by Sheila Burns
‘But you can’t be doing that, Claire, how utterly stupid of you!’
‘Why? I need a change, somehow now I want to get away from St. Julian’s more than anything else in the world, I have always adored the country, and today it was beautiful, with the birds singing and the sunshine, and I made up my mind I’d go.’
‘You won’t like it so much when you get there, as you’ll find out. All the country is glorious in May. Try it in November, and you get a nasty surprise.’
She went stone still. Had today made her feelings for Chris change, and could it be that already she was not so much in love with him? She was half ashamed of the fact that she could feel like this, and so suddenly.
He went on:
‘Your telephone will be going day and night, and you’ll have all the village malingerers on the other end of it. You’ll never have a spare moment to yourself, even if you think you will, and a lot of bother with the village men.’
‘What do you mean by “bother with the village men”?’
‘My sweet, what do you suppose I mean? You’re far too pretty and too attractive to go off down there and be all right. Don’t do it.’
‘I’ve fixed it now.’ She lit a cigarette that he had offered her, not because she wanted it, she rather disliked smoking, but somehow she felt that she must use it to disguise her feelings. ‘Anyway it will be a good experience for me.’
‘It’ll be a very nasty experience, if you ask me,’ and he put an arm round her. ‘Look here, darling, cut it out. Tell Sir Charles that you have changed your mind and let him get on with it, and find somebody else. It shouldn’t be too difficult. Marry me instead. I love you so much, and I mean this; I want you desperately. God knows I realise that I was born a flirt, but take me as I am, and I’ll be the best husband ever. Do marry me, darling.’
She could feel her throat throbbing with eagerness and the blood coming warmly to her cheeks, and dyeing her scarlet. She knew she was attracted to him, in love with him still, maybe he was the only man for whom she could care like this, and even if he had hurt her horribly, she could forgive him.
‘Chris, don’t make it difficult.’
He was closer to her now, she could feel his breath on her cheek, and knew that he was enchanting. ‘It’s all because of that silly little Lucille, isn’t it? My darling, it did not mean a thing, I promise this; I kiss all girls on principle, but when it comes to you, then that’s different. I kiss you because I love you.’
‘But listen; as a husband it would drive me mad. Surely you know this?’
He was irritated by her, she could see it, and then he tried to thrust it aside. ‘I’ve told you that there is only one girl I love, and the one girl is you.’
He stroked her hair with his hand, and she loved the admiring touch of a finger, his cheek against her own, or a half kiss, and she wished so much that he had not got the power to split her personality two ways. But he had. Half of her was still so much in love with him, though perhaps not quite as much so as a week back; the other half knew that the marriage could never work out.
‘Look here, Chris, this is one of the conditions which no one in their senses can rush. We have to remember that marriage is for ever.’
Reproachfully he whispered, ‘Once upon a time you trusted me, you know?’
‘Yes, but things have happened.’
‘I know. I’m made that way. What do I do? What can I do?’
She said haltingly, ‘I have simply got to be sure, marriage is such a big step to take.’
‘You don’t love me?’
‘The awful thing is that I do. I love you very much, and that makes it so much more difficult, anyone can see that. I want you, and yet …’ she was near to tears.
Chris put his arms around her, and drew her closer to him, whispering soothing words. The woodland background was shadowy and superb, and they could still hear the echoing laughter of the children bathing in the big pool far below them. We are in love, she thought, this is one of the moments that I shall always remember, and she put her arms round his neck and hid her face in his throat. Maybe she was weakening, maybe she could not help it, for love has a sweet folly of its own.
‘I adore you,’ he said.
‘And I love you.’ She could never blind herself to that, and the shy grey eyes smiled.
‘What are we worrying about? We are strong enough to face up to this, surely? Strong enough to get away with it. If we are so much in love, how can anything else matter?’
She pulled herself together. There came back a quick picture of today, of Sir Charles, Stable House, the village and the commitment that she had made. For whatever else happened, she had already made this.
‘We’re so different, Chris, and I think it isn’t true that opposites make happy marriages. Anyway we don’t know sufficient of each other; remember a year ago we had never met. This is not wise. It is rushing things. Give me six months in which to make up my mind.’
‘But to go away down to some awful Kentish village is such a mistake. You’ve let old Sir Charles persuade you, and you are being silly.’
‘The fact remains that he has persuaded me, and I’m going. There is no getting out of it.’
That was the truth.
He kissed her, and there was infinite tenderness about the soft touch of his mouth; also she loved the fondness in his eyes. ‘I want you now. I would marry you tomorrow, even the price of special licences being what it is!’
‘But I’ve signed up elsewhere, Chris.’
‘You are the silliest girl! Give me a chance, and I’ll get you out of it.’
Common sense came to her rescue, she had always been endowed with common sense, and now it came to her aid. ‘No, it can’t be done. I’ve made up my own mind, and I am taking this six months. Even if we are in love, we have all our lives ahead of us, and we can spare this time now.’
‘But love is happier when the heart is young,’ and his hands caressed her.
‘Six months taken out of the twenties is not an awful lot of time!’ she warned him.
She had to admit that when he kissed her, he could compel her. He wanted to say nothing about it, but just to slip round the corner and get married by special licence and have done with it. Nobody need even know. That little surprise would come when he presented himself at the cottage as the husband. Somehow she could not see this appealing to Mrs. Heath, or to Sir Charles, if it came to that.
They’d snatch a week-end honeymoon, go to Sark maybe, he had always wanted to go there, and so had she, and she had to admit that Chris made the sound of it exceedingly tempting.
Maybe she should be thankful for the training which had taught her to keep both feet firmly on the ground and not allow herself to be talked into doing something silly.
‘No,’ she said.
She got up from the bole of the big tree and stood there brushing down the dead leaves and the bits of grass from her skirt. He watched her almost owlishly for a moment, beginning to realise that in spite of his power with women, here was something that he could not do. Then seeing it was no good, he scrambled up beside her and she realised that he was feeling helpless, a little vague, and not quite able to cope with the situation. Chris was used to conquering and getting his own way; now for the first time he found himself faced with defeat.
‘If we wait six months, darling,’ he urged her, ‘we have got to remember that Christmas is hardly the right time for a honeymoon in Sark.’
‘I know, but six months could make all the difference in the world.’
‘You’re making a mountain out of a molehill. You only came out with me to make it all more difficult, and I do want you so much. I love you, don’t you realise what this means?’
She did, of course.
‘But this time, Chris, we have to go through a probation period.’
He said, ‘Oh hell!’
For a single moment they stood hand in hand staring into each other’s eyes, and Claire got the idea that she was poised
on the edge of a chasm and anything might happen. She could not stop herself from being in love with him, and that was perhaps the most difficult part of it all. Her whole future depended on her action now, standing here hand in hand with Chris. Then, quite sharply, she remembered how she had felt when she had seen those strangely pale eyes of Lucille peering at her, over Chris’s shoulder, her sudden sense of apprehension, of doubt, and of danger ahead.
‘No, Chris. It simply can’t be now.’
She let loose his hands, and turning started to retrace her steps through the woodland, up the hill path to where the common came into view, and the little windmill on the horizon with the sails turning round and round. As though they marked the hour for her! As though they reminded her that time goes on and on, and changed everything, and that for the moment the only thing to do was not to rush it.
If only I did not love him quite so much! she thought wretchedly, and heard him calling after her. If only I did not care so deeply for him!
Chapter Seven
Ten days later Claire made her farewells to St. Julian’s. She had taken her place at the last birth in the theatre, another caesar and a girl, and she had said an almost embarrassingly amiable goodbye to Matron. Sir Charles had done his work well, and when she was a little girl had not pulled her pigtails for nothing.
It was curious that she did not see Chris again after the quite distressing scene in the wood at Wimbledon. Something had happened in his domestic life, so the authorities told her, for his father was ill, and he had been called away to his bedside in a tearing hurry. Perhaps that was to the good, for she felt herself weakening in the strain, and it would never do now (when she was so near the six months’ trial) to go back on it.
Ever since Wimbledon and the evening when she had finally decided that she must follow these plans, she had felt conscious of this. I did the right thing, she thought as she took the train down to Charnworth. It was a slow train, which meant that it gave her far too much time to think. She knew that the first sharp pricking of doubt lay within her, and then prayed that after all this had not been the wrong thing to do. She felt dismayed in one sense, elated in another.
She was starting something new, something in which surely there could be no flaw, and this would give her time to see the position in true perspective, and let the future take its own course.
Mavis very kindly met her at the village station, because her uncle had suggested that she gave a hand with the luggage. Claire could not have believed that she would be so enchanted to see Mavis, but she was.
‘Good of you to come.’
‘Not at all. I wanted to help; the cottage looks good, Mrs. Hopkins has cleaned it all up for you, and there are no end of flowers waiting.’ She put the suitcase into the boot. ‘Now we must go for I have to rush on to a committee meeting. The rummage sale is the trouble.’
Claire carried the case into the cottage herself, and knew that it was going to be all right after all.
Mrs. Hopkins opened the door, clean apron (a special one) and all. Mrs. Hopkins was a darling person in the mid-thirties, with a fresh face. She had a broken marriage behind her, which had somewhat jaundiced her feelings for men, she thought just nothing of them, and she had two small sons, ‘Our Willie’ and ‘Our Pat’. Her mother lived with her in a cottage next door, and the presence of this hirsute old lady gave Mrs. Hopkins plenty of time to take on a job herself and enjoy it.
‘Come right in, Sister,’ said she, ‘and welcome to the village. They’re wasting no time, I can tell you, and there is a call for you right now.’
‘Not a call before I have even got into uniform?’
‘That’s it!’ Mrs. Hopkins was brisk and bright. ‘It’s young Mrs. Jefferies at 2 Hillside Cottages, and she thinks her baby is coming sooner than Doctor said. She says she feels awful.’
This would have to happen! thought Claire.
She rushed into uniform and came down again to where Mrs. Hopkins had a cup of tea waiting, nobody could say that she was not there on the dot. It was surprising how comforting the cup could be. Outside the door was the little car, mercifully the same make as the one she had driven for an aunt, and surely this was something. She pushed the gynae bag into the back of the car and went off up the hill. That was a thrill! She was on her own; she was setting out into life away from hospital and authority, and actually doing a job entirely alone. She was glad that the first case had come so quickly, it meant that she had really started, it meant that already she was getting there.
The thin long row of Victorian-built cottages stood on the brow of the hill. There were about six of them with similar doors and windows, well water, she guessed, and this was something which she had not catered for, and did not like. She stopped the car and instantly a neighbour came out of the door of number 2.
‘That you, Sister? Her wants you bad. Any time now, I’d say. Go right up.’
She opened the door and went inside, and up the box stairway which was set closely between the walls, made of scrubbed wood and without a carpet. The moment that she entered the bedroom she realised the panic that was going on, and that nobody had even prepared the bedroom for this crisis. It was just like it had been when working on the district round St. Julian’s Hospital, a very different matter from the coolly composed labour rooms in hospital, or the operating theatres with every commodity.
If anything goes wrong … she thought, almost afraid of herself, and then, almost fiercely to herself, Shut up!
‘I’m here,’ she said, and set down the bag. The woman in the bed turned to her. ‘It won’t be long now, and I’ve come to help you. You’ve been most awfully brave to get this far alone; I’ll do all that I can.’
The neighbour, a shrivelled old grandmother with wisps of stringy grey hair, and a bland if toothless smile, said, ‘I thought as how that there baby’d get here afore you did. You was ages. The old nurse’d have been along heaps sooner.’
‘Half an hour back my train had not even entered the station,’ Claire told her, but coldly, she did not want to be compared with her predecessor, she had already done her best. ‘You’ve got every kettle on?’
The old woman had done nothing, and Claire despatched her to get busy now, well aware that she disapproved. She asked if the doctor was coming as something was obviously wrong. The patient told her that she ‘didn’t believe in doctors’, and anyway she didn’t want men about when she had a baby.
‘You’re very brave, but Doctor ought to know. You are his patient, and he won’t want you to suffer one more pain than is necessary.’
She went to the top of those grotesque stairs, and called down to the old grannie below. She asked if she would help and send someone for the doctor. The old neighbour stared owlishly up the stairs. She didn’t think it was necessary, people had babies every day, and ‘the last nurse hadn’t never bothered’. It sounded to Claire like trouble, and she did not relish the thought. If the village was going to compare everything she did with what the last nurse had done, she rebelled against it.
‘I want the doctor,’ she said. ‘Please send somebody to get him for me,’ and she went back into the room.
She reckoned that the baby would be about another hour, that was if everything went according to pattern, and so far she was not convinced that anything was going to pattern. She pushed away the innumerable ornaments, and tidied up.
Suddenly she realised that matters were hurrying, they were approaching the point when there could be no further delay, and she was thankful when she heard the sound of a car coming up the hill and stopping outside the cottage. A man with a bag in his hand, jumped out. Thank God for that, Claire told herself. It so happened that the doctor had been seeing to Mrs. James’s bad leg down the road, and Mrs. Anderson’s Tommy who had gone to fetch him, had gone there first on spec.
He came into the room.
‘Hello, Sister! You’re new?’
‘Yes, Doctor. I got here a little while back, and was only called half an hour ago. I
want you to have a look at the patient.’
‘Of course.’
In the next few minutes they knew what was happening, and the doctor said, ‘She ought to have gone into hospital for this, as I suggested when she first came to me.’
‘Maybe she doesn’t like hospitals.’
‘Does anybody?’ and he grinned. Then he opened his bag and produced the anaesthetic. ‘You help me, Sister, and first of all get rid of old Mrs. Smith. She’s the village busybody, she never does anything but talk, and will be no good to us. You send her home.’
‘I gather that the husband should be back fairly soon, and Mrs. Smith is here to get a meal for him.’
He nodded. ‘He can get his own meal. Husbands are pretty good about our work, they let you get on with the job. Get rid of her, do.’
Claire knew that this would not be the way to make herself popular, but she had to obey the doctor, so she went downstairs and despatched the old woman, who went grumbling to herself; then she came back. Now all sounds save the stertorous breathing of the patient, had stopped. She lay there unconscious. As she helped the doctor Claire felt that if he had wanted this particular patient to go into hospital, it had been up to the previous district nurse to use their influence and help him. Surely she could possibly have persuaded the patient to go, and as far as Claire gathered she had done nothing.
Perhaps one lost heart after years of dealing with a lethargic people, who wanted only to stay where they were, in the same old rut. Argument might be tricky.
The child came into the world with a scream as Claire scooped him up into her arms.
‘He’s all right!’ she gasped.
He screeched the roof off, and she could imagine all the neighbours listening outside, for this would be news for them, and they would make the most of it. His twin brother, stillborn, and until this moment entirely unexpected, a mere midget who had defied all the diagnoses, came after him.
‘There’s the trouble,’ said the doctor. ‘How on earth did she work that one?’
