The Stars Look Down (54 page)

Mastering her sobbing as best she could Aunt Carrie wiped her blind and swollen eyes and went fumbling along the corridor to Harriet’s room. It was dark in the corridor for it was a dark night and Aunt Carrie in her agitation had not switched on the electric light at the head of the stairs. Harriet’s room was dark too, a dim darkness which the green glow of the bedside lamp did little to dispel. Because of her headaches Harriet was averse to a glare and now Aunt Carrie was tremblingly glad of that fact because the dim darkness hid her tear-stained face. She did not offer to switch on the light.

Upon Aunt Carrie’s entry Harriet quivered upon the bed where her pale, cow-like outlines were obscurely visible. She was trembling with temper and she bared her false teeth at Aunt Carrie with a click.

“Why didn’t you come, Caroline?” she cried. “I’ve been knocking for a good half-hour.”

Aunt Carrie stifled a big sob. Controlling her voice the best way she could she said:

“I’m sorry, Harriet dear, I can’t think what came over me. Shall I—shall I give you your medicine now?”

But Harriet was not going to let it go so easily as that. She lay there on her back in the bed in the dim darkness of the room surrounded by her bottles and her flat moon face was pale with passion and self-pity.

“It’s becoming a disgrace,” she said, “the way I’m neglected. I’m lying here with a splitting headache. I’m dying for my medicine and not a soul looks near me!”

Sad and shamefaced, her head bent, blinking her timid swollen eyes, Aunt Carrie gulped:

“I’m sure I beg your pardon, Harriet. Shall I give you your medicine now?”

“I should think so.”

“Yes, Harriet.” And hiding her face Aunt Carrie moved blindly to the little table, thinking, oh, dear goodness, let me give Harriet her medicine and get out of this room quickly before I break down completely.

“Your valerian, Harriet?” she asked.

“No,” Harriet said peevishly. “I want my old bromide tonight, the old aromatic bromide that Dr. Lewis gave me. I think that does best with me after all. On the shelf there at the corner.”

“Yes, Harriet.” Aunt Carrie turned obediently to the shelf and began to grope and fumble amongst the bottles. There were so many bottles too. “Where did you say, Harriet?”

“There,” Harriet snapped. “You’re a perfect fool to-night. There under your hand. I put it there myself the last time I was up. I remember perfectly.”

“This one?” Aunt Carrie knew she would break down again. Oh, dear goodness, she thought again, let me get out of here before I give way completely. “This one, Harriet?”

“No! The one next to it, that green bottle there. What on earth is the matter with you? Yes, that one, that’s right.”

Aunt Carrie lifted the bottle dazedly and went to the little table. Her hand shook so much she could hardly pick up the measuring glass.

“How much do you take, Harriet?”

“Two tablespoonfuls! Don’t you know that much? Can’t you even read?”

But Aunt Carrie could not read, Aunt Carrie was blind and dumb and desolate. Her movements were automatic, her mind far away in a grotesque and horrible land where Richard held Hetty Todd upon his knee. She could only do as she was told and then all that she wanted was to get back into her own room and give way to the floods of tears which welled within her. She fumbled out two tablespoonfuls of the medicine she thought Harriet had indicated. Dimly, through the dim darkness of the room, and the confusion of Harriet’s nagging, and the terrible desolation of her own heart, she thought the medicine had a queer smell. But it must be the saltness of her shed and unshed tears which made her think the medicine smelled queer, and Harriet was asking for the medicine and for her to hurry and not be a fool.

She advanced to the bed, drooping, her head averted, her
hand outstretched. Harriet sat up and snatched the medicine glass crossly.

“You’ve been very stupid and slow to-night, Caroline,” she said sharply. “Just when you saw I was dying for my medicine.”

Closing her eyes tight in the way she had, Harriet swallowed the medicine at one ill-tempered gulp and for one second remained sitting upright with her eyes tight closed and the medicine glass in her hand. Then she opened her eyes and screamed.

“It’s not the medicine.” She screamed and the glass fell out of her hand.

Aunt Carrie’s tears were frozen with horror. For half a second she stood petrified, then she rushed to the switch and turned on the full illumination of the room. She dived for the bottle. A shrill cry came from her like a frightened rabbit. The bottle said liniment. She had given Harriet a poisonous liniment. She screamed, louder than Harriet.

Harriet was clutching her stomach and writhing on the bed. For the first time since she took to her bed Harriet knew real pain. She was in agony. Her face was a greenish white and her lips all puffed and burned by the liniment.

“Water,” she gasped feebly, clutching with both hands now, clutching at her fat white stomach. “It’s burning on fire.”

Swooning with horror Aunt Carrie fled to the water bottle on the wash-basin and tore back with a tumbler of water. But the water would not go down. Harriet could not drink the water; it ran out of her puffed useless mouth all over the nice clean bed-clothes.

Harriet did not seem to realise that the water was wetting her in all the wrong places.

“Water,” she still gasped feebly. “It’s burning on fire.” But however much she tried, she could not drink the water to put out the fire.

A glimmer of reason now pierced Aunt Carrie’s panic and, clattering the tumbler upon the commode, she bolted out of the room to fetch a doctor. Along the corridor she raced and down the stairs, her long bunioned feet performing a miracle of speed, and in the back vestibule she brushed into Ann who was on her way upstairs to bed.

Aunt Carrie clutched at Ann.

“The doctor,” she moaned. “Telephone for the doctor, any of them, to come at once, quick, quick, the doctor.”

Ann took one look at Aunt Carrie. She was a sensible woman, habitually taciturn, and realising that something dreadful and serious had occurred she did not stop to ask any questions. She went instantly to the telephone and very capably rang up Dr. Lewis who promised to come immediately. Ann thought for a moment, then, in case there should be some unavoidable delay, she rang up Dr. Proctor, her own doctor, and asked him to come as well.

Meanwhile Aunt Carrie had darted to the pantry in search of whiting. She had the belief that whiting was an antidote of value. And, returning with the packet of whiting in her hand, she suddenly observed Richard emerge from the drawing-room. He came slowly, disturbed from his own meditation by the unusual flurry, and supporting himself against the lintel of the door he said heavily:

“What is the matter?”

“It’s Harriet,” she gasped, holding the whiting so tightly In her agitation that a thin white stream poured out of the corner of the packet.

“Harriet?” he repeated dully.

She could not wait, she could not endure it; she turned with another cry, and fled upstairs. He followed slowly.

Harriet was still stretched upon her bed under the bright glare, lying amongst her rows and rows of bottles. She had stopped moaning now. She lay sideways and twisted up and her puffed-up mouth was fallen open. A gummy mucus had formed on her blackened lips.

Occasionally Harriet’s legs gave a little twitch and with that twitch Harriet’s breath came back to her in one quick snore. Sick with terror at that quick infrequent snore, Aunt Carrie mixed the whiting in a frenzy of haste and endeavoured to get some of it past Harriet’s swollen lips. She was still trying to do this when Richard entered the room. He stood staring at Harriet, quite stunned.

“Why, Harriet,” he said in a thickened voice.

Harriet answered by puking back some of Aunt Carrie’s whiting.

Richard came forward in a kind of stupor.

“Harriet,” he mumbled again in a besotted sort of way.

He was interrupted by the abrupt entry of Dr. Lewis who walked in cheerfully with his black gladstone bag. But when Dr. Lewis saw Harriet his cheerfulness dropped from him. His manner altered completely and in a subdued tone he asked Aunt Carrie to ’phone for Dr. Scott to come immediately.
Aunt Carrie ran to do this at once. Richard retreated to the alcove by the window where, like some strange figure of destiny, he stood silent, watching.

Dr. Scott came with great dispatch and Dr. Proctor, who had walked up from Sleescale, arrived at exactly the same time. The three doctors put their heads together over Harriet. They did a great many things to Harriet. They injected Harriet with little syringes and lifted Harriet’s unresistant eyelids and pumped at Harriet’s stomach. They pumped and pumped at Harriet’s stomach and got the most extraordinary amount out of Harriet’s stomach. They all saw what a good dinner Harriet had eaten—it was incredible the quantity of asparagus she had put away. But Harriet did not see. Harriet, being dead, would not see any more.

At last, after a final attempt at resuscitation, the doctors were obliged to give it up and, wiping his forehead, Dr. Lewis advanced towards Richard who still stood rigidly in the window alcove.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Barras, sir.” He looked genuinely distressed. “I am afraid we can do no more.”

Barras did not speak. Dr. Lewis, looking at him, saw the hard pounding of his temporal arteries, the dusky suffusion of his brow, and mingling with his sympathy came the instinctive thought that Barras’s blood pressure must be high. “We have done everything possible,” he added.

“Yes,” Richard said in a strange voice.

Another wave of sympathy rushed over Dr. Lewis. He gazed at Barras with sorrow in his eyes. He did not know of course that he was, to all intents, looking at Harriet’s murderer.

Even Hilda was distressed. For weeks after Grace and she had returned to hospital from attending their mother’s funeral at Sleescale she remained taciturn and brooding. Now she admitted the abnormal atmosphere at the Law. Because she was worried she snapped at the patients, was rude to Ness, went through her work with a tireless efficiency.
And towards Grace she was again possessive, jealously affectionate.

It was the end of their half-day off and they were walking slowly along Regent Street, making for Oxford Circus to take a bus from Knightsbridge. Hilda, concluding a bitter diatribe on the humiliating complications of family life, glanced towards Grace sarcastically:

“You’re always on about wanting to straighten things out. Now’s your chance to go back home and try it.”

“Well,” Grace said quietly, “I wouldn’t be much use now.”

“How do you mean?”

Here their bus swung into the kerb.

Grace waited until they had taken their seats. Then, the minute they sat down she broke the news that she was going to have a baby.

Hilda flushed horribly. She looked as if she were going to be ill. She remained absolutely still while the woman conductor came and took their fares; then in a low, wounded voice she said:

“As if it wasn’t bad enough getting married. As if we hadn’t had enough trouble lately. You’re a fool, Grace, a ghastly little fool.”

“I don’t think I’m a fool,” Grace answered.

“Well, I do,” Hilda jerked out, very pale now and bitter. “War babies aren’t amusing.”

“I never said they were, Hilda, only mine might be.”

“Just a silly little fool,” Hilda hissed, staring hard in front of her. “Losing your head with that Teasdale and now this. You’ll have to leave the hospital. It’s sickening. I’ll have nothing to do with it. I’ve kept out of the family complications up till now and I’ll keep out of this. Oh, it’s so silly, it’s so beastly ordinary, it’s what silly ordinary beastly little nurses are doing all over the country. Having war babies to war heroes! O God, it’s… it’s disgusting. I’ll have nothing to do with it, nothing; you can go away and have your beastly infant by yourself.”

Grace said nothing. Grace had a simple way of saying nothing when to say nothing was the best answer in the world. She and Hilda had never really come together again since her marriage with Dan. And now this! That Grace, whom she had petted and protected, dear little Grace, who had slept in her arms, should be having a baby, a war baby, shocked and nauseated Hilda and made her swear that she
would keep herself clear of the whole disgusting affair. Tears stood in Hilda’s eyes as she rose stiffly at Harrod’s and marched out of the bus.

So Grace had to make her own arrangements. Next morning she went to see Miss Gibbs. Traditionally, Miss Gibbs should have been kind, but, like Hilda, Miss Gibbs was not kind. Miss Gibbs said, with a glint of teeth and temper:

“I’m sick and tired of this sort of thing, Nurse Barras. What do you think we have you here for—to nurse the wounded or propagate the race? We’ve taken the trouble to train you and educate you to a certain usefulness. This is how you repay us! I’m afraid I’m not very satisfied with you, Nurse Barras. You are not the success your sister has been.
She
doesn’t turn round and say she’ll have a baby. She stops in the theatre doing her job. This last month you’ve been three times reprimanded for carelessness and talking in the corridors. And now you come with this story. Things are very difficult. I am not pleased. That will do.”

Grace felt almost as if she were not married at all, Hilda and Miss Gibbs had made it sound so indecent. But Grace was not easily cast down. Grace was simple and artless and careless, the most unassertive person in the world, but she had a quiet way of keeping up her heart even although, as Miss Gibbs said, things were difficult.

In her individual way Grace went ahead with her plans. Since her mother’s funeral her dread of returning to the Law had increased. She wrote to Aunt Carrie and Aunt Carrie’s reply, full of suppressed fears and pious premonitions, and ending with a fluttering postscript, twice underlined, made Grace feel that she could not go home.

She thought a little over Aunt Carrie’s letter, then she decided what she would do. Somehow it was easy for Grace to make a decision; matters which would have worried Hilda for a fortnight never worried Grace at all, she hardly seemed to consider them but just made up her mind. Grace had the capacity of making molehills out of mountains. It was because she never thought about herself.