The Lonely One Read online

  ‘And how do you do?’ Bobby said gaily. ‘Look, Margaret says we can share out the rooms how we like – there’s one four-bedder, and Liz and Judith and me have already opted to share – and you can join us if you like. You look nice and quiet – do you snore?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Bridget stared fascinatedly at this elegant and loquacious girl, who already seemed to have the whole place organised. ‘Have you been here before?’ she asked tentatively. The dark girl called Liz moved lazily away from the radiator towards them and laughed huskily.

  ‘Not a bit of it, Bridget,’ she said, with an amused note in her voice. ‘I’ve met this type before. Give her five minutes in a place, and she knows it all – who to get things out of, who to avoid, the back way out, and the secret ways in, all the useful things like that.’

  Bobby grinned complacently. ‘Got it in one, ducky,’ she said. ‘If you don’t look after yourself in this wicked world, no one’s going to look after you – take it from one who knows and’ as suffered sumfin’ crool,’ and she struck a mock heroic pose that made them all, including Bridget, laugh.

  There was a faint sound from beyond the closed door of Sister Chessman’s office, and the maid nodded at the quiet girl called Dorothy, and opened the door for her to go in.

  ‘I’ll show you others your rooms, then,’ she said. ‘And mind you don’t make too much noise, or Sister Chessman’ll be after you. Come on –’

  As Bridget followed the maid and the other girls up the wide, polished, wooden stairs to the bedrooms above, she felt a little better. This gay girl, this Bobby who seemed so self-assured, who had all the qualities that Bridget herself lacked but longed to have, she seemed to like Bridget already, certainly enough to let her share a room with her and the other two girls she had chosen to be her friends. Perhaps life at the Royal wouldn’t be too bad, after all. Above all, she reminded herself, as she dropped her suitcase on to one of the beds in the big room Margaret showed them into, above all, it was safe. There was nowhere else to go. The Lessiters didn’t really have room for her in their lives, and there was no one else to help her, she told herself practically, but without self-pity. The Royal, or a hospital just like it, was the only answer. It might as well be the Royal as anywhere else.

  So, lifting her chin with an effort, she turned to look at the other three girls and the room she was to share with them for the next three months.

  Chapter 2

  Bridget spent the next weeks in a state of startled happiness that left her almost physically breathless when she thought about it. Everything about her new life was so enjoyable – the lectures were interesting, and with the habit of study and reading she had developed during her schooldays, presented little difficulty. In a way, the ease with which she coped with her work enhanced the greatest pleasure of all – her friendship with the other three girls with whom she shared a room. In the area of study and work, she was superior to them, and in only this. They were gay – particularly Bobby – they had a brand of high spirits that spilled over into their everyday speech and seemed to the hitherto lonely Bridget to be sparkling wit, and they were so pretty.

  It was wonderful, Bridget thought, to be like that, admiring these qualities in them without envy. But despite her wholehearted pleasure in their company, her genuine lack of envy, it was equally wonderful to be able to answer any question that Sister Chessman threw at the class, wonderful to sail through a test paper and sit back with the feeling of having produced well-written answers while the others breathed heavily over their pens, and muttered at each other about the hellishness of study.

  Liz and Judith, and particularly Bobby, rapidly discovered that Bridget found the work easy, and seized on this ability in her to make their own lives easier. Bobby told Bridget gaily that it was uneconomic, to say the least, for all of them to wear their delicate brains out with work, when she could do it for them. And Bridget, delightedly, agreed. At first, she took her careful lecture notes, made her clear diagrams, and handed over her notebooks after lectures so that the others could copy them at their leisure, while they sat in class and passed silly notes to each other, giggling softly, and looking at Sister Chessman with limpid innocence in their eyes when she caught sight of them in the back row obviously not working at all. By the end of the second week they found an even easier way of keeping their notes up to date. They just handed their books over to the willing Bridget who would copy her own notes into them. Bridget didn’t mind in the least, for not only was she helping her friends – she found it helped her to learn her work very quickly. By the time she had written out the notes four times, made four sets of diagrams, she knew the material backwards.

  There was only one aspect of their life in the Preliminary Training School that worried her, only one in which the other three were better than she was. This showed on the day each week when the eleven students, awkward in the white coats that the PTS students wore, were shepherded over to the hospital to spend time in the wards.

  On the first of these days, Bridget, together with Bobby and Liz, was sent to the male surgical ward. She stood at the door of the big ward, her heart beating thickly, her face white under its dusting of freckles, feeling her knees shake. How could she face a ward full of men, ill men? She knew there were thirty of them, that the long ward held fifteen beds on each side, and she dreaded the thought of having to walk down that ward, with thirty pairs of eyes fixed on her. But Bobby and Liz had no such fears.

  ‘Cor!’ Bobby said in her mock cockney accent. ‘Cor – Thirty lovely men – just think of it!’ And she tightened her white belt around her slender waist, shook her fair hair into an even more becoming casualness, and walked into the ward, with Liz beside her, her slender hips waggling in very conscious provocation, the frightened Bridget scuttling shyly in their shadow.

  Sister was at the far end of the ward, standing beside a bed, as the three students walked towards her, and her round young face creased into a faint frown as she heard the decided wolf whistle one of the patients produced at the sight of the beautiful Bobby, walking down the ward with her fair hair swinging, her big eyes fixed on Sister’s face with apparent unawareness of the stir she was creating among the patients.

  But Sister was young enough, and had a sufficiently satisfying private life of her own, to lack the vindictive jealousy of a young pretty student some of the other Sisters at the Royal occasionally displayed, and contented herself with a wry comment on the length of Bobby’s hair, advising her that she would have to have it cut or wear it up before she came to this ward again. And Bobby demurely agreed, knowing full well that she looked as good with her hair piled on her head as with it swinging loose round her ears.

  Bobby and Bridget were sent to give drinks of hot milk and cocoa to the men, while Liz, much to her disgust, was taken by Sister on a tedious tour of the ward cupboards. Her only comfort was that Bobby and Bridget would have to do this on the next visit, while she would be able to talk to the patients.

  By the time the two girls had loaded the trolley with cups and saucers and the jugs of drinks, Bridget felt a little better. She had something to do, and perhaps the business of pouring the drinks would make it possible to avoid the men’s eyes as they went round.

  ‘You pour, I’ll dish ’em out,’ Bobby said quickly, as they rattled their way out of the kitchen into the big ward. And Bridget was only too glad to agree. Industriously she filled the cups with steaming milk, while Bobby happily tripped from trolley to bed and back again, giggling at the men, joining in with their chatter, and generally enjoying herself while producing a very enjoyable performance for the delighted patients. Sister was out of earshot with Liz, the staff nurse was occupied in a corner with a tricky dressing, and the other nurses who belonged to the ward had gone off to drink their own morning coffee. Bobby had the field to herself, and made the most of it.

  But just before they had finished the round, when Bobby was standing by the trolley, holding her hand out to Bridget for the next cup Sister ap
peared at the ward door with Liz in tow. And at this same moment, one of the up-patients passed by the trolley, a young man with a plaster cast on one arm, and he pinched Bobby’s bottom as he shuffled by. Bobby yelped with a mixture of surprise and pleasure, throwing out one arm. Bridget, nervous and startled, lurched backwards, and a jug of hot milk went splashing messily all over the polished floor, sent there by her flying hand.

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, you stupid girl!’ Sister bore down on Bridget with rage all over her face. ‘This floor was polished this morning, and now look at it! How clumsy can you get! Go and get a mop from the kitchen at once and clean it up, go along now! And you –’ she turned to Bobby. ‘Even if you were splashed with hot milk, there was no need to make a noise like that! Are you scalded?’

  And Bobby, with a sharp glance at the flaming-faced and miserable Bridget said, ‘Er – no, Sister, thank you – I’ll help Nurse Preston, shall I?’

  ‘You’ll do nothing of the sort. She was stupid enough to make the mess, she can clear it up. You come with me, and Nurse Preston – hurry up with clearing that mess you’ve made!’ And she sailed off down the ward, with Liz and Bobby behind her. Bobby cast an apologetic look over her shoulder at Bridget, standing mortified with shame and a sort of helpless rage, in a pool of slimy hot milk, and shrugged slightly.

  Bridget spent a dreadful half-hour on her knees, mopping up milk and re-applying the polish the spill had removed. The obvious sympathy of the men made her feel worse. Even when the boy who had started it all by pinching Bobby’s bottom came over to tell her how sorry he was, that it hadn’t been her fault, she kept her head down, refusing to look up or answer him, so that he shrugged and went away, leaving her to her shame and misery.

  Later that day, when the four girls reassembled in their bedroom, Bobby had the grace to apologise to Bridget.

  ‘I am sorry, Bridie, love, truly I am –’ she said winningly. ‘But I couldn’t tell that Sister it was me that spilt the milk, could I? If I had, I’d have had to tell her that boy started it by getting fresh, and then she’d have given the boy hell, and we’re supposed to look after the patients, aren’t we? It wouldn’t be good nursing to shop a patient, now would it?’ And Bridget, though she was still smarting a little from the episode, found herself laughing, completely disarmed, as usual, by Bobby’s undoubted charm. They spent the evening in a visit to a local cinema, and Bridget tried to forget the whole business, only grateful it would be another six days before she would have to face a ward again.

  Unfortunately for Bridget, however, the episode had been reported to Sister Chessman, not because the Ward Sister was still particularly annoyed about it – her temper, while hot, cooled rapidly – but because it was usual practice to report fully on each student that came to the wards from the PTS. And Sister Chessman made a mental note that this girl Preston would bear watching. As she told Matron, on her weekly visit to the lady’s office to report on the progress of the school, ‘I’m a little doubtful about Nurse Preston. Her background isn’t all it might be – these quiet girls of strict upbringing tend to run wild when they get to hospital, in my experience. And she spends her time with three very giddy people.’

  ‘Are you worried about the other three, too, then?’ Matron asked.

  And Sister Chessman, frowning a little, said slowly, ‘I’m not sure. They have very high spirits, but they are the sort that can be guided. I think. I much prefer high spirits to this quietness – you just don’t know where you are with Nurse Preston. She doesn’t talk to me very much, though the others chatter away freely enough. I could be being unfair – maybe she was just clumsy from nervousness, though Sister on the ward thought she was making a scene for attention’s sake.’ Altogether, it was unfortunate for Bridget that the Ward Sister was as young as she was. An older, more experienced, woman would have recognised that Bridget was nervous, not an attention seeker.

  As the weeks wore on, Bridget got to know a little more about her new friends. They showed little interest in her background, though Liz once or twice asked her about the sort of life she had led before coming to the Royal. But Bridget had shrugged her questions away, and Liz didn’t persist. But they talked about themselves a good deal, and Bridget listened fascinatedly, particularly to Bobby.

  She was the only daughter of fairly rich parents, and as far as Bridget could tell, had never had to ask more than once for anything she wanted. Bridget got the impression that her parents had little time for their only child, regarding her with a sort of impatient affection, discharging all their parental duties by spending money. There had been nannies, expensive boarding-schools – several, for Bobby admitted unashamedly to being expelled from one after the other – foreign holidays, gay Mediterranean cruises. And Bobby liked her life as it was very much. She had come to the Royal because she wanted to live in London on her own, and somewhat to her surprise and chagrin, her father had balked at her demand for an allowance to run a flat of her own. He had told her that she either had to live at home in Surrey, or get a job living-in where she would be supervised. And as Bobby said with a grimace, That meant nursing. So here I am.’

  Judith, the one of the three Bridget found least approachable, for all her surface gaiety, was the daughter, surprisingly, of a parson in a market town in the Midlands. She too, Bridget discovered, wanted to get to London, and the only way she could do it was by nursing – and as she said smoothly. ‘The parents think it’s a “Good” thing to do – service to others and all that guff. My God, but it’s good to get away from that bloody vicarage –’ and Bridget had felt chilled at the coldness, the calculation of her.

  Liz, too, seemed to find Judith’s attitude to her parents rather distasteful. Her own parents were apparently happy, friendly people with a shop in a country town in Devonshire, and they had been delighted when their daughter had decided to become a nurse.

  They’re not too well off,’ she explained, almost apologetically. This way, I earn my own living, and get a career as well – they think it’s a great idea. And with two sisters younger than me, they’ve got a lot of expenses –’ and Bridget had smiled at her across the room, and poured out another cup of coffee for her, feeling a warmth for this pretty, friendly girl, who seemed so normal, somehow, the one of the three somehow most like Bridget herself.

  It was about half-way through the three months in the PTS that Bobby at last made the contact with the medical staff she wanted. As she had said firmly one evening, when the four girls were sitting in their room over cups of coffee made on the gas-ring each room was provided with, ‘Life in this hospital will be pretty drear if we don’t get to know some of the men around the place.’

  The patients?’ Bridget asked, remembering the boy who had pinched Bobby’s round bottom.

  ‘Not on your life, my pretty,’ Bobby had said, stretching catlike on her bed, and grinning across at Bridget. ‘I mean real men. I mean, what are we here for?’

  Judith chuckled fatly from her own heap of pillows. ‘I know what I’m here for,’ she said, peering into the mirror she was holding as she combed her thick red hair into a sleek style. ‘I want to get married as fast as ever I can. And not just to anyone. I want a man who can keep me in the style to which I have every intention of becoming accustomed as fast as ever I can.’

  And Liz, from across the room agreed. ‘A nice handsome doctor with prospects and a private income if it’s at all possible,’ she said dreamily. ‘Someone who will think I’m God’s gift to doctorkind, who’ll devote all the time when he isn’t saving lives to my special welfare. There ought to be a few of ’em around a hospital this size to choose from.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Bridget, startled. ‘I – I hadn’t thought of that.’

  Bobby sat up and stared at her. ‘Come off it, little one! I mean, I know you look like a schoolgirl, and behave a bit like one sometimes, but surely you aren’t really as green as that! Don’t you want a man of your own, or are you odd or something?’

  ‘I – I’m not odd, of
course I’m not,’ Bridget said hastily. ‘I – well, I just hadn’t thought about it, I suppose.’

  ‘Well, it’s time you did, sweetie,’ Judith said. ‘Why on earth come to work in a hospital, for God’s sake, if not for the – social opportunities? Don’t tell me you’re like that dreary Dorothy Jackson, all religion and a burning vocation to help suffering mankind, and all that rubbish.’

  ‘Of course I’m not!’ Bridget said indignantly. She, too, found Dorothy Jackson, with her sanctimonious voice, her tendency to smarm round Sister Chessman, and her self-righteous and very obvious departure for Church each Sunday, unpleasant. ‘It’s just that I hadn’t thought – I hadn’t thought about – getting married,’ and her voice faltered on the words. Indeed, she never had thought about marriage. She hadn’t even thought about having boy-friends. She had never had the opportunity to meet any boys of her own age, and so found men rather frightening people. The thought of having boy-friends of her own, of ever getting close enough to a man to even think of marriage made her boggle.

  Bobby laughed softly. ‘We’ll have to take you in hand, Bridie, my pretty, ‘deed and ‘deed we will! You’re not bad looking, and with the right clothes and a bit of know-how you’ll go a long way.’

  ‘I haven’t got much in the way of clothes.’ Bridget found the thought of being dressed in the sort of clothes the others wore decidedly attractive suddenly, despite her fear of men, her diffidence towards the idea of marriage.

  ‘All for one and one for all!’ Liz said gaily. ‘You do our notes for us, and the least we can do is show you how to dress and lend you some gear –’ and Bridget smiled gratefully at her. Of all the three, Liz was certainly the most appreciative of Bridget’s help with their work, and had an easy generosity of nature that was extremely appealing.

  So, when a few weeks after this conversation, Bobby came bursting into the PTS sitting-room with triumph all over her face, Bridget knew what was coming.