Nell went to see Mrs Curtis, the Red Cross Commandant. Mrs Curtis was benign and affable. She was enjoying her importance and was convinced that she was a born organizer. Actually, she was a very bad one. But everyone said she had a wonderful manner. She condescended graciously to Nell.
‘Let me see, Mrs – ah! Deyre. You’ve got your VAD and Nursing Certificates?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you don’t belong to any of the local detachments?’
Nell’s exact standing was discussed at some length.
‘Well, we must see what we can do for you,’ said Mrs Curtis. ‘The hospital is fully staffed at present, but of course they are always falling out. Two days after the first convoy came in, we had seventeen resignations. All women of a certain age. They didn’t like the way the sisters spoke to them. I myself think the sisters were perhaps a little unnecessarily brutal, but of course there’s a great deal of jealousy of the Red Cross. And these were all well-to-do women who didn’t like being “spoken to”. You are not sensitive in that way, Mrs Deyre?’
Nell said that she didn’t mind anything.
‘That is the spirit,’ said Mrs Curtis approvingly. ‘I myself,’ she continued, ‘consider it in the light of good discipline. And where should we all be without discipline?’
It shot through Nell’s mind that Mrs Curtis had not had to endure any discipline, which robbed her pronouncement of some of its impressiveness. But she continued to stand there looking attentive and impressed.
‘I have a list of girls on the reserve,’ continued Mrs Curtis. ‘I will add your name. Two days a week you will attend at the Out Patient ward at the Town Hospital, and thereby gain a little experience. They are short-handed there and are willing to accept our help. Then you and Miss –’ she consulted a list – ‘I think Miss Cardner – yes, Miss Cardner – will go with the District Nurse on her rounds on Tuesdays and Fridays. You’ve got your uniform, of course. Then that is all right.’
Mary Cardner was a pleasant plump girl whose father was a retired butcher. She was very friendly to Nell, explained that the days were Wednesday and Saturday and not Tuesday and Friday – ‘But old Curtis always gets something wrong’ – that the District Nurse was a dear, and never jumped on you and that Sister Margaret at the hospital was a holy terror.
On the following Wednesday, Nell did her first round with the District Nurse, a little bustling woman very much overworked. At the end of the day, she patted Nell kindly on the shoulder.
‘I’m glad to see you have a head on your shoulders, my dear. Really some of the girls who come seem to me half-witted – they do indeed. And such fine ladies – you wouldn’t believe! Not by birth – I don’t mean that. But half-educated girls who think nursing is all smoothing a pillow and feeding the patient with grapes. You’ll know your way about in no time.’
Heartened by this, Nell presented herself at the Out Patient Department at the given time without too much trepidation. She was received by a tall gaunt Sister with a malevolent eye.
‘Another raw beginner,’ she grumbled. ‘Mrs Curtis sent you, I suppose? I’m sick of that woman. Takes me more time and trouble teaching silly girls who think they know everything than it would to do everything myself.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Nell meekly.
‘Get a couple of certificates, attend a dozen lectures and think you know everything,’ said Sister Margaret bitterly. ‘Here they come. Don’t get in my way more than you can help.’
A typical batch of patients were assembled. A young boy with legs riddled with ulcers, a child with scalded legs from an overturned kettle, a girl with a needle in her finger, various sufferers with ‘bad ears’, ‘bad legs’, ‘bad arms’.
Sister Margaret said sharply to Nell:
‘Know how to syringe an ear? I thought not. Watch me.’
Nell watched.
‘You can do it next time,’ said Sister Margaret. ‘Get the bandage off that boy’s finger, and let him soak it in hot boracic and water till I’m ready for him.’
Nell felt nervous and clumsy. Sister Margaret was paralysing her. Almost immediately, it seemed, Sister was by her side.
‘We haven’t got all day here to do things in,’ she remarked. ‘There, leave it to me. You seem to be all thumbs. Soak the bandages off that kid’s legs. Tepid water.’
Nell got a basin of tepid water and knelt down before the child, a mere mite of three. She was badly burnt, and the bandages had stuck to the tiny legs. Nell sponged and soaked very gently, but the baby screamed. It was a loud long-drawn yell of terror and agony, and it defeated Nell utterly.
She felt suddenly sick and faint. She couldn’t do this work – she simply couldn’t do it. She drew back, and as she did so she glanced up to find Sister Margaret watching her, a gleam of malicious pleasure showing in her eye.
‘I thought you couldn’t stick it,’ that eye said.
It rallied Nell as nothing else would have done. She bent her head, and setting her teeth, went on with her job, trying to avert her mind from the child’s shrieks. It was done at last, and Nell stood up, white and trembling and feeling deathly sick.
Sister Margaret came along. She seemed disappointed.
‘Oh, you’ve done it,’ she said. She spoke to the child’s mother. ‘I’d be a bit more careful how you let the child get at the kettle in future, Mrs Somers,’ she said.
Mrs Somers complained that you couldn’t be everywhere at once.
Nell was ordered off to foment a poisoned finger. Next, she assisted Sister to syringe the ulcerated leg, and after that stood by while a young doctor extracted the needle from the girl’s finger. As he probed and cut, the girl winced and shrank and he spoke to her sharply.
‘Keep quiet, can’t you?’
Nell thought: ‘One never sees this side of things. One is only used to a doctor with a bedside manner. “I’m afraid this will hurt a little. Be as still as you can.”’
The young doctor proceeded to extract a couple of teeth, flinging them carelessly on the floor, then he treated a smashed hand that had just come in from an accident.
It was not, Nell reflected, that he was unskilful. It was the absence of manner that was so disturbing to one’s preconceived ideas. Whatever he did, Sister Margaret accompanied him, tittering in a sycophantic manner at any jokes he was pleased to make. Of Nell he took no notice.
At last the hour was over. Nell was thankful. She said goodbye timidly to Sister Margaret.
‘Like it?’ asked Sister with a demoniac grin.
‘I’m afraid I’m very stupid,’ said Nell.
‘How can you be anything else?’ said Sister Margaret. ‘A lot of amateurs like you Red Cross people. And thinking you know everything on earth. Well, perhaps, you’ll be a little less clumsy next time!’
Such was Nell’s encouraging début at the hospital.
It grew less terrible as time went on, however. Sister Margaret softened, and relaxed her attitude of fierce defensiveness. She even permitted herself to answer questions.
‘You’re not so stuck up as most,’ she allowed graciously.
Nell, in her turn, was impressed by the enormous amount of competent work Sister Margaret managed to put in in a very short time. And she understood a little her soreness on the subject of amateurs.
What struck Nell most was the enormous number of ‘bad legs’ and their prototypes, most of them evidently old friends. She asked Sister Margaret timidly about them.
‘Nothing much to be done about it,’ Sister Margaret replied. ‘Hereditary, most of them. Bad blood. You can’t cure it.’
Another thing that impressed Nell was the uncomplaining heroism of the poor. They came and were treated, suffered great pain, and went off to walk several miles home without a thought.
She saw it too in their homes. She and Mary Cardner had taken over a certain amount of the District Nurse’s round. They washed bedridden old women, tended ‘bad legs’, occasionally washed and tended babies whose mothers were too ill to do anything. The cottages were small, the windows usually hermetically sealed, and the place littered with treasures dear to the hearts of the owners. The stuffiness was often unbearable.
The worst shock was about two weeks after beginning work, when they found a bedridden old man dead in his bed and had to lay him out. But for Mary Cardner’s matter-of-fact cheerfulness, Nell felt she could not have done it.
The District Nurse praised them.
‘You’re good girls. And you’re being a real help.’ They went home glowing with satisfaction. Never in her life had Nell so appreciated a hot bath and a lavish allowance of bath salts.
She had had two postcards from Vernon. Mere scrawls saying he was all right and everything was splendid. She wrote to him every day describing her adventures, trying to make them sound as amusing as possible. He wrote back:
‘Somewhere in France.
‘Darling Nell,
‘I’m all right. Feeling splendidly fit. It’s all a great adventure, but I do long to see you. I do wish you wouldn’t go into these beastly cottages and places and mess about with diseased people. I’m sure you’ll catch something. Why you want to, I can’t think. I’m sure it isn’t necessary. Do give it up.
‘We think mostly about our food out here, and the Tommies think of nothing but their tea. They’ll risk being blown to bits any time for a cup of hot tea. I have to censor their letters. One man always ends “Yours till Hell freezes,” so I’ll say the same. ‘Yours Vernon.’
One morning Nell received a telephone call from Mrs Curtis.
‘There is a vacancy for a ward maid, Mrs Deyre. Afternoon duty. Be at the hospital at two-thirty.’
The Town Hall of Wiltsbury had been turned into a hospital. It was a big new building standing in the cathedral square and overshadowed by the tall spire of the cathedral. A handsome being in uniform with a game leg and medals received her kindly at the front entrance.
‘You’ve come to the wrong door, Missie. Staff through the quartermaster’s stores. Here, the scout will show you the way.’
A diminutive scout conducted her down steps, through a kind of gloomy crypt where an elderly lady in Red Cross uniform sat surrounded with bales of hospital shirts, wearing several shawls and shivering a good deal, then along stoneflagged passages, and finally into a gloomy underground chamber where she was received by Miss Curtain, the chief of the ward maids, a tall thin lady with a face like a dreaming duchess and charming gentle manners.
Nell was instructed in her duties which were simple enough to understand. They entailed hard work, but no difficulty. A certain area of stone passages and steps to scrub. Then the nurses’ tea to lay, wait on, and finally clear away. Then the ward maids had their own tea. Then the same routine for supper.
Nell soon got the hang of things. The salient points of the new life were, one, war with the kitchen, two, the difficulty of providing the sisters with the right kind of tea.
There was a long table where the VAD nurses sat, pouring down in a stream, frantically hungry, and always the food seemed to fail before the last three were seated. You then applied to the kitchen through a tube and got a biting rejoinder. The right amount of bread and butter had been sent up, three pieces for each. Somebody must have eaten more than their share. Loud disclaimers from the VADs. They chatted to each other amiably and freely, addressing each other by their surnames.
‘I didn’t eat your slice of bread, Jones. I wouldn’t do such a mean thing!’ ‘They always send it up wrong.’ ‘Look here, Catford’s got to have something to eat. She’s got an op. in half an hour.’ ‘Hurry up, Bulgy (an affectionate nickname, this) we’ve got all those mackintoshes to scrub.’
Very different the behaviour at the sisters’ table at the other side of the room. Conversation there went on genteelly in frosty whispers. Before each sister was a small brown pot of tea. It was Nell’s business to know exactly how strong each sister liked it. It was never a question of how weak! To bring ‘washy’ tea to a sister was to fall from grace for ever.
The whispers went on incessantly.
‘I said to her: “Naturally the surgical cases receive the first attention.”’ ‘I only passed the remark, so to speak.’ ‘Pushing herself forward. Always the same thing.’ ‘Would you believe it, she forgot to hold the towel for the doctor’s hands.’ ‘I said to Doctor this morning …’ ‘I passed the remark to Nurse …’
Again and again that one phrase recurred. ‘I passed the remark.’ Nell grew to listen for it. When she approached the table, the whispers became lower and the sisters looked at her suspiciously. Their conversation was secretive and shrouded in dignity. With enormous formality, they offered each other tea.
‘Some of mine, Sister Westhaven? There’s plenty in the pot.’ ‘Would you oblige me with the sugar, Sister Carr?’ ‘Pardon me.’
Nell had just begun to realize the hospital atmosphere, the feuds, the jealousies, the cabals, and the hundred and one undercurrents, when she was promoted to the ward, one of the nurses having gone sick.
She had a row of twelve beds to attend to, mostly surgical cases. Her companion was Gladys Potts, a small giggling creature, intelligent but lazy. The ward was under the charge of Sister Westhaven, a tall thin acid woman with a look of permanent disapproval. Nell’s heart sank when she saw her, but later she congratulated herself. Sister Westhaven was far the pleasantest nurse in the hospital to work under.
There were five sisters in all. Sister Carr, round and good-tempered looking. The men liked her and she giggled and joked with them a good deal, and was then late over her dressings and hurried over them. She called the VADs ‘dear’, and patted them affectionately but her temper was uncertain. She herself was so unpunctual that everything went wrong and the ‘dear’ was blamed for it. She was maddening to work under.
Sister Barnes was impossible. Everyone said so. She ranted and scolded from morning to night. She hated VADs and let them know it. ‘I’ll teach them to come here thinking they know everything,’ was her constant declaration. Apart from her biting sarcasm, she was a good nurse, and some of the girls liked working under her in spite of her lashing tongue.
Sister Dunlop was a dug-out. She was kindly and placid, but thoroughly lazy. She drank a great deal of tea and did as little work as possible.
Sister Norris was theatre sister. She was competent at her job, rouged her lips and was cattish to her underlings.
Sister Westhaven was by far the best nurse in the hospital. She was enthusiastic over work and was a good judge of those under her. If they showed promise she was reasonably amiable to them. If she judged them fools they led a miserable life.
On the fourth day, she said to Nell:
‘I thought you weren’t worth much at first, Nurse. But you’ve got a good lot of work in you.’
So much imbued by now was Nell by the hospital spirit that she went home in the seventh heaven.
Little by little she sank into the hospital rut. At first she had suffered a heartrending pang at the sight of the wounded. The first dressing of wounds at which she assisted was almost more than she could bear. Those who ‘Longed to nurse’ usually brought a certain amount of emotionalism to the task. But they were soon purged of it. Blood, wounds, suffering were everyday matters.
Nell was popular with the men. In the slack hour after tea, she wrote letters for them, fetched books she thought they would like from the shelves at the end of the ward, heard stories of their families and sweethearts. She became in common with the other nurses zealous to defend them from the cruelties and stupidities of the would-be kind.
On visitors’ days streams of elderly ladies arrived. They sat down by beds and did their best to ‘cheer our brave soldier’.
Certain things were conventions. ‘You’re longing to get back, I suppose?’ And ‘Yes, M’am,’ was always the answer given. Descriptions were sought of the Angels at Mons.
There were also concerts. Some were well organized and were thoroughly enjoyed. Others –! They were summed up by the nurse on the next row to Nell, Phillis Deacon.
‘Anybody who thinks they can sing, but has never been allowed to by their families, has got their chance now!’
There were also clergymen. Never, Nell thought, had she seen so many clergymen. One or two were appreciated. They were fine men, with sympathy and understanding, and they knew the right things to say and did not stress the religious side of their duties unduly. But there were many others.
‘Nurse.’
Nell paused in a hurried progress along the ward, having just been told sharply by Sister: ‘Nurse, your beds are crooked. No. 7’s sticking out.’
‘Yes.’
‘Couldn’t you wash me now, Nurse?’
Nell stared at the unusual request.
‘It’s not nearly half-past seven.’
‘It’s the parson. He’s at me to be confirmed. He’s coming in now.’
Nell took pity on him. The Reverend Canon Edgerton found his prospective convert barred from him by screens and basins of water.
‘Thank yer, Nurse,’ said the patient hoarsely. ‘It seems a bit hard to go on nagging at a feller when he can’t get away from yer, doesn’t it?’
Washing – interminable washing. The patients were washed, the ward was washed, and at every hour of the day there were mackintoshes to scrub.
And eternal tidiness.
‘Nurse – your beds. The bedclothes are hanging down on No. 9. No. 2 has pushed his bed sideways. What will Doctor think?’
Doctor – Doctor – Doctor. Morning, noon and night, Doctor! Doctor was a god. For a mere VAD to speak to Doctor was lese-majesty and brought down the vials of wrath on your head from Sister. Some of the VADs offended innocently. They were Wiltsbury girls and they knew the doctors – knew them as ordinary human beings. They said good morning blithely. Soon they knew better – knew they had been guilty of that awful sin ‘pushing yourself forward’. Mary Cardner ‘pushed herself forward’. Doctor asked for some scissors and unthinkingly, she handed him the pair she wore. Sister explained her crime to her at length. She ended thus:
‘I don’t say you mightn’t have done this. Seeing you had the exact thing that was wanted, you might have said to me – in a whisper, that is – “Is this what is needed, Sister?” And I would have taken them from you and handed them to Doctor. No one could have objected to that.’
You got tired of the word ‘Doctor’. Every remark Sister made was punctuated with it, even when speaking to him.
‘Yes, Doctor.’ ‘102 this morning, Doctor.’ ‘I don’t think so, Doctor.’ ‘Pardon, Doctor? I didn’t quite catch.’ ‘Nurse, hold the towel for Doctor’s hands.’
And you held the towel meekly, standing like a glorified towel horse. And Doctor, having wiped his sacred hands, flung the towel on the floor where you meekly picked it up. You poured water for Doctor, you handed soap to Doctor, and finally you received the command:
‘Nurse, open the door for Doctor.’
‘And what I’m afraid is, we shan’t be able to grow out of it afterwards,’ said Phillis Deacon wrathfully. ‘I shall never feel the same about doctors again. Even the scrubbiest little doctors I shall be subservient to, and when they come to dine, I shall find myself rushing to open the door for them. I know I shall.’
There was a great freemasonry in the hospital. Class distinctions were a thing of the past. The dean’s daughter, the butcher’s daughter, Mrs Manfred, who was the wife of a draper’s assistant, Phillis Deacon who was the daughter of a baronet, they all called each other by their surnames and shared the common interest of ‘What would there be for supper, and would it go round?’ Undoubtedly there was cheating. Gladys Potts, the giggler, was discovered to go down early and surreptitiously to filch an extra piece of bread and butter or an unfair helping of rice.
‘You know,’ said Phillis Deacon. ‘I do sympathize with servants now. One always thinks they mind so much about their food – and here are we getting just the same. It’s having nothing else to look forward to. I could have cried when the scrambled eggs didn’t go round last night.’
‘They oughtn’t to have scrambled eggs,’ said Mary Cardner angrily. ‘The eggs ought to be separate, poached or boiled. Scrambled gives too much opportunity to unscrupulous people.’
And she looked with significance at Gladys Potts, who giggled nervously and moved away.
‘That girl’s a slacker,’ said Phillis Deacon. ‘She’s always got something else to do when it’s screens. And she sucks up to Sister. It doesn’t matter with Westhaven. Westhaven’s fair. But she flattered little Carr till she got all the soft jobs.’
Little Potts was unpopular. Strenuous efforts were made to force her to do the more disagreeable work sometimes, but Potts was wily. Only the resourceful Deacon was a match for her.
There were also the jealousies amongst the doctors themselves. Naturally they all wanted the more interesting surgical cases. The allotting of cases to different wards gave rise to feeling.
Nell soon knew all the doctors and their various attributes. There was Doctor Lang, tall, untidy, slouching, with long nervous fingers. He was the cleverest surgeon of the lot. He had a sarcastic tongue, and was ruthless in his treatments, but he was clever. All the sisters adored him.
Then there was Doctor Wilbraham who had the fashionable practice of Wiltsbury. A big florid man, genial in temper when things went well, and the manners of a spoilt child when he was put out. If he was tired and cross he was unnecessarily rough and Nell hated him.
There was Doctor Meadows, a quiet efficient GP. He was content not to do operations and he gave every case unfailing attention. He always spoke politely to the VADs and omitted to throw towels on the floor.
Then there was Doctor Bury who was not supposed to be much good and who was himself convinced that he knew everything. He was always wishing to try extraordinary new methods, and he never continued one treatment for more than a couple of days. If one of his patients died, it was the fashion to say: ‘Do you wonder with Doctor Bury?’
Then there was young Doctor Keen, who had been invalided home from the front. He was little more than a medical student, but he was full of importance. He even demeaned himself to chat with the VADs, explaining the importance of an operation that had just taken place. Nell said to Sister Westhaven: ‘I didn’t know Doctor Keen was operating. I thought it was Doctor Lang.’ Sister replied grimly: ‘Doctor Keen held the leg. That’s all.’
Operations had been a nightmare to Nell at first. At the first one she attended, the floor rose at her, and a nurse led her out. She hardly dared to face Sister, but Sister was unexpectedly kind.
‘It’s partly the lack of air and the smell of the ether, Nurse,’ she said kindly. ‘Go into a short one next. You’ll get used to it.’
Next time Nell felt faint, but did not have to go out, the time after she felt sick only, and the time after that she didn’t feel sick at all.
Once or twice she was lent to help the theatre nurse clear up the operating theatre after an unusually big op. The place was like a shambles, blood everywhere. The theatre nurse was only eighteen, a determined slip of a thing. She owned to Nell that she had hated it at first.
‘The very first op. was a leg,’ she said. ‘Amputation. And Sister went off afterwards and left me to clear up, and I had to take the leg down to the furnace myself. It was awful.’
On her days out Nell went to tea with friends. Some of them were kindly old ladies and sentimentalized over her and told her she was splendid.
‘You don’t work on Sundays, do you, dear? Really? Oh, but that isn’t right. Sunday should be a day of rest.’
Nell pointed out gently that the soldiers had to be washed and fed on Sundays just as much as any other day, and the old ladies admitted this but seemed to think that the matter should have been better organized. They were also very distressed at Nell’s having to walk home alone at midnight.
Others were even more difficult.
‘I hear these hospital nurses give themselves great airs, ordering everyone about. I shouldn’t stand that kind of thing myself. I am willing to do anything I can to help in this dreadful war, but impertinence I will not stand. I told Mrs Curtis so, and she agreed it would be better for me not to do hospital work.’
To these ladies Nell made no reply at all.
The rumour of ‘the Russians’ was sweeping through England at this time. Everyone had seen them – or if not actually seen them, their cook’s second cousin had, which was practically the same thing. The rumour died hard – it was so pleasing and so exciting.
A very old lady who came to the hospital took Nell aside.
‘My dear,’ she said, ‘don’t believe that story. It’s true, but not in the way we think.’
Nell looked inquiringly at her.
‘Eggs!’ said the old lady in a poignant whisper. ‘Russian eggs! Several millions of them – to keep us from starving …’
Nell wrote all these things to Vernon. She felt terribly cut off from him. His letters were naturally terse and constrained and he seemed to dislike the idea of her working in hospital. He urged her again and again to go to London – enjoy herself …
How queer men were, Nell thought. They didn’t seem to understand. She would hate to be one of the ‘Keeping themselves bright for the Boys’ brigade. How soon you drifted apart when you were doing different things! She couldn’t share Vernon’s life and he couldn’t share hers.
The first agony of parting when she had felt sure he would be killed was over. She had fallen into the routine of wives. Four months had passed and he hadn’t been even wounded. He wouldn’t be. Everything was all right.
Five months after he had gone out he wired that he had got leave. Nell’s heart almost stopped beating. She was so excited! She went off to Matron and was granted leave of absence.
She travelled to London feeling strange and unusual in ordinary clothes. Their first leave!
It was true, really true! The leave train came in and disgorged its multitudes. She saw him. He was actually there. They met. Neither could speak. He squeezed her hand frantically. She knew then how afraid she had been …
That five days went by in a flash. It was like some queer delirious dream. She adored Vernon and he adored her, but they were in some ways like strangers to each other. He was off-hand when she spoke about France. It was all right – everything was all right. One made jokes about it and refused to treat it seriously. ‘For goodness’ sake, Nell, don’t sentimentalize. It’s awful to come home and find everyone with long faces. And don’t talk slush about our brave soldiers laying down their lives, etc. That sort of stuff makes me sick. Let’s get tickets for another show.’
Something in his absolute callousness perturbed her – it seemed somehow rather dreadful to treat everything so lightly. When he asked her what she had been doing, she could only give him hospital news, and that he didn’t like. He begged her again to give it up.
‘It’s a filthy job, nursing. I hate to think of your doing it.’
She felt chilled – rebuffed, then rebuked herself. They were together again. What did anything else matter?
They had a wild delightful time. They went to a show and danced every night. In the daytime they went shopping. Vernon bought her everything that took his fancy. They went to a Paris firm of dressmakers and sat there whilst airy young duchesses floated past in wisps of chiffon and Vernon chose the most expensive model. They felt horribly wicked but dreadfully happy when Nell wore it that night.
Then Nell told him he ought to go and see his mother. Vernon rebelled.
‘Oh, darling, I don’t want to! Our little short precious time. I can’t miss a minute of it.’
Nell pleaded. Myra would be terribly hurt and disappointed.
‘Well, then, you’ve got to come with me.’
‘No, that wouldn’t do at all.’
In the end, he went down to Birmingham for a flying visit. His mother made a tremendous fuss over him – greeted him with floods of what she called ‘glad proud tears’ – and trotted him round to see the Bents. Vernon came back seething with conscious virtue.
‘You are a hard-hearted devil, Nell. We’ve missed a whole day! God, how I’ve been slobbered over.’
He felt ashamed as soon as he had said it. Why couldn’t he love his mother better? Why did she always manage to rub him up the wrong way, no matter how good his resolutions were? He gave Nell a hug.
‘I didn’t mean it. I’m glad you made me go. You’re so sweet, Nell. You never think of yourself. It’s so wonderful being with you again. You don’t know …’
And she put on the French model gown and they went out to dine with a ridiculous feeling of having been model children and deserving a reward.
They had nearly finished dinner when Nell saw Vernon’s face change. It stiffened and grew anxious.
‘What is it?’
‘Nothing,’ he said hastily.
But she turned and looked behind her. At a small table against the wall was Jane.
Something cold seemed for a moment to rest on Nell’s heart. Then she said easily:
‘Why, it’s Jane. Let’s go and speak to her.’
‘No, I’d rather not.’ She was a little surprised by the vehemence of his tone. He saw that and went on: ‘I’m stupid, darling. I want to have you and nothing but you – not other people butting in. Have you finished? Let’s go. I don’t want to miss the beginning of the play.’
They paid the bill and went. Jane nodded to them carelessly and Nell waved her hand to her. They arrived at the theatre ten minutes early.
Later, as Nell was slipping the gown from her white shoulders, Vernon said suddenly:
‘Nell, do you think I shall ever write music again?’
‘Of course. Why not?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think I want to.’
She looked at him in surprise. He was sitting on a chair, frowning into space.
‘I thought it was the only thing you cared about.’
‘Cared about – cared about – that doesn’t express it in the least. It isn’t the things you care about that matter. It’s the things you can’t get rid of – the things that won’t let you go – that haunt you – like a face that you can’t help seeing even when you don’t want to …’
‘Darling Vernon – don’t –’
She came and knelt down beside him. He clutched her to him convulsively.
‘Nell – darling Nell – nothing matters but you … Kiss me …’
But he reverted presently to the topic. He said irrelevantly, ‘Guns make a pattern, you know. A musical pattern, I mean. Not the sound one hears. I mean the pattern the sound makes in space. I suppose that’s nonsense – but I know what I mean.’
And again a minute or two later:
‘If one could only get hold of it properly.’
Ever so slightly, she moved her body away from him. It was as though she challenged her rival. She never admitted it openly, but secretly she feared Vernon’s music. If only he didn’t care so much.
And tonight, at anyrate, she was triumphant. He drew her back holding her close, showering kisses on her.
But long after Nell was asleep Vernon lay staring into the darkness, seeing against his will, Jane’s face and the outline of her body in its dull green satin sheath as he had seen it against the crimson curtain at the restaurant.
He said to himself very softly under his breath:
‘Damn Jane.’
But he knew that you couldn’t get rid of Jane as easily as that.
He wished he hadn’t seen her.
There was something so damnably disturbing about Jane.
He forgot her the next day. It was their last, and it went terribly quickly.
All too soon, it was over.
It had been like a dream. Now the dream was over. Nell was back at the hospital. It seemed to her she had never been away. She waited desperately for the post – for Vernon’s first letter. It came – more ardent and unrestrained than usual, as though even censorship had been forgotten. Nell wore it against her heart and the indelible pencil came off on her skin. She wrote and told him so.
Life went on as usual. Dr Lang went out to the front and was replaced by an elderly doctor with a beard who said ‘Thank ye, thank ye, Sister,’ every time he was offered a towel or was helped on with his white linen coat. They had a slack time with most of the beds empty and Nell found the enforced idleness trying.
One day, to her surprise and delight, Sebastian walked in. He was home on leave and had come down to look her up. Vernon had asked him to.
‘You’ve seen him then?’
Sebastian said yes, his lot had taken over from Vernon.
‘And he’s all right?’
‘Oh, yes, he’s all right!’
Something in the way he said it caused her alarm. She pressed him. Sebastian frowned in perplexity.
‘It’s difficult to explain, Nell. You see, Vernon’s an odd beggar – always has been. He doesn’t like looking things in the face.’
He quelled the fierce retort that he saw rising to her lips.
‘I don’t mean in the least what you think I mean. He isn’t afraid. Lucky devil, I don’t think he knows what fear is. I wish I didn’t. No, it’s different from that. It’s the whole life – it’s pretty ghastly, you know. Dirt and blood and filth, and noise – above all, noise! Recurrent noise at fixed times. It gets on my nerves – so what must it do to Vernon’s?’
‘Yes, but what did you mean by not facing things?’
‘Simply that he won’t admit that there’s anything to face. He’s afraid of minding, so he says there’s nothing to mind. If he’d only admit that it’s a bloody filthy business like I do he’d be all right. But it’s like that old piano business – he won’t look at the thing fair and square. And it’s no good saying “there ain’t no such thing” when there is. But that’s always been Vernon’s way. He’s in good spirits – enjoys everything – and it isn’t natural. I’m afraid of his – Oh! I don’t know what I’m afraid of. But I know that telling yourself fairy stories is about the worst thing you can do. Vernon’s a musician, and he’s got the nerves of a musician. The worst of him is that he doesn’t know anything about himself. He never has.’
Nell looked troubled.
‘Sebastian, what do you think will happen?’
‘Oh, nothing, probably. What I should like to happen would be for Vernon to stop one – in as conveniently painless a place as possible and come back to be nursed for a bit.’
‘How I wish that would happen!’
‘Poor old Nell. It’s rotten for all you people. I’m glad I haven’t got a wife.’
‘If you had –’ Nell paused, then went on. ‘Would you want her to work in a hospital or would you rather she did nothing?’
‘Everybody will be working sooner or later. It’s as well to get down to it as soon as possible, I should say.’
‘Vernon doesn’t like my doing this.’
‘That’s his ostrich act again – plus the reactionary spirit that he’s inherited and will never quite outgrow. Sooner or later he’ll face the fact that women are working – but he won’t admit it till the last minute.’
Nell sighed.
‘How worrying everything is.’
‘I know. And I’ve made things worse for you. But I’m awfully fond of Vernon. He’s the one friend I care about. And I hoped if I told you what I thought you’d encourage him to – well – give way a little – at anyrate to you. But perhaps to you he does let himself go?’
Nell shook her head.
‘He won’t do anything but joke about the war.’
Sebastian whistled.
‘Well, next time – get it out of him. Stick to it.’
Nell said suddenly and sharply: ‘Do you think he’d talk better – to Jane?’
‘To Jane?’ Sebastian looked rather embarrassed. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps. It all depends.’
‘You do think so! Why? Tell me why? Is she more sympathetic, or what?’
‘Oh, Lord, no. Jane’s not exactly sympathetic. Provocative is more the word. You get annoyed with her – and out pops the truth. She makes you aware of yourself in ways you don’t want to be. There’s nobody like Jane for pulling you off your high horse.’
‘You think she’s a lot of influence over Vernon?’
‘Oh! I wouldn’t say that. And anyhow, it wouldn’t matter if she had. She’s doing relief work in Serbia. Sailed a fortnight ago.’
‘Oh!’ said Nell. She drew a deep breath and smiled.
Somehow she felt happier.
‘Darling Nell, – Do you know I dream of you every night. Usually you’re nice to me, but sometimes you’re a little beast. Cold and hard and far away. You couldn’t be that really, could you? Not now. Darling, will the indelible pencil ever come off?
‘Nell, sweetheart, I never believe I’m going to be killed, but if I were what would it matter? We’ve had so much. You’d think of me always as happy and loving you, wouldn’t you, sweetheart? I know I’d go on loving you after I was dead. That’s the only bit of me that couldn’t die. I love you – love you – love you …’
He had never written to her quite like that before. She put the letter in its usual place.
That day she was absent-minded at the hospital. She forgot things. The men noticed it.
‘Nurse is daydreaming.’ They teased her, making little jokes. And she laughed back.
It was so wonderful, so very wonderful to be loved. Sister Westhaven was in a temper, Nurse Potts slacked more than usual. But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.
Even the monumental Sister Jenkins who came on night duty and was always full of pessimism failed to impress her with any kind of gloom.
‘Ah!’ Sister Jenkins would say, settling her cuffs and moving three double chins round inside her collar in an effort to alleviate their mass. ‘No. 3 still alive? You surprise me. I didn’t think he’d last through the day. Well, he’ll be gone tomorrow, poor young chap. (Sister Jenkins was always prophesying that patients would be gone tomorrow and the failure of her prognostications to come true never seemed to induce in her a more hopeful attitude.) I don’t like the look of No. 18 – that last operation was worse than useless. No. 8 is going to take a turn for the worse unless I’m much mistaken. I said so to Doctor, but he didn’t listen to me. Now then, Nurse (with sudden acerbity) no need for you to hang about. Off duty is off duty.’ Nell accepted this gracious permission to depart, well aware that if she had not lingered Sister Jenkins would have asked her, ‘What she meant by hurrying away like that – not even willing to wait a minute over time?’
It took twenty minutes to walk home. The night was a clear starry one and Nell enjoyed the walk. If only Vernon could have been walking beside her.
She let herself into the house very quietly with her latch-key. Her landlady always went to bed early. On the tray in the hall was an orange-coloured envelope.
She knew then …
Telling herself that it wasn’t – that it couldn’t be – that he was only wounded – surely he was only wounded … yet she knew …
A sentence from the letter she had received that morning leapt out at her. ‘Nell, sweetheart, I never believe I am going to be killed, but if I were what would it matter? We’ve had so much …’
He had never written like that before … He must have felt – have known. Sensitive people did know sometimes beforehand.
She stood there, holding the telegram. Vernon – her lover, her husband … She stood there a long time …
Then at last she opened the telegram which informed her with deep regret that Lieutenant Vernon Deyre had been killed in action.