A Nurse's Duty (58 page)

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, ready 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.

There had been the time he had thought she would marry him, alone and pregnant as she had been. He had been sure he could make her love him. And he might have done, but the priest had come looking for her and that had ended his dreams once again.

Robert sat up straight in his chair and gathered his papers together. This time, please God, it would be different. He would be careful, he wouldn’t rush her, he would wait until the pain she was suffering (and he knew well the pain she must be suffering, hadn’t he gone through it all his life?) had lessened. Karen was doing well on the district, the people liked her and she was a good and efficient nurse. He was friendly with his colleague in Stanhope and had had good reports of her, both from her time in the hospital and as a district nurse.

‘Dinner’s almost ready, Doctor.’ His housekeeper put her head round the door.

‘I’m just coming, Sarah,’ he replied. Rising to his feet, he turned off the lights and went through the door which communicated with the house. As he went, he was humming softly to himself.

*

Karen drove into the farmyard and switched off the engine of her little car. She sat quietly for a few moments, her thoughts ranging over the year since Luke had come to the farm. Looking round, she noted how tidy the yard was, and how the hens were already shut up for the night for there had been reports of foxes in the area.

Rays from the setting sun streamed across the yard and the August air was redolent of the cut hay which Nick and Luke had been stacking in the barn. From inside, she could hear the voices of the children and the deeper tones of Luke. He was a young man now, she thought, and a more capable farmer than she had ever been. And, on the Chapel outing to Saltburn she had seen him hand in hand with his fellow Sunday School teacher, Elsie, Fred Bainbridge’s granddaughter.

Karen was tired, it had been a trying day. There had been a spate of motor bike accidents in the dale recently, boys and young men with broken ankles and sometimes worse, and after they came out of hospital it was her duty to see to any after care which was needed. She had just returned from a visit to Tom Grainger, where she had dressed the deep gash in his leg. Tom worked a farm further down the dale. He had been proud of his new tractor until he tried to travel on ground which was much too uneven for it and it had overturned. Luckily, he was thrown clear. There were reports of tractors turning over and trapping men underneath and killing them. As it was, Tom had only a slight concussion and the gash in his leg where he had caught it on a sharp rock. Karen smiled as she thought of him as he was this afternoon. She had caught him in the hay field.

‘I’m not working, Sister,’ he had protested. ‘Just lending a hand, that’s all. What’s a man to do at hay time?’ Grinning sheepishly, he had limped back to the house with her so she could attend to his wound.

‘You have to rest the leg,’ Karen had said. ‘If you pull the gash
open
it will only take longer to heal. Then what will you do in the winter when you can’t go up the fell after sheep?’

She was brought out of her reverie as the house door opened.

‘Mother, are you coming in to supper?’ It was Jennie standing there, slim and tall for her age, and serious. ‘It’s all ready, Nick and me did it.’

‘Nick and I,’ Karen corrected her automatically as she got out of the car. ‘Yes, I’m coming now.’

After supper, Luke changed into his good suit and put on a collar and tie. He’d had a shave too, Karen noticed, his chin was all pink and shiny from the razor. His hair was slicked back from his forehead and gleaming with an oil which smelled strongly of bay rum.

‘Our Luke’s going with Elsie Bainbridge,’ said Brian. ‘Mind, Luke, if that smell doesn’t put her off, nothing will.’

‘Hush now, Brian, and get on with your homework,’ said Karen. ‘You going for a walk, Luke? Well, enjoy yourself, you’ve earned it.’

After he had gone off down the lonnen towards the Bainbridge place, Karen was washing up the dishes when there was the sound of a car coming into the yard. All the family looked up in surprise. No visitors were expected, the people of the dale were usually too tired during hay-making to pay visits.

‘I’ll go,’ said Brian, and had the back door open even before whoever it was could knock. When the two men came in, both so tall that they had to stoop to enter and then seemed to fill the kitchen, Karen couldn’t believe her eyes.

‘Joe!’ she cried. ‘Joe!’ And collapsed into her brother’s outstretched arms while Brian and Jennie looked on in bewilderment.

‘How are you, Sis?’ he asked. ‘I’ve come to see what you’ve been up to all this time. Robert here was kind enough to run me up.’

She gazed up into his face and he grinned down at her, his teeth
white
against the deep brown of his tan. A confident, mature face, but nevertheless she could see her little brother’s eyes twinkling back at her. ‘Oh, Joe,’ she said, half between a laugh and a cry, ‘what are you doing here?’

‘I had to come to London on business, so I took a few days to come up and see you all. And here I am, large as life.’

‘On business?’

Joe’s grin grew wider. ‘That’s right, gold mining business. You never thought your little Joe would become a globe-trotting businessman, did you?’

‘Mam,’ said Jennie, tugging on Karen’s skirts, ‘is this Uncle Joe from Australia?’

Joe laughed as he bent down and swung the young girl in the air and waltzed her round the room. ‘I am, I am, and who are you, may I ask? You can’t be baby Jennie. No, of course you’re not, you’re far too tall and beautiful.’ And Jennie was suddenly a tiny girl again, blushing and giggling.

Karen turned to Robert. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, ‘I didn’t mean to ignore you but in the excitement of seeing Joe … Well, how are you? It was so good of you to bring him all the way up here.’

‘Actually, I wanted to see you in any case,’ he answered. ‘So when Joe said he wanted to come, I thought it was a good time.’

She glanced at her brother who had sat down on the settee, with Brian on one side of him and Jennie on the other. He was telling them tall stories of the size of the kangaroos and encounters with Aborigines and the children were listening, spellbound. ‘Come into the sitting room,’ she said to Robert. ‘We can’t hear ourselves speak in here. Would you like some tea?’

‘No thanks, I have to get back.’

‘Well …’ Leading the way into the front room, Karen was suddenly conscious of him as a man, a strongly attractive man, and the feeling was such a shock to her she almost stumbled over the edge of the rug and he put out a swift hand to take her arm.

‘Steady.’

Karen bent her head to the table lamp, lifting the glass and fumbling for the box of matches to light it. She was glad of the dusk and took her time in lighting the match, trying to get her confused feelings under control. What was happening to her? She loved Patrick, there was no other man in the world for her, how could she possibly be so drawn towards another man and that man Robert? Why, she had known him all her life. Her fingers trembled and she dropped the match.

‘Here, let me,’ he said, and took the matches from her. The touch of his fingers made her pull back in confusion. He lit the lamp and soft light glowed on her face and wide dark eyes. He drew in his breath sharply.

‘Karen …’ he began and turned away abruptly, clenching his hands. I must not rush it, he told himself, I must not.

‘Yes, Robert?’

‘I … I wonder if you would be interested in moving, changing your job?’

‘Changing my job?’

She was standing perfectly still, gazing up at him as though she had never seen him before. He glanced away, he had to if he was to keep his voice calm and neutral. ‘Yes. I need a good nurse, Karen, the village needs a good nurse. You know what it is – no one wants to come to a dirty old mining village to work when there are so many other places.’ He swallowed hard and stepped towards her, his resolve weakening as it always did with Karen. ‘Remember how I dreamed of us working together on the mission field in Africa, Karen? Well, we’re older now. I know there is as much good work to be done right here, by both of us. Can’t you see it, Karen?’

He took hold of her hands and drew her to him. She was enveloped in a warm, magnetic haze. Her will to resist gone, she lifted her face for his kiss.

‘Mam! Mam! Uncle Joe says … Mam!’ Whatever Uncle Joe said was forgotten as Brian saw his mother spring apart from Doctor Richardson, just a moment too late for he had seen them wrapped in each other’s arms. And so had Joe. He was in the doorway behind Brian and he was grinning widely.