Acting Sister, page 3
chart ticking to time. Just heaven in a big way. This is exactly what I needed most of all, she thought.
‘Early bed,’ said Aunt Glynis, ‘a long sleep, and breakfast in bed to start tomorrow properly. And then maybe the man who is to mean everything in your world, my dear, will walk straight into your life.’
‘I doubt it. Is it a village full of handsome strangers?’
Aunt Glynis said there was the married vicar, and the doctor who was as old as Adam, and perhaps a couple of guests staying at the village pub, which took in people, but never anybody of the slightest interest.
‘But,’ said she with the insight such women always have, ‘if he is to come, he appears from nowhere. You’d be surprised.’
‘You’ve got something there, Aunt Glynis, for I should be surprised!’ Sally said.
She slept like a top in a blue and pink bedroom with a bowl of carmine rhododendrons in it, beside her bed. Nothing had ever been sweeter or comfier, and she had done the right thing when she came down here.
‘It’s a shame there are no young men in the place,’ said Aunt Glynis at lunch next day. It was grilled gammon and pineapple, a marvellous dish after the nurses’ home, and sort of sponge pudding to follow which made her mouth water.
‘I don’t want young men, Aunt Glynis.’
‘Nonsense! All pretty girls want young men.’
‘I just want time to sit still, and stop my feet from aching after climbing all those stairs, but I want to climb the mountains for a change.’
‘That won’t help the feet, dear.’
‘No, but it isn’t that awful corridor; in hospital there seem to be miles of them, they go on for ever. I just want a lazy do-nothing holiday and I’ll adore it.’
‘A lazy holiday is just what you’ll get, and I’ll do everything I can to help you.’
It was like being in a new world to have no set hours and orders. She did not have to make her bed, even if she wished to do it. When she came to think of the numbers of beds she made in a single day in hospital, it gave her the jitters, and once (before she began) she had told herself that she would count them. But that would have been impossible. You made beds all day long, here and there, and they had to be properly made, or Sister was after you. When she thought of the haphazard manner in which one made beds at home, she almost winced at the idea.
There were no flowers to be arranged, or fresh water given to them, no voice demanding ‘Nurse’ and those demanding voices went on for ever. It was good to be away from it, and even if she was glad that she had taken on a career which lay so near to her heart, a brief breather away from it was a help. She would have hated to be anything else, but it was hard work.
Personally she did not find the new Matron too much of a good thing, as the rest of the nurses seemed to do. She might be prudish and pernickety at times, but from what Sally had seen of her so far she had not found her too difficult. The trouble with all hospitals was that although they were changing all the time with eternally different patients, and nurses going and coming, Sisters and Matrons too, privately they rebelled against change. When she returned, she was down for work in the theatre, which she would love. So far she had done little more work than was absolutely necessary on the fourth floor, which was given over to operations, with three first-class theatres, three anaesthetists’ anterooms, and the big lift doors.
She thought now how quivery she had been the first time in her life when she was on the list for theatre duty. It is perhaps the big experience in a girl’s life. She had been scared that she would be sick, or faint, or do something silly, for quite strong girls flopped out on duty in the theatre. Somehow or other her keen interest had seen her through, and she gave no outward sign of being in the least disturbed. Later, there had been moments she turned dizzy, moments when she felt the horror that surely the surgeons could not possibly do what they had set out to do.
After a course in the theatre she learnt that surgery is enormously advanced, and there is practically nothing that it cannot do. Now, when she returned, she would do eight weeks in the theatre with Michael Steele.
So far he had been nothing but a name to her.
He came from one of the big hospitals which are situated on the far side of the Thames, the one where they did wonderful heart operations, and he was a cardiac specialist. And sometimes a tartar in the theatre, so she was told, undoubtedly he had this reputation.
The nurses, ever chattering about any doctor, said that he was astoundingly handsome, the dark kind with lovely quite dazzling blue eyes, almost violet, and suave with the usual Harley Street manner about him. But his reputation in the theatre was not of suavity or the Harley Street manner. He rapped out orders, so they said, and each one came like a shot from a gun. Sometimes he had not a single thought for those who worked for him, and being untirable himself, stayed in that glorious state and blamed others for growing tired.
His work lay on the tricky borderline of cases, which could be quite terrifying, and however one condemned him, one had to remember that these patients demanded an enormous amount of self-control from him, a control which was a nervous strain, which took its own toll of his personality.
He was said to be married.
But the romantic rumour-mongers, of which there are ever a large assortment in every hospital, said that he had never had a girl in his life, that he did not care for women, though he worked wonders for them when they were ill. He had for a time been an excellent gynaecologist, but his main work to-day was with the heart. He did not mind what he did, and it was said that he attempted operations, and successfully, which other men shrank from doing.
He was in fact magnificent.
Sally knew that she would enjoy meeting him, though she realized that in all probability he would be a very hard master. But whatever anyone said, she would rather have a man who was not a lady’s man than one of the flirtatious kind, who she simply could not tolerate. She had already had trouble with that sort when she had begun her career. Hanging about waiting for the next op to come along, surgeons making a fuss over scrubbing down and calling to her for extra towels as an excuse to get off with her behind the screens.
She was not the getting-off kind of nurse.
Michael Steele would be enthralling to work for, because she would undoubtedly see the sort of ops that you saw only once in your life, and she knew that nothing taught like experience.
She had spent that first morning in the garden. It was a beautiful garden with the ancient gardener known as ‘Old Worms and Weeds’ who had spent his whole lifetime digging over this particular piece of land. He adored Aunt Glynis and would do anything for her. He had come here as a little boy, to her predecessor, in an era when small boys worked in gardens and when half a crown was almost a living wage. He knew every Rose of Sharon which clustered up the stream bank by the gate. He knew all the ferns. Aunt Glynis admitted that now when Old Worms and Weeds was getting past it (he claimed to be seventy-five which he considered to be young, but was far nearer eighty-six, if the village knew anything of him), he was a long long time doing the work. But what he did do, he did well.
‘I can never part with him, of course,’ she said over lunch.
‘Of course not.’
‘He’ll be here as long as I am, and I have the idea that he will outlive me, he is that sort of man. He is a miracle, and has never stayed away for so much as a cold in the head.’
That afternoon Sally took Toots the spaniel up the mountainside, which he loved. Old Toots was a sloppy dog, but never sloppy with a gun. He had belonged to Aunt Glynis for ten years now, and occasionally got a day with a gun with one of the local farmers. He was all for a good walk when he got the chance.
She walked up the early slopes which were little more than pleasant fields rising gently, with the great blue summit ahead, far into the clouds. There were little wild flowers everywhere, clovers and sorrels, strawberry plants, and the little pink orchids which are all over that part of the world.
I love Wales, she thought, and suddenly wondered how it was that she had ever dedicated herself to a hospital in London when this was so much part of her.
As she came down again and re-entered the village street where nothing ever happened (and most certainly if by mistake something did happen, then the news of it went far), she met Mr Jones the post, and Mr Jones the post remembered her.
‘How far is it to the scree?’ she asked.
He grinned amiably. ‘It’s a mile and a half to the bottom and a mile and a half to the top,’ he said.
He was a darling! That was the sort of thing he always said, and if you could make head or tail of it, then you were cleverer than she was. ‘Just to the scree?’ she suggested.
‘It would be the mile, yes indeed the mile, and the mile back.’
She gave it up.
She walked into the post office, which had a little shop attachment, and she went inside to buy some stamps. Mrs Jones had had an eleven-pound baby last autumn. It was a pity, she said, such a big boy and all that, but he was a nice baby and doing well, and Mr Jones was that proud of him. She liked seeing new faces in the village, she found new faces pleasant, and wondered how hospitals worked, and if Sally really liked it, with all the hard work and being on her feet so many hours in the day. She was aroused by a morbid interest which was all part of Mrs Jones’s inhibited village life.
She talked of the village pub, The Welsh Harp, round the corner of the village street. The old owner had gone away and sold it to a new man. Naturally Mrs Jones did not think too much of the new owner, for she liked nothing to change.
Oh yes, he was doing well indeed. He gave good food, and the story went round the villages at hand. He had climbers come and go up the mountain, but last autumn there had been a bad accident, a very bad accident, and two gentlemen dreadfully hurt, which put people off the mountains now.
‘The fog came down, indeed it did,’ said Mrs Jones who, when she wished to be impressive, used the voice of someone in church.
When the fog was about, one should stay in the halfway hut, she insisted, and there they must stay even if it was a long wait. Waiting could not hurt you, but walking could. They had come down, the poor fellows, to their deaths. But they had had the most beautiful funeral, the chapel was decorated and there were the loveliest flowers. She would always thank God that she had seen it, for it was the most beautiful funeral there had ever been, or ever would be, in the little chapel.
Sally said goodbye.
‘And when I go up the mountain I shall remember always to stay in the hut,’ she said.
The strongness of the air made her sleepy.
When she got back to her aunt’s house she lay down and had a rest before dinner, and woke for the evening meal feeling quite wonderful.
The vicar came round.
Aunt Glynis had asked him to dine with them. She knew that the village entertainment was rather limited, but what could she do? He was a merry little man, somewhat like a buxom robin, with pert eyes and a lot of chatter. He might be a bit boring, but he so enjoyed himself that he made others feel happy, too. He would have stayed for ever, as Aunt Glynis knew, and she had no hesitation in telling him when the hour came that Sally and she wanted to go to bed.
‘My niece is having a restful holiday, and after work in the wards she has to get to bed early,’ she explained, ‘so you must not be offended with us.’
He was not offended, he was not that sort of little man; he wished them goodnight, and when he had departed they went up to the chintzy bedrooms. It was the old-time hospitality with a box of biscuits by the bedside, and with sheets that smelt of lavender. I shall sleep like a top, Sally told herself.
As she curled up to sleep, her last thought was how had Barbie got on with Matron?
She heard about it next morning in a hurried letter which she could hardly read, for the writing was so agitated.
I’m terribly sorry about all this, but there really was nothing for it save this or the sack. Matron saw us together (she would come along just as the shoulder strap of my dress gave out!). I trespassed on your good name, for you have not got a single black mark against you, and I knew you would come under the first offenders’ act. I said it wasn’t me, but you, and you and Ferdie were engaged.
Ferdie promises to break off the engagement the moment he can, and he’ll stick to that. Matron was quite reasonable.
As Sally read the letter, she thought she would faint from sheer shock.
Barbie had found that Matron was very much on duty behind her scrupulously tidy desk, where no paper ever went astray, in a manner one would have believed to be impossible on any ordinary desk.
There was Matron in slick navy blue, with the right medal ribbons on her, and that peculiar lace cap which all Matrons (and nobody else) seemed to wear religiously. She had been completely calm. She wished Barbie to give an account of her behaviour at the Nurses’-and-Housemen’s Ball. She had walked through the sitting-room and had been somewhat surprised at what she had seen there.
Petrified, Barbie said, with a dignity which must have flabbergasted Matron, ‘But I was not there.’
‘I saw you with Mr Strong.’
Barbie swallowed hard. ‘I ‒ I hardly know Mr Strong, Matron. I was dancing. If you remember, both I and my friend Sister Lewis are fair and we were both wearing pale-green dresses.’
Matron stared at her, and there was something uncommonly cold about her manner. ‘Mr Strong will be seeing the Warden this morning.’
Thank God I fixed it up with him last night! thought Barbie, and he knows what to say, because with both of us having bad names this could easily be the end. In a calm voice she made the boldest statement of them all. ‘Mr Strong and Sister Lewis have been … secretly engaged for some time now, Matron.’
That did take Matron by surprise, for she most certainly had not anticipated it. It was seldom that a woman who was so well trained could even for a moment, show how she felt about a situation which had gone wrong on her, but for a couple of seconds there passed across her face a look of utter dismay! Then she pulled herself together and was entirely Matron again.
‘You realize of course that Sister Lewis is away on leave at the moment?’
‘Yes, Matron.’
‘I shall have to go into this matter with her when she returns, and I must say that I am considerably surprised by it. Sister’s behaviour here is exemplary’ (meaning that is more than mine is! thought Barbie). ‘I shall have to let the matter rest until her leave is done.’
‘Yes, Matron. It was of course entirely secret.’
‘In a hospital where one works, a secret could mean ultimate resignation,’ Matron was in one of her stickiest moods, and this terrified Barbie.
‘Yes, Matron.’
‘Very well for the moment. But understand that I have not finished with it.’
‘I am sorry, Matron.’
‘Thank you, and good morning.’
That woman is a ‒ ! said Barbie to herself, but ran straight out of Matron’s holy of holies into old Vicky Adams, who was very much the Sister-in-Charge, and looked like the wrath of heaven. Barbie had the impression that old Vicky had discovered something, but if she had, she said nothing. She sailed on.
Barbie saw Ferdie the first moment she could get hold of him, and she fumed all day until that moment presented itself. They went out to a little bar round the corner; it was the wrong end of the month when everybody was pretty well broke, and it would be empty. In any case nobody ever went near the bar at this hour of the day. They sat down at the far end, and ordered their food and got it before they started to talk.
It seemed that Ferdie had had a most ghastly time with the Warden this morning, who was a ruthless man who should have been a monk, or a father confessor; he was for ever butting in (according to Ferdie) and did not know how to handle a romantic situation. The Warden had been plain-spoken in the extreme, saying that he had had nothing but trouble with Ferdie ever since the day he had arrived here, and he was sick to death of excusing him and giving him another chance.
‘ “Fast as hell” was what he said,’ snapped the indignant Ferdie, ‘and that isn’t true, for I have always thought myself to be pretty fastidious about women.’
‘What’s he going to do?’
‘I said it was Sally Lewis, and that we were engaged. He said, “Why wasn’t I told? You know nurses are not supposed to get engaged like that?” ’
‘But that isn’t true.’
‘Of course it isn’t. It was just that he was so mad with me that he would say anything.’
‘What now? Because Matron was awful, too.’
‘I’d expect that of her, for if you ask me that Matron is no good either.’
‘She is awful! I could have killed her. I said that it was Sally, and that you had both been engaged for some time. I must say it seemed to take her flat aback, which was something of a help, but she got herself pulled together fairly quickly. I knew she did not believe a word I was saying, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it.’
‘What did she do?’
‘Said for the moment nothing could be done, until Sally returned, and then she will go into the matter in full. I only hope that Sally plays the game. It would be too frightful if she let us down.’
‘She won’t. I’ll be so jolly nice to her that I’ll sweep her right off her feet. I promise you that one. We’ll pretend to be engaged for a month to see us round this nasty corner, then have the most awful row, and that’ll be that.’
‘Only Sally is somewhat of a prude. She is one of those awful people who dot the “i”s and cross the “t”s, and she is not flirtatious at all. She could take it all dead seriously, and that would be the end.’
‘If I’ve got to walk out with an iceberg, I shan’t enjoy it too much either.’ Ferdie was looking thoroughly peeved about it.
‘I know.’
Barbie was now growing considerably more concerned than she had been at the start. She had difficult parents, for her father was one of those old-fashioned doctors, who had insisted on his daughter taking up nursing, and in his eyes no Matron could put a finger wrong, and she must be obeyed to the bitter end. Her father had been a medical student here himself, and he did not think that the Warden should have been a monk, but said he was a jolly good chap. Barbie knew that Dad was not easily deceived, and there would be great difficulty at home if this came out. Also she had the gravest doubts about the cold indifferent air of the new Matron, who could possibly send her home for a time. They were not that short of nurses, unhappily. Had been, but in the last three months everything had picked up a lot.
