finger at this man now, with no proof and nothing to substantiate such an accusation, save that Nurse Kane happened to be wearing a borrowed hat and coat, I fear the police would laugh at you. But if they did take it seriously and investigated further, surely that would cause an immense amount of bad feeling with the family which could rebound on your grandfather and brother? Which, according to what you have told me, is the very thing that has kept you concealing this man’s animosity towards you all these years?’

  Abby nodded. ‘Yes, Sister.’

  ‘An animosity which, I might add, never resulted in more than unkind comments and taking your arm at a wedding. In hindsight, even the incident when you were a child, although upsetting, was something and nothing. He must have known, as you discovered later, that the pools would be frozen well into the spring and that you were in no danger, save for being frightened. As I say, unkind, but one could hardly take the great leap to the man committing murder on such flimsy supposition.’

  Put like this, her fears did seem ridiculous. And yet . . . Abby looked into the sister’s well-meaning face. Sister Duffy didn’t know Joe McHaffie. She hadn’t seen the look in his eyes when he stared at her. But was he capable of murder?

  Sister Duffy patted Abby’s hand and then stood up. ‘We are all still feeling the effects of the terrible tragedy of Nurse Kane’s death, the more so because the police have not apprehended the person or persons responsible, but the police inspector has told Matron he is leaning towards the possibility that a passing vagrant, intent on robbery, committed the crime. He probably had no intention of killing Nurse Kane, but if she cried out and he panicked . . .’ Sister Duffy shrugged. ‘That is a far, far more likely explanation than the one you speak of. The farm is umpteen miles away, he would hardly have picked the very night that someone wearing your hat and coat walked along the lane after dark, Nurse. You must see that?’

  Again, put like that her suspicions did seem farfetched. ‘Yes, Sister.’ Abby rose to her feet, smoothing her apron.

  ‘And if he had had evil intentions towards you, wouldn’t he have carried them out while you were still living within the farm community? There must have been numerous times when he could have acted on them.’

  That was true, but . . . ‘I suppose so, Sister.’

  ‘You have to look at this logically, my dear. And at the moment that is difficult, I understand that.’

  ‘I’m sorry to harp on about it, Sister, but he did follow me on the night of my brother’s wedding.’

  ‘But after you’d repulsed him, he made no attempt to come after you or attack you.’

  She’d left him rolling on the ground clutching his private parts, Abby thought. He’d been in no position to come after her.

  ‘And the next morning he did not threaten you or attempt to detain you? Is that right?’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  ‘I am not being difficult, Nurse Kirby. I am merely putting the case the police would, if you spoke to them. You do see?’

  Yes, she saw. ‘Yes, Sister.’

  ‘Nurse’ – Sister Duffy hesitated for a moment – ‘don’t let your friend’s death, shocking and upsetting as it has been, impinge on your own mental health and peace of mind. Of course such a ghastly thing is bound to impact you and the other girls and disturb you, but life has to go on. You have the makings of a good nurse, a very good nurse, but something like this could cause you to lose focus and I wouldn’t want to see that happen. Hard though this may sound, you need to put it behind you and concentrate on your work here. Now, time has gone and you need to return to your ward but first’ – Sister Duffy glanced at Abby’s bed – ‘I expect you to leave this room as I would wish to find it.’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’ Strangely it was comforting. Whatever disasters befell and however terrifying her thoughts, Sister Duffy remained the same.

  Time has a habit of dulling even the most chilling of eras. For a long time after her talk with Sister Duffy, Abby went over and over it in her mind, especially during the night hours when she was so tired her head and body ached but sleep didn’t come.

  Sister Duffy had been logical and reasonable and – most importantly – neutral in her summing-up of the facts. The sister hadn’t been influenced by guilt and fear, and her conclusion that Joe McHaffie had nothing to do with Flo’s murder and that to implicate him would be harmful to everyone concerned, was a valid and plausible one.

  Abby had written to Rachel, asking Robin’s wife to let her know when news was heard about Joe, and, despite the cost, had thrown the beautiful hat and coat into the hospital rubbish. The first deed had been in recognition of Sister Duffy’s deduction of the facts. The second had been based purely on emotion, and despite the irrational and probably absurd aspect, Abby had been overwhelmingly glad to see the clothes destroyed. The bulk of her wages went to her grandfather to repay him for the cost of her books and uniform and other expenditure, and she couldn’t afford to replace the hat and coat, but that didn’t matter. Kitty and Pam, although not knowing about Joe McHaffie because Abby had shared that with no one but Sister Duffy, could totally empathize with her decision, and offered their own hats and coats for when she needed to borrow them.

  Flo’s passing left a deep sense of loss and injustice in each of the three girls’ lives, but at the same time drew them together as nothing else could have done. Flo had been the mother hen in their quartet, and when the matron had decided not to introduce another nurse into their room and had had Flo’s bed removed, they had gone together to thank her.

  Matron Blackett ha
d looked at the young faces in front of her, and had grieved for their innocence, fearing they would soon have more than their friend’s death to face. The environment of the hospital, the nursing exams, inspections and the constant demands for perfection created a small world within the world, and she, wise in years, knew this. Her junior nurses had no time or inclination to think about civil wars in distant lands, and fascism and communism were only words to them. She doubted if there were a handful of her nurses who could even name the prime minister of the day. But she, like others born before the Great War, was watching the rise of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialists with some trepidation. In a stunning German election the Nazis had come second, and the meeting of the new Reichstag, in which the Nazis had 107 deputies, had been marked by rowdy scenes in the chamber and violent anti-Jewish demonstrations in the streets of Berlin. The newspapers had reported that mobs of Nazi supporters had chanted, ‘Down with the Jews,’ and smashed windows of Jewish-owned stores.

  But she could be wrong, she thought, as she accepted her nurses’ thanks and sent them about their business. Certainly the government didn’t seem unduly concerned about the Nazis, or the fact that this Hitler – a small, nondescript little man in the matron’s opinion – had publicly denounced previous peace treaties, saying he wanted to build a huge conscript German army.

  But then her father had been a small, nondescript little man, and he had made her life hell on earth, as well as her mother’s and brothers’ and sisters’. Men were a different species. The matron nodded to the thought. A species she neither liked nor respected apart from a few exceptions among the consultants and doctors at the hospital. Men thought differently from women; it was all about power and prestige and domination with them, and the Nazis seemed to epitomize this from what she had read.

  No, there were dark days ahead. She shook her head sadly. And how many of her girls, as she privately thought of her nurses, would be put in danger if the worst happened and war reared its head once again? The last war had been called the war to end all wars, but men never learned the lessons of history.

  But for now she had a hospital to run. Clearing her mind of everything but the day ahead, she picked up the first paper from the pile on her desk and began to read it.

  Chapter Nineteen

  By the third week of December, when the snow lay thick in the hospital grounds and the nurses’ sitting room was so cold that the ice on the inside of the window was half-an-inch thick, the shock of Flo’s death had begun to fade. Abby thought about her friend often and she knew that Kitty and Pam did the same. Sometimes the three of them talked about the good times they had shared, and what Flo would have said about such and such a thing. But as Sister Duffy had declared, life went on, and life at the hospital meant one was on the go from morning to night.

  And now, on the approach to Christmas, Abby was finding that the festive season at Hemingway’s was different from anything she had experienced before. There was a gaiety in the air, an anticipation, and it kindled forgotten memories of how things had been at Christmas when her mother had been alive, especially before her father had returned from the war and joy and merriment had left the house.

  Since her mother had died, Christmas had simply been a time to get through as best she could, a dark time, stirring nightmares that haunted her in the day as well as at night. But this year was different. She even found herself humming the old song that had been one of her mother’s favourites – ‘Snowflakes in the Wind’ – as she went about her nursing duties.

  Kitty and Pam did nothing but grumble about being on duty over Christmas, but Abby had no wish to go home. She felt guilty about this if she thought about it, and so she didn’t let herself think about it. The farm was linked in her mind with Joe McHaffie, and although there had been no word from him according to Rachel’s letters, and the probability of him having anything to do with Flo’s death was remote, she still didn’t want to go where she would be reminded of him all the time. Rachel had taken her place as woman of the house, and Robin’s wife’s letters radiated a quiet happiness and contentment that reassured Abby all was well. With that she was satisfied.

  The second week of December Abby and the rest of the nurses had put up streamers and holly and blobs of cotton-wool snow in the wards, hanging bits of mistletoe in strategic places where the more forward of the nurses hoped the junior doctors would see it and take advantage of the none-too-subtle invitation. Pam had given her boyfriend his marching orders some weeks before and had her eye on one of the more senior doctors, a dashing, slightly greying forty-year-old with film-star good looks. Declaring he would notice her even if she had to dance stark naked in front of him, Pam had secured a piece of mistletoe which she carried about in the pocket of her dress in the hopes she would bump into him at a time when there were no sisters or staff nurses about. Abby and Kitty felt sorry for the poor man – as Kitty said, he was hooked and he didn’t even know it yet.

  The boy scouts had delivered a large tree for the entrance vestibule and the nurses who were off duty that afternoon, of whom Abby was one, had decorated it with glass baubles and tinsel and yet more cotton-wool snow. It was the first tree Abby had ever dressed and she felt inordinately proud of the result.

  To the junior nurses’ delight, they found the strict rules and regulations they had to abide by all year were relaxed a little as Christmas Eve dawned. Amid much giggling and carrying-on, they had formed a choir and had been having singing practices when time permitted. Once it was dark on Christmas Eve, Abby and a number of the other nurses went from ward to ward, singing carols while holding candles flickering in jam jars, wreaths of tinsel sitting on their hair instead of the regulation caps. In the children’s ward, they distributed cuddly toys wrapped in bright paper that had been donated by shops in Galashiels, along with small bags of sweets and a picture book for each child that Matron Blackett had bought.

  Most of the children who’d had to stay in hospital over Christmas were long-term patients, and several of them had never had a cuddly toy or any other toy to call their own. Some of the little ones had regular visitors; others had been more or less abandoned by their families who were either too busy, lived too far away or just didn’t care enough to make the journey to see their offspring. One such little tot, a tiny fair-haired boy with eyes like saucers, had clutched his teddy bear as though he would never let it go. ‘He’s mine?’ He looked up at Abby, his blue eyes shining. ‘For ever?’

  ‘For ever.’

  He smiled at her, a sweet wondering smile, made all the more poignant by his ravaged, emaciated body. ‘I’ll look after him,’ he promised.

  ‘I know you will.’ She stroked the fair curls, her heart breaking. It was doubtful he would see another spring. ‘What are you going to call him?’

  He thought for a moment. ‘My bear.’ He held the teddy close to his face for a moment. ‘My brown bear.’

  ‘Brown Bear. That’s a lovely name.’ The other children were already gobbling their sweets, but Archie only had eyes for his bear.

  After singing ‘Away in a Manger’ to the children the choir left the ward, but Abby had had a job to join in for the lump in her throat. She was still thinking about the little boy when she reached her room later. Kitty was already in bed, the blankets pulled up to her chin and her coat spread over the counterpane to combat the icy chill in the freezing room. Each of the girls went to bed with a jumper or two over their nightdress and bed-socks, but they were rarely warm enough since winter had taken hold. It was as well that exhaustion usually claimed them in sleep before the cold penetrated their bones, but each morning when they awoke, instinct having turned them into little curled-up balls under the covers, they ached all over.

  ‘Where’s Pam?’ Abby asked, swiftly divesting herself of her dress but keeping her underclothes on, over which she pulled her nightdress and then a thick jumper before scrambling into bed. In the last changeover Pam and Kitty had been placed on the same ward.

  Kitty chuckled. ‘Pr
obably in seventh heaven as we speak. We were leaving the ward and walking down the corridor when Dr Ferry came towards us and quick as a flash Pam pulls out her mistletoe. He didn’t stand a chance. Honestly, Abby, she practically ate the poor man. What could he do after that but ask her if she wanted a coffee? He included me in the invitation too, to be fair, but it would have been more than my life was worth to take him up on it! I think Santa is going to bring Dr Ferry a lot more than he expected for Christmas if the gleam in Pam’s eyes when she walked off with him is anything to go by. She’s shameless, she really is.’

  Kitty spoke a little wistfully. She had never had a boyfriend, and while she was regularly shocked by Pam’s antics and complete disregard for propriety, she rather admired the other girl’s confidence.

  ‘Well, we never doubted she would get her man,’ said Abby drily, her feet so cold they felt like blocks of ice.

  ‘He is gorgeous, though, isn’t he,’ murmured Kitty dreamily. ‘And there’s something about doctors. Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘No, not really, and I’m going to sleep.’ Abby had been thinking about Nicholas all day and she couldn’t face a discussion about the merits of doctors. ‘We probably won’t see Pam for hours, so I’d advise you to do the same. Tomorrow is going to be even more rushed than usual what with the mayor and his dignitaries coming.’

  Kitty pulled a face. ‘All that work and I bet they don’t even want to set foot in the place.’

  Abby didn’t doubt that. Every year the civic party arrived just before lunch, and the mayor was given the honour of carving the turkey for the top table where he, his hangers-on – as Pam irreverently called them – and the matron and consultants sat.

  The amount of work to get the hospital’s patients ready for this visit was immense, especially for the poor junior nurses who happened to be on duty on the male and female chronic wards. Most of these inmates didn’t know what day it was or where they were, existing in a world known only to them and having conversations on a regular basis with folk long since departed.