The Private Wing

by Claire Rayner

  And then all he said was “Tricia – ” and put his arms round her and kissed her so hard and so hungrily that her head was forced back against the tree, and her lips felt bruised under his onslaught.

  She managed to pull back her face after a moment, but he kissed her throat instead, and his hands were hard against her back, and caressing her with a barely controlled violence.

  “David – stop it – stop it!” she managed to say breathlessly, and wrenched her head sideways as his face came up and he tried to reach her mouth again. “No, damn it – you smell foul – stop it, do you hear me? – stop it at once – ”

  And then, as his hands moved down her body, she managed to pull one arm free of the combined shackles of his grip and the folds of her heavy cape, and pulled her arm back and struck out.

  Her hand hit his face fair and square, so hard that her palm stung, and there was a moment’s horrified silence as they both stood perfectly still. And then he pulled away, and said thickly, “I’m sorry. I don’t know what – I’m sorry.”

  “David! Are you all right? Did I hurt you? Oh, God, I’m sorry! But you’ve never been so – you’ve never been like that before! And what’s the matter with you? You’ve never drunk whisky as long as I’ve known you! And you reek of it. What’s the matter?”

  She could just see him in the half light, one hand held to his cheek, and she put her arm round his shoulders, and led him round to the far side of the tree to the little wooden bench that curled round the trunk, and sat him down and then sat next to him, looking up into his face.

  “David?”

  “I’m sorry, Trish,” he said after a moment. “I don’t know what hit me. No, that’s not true. I do. But – well, I’ve been thinking about it for hours – what I’d say, how it would be, and then – well I thought you were keeping away from me, because they couldn’t find you in your room they said, and – well, then there you were, and I couldn’t help it. And I’m sorry.”

  “I wasn’t hiding. I – there was a problem. I’m sorry. I really meant to call you. I just went up to change first, and then – I got held up,” she finished lamely. Well as David knew Ngaire, she couldn’t say any more about her to him. “But David – whisky! Why?”

  “I told you. I was planning – thinking about what I’d say. Needed some Dutch courage, I suppose.”

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “What were you going to say that needed so much courage?” That you’re tired of waiting for me, the little secret voice deep inside her whispered. That you aren’t going to sit about any longer while I finish what I started. And a little bleak chill rose in her. But she said again. “What were you going to say?”

  He sat silent beside her for a moment, and then sighed heavily. “Oh, I don’t know. It sounds so – when I first thought about it, it made sense. But now – ”

  “If it made sense before, it will now. You’d better say it, whatever it is,” she said in a low voice. Put me out of my misery now, and let’s get over with it, whispered the little voice.

  “You’re a very innocent girl, aren’t you, my darling?” his voice had softened now, sounding more familiar to her. “So nïve. So young.”

  She was nettled. This was the second time today a man had suggested she was silly and young and lacked understanding. Even Ngaire had implied it when she told her story. Now she let her annoyance thin her voice to a sharp edge.

  “How do you mean, naïve? I don’t imagine I’m any more starry eyed than the next girl of my age. I’m not exactly a baby – it’s some time since I grew up, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “Oh, I’ve noticed. My God, I’ve noticed. You’re very much a woman in some ways. You’ve certainly got the body of a – very much the body of a woman. It’s not that I mean. It’s just that – well, you don’t really know what makes me tick, do you, even after all the time we’ve been going out together?”

  Again the accusation of a lack of understanding; now she was thoroughly angry. “Look, David, I don’t know what the hell it is you’re trying to say. And I’m not about to sit here in the freezing dark until you get round to it. Either say it and get it over with, or shut up – ”

  “I’ll say it.” He said and his voice was hard again. “I’ll say it – right now. I’ve told you. I’m a one girl man. I want you – you and no one else. And I want you so much sometimes I could – I could – ” he put his hand out towards her, and then seemed to shrink back inside himself, away from contact with her. “But you don’t seem to understand that, do you? You just talk about getting married, sometime, when you’ve got your bloody nursing out of your system. And I’m supposed to sit about and wait with my system shot to hell because of it. Well, I can’t. Not any longer. And – ” he swallowed noisily, “I think I know the answer to both our problems. A way to – to make it possible for me to wait a while to get married, and a way for you to go on with your nursing until you’ve had enough.”

  “Well?”

  “It’s not that unusual, damn it, not these days. Once, I’d have been horrified. But not now. I’m not a prude, and I know what we both need. So – ”

  She sat very still and felt the cold moving into her bones. And said softly, “Spell it out, David. I’m naïve, remember? I don’t know what makes you tick. So spell it out. In easy words.”

  “Get yourself fixed up with the Pill or something,” his voice sounded sulky in the darkness, but gradually became more eager, developed a note of pleading. “Damn it all, why not? I must be mad to go on in this – this half dead and half alive fashion! I love you and I want you, and I don’t see any sense in suffering much more of the – the hell of seeing you and almost not daring to touch you for fear of the way it makes me feel. Why not? Then I’d be able to let you go on as you are, with no more of those awful arguments about when, when – when we’ll get married. Doesn’t it make sense to you? It must, if you care for me – ”

  She didn’t speak for a long time, and when she did her voice was genuinely puzzled.

  “I don’t understand you, David, indeed I don’t. You’re-you’re suggesting we start sleeping together now, as though we were married, and say that you wouldn’t mind waiting till I had finished my nursing career – but you won’t get married and then let me finish it! For God’s sake, what is this? Why would it be all right to have the girl friend you sleep with working at a career, but not your wife? I don’t understand.”

  “There’s a hell of a difference,” he said roughly.

  “A hell of a difference. I can be stubborn too, just as you can. And I’ve sworn no wife of mine will go out to a job. I mean that. What we do while we’re engaged – well, that’s our affair. No one else’s. But I’m going to hold my head up in the world when I marry. My wife won’t have to have a job.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said again, and stopped. Her mind was a maelstrom of feelings, memories, words. Ngaire’s anguished misery of making love with a man who didn’t love her as she loved him. Adam Kidd’s face as he had looked when he told her she was immature – and the change in him when he had apologised and left her in the office. His voice saying, “There’s more to maturity than age – ” And then Ngaire’s face again, so full of misery, but also, so full of – what? Understanding, wisdom. It might be painful to acquire such understanding, it might demand sacrifices, but surely it had to be done? Somehow?

  Tentatively, she put out her hand and touched him, and then shrank back as he turned on her and seized her in that terrifyingly violent grip again.

  “No, please – David, I can’t think properly if you – if you bully me. Stop, please – ”

  At once he let go, and stood up, and moved away from her, and she could see him standing silhouetted against the branches of the tree, his height bulking against the stippled greyness of the night sky. It must be getting awfully late, she thought inconsequentially. I hope Ngaire’s all right. And then mentally shook herself and opened her mouth to speak. But he was already talki
ng.

  “Look, Tricia, I’ve said it. I had to, and I hope to God you can understand why. I’m not trying to pull a fast one on you. I do love you, and I do want to marry you, but it’s got to be on my terms if I’m ever to keep my own self respect as a man. If you can’t understand that, then God help me. But I’m hoping you will. Think about it, my darling. Please, think carefully and – I’ll call you. Or better still, I’ll wait till you phone me. I don’t want to feel, ever, that I bullied you into this. Or that I cheated in any way. I’ve got to, because if I don’t I – oh, my God, I wish to hell I didn’t want you so much!” and he plunged away through the overhanging branches, making them creak in protest as he thrust them aside, and she could hear his heavy footsteps as he went rushing away across the garden.

  She sat there for a long time, watching the lights of the windows in the ward blocks towering up above the garden winking unevenly through the moving branches as they creaked and cracked slightly in the evening wind. Sat and thought, decided and changed her mind, over and over again. Until the sound of the remote clanging of the Path. Lab. gate, which was locked up for the night at ten o’clock, brought her an awareness of the passage of time.

  Moving wearily, she went into the Home and up the stairs, to find Ngaire. In their separate ways, each needed the comfort of the other tonight. Perhaps, in talking to Ngaire about her distress, Tricia would find an answer to her own dilemma.

  Chapter Ten

  “Ah, there you are, Nurse Oxford!” She looked up, startled. She had come on duty straight from the Home, not bothering with breakfast, and had walked through the double doors leading on to the third floor with her head down, staring at the ground as she walked, and totally wrapped up in brooding over the happenings of the previous evening.

  Adam Kidd was sitting in the office, and he got swiftly to his feet as soon as he saw her, and came out to stand in front of her, his hands thrust into his pockets, and with an expression on his face that was frightening. He looked furiously angry, his lips pinched and his jaws clenched.

  “What the hell did you say to Mrs Slattery yesterday?”

  “Mrs Slattery?” she said, momentarily bewildered. “Say? What about?”

  “Morning, Dr Kidd! You’re bright and early today! Or have you been here all night?” Bridie Cavanaugh came through the doors behind Tricia, and she stepped aside to let her pass.

  “Bloody nearly,” Adam snapped. “And all because of – look, I have to talk to this – this nurse somewhere in peace. I’ll use the linen cupboard. Come on – ” and he turned on his heel, and marched away.

  “What have you been after doin’ now?” Bridie murmured, staring after him.

  “I don’t know – at least – oh, hell,” Tricia said miserably, “I think I know, look, cover up for me if Cleland comes hunting me, there’s a lamb,” and she followed Adam to the linen cupboard, and closed the door behind her with cold fingers. He was standing with his back to the window, his hands still in his pockets, and glowering, and without any preamble she said, “I know – or I think I do – what you mean.”

  “Oh, you do? You can tell me why a patient due for operation this morning got so agitated last night that she packed up her things and decided to march out? Why it took every ounce of tact I had to persuade her not to? Why she needed heavy sedation to get a night’s sleep? Why she is right now heavily sedated so that we can get her to the theatre at all this afternoon? You know why?”

  “Oh, surely she didn’t – I mean, I didn’t mean her to hear me, but even though she did, there was no need to – ”

  “Hear what, God damn it?”

  She closed her eyes for a moment, wearily. “Last night, when I was talking to you in the office. I – I said something about people having face lifts when there was such a long waiting list on the general side. And the phone rang and you answered it and then I saw her – she was walking past the office door, and I think she heard me. I meant to go and apologise. I didn’t mean to upset her, of course I didn’t! It was you I was talking to. But – I forgot – ” and with a sudden memory of why she forgot she found herself filled with embarrassment, and couldn’t look at him.

  “I see! You said – ye Gods, girl, how can any one person be so bloody stupid? I thought, last night, I’d got some sense into you, but – ”

  “This happened before – before you started to talk to me. Properly, I mean. And – well, it was the first time you’d ever been anything but hateful, and – and that was why I forgot, I think.” To her horror she felt her eyes become hot and sandy, and knew that any second now she would cry. And swallowed hard and blinked, and looked down at the floor again.

  “Oh, for pity’s sake! Don’t go weeping all over me. You can save that sort of little girl trick for your boyfriend. It cuts no ice with me.”

  “It’s not a trick! Damn it, I don’t – I’ve never – oh, damn – ” and then she was crying in good earnest and furiously she rooted in her pocket for a handkerchief and, not finding one, scrubbed at her face with a corner of her apron.

  There was a silence for a moment, and then he moved and came towards the door, and she stepped aside to let him pass. But he stopped in front of her, and held out a handkerchief taken from his white coat pocket.

  “Here, you’d better use this. And let me tell you a little about Mrs Slattery, will you? Then perhaps you’ll see just how much harm you almost did.”

  “Almost?” she managed to say, her voice husky.

  “As usual, I picked up the pieces. I seem to do it all the time on this floor. Mrs Slattery makes her living as an actress. She’s not at all a well known actress, but she gets by, or always has up to now. She has a son of seventeen, the only person in her life she has to care about. The child’s father dumped her long ago – never married her, never even knew about the child. So she’s had to keep the pair of them by her own efforts, but she managed to send the boy to a good but expensive school. Silly of her perhaps to land herself with a commitment like that, but as she sees it she has a responsibility to the boy. She had him, and apart from any feeling she may have for him, she feels she owes him a debt for the start she gave him. Being a bastard, even in this day and age, isn’t easy. Anyway, he’s bright – very. Due to sit his A levels shortly. But over the past couple of years things have been getting very difficult for Mrs Slattery. She gets very little work, very little indeed. Her face – it’s paying the price of all these years of heavy make up and hot stage and studio lights – and she believes that’s why she can’t get work. She believes that if her face can be made to look more as it used to she’ll be back in employment. Maybe she will, maybe she won’t. The important thing is she believes it. Without improvement to her face she’s scared to even try to get work. Understand?”

  “But she can’t be all that – I mean, it costs a bomb to be a patient on this floor, doesn’t it? And there are the surgeon’s fees – ”

  “I’m coming to that. Indeed, I am. And then you’ll see why I was so furious with you. Mr Chatterton, her plastic surgeon, has known Julia Slattery for years. He came to us here at the St Cuthbert’s Wing and asked us to help what he regards as a very deserving case. He couldn’t get her a bed on the general side – there just isn’t any provision there for this sort of cosmetic surgery, however psychologically important we may think it is that a particular patient has such treatment. But we managed to get her a bed on this floor without charging for it. It wasn’t easy, but we managed it because there are one or two small funds available. Mr Chatterton is operating for no fee. So we were pleased with ourselves. We were in a position to help, but Mr Chatterton had a considerable job in persuading Mrs Slattery she should accept the offer. She’s a proud woman, however desperate her situation may be. And though you may not think the problems of an ageing actress with one son to support are very important, I happen to feel that everyone is entitled to respect for their needs. And what happened? On her first evening here, a silly girl who has more tongue than sense says something that make
s her think that she is depriving another person of treatment they urgently need. This just isn’t true – I know that, and Mr Chatterton knows that, and if you thought about it, you’d know it, too, because the only people being deprived in this situation are Mr Chatterton of a fee, and this wing of some money it can well spare. But Mrs Slattery believed what she heard you say – and wanted to go because of it. And if she had, it’s my guess she’d never have been able to get another professional job again – not because of the lack of the operation, but because of the lack of the psychological security the operation will give her. She’d have been forced to take her son away from his expensive school just at a stage when it would very likely ruin his entire educational future. Now do you see what you almost did?”

  She nodded bleakly. “Yes. I’m sorry. I was sorry last night, but now I’m even more sorry. I’ll go and apologise to her right away – ”

  “You won’t! You’ll keep right out of her way. Whatever you do, you’ll keep out of her way, because you’ve done enough damage. No apologies will help. I’ve persuaded her, she’ll have her operation, and that’s that – ”

  “But she’s on my case load!”

  “She won’t be – not after I’ve spoken to Sister Cleland.”

  “Oh, no! Must you do that? I mean, she loathes me so much already that she’ll – ”

  “That’s your problem,” he said curtly. “Have you finished with that handkerchief? Thank you.”

  And he went, leaving the door swinging behind him and Tricia with her head aching miserably, and filled with apprehension at the thought of the inevitable confrontation with Sister Cleland.

  But when it came later in the afternoon (and it was typical of her to keep Tricia waiting for the summons, on tenterhooks, as long as she could) she was surprised at the tone Sister Cleland took. She leaned back in her office chair, and looked at Tricia, standing there with her hands very correctly clasped on her apron front, and there was a look of sardonic pleasure on her face.