The Hive (21 page)

He reddened. ‘Damn you, Elizabeth. Can’t you cover anything in decent reticence?’

She smiled. ‘No, I can’t. It makes me—an exciting partner, I’ve been told.’ She dropped her eyes with the first hint of provocation she had shown all evening.

‘When can we meet?’ he said abruptly, after a moment.

‘It’s agreed, then?’

‘Yes. It’s agreed. When? Tomorrow?’

She leaned back in her chair and laughed softly. ‘Your eagerness is flattering. No, not tomorrow. There’s the sisters’ discussion meeting, and I find those evenings—debilitating. The following evening. Come to the flat.’

He looked alarmed. ‘The flat? Is that wise?’

‘Much wiser, and a great deal more comfortable than using an hotel. We want no possible witnesses or bills, or anything of that sort to complicate matters, do we? My maid is off duty at eight thirty, and I’m never disturbed after that, unless in emergency—and then I am telephoned. The flat. About nine?’

He took her back to the hospital, and left her a hundred yards away from the main gates, in a deserted side street.

‘Some curious porter may hear the car,’ he said. ‘And if we’re seen together returning from outside, there’ll be gossip. Goodnight, Elizabeth. I’ll see you at nine, the day after tomorrow——’

He had got out of the car, and was standing close to her in its shadow, and suddenly, he held her very closely and kissed her with an urgency that made her breathless. When he raised his head, he looked down on her face in the darkness and said, a little thickly, ‘And I didn’t do that for any ulterior reason. I
wanted to——’

‘I know,’ she said, and let her hands run down over his body, feeling him tighten under her touch, and she smiled with an almost feline satisfaction. ‘I know. You will have no regrets, on any score, James. Goodnight.’

And she walked calmly away, down the silent, badly lit and shabby street, leaving him standing leaning against his car, watching her, his senses aroused as Jennifer had never aroused them, filled with an animal desire that surprised him in its intensity.

‘My subject,’ Dolly said in rather pontifical tones, ‘is loyalty.’

‘Loyalty? What’s that got to do with nursing as such?’ Daphne said.

‘Oh, a great deal. Nurses have many loyalties—to their patients, to the doctors, the hospital they belong to and to their friends and families. I have my own ideas about which comes first, and I’d like to hear yours.’

Despite her attempts to keep her mind on the activities of the moment, Elizabeth all day had been finding it difficult to keep her thoughts away from the following evening, and her undoubted success with James. She almost despised herself for the way her body responded to thoughts of what was to be, the way her awareness of success made her want to laugh aloud, made everything else she did seem unimportant. But she tried to bring her full attention to the evening’s discussion, and nodded at East cheerfully. She had temporarily forgotten her own suspicions of East, and Swinton’s half spoken warning, and looked now at the big woman with approval. ‘An excellent subject. Who would be a good person to begin, do you think?’

‘I thought I would change the scheme rather—I thought I would tell you of a case that came to Casualty once, and what happened, and let you discuss the implications of it, as regards ourselves.’

‘Going to show us how efficient you are, eh, Dolly?’ Ruth said. She was sitting sprawled over an armchair, wearing tight black trousers and a red sweater, looking almost glowing in her self-satisfaction.

‘Christ, if they only knew,’ she thought, looking at them all with enjoyable scorn. ‘If they only
knew
—poor bitches,’ and she hugged the new Ruth to herself, and watched the others with a triumphant pity in her eyes. Not that any of them, apart from Swinton sitting quietly in her usual window seat, noticed the change in Ruth of which she herself was so aware.

‘We all know how inefficient
you
are, Arthur, so there is no
need to talk like that. And the subject is loyalty, and I don’t suppose even you will be able to produce any of your usual unpleasant talk on
that.
Now, shall I tell you about this case?’

‘Try and stop her,’ Daphne muttered into Susan’s ear, and Susan grinned, and drew up her knees to sit in her favourite little girl pose on the fireside rug at her feet.

‘Yes do, Dolly,’ Mary said comfortably, looking up from her knitting, and Dolly folded her hands on her lap and began.

‘A young man—a weedy creature, fair haired, thin sort of man—was brought into Casualty unconscious. He’d been found in his room with a pill bottle next to him. Well, we washed out his stomach, and got back a good many Nembutal capsules. Not enough to have killed him, but enough to make him unconscious, and a bit of a problem. Right. When he was waking up, I decided to see if I could find out why he’d attempted suicide—we don’t like to make a police thing of these cases, unless we must, and I wanted to get the truth.’

She looked round with a look of distaste on her face. ‘It was all most unpleasant. This grown man—he was about thirty, I suppose, crying like a baby, shouting and throwing himself about—disgusting. Anyway, I got the story from him. He was a school teacher—never mind where, but at a well-known school not too far from here—a boys’ public school. And he had a “friend” as he called him. Well, it didn’t take much to see what sort of “friend” he was. And this friend of his had found another person at the school he preferred to the patient, and this sloppy young man had taken the Nembutal because he was so heartbroken, as he put it. It was absolutely sickening, the whole thing.’

Mary looked across at Dolly, her knitting on her lap, and frowned, puzzled.

‘What has this got to do with loyalty, dear? I don’t understand, I’m afraid.’

‘Ah!’ said Dolly triumphantly. ‘That’s the point. Because I believe that loyalty to the place where you work matters, I used my own discretion. I kept this story to myself. But suppose I hadn’t? What would have happened? It would have got out—even got into the papers—that this young man was a
homosexual, and had attempted suicide because of another homosexual teacher at the school where they both worked. What would that have done to that school? Can you imagine? The scandal could have done enormous harm—enormous. This dreadful young man didn’t care about the school—all he cared about was himself, and his friend. And he hadn’t much loyalty to the friend he was supposed to care for so much, either, had he? Suppose he had died? What would that have done to the friend? As I see it, there is a danger in such close—
friendships
—in any institution. I’d like your opinions.’

She looked round the room, letting her eyes stop for a moment on Daphne, before looking down at her hands, a small smile on her lips. Daphne sat very still, staring back at her, and for a moment, she felt cold.

At her feet, Susan stirred and said, ‘Well, I don’t really see what you’re getting at, East, I must say. This man had a mental illness, didn’t he? He couldn’t help being the way he was, I suppose. What’s it got to do with nursing? Except that perhaps he should be in a mental hospital——’

Mary was looking rather pink. ‘I don’t think this is a really suitable sort of story for us to talk about, Dolly, if I may say so. I mean, this sort of thing—not very nice——’

‘You think he was mentally ill, Phillips?’ Dolly ignored Mary, and looked at Susan with her chin held rather high.

‘Well, yes, I suppose so. I mean, there was an article, wasn’t there, in the
Nursing Times
not long ago about treating these people with apomorphine to make them sick while they look at pictures of men——’ she shuddered a little. ‘Really, I think Mary’s right, you know. It’s not a very pleasant subject, is it? And riot much to do with us.’

‘Don’t you know that this isn’t just something that is a mental illness, though?’ Dolly persisted. ‘Why, Phillips, you are a simple creature, aren’t you? The world’s full of people like that young man, and they aren’t all in mental hospitals, believe me. And it’s not only men who are like that. Haven’t you ever come across close friends among nurses who——’

‘I think Cotton and Phillips are right,’ Swinton said sharply from her corner. ‘And I think Matron will agree with me?’

Elizabeth had to make a conscious effort to answer Swinton intelligently. She had allowed her attention to wander during Dolly’s recital of her story, thinking of James and the following evening. (I need not have put him off until tomorrow—it was silly of me. He could have come tonight, really. Hell, I’m like some eager virgin—this is stupid——)

She pulled from the back of her mind the words that had been said, for she had heard them, even if they had not really registered when they were spoken. Dolly had turned the talk to homosexuality, and she remembered this, she caught sight of Josephine across the room, Josephine with a suddenly red face and a look of appeal in her eyes as she stared at Elizabeth.

It’s happened again, she thought irritably. Cramm thinks this applies to her; she’s developed a crush for me, and now she thinks these bloody women can see it, and thinks she’s queer.

She smiled briefly at Josephine, and said carefully, ‘You don’t think this subject applies to nurses? Why not?’

Swinton looked at Elizabeth with an odd mixture of amusement and warning in her eyes, but Elizabeth was not looking at her.

‘It’s a difficult subject.’

‘Difficult perhaps, but we should be able to talk about it all the same. Anyway, why is it difficult? Because you think there is something bad about close relationships between people of the same sex?’

‘Don’t you think so?’ Dolly said quickly. ‘Or do
you
put it down to mental illness as well? I think these people are degenerates—just plain degenerate. I’m not one of those who go around saying Poor Things, they can’t help it—of course they can. They’re just evil people——’

‘Oh, come Sister East, that’s hardly a reasonable attitude towards a well recognised psychological entity,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I can’t agree with you that people who experience—emotional attachments to people of their own sex are bad. Unfortunate, if the condition persists into adult life, but bad? Surely not.’

‘How do you mean—persists into adult life?’ Dolly said. ‘Do you mean that these people are like children—again?’

‘In a way,’ Elizabeth said carefully, aware of Josephine’s gaze fixed anxiously on her. ‘Most of us go through a phase of feeling affections of this kind—didn’t any of you get crushes on girls older than you, or teachers, when you were at school?’

‘Certainly not,’ Dolly said stiffly.

‘Didn’t you, Dolly? I did—remember it very well,’ Swinton said.

Dolly sniffed. ‘Perhaps you did—and I’m surprised you’re willing to talk about it if you did. It’s not a very good reflection on your character.’

‘Not at all, Sister East,’ Elizabeth said. ‘It is a perfectly normal stage of development. And as I said, some unfortunate people never go beyond it. I’m not absolutely sure that unfortunate is the right word, come to that. They may be unfortunate in the social sense—the community frowns on homosexual relationships, just as you do—but they are often very successful people, able to enjoy a happy human relationship without hurting anyone else. Human affection is a wonderful thing. I see no reason to disapprove of the form it may take in individual cases.’

Dolly lifted her head and looked at Elizabeth with her eyes a little narrowed. ‘Then if you discovered that someone at the Royal—a couple of student nurses, say—had one of these relationships, you would do nothing about it?’

‘What could I do? What should I do, in your opinion?’

‘I think you should get rid of them,’ Dolly said softly.

‘If you were a Matron, would you get rid of them?’ Elizabeth’s voice was equally soft, and she stared back at the challenge in the other’s face with a direct gaze.

‘Indeed I would. I would think them dangerous. I would be afraid they would—infect other nurses.’

‘I think you would be wrong, Sister East,’ and the slight emphasis Elizabeth put on the word Sister was not lost on Dolly.

‘Such interference in an essentially private relationship would be a mistake, you know. The presence of two such close friends in a community is very unlikely, in my view, to be a source of danger, as you see it. Unless there were others who shared the same stage of arrested emotional development,
there would be no—infection. Certainly not in a feminine community, anyway. It may be true in a place like a school for boys, where there are many young people who are going through the stage anyway—but in the case of women, this is rare, in my opinion.’

‘And you would do nothing about it.’ Dolly made it a statement, not a question.

‘I would see no reason to do so. If the nurses were young, then the chances are they would come through the stage normally, and go on to make perfectly acceptable heterosexual relationships in due course. If they were older, there would be no point in dismissing them. The community is cruel enough to those who are different in any way; it would be the very antithesis of good nursing—and therefore good Matronship—to add to their problems by removing them from their jobs.’ She leaned forward, and said very clearly. ‘And frankly, I would feel that a woman who was capable of any form of human love was infinitely more likely to make a good and kind nurse than one who was unable to make any sort of successful human relationship. I think such a woman—the friendless kind—is far more—unfortunate—than the homosexual one.’

She had expected anger from Dolly, some indication that she had understood that Elizabeth was speaking of Dolly herself, but there was no such response. Dolly merely nodded, apparently in satisfaction, and leaned back in her chair.

‘It’s as well,’ Elizabeth thought. ‘She’s an unpleasant woman, but it’s stupid of me to try deliberately to antagonise her just to satisfy my own dislike for her. I’m glad she didn’t understand.’

But Josephine had understood, and that was something. She had relaxed, and was looking at Elizabeth with a pathetic gratitude. Elizabeth was pleased with her efforts. She had made a point that helped Cramm, and had avoided another explosion, she told herself in relief.