Nurse with a Dream (16 page)

She went into the kitchen and cried over the sink, her hands blindly washing up the cups and saucers used by the parents ten minutes ago. The tea in them was almost untouched, melted sugar unstirred thick in the bottom of the cups. There was no time in the schedule for private grief; when the night nurses came on they would expect to find the kitchen tidy.

An arm took her shoulder in a warm, masculine, comforting grip. “It can’t be helped, Jacky. We’ve done all we can. Sometimes we’ve just got to take a beating.” It was Alan.

She turned towards him. She could not stop crying at once, and he kept his arm round her.

“Why does God want him to die? He’s so young, all his life before him. It’s cruel.”

“Jacky, girl—don’t fight it like that. And don’t blame God for everything.”

“Aren’t we supposed to be His children?”

“His grown-up children, not His toddlers. We have to take responsibility for our own actions. The human body just isn’t built to fall from a roof on to a concrete floor. We know that. That boy knew it, but he deliberately took the risk, against which he’d been warned.
He
broke the rules—God didn’t.”

“Isn’t that rather hard?”

“It is unsentimental. God isn’t sentimental. That is one of the biggest mistakes people make. The law of gravity makes a body fall. God can’t alter the laws of His universe to suit the individual case. It’s man who must alter the cases to suit the universe.”

“For instance?”

“God made human beings to need food. We know that—all of us. So if we let a child starve to death it’s our fault, not God’s. We have broken the law, not God. And be sure we shall have to answer for it one day.” He gave her shoulder a friendly squeeze and released her. “I missed my dinner. Sister said there’d be a cup of cocoa if I asked nicely.”

Jacqueline wiped her eyes and smiled. “I’ll bet she didn’t. I’ll bet she beat her head on the floor and said
Yes, Mr. Broderick, No, Mr. Broderick, certainly!
You are spoilt and idolised, but it doesn’t seem to go to your head. I’ll put the milk on.”

“My housekeeper doesn’t spoil or idolise me, thank you. She’ll be furious—she is always cooking a nice chop or a nice bit of steak or a nice cup of tea, which I fail to consume. I’m a trial to her.”

“Rich tea biscuits or toast?”

“Toast, please.” He pottered round the kitchen in an interested way until Sister popped her head in and said in a scandalised voice, “Mr. Broderick, there are some chocolate biscuits in my room. Do come and sit down. Nurse, bring Mr. Broderick’s cocoa as soon as possible.” She sniffed like a pointer. “Toast? Who’s that for?”

“Mr. Broderick, Sister.”

“Oh, I see. Well, hurry up. Excuse me, sir—I’ll just finish my report” She glanced at the kitchen clock and bounced away.

“Little Lord Fauntleroy!” Jacqueline whispered. “Go on, into her room. You’re not kitchen company, Mr. Broderick.”

As Jacqueline crossed from kitchen to Sister’s room with a tray, she saw Mary come out from behind the red screens. Sister was sitting at her table writing the report, but she looked up and quietly replaced the cap of her fountain-pen; then she moved towards Mary and together they went into the screens.

Sometimes you just have to take a beating.

The men said, “Only twelve more operating days to Christmas, Nurse?” The cupboards rained decorations if opened sharply, and Lowe revealed a talent for making paper lanterns which put up her stock with Sister, and heaven knew she needed it. The night nurses swayed around blear-eyed, what with staying up to shop or to practise carols. Nobody did any exam, work, and Sister Tutor’s Cassandra warnings fell on heedless ears.

Jacqueline wrote to Guy, inviting him to be her guest at the Christmas dance in the Nurses’ Home. Liz invited Tom Fielding, a rugger player who had just left Private Patients after a knee injury. Bridget hoped for Greg, and even the Poor Indian, flown with the success of her lanterns, admitted to a boy in the post office.

Mary Leigh’s portable gramophone worked overtime as the nurses showed each other versions of the newest dances; the keenest ones bought or borrowed dance records, to Mary’s distress. She preferred Bach.

Jacqueline’s dance frock was green and silver. When she admitted she had made it herself, she was unanimously appointed Dress Adviser to her friends. Firmly, she took in Mary’s bodice, and when Mary complained that it now fitted as closely as a ballet dancer’s tights, everyone said yes, it did, and wasn’t she lucky! Liz yelled when Jacqueline thrust scissors into her neckline, but had to admit the resulting chic was worth it. Little Nurse Lowe was forbidden a black-and-crimson fringed stole, the darling of her heart. Too long, said Jacqueline, too broad, and Lowe wasn’t the type; she’d get it entangled in her feet or strangle her partner.

“That’s enough,” Liz decreed. “Draw the line or you’ll be giving dresses the Continental touch until the cows come home. Take a butcher’s at this—Sister’s Christmas present from Liz with love.”

“What is it?” someone asked. “Rat poison?”

An obscure junior named Richardson or Harrison burst into tears and said she was homesick. She’d never been away from her mother at Christmas before.

“Buck up, ducks,” said Liz in a Barnbury accent. “Seventy per cent of the customers haven’t either, and you’ve got your
’
ealth and strength.”

After tea on Christmas Eve, the nurses’ choir toured the hospital, wearing their red capes and carrying cardboard lanterns with red crinkled-paper windows lit by insecure torches. They sang a carol or two in each ward, during which the tree was illuminated, and a number of the patients enjoyed a good cry which in no way diminished their rapturous applause. In the Children’s Ward every bed already sported a giant sock, which would have to be filled by the night staff from a pile of magnificent toys provided by the local Rotary Club. Here the tree was still screened, waiting for Santa Claus himself, due to make a personal appearance in the morning. Several of the younger children, who had been to Sunday-school, became slightly confused, and thought they had already arrived in Heaven.

Jacqueline and Liz were almost at the end of the procession as it wound its Christmassy way through the corridors. Nurse Lowe led the choir, a modest but definite triumph, her training in the Methodist Chapel at home having come in useful, after all.

The medical and senior nursing staff were assembled in the Great Hall under holly-dressed pictures of Florence Nightingale, Sister Dora and the late Alderman P. R. Jackson. The choir serenaded them with a few of the more successful carols before dispersing to catch up with work or sleep, as the case might be. The doctors and senior sisters retired to Matron’s room to drink sweet brown sherry and eat chocolate biscuits, and the lesser lights rushed back to the wards to harry their juniors.

On Christmas Day the nurses worked twice as hard and twice as fast, but nobody noticed because it was Christmas. The patients got out of hand quite early, and even Birdie’s eye could not quell them. She did not try, but accepted boxes of chocolates, tins of toffee, lavender water and plastic comb sets with the utmost graciousness. Most of her cards sported a robin, a fact which puzzled her as much as it delighted everyone else.

The Mayor and Mayoress arrived, convoyed by Matron, Assistant Matron, the medical staff and wives. Mrs. Parsons was a half a head taller than her husband, and had exactly the same kind, neighing laugh which revealed long equine teeth. Mrs. Anstay was dark, lovely as a cameo, with exquisite clothes and a hand-span waist. The nurses, plump with cocoa and starchy meals, stared at her enviously, and made resolutions about slimming which they knew they could not keep.

Dinner was turkey, of course. The luckless few on diets groaned and booed, but Diet Kitchen did their best and sent up something festive.

“Steamed flipping cod with a flipping paper serviette with holly on it!” Daddy Pearson grumbled. But even the worst grousers groused good-humouredly.

In the staff dining-room, the Mayor took the head of one table and Alan took the other. The Mayor’s Chaplain said Grace, the Mayor stuck a carving-knife into the turkey’s crisp brown breast and was surprised but relieved when it was immediately whisked away to be carved professionally. Alan, however, was left with his turkey, and carved it good-humouredly to a running fire of commentary and advice from his colleagues who gathered round to cheer him on. On removing the stuffing from the neck end, he discovered a big red heart, an enormous safety-pin and a pair of forceps in the body. These he removed amid cheers, while Home Sister trotted round whispering that they had all been thoroughly sterilised and nobody was to worry.

Plum-pudding, crackers, paper hats. More carols, army songs, Birdie’s balloons bursting, with bombardment noises from the old soldiers. Nurse Knight decided that old-fashioned red and green decorations looked best, after all; yet cast a languishing look over her shoulder at Lister’s green and silver and Harvey’s elegant Regency decor in pale blue, white and gold.

One by one the wards fell silent, with only the green-shaded lamps casting pools of light. First the Children’s Ward, then the old tired ladies of Lister, Pasteur, Hunter, and Jenner kept it up to the very last. When Jacqueline came off-duty she searched for soft spots in the terrazzo-tiled corridors to ease her burning soles.

“What a day!” Bridget was sitting sideways, her stockinged feet draped over the arm of her chair. “Dr. Gregory kissed me. Twice.”

“He didn’t!”

“Swank!”

“When’s the wedding?”

“He showed me the Charleston. His grandma taught him.” She rolled down her nylons and proudly displayed blue bruises. “Those old-timers must have been tough.”

The Staff Dance was a different kettle of fish. Formal, with everyone in their best clothes and on their best behaviour. Matron, splendid in gunmetal poult, opened the dancing with the Mayor. Assistant Matron wore royal blue georgette with silver beads. Deborah wore black superbly. Miss Pugh the almoner and her fiancé were up to competition standard and twirled with smooth competence twice round the floor before anyone else stood up; the office clerk told everyone proudly that there were eighty yards of net in Miss Pugh’s flame-coloured net dress and that she’d won a bronze medal at Bournemouth.

Guy brought a corsage of carnations. It was strange to see him in evening dress, and his suit smelt faintly of mothballs; but he looked magnificent, and Jacqueline was proud of her big escort as she laid her small hand on his arm and led him up to Matron to be received.

He held her closely as they danced. “I’m still waiting for my answer, sweetheart. When are you going to say yes?”

“You promised me time to think.”

“You’ve
had
time. Don’t be a coward. You know you will marry me sooner or later, you can’t help yourself. It’s your fate—I’ll bet it’s written in your palm.”

Dancing with Guy, outstandingly the best-looking man in the room, she felt excited, proud, gay. Why should she hesitate? Was this love, a whirling exhilaration, the thrill of hand touching, of blue eyes looking into brown?

Or was there something more?

When Deborah claimed her brother to give a dance or two to the older Sisters who had come unpartnered, Jacqueline was besieged by partners who complained that Guy was taking more than his fair share.

She kept an eye open for Alan, sure that he would be here this gala evening. It was not until she was dancing with a shy young doctor, who stammered and whose name she never knew, that she saw him. She caught her breath.

He was dancing with a tall slender girl with a faintly discontented pout which marred her lovely features. Her dress was matt white, with a plain gold kid belt. It made every other woman look bunchy.

“Who is that girl in white?” There was no need to say
which
girl in white.

“Diana Lovell. Her father is an industrialist, steel or something. She drives his cars in rallies.”

“She’s quite beautiful.”

Her partner’s fair skin flushed under his gold freckles. “If you can afford it. She is enormously rich.”

The music stopped. Everybody clapped wildly. Jacqueline asked inquiringly, “The sort of money that buys big houses—and long cars?”

He nodded. “That sort. May I bring you an ice?”

Ices, too. Matron had pushed the boat out to-night! “That would be delicious.”

She ate her ice and surreptitiously watched Alan and Miss Lovell. It did not matter at all to her what kind of woman Alan married, so it was silly to feel so strongly that Diana Lovell wasn’t right for him. She had a self-centred look, which would deceive all of the men most of the time and all of the women none of the time. Miss Lovell was interested in Miss Lovell and the effect she had upon other people. She did not even give the impression most women try to create, of being passionately interested in her, partner’s conversation.

“H-Harley Street, here I come,” said the little doctor. “He’ll be an authority on Duchesses’ Slipped Disc in no time.”

Jacqueline tried to picture Diana up to her ankles in bog water and sopping moss, not even moving when a fly tramped across her nose because Alan wanted to take a photograph. The picture wouldn’t focus. In scrupulous fairness, she admitted that a motor-rally driver had to be tough and maybe Diana wasn’t as brittle as she looked.