Cottage Hospital Page 4

  When the children had gone back to school, and Mary and Barbara sat over their coffee, Mary said suddenly:

  “Barbara – why aren’t you married?”

  Barbara stared at her, her eyebrows raised a little. “Why? Because I don’t choose to be,” she said as repressingly as she could. Mary ignored the hostility in her sister’s voice.

  “But you should be, you know. You must be – nearly thirty, now. Time you settled down.”

  Barbara lit a cigarette, trying to hide her annoyance.

  “I can’t think why you should imagine that marriage is the only way a woman can settle down,” she said as lightly as she could. “I have a very absorbing career. I’m perfectly happy with it.”

  “Oh, a career.” Mary dismissed it with a wave of her well-manicured hand. “That’s all very well. But a woman needs more than that. A home and security – children. That’s a real career.”

  “I can’t say I fully agree with you.” Barbara let her annoyance show.

  “No, there’s no need to get huffy, Barbara. It’s just that I have your best interests at heart – and I’m sure you should marry. What about that man you used to mention last time you were here – Daniel something? What’s his background?”

  “I am not in the least interested in Daniel’s background, and I am not in the least interested in marrying him, if that’s what you’re meaning. He is merely a friend,” Barbara was icy.

  “Friends are all very well, my dear. But a husband is more to the point. Now, there are several men I know, all of whom are doing very well for themselves –”

  Barbara stood up. “Look, Mary, let’s understand each other. I am not in Sandleas to be toted around your marriage market. I am here to do a job of work, until I am ready to return to London and the Royal. So please, don’t run away with the idea that you can do anything to alter that. You insist that I stay here – and I will. But on my terms.” She looked at her sister firmly, her face flushed a little.

  Mary looked back at her, the line between her eyes accentuated. “Must you be so – direct? I have no intention of toting you, as you put it. I merely wanted to help you –”

  “You started by pretty direct yourself, didn’t you?” Barbara said coldly. “And as for helping me – you must try to see I don’t need any help – not of that sort, anyway. I just want to be left in peace, that’s all.”

  Mary stood up too, and after a moment, said, “I’m sorry, my dear. I suppose I was a bit abrupt. I didn’t mean to upset you – but I do so want to see you with the same comfort I have. You have to work so hard –”

  Barbara softened, and put her hand impulsively on the older woman’s arm.

  “I’m sorry too, Mary. I shouldn’t be so touchy. I do understand, I suppose – but I want you to understand me. And as for work – well, I’m used to it. And I like it.”

  “Don’t you like comfort too?”

  Barbara looked round the warm dining room. “I suppose I do,” she said slowly. “But if it isn’t for me, there it is. You can’t just walk into it, can you?”

  Mary smiled a little. “No – but you can walk in the right direction. That was what I meant. Wouldn’t you like – this?” The sweep of her arm included everything. The warm comfortable house, the security of her marriage, her two handsome children – even Mrs. Lester washing dishes in the sink.

  Barbara bit her lip. “I would, I suppose,” she said again unwillingly. “I daresay there are times I would happily change places with you – but if I can’t, I can’t. Look, Mary, let’s not talk about this any more. I’ve had a long day, and I’ve got to go to the hospital now –”

  “The hospital? But I have some people coming to tea, to meet you –” Mary sounded angry again.

  “Oh, really?” Barbara’s voice was smooth. “I wish you’d told me earlier. I’ve arranged to go to see Matron this afternoon. What a pity,” and she avoided Mary’s eye as the lie slipped out so easily.

  “I’ll ring Matron now and explain,” Mary was making for the door. “She won’t mind –”

  “But I would, Mary.” Barbara stood very still in the centre of the room. “I made an arrangement and I intend to keep to it. I’m sorry.”

  The sisters stared at each other for a second, then Mary smiled. “I see,” she said softly. “I see. Well – could you try to be back before four, perhaps? I’ve invited these people specially – it will be rather embarrassing for me – and a little insulting to them, don’t you think?”

  Barbara bit her lip. Put like that, Mary had her pinned, like a moth. “All right,” she said unwillingly. “I’ll try. But another time, Mary, tell me your plans in advance, when they affect me, will you? I do have arrangements of my own, you know. I’m not one of the children.”

  Mary smiled again, triumphantly this time. “Of course I will, Barbara,” she said silkily. “And again, please forgive me. I keep forgetting how adult you are. Fourteen years seniority sometimes blinds me to it.”

  Barbara escaped the house with a sense of real relief. She knew that Mary’s and her own will clashed easily, but she hadn’t realised quite how soon the clash would come.

  “And I’m supposed to be here to rest,” she told herself bitterly, as she turned out of the drive, towards the town centre. “This next year isn’t going to be easy, something tells me –”

  Chapter Three

  By the time Monday arrived, bringing her first day on duty at the Cottage Hospital, Barbara felt like a violin string. Her nerves were stretched to breaking point, and keeping her temper had become the most difficult thing she had ever had to do.

  It wasn’t that she wasn’t made comfortable in Mary’s house – she was. Everything that could contribute to her comfort was provided, from early morning tea to fresh flowers in her room every day. The children were obviously delighted to have her there, and Josie, in particular, spent every moment she could with her aunt. She would sit curled up on Barbara’s bed, watching her comb her long hair, saying nothing, her big eyes fixed unblinkingly on Barbara’s face. And while Barbara sat sewing, or reading, or writing letters, Josie would sit beside her, content just to be in her company. Jamie too made her feel happy, treating his aunt to his rare smiles, and occasionally asking her for help with his school homework. Geoffrey she hardly saw, as he came in only for meals, and then incarcerated himself in his own shabby library to work long into the night. But when he did meet her around the house or at meals, his abstracted face would break into a warm smile, and he would murmur. “Everything all right? Feeling better? Good!” before sinking back into his private thoughts.

  It was Mary who was the problem. Her personality was so much the strongest in the household that she made herself felt even when she was just sitting – a rare occurrence – and reading. The whole house seemed to relax and stretch itself with a sigh of relief when she went out to one of her many committee meetings, and Barbara felt guilty when she, too, was glad to see her sister’s car turning out of the drive. Mary was charming and friendly, and said no more about her plans to introduce her sister to eligible men, but Barbara felt that this was the calm before the attack. She was constantly on the defensive, waiting for Mary to say or do something wrong, and the fact that she didn’t only made the tension in Barbara greater. So much so, that Barbara found herself reacting to Mary’s simplest remarks with cool caution rather than sisterly affection.

  On the Sunday evening before she was to start work, Barbara spent an hour in her bedroom preparing her uniform for the next morning. Josie, as usual, sat with her, silent, watching Barbara’s deft fingers make up a frilled cap and put the buttons into her uniform dress. Barbara watched the child covertly, and smiled a little at the concentration on the pale little face as Josie tried to follow each step in cap-making.

  “I wish she were mine –” The thought slid into her mind unbidden and, almost with panic, Barbara tried to push it back. But she couldn’t. She loved Josie, and Jamie, and she did wish they were her children. She wished she could be the
person who could make Josie the happy chattering child she ought to be, instead of the silent, nervous scrap she was. And she wished too, that the house, the comfortable warm house that was so attractive, was hers, also.

  Her fingers stopped their work, and fell into her lap, and Barbara sat staring out of the window, her face abstracted.

  “I suppose Mary’s right, in a way. I do want all this – the security of marriage, the comfort of a husband and children – I suppose that’s why I got so angry when she said so – it hurt –”

  “What are you thinking about, Auntie Bar?”

  Josie’s voice shattered her thoughts. “Mmm?” Barbara bent her head to her cap again. “Thinking about? Oh, nothing very much. About – people I know.”

  “I wish I was you,” Josie said suddenly, after a pause.

  “Why, darling? It’s much nicer to be twelve, really it is – all sorts of exciting things to come –”

  Josie stretched her legs in front of her, and stared at her feet.

  “Oh nothing exciting will happen to me. I’ll just get married, I suppose –”

  “Wouldn’t that be exciting?”

  “I don’t think so – I’d much rather be a nurse, like you. I think being married must be awful. Having to tell people what to do all the time.”

  Barbara’s face creased with pain, suddenly, as she stared at the solemn child on the bed. “I hate Mary,” she thought viciously. “I hate her – to let a child think marriage is just that –”

  But she smoothed her face, and tried to speak lightly. “Oh, darling, it isn’t like that at all, really. Married people do have to tell people what to do sometimes, but not all the time –”

  “Mummy does,” Josie’s voice brooked no argument. “Auntie Bar, do you like Mummy?”

  Barbara felt sick for a moment. Had her hostility to her sister been so obvious? “Of course I do, sweetheart. Mummy is my sister. Of course I like her –”

  “I don’t think you do, really.” Josie raised her head and looked at her. “Do you know what? I think you’re like me. You wish Mummy would go away – Do you know what else? I wish Mummy would go away and you were here for always instead –”

  “Josie! Stop it! You mustn’t say things like that – it’s – It’s dreadful –”

  “I don’t care!” Josie’s voice rose shrilly. “It’s true. I hate Mummy – I love you. I wish you were my mother!”

  Barbara took Josie’s narrow shoulders and shook her gently, trying to damp down the hysteria rising in the child’s voice.

  “Josie, listen to me. You’re – you mustn’t say things like that. Mummy loves you a lot, and that’s why she – she has to tell you what to do and what not to do. You don’t bother to tell things like that to people you don’t love. Girls of your age always get cross with their mothers – it’s part of growing up. But if you say things like that, you’ll feel dreadful afterwards, when you aren’t angry with your mother any more. Don’t you see?”

  Josie’s soft mouth trembled a little, and then settled stubbornly into a line. “No I don’t,” she said flatly. “I do wish you were here all the time instead of Mummy –”

  Barbara’s hands dropped, and she looked down at the bent fair head with a feeling of defeat.

  “Why are you so angry with your mother, Josie?” she asked after a long moment.

  Josie shrugged. “I’m not specially angry –” she muttered.

  “Yes you are,” Barbara said gently. “You must be, or you wouldn’t have said that to me. Now, tell me what it is.”

  Josie raised her head, and looked at her aunt, her eyes stormy. Then her face crumpled, and she said, “I said I wanted to be a nurse, like you, and she said – she said –” Tears started to fall down her face.

  “What did she say, love?” Barbara sat down beside her, and put an arm round her shoulders. “What happened?”

  Josie leaned gratefully on her aunt, and gulped a little. “She said no daughter of hers was going to be a skivvy for anyone – she said – she said – she didn’t want me turning into a – a dreary spinster like you –” The child’s shoulders started to shake with huge sobs. “And you’re not! You’re not dreary – I love you, Auntie Bar, really I do – and I hate Mummy!” and she abandoned herself to uncontrolled weeping, throwing her thin arms across Barbara in an ecstasy of tears.

  Barbara sat rigid, staring across the room above the child in her lap, and her anger rose in a sick cold wave inside her. She wanted to cry too, like Josie, but her rage was too deep for tears. While part of her mind repeated with heavy monotony. “How dare she? How dare she? –” another part argued. “But she’s right, isn’t she? You want to be married, like Mary, don’t you? You want her life for yourself – her house – her marriage – her children –”

  Later that evening, after she had settled Josie into bed with a hot drink, Barbara stood in the darkened bedroom, looking down on the exhausted sleeping face on its primrose coloured pillow, and sighed. Josie felt better now, she knew, having poured out her anger and resentment against her mother.

  “She’ll forget it,” she told herself optimistically. “It’s just part of adolescence –” But she knew that whatever happened to Josie’s feelings, her own were too deeply lacerated to recover very quickly. Josie had said what Barbara herself hadn’t dared to put into words. To have been shown her own private and, to Barbara, wrong thoughts, by a child – that hurt desperately.

  “One thing’s certain,” Barbara told herself as she quietly closed the door on the sleeping child in the pretty frilly yellow room. “I must make an effort to be more friendly to Mary. I can’t let myself show my feelings before the children so clearly –”

  She was glad that Mary and Geoffrey were out, glad that Jamie had gone to a school play. “If they had been in,” she thought, “the whole thing would have boiled over into something quite dreadful. As it is, no one but Josie and I know about it –”

  So, when Monday morning came, she was relieved. With work to occupy her mind, she wouldn’t be able to brood so much on her feelings and problems with her relationship with Mary. Work was the best therapy she knew.

  Much to her surprise, she fell in love with the hospital. It was a converted manor house, and there were still unexpected steps up and down, odd corners that clearly showed the origins of the house, and the place had an atmosphere that was comforting.

  Matron showed her around properly on that first morning on duty. She was a bustling, fat, happy woman, whose tongue was never still, who wore her uniform with an air of “Lawks-a-mussy-me-this-is-none-of-I.”

  To Barbara, used to the super-efficient Matron of the Royal, who looked as though she had been born in her uniform, this Matron came as a rather pleasant change. Matron Elliott was for all the world like an old-fashioned children’s nanny, with her big soft bust, her billowing hips spreading widely under her tight black belt, her well-polished old black shoes pushed out of shape by bunions. Her hair was iron grey and curled in wild tendrils that she was forever pushing under the edge of the big old-fashioned white veil that she wore.

  “What a pretty uniform that Royal one is, isn’t it, Sister Hughes? I do like the wide skirts so much – and that pretty frilly cap – you’ll be a real ornament about the old place, really you will. Now, here’s our men’s ward. Twelve beds, you see, and nearly always full, every one of them – it’s a nice ward, isn’t it? It was the library of the old house – that’s why it’s so cosy, I think – Mr. Hunniset, you know you shouldn’t be out of bed at this time of the morning, now – what? Oh well, hurry along then, and no smoking in the lavatory, mind – Ah, Nurse Field! Here is Sister Hughes – if you need any help, just ask her, won’t you –” Barbara nodded a little breathlessly at the young assistant nurse in her lilac dress and butterfly cap, before Matron swept her inexorably on her way. She barely had time to look at the bright little men’s ward, with its panelled walls painted in cream, the red counterpanes on the dozen beds, the men who peered curiously at her over the
ir morning newspapers.

  “This is the women’s ward, now. Twelve beds again, nearly all medical cases, though we do the odd bit of surgery – this was the drawing-room of the old house – that’s why it has so many windows – do you like the curtains? They were a gift from your sister – very generous to us, is Mrs. Martin – Good morning Mrs. Innes! How’s the chest this morning? Better? – good – ah, Nurse Morgan – here is Sister Hughes. You’ll find her a great help if you need any – Nurse trained at the Royal Dover Hospital, Sister – a local girl – getting married soon, aren’t you, Nurse? –”

  Barbara smiled at the blushing blonde staff nurse, and the large, panting woman she was helping out of bed into a wheelchair, and then followed Matron on her way through to the end of the ward.

  “Now!” Matron pushed open the door at the end, and stood back to smile at Barbara as she pushed her hair under her veil for the umpteenth time. “Here is our children’s ward. Just the four cots, you see, and very nice, don’t you think?”

  It was delightful. A room with a glass wall all down one side, overlooking a lawn starred with daffodils and with a couple of venerable elm trees to give shade. The four cots were pushed against the walls, and in the centre of the room a big play pen held a couple of fat babies. In two of the cots another couple of toddlers sat pulling dolls to pieces, one of them with chocolate smeared happily over his face, the other wearing, very solemnly, a bandage over one ear.

  A coal fire burned cheerfully behind a high Victorian fireguard, and a middle-aged woman in the uniform of an assistant nurse stood in one corner busily ironing babies’ nightdresses. It was more like a private nursery than a hospital ward. Matron, with a flick of her skirts that displayed an expanse of black-stockinged leg surmounted by dark green bloomers, hopped over the edge of the playpen and squatted down beside the babies, hugging them to her ample bosom in an expansive loving gesture. They squealed with pleasure, and climbed all over her, while Barbara stood and laughed delightedly at the whole charming picture.