Children's Ward Read online

  In the office Gregory watched her go, and sighed impatiently, turning to where Harriet was completing the chart, to reach for the prescription sheet.

  ‘Silly creature,’ he said with cold anger. ‘All this because she hadn’t the wit to make sure he couldn’t get at a kettle of boiling water. Some of these women don’t deserve to have children.’

  Harriet, chilled by his attitude, said sharply. ‘It was probably less her fault than the fault of the way she has to live.’ She thrust the chart at him, and pointed to the address on the cover. ‘Fontana Street. That’s a road of houses that should have been condemned years ago – and she told me she only has one room, and a very small room at that. It can’t be easy to look after a child properly in those sort of conditions – she hasn’t even got a proper cooker. She has to do all her cooking on an oil stove. With a lively three year old to look after, and pregnant again into the bargain, is it any wonder this happened?’

  He signed the prescription sheet, and looked up at her under drawn brows. ‘You managed to discover a lot about her.’

  Embarrassed, she shrugged slightly. ‘It’s part of my job, isn’t it? To know about patients’ backgrounds, I mean. It makes a lot of difference to the sort of care they need. This boy, for instance, if he came of well-off parents, the chances are he would be well fed, and in good condition to cope with this accident. As it is, he probably eats poorly – because his mother can’t afford to feed him as he should be fed, even if she really understood much about nutrition – and doesn’t get enough sleep or fresh air, so he’ll need extra vitamins and so on while he’s in here – and a long convalescence in the country after he’s better –’ She faltered. ‘I’m sorry. You must be tired. I shouldn’t waste your time nattering like this.’

  ‘You’re tired too, I imagine.’ He made no attempt to go, sitting perched on the corner of her desk, looking down at her where she sat in her usual chair. ‘I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have been so quick to criticise, I suppose. I – get angry when I see children with unnecessary injuries.’

  ‘Don’t we all!’ Harriet said, and smiled up at him a little shyly. ‘I didn’t mean to sound so sharp – but so often doctors don’t seem to know about the sort of lives their patients live outside hospital. It does matter.’

  He nodded, still looking at her considering. ‘I’m not arguing with you – you had every right to tell me off. How did you know what –’ he peered down at the chart ‘what Fontana Street was like? Is your home around here? I thought all you sisters lived in the hospital.’

  ‘We do.’ Harriet said, ‘And my home’s in Devonshire – but when I got this post, after I finished my training, I thought I ought to know something about the district – so I went around looking.’

  ‘Just like that?’ he asked curiously. ‘Just went walking around?’

  Harriet nodded. ‘I suppose it sounds a bit silly, really. But I like walking, and I wanted to know –’

  He was silent for a moment, and then he said, with an odd diffidence, ‘You make me feel a little ashamed. I ought to know more about the district too, I suppose. As you say, it helps when you come to think about patients and their diagnoses and treatment. I just never got around to looking at much outside the hospital –’

  Without thinking, Harriet said, ‘But how could you? You never go out.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ he asked, his voice suddenly rough.

  Harriet’s face flamed a hot red in embarrassment. ‘I – I beg your pardon,’ she stammered. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude – but – well, you don’t, do you? I mean – well, you never go to any of the parties in the doctors’ common room, and someone once said you never go out either –’

  He stood up, and turned to stare through the glass partition at the darkened ward stretching into the shadows.

  ‘No, I don’t go out very much –’ he said slowly. ‘It’s a sort of – habit, I suppose. I never seem to get around to much at all outside my job.’ He turned and looked at her, at the fading red in her face and even white teeth biting her soft lower lip in ashamed embarrassment. ‘Does that sound – silly?’

  ‘I suppose not.’ Harriet managed to smooth her face into a semblance of calmness. ‘If that’s the sort of life you really want. But there’s so much more to living than just one’s job, however interesting that job may be. Anyway –’ she took a deep breath, and looked straight at him, her pulse thickening in her throat. ‘I think you do a better job if you take a rest from it sometimes. Unless you really want to live like a hermit, of course –’

  Any minute now, part of her mind jeered, you’ll be asking him to go out with you. How silly can you get about this man, for God’s sake?

  ‘Perhaps I do –’ For a moment, his habitual grimness returned, banishing the few moments of relaxation that had been the first sign of humanity Harriet had ever really seen in him. But then, he sat down on the corner of her desk and looked at her again.

  ‘Sister – Brett – Harriet, isn’t it?’ She nodded wordlessly. ‘As you say, I really ought to know a bit more about the district this hospital is serving. And as you seem to know it pretty well, perhaps you’d spare some time to show me around it? If you aren’t too busy –’

  ‘I’d like to,’ she said, a little breathlessly. ‘I can always find time to walk – I enjoy walking – it’s more fun in the country, at home, but even here, in streets and in all the traffic it’s quite pleasant –’ she was gabbling a little, so full was she of delighted surprise. ‘Just let me know when you can manage it, and I’ll arrange my off duty accordingly –’

  He nodded gravely. ‘I have a half day this Friday. Will that be suitable?’

  She nodded too, and smiled brilliantly. ‘Fine. I’ll be off about two o’clock.’

  ‘That’s settled then.’ He got to his feet, and went to the door. ‘And I’ll be up in the morning to see this child again. He may need to go to theatre to have those blisters snipped. I’ll decide tomorrow. Goodnight, Sister Brett.’

  ‘Goodnight, Mr Weston.’ Harriet said, and sat in a bemused silence long after the double doors had stopped their swishing behind his departure, guiltily blessing the child whose scald with a kettle of boiling water had made her so happy.

  Chapter Two

  Harriet was perched on top of a ladder sorting through the top shelf of the linen cupboard when Sally put her head round the door.

  ‘Hello,’ Harriet said absently. ‘Fifteen nightgowns – five bibs – honestly, I think those babies must eat them. We’ve lost nineteen since the last inventory.’

  ‘The nurses probably use ’em as dusters, if your lot are anything like mine. I’ve lost six dressing towels since the last count. But at least I’ve finished my inventory. Why are you so late with yours?’

  ‘We do work here sometimes,’ Harriet said. ‘I’ve had three babies with pneumonia this last week, on top of all the usual surgical stuff–I haven’t had time.’ She put the last pile of clothes back on the shelf, and came down the ladder to make a note in the linen book. ‘Now, what can I do for you? I haven’t had a chance to get the list for tomorrow straight yet, so if that’s what you’re after you’ll have to wait. I’ll do it after lunch.’

  ‘No –’ Sally grinned. ‘I’m off tomorrow, so the list’ll be Staff Nurse Baker’s headache. I want to know what’s happening tonight – if you don’t mind my asking,’ she finished sarcastically.

  ‘Oh – tonight.’ Harriet led the way out of the linen cupboard, and Sally followed her into the ward. They picked their way over the small groups of children playing on the floor, dodging an active game of tag played by two small boys both of whom had one eye covered with a bandage, an affliction that seemed to hamper them not one whit. Harriet scooped a diminutive child up from an absorbed game of scribbling on the floor and with a pat on his pyjamaed behind sent him off to the lavatory, correctly interpreting his wriggling as an urgent need to visit there. ‘If I don’t watch that one, we get puddles all over the place,’ Harriet said, wat
ching the child trot off obediently. ‘I don’t think his mother ever got around to explaining to him what lavatories are for.’

  ‘Harriet,’ Sally said with exaggerated patience. ‘Will you please concentrate on me for a moment? I want to know what is to happen tonight. Are you coming with us, or aren’t you?’

  Together, they went into the office, and Harriet sat down at her desk and swung her chair round to look at her friend where she sprawled in the armchair.

  ‘I don’t want to,’ she said. ‘You know I don’t. But what can I do? Paul just won’t take no for an answer.’

  ‘Then you are coming?’ Sally said.

  ‘I suppose so. I wish Paul wouldn’t nag so –’

  ‘What it is to be Harriet Brett!’ Sally said theatrically. ‘Two men on a string! How do you do it? What have you got that I haven’t? Just the same, if a little less of it –’ and she looked down at her round shape with a sigh. ‘How goes things on the Weston front?’

  Harriet grimaced at the pun, and said ‘I don’t know what you mean –’ avoiding Sally’s eye as she said it.

  ‘Come off it! You know damned well what I mean! You’ve been going around with him for nearly two months now. Are you any nearer getting to know him than you were before?’

  Harriet sighed. ‘Not really,’ she said unwillingly. ‘We walk a lot and talk a lot, but that’s about all.’ She leaned back in her chair, and stared down the ward absently. ‘It’s odd, you know. I’ve told him all about myself – about the family, that sort of thing, and he seems interested – asks about them, asks about me – what I like, what I don’t like. But somehow we never get around to talking about him. For all I know, he just happened – like Topsy. He never says anything at all about his own background, or where he comes from –’

  ‘Have you asked him – outright, I mean?’ Sally said curiously. ‘I would.’

  Harriet smiled. ‘I know you would. If I didn’t tell you everything you want to know about my private life you’d only nag me skinny till I did –’

  ‘Why not? If you don’t ask, you never know – and I like to know. Have you asked him about himself?’

  Harriet shook her head.

  ‘He’s not that sort of man. I don’t deny I’ve – fished a bit. But he always clams up, and I’m not the sort to persist when someone isn’t willing to talk. So there it is –’

  ‘Has he ever kissed you?’ Sally asked baldly.

  ‘Sally, really!’ Harriet said crossly. ‘You go too far sometimes –’

  ‘Has he?’ Sally ignored the protest.

  ‘No,’ Harriet said shortly. For a moment, she remembered the way he always seemed not to notice her upturned face whenever he brought her back to the nurses’ home, the way her whole body ached to feel his hands over hers when they sat side by side in a threatre or cinema, the way he got out of the car as soon as they got back to the hospital, never once lingering as other men did after a date – as Paul always did.

  ‘I suppose he’s all right,’ Sally said, a question in her voice.

  ‘All right?’ Harriet echoed, and stared at Sally, ‘What do you mean?’

  Sally shrugged, embarrassed for once. ‘You know what I mean. Some men just – never make passes at women.’

  Harriet reddened with a mixture of embarrassment and anger. ‘If you are suggesting he’s at all gay, you’re wrong,’ she said shortly. ‘I’ve been around long enough to recognise a man when I meet one. He’s perfectly “all right” as you put it. I’m sure of that. No – it’s something else –’

  What she didn’t tell Sally about and didn’t intend to yet, if she could help it – though she knew quite well that Sally would get it out of her eventually – was the conversation they had had the last time they had been out together. They had been sitting over the remains of dinner at a small restaurant Gregory had taken her to once before, and he had said suddenly, without looking at her, ‘Harriet – I want to talk to you.’

  She had looked up from the glass of amber wine she had been twisting between her fingers, and said softly, her heart lifting with a wild hope for a moment, ‘Yes? What is it, Gregory?’

  He had leaned back in his seat, so that his face was hidden in the shadows of the dimly lit restaurant.

  ‘You – do you enjoy these evenings we spend together? The afternoons when we walk around the streets? Or do you just come because you’re sorry for me? Think I’m lonely, and that you can help me to be less of a hermit?’

  Harriet had smiled then. ‘Of course I enjoy them, Gregory. I wouldn’t come otherwise. I’m not the sort to go in for pity, you know. Not like that. Any pity I’ve got I use in my job. Outside of that, I live like anyone else – doing what I want to do, because I want to do it. I don’t see you as a pitiful object anyway.’

  ‘I’m glad of that,’ he had said gravely. ‘I’d hate to think you were just – mothering me. I don’t like motherly women.’ He had paused then, and after a moment went on with an oddly painful note in his voice. ‘I enjoy these times we spend together, too, Harriet. They – they’ve come to mean a lot to me. Are you a patient woman, Harriet?’

  She had stared at him then, surprised by the sudden shift.

  ‘Patient? I don’t know. It depends. I can be, I think. If I must wait to get what I want, then I can wait – is that what you mean?’

  He had leaned forward then, so that she could see his face, see the red lamplight glinting on his cheekbones, deepening the fine lines round his mouth.

  ‘I can’t explain now – not really. But it’s just this. Would you be willing to go on as we are – going out like this, seeing each other whenever we’re off duty together, and leave it at that – just for a while? It’s a lot to ask, I know. You’re a – popular girl, aren’t you? I mayn’t spend much time in the mess, but I’m there often enough to know that Martin regards you rather highly –’

  Harriet reddened. ‘Paul is – is an old friend,’ she said a little brusquely. ‘I’ve known him a long time.’

  ‘Yes – I gathered that. Harriet – would it be asking a lot of you to go on seeing me? And then, in eighteen months’ time, perhaps – perhaps we can talk about the future.’ His voice died away, and for a long moment, Harriet stared at him.

  ‘Eighteen months?’ she asked at length. ‘Eighteen months? I – I don’t understand.’

  ‘I can’t explain – not now,’ he had said miserably. ‘I will be able to – then. But not now. Are you patient, Harriet? Can you accept that and understand enough not to ask questions?’

  She had sat and looked at him, at the face she had come to love so much, the deep set eyes, the glint of white in his dark hair, and thought confusedly, Wait? What for? For you to love me? Will you ever love me? Are you trying to tell me that you do care for me now? And if you do, why must you wait for so long to ‘talk of the future’?

  He had seemed to interpret her silence as refusal, for he had leaned back, and said in a flat voice, ‘I’m sorry, Harriet. I had no right to suggest it. It’s a lot to ask a woman to take on trust.’

  She had put her hand out impulsively, and said softly, ‘You had all the right in the world, Gregory. I can’t pretend to understand – but that doesn’t matter. I –’ she picked her words with care. ‘I enjoy your company a great deal, Gregory. I would be very unhappy if we couldn’t see each other as we do. And if you want to go on as we are, that’s fine with me.’

  He had stared at her then, his face lifting into a rare smile. ‘Thank you, Harriet. Thank you. I – my God, I wish I could explain – but I can’t – not yet –’

  ‘Then don’t try. If you don’t want to talk about anything, you don’t have to. I’m not a baby, Gregory. I’m a grown woman – and I hope I’m intelligent enough to accept a situation I can’t understand yet in the promise that I will understand it eventually. Gregory –’ she had looked down at her hands, loosely clasped on the tablecloth, and with a steady voice that surprised her, she said, ‘Gregory – you know, don’t you? Know I – I care a g
ood deal for you?’ She lifted her eyes to look at him. ‘I’m not good at pretending, Gregory. And there it is.’

  ‘I know,’ he had said in a low voice. ‘That’s why I – why I had to ask you to wait for me. I – I care for you too, Harriet. More than you might suspect. Just give me time, Harriet. Just time.’

  And that had been all. They had gone back to the hospital in silence, not a strained one, but a silence full of thought on both their parts, though Harriet couldn’t even begin to try to imagine just what form Gregory’s thinking was taking. He had said goodnight with his usual formality, only saying ‘thank you’ in a low voice before driving back to the main courtyard from the Nurses’ Home, leaving Harriet staring after the winking tail lights of his car, her mind whirling.

  Even now, two days later, she couldn’t assess her own feelings. Part of her was full of relief, relief that this man she loved with all her heart cared for her. But the rest of her mind seethed with questions. Why eighteen months? Why hadn’t he made any attempt to kiss her? He must know – she was sure he knew – how much she wanted to feel his touch. And she knew, too, with all the woman in her, that he wanted to hold her close. Why didn’t he? Why?

  Sally’s voice pulled her out of her abstraction.

  ‘Here’s Paul,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I’m going.’

  Harriet looked across the ward to the big double doors where Paul Martin’s tall figure was standing with a small girl clutching at his white coat. He looked up and saw her at the same moment, and disentangling the child he made his way with an oddly purposeful tread towards the office.

  ‘Don’t go, Sally,’ Harriet said urgently. ‘Stay –’

  ‘Not on your life, ducky,’ Sally said. ’I’m sick of playing gooseberry to you two. You settle this on your own. ‘Bye!’ and she slipped out of the office, to stop and say a few words to Paul before disappearing through the doors.