A Weekend in The Garden (The Jason Trilogy Book 2)

by Lucilla Andrews

  Mr Parsons was deeply asleep and looked ten years younger than in the night. His oxygen had been discontinued, but again the apparatus was still there. The transfusion apparatus had been removed after the second of the two pints of blood that had been all he needed, had run in an hour ago. His new plaster was pristine, his exposed toes warm and a good colour and the alignment of his traction correct. Again MacDonald stood watching him before he touched Mr Parsons’ forehead. From across the ward, the night senior eyed him anxiously. Why did he have to keep standing and staring? He was a surgeon not a physician. Physicians often stood and stared, probably because there was not much else they could do for medical patients, but surgeons just said ‘Right!’ and got a move on to the next bed.

  She didn’t know that to use his eyes was one of MacDonald’s professional habits. She had just decided he had found something wrong and was going to nark at her too, when he turned away, called softly, ‘Thank you, nurse,’ raised a hand to the watching men and walked out of the ward.

  Had he not been so preoccupied, MacDonald would have enjoyed the sensation of a freedom he had not experienced since an SSO in the worst periods of the air war, when the overwhelming burden of work had forced Martha’s ward sisters to allow him to indulge his preference for looking at his patients on his own. From upbringing and personal choice, he was a loner. His mother had died when he was born. He had been the only child of a Colonial Civil Servant who had spent his working life in Africa and been forced by the climate ‒ and lack of modern immunization therapy ‒ to leave his infant son with relatives in Scotland. Aside from his long childhood illness in hospital, MacDonald had spent his entire boyhood between the homes of an assortment of elderly relatives, and boarding schools. He had been many years in Martha’s when his father retired to Edinburgh. The old man had died shortly after MacDonald’s appointment to the teaching staff, proud of his son’s professional achievement. MacDonald had been grateful for his father’s pride and had often wished he could have admitted it, but knew the mere thought of such a personal revelation would have embarrassed them equally. He had learnt to keep his own counsel before he shed his milk teeth and had now such an outward control over his emotions and weaknesses that his acquaintances and foes considered him incapable of either. He had friends who thought they knew him well, who remained convinced he had not remarried because he still mourned his wife. He had never disabused them. He never mentioned his dead wife nor their disastrously incompatible, unhappy marriage. Nor had he ever forgotten that he had been fundamentally responsible for his wife’s death.

  Mrs MacDonald had taught in a girls’ school near their Warwickshire home. One October day in ’44 she had arrived unexpectedly in Martha’s to refuse in person her husband’s letter asking her to divorce him. Shortly after her arrival, another flying bomb fell in Martha’s zone and the incoming casualties made it impossible for MacDonald to spend more time with his wife. She decided she must return the following day to continue the conversation, but warned him nothing would alter her refusal to allow a divorce. She had gone down to spend the night with her only brother and his family in north Kent. Her brother’s solid farmhouse lay outside a village and had a Morrison air-raid shelter, but she disliked the prospect of sharing this with her brother, sister-in-law and their two infant children, and demanded a mattress in the cupboard under the stairs. It had been at about ten-thirty that night when a flying bomb shot down by the RAF landed on the farmhouse. Mrs MacDonald had been killed outright. The family in the Morrison had been dug out shocked but otherwise unharmed.

  This news had reached MacDonald whilst on-duty and been given him by the Wally’s senior night nurse, the girl he had then wanted to marry ‒ and who was the present Sister Wally’s. Until that night she had been unaware he wanted a divorce. The thought of being involved in the inevitable scandal had shocked her as deeply as his later insistence that he had been the basic cause of his wife’s death.

  She had never understood his attitude, nor him. He had never held this against her as it was only that night that he had begun to understand himself.

  He walked up the empty ramp oblivious to the brilliance of the early morning sun, the blazing colours in the flowerbeds and blue of the sky. His mind was haunted by faces; four faces; two living, two dead; and all young. The face of his wife; the face of the girl he had wanted to marry; the face of the third Wally’s night nurse, killed by rocket blast; the face of the Wally’s night junior when he’d had to tell her that her friend Nurse Smith was dead. The girl that until that night he had thought of as ‘that kid Carter’ had stared up at him, her face stunned and waxen and a disturbing mixture of grief, compassion and maturity in her great dark blue eyes.

  He brushed a hand over his eyes as if to brush away memory, but the past was too present. He stepped off the ramp, took the short-cut up the yard and at the high street instead of crossing over, he stopped, looked up and down, then walked towards a public telephone box outside the bus station booking office, about two hundred yards down on the left.

  MacDonald had only met David Hartley briefly once before last night and then shock, the swelling and bruising had hidden the resemblance. He would have known the boy this morning without being told his name. He had a good memory for faces and names. Too bloody good. He sorted through a handful of change for pennies, sixpences and shillings, then asked the operator on the Oakden Exchange to get him a personal trunk call to London. There was a telephone in the Gordons’ front hall, with extensions in the study, master-bedroom and the guest-room he was using. But last night he had dined alone with Mrs Gordon.

  He returned to breakfast with her.

  ‘I always insist darling Alex has quiet breakfasts on working mornings ‒ Nanny sees to the two children in the day nursery ‒ and aren’t you an eager beaver? Over to the hospital already! Last night’s ops. ticking over? Wizo! What a first night for you! Coffee okey-dokey? Sure? Positive you don’t take sugar? We’ve masses. Neither Alex nor dear old Nanny ever use all their rations. My poor darling husband says he went right off sugar as a POW and feels much better without it. He’s always telling me to cut down on the children’s ‒ says it’s bad for their teeth or something ‒ can’t imagine why!’ Her smile exposed her teeth. She seemed to have more than the usual number but they were in excellent condition. ‘Not one filling and I’ve always adored sweet things. Positive one egg’s enough? Honestly? I expect you’re just being frightfully polite and just wish it could be two but what with it only being one egg a week on ration I don’t know what we’d do if our farmer ex-patients didn’t keep slipping us the odd dozen on the Q.T. ‒ no use binding! As poor dear Mummy says much better than the one a month in the war. Do have another cup of coffee ‒ you must need it after that blitz of a night. Was the second op. a road accident?’

  ‘No.’

  Iris Gordon smiled knowingly. ‘Naughty me! After six years as a surgeon’s wife I should know not to ask awkward professional questions. I am allowed to ask if you slept well. Did you?’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ he said truthfully. He had slept well for three hours, but didn’t feel tired as he belonged to a generation that had learnt to manage on little sleep. ‘I hope I didn’t disturb your household coming in on either occasion. I’m afraid the telephone ‒’

  ‘Didn’t wake me! I switched off the bell in our room, but nothing wakes me!’ She laughed uproariously. She was a large, healthy young woman with a lovely complexion, untidy short brown hair, and would have been quite pretty had she had fewer teeth. She was twenty-four but still thought of herself as ‘Mummy’s clever little girl’ for marrying an attractive, eligible man seventeen years her senior, a few months after she left school. Mrs Gordon and her mother only applied ‘clever’ as a compliment, to a woman who married young and married well. A ‘clever’ woman in any other context was to be distrusted, or pitied, and in both events, avoided. ‘I don’t know what we’d do without dear old Nanny to listen for the children,’ she continued in her piercing vo
ice. ‘Nanny heard you but she says you were frightfully quiet ‒ she’s just wonderful with the children and such a light sleeper, bless her! Used to be my Nanny. Imagine!’ He braced himself for the laugh. It came. ‘Mummy managed to hang on to Nanny and our old cook in the war whilst I was away at school ‒ whole school evacuated to Wales ‒ don’t you just adore the Welsh? All that wizard singing!’

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve never visited Wales.’

  ‘You must! Positively! Mummy moved down with Nanny and cook and, as she says, just muddled through. Don’t you think civilians were simply wizo in the war? Not that I actually remember it very well as ‒ well ‒ actually I was frightfully young and that sort of thing. Seems ages ago ‒ but you won’t believe this ‒ one still can’t get servants. The girls just don’t want the jobs. Do you know, all I’ve got to help run this house with two children is old Nanny and my daily woman and she flatly refuses to come Saturday afternoons and Sundays though I pay her one-and-six (l/6d) an hour! I’d be up a gum tree if we hadn’t coaxed Nanny back. I think she was quite glad to come back. She’d retired to live with her older sister ‒ widowed in the Great War. Can’t have been much fun for them both just living on their pensions.’

  MacDonald looked into his empty eggshell as if inscribed within was the 10/- State weekly pension for Widows, and Old Age Pensioners. ‘No. Not much fun.’ He took his ration book from his wallet. ‘Sorry, I forgot to give this to you last evening.’

  ‘Thanks frightfully.’ She examined the contents. ‘Wizo! You haven’t used any of this week’s ‒ bread, tea, sugar, meat, butter, marge ‒ bliss upon bliss! Are you sure you don’t want these coupons?’

  ‘Quite, Mrs Gordon.’

  ‘Iris, please! And you don’t mind ‒ George?’ He bowed slightly. ‘Wizo! I loathe formality. Makes me feel frightfully aged.’

  ‘Unnecessarily. If you’ll forgive me ‒’ he rose, ‘as I’m due over the road at nine.’

  ‘And you’ll need your car as you’re due to take Alex’s follow-up clinic in Wilverden Hospital at eleven. I’ll see you out ‒ oh, bother!’ The hall telephone was ringing. ‘Not bother! May be Alex or his mother ‒’ she galloped through the door he held open and he heard her, ‘Oh, it’s you, Mummy darling ‒ can I ring you back?’ as he went quickly by and up to his room for the medical bag locked in his suitcase. He hadn’t needed it in The Garden, but in the surgeons’ room after Mr Parsons’ repair, he had gathered from Joe Rolls and Dr Edgehurst that the former Old Peoples’ Home in Wilverden, a village nine miles south-east of Oakden, now had a new name, but was generally regarded as The Garden’s poor relation.

  Iris Gordon was still talking to her mother when he returned. They exchanged waves and he let himself out of the unlocked front door. A few minutes later when she bounded down the steps to open the gate for him, Catherine rode by on a high, black pre-war bicycle.

  Catherine pedalled slowly with one hand holding down between her slim, bare thighs the voluminous skirt of the sleeveless, tight-waisted pale blue New Look seersucker her younger sister, the wife of a Washington attorney formerly a Major in the USAAF, had sent her in 1947. When skirt hems moved up to their present mid-calf, she had cut off enough to make a cravat for Mark to wear when his bed was outside, and a headscarf for herself. Having been one of the three daughters ‒ no sons ‒ of an East Anglian country parson with a wide-spread parish, small living and no private income, she had learnt to ‘make do and mend’ long before it became a patriotic duty during the war, and necessity in the much tighter austerity of the peace. Her upbringing had been invaluable in Oakden, as she understood instinctively the local unspoken language and unwritten rules. Under those rules, a young grass-widow on a bike could stop for social chats with other women, but not with a man or when one was present. Thank God for the rules. She had seen the couple in the Gordons’ drive with her side-vision but wasn’t feeling strong enough for either. She didn’t turn her head and rode on with her hair floating behind her and skirt attempting to billow like an inflated parachute.

  Iris Gordon was r-a-a-ather tickled that George MacDonald didn’t appear to have noticed, much less recognized, Mrs Jason all tarted up. Personally, she thought her jolly sensible to get herself a little job whilst her husband was in the San. Natch, dear old Mummy couldn’t be expected to understand and in a way one had to see Mummy’s point ‒ it was r-a-a-ather letting the side down for a doctor’s wife who actually was a lady, to work in a place like The Garden. The other nurses, as Mummy said, were no doubt excellent gels, but it was useless to pretend they weren’t frightfully common. Different in the war. Ladies did all sorts of odd jobs in the war, but now we were back to normal (by which Mrs Gordon and her mother meant 1939), it was a bit odd. And yet, she, Iris, actually, quite liked Mrs Jason. They often had jolly little natters at the gate. Once, she had actually told her she was jolly enterprising to get this little job. ‘Let’s face it ‒ what else would you do down here?’

  Knowing the rules, and having in her old home, in her two years as a VAD in military hospitals, and in Martha’s, met so many Iris Gordons, and especially to spare Mark’s pride, Catherine had resisted the temptation to reply ‒ I could always try starving on the ten bob (10/-) a week that’s the most the National Assistance Board hands out to the destitute. She had smiled and changed the subject.

  ‘Lunch, George!’ Iris announced. ‘Silly little me! I’ve forgotten to tell you it’ll have to be all cold today and will you mind just helping yourself? Everything’ll be ready in the dining room. I’m afraid I’ll have to eat early with Nanny and the children ‒ the Fair! Remember my telling you all about it last night? Jolly G.! Thing is ‒ the Opening’s at two and I’ll put up the most frightful black with Matron if I’m late. She does so like all the wives to show the flag. The Friends have a stall ‒ The Friends Of The Garden ‒ and we’re all supposed to bring and buy and that sort of thing. Fearful bind, actually, but the children and Nanny love it.’ She hesitated, then decided not to add, and I’ll bet you get dragged in. Always put darling Alex in a bad mood all morning ‒ but he couldn’t get out of the Annual Fair with his usual excuse that he was wanted at the hospital with Matron Chairman of the Organizing Committee. Much better to leave the bad gen to the Assistant Matron. ‘Sure you don’t frightfully mind having to eat alone?’

  ‘Not at all. I hope you all have a pleasant afternoon.’ He got back into his car. ‘If you’ll kindly ‒’

  ‘Say no more! Gently does it!’

  Waiting in the middle of the road for a gap in the on-coming traffic, he stuck an unlit cigarette in his mouth and watched the first poles for bunting going up on the broad, closely-mown Green that backed the War Memorial about fifty yards down on the right from the hospital. He didn’t light up until he had crawled across, through the gateless pillars, round the far side of the circular rosebed filled with dark red roses, narrowly avoided the mounting block and drawn up in the space for about three cars largely labelled PARKING FOR CONSULTANTS ONLY. For a brief while he sat smoking and watching through the rear window the small pale blue figure slowly cycling up the foot of the hill until the figure jumped off and began to push up. He put out his cigarette, reached for his medical bag, glanced at the roses, then went up the black marble steps two at a time.

  ‘Mrs Jason! Mrs Jason!’

  Catherine jumped off the pedal on which she was scooting into the Sanatorium drive, swung round, and at the sight of Sugar Plum’s anguished, tear-stained face, suddenly felt very cold. She asked gently, ‘What’s up, Nurse Ash?’

  ‘Oh, Mrs Jason ‒ it’s my boyfriend David ‒ David Hartley ‒ I’d just come off when our portress told me ‒ she’s Mrs Gillon, P.C. Gillon’s mother ‒’ she clasped Catherine with both hands, wept on her shoulder and between sobs gasped out the whole story.

  Catherine’s adrenalin flooded her drained face with colour as she comforted the girl.

  ‘He’s going to be all right? He is going to be all right ‒ isn’t he?’

  The
y all asked that, thought Catherine. All ages, both sexes, in the same words. Thank God, for once I can be honest. ‘It was a nasty smash but he’s doing quite nicely. He’ll probably be in The Garden a few weeks. You must come and visit him.’

  The girl’s wet eyes shone. ‘Can I? Only ‒ being on nights ‒’

  ‘I’ll tell Sister Men’s Surgical you’re a night nurse. She looks a bit stern but she’s very kind. She’ll let you visit him out of hours. It’ll only be for a few minutes at first and wait until tomorrow. He won’t be up to it today.’ She remembered belatedly she was a Night Sister. ‘You’re quite sure he’s my friend Miss Dean’s cousin?’

  ‘Oh yes, Mrs Jason! Like I said ‒ that’s how we met though ‒ er ‒ though I don’t think he’s told her about me.’

  Catherine smiled kindly, ‘They’re only cousins, duckie, and as he’s a few years younger I don’t think they’ve ever seen much of each other. Do your cousins know about him?’ Sugar Plum shook her auburn head. ‘And you haven’t known each other very long, have you?’

  ‘Not really. Just five weeks only it seems much longer because ‒ well ‒ we just clicked. You know?’

  ‘Sure.’ Catherine looked at the wide-eyed, pretty innocent face. A sitting duck for any attractive lad with a roving eye and if her knight on the white charger had more than fifty per cent of his blood in common with Ruth Dean, when he eventually rode off into the sunset he would ride alone. But this was no moment for that kind of truth.

  ‘I expect that was just how it was when you first saw Dr Jason?’

  Not quite. She didn’t say that either. No girl under the impression that the great love of her life is just recovering from a near-fatal accident wanted to hear that once another girl of her present age had greatly loved a boy of twenty-one whose aircraft had exploded over Bremen. ‘Often happens that way, duckie.’

  ‘Guess so. Oh dear ‒’ Sugar Plum shuddered. ‘I know it was my fault because of our row! I’m sure his cousin will think so ‒ will you have to tell her about me?’