The New Sister Theatre

by Lucilla Andrews

  When we were alone again he asked if I wanted a translation. ‘Or did you gather you met with Luis’s complete approval?’

  ‘Roughly. Spain seems a country to boost a girl’s morale. I’ve always heard Spanish men were much given to making gallant remarks, but, like this set-up, I never really believed it was true. Have you caught the habit yet?’

  He shook his head. ‘Wouldn’t be wise if I did. They don’t much care for foreigners making verbal passes at their own girls. Until you arrived Geraldine was the only English girl I’d heard of around here.’

  ‘Frances hasn’t been out then?’

  Luis was back with a jug of wine and a plate of shrimps to keep us going until the tortillas arrived, so he just shook his head.

  Luis asked a question in which the one word I understood was novio. Joe’s reply resulted in his hand being shaken again.

  ‘Get the gist of that, Maggie?’ he asked when the proprietor left us.

  ‘Again, roughly. Wouldn’t he take no for an answer?’

  ‘It wasn’t quite that.’ He coloured very faintly. ‘I gave him the wrong impression ‒ intentionally. He’d have been a bit upset if I hadn’t.’

  ‘This is an old-fashioned country and so on?’

  ‘That’s right. And a particularly old-fashioned part of the country. Nice girls here don’t go out with any other type of male friend. In point of fact, here most girls wouldn’t even be allowed out alone with a fiancé. But as we are English and officially expected to be mad, that he’ll overlook. It hasn’t upset you?’

  For one wild moment I considered answering that truthfully. My training, if nothing else, prevented me. The habit of dealing gently with the sick and convalescent was too firmly ingrained to let me hit back even when hurt. ‘Not at all. I’m all for seeming to abide by local customs. Do you come here a lot? That how you know him so well?’

  ‘Miguel brings me in about once a week. Sometimes more. It depends on our post. He brings it out ‒ generally in the evening, unless it contains a cable. Time isn’t all-important here, which is a constant joy to me. Geraldine and David have got used to it. But though time isn’t a god, things get done.’

  I glanced at our fellow-customers. Most of the tables were taken. There were only three other women there amongst the many men. Everyone was talking rapidly, quietly, intently. ‘Things also get discussed, it appears.’

  He looked round with patent affection. ‘Luis once told me only death silences an Andalusian.’

  He had turned the ‘s’ into a ‘th’, as Geraldine did. I remarked on it, then asked how he had learned so much Spanish so soon. ‘I never remember your knowing any.’

  ‘I did some at school. Not much, but enough to start me off here. And as hardly anyone here speaks English I had to pick it up or stay dumb. I brought some books out with me after Christmas and have been doing some homework for something to do. Luis has been a big help, and as he’s only a couple of years older than myself, we see most things the same way.’

  ‘He’s only that much older? I thought him at least fifty.’

  ‘If he was he probably wouldn’t be alive. The forties-to-sixties men are largely missing. The Civil War.’

  ‘I’d forgotten that. I suppose they haven’t?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not that they talk about it ‒ to strangers, that is. Luis did tell me he remembered his father and two uncles being killed. He didn’t say how. I didn’t ask. They are all great talkers, but they don’t like personal questions, or talking politics with foreigners. They make very good company, but, in my experience, don’t give much away.’

  That applied to our conversation. We talked constantly, yet might have been strangers. I found myself waiting, as one did with a strange man taking one out for the first time, for him to give me the conversational leads. Yet there was one big difference to eating out with a stranger. There we would both have sought for mutual ground. Now we were searching for the safety of the ground we had not trodden together in the past.

  A man sitting against a wall began to play a guitar. The rhythm fascinated me. It was simple and complicated. ‘Joe, is this a type of flamenco?’

  ‘No type. Again, the real article.’ His face had lit up the way it always did when he heard good music. He produced an old envelope, noted the tune on the back. ‘This is one I haven’t heard. I’d like to try it on a piano some time.’

  ‘Is there one around?’

  ‘The only one I’ve seen belongs to the Alvaros. I dine with them occasionally, but it’s always very formal. He smiled. ‘They’d both be appalled if I suggested bashing out a jolly tune on the old joanna. They’d let me, of course. A guest can do no wrong. But they wouldn’t ask me in again, which I wouldn’t like. They are a nice pair, and their kids are quite enchanting.’

  ‘Geraldine told me they had five girls.’ I had another look round. ‘Pity they don’t have a piano here.’

  ‘Luis is talking of getting one ‒ mañana. I hope he does.’

  ‘Yes.’ I remembered how he had always used the nearest piano as a safety-valve. ‘How about learning the guitar?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking of that, but have put it off as I don’t know how long I’ll be here and don’t want to accumulate too many possessions. There isn’t much space in hospital, even in a private room, as you know.’

  ‘Buckwell did you in their Private Wing?’ I asked, thinking back to those telephone inquiries I had made and wondering how they had been so unsuccessful. ‘When did you go in? When you left Barny’s?’ He nodded. ‘I suppose they suddenly had a bed for you, hence your sudden removal?’ I spoke as if all this had just occurred to me. I dared not tell him the truth about it or those calls. That would have given far too much away.

  ‘That’s right.’ He lit another cigarette, changed the subject by drawing my attention to a portrait of Luis behind the bar. ‘You can see it now those chaps have moved off. David did it.’

  ‘Can I go over for a better look? Will anyone object?’

  ‘No. As you officially belong to me, the wolves won’t howl.’

  I said, ‘They look remarkably harmless wolves.’

  ‘My dear Maggie,’ he replied smoothly, ‘they may be. But you are not.’

  I stood up. ‘And you, my dear Joe, seem to be picking up the local customs fast.’ I walked over to the picture, exchanged bows and mime explanations with Luis, looked at the picture for a few seconds without seeing it at all, then, realizing I was going to have to discuss it, made myself take it in.

  ‘It’s odd,’ I said, sitting down again, ‘but rather impressive. Did he do it all with a knife?’

  ‘Yes. He’s laying off that technique now. That was done two years back. He’s still feeling around, but I think one of these fine days he’s going to be really good. There’s one dealer in London who’s now very interested in him. I took four canvases back with me on my last visit home. They’ve all sold.’

  ‘I hope you told Robbie?’

  ‘I did.’ He grinned. ‘He still thinks they are pathological cases. I did once. They are devoted to Robin, but were acting up like a pair of morons over his leg ‒ like David with Geraldine all this week. Yet on balance I think they’ve got so many of the right answers.’ He refilled our glasses. ‘They’ve asked me to come out again after my next op.’

  ‘And will you?’

  ‘Mañana, Maggie. Now tell me about the rest of your holiday. What was that you said in Gib about going down to Exmoor?’

  We talked Exmoor, then Devon, then the whole West Country, in such detail we might have been preparing a guide-book. Then the guitar-player started again.

  I was grateful for the excuse for silence, just as I had been on the drive from Gibraltar. But then I had needed silence as a refuge from his touch; now, because he had become so untouchable. I listened to the gentle, haunting, and to me quite unbearably sad tune, and thought, This can’t be me, and that can’t be Joe. This has to be some sort of dream, bordering on nightmare.

 
The candlelight accentuated my sensation of unreality, softening the lines of Joe’s high-cheek-boned face and the faces of the other men around, that were so uncannily similar to his.

  ‘Joe, have you any Latin blood?’

  He blinked as if waking from a private dream too. ‘Not that I know of. Both sides of my family come from Kent, and as far as I’ve been able to trace them always have, as you know.’

  ‘Of course.’ The atmosphere between us was suddenly much more strained. My thoughtless remark had knocked down a ‘No Entry’ sign. ‘You were born on the Romney Marsh. Weren’t any survivors washed up there from the Armada?’

  ‘If they were I never heard it. We had the Danes, and the Vikings, and the Normans. Frances,’ he added ‒ I thought deliberately ‒ ‘has the notion that one of my solid Saxon ancestors must have fraternized with the occupying troops, hence my name and colouring. She could be right, but I never heard it from anyone in my family. Ah! Here’s the old man!’ There was no hiding the relief in his voice. ‘And looking exactly as if about to do a ward round in his pundit’s suiting.’ He heaved himself to his feet. ‘Over here, sir! Try some of this wine ‒ it’s good.’

  We flew back from spring and back to winter early the following afternoon. From the air England was hidden beneath a thick carpet of cotton-wool. Our hostess told us it was snowing in London, but the airport was still open. ‘We are lucky. Yesterday every airport in the south of England was closed, but this morning was fine, so they were able to get the runways clear. This snow only started about an hour ago.’

  Sir Robert was relieved. ‘Not that I much care for the idea of going down in this, m’dear, but I have to be back for that kidney-graft to-morrow. Wouldn’t have suited me at all to be stuck out in that cock-eyed household another twenty-four hours, not to mention delaying your holiday again. I’m deeply obliged for all ye’ve done, Sister.’

  We were over England, so I was ‘Sister’ again. I sounded it as I said, ‘Not at all, Sir Robert. I haven’t really done anything, but thank you for saying that.’

  An ambulance and Lady Stanger were waiting for us when we arrived. She followed in her car, while Sir Robert and I travelled with Geraldine and her baby to Barny’s, then waited while we were up in Catherine Ward, after previously insisting that I spend that night in her house.

  Plump little Sister Catherine took the baby from me. ‘So this is my lodger? What a nice little fellow! My nurses are delighted to have a baby lodger!’ She paused until Sir Robert vanished behind the curtains for another word with Geraldine. ‘Well, Sister? You seem to have had a most exciting time!’

  ‘Oh, yes, Sister. It wasn’t dull.’ I touched the baby’s face with one finger. ‘He’s been a model baby.’ I then gave her a brief account of the trip, which did not include Joe’s name. She would almost certainly get the whole story from Geraldine, and if she then thought my reticence odd that was just too bad. Once she heard his name, and about his condition, she would want all the medical details, and they were now something I could not bear to discuss even with Sir Robert. Now I was back in the hospital atmosphere I understood better than ever why Joe and his friends amongst the residents had clamped down on that story. His medical case-history would fascinate even those few members of the staff who were above listening to grapevine gossip. Everyone of his symptoms would be discussed in minute detail, every possible prognosis considered. It was an interesting case, made the more interesting by his being so well known in Barny’s and the inevitable effect it must have on his professional future. Once the news got round it would be a very long time before the general interest began to fade. No sensitive person enjoyed being the object of so much talk, or the thought of what having to listen to that talk would mean to his friends. Far, far better try and prevent it all getting started.

  Sir Robert returned. ‘Shall we now go and pay our respects to Matron, Sister Theatre.’

  Matron announced herself most happy to see us back. ‘Spring-cleaning has started in your theatre to-day, Sister,’ she added, after hearing Sir Robert’s version of our travels. ‘All general surgical work is now being done in the Orthopaedic Theatre. Staff Nurse Garret and Nurse Cotton are working there on loan.’

  I noticed Sir Robert had also omitted Joe’s name in his explanation. Out in the main corridor I asked bluntly, ‘Sir Robert, did you avoid mentioning Joe de Winter intentionally?’

  ‘Just so, m’dear. Just so. Can you see the reverse serving any useful purpose? As I’ve just informed young Geraldine. I didn’t have to tell a good nurse like yourself. Good nurses know how to keep their mouths shut. The boy doesn’t want a parcel of silly old women of both sexes prattling over his prognosis. Well? I want to see Bill Swan. I shall be about fifteen minutes. Will you join m’wife in the car?’

  ‘There are a few things I would like to collect from my duty-room. May I nip up there first?’

  The theatre corridor was empty, the whole department very quiet with that strange lifelessness of all hospital departments when temporarily closed to patients. The theatre seemed to have died a little, the way a ship does in port, or an aircraft when grounded.

  The duty-room door was open, and Dolly Bachelor was writing at the desk. ‘Sister!’ She bounced up. ‘I thought you were in Spain!’

  ‘I was. We’ve just got back,’ I explained why I was there.

  ‘I’m not surprised you left things behind going off in that hurry.’ She made for the door. ‘I must go and check the anaesthetic-room.’

  ‘Don’t let me turn you out, Nurse Bachelor …’ but she was gone without asking one question about my journey. As she was normally such a chatty, friendly girl, her vanishing would have puzzled me if I had not had so much else on my mind. Consequently, I was only grateful to be spared telling the tale again and to be left alone.

  But the desk telephone reminded me I must let Wendy and Mark know I was back. I rang Henry Carter first. Wendy was off duty. Her staff nurse thought she had gone to see some show with Sister Matilda. ‘I’ll tell Sister you rang, Sister Theatre. And that you’ll be back in ten days.’

  Charlie on the switchboard said I was dead out of luck, I was. ‘Dr Delaney’s off until eleven. Went out for the evening not a half-hour ago. Any message, Sister? You’ll be in touch? Right. I’ll see as he gets it.’

  Lady Stanger had the heater on in her car and was knitting placidly. ‘I get most of my sweaters made waiting for Bob. I hope he doesn’t keep us too long. You look fagged out, my dear. Was it all very tiring?’

  She had been a ward sister at Barny’s before she married. She asked a few questions about her young in-laws, but was far more eager to talk nursing shop and compare my experiences with those of her own days.

  We spent most of that evening on the subject, before at her insistence retiring for an early night. When she drove me to the station next morning she asked me to spend the last weekend of my holiday with them. ‘I really did enjoy talking to a fellow-nurse again. Neither of my girls are interested in nursing, and though Bob and I talk Barny’s most of the time, naturally he doesn’t see things with a nurse’s eye. Do say yes, my dear.’

  I did as she asked, intending to write with some polite excuse while I was away. My one desire at that moment was to get right away from anyone with any connection with Barny’s or Joe. Our final good-bye in Spain had been even worse than I had anticipated. He had been so polite, so damned polite, and so utterly untouchable. He had asked me to give his regards to dear old Mark. ‘One of these fine days perhaps the four of us can meet up in London. You, Mark, Frances, and myself. Tell him that from me, will you, Maggie?’

  I spent that night in a hotel. By morning I had had enough of my own company and rang my father’s friends.

  Exmoor was powdered with snow. My friends warned me to expect a lot more. ‘Last winter we were snowed up for weeks. It will be nice to have you stranded with us.’

  They were very pleasant people. They knew nothing about hospitals, had never heard Joe’s name, remembered me
only as a schoolgirl. ‘And you are now an important sister in the theatre! You must tell us all about it!’

  I did not attempt anything of the sort, as they were not really interested in anything but their farm, milk-yield, and the effect the next general election was going to have on farm subsidies. I found their attitude restful for a couple of days, then the reaction set in and I wanted to be back in my own world. I wrote to Lady Stanger thanking her again for her invitation and telling her the time I expected to arrive at her house, then sent postcards to Mark and Wendy.

  It snowed fitfully most of my days on the moor. On the last morning the snow was much more constant. My host fitted chains to his car. ‘Change your mind and have this week-end with us, Maggie, and I think I can promise you a much longer holiday.’

  I said untruthfully there was nothing I would enjoy more, but must leave or offend the Stangers.

  ‘Isn’t this Sir Robert a big noise? You can’t do that!’

  Lady Stanger welcomed me like an extra daughter. ‘The same room as last week, my dear. Dinner will be an hour later than usual as Bob has a meeting. Never marry a surgeon.’ She flicked shut the window-curtains. ‘Either he’s in the theatre, lecturing, or at a meeting! Luckily I knew what to expect, but it can be very lonely, particularly now the children have grown up.’

  ‘I expect so.’ When she left me to unpack I found myself thinking how much I would love to be lonely for Joe, in those circumstances. I wandered over to the dressing-table, studied my reflection dispassionately, as if it belonged to another person. ‘Not bad-looking,’ I said aloud, ‘and quite intelligent. Isn’t it time you woke up, for good? He doesn’t want you or need you. He’s engaged to another girl, and he must love her the hell of a lot to have asked her to marry him before having this second op. And she must love him the hell of a lot to have said yes. They both know there’s a chance he may end up in a wheel-chair. The fact that he doesn’t mind having her to push it shows just how much she must mean to him ‒ and how he’s changed. Your Joe,’ I added much more slowly, ‘would have waited until he was in the clear. He hasn’t. Do you need any more proof that he’s no longer yours to love?’