Final Year

by Claire Rayner

  “Yes, Peter,” I was breathless. “It’s important, but not here – “

  He looked back across the room for a moment, and my eyes followed his. The girl in the armchair was lighting a cigarette, her long legs crossed elegantly, her hair shading her face as she bent her head to the flame of the lighter.

  I felt Peter’s hand on my arm.

  “Of course, darling.” He led me across the corridor to the little kitchen opposite. He pushed the door open, and Maggie, the bad tempered common-room maid, looked up frowningly. But her face cleared when she saw who it was.

  “More coffee, Doctor?” she asked.

  “Not right now, Maggie, but I’d love some cigarettes. Would you be three different kinds of an angel and get me some? The special ones, from the off-licence – you know? Would you?”

  Maggie wiped her hands on her apron, and held out her hand for the money.

  “Seein’ it’s you, Doctor C.” She said, “Righto.”

  As she pulled her coat over her apron, I thought wildly, “Everyone falls for his charm. Even Maggie, who never does a thing for anyone if she can help it, Dickon says.” For a second, I wanted Dickon quite desperately.

  And then Peter turned to me, moving close as the door closed behind Maggie.

  “Now, Avril, my dear. What is it that’s so important?”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “What is it that’s so important?” Peter repeated after a long pause.

  For a little longer I gazed at him, feeling oddly calm. It was as though the real me was sitting high up in a corner of the room, watching another Avril on a brilliantly lit stage. The tap over the sink dripped quietly, and occasional gusts of muffled laughter from the common room drifted to my ears. When I spoke, my voice sounded strange.

  “I want to know what happened at the inquest yesterday.” I was surprised at the conversational note in my voice.

  “You heard about it, then?”

  “Of course I did. Surely you know how fast news travels through the hospital?”

  “Yes.” He sounded abstracted. Then he broke away from me, and swung himself lightly on to the kitchen table. He didn’t look at me. His strong brown fingers played with lumps of sugar from the bowl beside him on a tray, building them into a tidy little tower, like one made of a child’s bricks.

  “It was the usual guff,” he said. “Who, how, what – you know – “

  “I don’t. I’ve never attended an inquest.”

  “What does it matter, anyway?” he was impatient. “The coroner said it wasn’t my fault – “

  “But that the hospital was at fault in permitting an inexperienced nurse to assist at such a major operation,” I finished.

  He looked at me then. “I see,” he said, a hint of a smile on his face. “You’re cross with me for mentioning the missing silks.”

  Suddenly, my calm broke. “Peter,” I cried, running across the room to stand beside him, and putting my hands out. “Peter – why did you do it? Didn’t you know what it might mean?”

  “Darling,” his voice was warm and deep, in the familiar throat clutching way, “I wouldn’t hurt you for the world. You’re much too sweet. But I had to tell the truth, hadn’t I?”

  I nodded. “I know, Peter. But the truth means the whole truth. And you didn’t tell that. Why didn’t you tell the coroner you were given the right sutures in the end? You didn’t, did you?”

  “Darling, I couldn’t! There just wasn’t an opportunity. These legal things – people talk and talk, and all of a sudden it’s all over. I hadn’t a chance. Can’t you see that?”

  I stared at him, at the sleek gold head, at the narrow mouth that was so disturbing, at the vivid blue eyes I had come to love so much. Was it really only that?

  I looked at him very directly, my head held high. Then I said, “I thought, perhaps, that it was for another reason that you kept the information to yourself.”

  “Another reason?”

  “I thought that perhaps – there might be – circumstances in which you would know that it wouldn’t matter to me if my career as a nurse was harmed. That it might be more important to me that your career was safe – “

  He frowned fleetingly. “Darling, I don’t quite understand. Other circumstances?”

  “I thought you might be intending to ask me to marry you.”

  My voice slid to silence, and we looked at each other for a long moment. Then Peter jumped down from the table and strode across the room, whirling round at the door to stare at me again.

  “Here, hold hard, Avril! Why? – I mean, damn it all! Have I ever said anything to make you think that – Ye Gods!” His wide-eyed amazement made me shrivel inside, made me feel giddy with shock.

  “You asked me to meet your parents!” I cried. “Wasn’t that enough reason to think – ?”

  “My parents!” He was all blank astonishment. Then he threw back his head and laughed, laughed until I wanted to hit him to make him stop.

  He did stop, eventually, and came across the room, to take one of my hands in both of his. For the first time, I realized that my hands were icy cold.

  “Look, angel,” he said reasonably. “I certainly asked you to my parents’ cottage. But I equally certainly didn’t say they would be there. There’d be no point in going if we were to be chaperoned, would there?” He peered at my face closely. “Surely you knew what I meant when I asked you down there for the weekend?”

  I shook my head. I knew now. Sickeningly. I knew just what a fool I’d been.

  “Avril, my dear, all this is your own fault, you know.” Peter was all calm good sense. “I thought you and I spoke the same language. When I told you how ambitious I was, you told me you approved. When I told you why I was hobnobbing with Dorothy, you said you understood.” He ran his hand across his head. “And you weren’t fair yourself, you know. You were – provocative – weren’t you?”

  I couldn’t deny that. I had been provocative, acting the part of the girl who enjoys playing one man off against another. But I had done it because I loved him – loved him almost from the moment we met. But I couldn’t explain. My voice had dried in my throat.

  He was speaking again. “And you were so – well, cooperative, that night in the sick bay. I had every right to think you were playing the game my way. Strictly for fun. And when I mentioned going to the coast, you were so agreeable. But I never said anything about marriage.”

  “I told you I loved you.” My voice was dull and heavy.

  He shrugged. “My dear, I thought you were as tired as I was of all the silly preliminaries. That you wanted to arrange a weekend, too –”

  I dropped my head into my hands. “Stop it!” I cried, agonized. “Stop it! For God’s sake –”

  But his voice went on, inexorably.

  “As for marriage – my dear girl! You are sweet, pretty, charming – I could very easily marry you and be very happy with you. Up to a point. But that isn’t what marriage is for, my sweet, not for people like me. I’ve got a life to make for myself – a career. And I’ve only got myself to build it on. No money, none of the right connections. Don’t you see? That’s why I’m marrying Dorothy. She hasn’t got your brains, or your looks, but she’s got the right father.” He came and put a finger under my chin, tilting my white face up so that I would have to look at him.

  His eyes crinkled down at me. “But marrying Dorothy doesn’t mean that I can’t still have my own friends. I’d hoped you’d be one of them – in our own special way –”

  And then rage rose in me like a blinding storm. Almost before I realized it, my hand came up and met his cheek in a stinging blow that left my hand tingling.

  His head snapped back at the force behind it, and came back with a slight shake to clear his senses. He was chalk white, except for an angry red stain where my fingers had met his skin.

  That was the last I saw of him. I turned once at the door to look back at him where he stood rubbing his cheek, his mouth hanging open in stupefaction, his whole
body rigid with amazement.

  Then I was running, running as though all the hounds of hell were behind me, across the courtyard to the Nurses’ garden, to sink gasping for breath into a huddle on the bench. Until I remembered that this was the bench where I had seen Peter kiss Dorothy – not that I knew it then. I knew now.

  I slid to the grass, and rested my burning face against the gnarled rough tree trunk. I don’t know how long I sat there. I heard some of the nurses coming home, their laughter floating gaily across the lawn. I saw huddled shadows merge and break apart as they kissed their escorts good night. And still I sat there.

  It was very late when I got stiffly to my feet. I was bitterly cold, so cold that I stumbled as I crossed the grass towards the home. But I got there. I had made up my mind what to do, and I had to do it now.

  I took my clothes from my wardrobe with an almost military precision. I emptied my chest of drawers, pulled books from the shelves, ornaments from the window sill.

  As I packed, methodically wrapping things in tissue paper, as I always did when I packed, I thought about Joanna. For a moment, I was Joanna, facing misery, the dissolution of all the plans that I had hoped to build my life on.

  I heard Chick’s voice in my ears. “I hope you never feel lack of kindness in someone else, Avril. You can suffer if you need someone to be kind – you’re vulnerable. Vulnerable.”

  I knew now what everyone had tried to explain to me, after I had hurt Joanna so badly. What Chick had meant, what Dickon had tried to tell me.

  Dickon. As I thought of him, I felt my control start to slip. I had hurt him, too, dreadfully. It had taken Peter’s words tonight to show me what Dickon really was, the honesty and gentleness of him. I hated myself for that. That it needed someone as worthless as Peter had proved himself to be to show me what I had so casually thrown away when I turned my back on Dickon.

  But I had to forget Dickon. He was gone. Together with everything else. The newly won respect of Susan, the respect that would disappear again once she knew I hadn’t got the Gold Medal. As far as Susan was concerned, I told myself bitterly, I’d just be Tiddles again, a silly empty-headed child.

  I stood at the door when I had finished, looking round at it for the last time. The neat white-covered bed, the table beside it showing a dusty square where my radio had stood, the empty book shelves, the bare chest of drawers. Mechanically, I closed one of the drawers that stood half open, and dusted the table with my handkerchief.

  This room had been my home for three years. I had come to it as a wide-eyed country schoolgirl, agog for the excitement of life in a new world, the world of hospital. And I had had plenty of that, I told myself bitterly, as I closed the door very quietly behind me. I left the keys dangling in the lock, and almost as an afterthought, I took the little white card from the slot on the door.

  “Nurse Avril Gardner. Third Year. Day Duty”, it read. I put it carefully into my handbag, in the section I kept for special things, beside my purse and my cheque book. I wanted to keep it.

  I could remember seeing a similar card on a door on my first day in the hospital, when I had scuttled along a corridor to the P.T.S. section. I had marvelled, then, to think that some day, I too, would be a third year nurse. Only now, I wasn’t a Royal nurse any more. It was all over. I was going, and that was that.

  But as I crept along the main entrance hall, avoiding the single patch of light that was shining out of the reception room door, I heard a voice. I tried to run to the door, to escape before I need answer, but she was too quick for me.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Chick’s urgent whisper was angry. “Come here, you idiot!”

  She grabbed one of my cases, and pulled me into the little reception room. I noticed, vaguely, that the three-line switchboard that served the home was still open, even though the receptionist had gone home hours ago. One of the leads was plugged in, and a light winked above it. On the table, the headphones and mouthpiece lay beside an ashtray full of butts, a half smoked cigarette sending lazy blue-grey spirals up to join the haze near the ceiling.

  That was why Chick had caught me, obviously. She must be waiting for a call to Canada, I thought irritably. She had done that before, and it always meant spending hours by the phone, waiting for a connection. But I was in no mood to ask her why she was calling home.

  Instead, I tried to sound calm and sensible.

  “Look, Chick. Don’t interfere. I’m fed up, and I’m quitting. We’ve all said we’d do it some day, and now I am.” I managed a feeble smile. “After all, the State finals are over. It’s only a matter of waiting for the results. I’ll get myself a glam job doing private nursing somewhere. Only right now, I need a break. So I’m taking it.”

  “Sure, Sure, I know. Just like that. Avril-fly-by-night – I don’t think!” Chick was sardonic. “Just the sort of thing you’re likely to do, isn’t it? You never thought much of the Royal, did you? Just wanted your State and that was enough! Who the hell d’you think you’re kidding? This is Chick – remember me? I happen to know you pretty well. So stop being a bloody fool and tell me what’s happened.”

  Then my control did go, the iron control I had been holding so fiercely ever since I had slapped Peter. I dropped my head and wept, great tearing sobs shaking my body. Chick put a sturdy arm round my shoulders and stood there, letting me lean against her, saying nothing until the storm had passed.

  Then she pushed me into a chair, with rough tenderness, and put a cigarette between my wet and shaking lips.

  The cigarette was half smoked before either of us spoke.

  “He – he thought I was –” I couldn’t say it.

  “He thought you were the kind that would go off for a weekend with him just for the hell of it,” Chick said calmly. “I know. Is he marrying that girl?”

  I nodded, miserable and weary.

  “He made me feel like – a – a – callgirl or something –” I burst out. “God, Chick, am I like that? Am I the sort people think of as a casual weekender?”

  Chick laughed, gently and kindly. “My sweet ass, of course not. But Chester is. He sees everyone through his own brand of rose-coloured glasses. To him, girls are strictly for kicks, for casual affairs. He never stops to think about them as people – only you couldn’t see that, honey. He made for you because you’re pretty, brainy, and – you belonged to someone else. I’m sorry if that sounds brutal, but it’s the truth. I tried to tell you –”

  “I know you did. And I wouldn’t listen. I don’t think I could have listened. I had to find out for myself – Matron said something like that, too.” I stubbed my cigarette out, twisting it into a mess of shredded tobacco and scraps of flimsy paper. “I knew he liked the – idea of getting me away from Dickon. I – I even used the knowledge to attract him – God, but I’m a fool. I deserve everything –”

  I put my hand between my teeth and bit down hard.

  Chick pulled my wrist down. “Stop dramatizing, Bernhardt,” she mocked softly. “It doesn’t help.”

  I giggled foolishly, a little hysterically. For a while we just sat there, Chick perched on the table beside me, while I stared at the little light on the switchboard, and thought about Peter.

  And the dreadful thing was that I could still feel the attraction he held for me. I forced myself to remember the first time he had kissed me, among the brooms and mops, and the old thrill rose in me, making me tremble again.

  “It will take time, Avril,” Chick’s voice made me start guiltily. “You won’t get over it quickly, honey. But you will one day. And sooner than you think.”

  I stared at her blankly.

  Chick leaned over and smiled at me. “I’m not psychic, love,” she grinned crookedly. “I’m just used to that particular expression on your face, that’s all.” I dropped my head, sick with shame. Was I so transparent? It was a painful thought.

  She put her hand on mine. “You can’t run away, Avril,” she said after a long pause. “You mustn’t.”

>   “Why not?” I was stubborn. “I can’t stay, either – not possibly. To see him around the hospital, in the courtyard – how could I?” I put my hands to my face and stared at her piteously. “You can’t ask me to stay, Chick.”

  “You must. If you go like this, you’ll never get back on an even keel again. You’ve got to stay – even without the medal.” She grinned. “Don’t look so surprised. I realized long ago that that was what you wanted. And even when people talk about Peter and this Dorothy girl – you’ll just have to ride it out.”

  I started to shake my head again, but the switchboard stopped me from saying anything at all. It started to buzz urgently, and Chick hurled herself at it, and started to push the leads into various holes, cursing as she did so.

  “How does this damn thing – oh, that’s the one – no – it’s this one – “ Then she pulled the headphones over her ears and squinted with the effort of listening.

  “What? I can’t hear you – louder – louder, damn it! – that’s better – what? – yes, she’s here – oh, hell!” and she yanked the headphones off and threw them on to the table.

  “They can’t get a line. Too much static or something.” She looked guiltily at me. “Look, Avril. This call’s for you –”

  “For me?” I gaped at her. “What do you mean? Who is it?”

  “I’ve been trying for hours.” Chick sounded weary and depressed. “I got through once, but they lost the line. He’s trying to get back himself.”

  “Chick!” I could have shaken her. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  She relaxed and grinned at me. “Dickon gave me the radio code of his ship before he sailed, and told me when it’d be in home waters so I could get a ship-to-shore call. So I could reach him if I thought it necessary. Tonight, I thought it pretty damned necessary.”

  ‘Dickon?” I said wonderingly. “I’m going to talk to Dickon?”

  “Yes,” she said softly. “I thought you might need him.”

  I sat down hard on the chair, weak with surprise and an all-pervading sense of relief.

  “Need him –” I whispered. “Oh, yes! yes – I do –” Then I jumped up again.