A Nurse's Duty (57 page)

The marketplace was fairly busy this Thursday morning. Not so bustling as when the mines were working fully though, except round the stall at the end near the entrance to the bishop’s palace which sold second-hand clothing. There, women were turning over the piles of collarless shirts and suits with shiny elbows and knees. Two women were arguing over a child’s dress, pink and frilled artificial silk.

‘I’ll give you two shillings, I can’t afford half a crown,’ the younger one was saying. ‘Come on, man, would you have my bairn go on the Sunday School anniversary without a nice dress?’

‘Two and threepence,’ the stallholder answered stolidly, glancing absent-mindedly after Karen. She passed on to where the fish-wives from Shields were calling their wares.

‘Caller herring! Lovely fresh cod!’

She bought a pound of herring and waited impatiently for the fish-wife to wrap the fish up with her red-raw hands, chapped and scarred from the fish pickling. The Morton Main bus was in. Karen
paid
her twopence and ran for it. At least she had something to take with her to Kezia. She had forgotten altogether to bring the basket of eggs she had intended for her.

‘Why, Karen pet, it’s grand to see you,’ Kezia exclaimed, scrambling up from her kneeling mat before the range, black-lead brush in hand for she had been busy buffing up the shiny black fronts of the oven and boiler. ‘Why didn’t you write and tell me you were coming? I’d have had the place nice for you.’

The sisters gave each other quick pecks on the cheek though their beaming smiles belied the meagreness of their embrace. Kezia’s smile became anxious however as she noted the deep shadows under Karen’s eyes and the hollows in her cheeks. She knew that Patrick had left her, of course. Karen had written her a short note, saying so. But there had been no emotion in the letter and her sister had insisted that she was all right, everything was fine. And Kezia had been busy with the problems of Luke working only three days a week and Young Luke not at all, and had taken her at her word. Karen was not fine, she could see that now, feel it in the nervous energy which pulsed from her.

‘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.