The Lonely One Page 6

  But she had no time to think about it, for to her complete surprise, David, beside her, suddenly whirled her round, held her very close, and kissed her extremely thoroughly, in a way that bruised her mouth, and made her want to pull away from him. But she couldn’t move, so firm was David’s grip.

  When he released her at last, she pulled back, her hand against her sore mouth, and looked at him over it, her eyes shadowed in the dimness.

  ‘Thank you for supper – er – both of you – ’ She stopped, unable to look at Josh and Bobby, aware that Bobby still had her arms twined about Josh’s neck, that she was holding on to him as if she had no intention of ever letting go.

  ‘Goodnight, David,’ she said again, just as David seemed about to make another lunge at her, and turned and almost ran through the door into the Home.

  Josh, looking over Bobby’s shoulder at the flick of green skirt disappearing, felt a sudden twinge of something rare for him – embarrassment. He had always taken his pleasures easily and gaily, not being in the least perturbed if another couple were about when he kissed a girl goodnight. After all, why should he? None of the girls he ever met had mattered to him very much, except as delightful creatures who were fun. Why care? But this quiet, shy child, as he thought of her, somehow embarrassed him, making him see himself, for a fleeting moment, through someone else’s eyes.

  But then Bobby put up her inviting lips again, and David muttered a glum ‘Goodnight’ before making his way across the garden towards the courtyard and the doctor’s commonroom, and Josh, left with a very pretty and willing girl, forgot his moment’s embarrassment and enthusiastically co-operated with Bobby.

  It was twenty minutes later when Bobby came upstairs, by which time Bridget was already in bed, lying in the darkness and staring at the dim shape of the window, trying to sort out her confused thoughts, still feeling David’s experienced and alarming kiss on her mouth.

  Bobby put the light on, and sat down beside Bridget, smiling at her in a warm friendliness that brought all Bridget’s need for her friendship and approbation bubbling up inside her.

  ‘Hello, love,’ Bobby said softly. ‘Are you at all annoyed with me?’

  ‘Why – why should I be?’ Bridget said lamely.

  ‘Well, it was you that Josh asked out – and we did change partners, didn’t we?’

  ‘He – he only asked me out of pity – because I fainted,’ Bridget said honestly. ‘I mean – I’m not his type, am I? He – he needs someone like you, who can talk like he does – ’

  Bobby, with a sort of rueful smile on her face, said, ‘Well, I think you could be right, lovey – ’

  ‘And you did see him first, anyway – ’ Bridget was trying not to remember the sharp pain she had felt when she saw Bobby kissing Josh, trying to forget the way Josh had looked in the restaurant, the way his eyes looked when he smiled, the warm notes of his voice, the way his hands had felt on her shoulders that morning, when he had caught her and stopped her from fainting all over Mr Jeffcoate.

  ‘Oh, please – ’ Bobby seemed suddenly embarrassed. ‘I know I said that at the party, but I’d had a drink or two, you know, and – well – I mean, if I thought Josh liked you best, I wouldn’t dream of trying anything with him. I mean, a girl’s got her pride, hasn’t she? But it just seems to me that really David likes you better than he likes me – he did kiss you goodnight.’

  ‘That was just because I was there,’ Bridget said, with a surprising shrewdness. ‘I think he’s the sort who doesn’t really notice people – I mean, a girl is a girl – not a person.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ Bobby scoffed. ‘Of course he likes you best – and I rather think that Josh likes me – which is tidy and convenient, to say the least!’ She smiled with sudden reminiscence. ‘He certainly behaved as if he liked me, downstairs just now – ’ and Bridget dropped her gaze, feeling the sharp pain of acute – what? She didn’t know, but she certainly felt it. Maybe it was shame, she thought miserably, because it is shaming when a man asks you out from pity, and then prefers someone else’s company. ‘I’m so tired I could sleep for a week – I’m for bed, sweetie. And Josh says there’ll be another party in the mess next week, and of course we’re all invited – Liz’ll be tickled to death. She’s mad about that Ken of hers – ’ Night, Bridget. See you at breakfast.’

  ‘ ’Night,’ Bridget echoed, and then lay in the dark for a long time, staring at the window, trying to sleep, but too mixed up and almost too tired to.

  She woke next morning feeling heavy-headed and leaden-limbed, dragging herself on duty to face another day of hard work, of Barnett’s nagging, who as next in seniority was Bridget’s guide about the ward, to face Sister’s now definite dislike of her, to the sounds and sights and smells of the ward that seemed so dreadful to her.

  But she survived the day, the long hours of running about the ward, the bed-pan and bottle rounds, the sluice scrubbing, the fetching and carrying, the bed-making and locker polishing, the serving and collection of meals, the washing of patients – everything. And she survived the next day and the next, till suddenly she realised that it wasn’t quite as hard work as it had been, that the patients were no longer an amorphous crowd of frightening people, but individuals, some nice, some unpleasant, some cheerful, some perpetually moaning.

  She began to like the work she did, to take a real pleasure in the muttered ‘Thank you’ from a man whose bed she had made more comfortable, to enjoy the appreciation with which a very ill patient sipped the orange juice she had prepared for him, to appreciate the way a man would be grateful for a friendly word from her while she cleaned his locker. Even the really difficult jobs, like helping a grown man with a bedpan, a man so miserably embarrassed by her ministrations that he almost wept with it, became worth doing. She learned, gradually, how to help the men lose their shame, learned how to be relaxed and make them relaxed.

  She became quicker in her work about the ward, more deft, and managed to avoid the clumsiness that so enraged Sister Youngs, so that that lady began to develop a grudging respect for Bridget, began to wonder if she had misjudged her.

  ‘Certainly,’ she told Sister Chessman, at the end of Bridget’s first month on the ward. ‘She learns fast. And she seems to care about the patients as people, which is important. I know they like her, which is a good sign. I mean, if she was just putting on a show for me, when I was around, the men’d soon see through it, and let me know they didn’t like her – Apart, as I say, from a possible tendency to be a bit of an exhibitionist when it suits her, I think she’ll make a fairly good nurse – ’ And Sister Chessman marked Bridget’s file with a query, and sighed, wondering whether she too, had been misjudging Bridget. This was, after all, a good ward report, compared with some she had received on others in the new class.

  Rather to Bridget’s relief, the projected party in the mess had to be cancelled, because of a sudden epidemic of flu among the medical staff – so many men were off sick there was no time for a party, even if any of them had wanted to have one without their missing colleagues. For the same reason Bridget saw little of a very busy Josh, only sometimes scuttling past him on ward rounds, while she ran one of the lowly errands that were her lot, blushing when he managed a friendly wink in her direction.

  And then, one morning in early May, when there was at last a real hint of summer in the air, Bridget was in the little cupboard that ran off the lobby of the ward – the cupboard used for testing urine specimens – scrubbing the shelves and relabelling the bottles. She was singing under her breath, quite enjoying the job, taking an almost housewifely pleasure in the tidy shelves, the freshly scrubbed wooden working surface, the gleam of the chrome taps over the tiny sink.

  Josh put his head round the door and grinned at the flushed face that met his eyes, the roughened hands that were busily rubbing at a recalcitrant spot on the wooden shelf above her.

  ‘Hello, Tiddler. Thought I heard your mellifluous tones as I hurried by on my errands of mercy – going to give the push
to at least three of your patients this morning, I am – how’s things in your little world?’

  She felt her heart lurch sickeningly inside her at the nearness of him, the smile in his eyes so close to hers, and swallowed.

  ‘Er – er, hello,’ she said awkwardly, avoiding his eyes, and scrubbing busily at the now vanished spot. ‘Fine, thanks. How are you?’

  ‘Worked to death as usual,’ he said, leaning against the door, and smiling down at her obvious confusion. ‘Honestly, Tiddler, you are sweet. I’ve never met anyone as shy as you are – really I haven’t.’

  She didn’t answer, wishing desperately that she could, but completely unable to think of the sort of flippant, gay thing Bobby would have said in the same situation.

  ‘You know, Tiddler.’ He was almost serious suddenly. ‘I never did apologise for what happened that night we all went out to supper.’

  ‘Apologise? What for?’ Bridget was genuinely surprised. It had never occurred to her that Josh had anything to apologise for. Admittedly, he had taken her out, and should, in all courtesy, have spent the evening concentrating on her, but if she herself was too dull to interest him it was hardly any fault of Josh’s – or so she argued within herself.

  ‘Well, never mind,’ he said, a little shy himself for once, and then smiled again. ‘Listen, let me make it up to you – what say we go out for a drive somewhere tomorrow? Hmm? Spring is really and truly here at last, and we could get out to the country in no time in my old jalopy – poor but hard working, like me, that car. What do you say?’

  She looked at him then, part of her aching to say, ‘Yes – oh, yes please!’ and his eyes looked down at her in a way that made her head swim suddenly, delightfully. But almost without thinking about it, she heard Bobby’s voice in her mind’s ear, ‘I mean, a girl’s got her pride, hasn’t she? – if I thought Josh liked you best, I wouldn’t dream of trying anything with him – he certainly behaved as if he liked me – ’

  And even though I’m dull, Bridget thought desperately, looking up at the face above hers, a face she was coming to care a great deal for, even if I am dull and a bit stupid about men, I’ve got my pride too. He only asked me out of pity the first time – and now he’s asking me out of pity again, because he really likes Bobby better than me, and thinks I might be hurt –

  ‘No – no thank you,’ she said baldly, and dropped her gaze before the look of surprise on his face, dropped her eyes too soon to see that he was hurt as well as surprised.

  ‘Phew – !’ he said after a moment, his voice a little strained. ‘Well, that’s me told off! I didn’t mean to make you as mad as that, you know. No need to bite my head off – ’

  She could have wept at that. If he’d only understand how hard she found it to talk to men, how little experience she had of saying ‘no’ gracefully –

  ‘I didn’t mean to be rude – ’ she managed. ‘It’s just that – well, I’m rather busy just now – ’

  ‘Oh, well, not to worry!’ he said, with an apparent return of his usual cheerfulness. ‘Sorry I bothered you – see you!’ and he was gone, on into the ward to drink coffee with a friendly Sister Youngs, and go through the notes of the patients to be discharged. And Bridget was left in her little cupboard, still scrubbing shelves, but with every scrap of sunshine gone out of her day. But a girl’s got her pride, she told herself stubbornly. And I can’t bear to be pitied. So that’s that.

  Chapter 6

  Spring made its reluctant change to summer, and suddenly, their first three months as full students at the Royal were past, and Bridget and her class found themselves in the heady position of having a class junior to them in the hospital. They moved from the Lambing Pen, in the dining room, behind the door, to the next table up, where they ate their meals in gay and relaxed postures, so that the new juniors at the table behind the door could steal admiring and awed glances at them, just as they had themselves in the days when they had been fresh out of PTS.

  The new class meant, too, that a reshuffle of staff was necessary, and Bridget found herself assigned to the Casualty department. Bobby was sent to the Male Surgical ward, a move which delighted her, Judith to the Out-patient department, and Liz to one of the Children’s wards, which pleased her rather – she had a genuine liking for children, and found that most of them liked her, which was half the battle in any form of child care.

  In one way, Bridget was relieved to be away from Male Surgical. It meant she would see less of Josh, who, as senior surgical registrar, inevitably spent a lot of time there. Ever since that day when Bridget had so baldly refused to go out with him, he had seemed to Bridget to change somehow. He was still friendly, still gay, and amusing when he met her, but in an oddly distant way. He didn’t call her Tiddler, for example, a nickname she had liked to hear on his lips, made no further attempt to talk to her on her own. And this helped a bit – but not much. For Bridget couldn’t deny to herself that Josh had become a very important person in her life, yet she knew she had no right to regard him as anything other than an acquaintance. Every time she saw him, she felt her knees shake, something deep inside her taking a sickening lurch, felt her face flame with a hot blush. But even as she felt so, she reminded herself sternly that he was Bobby’s friend, not hers. It was Bobby he took out, Bobby he kissed ‘Goodnight’ on the Home doorstep, Bobby who always sat next to him when they went out in a crowd, as they often did.

  This was the hardest part of it all, she would tell herself bleakly. They often went out in a noisy group of eight, the four girls, with Josh escorting Bobby, Ken escorting Liz, and a fresh-faced young anaesthetist called Clive Damant escorting Judith, and the silent David always with Bridget. It was odd, really, she would tell herself, undressing wearily after these evenings out. David has never once asked me out in so many words – he’s hardly said more than a few words to me, anyway. Yet we seem to be stuck with each other.

  And indeed, so it was. Bobby, still the prime mover in the tight little group, would come bouncing into her room, to tell her cheerfully that they were all going out to a cinema, or on a country pub crawl, or to eat hot-dogs and hamburgers at the funfair in Battersea, or whatever she and Josh had planned between them. Neither Liz nor Judith had the least objection to having plans like this made for them, as long as they were assured that Clive and Ken would be there, and when Bridget once said to Bobby that she didn’t want to go, Bobby had flown into a furious temper.

  ‘But I just don’t want to go out tonight – I’m tired – we’ve been terribly busy on Cas, and I want to go to bed early – ’ Bridget said pleadingly.

  But Bobby wouldn’t hear of it. They were all friends weren’t they? she asked in a voice that made the tired Bridget shiver suddenly.

  ‘And if we are, it means we do things in a crowd – we like to be together. If you want to turn into a drear like that Jackson, or a swot or something, just say the word, and we’ll keep out of your way. If you don’t want us, we don’t want you – ’

  And inevitably, Bridget went out with the crowd, to sit again with David, to listen to the others chatter, to try not to watch the way Bobby snuggled close to Josh at every possible opportunity, to try not to see the way he would drop casual kisses on her upturned face, or would sit with an arm round her waist.

  Even the way David took it for granted that she, too, wanted to neck, like the others, was something she learned to tolerate. She couldn’t pretend, even to herself, that she really liked his kisses, or even accorded him more than the casual regard she had for any of the others – except Josh of course. But she couldn’t bear the thought of being shut out of the company of her three friends. Even though she had been at the Royal for more than six months now, she had made no other friends. The four of them were so self-contained, there had been no real opportunity for her to make friends among any of the other nurses. They had formed their own groups and cliques and there was no room for Bridget in any of them. If she had not had Bobby and Liz and Judith, she would have been quite without friend
s, and the thought of returning to the loneliness of her previous existence made her shudder.

  But in spite of the ever-present ache about Josh, in spite of the depressing tedium of having David kiss and fondle her, she was happy. Casualty was an exciting and interesting place in which to work, and as she became more senior, she was taught to do ever more complicated work in the department. She learned to apply dressings, to bandage wounds and help put plaster casts on broken limbs, to give injections, to assist in the minor operating room attached to the department, and she gloried in her new skills, and took a real pride and interest in her work. Casualty Sister seemed to like her, which was refreshing to say the least, after the sort of armed truce her relationship with Sister Youngs in Male Surgical had been.

  She found time, too, to study, to keep up with the lectures that they attended during the week, to plan her work for the next study block the class would go to, just before their Preliminary State Examinations. She would spend hours of her daytime off duty in the classroom, reading and studying for the sheer pleasure of it, enjoying tracking down information about a patient she may have seen in the course of her work in Casualty; but she never told the others about the time she spent thus, knowing quite well that they would laugh at her, sneer almost, for all three of the others had short patience for the people they scornfully labelled as swots.

  And then, late one evening, just before she was due off duty, she was in the department rolling bandages ready for the next morning’s dressing clinic, alone with one of the very few juniors from the class after hers, while Sister was off duty for the evening, and the staff nurse in charge had slipped off to have a quiet natter with a friend on one of the wards. The department was completely empty of patients, and the staff nurse, a rather giddy girl with a decidedly underdeveloped sense of responsibility, told Bridget that if anything came in, she was to cope if she could, and if she couldn’t, to send the junior to find her.