Читать книгу Money in the Morgue - Stella Duffy, Ngaio Marsh - Страница 12

In the private room of Civilian 3 another tragedy was finally played out. Young Sydney Brown had pulled himself together enough to return to his grandfather’s bedside and the little nurse in the room had sensibly allowed him the privacy that this time required. Forty-five minutes later when Sister Comfort came to check on Sydney she had found him hunched over a pillow, hugging it to his chest as he looked on in horror at the old man, still and already becoming cold in his bed. Now Father O’Sullivan prayed quietly, the nurse awaited Sister Comfort’s orders, Sydney tried not to show his revulsion at sitting alongside a dead body for the first time in his life, and failed miserably.

Dr Hughes knew enough about nurses and their understanding of patient protocols to take his cue from Sister Comfort, so he waited in silence for the older woman to speak. After an appropriate time of silence had elapsed, the exact number of minutes being something Sister Comfort had judged to perfection after all these years, she spoke up and, with no effort to lower her voice or soften her usual strident tone, gave her orders.

‘Dr Hughes, wait here, I’ll fetch the relevant paperwork and be with you in a moment. I shall pop in to Matron when I go to the Records Office and let her know.’

Dr Hughes offered to fetch the paperwork himself, but he was over-ruled as Father O’Sullivan sprang up from his hard wooden chair at the head of the bed, ‘No need for either of you to divert yourselves, I’ll alert Matron. You’ve plenty to do. I’ll go to her straight away.’

He was gone from the small room before Sister Comfort could protest that it was more usual for her to pass on this kind of news and for the vicar to stay with the bereaved.

Her next words to Sydney were sharper to match her frown, ‘Mr Brown, if you’d like to go along with the nurse, she’ll find somewhere for you to rest for the night.’

‘What? Rest? Nah, no thanks, Sister, but I can’t be—’ he shook his head, ‘I mean, I’ve got to go, things to do.’

Sydney Brown sounded as if he might make a run for it at any moment and Sister Comfort immediately squashed him.

‘I’m afraid not, Mr Brown. The next transport is not due to leave until six o’clock in the morning and even then it will depend on the state of the roads. Frankly, I’d be very surprised if anyone leaves Mount Seager tomorrow morning. A storm like this has a bad habit of bringing down a flash flood and making the bridge too dangerous to cross. It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve been cut off by the river and I doubt it’ll be the last. Nurse, if you will?’

The shocked Sydney Brown stumbled to his feet, fidgeting with his collar and cuffs as if he might square up for an argument and then, seeing the determination in Sister Comfort’s eyes, he followed the nurse, his feet scuffing at the polished floor, his arms still wrapped around the pillow he held as a comforter.

Sister Comfort looked after them frowning, ‘Foolish lad, doesn’t know when he’s well off.’

Dr Hughes was no longer surprised by Sister Comfort’s brusque manner. Whatever the situation, whether he would have spoken carefully or forcefully himself, Sister Comfort could be relied upon to crash into any scenario with neither care nor finesse. He noticed now, as he had several times before, that her manner was actually remarkably useful. The little nurse, who appeared as inexperienced with death as Sydney Brown, had assumed the mantle of her office and was now the epitome of efficiency, as Sister Comfort had no doubt intended, while Father O’Sullivan had left with his unusually prayerful demeanour quite put away. In fact, he had looked much more like his regular self, a figure Rosamund Farquharson once mischievously but accurately described as looking ‘like a bank clerk who somehow found himself in a priest’s cassock and forced to deliver a sermon’.

Sister Comfort turned to Dr Hughes when the others were gone, ‘I shall send Will Kelly to deal with the body and get it down to the morgue. We’ll have to be fast, he’ll not keep in this heat.’

She turned on a silent heel and was gone.

Left alone with the corpse, Dr Hughes shuddered and turned his back on the dead man. He had seen far too much of death in the past two years and even an old man dying of natural causes disturbed him. He tried to calm his breathing, clenched his fists to still his shaking hands, but it was no good, the sight of the dead man took him back to the heat of battle, the stench of war, the bloody and broken young men calling for his help. These were the cries that infested his dreams, interspersed with the awful silence of death, the silence that now woke him whenever he tried to sleep. Dr Hughes became almost faint, quite dizzy and turning into the room, he grasped the foot-rails of the bed to steady himself. He forced himself to open his eyes. Here he was, in the old man’s room. There was the corpse. Yes, the man was dead, but he was old, nothing dreadful had happened to him, his was not a life cut off in its prime.

Brought back to the room, he looked about himself and took in the peeling paint at the window, a bucket catching heavy drips of rain. He knew the New Zealanders were finding it hard, sending off so many healthy young men to fight had a real effect on the home front. Early in his tenure he’d innocently remarked on the distance from the theatre of war and Matron’s response had been swift.

‘We’ve all we need here in New Zealand to look after ourselves and we’re grateful for it, but we’re feeling the pinch as our lads go off and we send the best of us away. We felt it in the first war too. There’s only so long anyone can give and give before they break.’

Dr Hughes understood that an entire generation of men missing after the first war, the loss of strong young men now, had taken its toll on the nation’s spirit as well as its economy. He’d had money worries of his own and understood how debilitating it could be to scrimp and save. His family were very ordinary and his whole way through medical school he had been on scholarships and bursaries. Even so, his money worries were as nothing to the nightmares he now dealt with on a regular basis. He’d taken on the night shift in order to try to avoid the dreams, but they felt even more brutal when they arrived in the light of day and the one person he had confided in had been most frightened of his fears. When Luke tried to explain to Sarah why he was afraid to sleep, fearful of what might come, he saw worry and perhaps even shock in her eyes as he talked of the walking wounded in his dreams, mumbled in garbled language about his fear. The words she eventually spoke were intended to be comforting and she had tried to understand, but he was sure he had said too much. He was worried that she now thought him a coward and, in response, he had closed himself off from her. Luke knew she must be confused and upset by the way he had been avoiding her. Sarah was a lovely girl and she deserved someone better than him, he would have to tell her that. He groaned inwardly, he knew only too well that some lives could seem hopeful on the outside and yet inside it was all turmoil and upset. Take young Sydney Brown for example. All of twenty-one, about to inherit his grandfather’s farm, lock, stock and barrel, and seemingly no happier about it than had the entire estate gone to a stranger.

‘Thing is, I don’t flamin’ well want to be a farmer, that’s the cow of it,’ Sydney had said, whispering across the old man when Luke came in to check on Mr Brown, ‘I want to be an engineer, I want to make things happen. I never wanted the farm at all. I can’t stand being stuck out here in the sticks. I’ll sell it quick as I can and be off.’

Luke’s reveries on the uncertainties of fate were cut off by the welcome arrival of Will Kelly, the night porter. Kelly was famed at the Bridge Hotel for his ability to drink gallons of lemonade shandy, his drink of choice, with no obvious effect, yet a single tot of whiskey, rum, or brandy—Kelly wasn’t a fussy man—would have him drunk as a lord and twice as foolish in no time at all.

‘Ah, it’s himself, is it? The young doctor, and good evening to you too.’

Kelly clattered into the private room and halted his forward trajectory by the noisy but effective method of clanging his ancient trolley into the hospital bed. He set to work right away, rolling the covers back from old Mr Brown and readying his trolley and body bag to house the deceased.

As he worked he sang quietly, ‘Full fathom five thy father lies, of his bones are coral made—’

Kelly broke off to look at Luke’s aghast face, ‘Don’t you worry at all. Not your fault, this old fellow. Time’s the culprit here, nothing you could’ve done to save this one, don’t go blaming yourself.’

‘I know that, of course I know it was his time. It was his grandson, he wanted to see Sydney,’ the doctor protested. ‘We all thought he was holding on for the young man.’

‘Well, that’s the way with the dying, hang on when you expect them to go, pop their clogs when they’re meant to hang on. Never can tell. Tricky ones, the dying are. The lad was lucky to be here when he went, more often than not the family hang around for hours or days, waiting for the final words, the last breath, then the minute they nip out for a cup of tea, there you go, he shuffles off his mortal coil. I reckon they prefer to be alone when they go. He was a lucky young fellow all right. Come on then, old boy, let’s be having you,’ Kelly said as he manhandled the corpse into the body bag.

Luke frowned and took a few steps backwards, eager to get away from the sight of Kelly rolling the corpse into the canvas bag.

‘I have to go, there are forms, Matron has the papers ready and I need to sign them.’

‘Death and taxes, always the way. You hurry along to the office, they’ll have the paperwork ready and want it signing, always want a name to a death, that they do and yours is as good as any other once you’ve your fancy letters after it.’

With that Will Kelly finally finished struggling with old Mr Brown, fastened the bag, rolled the bagged body onto the trolley and pushed off and out of the room. Luke heard him as he headed along the yard towards the morgue, hidden away at the far end of the row of wards, singing through the rain.

‘Those are pearls that were his eyes; Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea change, Into something rich and strange.’

Luke had to admit that Kelly had a fine baritone, and an apposite choice in his Shakespeare. He turned out the overhead light as he left the room, remarking how especially empty it felt with the dead man removed, as if death really did have a presence of its own. The doctor took a deep breath and forced himself to pay attention to where he was. He was no longer in a field hospital, he was no longer surrounded by heat and dirt and flies. He was here, at Mount Seager and as the ghastly images receded from his mind, he looked across to the Transport Office. The dimmed light was on. Very well. He would sign the paperwork for old Mr Brown and then he would go to Sarah and speak to her. He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders and walked across the yard.