Seven Dials

by Claire Rayner

  The envelope was written in block capitals so that she couldn’t certainly identify the handwriting and the postmark was blurred so that she couldn’t read it, and she stared at it for a moment before pushing it into her pocket and hurrying over to the bed of the operation case, now safely ensconced and with the bottle from his blood transfusion glowing redly above his head on a stand, trying to concentrate on the matter in hand, which was ensuring that he was in good condition; but it was a difficult thing to do. All the time she examined him, checking his heart rate and his blood pressure, she could feel her own pulses beating harder and faster than they should in her ears and she was furious with herself. It was only a letter, damn it, and she couldn’t even be sure who had sent it. Why get so excited? Calm down, do your job -

  She hurried through her tasks; had to, unable to be comfortable until she could rip open the envelope and smooth out the pages inside, but then, when at last she had turned her patient over to the nursing staff and could go away to the mess to collect her meagre supper, she took her time. She sat in the corner of the big shabby room, withdrawing from the rest of the staff who were there chattering over their own meals and ate her sandwich slowly, not tasting it, but behaving as though it were something especially to savour, sipping her coffee as though it were a really fragrant brew instead of the repellent bottled stuff that was all that the hospital provided. And then when she had finished and couldn’t delay any longer, she took the envelope slowly from her pocket and unwillingly opened it. And it was, of course, as she had known from the moment she had looked at it, from Brin.

  ‘My dear Charlie,’ his large erratic handwriting sprawled over the page. ‘How I’ve the brass neck to write to you, I’ll never know. Heavens, how badly I’ve behaved! To nag you so and then to sulk and fuss and go stamping off like a spoiled two-year-old - you don’t have to say it. I’ve said it all to myself and more these past weeks. I’ve been saying it ever since I got here, the day after I was so hateful to you at that ghastly Broadstairs pest house. (It was awful, wasn’t it? That Matron had lysol in her veins, I swear, but she adored me so she couldn’t have been all bad, I suppose!) I went marching home like a stupid schoolboy and the moment I got here I knew I’d been an idiot. But there it was, I was here and there was no way Sophie was going to let me go straight back to London, which was of course what I wanted to do as soon as I got off the train at Haworth station! She took one look at me, being very much the big sister, and began to cluck like the most proverbial of hens and laid on so much in the way of food and hot water bottles and soft beds and general tender loving care that I couldn’t escape.

  ‘My father fussed too in his dour fashion and made me feel frightful. He’s a good enough old stick, I dare say, but I can’t pretend we’ve ever been as close as we might be. He’s always been so wrapped up in his boring old Mill and local politics - and nothing is more boring than Yorkshire politics except perhaps Yorkshiremen, who are indeed a special breed - that talking to him was, for me, like climbing up the moors in bedroom slippers. And my dear, the weather here made it all seem so much worse! Tansy Clough (that’s the family home, they’ve been living here for who knows how many generations, madly feudal) is all grey stone and bitter nights and not enough coal and what there is smokes so that you’re kippered - but Sophie and Father have done so much to try to make it agreeable for me that I just got stuck here. Sophie has managed to get hold of some wood and so there we sit night after night, staring at the flames while my father nods over the Yorkshire Post and Sophie knits and watches me, anxiety on a plate! So, as you can see, I’ve had a rest as you suggested - but it’s the sort of rest I imagine corpses feel they are getting, tucked into their graves.

  ‘Anyway, here I am now, apologizing to you for being such a wretch and treating your kind efforts on my behalf like some sort of oaf. Of course you were right. I have to be patient, and if you feel you can eventually operate on me and make me look as I should, then I’ll be forever grateful. So, please, dear Charlie, this letter is to ask you to take me on again. I’m coming back to London - I’ve got to - can’t stand it here another day - though quite what I’ll do about a job I can’t imagine, and I’d be so glad if you’d see me again, and make a plan for taking me in hand as soon as possible. I can hold on till the summer - that’s when you’ll be finished there at East Grinstead, isn’t it? And then it’ll be back to Nellie’s and a nice new face for yours truly!

  ‘Do say I’m forgiven and am once again the patient of the clever, dear and delightful Miss Lucas. Please, Charlie? Yours, grovelling and ever affectionately, Brinsley Brotherton Lackland.’

  Slowly she folded the pile of thin sheets, over which his elaborate handwriting had sprawled in such profusion and slid them back into their envelope, and though she tried not to be exhilarated, it was impossible for her not to be. There she had been, not an hour ago, congratulating herself on having got over her obsession with this damned man and here he was again pushing her with one extravagantly written letter right back into the tangle of feelings she had lived in ever since he had first turned up at Nellie’s as a patient. She was excited and dubious and hopeful and frightened and happy all at the same time; it was an exceedingly queasy mix of emotions and she wasn’t sure she could cope with it again. She had, in a sense, got out of practice.

  But for all she lectured herself as she left the medical staff room and made her way back to the theatres to scrub up ready for the evening cases, for all she went on telling herself off through the long hours as McIndoe snipped and shaped and smoothed and stitched, while she held his instruments and anticipated his needs as she had been trained to do, the excitement never left her. Brin was coming to London. Brin wanted to see her again. What more could she want? What more except, perhaps, a little peace of mind.

  13

  ‘Invitation!’ announced the piece of paper pinned to the rehearsal room notice board. ‘To all and sundry, near and far, the Rising High company in particular. You are all invited to my New Year’s party, next Monday, 30 December, from 7 p.m. onwards, at Rules Restaurant in Maiden Lane. Sorry, no room for spouses or other attachments - we are a big company! RSVP on the attached sheet and say you can bring yourself, your appetite and your thirst. I’ll look forward to dealing with them for you. (Signed) Letty Lackland.’

  ‘That’s a bit odd,’ one of the dancers said, peering at it. ‘I mean, why the day before New Year’s Eve? Seems a funny sort of thing to do -’

  ‘She’d have to invite those - what does she call ‘em - spouses and attachments if it was on Tuesday night, wouldn’t she? You can’t split loving couples then, can you? And like she says, we’re a big company.’

  ‘Seems a bit on the mean side, all the same,’ one of the other dancers joined in. ‘There’s my boy, just out of the army, poor darling - how can I not bring him? After all, serving his country all those years -’

  ‘What, him, sitting out the duration in a cosy quarter-master’s office in Aldershot? I should cocoa! Never heard a shot fired, he didn’t -’

  ‘He worked very hard! I shall ask her if I can bring him - she can’t say no -’

  ‘Oh, yes she can,’ the first dancer said and leaned over and scribbled her name on the acceptance list. ‘I tried that. Asked her if I could bring that super flight sergeant I met at the Stage Door Canteen - he’s gorgeous! But she wasn’t having any. Nice about it she was, very sorry and all that, but the original Rock of Gibraltar, believe me! Be sad if I wasn’t there, she said, but she only had accommodation for the company - and let’s face it, it must be costing her a bomb! What’ll you do then? Come and join in or go out with your quartermaster?’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ the other girl said loftily and turned and flounced away. ‘Got to discuss it with him, haven’t I? Come on, I’m due at the Palladium in half an hour for an audition. If you want to go through that flower sellers’ routine with me before I leave, you’d better put a move on -’

  They moved away to the far side of the big r
oom towards the piano, chattering like starlings all the time, to start their rehearsal, and Katy, who had been leaning quietly against the wall listening to them, quirked her lips. So dear Aunt Letty wasn’t being amenable about bringing extra people to her boring party? Fine - then she wouldn’t be asked. Katy would just bring him and see if even Letty had the brass neck to chuck him out. She’d be livid and watching her control that would be fun, and Katy hadn’t had a great deal of fun lately, what with Peter being so aloof all the time and the rest of the company including no one of any interest at all. She hadn’t even been able to see anything of old Harry, in spite of cultivating that tiresome Lee as she had. The last weeks had been nothing but work and Katy was getting decidedly bored. Ripe for mischief, that’s me, she thought then and smiled brilliantly as the tall and very good-looking - but somewhat dull - actor who had been cast to play Petruchio opposite her came hipping his way into the room. He was the most boring of all, with his doggish devotion, and any moment now she’d give him the sharpest snub of his life. But not quite yet -

  ‘Peter, this is ridiculous!’ Letty said. ‘I don’t need you to work yourself to a streak, dammit! You’ll be exhausted if you go on like this, and then what use will you be? Let me get an assistant for you - someone to take some of the donkey work off your back.’

  ‘Not yet,’ Peter said. ‘Honestly, I’m coping well, really well. And I am enjoying it, you know. And wasn’t that the object of the exercise?’

  ‘It certainly wasn’t to make you look like your own ghost! Are you sleeping properly? Eating as you should? Looking at you I’d say you weren’t.’

  ‘I’m sleeping incredibly well,’ Peter said and lifted his eyes to her face. ‘Can’t you tell?’

  She looked at him carefully, unhappy about what she saw. The smudges of violet shadow beneath his eyes were even darker than they had been and there was a pallor about his sunken cheeks that seemed to go right into him, to be much more than a mere surface attribute. But she had to admit that the deadness had gone out of his eyes. That opaque stare that had so chilled her wasn’t there any more and he looked at her so birdlike and bright that she had to smile, and he responded with a sudden grin of his own.

  ‘Well, yes, I can tell. You’re different. But are you eating?’

  ‘Dear Letty, it’s very hard to get interested in eating the awful sort of stuff that we’re offered these days. I mean, snoek and dried eggs - hardly conducive to greed, are they?’

  ‘Maybe not, but you’ve got to eat all the same. I’ll talk to Mrs Alf. She’s got her fingers in more black market pies than anyone I know. She’s even managed to get the most enormous goose for my party - the people at Rules nearly fell over with shock when she brought it in - and I haven’t a moment’s compunction about getting her to do something for you. Eggs and cream and good broths, that’s what you need -’

  ‘You get them and I’ll consider eating them,’ Peter said. ‘Black market or not. It mayn’t be very ethical, but who gives a damn about ethics any more, anyway?’

  ‘Every inch the cynic, that’s you,’ Letty said but the jeer in her voice was a gentle one. ‘All right. I’ll try to sort things out as far as some decent food’s concerned. And I’m also going to get you an assistant. No, don’t fuss, man. I’m the boss here and you’ll do as you’re told and like it.’

  ‘Dame Goody Two-shoes on the rampage,’ Peter murmured. ‘Power’s gone to your head -’ But he didn’t argue any more, because he was indeed getting very tired, and that was not an agreeable way to feel. He’d thought that once the horror of his nightmares stopped he’d be completely well again, but it just wasn’t working out that way. But all the same, he told himself as he settled down to putting Katy and Rollo through their scene so that Letty could see how they were shaping - all the same, be grateful. You’re sleeping these nights, you’re sleeping. And that is no mean achievement.

  ‘Well, that’ll put a nasty little spike into the Lackland guns,’ William Molloy said with a deep satisfaction and slapped down the letter he was holding so that it lay precisely in the middle of the blotter on James Brodie’s desk. ‘I’ve tried to warn ‘em, of course, but they don’t listen to me. I’m just the secretary here, that’s all, no one at all. But maybe they’ll pay some attention to the Ministry of Health.’

  Brodie picked up the letter and read it carefully and then sniffed and put it neatly back in the same place. ‘I wouldn’t pay too much attention to this, old man. It’s the usual Civil Service chatter, stuffed with parties of the first part and parties of the second part and pursuant to the acts and so on and so forth. If you’d had as much experience as I have of dealing with these obfuscators you wouldn’t get so excited.’

  ‘I am not excited. I am merely pointing out to you that any money they raise with these junketings of theirs will be -’

  ‘Will be used for the benefit of Nellie’s. As I understand it, the show will be done some time in the summer. They need a lot of time to get all the people properly rehearsed, and free from other commitments, and time, too, to get the sets and their costumes organized -’ He sounded very knowledgeable in these theatrical matters and blinked owlishly at Molloy. ‘They are a very important part of any performance, you understand -’

  ‘I’ve been to theatres before, you know. I’m not precisely an idiot. But I also know that these Ministry people mean business. If there’s any money in the kitty when they take over, it goes to the Government, every damned penny, to use for their lunatic state medicine schemes. That’s what that letter says - I can follow Whitehall English if you can’t. And here are these Lacklands swanning around raising money left right and centre, telling people it’s for Nellie’s -’

  ‘And so it is!’

  ‘- when all the time it’s going to go straight to the Treasury! They might as well pay voluntary income tax, these people, as -’

  ‘And what do you propose? That we throw up our hands now and stop worrying about where we’re to get money from? There are bills to be paid every damned day in this place, as well I know! Do I tell our good hardworking fund-raisers not to bother any more and let Nellie’s fall apart? Do I let the patients go hungry and without clean linen - or turn them away altogether? And what about the new block? Do we forget all about the fact that we haven’t any proper pathological facilities and -’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, man, didn’t you read that letter? Can’t you see what it says? Even if you get all the money in from this stupid show and the new building started it won’t be completed before April ’48 when the new scheme starts! It won’t be Nellie’s money any more or Nellie’s building or -’

  ‘Oh, of course it will!’ Brodie said and leaned back in his chair to stare offensively at Molloy down his rather long nose. ‘It’s you who seem to lack the ability to understand what’s as plain as the nose on your face. There will still be a Nellie’s, still be patients who belong to Nellie’s and who rely on Nellie’s. The only difference will be that we won’t have to fuss so much about where the money’s to come from to keep the wheels turning. The Government will provide all we need and very nice too - so we might just as well start as we mean to go on, and raise the cash we want to get our new block started. Can’t you understand that work commenced by April ’48 will have to be completed? But that work that’s still in the planning stage could be held over for heaven knows how long? If we want to keep control here, then we let the Lacklands go on beavering away at their fund raising. We need every penny we can get and the sooner the better. I’m already looking at the estimates from the architects and sounding out builders and I’ve got all sorts of feelers into the Min. of Supply. The sooner I get essential materials ordered the better - do you have any conception what it’s like to get a few simple basics these days? If you don’t, you ought to spend a few days with me - then you’d know what there was to really worry about. I’m in competition for cement and bricks and paint and all the rest of it with every major building in London - because you can’t use your prefabricat
ed Portal buildings here, you know! That’s what I have to fret over! It certainly isn’t the fact that the Government’ll be taking over the running of Nellie’s. It’s the fact that the Government needs a lot of prodding to get done the things we need done now, that’s the worry. Do stop fussing, man, and get on with encouraging the Board to keep on keeping on -’

  ‘One thing you can be sure of,’ Molloy said spitefully, ‘is that you’ll be out of a job once they take over with their damned scheme. You can start as many projects as you like now, expecting to be busy keeping them going after Whitehall moves in, but it won’t be so easy for you. They’ll always need a hospital secretary here to keep the place going, but a bursar? You’ll be as obsolete as - as a Focke-Wulf fighter, after Nye Bevan really gets going -’

  Brodie laughed at that, a wide grin of real amusement. ‘I don’t think so, old boy. I’m afraid you can’t get rid of me as easily as that. Just you wait and see how it’ll all be - I’ve got myself well and truly sorted out, don’t you fret!’ And he bent his head over his desk, pulling a ledger towards him to signal the end of the discussion, and Molloy made a small disgusted noise, halfway between a snort and an exclamation and turned on his heel, and went. Bloody man, he thought as he slammed the door behind him. Bloody man!

  And the bloodiest thing about him is that he could be right. Maybe I should be quiet about this letter, not stop the Benefit sub-committee from ploughing on, not alarm them unnecessarily. Once we’ve got the money, then there’ll be time to worry about whether we had a legal right to raise it. Once we’ve got it. And he went into his office and slammed the door and spent the rest of the day reducing his secretary to tears as often as he could.