I got out of the bath and reached for my towel.
“I don’t know about that,” I said stubbornly. “I don’t see how anyone can nurse properly without the necessary background knowledge. And it’s exams that show whether you’ve got that knowledge. It’s obvious to me.”
Chick lounged over the door. “It may be obvious to you, but it isn’t to me, or to anyone else. Like I said before, you’ve got your values all mixed up. But you’ll learn, I suppose, even if it hurts you - and other people as well.” She leaned against the door and looked at me thoughtfully, “You’re a bit like Jo in some ways, you know.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“She has to struggle to pass exams, but she has no trouble in being compassionate. You skate over exams, but you have to work at being compassionate. It’s all relative.”
“Compassion! Sentimental nonsense,” I snapped.
“Is it? I hope you never feel the lack of it in someone else, Avril. You can suffer if you need someone to be kind, and they’re not.”
“Indeed?” I said coldly, pulling my sweater over my head. “I doubt it.”
“Poor Avril,” Chick said softly.
“And don’t be so damn patronizing, either.” I picked up my towel and sponge bag, and pushed past her through the door. “I don’t need pity, thank you.”
Chick shrugged. “Have it your own way, then. I’m going to bed. See you at breakfast.”
But I was too angry and hurt to answer her, and somehow, her “See you at breakfast”, the phrase we always used when we parted at the end of a working day, seemed to highlight the schism between us. We had had our disagreements, of course, over the years, but we had always understood and respected each other’s point of view. Until now.
I came out of the Nurses’ home door and looked across the garden to the big courtyard and the main hospital buildings. There were a few medical students clustered round the door of the medical school block, and the usual hubbub of ambulances and wheelchaired patients at the casualty and out-patient entrances.
As I hurried across the courtyard towards the canteen, a familiar figure came out the laboratory block. Dickon. I wanted to run, suddenly. The only person I wanted to see right now was Peter - I didn’t want to have to cope with Dickon’s hurt face, not after last night, and this morning’s miseries.
But he had seen me, and he came towards me, his hands thrust deep into his crumpled white coat pockets.
“Hello, Avril.” The still drawn look that had been on his face the night before had disappeared, I saw with relief.
“Hello,” I said flatly. It was difficult to look at him, and I bent my head to watch the toe of my shoe scuffling in a little heap of dust.
“I saw Chick a little while ago.” Dickon’s voice was quiet, and I could almost feel the strong effort of control that lay behind it. “She told me what happened this morning.”
I looked at him now, feeling the angry colour rising in my cheeks.
“Did she, indeed?” I said coldly. “Then you too, no doubt, also subscribe to the popular idea of Avril’s Wickedness?”
He looked at me coldly. “Chick didn’t say you were wicked, Avril. She just told me what had happened, and left it at that. But I can’t help wondering why you did it, Avril. Didn’t you know how much this exam meant to Joanna - and why? Couldn’t you have kept quiet about the source of that apron? It wouldn’t have hurt you very much if you had.”
“Yes it would have done!” I flared. “I’d have been disqualified in that paper for sure, and that would have made one hell of a difference to the final results. And that happens to matter to me, in case you didn’t know.”
“I know that very well - very well indeed. I have good cause to. But they matter to you for different reasons, don’t they? You want personal - well, glory, if you like. Joanna wanted to make some sort of arrangement for her brother, not to simply please herself. Failure to you would be - sad, no doubt. But failure to Joanna means a ruined life.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Dickon,” I said wearily. “How you all go on about this! You’re over dramatizing the whole thing. I haven’t ruined Joanna’s life at all. She would have pipped the State probably - and it’s that that matters to her. I’ve done nothing to stop that - not really. All I did was protect myself. Is that so dreadful?”
“Not from your point of view, perhaps. But it seems to me you’ve got yourself a bit mixed - “
“If anyone else tells me I’m a mixed up kid, I’ll scream! I don’t care! Do you understand that? I just don’t care! And now you’ve had your say, you can go away and stop talking to me any more, like the others.”
I started to walk towards the canteen, and Dickon fell into step beside me.
“You ought to know me better than that, poppet,” he said softly. “The only thing that would make me - stop seeing you and talking to you would be the sure knowledge that you really didn’t want me to. And anyway, you’ll probably be glad to have even me talking to you, for a while. The girls are a bit emotionally het up over this, aren’t they? Life might be a bit lonely for you for a while.” He smiled down at me. “But they’ll get over it. People in hospital get very intense about things. It’s such a tight little society, isn’t it? And Joanna is popular in her own quiet way.”
“And I’m not, I suppose.”
“Well, you can be a little - unapproachable, can’t you? Sometimes you seem too wrapped up in your private thoughts to notice people. I ought to be flattered you ever noticed me!” Dickon said wryly.
“I couldn’t help it.” For a moment it was just as it always had been between us. Friendly. Light hearted. “You made a shocking nuisance of yourself!”
He chuckled. “I did, didn’t I? Dogged Dickon, that’s what they calls me. I sees what I likes, so I goes and gets it.”
I steeled myself against the warmth in his eyes. “Do you still like what you see? Even after this morning’s affair?” I said challengingly.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I still like what I see. I always shall. I wish you did.”
“I do like you, Dickon - you know I do,” I said impulsively.
“Only like?” His hand tightened on my arm, so that I had to stand still. “Can’t you make it a little stronger than that?”
I looked up at him, at the shaggy hair falling into his eyes as it always did, at the firm line of his jaw, and once again I felt the warmth that had grown so steadily over the months we had known each other. The warmth that had become almost a part of my life. Dickon sensed this, and moved closer, apparently oblivious to the fact that we couldn’t have been in a more public place.
“Hello, Avril.” Peter’s voice behind me pulled me round sharply, and the sight of his face made the urgent attraction he had for me rise in a great tide.
He nodded at Dickon over my head. “Hello, Bartlett,” he said casually. Dickon stiffened, and let go of my arm.
“Hello, Chester,” he said flatly.
Peter linked his arm in mine. “Ready for that coffee, Avril?”
I nodded, almost mesmerized by his touch.
“Be seeing you, Bartlett,” Peter was urging me, gently but firmly, towards the canteen.
I looked back at Dickon, standing with his hands in his pockets again, looking remote and cold. He looked at me briefly, and then turned on his heel, and went back to the laboratory block, his back as stiff as a ramrod.
“Are you a special friend of Bartlett’s?” Peter’s question was casual.
“Well - “ I hesitated. “I suppose you could say that.”
Then I did something that surprised me. I looked up at Peter’s face provocatively and said lightly, “The hospital gossips have married us off to each other a dozen times this past year.”
I had never been kittenish in my life before, and to deliberately try to play one man off against another was something that had always disgusted me when other girls had done it. But Peter had an odd effect on me. I wanted to impress him. I wanted to make hi
m feel about me as I felt about him. I knew, even after such a short acquaintance - could this really be only our third meeting? - that Peter was a man who responded to a challenge. Almost instinctively, I realized that Peter would lose interest in someone who seemed easy to bowl over. But I also knew I could not disguise the attraction he had for me. So, if I was to get anywhere with him, I had to make the conquest seem difficult. Hence using Dickon as a sort of bait.
Which was ridiculous really. Dickon himself had only just said that the only sure thing that would make him stop seeing me would be the sure knowledge that I didn’t want to see him any more - which meant, I knew, that Dickon would never fight for me. I would have to care about him, and him only. That was one of the big differences between the two men.
And I was beginning to care a great deal about Peter. I watched him carry two cups of coffee from the self service counter, and shivered deliciously, deep inside. I had never felt this urgent excitement with Dickon. With him it was comfort and peace and laughter, but with Peter it was something quite new to me. And it was a newness I liked.
As he put the coffee down on the table, Peter grinned at me rather wickedly. “So the gossips have tied you to Bartlett, have they? Well, well. How people do like to talk.”
I looked up at him under my eyelashes, turning on every ounce of guileful femininity I had in me.
“Uh huh! They do indeed. Not that they haven’t had cause. We’ve been to all the hospital parties and dances together for a long time.”
He stirred his coffee thoughtfully. “Let’s confuse ‘em, then. Come to the next one with me, and watch the dovecotes flutter.”
I could have hugged myself. My wiles had worked! I’d thrown down the gauntlet, and Peter had picked it up.
“I might at that,” I said as lightly as I could. “A bit more gossip won’t hurt me.” I bit my lip. “And it might take their minds off this morning.”
“This morning?”
I looked at him, defiant and a little frightened. Would Peter, too, think I had done the wrong thing? It was a chance I had to take. If I didn’t tell him, someone else would - I was suprised he hadn’t heard about it already, the news had spread so fast.
“There was trouble over the exam,” I said, picking my words carefully. “Nasty trouble.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Well?”
I took a deep breath. Then, with my eyes on my hands, clasped on the table before me, I told him the whole story, leaving nothing out. Joanna’s brother, the other nurses’ reactions, my banishment to Coventry, Chick’s attitude, everything. Everything, that is, except what Dickon had said. I felt obscurely that it was one thing to use Dickon as a challenge in my relationship with Peter, and quite another to complain about what Dickon had said. That would be - disloyal, somehow.
He listened quietly, and I could feel his blue eyes on me, even though I wasn’t looking at him. When I had finished, my voice trailing away miserably, he leaned over the table, and tilted my head up with a firm finger under my chin, so that I had to look into his eyes.
“And all this is bothering you? You feel guilty?”
I nodded unhappily. I did feel guilty - even though I had not really meant to split on Joanna - even though the words had been said almost before I realized I had said them. If everyone was so convinced I was in the wrong, then I must be. I hadn’t the arrogance to back myself against everyone else’s opinion, without a single voice raised in my defence.
“Then you are a very silly girl.” Peter’s eyes crinkled at me, turning the words into a caress. “Because you were absolutely right. Remember what I said last night about Jennings? Doesn’t this attempt of hers to cheat prove that I was right? Never mind all this sentimental guff about her brother. It’s a great pity and all that, but if she can’t pass her exams without using a crib, then she has no right to qualify. She’ll have to find another answer to her problems. But you have no obligation, moral or otherwise, to cover up for her. Why should you lose all you’ve worked for?”
I nodded eagerly. “That’s what I tried to explain to Chick. But she just talked about compassion.”
Peter snorted. “Lord! The sloppy way people go on! Compassion is just a fancy word to cover up sloppy thinking. This is a hard world, and people have to get on as best as they can, by themselves. Compassion is a luxury, and you and I - we can’t afford it, can we?”
This bracketing of us together, in a world full of enemies - as it seemed to me - was balm to a wounded soul. It was what I needed more than anything else. If anything could have pushed me over the edge into admitting I was head over ears in love with Peter, it was this. And as I smiled tremulously at him, a voice in my head sang, “I love him! I love him!”
Peter’s hand closed warmly over mine.
“Never mind what other people may say about this, Avril. I’m with you all the way. Any sensible person would have done just what you did. I would have. So forget it. It’s over and done with, now.”
“Thank you, Peter.” My voice shook a little. “Thank you. I feel much better now.”
“Good!” He smiled companionably at me. “Now let’s talk of - nicer things. When are your next nights off?”
“This weekend.”
“Marvellous. I’m off on Saturday. Let’s go out for the day - country or somewhere. What say you?”
I nodded blissfully. I had meant to go home, but I could do that any time. Anyway, they wouldn’t really miss me at home. The house would be full of my sisters’ University friends, who would treat me like the baby of the household, and I’d be out of things. My father would spend the weekend buried in his books, just as he had ever since my mother’s death, eleven years ago. So I said, “That’s a date, I’d love it.”
“I’ll look forward to that.” Peter stood up. “I must go and get ready for this afternoon’s list, and you need some sleep. I’ll see you back to the home. Come on - Avril.”
He said my name like a caress, and I shivered again. Could it be possible that Peter felt a little about me as I did about him? There was nothing very significant about his asking me to have coffee with him, or even in his making a date with me. Without meaning to sound conceited, I know I’m not bad to look at, and men have paid attention to me before Dickon and Peter. But was this different? Did Peter feel more than a passing attraction for me? I hoped he did, with every fibre of me. I wanted him to care for me more than I had ever wanted the gold medal - and that was saying quite a lot.
We walked back to the home, and as we crossed the courtyard, threading our way through groups of nurses and students, Peter very deliberately walked close to me, holding my arm in a strong grip. I saw some of the nurses stare, and my heart sang. Peter must care. He would never be so obvious if he didn’t. He knew as well as I did that everyone would be gossiping about us now, just as they always did talk about new permutations among the staff’s personal relationships. And hadn’t he said we’d “give them something to gossip about”?
We turned into the door of the home. The entrance hall was quiet, smelling of flowers and furniture polish. Through the half open door of her office, I could see Home Sister at her desk, her back to us.
I put my finger to my lips, and tiptoed across to the foot of the wide staircase. I was already late for bed, and Home Sister would be very sarcastic if she saw me - there are strict rules about hours of sleep for night nurses. Peter understood, and came quietly after me, tiptoeing in an exaggeratedly conspiratorial way that made me want to giggle.
As we reached the staircase, he pulled me, so suddenly that I nearly lost my balance, into the space under the staircase. I stood there, very close to him, staring wide eyed at him in the dim light, absurdly aware of the brooms and mops around us.
“Sleep well, Avril. Don’t worry about that silly fuss this morning. And remember I’m looking forward to Saturday,” he said softly.
And then, his arms were around me, and his mouth was on mine, hard and warm. I was too startled for a moment to respond, but then my arms
came up, and I held his smooth head in my hands, clinging to him, my whole body melting.
When he raised his head, I stood trembling like a baby. He touched my cheek again, in a way I was coming to recognize.
“Sweet Avril,” he murmured. Then he was gone, leaving me among the brooms and mops and dusters, holding my face in my hands, and wondering how I would ever exist until I saw him again.
CHAPTER FIVE
As I dressed for duty that night, after a nearly sleepless day, I hugged the thought of next Saturday like a child thinking about Christmas. Today was Wednesday. Three more nights on duty to get through. But I was sure to see Peter on the ward before Saturday, I remembered, and excitement welled up in me again.
I had almost forgotten the events in the classroom, but when I went into the dining room for breakfast, I was reminded of them very forcibly.
As I came in, the usual buzz of conversation faltered, and then started up again, louder than ever. No one looked at me, and no one spoke to me. It was an odd feeling - as though I wasn’t there at all.
I helped myself to a plate of scrambled eggs and sat down in my usual place. Joanna’s seat across the table was empty, and much as I wanted to know where she was, and what had happened when she saw Matron at seven o’clock, I knew better than to ask. I wasn’t going to give anyone the opportunity to snub me more obviously than was necessary. Then Chick slid into her seat beside me, breathless because she was late.
“Hi, Avril,” she said, raising her voice so that it could be heard clearly above the noise in the room. “How did you sleep?”
“Not much,” I said shortly. Somehow Chick’s determined effort to treat me normally bothered me more than the studied ostracism the others were displaying. It seemed to make their dislike of my presence even more obvious.
Chick realized this, and spoke to me again in a quieter tone. “Don’t take any notice, Avril. They’re being awfully childish. Night duty always makes people behave in a - well, exaggerated sort of fashion. Things always seem so much worse than they are when you don’t sleep, and you’ve got time to think while you’re lying awake. They’ll soon forget it.”
Final Year Page 6
