Dutifully Jane smiled, wondering what sort of man this was who, while obviously doing a job of importance, could discuss at length the peculiar tastes of the soups of the country in which he worked.
“Maybe he’s secretly trying out my own reactions,” she thought, sensing his gaze on her bent head. “I wouldn’t care what the food’s like. I came out here because I wanted to travel, to see how some of the other people in the world live—and to escape from Dudley,” her mind added honestly, but she refused to think about Dudley now.
“Where were you planning on spending the remainder of the evening?” he asked Ann, speaking to her directly and across the table from Jane.
“I’d thought of taking Jane to see the Golden Fiddle,” Ann said, turning to Jane to add an explanation. “It’s a sort of inn-cum-palais-de-danse,” she laughed. “That’s a dreadful way to explain it, but there’s nothing else to say. The name’s unpronounceable unless one is born to the language, but the sign outside is of a golden violin, so we ‘foreigners’ know it as ‘The Golden Fiddle.’ It’s the inn where most of the locals go for their evening drink and where the young people dance to a three-piece sort of band.”
“Sounds interesting,” Jane enthused. “How far away is it?”
“A couple of streets, that’s all,” Jim Lowth spoke crisply and not as though he were personally interested. “I’ll walk there with you, then drive back to the hospital. I’ll call in and tell one or the other of the Bransla brothers to pick you up in about an hour. That ought to give you long enough to show our new nurse the sort of night life which goes on around here. The sort which it’s wisest to attend if one must spend one’s leisure out of hospital precincts, that is!” he amended.
Jane didn’t know what to say, and at the moment Ann appeared not to have any ideas either. It was something of a relief when Jim Lowth began to tell them of the explosion in the canning factory where the emergency had taken place.
She listened with interest, but without much knowledge and therefore without any real idea as to what, exactly, had taken place. Apparently the factory was modern up to a point, but machinery was one thing Dalasalavia did not have in abundance, modern machinery, that is. It was one of the ancient oil-powered machines which had exploded, killing one man and injuring several others. Three workers, more extensively injured than the rest, had been admitted to the hospital, and Doctor Lowth expressed his intention of returning to see how they were progressing almost immediately.
Abruptly, as he concluded his brief, succinct description of the accident and of the injured, he turned to Jane.
“What nursing experience have you had?” he shot at her. “Apart from taking your S.R.N., of course.”
“I’ve been on every ward in Rawbridge Infirmary,” Jane was annoyed to feel herself on the defensive. “I did my midwifery because at one time I’d thought of joining the World Health Organisation. That was before my, twin sister married,” she added, but he wasn’t interested in whether or not Betty had gone far away and whether Jane had been influenced by the fact that her parents might be lonely. Already, she knew without a word being said, he had forgotten her comments beyond making a mental note of her accomplishments as a nurse.
“You’ll be O.K. with difficult births, then.” It was a statement rather than a question. He frowned, and it was only much later, when she had come to know him better, that Jane realised her first impression had been right and that this man took every aspect of his job very seriously indeed. “I can’t fathom it,” he went on now, speaking almost to himself but musing aloud. “They don’t starve, they don’t overwork, not really, and they haven’t a bad climate, all things considered. I realise the sanitation leaves a great deal to be desired in the outlying districts, but from every part of this country, not just in the towns or merely in the country areas, everywhere, we have more than the average difficult births each year. None of it ties up with known facts. There must be something else, something which isn’t sufficiently obvious to put a finger on it right away. I think...”
What it was he thought they didn’t learn, either then or later. A waiter edged his way through the now rather crowded little restaurant and stopped by their table, stooping to give Dr. Lowth a message. The doctor was on his feet immediately, turning as though automatically to Ann.
“I’m needed back at the hospital,” he said briefly. “Thank God the blood bank’s more or less well stocked. Looks like we’re going to need it,” adding with a most unexpected bitterness: “We often tend to forget we’re not at home and that it isn’t possible to radio round for extra supplies of either vaccine or a special bottle of plasma just when we need it! I’ll find time to get one of the Branslavs to fetch you. Don’t attempt the bus!” and with that he was gone, leaving them to complete the meal alone.
“Why not the bus, for heaven’s sake?” Jane asked in semi-amusement. “I didn’t even know there were any.”
“A few,” Ann’s tone was laconic. “Not very reliable or very comfortable, and certainly not exactly what we know as a bus, not since before the first European war, anyhow, and that was before our time! The thing is,” she said in lowered tones, “the authorities know a number of young people have been approached by the ones I mentioned to you, the arts crowd, known locally as ‘the wild ones’, about the overthrowing of authority and all it stands for. I don’t know much about it, and their way of life would certainly not suit me for very long. All the same, like Dr. Jim, I respect their right to live their lives in the way they think best, whether they believe in the sort of authority they’ve got for themselves or whether they long to rebel against it. It’s no concern of ours, and I as a foreigner in their country wouldn’t like to get myself mixed up in anything likely to cause trouble for the Embassy or for Dr. Jim. He’s doing, and has done, some wonderful work here, and it would be a dreadful loss to the community if anything were traced to the hospital and he and the staff were deported!”
“Could they—I mean, we—be deported?” Jane asked, horrified.
“I’m told that’s what nearly happened a year or so after Dr. Jim came here and one of the then laboratory technicians allowed himself to be talked into taking part in some minor demonstration or other. The government threatened to send all the foreigners back home and to staff the place, however inadequately, with their own people. Since then Dr. Jim’s worked hard to train people who could, in the event of such a thing ever happening again, take over the work and the running of the place, even if it were not run quite so efficiently as now. This is one of the reasons why I’ve asked you not to wind up with the wilder element of young people Kevin has made his friends. It ought to be simple enough to remember the old adage—‘when in Rome...’ ” she laughed, but although she smiled Jane felt she could not join in the laughter.
“It seems funny to think of ourselves as the ‘foreigners’, doesn’t it?” she said soberly. “I know we are, here, but it still seems strange to even think about.”
“I know, but it’s true. There’s one comfort, our job’s a sort of international one, isn’t it?”
“That’s the way I always think of it,” Jane admitted soberly. “Illness is just as bad in any language, and nurses are needed the world over. I’m glad I came,” she discovered suddenly, brightening. “I know it probably sounds very smug, but it’s not meant that way. I think working here is going to be more rewarding than what I was doing, rewarding in giving a sense of satisfaction, I mean,” she explained, wondering if she sounded a prig and hoping against hope Ann would understand.
“I don’t know exactly where you were, except general nursing,” Ann said gently, “but I do know that, although there’s a shortage of trained nurses in Britain as everywhere else, there are also excellent services available for most complaints. Geriatric homes, nursing homes, children’s hospitals, general hospitals, sanatoriums and welfare homes, psychiatric homes and goodness knows what else, even if there aren’t as many people as we’d like to man them all. The fact remains help is
available for the majority of illnesses. Here,” she gestured vaguely, “there is so little, and a need for so much. I assure you, Jane, that whatever work you’ve left you’ll find yourself—mentally and spiritually at any rate—reaping a greater reward of satisfaction with a job well done during whatever time you stay here.”
“You seem to have enjoyed it,” Jane rejoined, smiling as Ann laughed openly.
“Most of the time,” she admitted, “but I’m the sort of person who believes in attracting happiness by simply being happy. It sounds sort of cock-eyed, I know, but believe me, it works! But if you don’t hurry and finish your sweet,” she added, “the taxi’ll be here before we’re ready!”
“I won’t be a moment.” Jane spooned up the last mouthful of the delicious concoction of what tasted like nectarines, tiny grapes, slices of something which resembled apple but which she was certain was not, and the whipped-up frothy cream with which the whole had been adorned. “I shall have to watch my weight if I eat many dishes like this one,” Jane observed ruefully. “But it was absolutely wonderful.”
“I don’t believe that bit about watching your weight at all.” Ann rose and beckoned the waiter, paying the bill and obviously asking to be told when their taxi arrived. “Like me, you belong to the ‘skinny’ breed, as my old Sister in my first hospital used to phrase it. Even if you didn’t you’d soon run off any extra ounces. You think the corridors and what-have-you are long at home. Here they seem to go on for miles and no one department connects with the next without an exercise in the use of your legs! Still,” she gathered up her bag and gloves as the waiter beckoned them from the doorway, “I think you’ll get on like the proverbial house afire, and that you’ll enjoy every moment.”
“I thought Dr. Lowth said this place, what is it? The Golden Fiddle, wasn’t far away?” Jane asked as the same driver who had taken Ann to the station to meet Jane ushered them into his cab.
“That’s right,” cheerfully, getting in beside her and slamming the somewhat rickety door. “All the same, Dr. Jim wouldn’t be very pleased if we walked even that short distance without an escort, and as he’s taken the trouble to engage Larlez,” she gestured again towards the driver’s back, “to take us there, and I expect to wait for us.”
“Can we afford it?” Jane asked outright. “Remember I don’t understand much of the rates of exchange and the value of these queer pieces of paper and coins I’ve been given. Taxis cost the earth any place, and as they’re in such short supply here I don’t suppose they’re the least expensive mode of travel.”
“We’re not going to bother about that at present,” Ann told her as the car jerked to a halt. “Dr. Lowth has an arrangement with Larlez and his brother. I don’t know quite what it is, but he wrote some sort of medical textbook a few years before he came out here. He said once that the royalties weren’t great, but they were at least regular and sufficient to keep him in modest luxuries, one of which he counts as always having some means of transport upon which he can depend. The Branslav brothers look after his own car and our one ambulance,” she added. “Mechanically, that is.”
Ann led the way through the lighted door, down three steps into a brilliantly lit cellar. Two youths with stringed instruments, one of them a violin, flanked an extremely pretty girl in a short, full skirt with a white blouse covered with masses of tiny frills. Behind the girl was a third youth with a drum and a tambourine. Cymbals stood on a stand beside him. As the girls made their way through the fairly crowded room to a small table in the corner, the dark-haired, pretty-featured girl began to sing.
The words, naturally, meant nothing to Jane, but the tune was gay and provocative, and the words sounded light-hearted and lilting so that she was not in the least surprised when, two by two, rapidly forming into groups of four or six, the young people began to dance.
Grouped round the bar and alongside the walls of the long room, older men and women sat at tables or with their tankards and glasses in their hands, tapping their feet, keeping the rhythm of the dance on the table tops and, in many cases, singing gaily. There was nothing noisy or uproarious in the atmosphere, it was all, Jane thought smiling inwardly, rather like an adult version of a children’s birthday party back home.
The music came to an end, the singing and the dancing stopped. People chattered happily together, and more than one of them ventured an outright stare at the newcomer. Ann, it was plain, was known to the majority of them already. They smiled shyly in Jane’s direction, and suddenly she knew she had been right to come. She was thinking over this discovery when the music started again, and once more the girl began to sing.
Someone, she dimly saw a smiling, middle-aged face leaning over the table as its owner placed two glasses of liquid before them, brought them a drink, and Ann thanked the man, explaining to Jane that this was the least expensive wine of the country, home-produced and drunk largely in lieu of water. Silently Jane held her glass in a toast to the donor of the drink, and was rewarded by another shy smile.
When the song had ended and the girl left her position by the band to chat with friends, Ann glanced at her watch.
“We ought to be going now,” she observed. “Larlez will have had his orders as to what time we should be back in the flat, and I don’t want to get him into trouble with Dr. Lowth.”
Obediently Jane rose, gathered her things and returned smile for smile all the way to the door where the burly form of their driver awaited them. As they approached he drained his tankard and banged it back on to the counter, then, beaming and shouldering a way for them, he led them out into the night.
After the bright lights of the inn the darkness of the street was hurtful at first, but as she stepped into the cab Jane looked up and saw the brightness of the stars set in a purple-black sky.
“They’re just the same stars that shine on Mum and Dad,” she reflected, and felt suddenly not so far away after all, although it was all so much different from her imaginings.
The journey back to the flat seemed to take place in record time, although once, along the darkened street, they halted abruptly, and looking through the window Jane saw a group of young people, walking briskly along what seemed like a broad pavement, lanterns swinging from their hands.
They were singing and seemed in the best of spirits, and she looked at Ann in bewilderment.
“Who were they?” she asked, but already she was certain she knew.
“The young people I told you about,” Ann said quietly. “Their present campaign is for street lighting throughout the town, not just along the main thoroughfare as it is now. They’re right, of course, but they don’t see that all this sort of thing takes a great deal of money to accomplish, and that first things—exports, imports, care of the sick and so on—must come first.”
“They seemed a lively crew!” Jane smiled as the taxi turned in at the entrance to the hospital precincts and stopped at the door of the house which contained “her” flat. “There didn’t appear to be anything revolutionary about them so far as I could see.”
“I suppose not.” Ann opened the door and the head of the elderly caretaker appeared round his office window. Ann greeted him, indicated Jane with a wave of her hand, and started upstairs. “They’re not really revolutionaries at all,” she said as she unlocked the door. “They just want a better life for themselves than they’ve seen their parents have, but that,” she sighed, “is at the bottom of most revolutionary ideas! They’ll get it all in time, they’ve the urge to work, to save and to think of the future. I suppose the root of the matter is that, in common with most youthful ideas, there’s a strong sense of impatience. Come on,” she urged. “The caretaker said your trunk had been delivered. It’s just inside. Do you want to unpack now or have a cuppa and go to bed?”
“Bed, please!” Jane admitted. “I’m tired. I don’t suppose there’s anything missing from my trunk?”
“Not unless you had something in it that ought not to have been there.” Ann was arranging the chair into a l
ong bed-chair arrangement as she spoke. “All the time I’ve been here I’ve never had so much as a pin confiscated, or a letter returned to me with bits snipped out, as I understand is the custom should anyone appear to be discussing affairs of state,” she laughed at the quotation, “by letter or any other means. To reiterate: mind your own business, do the job you came out here to do, and do it to the best of your ability, and you won’t go far wrong. In fact I think you’ll be very happy.”
She looked at Jane consideringly for a moment, then as she turned away she asked a seemingly casual question:
“First impressions, please!” she demanded. “Do you think you’ll be O.K., and how do you feel about Dr. Lowth, our ‘Dr. Jim’, now that you’ve met him socially if not officially as yet?”
CHAPTER 3
WHETHER it was because she was in a strange bed, sleeping in strange surroundings, or whether she was just too excited at the thought of entering a completely new phase in her nursing career, but Jane had fully expected to lie awake for hours, and then, when she finally fell asleep, she had expected to sleep heavily for several hours. As a precautionary measure she had set the alarm clock which stood beside the bed, even though Ann had protested it was quite unnecessary as she never overslept.
She had wakened, alert and bright-eyed, ready for whatever lay ahead, ten minutes or so before the alarm was due to ring. Moving cautiously in order not to rouse Ann, she slipped from bed and put the catch down on the alarm bell to prevent its ringing, then, still tiptoeing round, still moving everything with the maximum of caution, she prepared a cup of tea and some slices of thin toast.
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