The Village Nurse (1960s Medical Romance Book 4)

by Sheila Burns

  She came to Highwayman’s Hill, and the cottage where a morose neighbour was doing her best with the sort of strange comfort that women mete out to their sisters in adversity. Plainly she came of some religious sect, for she kept quoting the Bible, whilst Claire felt that gas and oxygen would be far more comfort. She went immediately to the girl.

  ‘We’ll see you through this,’ she said; ‘why didn’t they send for me earlier?’

  The ever-truthful neighbour butted in. ‘It was that husband of hers,’ she said resentfully.

  Claire gathered that the husband was slightly fanatical, too, believing in suffering as being good for the soul. One was for ever fighting this sort of faith, the curse of Eden, the sin of Adam, and the unhappy inheritance of Eve’s daughters.

  ‘You should have sent for me,’ she told the sour woman.

  ‘It didn’t seem right. Not after all the talk there’s been.’

  A sick quiver within her disturbed Claire, but she said, ‘What do you mean about talk?’

  The woman went on mumbling to herself, and leaning on the bed rail. ‘It isn’t right for a nurse to be so young, and so pretty. Everyone says that, and none of it is right or proper.’

  Claire turned on her and ordered her out of the room. In this hour the trained help was what the patient needed, but the words stuck in her mind, It isn’t right or proper. She brought the baby into the world, a little girl, soft as a peach, and with surprisingly attractive prettiness. Claire looked at her with a deep and abiding emotion, for there is something so perfect about the newly-born, almost unapproachable in their perfection, in their simplicity and their own sweet helplessness. She wrapped the child in a blanket, and gave her to the woman below.

  ‘I’ll see after her in a moment, she’s right as rain whilst she cries,’ she said, and went back to the mother.

  This was perhaps always the happiest moment of her work, the realisation of danger past, of pain gone, though when she told the husband about the baby girl, she recognised that he was disappointed, for he had wanted a son.

  ‘The child is well?’ he asked.

  ‘Very well, and very pretty. Your wife would like to see you.’ He stared at her without saying a word, and then she realised that what the neighbour had said was true, for plainly this man did not care how she had suffered; he was irritated that the baby was a girl. She added, ‘Do remember that your wife has had a bad time, and she needs love and care.’

  ‘It is written in the Book that women must suffer,’ he told her, but did not stir.

  Rather coldly Claire said, ‘No man would ever go through what a woman endured to give him a child. You should remember that. Now she needs the comfort that only you can give her; would you please come upstairs and see her?’

  He followed her rather awkwardly, and she knew that he blamed her. When they got on to the narrow little landing, she sent him on ahead, and for a moment he looked Claire full in the face. He was a shortish man staring at her from under big beetling eyebrows which were lowering and gave the impression of bad temper. He frowned most of the time, and about him there was the air of grim pretentiousness which many men get as they grow older.

  In a low voice he asked her, ‘What for did you come here to our village? We’ve always had good old-fashioned nurses afore this, and they are the right kind of people like us. What I wants to know is what made you come here, it don’t seem to be right.’

  ‘I came because it is my work. Like all things in the present day, medicine has changed. This is the age of younger people, and because we are young does not say that we do not know. Remember that.’

  ‘It ent right in Charnworth. Men is men and they talks about you. They’ve never had no one working for them like you is, and I warn you, miss, they have evil tongues.’

  There was something unpleasantly sinister about him at this moment, and Claire recognised it. The talk had come at the end of a hard day, a day in which there had also been trouble at Stable House, and she was in no mood to take it now. She had not the power to accept it in the manner they had taught her at hospital, and silence him with her aloofness.

  ‘That is not right,’ she said in a cold voice, but she could not hide her fury. ‘Now go to your wife and see your daughter. I can only allow you five minutes with her.’

  He went into the room and was purposely noisy, stumbling over a chair that he must have known was there. She went down to the kitchen again, waiting to go back to tuck her patient up for the rest of the night. She was more tired than she should have been. She had never felt quite so down and out at St. Julian’s, and perhaps … for the first time in her life realised what a prop the hospital itself had been to her. She had hated it when she first went there, with the nostalgia of anyone leaving home. But those staunch walls, and that bare entrance hall, had been the bulwarks which had sheltered her. The hospital would never have allowed the sort of experience which she was getting here, an experience which she detested, and which had been entirely unexpected.

  The man was over-long, and she had to go upstairs after him. He was already in the other bedroom, she heard him kicking off his boots, not troubling to be quiet about it, and she went into the sick room to find the girl lying there with her baby in her arms, and her face wet with tears.

  Quietly but with authority, Claire took the baby from her, and tucked her into her own cot, which she drew within reach.

  ‘You mustn’t cry,’ she said. ‘Sleep till morning, remembering that you have the sweetest little girl, and she is yours for ever. I’ll be back tomorrow to see after both of you.’

  ‘Thank you, oh, so much, Sister!’

  ‘Is there ‒ is there anything more that I can do to help you?’

  The girl beckoned to her, and when she went to the bed whispered what it was she wanted to say. ‘He’s difficult, I know, he may give you the idea of being very hard, but really he is a good man. Believe me, he is. He is so good that he finds the world too wicked for him to be happy in it.’

  What could one say to a statement like that? Claire wondered, and she folded the blanket over. ‘You just go to sleep, and you’ll feel lots stronger in the morning. Tomorrow is always another day, you know.’

  ‘Tomorrow is still tonight,’ said the girl, and with conviction.

  Driving back in her little car through the darkness, Claire found that she was feeling quite sick with tiredness. She was worrying far too much, and must try to check this. But she got to bed, and was surprised that she went to sleep straight away, waking to the new day which quite possibly would bring its own problems.

  Every day there was a long list of visits to be made, and Mondays were always the busiest. Everybody who wanted to be ill, got ill then. When she returned late for her lunch, Mrs. Hopkins had already made out another list for her, and also said there had been a telephone call from London. She announced that it was a gentleman who sounded like a doctor (how she made that out, Claire could not imagine). She half wondered if it could have been Sir Charles. But Mrs. Hopkins knew Sir Charles’s voice, and surely would have recognised it? The thought that it could have been Chris was worrying.

  Vernon Heath had come round with more azaleas; Claire had to admit that all these people were being most surprisingly kind to her, and most generous in their gifts. But she still felt very tired.

  The weather was hot and sticky, maybe that made her head ache. Maybe she was doing much more work here than she had done in the theatres at St. Julian’s, for here there was the getting about the world as well as the work itself. She had never thought this could make a mark on her, but it did.

  Just before she started off on the afternoon visits, the telephone rang again, and the call had come from London. It was Chris! The moment Claire heard him, she turned to stone, but that stone could feel. She felt uplifted in one way, horrified in another. What was there that she could say or do? and what was it he wanted from her?

  ‘This is a surprise, but I worked it out, and I thought I might catch you now,’ he said
.

  ‘Chris, I’m most desperately busy.’

  ‘Are you indeed? Well, well, well! I’m going to make you busier, for I’m slipping down your way tonight, just to get the image of the place.’

  ‘You ‒ you can’t possibly do that!’

  ‘Oh yes, I can. That’s what I keep a car for. No, not for visits, you silly child, but to go off to see sweet people! I’ve got to see you, darling, I love you so much, and we can’t go on in this absurd way, it’s got to be put right, and that is exactly what I am coming down to do.’

  She wondered rather frantically if he was telephoning from the hospital, because the door of the little box wouldn’t shut properly, and this would be a wonderful moment for Sister sitting at her desk there, and finding life a bit dull, to listen to all he said.

  Quickly she said, ‘Shut up! Someone will hear you.’

  ‘I won’t shut up! I shall be down with you at half past seven this evening. The moment that I get out of the homing traffic, I shall come down like a bird. We have had a slack afternoon at hospital, and not likely to be trouble ahead.’

  ‘Chris! Listen to me! I can be called out at any moment, and it is happening all the time; I may not even be here in the cottage, when you arrive.’

  ‘That’ll be just too bad, and I shall risk it. We have got to talk this out, and I won’t take no for an answer. I love you, more than anyone else on earth, and you have got to realise it. I’ve got …’

  She cut him short. ‘Mrs. Hopkins will put out some supper for you, and if you get here and I am out, help yourself.’

  ‘It isn’t Mrs. Hopkins’s supper that I’m after. I want to see you. I’ve got to see you,’ and then the line went quiet.

  Most certainly Sister at her desk had had a thrilling time, Claire thought, and it would be all over the hospital in the time it took to get to the Sisters’ lounge, and out again. Now she did not know what she thought, for she wanted to see him, although she had protested; she wanted to put the whole thing right, who wouldn’t want it? But behind it all was the frail little ghost of Lucille who now had measles! The ghost mocked her! For he was the man who would have other ghosts in his life, other kisses and caresses, and she was crazy to think that she could bear it. It was a madness she had scorned in others, and yet here she was, half accepting it for herself.

  It so happened that the afternoon was far easier than she had expected, and she got through it and gave orders for a special supper. Mrs. Hopkins had bright ideas. There was nothing that she liked better than getting a meal for a visitor, she said, and suggested iced soup, chicken salad, and some fruit. Unfortunately it was only too obvious by her manner that she knew all about Chris’s reason for this flying visit.

  It was the love affair, and nothing enchanted the village more than the love affair, the white wedding, and the baby within the year. This was the way that life went on in Charnworth, and what was more it would always go on like this.

  Claire had made sure that this would have to be the evening when the Smithson baby arrived, it was overdue anyway, but it had the grace to stay put. She felt almost safe from it by the time the new cream Jaguar turned up in the lane and came to a standstill outside her cottage. From the diamond-paned window she watched Chris getting out of the car.

  It was absurd to think that only these few days apart had made him better-looking, or had she forgotten how attractive he was? His darkness was lovelier in summer-time perhaps, his eyes deeper, and he was one of those men who wore his clothes superbly, with a languid grace of his own. His sports coat was the hallmark of good tailoring, his tapering trousers exquisite. She had never realised how much she admired good clothes on men until she saw Chris wearing them. They added to that almost defiant look about him, the easy manner and the smile.

  She was glad that he had come. The irony of it, when she had come here only to escape him, and now wanted him back! She had gone to the door as he came up the little path, with the white pinks in flower, and their strong clove scent. She was a slender girl in a turquoise silk frock that was spotted with black dots here and there; she had brushed her hair until it shone, and maybe the knowledge that she looked her best made her lose the tiredness, and feel good.

  Chris had come to see her.

  ‘So here we are again, and don’t tell me I’m not wanted!’ he said, and kissed her as he entered the place. It was as if he had the right to do it. A passing cowman stared at them both, like an owl disturbed by the sun. It was irritating, for already Claire knew what the village men thought about her, and this was the last straw. ‘Darling, I am here, and you are still my darling.’

  ‘You’d better come inside before you make my name mere mud,’ she said, and drew him into the sitting-room. It was already too late, for the cowman had seen her being kissed by ‘a gentleman from London’. Really, Chris might think about these things! ‘This is where I live,’ she said.

  He entered the room with the old beams and quaint ingle at the far end. The scent of honeysuckle was drifting in at the windows.

  ‘By Jove, you’ve got something here, for this is quite the fairy tale cottage, isn’t it?’ He flung down an expensive pair of pigskin gloves with light cream crocheted backs to them, and stood looking out of the window to the little garden beyond. The supper had been prepared, and laid on the table in the window, with the best napery, and pretty little coloured napkins which went well with the cottage. ‘Did old Sir Charles furnish it for you? If he did, he must have got it badly!’

  She very much resented that.

  ‘Don’t be absurd. The village nurse always has the same cottage. I got it for my time down here, and already I don’t want ever to leave it.’

  ‘It’s heaven.’ To himself he began singing the old song, ‘I will give you brooches, and toys for your delight’. ‘Here you have everything. I don’t wonder that you grabbed it. Lucky girl, aren’t you?’

  She would never know how she started telling him about the place; maybe it was the eagerness of meeting him again, she had missed him more than she would have expected, and she told him of her worry with the village men. The thing was fast becoming an ogre in her life. ‘The bother is that I’m too young for the job, Chris. They expect an old hag! Then the wolf whistles start.’

  ‘Yes, of course, because villagers are made this way. The only thing to do is to treat it as a joke, laugh at them, and in time they’ll find that it doesn’t work.’

  ‘I feel so desperately conspicuous.’

  He said, quite contentedly, ‘It all goes to show, my darling, that you will have to marry me and settle down.’ That was when the telephone rang, and as she went to it she muttered, ‘If that’s the Smithson baby, I’ll go mad.’

  It wasn’t the Smithson baby after all, but old Grannie Dickins, who had got ‘the pains’ again. She was mental of course, and got sudden scaring moments when the poor old thing thought she was going to die. In truth she was as stout and sturdy a piece as anyone could meet, and would live on for an eternity, without a doubt, but Claire knew that she would have to visit her some time this evening. Grannie was in the mood which sought reassurance.

  ‘If you could come round, Sister?’ (It was an agonised great-niece who had just about had enough.) ‘It would be such a help, because she always believes what you tell her.’ She rang off, turning to explain to Chris.

  ‘Help yourself to a cigarette, the box is there, and there is some sherry on the side.’

  ‘Does the village supply your cellar too?’

  ‘No, I got it in for you. It’s British, I’m afraid, but that is all the grocer keeps.’

  ‘Thanks, a lot!’ He looked at her with real yearning in his eyes, and she knew that they had the power to thrill her. She was weak as water with this man, and would have condemned anyone else for being so silly.

  ‘I’ll only be a short while, Chris. There’s nothing the matter, she wants tucking-up and the light putting out. Wait for me.’

  She was longer than she had said she would be, but
when she returned she knew that she had regained her own composure, and perhaps had needed the momentary break to find her real self. She must not let Chris rush her, but must stay calm. For her, there was still the ghost of Lucille in the background, the inescapable ghost of stolen kisses and caresses, and that provocative voice which Chris used when in the flirtatious mood. Maybe he would change! Maybe … She came into the room.

  ‘Now let’s eat,’ she said.

  He went to wash, and Mrs. Hopkins emerged radiantly from the kitchen. She and Chris had had a chat and he had obviously impressed her.

  ‘He’s ever so nice, downright lovely, Sister, and you ought to marry somebody like that, and a doctor.’

  ‘I worked for him,’ she said, ‘in hospital, and I can assure you there is no question of marriage in this.’

  Mrs. Hopkins twinkled in that rubicund way of hers. ‘Wherever there is a pretty young lady and a handsome rich gentleman, then there is something like that about it, so there you are!’ and she said it in triumph.

  Chris came down again, and he sat there ready to enjoy it, and cheerful.

  ‘You have everything, my darling! A good job, a sweet cottage, and best of all, a first-class cook!’

  They ate happily, she was actually enjoying it, and they chatted about the hospital scandals, which were always something of a delight. Claire avoided mentioning Lucille, for she must be kept out of the picture, but she hoped he would say something. He was far too discreet for that. Maybe it was wise to forget that Lucille had ever been.

  Then, when the meal was over, they went into the tiny garden. There is, she thought, nothing quite so wonderful as a garden at eventide.

  Just before he had to go back, he put a firm hand over hers, clasping it closely. ‘Darling, I do love you. Please always remember that. I’ve been such a fool. I deserve everything that has happened, but can’t you forgive me?’

  ‘I had to come away.’

  ‘I know, I do know. I had never meant to do that, you know, I don’t really know how it happened, and I’ll never do such a damned stupid thing again.’