Читать книгу Winter Wedding - Бетти Нилс - Страница 6

IT WAS DARK, cold and wet when Emily left the house at half past five the next morning. The twins and Louisa were still sleeping and she hadn’t bothered with breakfast, only a quick, strong cup of tea. She tied her overnight bag on to her bike and pedalled briskly through the almost deserted streets. Bar the odd milkman and a police car idling along, giving her a nice sense of security, there were few people about. The rather ugly modern town looked bleak and unfriendly and before many minutes the rain was dripping steadily down the back of her neck. She hadn’t had time to do much to her face and her hair was going to be sopping by the time she arrived. She changed in the cold little room, scraped her fine brown hair back into some sort of a bun, pinned her cap on top of it and went through to the hospital. The early morning rush was on; almost no noise, only the steady hurried tread of the nurses trying to get done before the day staff arrived. Emily gained ENT without seeing anyone at all, checked with the night staff nurse, telephoned Night Super that she was on duty and went along to Mr Wright’s room.

He’d had a bad night, that was obvious, but his cheerfulness was unabated, so Emily was cheerful too, telling him silly little tales of her training at Paul’s and not mentioning the day’s dire work while she readied him.

She was relieved for breakfast after an hour, a meal she swallowed in no time at all, and when she got back she found Mrs Wright had just arrived.

‘I’m not supposed to be here,’ the little lady hadn’t slept either—’ and I’m going again at once, dear.’ She smiled at Emily. ‘I know you’ll do your very best.’

‘I will, Mrs Wright, and don’t worry, Mr Wright is going to be all right. Professor Jurres-Romeijn is tops, you know, he’s done this op before a good many times and he’s successful…’

‘A generous statement, Nurse Seymour.’ The Professor’s voice held mockery and she swung round to see him standing in the doorway, immaculate as usual even at that early hour and the only one of them who looked as though he had had a good sleep. She didn’t speak; she couldn’t think of anything to say and there was no point in it. She stared at his faintly sneering mouth, and disliked him very much.

He didn’t speak to her again but addressed himself to his patient and Mrs Wright, only as he went away he reminded her that Mr Wright would be going to theatre in exactly half an hour and as from now was to receive no more visitors, nor talk, or rather, try to talk. He paused at the door to allow Mrs Wright to say goodbye to her husband, then swept her away with him, not looking at Emily at all.

Mr Wright broke the Professor’s rules the moment the door was closed. He said in his strained voice: ‘I wonder if Renier knows what a treasure he’s got working for him? I must remember to point it out to him—in writing, of course.’ He grinned at her and closed his eyes.

‘Now you be a good boy,’ begged Emily in a motherly voice, ‘or I’ll turn into an old battleaxe!’

The operation lasted a very long time. The Professor worked quickly but meticulously too, muttering to himself from time to time, requesting some instrument or other in an almost placid voice, asking details from the anaesthetist from time to time regarding his patient’s blood pressure and condition. Emily, standing at the anaesthetist’s elbow, had to admire his skill, and he must be getting a frightful backache, she thought inconsequently, bending like that. They were all three very close together with Mr Spencer on the other side of the Professor and an assistant across the table ready to hold things and tie off and cut gut when required. Theatre Sister was scrubbed, of course, and so was the senior staff nurse, and there were other nurses there too. A splendid turn-out, thought Emily, counting heads without taking her mind off her work.

The atmosphere was nicely relaxed; she had worked for surgeons who had everyone biting their nails with nerves because they were so ill-tempered. She could remember one occasion when a surgeon had flung an instrument on to the ground and then had to wait while it was picked up, scrubbed, sterilised and handed back to him; a bad-tempered man he had been, and give the Professor his due, with the exception of herself, he appeared to have everyone there eating out of his hand.

The morning wore on until finally the Professor straightened his great back and stood back from the table. His thanks were pleasantly uttered before he turned on his heel and went along to the changing room. Not that he’d be there long, Emily decided, he’d be in and out of ITU for the next hour or so, getting in her way…

She knew her job well and set about connecting tubes to sealed bottles, setting up a drip again, checking the cardiac arrest trolley, the tracheotomy trolley, the oxygen, the ventilator… She had a student nurse to help her, to fetch and carry, but she was responsible for her patient to the Professor and any mistakes, whether she made them or not, would be her fault.

Just as she had thought, the Professor was in and out of the room for the rest of the day and a good deal of the night as well, and when he had come to examine his patient in the early evening he had requested her politely to remain on duty for a few more hours. Doctor Wright was conscious but fretful and worried because he couldn’t speak. Emily, reassuring him gently, found it pathetic that he had assured so many of his own patients in like case and still needed that reassurance himself, and her opinion of the Professor was considerably heightened by the kindly understanding he showed towards his patient. ‘We’ll keep him doped,’ he told her. ‘I’ve written him up again for another jab at ten o’clock and I’ll be in just after to see how he is. He’ll need more blood—is there plenty available?’

Emily said, ‘Yes, sir.’

‘And I’ll take a blood gas estimation.’

She produced the tray without a word, waited while he withdrew the blood, signed to her assistant to take it to the Path. Lab. at once, and applied a swab to the puncture, standing patiently for five minutes while the Professor leaned over the foot of the bed, watching the patient and, from time to time, her.

‘I should be obliged if you could be on duty as early as possible in the morning,’ he observed quietly.

Emily had her eyes on her watch. ‘Would half past seven suit, sir?’

‘Very well. I’m afraid you’re in for a rough time for the next few days.’

‘Not half as rough as Mr Wright,’ she told him matter-of-factly.

But the next few days were rough. Mr Wright was a good patient but naturally enough irritable, for Emily was constantly busy with something or other, turning him, with the other nurse, from side to side, sucking him out, charting her observations, feeding him through his intranasal naso-gastric tube, tending his tracheotomy. He vented his spleen on to his writing pad, scrawling the invective he would have liked to utter so that on occasion she was forced to admit that she had no idea of what he meant. ‘You see,’ she told him apologetically, ‘there’s no man about the house to swear, so I’m a bit out of touch.’

‘Then it’s high time there was,’ Doctor Wright scribbled furiously. ‘Does Professor Jurres-Romeijn know? about the twins—and your sister?’

Her ‘No!’ was so fierce that he had added hastily: ‘All right, keep your brown hair on; I shan’t tell.’ He put his pencil down and then picked it up again. ‘You don’t like him.’

Emily’s hazel eyes flashed. ‘Never mind that, Doctor Wright. He’s a splendid surgeon.’

‘He’s a man as well,’ wrote her patient slowly, ‘a bit crusty sometimes, but I’d like him on my side in a fight. Nice with children too.’

‘I have no doubt of it,’ said Emily tartly, ‘and now lie still while I see to your feed…’

She was a first class nurse—besides, she had made up her mind that Doctor Wright was going to recover. True, life wouldn’t be quite the same for him ever again, but he had a loving wife and children and in time he might do a little consulting work; there was nothing wrong with his needle-sharp brain and he had been a top man at his job. Emily told him this, over and over again; each time she saw the worried lines deepen on his face, she trotted out her arguments with such sincerity that after a time he began to believe her, and when his wife, primed by Emily, joined in on Emily’s side it was obvious that he had made up his mind to have a future after all. Perhaps not such a lengthy one as most people, but still a future. When the Professor called that evening, he stayed twice as long as usual, listening to Mrs Wright, and reading his friend’s scribbled conversation. And he added his certainty as to the patient’s ability to work again in a calm unhurried manner which carried conviction.

Emily was tired by the end of a week. She had been sleeping at the hospital, working long hours—busy ones too, and over and above that she wasn’t happy about leaving Louisa alone for so long a time. She had managed to get home on several afternoons, just for an hour, but Louisa had sulked and the babies didn’t seem happy. If only the longed-for letter from Mary would come! thought Emily, racing back to duty again. She would miss the twins, but the life they were leading now wasn’t good enough. They should have someone’s undivided attention. Luckily she would have a good deal of off duty and days off to come to her by the time Doctor Wright left, she would make it up to them then, and Louisa too. No wonder she had sulked, tied to the house and the shopping and washing and only the twins for company. Emily, carefully schooling her pleasant features into a look of relaxed ease, presented herself at her patient’s door, declaring cheerfully that in such weather it was better to be in than out.

She had just completed all the many chores attached to her care of Doctor Wright, ensconced his wife beside him and declared her intention of going to supper herself when the Professor joined them. His ‘Don’t go, Nurse Seymour’ left her standing, rather crossly, by the door while he sat himself down on the end of the bed for what she could see was to be a leisurely chat. If he wasn’t quick about it, her supper time would be over and done with and she without her meal—and she had agreed to stay on duty until ten o’clock that evening so that Mrs Crewe, the night nurse, could go to the cinema. The canteen would be closed by then; if she wanted to of course she could wait until the night nurses’ evening meal at midnight, but she knew she’d never stay awake.

The Professor rose presently and turned round and looked at her. ‘Ah, yes, Staff Nurse—I should like a word with you.’

She followed him out of the room and stood in the middle of the landing. It was quiet there. Sister, back from her own supper, was writing the report in her office and the two nurses left on duty were in the ward. She was totally surprised when the Professor said: ‘I have to thank you for your part in Doctor Wright’s recovery. You have worked very well, I am grateful to you as I am sure he and his wife are.’ He smiled and she thought suddenly that in other circumstances she might have liked him.

‘I must admit,’ he went on smoothly, ‘that when you were suggested to me I wasn’t quite sure…’

Emily broke in: ‘No, I know—I heard you; you didn’t like to be fobbed off with a prim miss.’ She paused and quoted: ‘A small plump creature who merges into the background from whatever angle one looks at her.’

The Professor was looking at her in astonishment. ‘Good God—yes, I said that; I’d forgotten. Do you want me to apologise?’ He neither looked nor sounded in the least put out.

Emily eyed him thoughtfully. ‘No,’ she said at length. ‘Words don’t mean a thing—you could say you were sorry and not mean it.’

He shrugged. ‘Just as you like, although I might point out that I’m not in the habit of apologising unless I mean it.’ He added outrageously: ‘You are small, you know, and a bit plump, too.’

Emily made a cross sound, but before she could say anything he went on in a quite different voice: ‘I shall change the drugs this evening—you are on duty until ten o’clock, I understand? Observe Doctor Wright carefully, will you, and ask the night nurse to do the same. We must start talking about speech therapy, too.’ He nodded his head carelessly. ‘I’ll see you later.’

He left her standing there. There were just five minutes left of her supper break; she’d barely reach the canteen in that time, let alone get a chance to eat anything. In a bad humour, she went back to her patient.

‘You were quick over your supper,’ remarked Mrs Wright. ‘Wasn’t it nice?’

‘Professor Jurres-Romeijn was talking to me—I didn’t get down to the canteen.’ And when Mrs Wright protested: ‘I’ll go later.’

It was a little after ten o’clock when the Professor came again. He didn’t speak to her although he gave her a close look as he came into the room. He altered the drugs, checked that his patient was in good shape for the night, said something quietly to him and went away, leaving Emily to give the report to Mrs Crewe, wish her patient goodnight and gather up her cloak and bag. She was very hungry, but it was really too late to go out to one of the small cafés which ringed the hospital. Besides, it was dark and cold and the streets weren’t quiet; the pubs would be shutting. She would have to go to bed hungry…

The Professor was standing on the landing, staring in front of him, doing nothing, but at her quiet step he turned round. ‘I had no idea that I made you miss your supper,’ he observed without preamble. ‘You should have told me.’

‘Why?’ asked Emily baldly.

He ignored that. ‘Allow me to take you out for a meal.’

‘No, thank you.’ It was annoying that as she spoke her insides gave a terrific rumble.

The Professor’s mouth twitched. ‘You’re hungry.’

Emily’s mouth watered at the thought of food—any food. ‘Not in the least,’ she told him haughtily. She wished him goodnight just as haughtily and left him standing there.

Half an hour later, coming from the bathroom on the top floor of the Nurses’ Home, where she had a temporary room on the night nurses’ corridor, she was met by the night cook. ‘There you are, Staff,’ said that lady comfortably. ‘I’ve put the tray in your room, Night Sister said you was ter ‘ave it pronto; special orders from Professor Jurres-Romeijn.’

Emily, her hair hanging damply down her back, her face red and shiny from too hot a bath, goggled at her. ‘Me? A tray?’ she asked.

‘That’s right, love. And be a dear and bring it down to the canteen at breakfast, will you?’

‘Yes—yes, of course—thanks a lot, Maggie.’ She sped down the passage and into her room where there indeed was a tray laden with a teapot, milk, sugar and a mug, soup in a covered bowl and a wedge of meat pie flanked by peas and chips. Emily put the tray on the bed and got in beside it and wolfed the lot. It was over her third cup of tea that she took time to think about the Professor. It had been generous of him to see that she had some supper, or perhaps it was gratitude because he hadn’t had to take her out? All her friends would think her out of her mind to have refused him anyway. But he must have taken the trouble to telephone Night Sister and speak to her about it, and considering he didn’t like her, that had been good-natured of him, to say the least. She would have to thank him in the morning.

But when she did just that after his visit to Doctor Wright, all he said was: ‘But my dear girl, you’re wasting your gratitude; I can’t afford to have you going off sick. I want you here for another four days.’

A remark which effectively nipped in the bud any warmer feelings she might have begun to cherish towards him.

The four days seemed unending. She went home every afternoon, just for an hour or so, and because it was obvious that Louisa was becoming more and more impatient and irritable, she spent the hours there catching up on the chores which her sister declared she had neither the time nor the inclination to do. And the twins looked peaky too. She suspected that Louisa wasn’t taking them out enough, but hesitated to say so, and she would be home for four days. Louisa could be free to do what she liked while she set her little house in order and took long walks with the babies. It would make a nice change too.

Doctor Wright was leaving the hospital the day before she herself was due for her days off; he was going home with Mrs Crewe in attendance and it wasn’t until he was writing his last note to Emily that she discovered that he had asked for her to go with him. When she had given him a questioning look he had taken the pad and scrawled: ‘Jurres-Romeijn wouldn’t allow it; said you were in need of a rest— made him promise that if anything went wrong you’d come and nurse me.’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Emily instantly, thrusting the question of what to do with the twins on one side. ‘I’ll come like a shot, but you’re going to be fine. Do press on with the oesophageal speech, won’t you?’

‘You’re as bad as Renier, badgering me back to living again.’ But he smiled at her as he wrote, and his goodbye had been warm with gratitude. So had Mrs Wright’s, accompanied by a large box wrapped in gay paper and tied with ribbon. Before Emily set about clearing the room of its complicated equipment and readying it for whoever was to occupy it next, she opened it. Elizabeth Arden, and lashings of it; lotions and powder and perfume, soap and several jars of face creams and a large bottle of bath essence. Emily drew in an excited breath; surely her mediocre looks would improve with such a galaxy of beauty aids? She wrapped everything up again and when she had finally finished her work bore it carefully home.

Louisa, looking it over that evening, agreed that it was a lovely present. ‘Though personally I don’t go for her,’ she observed. ‘I mean, everyone, just everyone, uses Fifth Avenue.’

But Emily refused to be put out. ‘I shall use the lot,’ she declared. ‘It’s bound to do something for me.’

Her young sister looked at her with affection tinged with irritation. Emily was a dear and she had always been able to twist her round her little finger, but she was a bit wet; it would take more than Elizabeth Arden to change her ordinary features into anything glamorous. ‘It’s worth a try,’ she agreed. ‘I say, now you’re back for a day or two, I can go up to London, can’t I? I simply must have some undies…’

There was really no need to go up to town. The shops were adequate enough for Louisa’s modest wants; Emily recognised it as an excuse and agreed without demur. Louisa had earned some fun. It didn’t occur to her that she had earned some fun too, but she was happy enough in the ugly little house, cleaning and washing and taking the twins out for the long walks she had promised. The weather had cheered up a little too, so she took them down the road and then pushed the pram along the bridle path, rutted and muddy, but the woods and fields on either side, although not quite country, were pleasant. She marched along briskly, thinking about Doctor Wright and the Professor. She had heard from various friends at the hospital that he wouldn’t be there much longer and she felt a strange regret, which considering she didn’t like him, seemed strange.

Louisa, happy now that she had no need to be tied to the house all day, was disposed to be generous on Emily’s last day. ‘I’ll take the twins,’ she offered, ‘so you can go to the shops if you want to.’

There were one or two things Emily wanted, she accepted at once and then at the last minute had to alter her plans because William, cutting a tooth, became fretful and feverish. ‘He’ll have to stay indoors,’ she said, hiding disappointment. ‘If you don’t mind staying with him, I’ll take Claire out this afternoon.’

‘What about your shopping?’

‘I’ll do that on the way home tomorrow.’

It was a cold day and grey as was to be expected in November, but there was no wind and Emily, pushing Claire briskly in her pram, was quickly glowing. She had taken the bridle path again, away from the streets of small prim houses because although she never said so, she hated them. One day if she was lucky, she would have a small cottage in the country with a garden. There was plenty of time, she was only twenty-three and if she got a Sister’s post soon she would start to save money. It didn’t need to be full of mod cons, she could improve it over the years, and sometimes one could buy up a small place fairly cheaply if it hadn’t been modernised.

There was no point in dwelling on the fact that she would probably not marry. She only met the young doctors she worked with in hospital and none of them had shown any interest in her to date. It would be nice if she did, of course…her mind wandered off into a vague dream so that she didn’t at first hear the horse’s hooves ahead of her, and when she did she merely turned the pram towards the hedge so that there was room for the beast to pass. She was leaning over the pram handle, encouraging Claire to take a look at the animal, when it trotted round the bend which had been hiding it. It was a very large horse, which was a good thing, for its rider was large too—the Professor, sitting at his ease and looking, as always, elegant. Emily, taken by surprise, gaped. The Professor’s handsome features, however, remained calm. He reined in his horse, got down and said civilly: ‘Good afternoon, Nurse Seymour.’

She muttered a greeting, rather red in the face, and bent to inspect Claire. ‘I didn’t know that you were married.’ He turned to smile at Emily, and the red deepened.

‘I’m not,’ said Emily.

His expression didn’t alter, only his heavy lids drooped over his eyes so that she had no idea what he was thinking. ‘She is very like you,’ he observed. ‘What is her name?’

‘Claire.’

‘Charming. You live close by?’

She jerked her head sideways. ‘Yes, in one of those houses over there—the last in a row, so it’s not too bad.’ She added earnestly: ‘I was lucky to get it.’ She went on, to make it clear: ‘It’s not so easy to get a house, you know—not if you’re not married.’

‘Er—probably not. I’m lost in admiration that you can work full time and run a house and a baby as well.’

‘Well, Louisa—she’s my sister, is staying with me until she can go to school for modelling—she’s waiting for a place.’

His eyes flickered over her sensible coat, wellingtons and woolly cap pulled well down. ‘She must be a pretty girl.’

‘Oh, she is,’ said Emily enthusiastically, ‘and she’s only just eighteen.’

He smiled faintly. ‘And you, Emily? how old are you?’

‘Twenty-three, almost twenty-four.’

‘And Claire?’

‘Eight months.’

‘You moved here because of her, of course,’ he suggested smoothly.

Emily had her mouth open to explain and then thought better of it. He couldn’t possibly be interested. She frowned a little and said ‘Yes’ and nothing more. And then, because he just stood there, saying nothing, she said: ‘I must be getting on; it’s cold for Claire if I stand still.’

‘Of course.’ He got on his horse, raised his crop in salute and rode on, leaving her to continue her walk while she discussed the meeting with Claire, who chuckled and crowed and didn’t answer back, which was nice. She was almost home again when the thought crossed her mind that the Professor might have thought Claire to be her baby. She stopped in the middle of the pavement, so that people hurrying past had to push against her.

‘But that’s absurd,’ said Emily, out loud. ‘I’m not married.’

The elderly woman squeezing past her, running over her wellingtons with one of those beastly little carriers on wheels, paused to say: ‘Then you ought to be, my girl!’

Emily delivered a telling kick at the carrier; better than nothing, for she could think of nothing to answer back.

She went back on duty the next morning, on day duty now, but still on ENT. The wards were as busy as ever and Mr Spencer cheered her up by the warmth of his welcome. Of the Professor there was no sign; she went back home that evening wondering what had happened to him. She hadn’t liked to ask and she had gone late to her dinner, so that she hadn’t had a chance to talk to any of her friends.

He was there on the following morning, though, doing a round with Mr Spencer and his house surgeon, Sister and the speech therapist, a young woman whom Emily envied, for she was tall and slim and always said the right thing so that even the Professor listened to her when she had something to say, and smiled too. He didn’t smile at Emily, only wished her a chilly good morning and requested a patient’s notes. On her way home later, pedalling briskly through the crowded streets, she saw him again, driving a beautiful Jaguar XJ Spider. It was a silver-grey, Italian designed and probably worth a very great deal of money. He lifted a nonchalant hand in greeting as he slid past her which she had to ignore; there was so much traffic about that if she had lifted a hand from the handlebar she would certainly have fallen off.

Louisa wanted to go to the cinema, so Emily stayed home, contentedly enough because she had had a hard day. The little sitting room, rather bare of furniture, yet looked cosy enough in the firelight; she sat by it and sewed for the twins by the light of the lamp at her elbow.

There was a good programme on Radio Three and she allowed her thoughts to idle along with Brahms and Grieg and Delius. They returned over and over again to the Professor—too much so, she told herself severely; it was pointless to get even the faintest bit interested in him when he could hardly bear the sight of her. Besides, with a car like that, he obviously came from an entirely different background from her own. She folded her needlework carefully, left everything ready for Louisa to make herself a hot drink when she came in, and went to bed.