by Mary Lavin
Bewildered, she turned back, and beside herself now, she devoured every word.
You will remember how we often spoke of destiny? It certainly does seem now that there was, after all, a strange concatenation of events in my life. Not only did I in a way initially undertake this voyage because of you, and most certainly because of you at the time I did, but it was a likeness to you that first drew my attention to Mary. That is her name. Mary Seward, the girl I told you about in my other letter. It is for her I’m waiting here in the hotel at this moment.
When I ran into her on deck the day after my last letter to you, and we got into chat, I cannot tell you how much I was struck by several other resemblances between you: small but very striking. In no time at all I was telling her about you. I found her so understanding. It was the beginning of our friendship, and now it seems that there is to be more in it for us than mere friendship. How strange to think you and I knew each other for so long, and Mary and I have just flown into each other’s lives, while both of us as she put it rather beautifully, were ‘on the wing.’
When things are settled I will write to you again. And if I am not mistaken, Mary will want to write to you too. She told me last night how very conscious she was of the part you played in our lives. She said she would like to thank you. In spite of the distance that divides you, it is my hope that you two will be friends.
But I must stop. I see her coming. As a matter of fact we have missed the main excursion. But we will hire a car and do a little tour of our own. It will probably be more enjoyable than the tour organised by the ship. But we will have to hurry, as in any event we must be back on the Orcades at 10.45 p.m. In haste, but with affectionate remembrance.
Alan
Affectionate remembrance! It was like a line on a mortuary card. As for that sentimental rubbish from the other woman, that hurt most of all.
Oh, it was so humiliating. And what would Rita and Lily think? Even if she didn’t tell them they’d probably sense there was something wrong. But as she stood miserably staring at the letter, her heart froze at a sound from her father’s room. ‘Oh God, what is that?’ she cried out loud. Headlong she ran onto the landing. But although low, those sounds had filled the house, and ahead of her Rita and Lily had raced up the stairs and were with her father. Rita was bending over the bed and Lily was on her knees mopping up the floor. ‘What is the matter?’ whispered Vera.
Her father was almost entirely out of the bed, leaning forward in a position so grotesque that, combined with the way they were holding him, made it seem as if ludicrously he was trying to swim, or to fly. He was retching violently. And as the black bile poured out of him, it seemed that it was by its force he was splayed out over the side of the bed. ‘Vera!’ he gasped, as their eyes met. Do you see now why I saved my strength, those eyes seemed to ask.
Then, as suddenly as it started, the retching stopped. And where before he seemed to have been flung forward, now he seemed to be flung back, his gaze transfixed.
Rita, as white as a sheet, straightened up. Her face was wet with sweat. ‘Another minute and he would have been gone,’ she said harshly. ‘He shouldn’t have been left alone.’
‘Is he dying?’ Hysterically, Vera tried to push past the others to get to the bed.
‘Oh, not at all; he’s all right now,’ said Rita impatiently. ‘We got to him in time.’
Vera was shaking. ‘What does it mean?’ she cried.
Rita swung round. ‘I’ll tell you what it means,’ she said callously. ‘It means that you’ll have to get a night nurse right away. Where would we be if this happened during the night? He could have choked.’
As if she’d been struck, Vera’s face reddened. ‘Wouldn’t I have heard him?’ she asked weakly.
‘You didn’t hear him in broad daylight, did you?’ Crossly Rita wiped her hair back from her face. ‘A nice kettle of fish it would have been if he smothered, for me, I mean. It’s high time we had a night nurse. We should have had one from the start I suppose, but I was sparing you.’
‘There was no need for that.’ The tears came into Vera’s eyes. When had she been niggling?
Rita had the grace to be ashamed at least. ‘It’s not that I’d mind getting up at night,’ she said. ‘But if I lost my sleep too often I’d be no use to you or to him. Goodwill isn’t enough in nursing.’
‘I understand,’ said Vera. It took an effort to be polite.
‘I hope you do.’ Rita looked more contrite every minute. ‘I want to give him an injection,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to go upstairs to my room for a new needle. Will you stay with him while I get it? We can’t leave him alone any more, even for a short time. You needn’t be frightened. I just want to be on the safe side.’ As she went out of the room she looked back. ‘There wasn’t bad news in your letter, was there?’ she asked.
The letter? A thousand years could have passed since she’d read it. Alan and his bride-to-be had shrunk to specks on a very far horizon. Even the hurt they’d inflicted had been deadened, but not her instinct to hide it. ‘Of course not,’ she said quickly.
But Rita’s eyes probed her through and through. ‘A little misunderstanding, I expect. Ah well, the course of true love never did run smooth,’ she said lightly. And she went out.
Vera moved over to the bed. Her father looked up at her. She bent and kissed his forehead. He was all she had in the world now. She had a great longing to unburden herself to him; to tell him about her heartbreak.
But Rita was back. ‘A nice fright you gave us!’ she said briskly to her patient as she came in the door. ‘Why didn’t you call someone? Shame on you!’ But across the bed she winked at Vera, and bending down she smiled into the sick man’s eyes and her voice was soft and cajoling. ‘I’m only joking,’ she said. ‘It was our fault. We shouldn’t have left you alone. But it won’t happen again. We can promise you that. We’re going to get someone to sit up with you and keep you company at night. Won’t that be nice?’ When he looked startled, she gave him a playful nudge. ‘We’d have had one long ago only we couldn’t find anyone fetching enough for you.’
For a moment her father seemed to hesitate, and then, playing his part he tried to smile. ‘How about a blonde this time?’ he whispered.
‘Oh come now. I can’t have talk like that,’ Rita said. ‘I’ll be getting jealous.’
‘Oh, you’ll always be my first love, Nurse,’ said the patient, but it made Vera sad to see that unconsciously he had given Rita back her formal title.
It wasn’t easy to get a second nurse with the summer coming on. After several trips to the phone in the village post office Rita got very anxious.
‘I wonder if we ought to try for a nurse attendant?’ she said desperately. ‘They’re sometimes very competent, and all we need really is someone to sit with him at night. And I know one who is free, a very reliable person. We were on a case together before. She’s an old dear.’
‘Oh, she’s old?’ Vera was doubtful at once.
‘She’s fairly old. There’s no denying it,’ Rita said, ‘but she’s very efficient. She’s had enough experience, God knows.’ And here it seemed she could not help laughing. ‘The old girl is ninety if she’s a day.’ She was joking of course, and Lily who had come into the room and overheard her took it as a huge joke. Vera felt they could both have been less unfeeling.
Next day, however, when the old nurse stepped out of the taxi at the door Vera’s own first impulse was to laugh. The new nurse looked a million years old. How would her father take this? It took them five minutes to get her up the steps. And once inside, she didn’t seem to have a glimmer about direction. Several times they found her going the wrong way along a corridor, or looking for the patient’s room on the wrong landing. It was nearly eleven, that first night, before they’d got her ready for her duties. She’d be almost as much trouble as the patient, Vera thought uneas
ily, as she said good night to her. She herself was having a cup of cocoa in the kitchen with Rita and Lily before they too went to bed. The old woman was taking a jug of water upstairs with her. Holding it out from her like a bunch of flowers, she was toddling off when suddenly there was a loud crack, as she knocked the jug against the metal tongue of the lock.
‘Oh Nurse, are you wet?’ Vera asked as water spilled out on the floor.
But the old nurse had heard nothing. Unconcernedly she went on up the stairs to the tune of pattering drops. Lily and Rita spluttered with laughter.
‘I don’t think it’s amusing at all,’ said Vera.
But a minute later she found it hard to keep her face straight when the old thing appeared at the kitchen door. ‘Lily! You gave me a leaking jug,’ she said crossly. ‘There’s not a drop in it.’
Stuffing their fists into their mouths, Lily and Rita ran into the pantry to hide their laughing, but Vera’s heart sank. How would the old woman be competent to mind a sick man at this rate? she thought. But when the old nurse was gone up again and Rita came out of the pantry she was genuinely sympathetic.
‘Don’t let that worry you,’ she said. ‘Your father likes her, and that’s the important thing, isn’t it?’
It was true that the sick man did seem to like the old woman. Was it, perhaps, that the efforts of gallantry had been a strain on him? Did he welcome the peace the old creature brought with her? There was certainly a new quiet in the sick-room. He often dozed when the two of them were together. Going into the room once it crossed Vera’s mind that the old woman too, no less than her patient, was waiting for her last end. Her few words were uttered in a voice so soft they could not be heard outside the door, and when she moved around the room she made no sound in the old felt slippers she wore. Indeed as time passed it even seemed that the whole house was becoming muted.
Rita and Lily were gay as ever, but, freer now to leave the house, they worked off their excess vitality in cycle rides, and even an occasional dance in the village. And once or twice, when they had been out late, the old lady made Rita lie-in next morning. ‘I can rest as well in a chair as a bed,’ she said placidly. And indeed, the big plush armchair was as big as a bed for her small, shrunken body. ‘I don’t need much sleep,’ she assured them placidly. ‘Anyway I’ll soon have enough of it.’ It was impossible to tell whether she spoke humorously or otherwise.
‘She sleeps on her feet,’ Lily said. ‘Like a bird on a branch.’
‘All the same I don’t want to trade on her goodwill,’ Rita said. And yet it was inevitable that they did, all of them, even Vera.
One day Vera let Rita persuade her to go for a spin with her. ‘You’re in the house too much,’ she said severely. ‘You need to get out in the air.’
‘I’ll cut a few sandwiches for you,’ Lily urged. ‘Make a day of it.’
It was not yet the real summer, but yet it was a day such as seldom comes even in summer. The sun shone down as they rode along between the hedges, already thickening with leaf and bud, and they laughed and talked as happily as if they were one as young and carefree as the other. Rita let go the handlebars and pedalled along with her hands in her pockets, whistling like a messenger boy. They stopped for lunch on a long treeless stretch, where the banks were high but softly mounded and the ditches shallow and dry. Throwing down her bike Rita clambered up on the bank and sat down.
‘Are you sure the grass isn’t damp?’ Vera asked, feeling it.
‘Are you mad,’ Rita cried. ‘It hasn’t rained for days.’
But they had no sooner settled themselves, and taken out their packages of food than rain splashed on the greaseproof paper. By the time they had got to their feet it was pouring.
‘Oh, where will we shelter?’ Vera cried, looking up and down the treeless stretches of the road.
‘Oh, come on. Let’s go on,’ Rita cried, jumping on her bicycle. ‘We’re already soaked to the skin.’
‘Look, there’s a clump of trees ahead,’ Vera said.
But when they reached it Rita didn’t stop. ‘Let’s keep going,’ she said. ‘We can change our clothes when we get back. I love the rain.’ Throwing back her head, she held her face up to it. Just then the sky was split with lightning.
‘Oh my God. Did you see that?’ Vera’s words were drowned, however, in a long peal of thunder.
‘Oh, it’s miles away,’ said Rita indifferently, although a second peal had immediately volleyed over their heads.
‘We can’t go on,’ Vera cried.
But there seemed to be a devil in Rita. ‘Why not?’ she called back, and her voice was almost buried under the cataracts of sound.
To be heard Vera had to draw abreast of her. ‘It’s terribly dangerous,’ she shouted. ‘Especially on a bike. Steel attracts lightning.’
‘Nonsense!’ cried Rita. ‘We’re safer on the bikes than anywhere. Aren’t the tyres rubber?’ Anyway the clump of trees was far behind.
Keeping abreast they careered along, while to either side of them the darkening countryside was lashed with light. Shrinking down over the handlebars Vera didn’t dare to raise her head, but Rita, standing on the pedals, rose up and down with them, and stared out over the transfigured landscape. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’
‘I’m scared’ Vera screamed.
Rita threw her a scathing glance. ‘Do what you like,’ she said. ‘I’m going on. Anyway, I’ve got to get back to my patient. A nice thing it would be if he went off suddenly while I was sitting here under a bush.’
In her fright Vera’s foot slipped off the pedals and she almost fell. ‘Wasn’t he all right when we left?’ she cried appalled.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t take me up on every word I utter,’ Rita yelled back crossly. ‘It’s just that you never can tell with any case.’
As if her father was only a case. ‘Oh, let’s get back quick,’ she cried, and with a new spurt she shot ahead. Obscurely she’d felt up to then that the blades of light as they scythed across the tops of the hedges would not dip to find her if she crouched low enough over the handlebars. But now she, too, stood up on the pedals and pressed them down with all her might. She too stared out over the fields, which in that eerie light were as strange as the fields of the moon. Trees and bushes, even on the farthest rim of the sky, were suddenly brought so close it seemed their branches switched her eyeballs. Near and far were one. Then, around a bend in the road, the white gable of a cottage came in sight. It seemed to rear up out of nowhere. And up its walls rode their shadows, hers and Rita’s, riding like furies. ‘Look at us, Rita,’ she cried. ‘We’re like death riders in a circus.’
Then there was another flash and a second cottage rose up as if out of the earth. The walls this time were rosy pink, but to Vera it seemed they were in flames. The whole world was in flames. Even Rita was startled. ‘Oh God! that gave me a fright,’ she cried, acknowledging with a grimace that perhaps after all death could have been riding with them. When they got back at last they could see Lily’s white face pressed to the window, and as they flung down their bikes she threw open the door for them and ran back, not daring to stand in the doorway.
‘How is my father?’ Vera cried.
Lily grinned. ‘He slept through it. The old girl too. I might as well have been all alone. I was scared stiff. And look. I got stung by a wasp.’ She held up her arm. It was red and swollen. ‘I knew that jam would draw them,’ she said. ‘And what do you suppose I discovered? There’s a nest of them in the grass under the kitchen window. I nearly stood in it.’ She laughed.
Rita was the one who was cross. ‘You’ll have to do something about that,’ she said sharply to Vera. ‘There’s your father to think of. If we managed to get him out in the sun for a few hours it would be a nice thing to have him stung to death.’
Bewildered, Vera looked at her. A little while before
she was afraid he might be dying and now she was talking of bringing him out in the sun.
But Rita turned to Lily. ‘Are there any men about?’ she asked jokingly, and whipping off her blouse she held it in front of the range to dry.
Vera went upstairs. Her father was still asleep. So after changing her clothes she ran down again. Rita and Lily were sitting at the kitchen table, but somehow she got the impression that they hadn’t expected her to come down so soon. It was not that they changed the conversation, and Rita even drew her into it at once, but an odd look had passed between them. Then Rita addressed her directly. ‘I was just saying to Lily here that those summer storms – thunderstorms – are usually a sign of good weather.’
‘But it’s only May,’ said Vera instinctively.
‘Nearly June,’ Rita said.
‘And those wasps,’ Lily said. ‘They’re a sign of summer.’ But she looked guilty. ‘Of course this fine weather could be just a flash in the pan,’ she added quickly, when Rita gave her a quelling glance.
‘This may well be all the good weather we’ll get,’ Rita said. ‘I’ve made that mistake too often, spent May and June watching for the good weather, and July and August finding out it was over.’
Was it possible they had been talking about their holidays? Filled with consternation, Vera’s face gave her away.
‘Of course I’d never take my holiday in the middle of a case,’ Rita said quickly. ‘That is, not if the end was in sight.’
Relieved, Vera sat down. ‘I always think myself the autumn is the nicest time of the year for holidays,’ she said.
‘Oh, the autumn is no good for anything,’ said Rita sharply. ‘The evenings are too short.’
