A Nurse's Duty

by Maggie Hope

  ‘Come on, sit down, lass,’ she said. ‘I’ll make a pot of tea. I have some new bread and some of last year’s bramble jelly left, you look as though you could do with something, you’re nothing but skin and bone.’

  Karen put her parcel of fish on the table. ‘I brought you some caller herring from the market, Kezia. But don’t bother about me, I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ she said quickly, ‘you have to eat. Thanks for the fish anyroad. I’ll soon have them cleaned and fried. It’ll be a nice treat for Luke and the bairns when they get in. Luke’s on fore shift, you know, he won’t be long.’ She cleaned and washed the fish and rolled them in oatmeal ready to fry, all the while keeping up a conversation about nothing in particular, just trying to bring Karen out of herself.

  ‘How’s Father?’ she asked, rather belatedly thought Kezia. Well, at least the news of Da’s new job would brighten her up a little.

  ‘I was going to write to you, Karen. Da’s working, isn’t that grand?’

  ‘Working? Do you mean they took him back on at the pit?’ Karen was all attention now, her own trouble forgotten for the minute.

  ‘No, you know they won’t do that, not after the lockout. No, he’s working for Doctor Richardson, what do you think of that?’

  ‘Robert? He’s working for Robert? But what does he do?’

  ‘Oh, all sorts. You know old Mr Clary, he used to collect the panel money for Doctor Brown? Well, he carried it on for Doctor Richardson but now he’s retired and Robert came and asked Da would he like the job? Mind, we were flabbergasted, I can tell you. But Da, he perked up straight away. “I will, Doctor,” he said. “I will, and God bless you for it.”’

  ‘“Not at all,” said Robert, “you’ll be doing me a favour. I need a trustworthy man and you being a fellow lay preacher I thought of you. What’s more I’ve known you all my life, why you’re just the man for the job.”’

  ‘But surely that’s just a two-day job?’ put in Karen.

  ‘No,’ said Kezia, over the sizzling noise from the frying herring. ‘He works in the surgery too, making up the medicines and such. Why, according to the doctor he’s his right hand man, making up bottles and answering the telephone. Doctor Richardson says he saves him no end of time. Oh, Karen, you should see Da now! He’s so much better. Why, he looks twenty years younger. I was worried he might think it a cissy job for a miner but he’s taken to it grand.’

  Dear Robert, thought Karen, he was a real Christian, so kind. What man, treated by a woman as he had been by her, would even have talked to her or her family again? Yet he had given her a reference, he had given her father work. He had loved her, and if he had done so half as much as she had loved Patrick, he must have gone through the same agony she was going through now. The thought made her wretched. She turned away so that Kezia shouldn’t see the tears threatening to fall. Luckily, she was distracted as the children came in from school, closely followed by Luke, black from the pit, and Young Luke who was proudly carrying four eggs.

  ‘Well, isn’t that something?’ exclaimed Kezia. ‘Look now, Karen. Luke built a hen house down the garden. He raised the hens from chicks and we thought he was never going to get any eggs but here they are at last.’

  ‘They’re a bit small, I know. Mebbe the hens will do better when they are older,’ said Young Luke. ‘Hallo, Aunt Karen.’ He showed her the eggs, she being the farmer in the family. ‘What do you think?’ He looked down at her anxiously, a thin, gangly lad, his face pink from these days spent out of the pit and in the sun.

  ‘Lovely,’ said Karen. ‘I bet your mam will be glad of them. You like working with animals, don’t you, Luke?’

  ‘Oh, aye, I do. I was thinking, I might be able to get a nanny goat. I could tether it along the line, then we’d have our own milk.’

  ‘There’s no money for a goat, lad,’ his father said flatly, and Young Luke flushed, the enthusiasm dying from his eyes.

  Kezia was serving the fish and Karen was busy for a while, cutting bread and handing slices to Meg and Tom.

  ‘Da won’t be in today, he’s having his at the doctor’s house,’ said Kezia.

  For a while, the talking ended, everyone tucking into the meal with a will. But when they had finished, Karen brought up the real reason for her visit. After all, she reasoned, it was best approached while the family was all together.

  ‘I have the offer of a full-time job at the hospital,’ she said, leaning back in her chair. ‘I could do with the money, and I’d like to take it. Trouble is, there’s so much work on the farm.’ As she spoke, she watched Young Luke who was suddenly all attention, looking at her with steady, expectant eyes.

  ‘There’ll be no trouble in getting help in these times, surely?’ commented Kezia.

  ‘No. But I can’t afford much more than a lad’s keep, not yet anyway. I was thinking, Young Luke –’

  ‘Mam?’ He didn’t have to put his request for permission into words, it was there, shining from his eyes.

  Kezia looked at his father, who nodded. ‘What about the hens though?’ she asked.

  ‘Tom will see to them, won’t you, Tom?’

  ‘Will I get an egg every day if I do?’ he asked, and Karen was hard put not to smile.

  ‘You’ll do as you’re told, whether or none,’ his father put in sternly. ‘Now get away back to school and watch Meg crosses the road safely. Don’t you go running off leaving her, do you hear?’

  When the children had left for school, Meg protesting loudly that she didn’t need anyone to see her across the road, wasn’t she a big girl now. Karen looked at Young Luke who was sitting still, his hands clasped together and resting on the table, as though in prayer.

  ‘The lad was a great help when he was with us before,’ she said. ‘A born farmer, he is.’ In spite of the blue-grained scars on his hands, the marks of a pitman, she thought as she gazed at the tightly clenched fingers. Why, there was even one on his forehead, standing out against the pink-white skin.

  ‘The lad can go with you,’ said Luke. ‘It’s better than him having to go to Australia like your Joe. At least we’ll see him from time to time. Now, what about my bath, Kezia? I’m ready for my bed.’

  It was as Karen and Young Luke were going off for the bus to Bishop Auckland, Luke carrying his straw box and dressed in his best suit and cap and Kezia walking beside them, telling him to behave himself and work hard and write home every week, that a car drew up beside them.

  ‘Now then, you weren’t going off without seeing your father, were you, Karen?’

  All three of them stopped and watched as Da climbed out of the passenger seat of the Sunbeam coupe and kissed Karen lightly on the forehead. She couldn’t believe the change in him, he looked so well, and as Kezia had said, twenty years younger.

  ‘Granda, Granda, I’m going to work on the farm!’ cried Luke excitedly, dropping his box on the pavement and quite forgetting he was almost a grown-up.

  ‘Are you now?’ Da answered, looking keenly at Karen’s shadowed face. ‘By the look of your aunt here, it’s time she had someone she could rely on.’

  Karen looked up at him quickly. Kezia must have told him about Patrick’s desertion, of course. Did he blame her for not holding him?

  Her father was strictly against broken marriages, separation or divorce. This was her second, too, the thought ran through her mind. But Da’s face held only concern for her.

  ‘Hello, Karen.’

  The sound of Robert’s voice made her look beyond her father to where Robert was just getting out from behind the driving wheel. He walked round the car and took her hand.

  ‘Robert,’ she said. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Well,’ he answered gravely. ‘I was just dropping Mr Knight off so he can have a break before the six o’clock surgery. Sarah is seeing to any calls for me. I’m on my way to the town, I have a patient in the cottage hospital. Perhaps I can give you a lift?’

  ‘Well, we were catching the bus …’ she began to say. Looking
up at him, she was shocked to see the band of white which ran through the centre of his dark hair. Had he had it when she asked him for a reference? She was ashamed to find she couldn’t remember. He was standing quietly, waiting for her to go on, politely, almost impersonally, as though she was a stranger. And she was a stranger, of course she was. Or had been these last few years since Patrick.

  Robert saw the sudden shaft of pain in her eyes as she thought of Patrick. He stepped back and dropped her hand, though he hadn’t an idea what had caused it. ‘Of course, go on the bus by all means.’

  ‘Oh, no, we will be delighted to ride with you, won’t we, Luke?’ she cried. ‘Luke is coming to live with us,’ she went on rapidly. ‘He is going to work on the farm.’

  ‘Well then, climb in the back, Luke, and I’ll hand you your box,’ said Robert. The family said their goodbyes and soon they were on their way, Luke still young enough to be thrilled to be riding in the doctor’s Sunbeam, grinning and waving as they passed a group of young unemployed miners, lounging about on the corner of the Chapel wall.

  ‘How are the children? And Patrick, of course?’

  The question sent a tremor of shock through Karen. How could Robert be so cruel as to ask such a thing? Could he possibly not know what it did to her? She looked sideways at him with a feeling of outrage but he was gazing ahead at the road, his expression bland and unknowing. He hadn’t heard of her trouble, she realized, and found herself wondering that he had not.

  ‘The children are well,’ she replied, her voice low.

  ‘And Patrick?’

  Karen cleared her throat. ‘He … he has left,’ she muttered.

  Momentarily, the car slowed, then Robert recovered himself and kept up a steady thirty until he reached the marketplace where the bus for Weardale was standing in. He stopped the car and turned a concerned face to her.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ he said quietly.

  ‘I’m surprised you haven’t heard, you being so friendly with Father Donelly,’ she said bitterly. ‘Patrick has left us, he’s gone back to his church.’

  ‘I haven’t seen Sean since he was made a bishop. I’m sorry, Karen, really I am. If there is anything I can do …’

  She turned away and opened the car door. ‘Come on, Luke,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to hurry or the bus will go without us.’

  Robert understood. He too got out of the car and helped Luke with his box. ‘Go on, hold the bus for your aunt,’ he said, and turned back to Karen. ‘I know it’s too painful for you to talk about yet.’

  ‘Oh, I’m all right, Robert, don’t worry about me. Did I tell you I am working full-time now? I am going on the district as soon as I can and with Luke to help Nick on the farm – well, as I said, we’ll be fine.’ She smiled brilliantly at him and rushed for the bus, leaving him looking after her. He even took a step after her, his arms lifted, yearning to take her into his arms before the thronged marketplace and comfort her. But they dropped to his side and he walked back to the car. Now was not the time. He would not make the same mistake twice.

  Luke was all Karen had hoped for on the farm. He and Nick worked closely together, much more so than Nick and Patrick had ever done. Karen was thinking about it as she came out of the house one morning and got into her little car, an Austin 7 she had bought second-hand for £15 when she started her new career as a district nurse. Nick called over to her as he led Polly out of the stable, her breath blowing white on the frosty air.

  ‘Mind, missus,’ he called. ‘Be careful on that top road today. It’s awful steep and bound to be icy.’

  ‘I will, Nick, I will. What are you up to today?’

  ‘Luke and me are bringing the sheep down inbye, there might be snow the night,’ he replied.

  ‘Well, if Brian’s in there hanging round Luke as usual, maybe you’ll tell him if he doesn’t come now, he’ll have to walk up for the bus to school.’

  Jennie was already climbing into the back seat of the car. Karen smiled softly at her. She had to be careful with Jennie; the child was too anxious to please somehow, and clung to her mother since Patrick had left. Jennie sat quietly as Karen waited for Brian, her thoughts roaming back over the dream she’d had during the night. It was a recurring dream, one she’d had over and over again, but at least the intervals between were getting longer.

  In her dream, she was always in Patrick’s arms and they were about to make love and she could feel her body responding eagerly to him. Or sometimes they were in the kitchen and the children were in bed and they were sitting before the fire, holding hands in the lamplight, enveloped in love and security. And just when she was feeling so secure in his love she woke from the dream. At first the feeling of euphoria hung on for seconds, even minutes, but always reality broke in and desolation swept over her.

  Karen moved restlessly behind the wheel. She must stop thinking about it. She hadn’t thought about it for weeks, but the dream had come back as she had known it would. Looking over to the stable, she saw Brian just emerging.

  ‘Hurry up, Brian,’ she called sharply. ‘Do you want to be late for school?’

  ‘But, Mam, there’s half an hour yet,’ the boy said reasonably as he slid into his seat. She twisted in hers and looked him over.

  ‘You haven’t got yourself dirty, have you? Show me your hands.’

  ‘They are clean, Mam,’ Brian protested but held them out obediently.

  ‘Well,’ said Karen, ‘don’t keep me waiting again, I have to get to work.’ She hated herself for being sharp with him, it wasn’t his fault she had such bad dreams. And his father’s desertion had affected him badly. He had grown nervous and quiet, and when Luke came to the farm spent all his time with his cousin, keeping out of the house as much as possible. Sometimes Karen wondered if he blamed her for what had happened.

  She started the car and edged out of the yard and up the track to the road. Tonight she would make a special effort. Perhaps if she got home early she would have time to make something special for the children’s tea. And on Saturday it was the Sunday School Christmas party, she would take them down herself. Jennie would like that.

  She dropped the children at the school gates where Miss Harvey the headmistress saw her and came over to her.

  ‘I’ve been wanting a word with you, Mrs Murphy.’ Karen made a move to get out of the car but the headmistress waved her back. ‘No, there’s no need to come in, I know you are a busy woman nowadays. Everyone is talking about the good you are doing in the dale. We should have had a district nurse years ago. Anyway, what I wanted to ask you was, is it all right if I put Brian in for a scholarship to Wolsingham Grammar School? He’s far and away the brightest pupil I’ve got, though Jennie won’t be long before she catches her brother up.’

  Karen flushed with pleasure. ‘Of course it’s all right, I’d be delighted,’ she said. ‘Jennie too, when her time comes.’

  ‘That’s the attitude I like to see in parents,’ declared Miss Harvey. ‘You know, some of these farmers don’t see the advantages of an education, not when the boys are to follow them on the farm. But I always say, an education is an investment in life.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Harvey, how right you are. But I know you will excuse me? I have to be at the doctor’s surgery in five minutes and the roads being as they are …’

  ‘Of course, Mrs Murphy, mind how you go now,’ said the headmistress, and stepped back from the kerb. Karen drove off, her mind lighter than it had been for many a month, for once all thoughts of Patrick banished.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  ROBERT SAT AT his desk, leaning back in his worn leather chair, his long legs stretched out before him. Surgery was over at last and he could relax for the first time that day. Subdued sounds from the cubby hole in the corner of the room reminded him that his assistant was likely to be just as tired as he was and glad to go home.

  ‘You can get off now, Mr Knight.’

  ‘Yes, Doctor, thank you. I’m just emptying the Mist Expectorant demijohn into bottles, r
eady for tomorrow. Then it can go to be refilled. It seems that everyone has a cough this bitter weather.’

  Mr Knight came round the corner of the screen which served as a door to the cubby hole and took his coat from the stand and put it on. As he knotted his white scarf round his neck and buttoned the coat over it, Robert was struck afresh by his likeness to his daughter Karen. The same shape to the head, though the father had the typical miner’s haircut, clipped close with only a fringe at the front to show when he put on his cap, as he was doing now, pulling it out of his pocket and jamming it down on his head.

  ‘I’ll say goodnight then, Doctor. I’ll come early in the morning, there’ll likely be a surgery full.’

  ‘Yes, it’s good of you, Mr Knight.’

  For all their relationship of employer and employee, Robert never presumed to address the older man without his proper title. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask about Karen, how she was, had the family heard from her today, but he held back. After all, he had asked after her yesterday, and only a few days before that. Mr Knight would begin to wonder, if he wasn’t wondering already.

  Robert clasped his hands behind his head after the older man had gone, enjoying the chance to think and dream now he was alone. Karen … it had always been Karen for him, ever since he had rescued her from Dave Mitchell when they were at Sunday School together. Even then, he had planned to be a medical missionary, promising himself that as soon as he was qualified he would ask her to go with him.

  He shifted position slightly as he remembered the despair he had felt when he discovered she had already married Dave, and he had missed his chance. And his stay in the mission field had been cut short in any case when he had been hit with illness and had to come home. He smiled wryly. ‘Man supposes, God disposes.’ It had been a favourite saying of his father.