Call Me Sister (12 page)

It might be easier to keep in Muir of Ord, divided by a busy main road, but villages are prized for neighbourly interest. Miss Forbes mightn’t see it like that. Maybe I could ask Ann if she knew anyone who was discreet, a dog-handler, had guiding experience and an ability to empathise with a proud old lady, now frail and fallen on hard times.

The anxiety chewed away at the back of my mind through a morning dealing with Ann’s list and reassuring her patients that I wasn’t a permanent replacement. As soon as was possible, I drove back to Conon Bridge so that I could leave a politically correct message on the answering machine. Then there were the long johns. They needed to get back to their owner. I’ll pop them in to Jock, I thought. It won’t take a minute.

It was as startling to see a television aerial sprouting from the Duthie house as it was to hear flapping noises coming from the tree beside it. Two hens were perched on a branch halfway up it. Resisting Jock’s attempts to coax them down, they merely spread out their wings for balance, clucking irritably as if annoyed at being disturbed.

‘Come on, Dilly and Dally. Get down out of there. The other hens won’t touch you.’ Jock rattled a pail of grain which mightily interested every hen but those in the tree.

With no sign of the pair moving and the defiant squawks continuing, I was reminded of LBP. The attitude was much the same. I nearly suggested chucking a brick at them but then remembered Jock’s soft heart. I couldn’t think how else to help. Still, it was an intriguing situation, so I went for, ‘I didn’t know any of your hens had names.’

‘The Campbells gave them to me. They said I’d need eggs for Willie for when he comes home and these are good layers.’ Jock didn’t sound convinced. ‘The bairns had them for pets but got scunnered of them. The Campbells are awful soft, you know. They just left that two to please themselves.’ He glared up at the tree. ‘And that bit’s true. I should never have let them out of that box.’ He kicked the one lying at his feet. ‘It’ll serve them right if they freeze up there. Just look at the other hens, they’ve all gone inside. Now that’s girls with common sense, common sense!’

‘And that should apply to us too.’ I handed over the long johns, which Jock took and tucked under his arm in an absent-minded sort of way.

‘Fine, fine,’ he said. ‘Willie was asking about them. I’ll get them to him this afternoon.’ He returned his gaze to the tree. ‘Once I get Dilly and Dally down.’

I shivered. There were flakes of snow sliding down the back of my neck and my chilblains itched.

‘You’re not biking in?’

It must be especially cold. Jock was wearing a raincoat. Compared to the rich red-brown of those pesky Rhode Islands, it was more like the colour of mud. As he tightened the belt, he threw me a challenging look. ‘Of course. Willie’ll be looking for me.’

I remembered Sister Shiach and the old man she worried about falling off his bike. Ann’s list of afternoon work was short and I didn’t want to start worrying about Jock as well as Miss Forbes. Then too, being a compassionate sort of person, I thought about my poor feet. They deserved a decent pair of boots. I could maybe buy them ones in Dingwall.

‘Look. I’ll take you in.’

You’d have thought it was an indecent proposal. ‘Oooh, no! I’ll manage fine.’ He said, then looking worriedly at Dilly and Dally. ‘I’m running short of time though and you’ll be wanting to get on with your work, Nursie, Nursie.’

The snowflakes now melting and making a chilly track down my back made me irritable. ‘That’s true and this is holding me up so look, Jock, I’ll make a deal with you. I’ve got to go to Dingwall anyway, so if I help you get those brats down will you let me drive you there?’ Not waiting for an answer, I looked around. ‘Have you a ladder?’

Torn between care for Willie and caution regarding transport, Jock had decided that in the meantime, he’d be safe enough with a ladder. He came back with a metal one, evidently stored at the back of the house.

‘Man’s work,’ he said, leaning it against the tree then clearing the rungs of snow, ‘but maybe you could steady it.’

Continuing their stance, the hens looked down, shouting in defiance and spreading their wings as if readying for take-off. Still, I reckoned they looked safer than Jock. As he started to climb, his tackety boots cslinked on the rungs. Occasionally there was a scrape as his foot slipped. Never had such roadman-like noises sounded so dangerous. A cold hand clutched my heart. I held onto the ladder like grim death. What if he fell?

Nurse training, like a few other things I was discovering on district, hadn’t catered for poultry management or immediate care of somebody flattened by a falling person. As I looked up at those trouble-making hens, I thought back to my farm childhood days. I remembered how efficiently my father wrung hens’ necks and shouldn’t have thought it, but found the memory uplifting.

As Jock neared his targets, one of them panicked into flight. Her navigational skills were so poor she flew with all the grace of a frozen turkey. It made it easy to catch her. I stuffed her into the box whilst the other, flustered without her pal, followed suit.

‘Gotcha. You must be Dally. Join Dilly,’ I said, and shut the lid.

Jock climbed down. ‘Are they all right?’ He peered through air holes punched into the box’s side. ‘They don’t sound very happy.’ He was definitely working on not repeating his last words. I wondered why. Maybe I’d find out on our way to Dingwall, if we ever got there.

I said, ‘They’ll be fine but I expect you know they’ll need their wings clipped to stop their flying careers. Have you a sharp pair of scissors?’ Momentarily I thought about the glinting, shining ones in Ann’s nursing bag, but couldn’t really justify using them. ‘If not, we can get a pair in Dingwall. Come on, Jock. We’ll miss the visiting time if we don’t go now. Just put away your bike clips and mind and take those dratted long johns with you.’

Jock climbed into the car, carefully kicking his boots free of snow. Then he shut the door, sat back and sighed as if surrendering to an uncertain fate. Already he was making me feel nervous. Dingwall wasn’t far away but my passenger with his eyes trained on the speedometer and whistling whenever it went over thirty mph had a slowing effect.

I don’t know who was the most delighted when we got to the hospital but Jock’s look of relief went as he got out.

‘I’m thinking Willie’s no keen to come home. Maybe having the telly’ll do the trick.’ He wiped his brow with the back of his hand. ‘I wouldna like to think I got it for nothing. Anyhow, I’ll no be watching it, watching—’ He slapped his hand over his mouth. ‘Uh! Willie says me always repeating myself drives him daft. It’s just a habit I got into when I was on the road and keeping myself company but he says that’s why he’d given up saying much to me,’ Jock sounded plaintive. ‘But how would I have known that if he wouldna tell me tell me?’

‘I expect it’s because he didn’t want to hurt your feeling,’ I said, moved at seeing Jock’s hurt expression, ‘but it sounds as if
he’s
plenty to say to you these days. So that’s good news and I’m sure he’ll be delighted with the telly. Anyway, hospitals are always wanting their beds freed up so whether your brother likes it or not, he’ll be home before he knows it.’

My confidence must have reassured Jock a little for he walked off quite jauntily whilst I went to find a parking place near a shoe shop.

I should have kept on my new boots. They wouldn’t have been so obvious as the tell-tale shoebox I was now carrying.

‘You’re a long way from home.’ Sister Shiach had come out of the chemist shop where I was now scissors-bound. She was laden with two large packs of incontinence pads. She swung them like weighing scales as she explained, ‘These are for one of my thrifties. She thinks that drying her used ones saves money.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘I think her house smells like an ill-kept fish shop and
she
thinks I’m a representative of a spendthrift society.’

I didn’t need to mention boots and maybe buying scissors to cut feathers wasn’t a very good reason to be in Dingwall either so I explained about Jock and how he wanted to tempt Willie back home with a television. Hens, I considered, were surplus information.

‘Sounds as if Willie’s getting hospitalised. Silly blighter doesn’t realise he’s lucky having Jock.’

It’s a funny world, I thought, remembering Raigmore and Miss Caird, who’d had nobody. The last thing she’d have wanted was to be in hospital, but then she didn’t have a caring brother chivvying her to get better and back home.

A wave of laughter and banter burst down the street, startling Sister Shiach. She looked at her watch. ‘Heavens! That must be pub-closing time. I’ll need to get on. You too.’

Then she bent her head and hissed, ‘Blast! Look the other way. You’ll never guess who’s heading in this direction.’

There was something heroic about Ginny Saunders-Hewitt. In a defiant stance against the weather she skittered towards us wearing impossibly high heels and a very short skirt. Maybe the fur jacket was keeping her warm or, more probably, it was where she and the Captain had just come from.

As soon as she caught sight of us, she grabbed her husband’s arm. ‘Oh, look! It’s Sister Shiach and,’ she aimed a cool if slightly ill-focused glance, ‘her little helper!’

In a world of swirling snowflakes, the Captain’s face was like a Belisha beacon of cheer. He stopped to button up his camelhair coat, a bit hindered by Ginny hanging on but still able to look about. He raised his eyebrows when he spotted a Morris Minor mounted halfway on the pavement and very near where we stood.

‘So it is! If we’d spied that we’d have known it was you, Sister. Your parking skills are famous. Ha ha!’

Shortly after getting to know Sister Shiach, I’d learnt there was only one way to really annoy her, and the Captain’s criticism of her driving had just done it. Blithely, he carried on. ‘It’s not something you do, is it?
You
just jolly stop.’ His speech might not be as slurred as it had been at our last encounter, but I reckoned he must have lost some brain cells since then. He can’t have known he was playing with fire.

Sister Shiach’s eyes narrowed, her brow gathered, her lips tightened and she spread her feet as if readying for physical combat. For a delicious moment I thought she was about to clock the Captain with one of the incontinence bags but fortunately (or not) the car horn blasted.

‘That’s Jomo telling me not to hang about and that
we’ve
work to do. Nice to see
you
, Sister Macpherson, but don’t you be standing outside too long in this weather. I don’t want
you
to freeze.’ And with that she hurried away.

‘Whoops, I say! Must’ve touched a raw nerve there as well as stopping the good lady from getting on,’ said the Captain, ‘and maybe we should head home before we freeze too.’ He nudged his wife and winked. ‘And I’m sure that when we get there we’ll think of a few ways to keep us warm, eh, Ginny Gin?’

‘Oooh, Charles,’ she giggled, ‘You are a rascal. But come on. I never thought it’d be such fun revisiting those days of our youth. D’you think there’ll be hot water for a bath as well?’

The pair staggered off in a waft of alcohol and mothballs, surely coming from the fur jacket. Maybe it too was enjoying a resurrection.

But this was no time for reflection. The hospital-visiting hour would soon be up and Jock had to be collected before I could finish Ann’s list of patients. I’d make a quick nip to the chemist shop, then I’d be on my way.

‘Good afternoon, Sister. Are you collecting someone’s prescription? In this awful weather I suppose you’ll be finding a lot of your patients are stuck at home, not able to collect them themselves.’

I wondered if the lady serving me was the pharmacist. Her grave manner, white coat and grey hair had the authority of someone used to giving advice. Behind the rimless spectacles was a shrewd gaze. I suspected that under it many a young chap bent on buying contraception would develop a sudden cough and go out of the shop with a packet of lozenges instead.

‘Actually, I’ve come to buy a pair of good strong scissors,’ I said.

‘Oh, nobody’s tablets then.’ She sounded disappointed, but still eager to help, pointed to an array of cutting implements displayed in a glass cabinet. ‘Would that be stitch, nail or plaster?’

I couldn’t tell her she’d missed out on the feather category. ‘Plaster, please.’ I said, immediately regretting it when she came back with , ‘Ah! Someone’s broken limb healed now and ready for the cast to be cut off. Now who would that be?’

Thankfully, she immediately patted her mouth in a delicate way and looked about. ‘Oh dear, that’s confidential I suppose. It’s just that we generally know every health matter around Dingwall. You’ll understand it’s only a kindly interest.’ She leant over the counter and whispered, ‘But Sister, you shouldn’t have to buy scissors. Surely you’re supplied with ones.’

I whispered back, ‘Actually, I think I may have mislaid mine.’

It was worrying how easily the lie slipped out. I decided that the next time I came shopping I’d not be wearing the uniform even if I knew I was already marked. She’d clocked the shoe bag.

Nodding at them whilst wrapping up the scissors, she said, ‘It’s good you’ve had the time to get these. It must be your half-day but you’re late for going off duty and I bet you’ll be wanting to get home before the snow blocks the road. That plough’s always late on the road. Have you far to go?’ The question was casual, but I knew it was loaded.

It could have been fun not letting on but she’d such an interrogatory manner and I needed to be on my way that I relented and told her.

‘Some of our Muir of Ord patients get their prescriptions elsewhere, you know,’ she sounded annoyed, ‘even if we give them a little advice for nothing. But you come back and see us again and if your patients can’t collect their prescriptions, you be sure and get them here.’

‘That Mabel Ross is awful nosy,’ declared Jock once I’d collected him from the hospital and told him about the scissors. ‘I was in school with her and she was as bad then – bigsy too. And the way she carries on you’d think she was the chemist and owned the place. I thought she was retired but she must be doing holiday relief for another assistant, assis —’ He clamped down on the last word.