Nurse in Love

by Jane Arbor

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter,” said Sara, turning away. And somehow it didn’t seem to. At least she hadn’t failed in her trust, and the thought was soothing enough.

  However, her next brush was with Simon himself. A patient whose dressed foot was supported in position by a pulley was complaining that the pulley was dragging, causing him pain, and Sister Bridgeworth asked Simon to adjust it.

  Simon, testing the uprights of the pulley-frame and finding that one of them was out of true, signalled to Sara to bring a mallet with which to hammer it home at the angle.

  “I want it to finish up—so,” he indicated, dragging it to a true right angle. “It takes a bit of holding in that position, so I’ll hold while you hammer. Up the step-ladder with you.”

  “I’m not much good at hammering,” murmured Sara.

  “Nonsense. It’s not a penny nail. You can’t go wrong. Only don’t miss, that’s all.”

  Obediently, though with misgivings, Sara climbed the ladder, poised the mallet above her objective, took aim—and the air was rent by Simon’s yelp of pain.

  Aghast, she stared at him clutching fingers and thumb in a convulsive grip. “I’m so sorry,” she began.

  But Simon, for the moment too shocked to be kind, snapped back: “I said, ‘Don’t miss’. Perhaps this time you’ll take better aim. But wait till I’m ready, will you?”

  At the brusquerie of his manner all the petty irritations of the morning welled into one enormous grievance against Simon, and Sara was fighting down tears of self-pity as she protested: “I told you I was no good. And you shouldn’t have had your hands there.”

  Simon just looked at her, shaming her into silence. His lips were compressed into a straight line that seemed to give his merry countenance a new dignity. And even in her forlorn anger she had to admire the restraint with which he said: “All right, Nurse. Come down. I’ll get the porter instead.”

  Unnecessarily he helped her from the ladder, nodded a reassurance to the patient, and turned away. He stalked down the ward, leaving her to follow, which she did with her head held high, in case he looked back.

  But he did not look back, and as she watched him go out through the swing doors, Sara was aware of a most curious feeling. At first she had been shy of him, then had responded to his infectious friendliness, then had begun to wake every morning to the thought that she would be seeing him on the ward or that he might ask her to go out with him on her next off-duty. But never before had she felt as she did now, with that overwhelming sense of grievance turning to something else—something else that was humbling and strangely exalting at the same time, the thing people called love.

  Love. She loved Carol, but even loving Carol had never been quite like this. This was different. This was loving Simon. Not wanting to protect him, as she longed to protect Carol, but wanting to give of herself to him, wanting to share not only fun but also trouble with him, wanting his respect, wanting his tenderness, wanting Simon—

  “Nurse—can I have a drink, please, Nurse?” Daddy Fosdick’s plaintive falsetto cut across her thoughts.

  She went over to him to get his lemonade jug. “Where do you put it all, Daddy?” she teased him, her own voice breaking a little upon the warm, secret excitement that nobody who was as old as Daddy could possibly share.

  She went on down the ward, wondering if it was ever possible to share this kind of loving with anyone except the loved one. That meant Simon—and this afternoon she was off duty and they were going to a cinema because Carol was to be taken shopping for a coat with Barbara.

  This afternoon—if, after this morning’s scene, Simon turned up ... She had to shut her thoughts against the fear that he might not. But if he did she would apologise straight away. And after that everything would be the same between them. Or would it? After this sweet, blinding revelation would anything ever be the same again?

  It was difficult, she found, to apologise to someone who didn’t seem to realise that an apology was due. When she left hospital, cuddled to the chin in her new rust-coloured coat that Simon hadn’t yet seen, he was waiting for her as usual in his little car.

  “Forget it,” he grinned. “I daresay you and I’ll quarrel about a good deal more than that before we’re dead.”

  Sara sighed with sheer happiness. “That sounds a terribly long way off,” she said.

  “I know. Lots of time in between. Or is there?” said Simon cryptically.

  The first shadow since her disastrous morning crept across Sara’s spirit at the words. How much time was there really? For doing her training and passing her exams, with flying colours, for caring for and educating Carol, for loving Simon all the while, and for doing all the good to other people that her dreams had always planned?

  Her thoughts broke at the sight of the hoarding upon a building that was used as an annexe to the hospital. “Oh, Simon,” she exclaimed, “it’s Blood Donors’ Week. I’d forgotten, hadn’t you? And Brough is making a special effort to beat Croydon’s figures. Look, there’s a chart—”

  Simon looked, but drove on.

  “Simon, stop for a moment! We ought to give some. You ought. I ought. I never have, you know—”

  Simon’s glance at her was patient but quite incredulous as he braked to a standstill. “You don’t suggest, surely, that we spend a pleasant afternoon donating pints of blood, do you?”

  “Yes—yes, I do! The Week ends on Saturday, and I don’t have any more time off before then. Please, Simon, let’s!” (How could she explain to him that her own new-found joy in loving him had simply had to be expressed so, by doing something for others, by giving?)

  “But, Sara, I was going to take you to tea at the Rondo, and then to the flicks!”

  “Well, that’s all right. They give you a cup of tea afterwards, so we could cut out the Rondo and go straight on to the cinema!” urged Sara.

  For a moment she thought that Simon’s mouth was about to set into the same line of annoyance that she would recognise from her experience of the morning.

  And she was praying: “Let him understand”—when with a gesture of mock resignation, he thumped both fists on the steering-wheel and smiled.

  “All right,” he said. “I can’t think of a thing I’d rather do than sit by while a fellow quack relieves me of a few million red-and-white corpuscles and rewards me with a mug of hospital brew. Come on. Let’s go.”

  “Oh, Simon!” If it had been anything for herself, Sara would have been ashamed of persuading him. As it was, she felt only grateful that he had understood her need to give, even if he could not guess at its cause.

  As they went into the clinic she asked: “You’ve given some before, haven’t you? What blood group are you?”

  “AB negative.”

  “That’s a rare one, isn’t it?”

  “So rare,” Simon assured her with a twinkle, “that they put me in a gold encrusted bottle, specially inscribed.”

  Sara’s smile was very sweet. “I hope I’m AB negative, too,” she said.

  “Envy—or fellow feeling?”

  “Neither. Just—glad to be the same.”

  They separated, and in the ante-room to the women’s clinic Sara found that it was Thelma Carter who was taking the donors’ particulars.

  “You’d better sit down,” she told Sara. “We’ve had a rush, and there’ll be a wait before they can take you.”

  Sara sat down and presently Thelma, who did not seem to be over-worked, remarked casually: “You are a sort of protégée of Kathryn Clare’s, aren’t you?” As Thelma used it, the word “protégée” sounded patronising, so Sara replied firmly: “Yes, we’re friends. We went to the same school.”

  Thelma’s brows went up. “But she’s several years older, isn’t she? And her position as Sister must be quite an advantage to you.”

  Sara flushed. “I don’t know what you mean. I’m not even on her ward.”

  “But surely? I mean, her influence must give you a lot of advantage over the other students of your yea
r. Only in the little things, I daresay,” Thelma continued smoothly, “but they must help, even if some of your own lot may consider that you’re a bit too favoured by being so friendly with one of the Sisters.”

  “Until now no one has ever suggested anything of the sort!” contended Sara hotly.

  “Well, they hardly would—to your face, would they?” argued Thelma indulgently. “And I’ve heard nothing definite, except that I know that that sort of thing is resented sometimes. But I shouldn’t worry, if I were you, because after all your friendship with each other has its advantages for Kathryn too.”

  “How?” snapped Sara.

  “Well, surely through your connection with Mr. and Mrs. Thorley? Your little sister is living with them, isn’t she?”

  “Kathryn knew Barbara and Victor Thorley long before Carol went there!”

  “But meeting you and little—Carol, is it?—there does give her an added excuse for dropping in often, doesn’t it?”

  “Barbara has always made her welcome!”

  “I haven’t any doubt of it. Mrs. Thorley is a very sweet woman. It’s only that—” Thelma paused and shrugged diffidently. “Perhaps I oughtn’t to say this—”

  “Say what?”

  “Well, it’s only a joke really, because Mrs. Thorley has every right to welcome whom she pleases and as often as she likes. But I gather from Adam—Dr. Brand, you know, the specialist on Kathryn’s ward—that whenever he goes to see Victor Thorley he’s bound to meet Kathryn Clare too.”

  “And if I’ve been there once or twice lately when Dr. Brand has been, does he take exception to that as well?” demanded Sara with an attempt at sarcasm.

  Thelma’s laugh was light and indulgent. “My dear, he hasn’t complained. And he hasn’t so much as mentioned you, though he is fond of little Carol, I know, and she has asked us both to her birthday party—imagine! But of course you’d know about that. No, about Kathryn and Adam, I get the impression that when you have no choice but to see and work with a particular nurse every day, you hardly want her dogging your social footsteps as well. And if Adam does feel that, as I suspect he does, you could probably do Kathryn a kindness by giving her a hint of it.”

  “Could I now?”

  Sara stopped short, only too well aware that her experience had equipped her with no weapons to deal with honeyed insinuations of this sort. She knew that later she would think of and rehearse all the cutting things she should have said and hadn’t. But for the moment she only wanted time in which to calm down, and time to decide how much—if any—of this distilled poison she ought to convey to Kathryn.

  She thought of Simon, and wished she could ask his advice. But instinctively she knew that either she must warn Kathryn only, or lock it away for ever in her own brain. Perhaps that was best, after all. Or was it? She wished wretchedly that she knew. Whatever happened, Kathryn mustn’t be put in a position where Dr. Brand could snub her. But Thelma’s impertinent advice, repeated, would sound even worse than at first-hand. And Kathryn hated gossip...

  When the desk telephone buzzed to summon her into the surgery, Sara had begun to feel that this day, which had produced the wonder of loving Simon, was asking a good deal in return.

  By the evening of Carol’s party, Kathryn was glad to notice that Sara, who had taken her examination a few days previously, seemed in far better spirits. She had confessed that Kathryn had been right, and she had over-prepared for papers and practical work which had not demanded any more than she was able to tackle with confidence, and she was now actually looking forward to the next tests at the end of her first year.

  They were early at Barbara’s house, and were amused at the quaint dignity with which Carol was speeding her afternoon guests and explaining that it was now the turn of the grown-ups.

  “I feel quite patronised, don’t you?” laughed Sara ruefully.

  Kathryn laughed too. “She doesn’t mean it like that. Actually I think it’s a gem of hostess tact—making the departing ones feel that they are privileged to be leaving!”

  When the other guests arrived there were some introductions to be made all round, and at Barbara’s equally clever hostess-ship the party began to warm with generally shared fun as different as possible from the accepted brittle pattern which Sir Paul Denver had criticised to Kathryn. Barbara produced pencils for a paper-game which led to a lot of hilarity and argument; she dragooned Victor into carrying round sandwiches and drinks quite early, since Carol must soon go to bed, and then announced that Carol had begged for one game of Black-out.

  “Black-out? How do you play it?” came a chorus of query.

  “You probably wouldn’t know,” smiled Barbara. “It’s Carol’s pet version of Hide-and-Seek, and shows, I must say, a blood curdling taste that’s to be deplored. But she loves it. The idea is that the whole house, except this room, which will act as a cage for the bagged prisoners, is completely blacked out, and everyone has the full range of it—bedrooms, kitchen and all—and I should add that we open up all the floor-to-ceiling cupboards, of which we have a lot.”

  Carol was jigging excitedly on one foot. “But you’re not allowed to hide!” she squeaked.

  “Yes, that’s where it’s different from Hide-and-Seek. You may take temporary refuge, but only for as long as you take to count an honest twenty. At all other times you must glide about—”

  “Gliding is hardly in my line,” protested the games-master from the Grammar School, who was six feet tall and broad to match.

  “You’ll glide—and like it,” Victor told him. “Now my ever-present problem is the correct speed of an ‘honest’ twenty!”

  Everyone laughed, and Barbara went on: “Well, you are supposed to keep moving, anyway. If you meet anyone you may try to escape if you can, but if you’re challenged by your name you must answer to it. That makes you the challenger’s prisoner, and you must come back here. If you’re challenged wrongly you needn’t reply and are free to move on, and of course everyone travels alone except”—with a smile she indicated Carol who was holding Victor by the hand—“except the inventor of the game, who likes to be escorted!”

  While she and Sara went off to open up all the doors and to ensure the required density of darkness, the finer points of the rules were discussed by the others.

  Did one make a bold bid for prisoners? Or was it better to slink about, trying not to be challenged? Oughtn’t a preliminary survey of the layout to be allowed? And how often in practice could one take cover? Everyone seemed to be talking at once, but beneath her own share of the babel, Kathryn was aware of the undertones of another conversation going on near by.

  Between lips that scarcely moved, Thelma was murmuring to Adam Brand: “I hadn’t bargained for fourth-form antics of this sort!”

  “You can’t make yourself conspicuous by refusing to join in.”

  “You mean you are going to?”

  “Yes, why not?”

  “But why?”

  “No doubt from a suppressed hankering for cloak-and-dagger stuff. I daresay the psychologists would have a word for it. Meanwhile you should be thankful that we haven’t been asked to black our faces too!” At which Thelma shrugged impatiently and walked away, leaving Kathryn to envy her the glance of tolerant amusement with which Adam Brand’s eyes followed her as she went.

  Certainly the quality of darkness which Barbara had achieved was most daunting, and it seemed strange that so many people could apparently be swallowed up by it. Here and there were some suppressed giggles, and a laboured breathing followed Kathryn up the stairs. But once she had reached the first landing—there was also an attic storey—the silence about her was complete.

  How did one bag a prisoner if everyone else kept out of the way? She turned round once or twice, listening for some likely prey, and found, when she came to take her bearings again, that she had no idea of them. The head newel-post had been here—no here—and now it was nowhere at all!

  Trying not to betray her whereabouts by laughing aloud, she b
it her lip and stretched both hands before her in search of a tallboy, the position of which she knew she would recognise as soon as she touched it.

  She took a blind step or two forward, becoming bolder, began to walk ahead fairly steadily—and found her outstretched hands gripped in a clasp which, though she wrenched back in dismay, imprisoned them tightly and did not let go.

  She wanted to protest, but, since she would have to give in, she would wait for the challenge of her name! She stood rigidly, frozen into silence, waiting, as, beyond the darkness between them, her captor waited too.

  Then: “Is that you, Thelma?” The challenge came in Adam Brand’s voice as, at the first sure touch of his hands upon hers, she had instinctively known it would. But he had challenged her wrongly, and now she need not answer...

  He spoke again: “Thelma?” The single word was a question, and then, before Kathryn could resist, he had released her hands and had drawn her close to him, so that now his tall figure was vaguely but unmistakably set against the surrounding darkness.

  Surely he could see her, too, know who she really was? But seemingly his conviction that she was Thelma held. For as his hands took her about the shoulders, his head was bent above hers and his lips, seeking and demanding an answering passion from her, came down upon her mouth.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Adam’s kiss lasted for a bitter-sweet instant of time, a dreamed-of moment now cheated of joy. Then Kathryn tore free.

  “You—you’ve—” she began, but her voice broke upon a panic that threatened to engulf her.

  She waited for him to speak, to say anything that would reveal he knew the cruel mistake he had made. But he did not speak, and she turned about, praying he would not follow. A blind, imperative instinct drove her to the head of the stairs without faltering, and she almost ran down them towards the shelter of the hall.