A Summer Idyll

He got to his feet. ‘God forbid—I live here.’ He walked away, leaving her gaping after him, and then she forgot him as Basil pushed his way through the people leaving.

‘There you are. We’re all going on to a disco…’

Phoebe wasn’t listening. ‘Who was that man?’ she asked. ‘He said he lived here.’

‘Well, of course he does, you little idiot, he’s Deirdre’s husband. Get your coat—it’ll be a bit of a squash in the car, but that won’t matter.’

‘We’re going back to St Coram’s?’

He gave her an impatient look. ‘Good God, no! Do get a move on.’

Phoebe, a mild-tempered girl, didn’t budge. ‘I’m not coming,’ she said mulishly.

‘Don’t be a fool! You’ve no way of getting back on your own.’

Which was true enough. She had thrust a handful of small change into her purse, probably not enough to get her back to St Coram’s. Her mind boggled at the long walk ahead of her, even if she could get a bus for part of the way.

‘If you could lend me some money for a taxi?’ she suggested diffidently.

‘No way. I’ll need all I’ve got with me. Get a bus.’ Just for a moment Basil looked uncertain. ‘You won’t change your mind?’

She shook her head, willing him to change his, but he didn’t; he turned on his heel and left her without so much as a backward glance. After a minute or so Phoebe followed him, to find the hall empty. She picked up her coat for a moment, pausing, then put it on and went to the door. She was on the point of going through it when the man she had spoken to during the evening came into the hall.

‘Everyone gone?’

‘Yes. I’m just…that is…thank you for a nice party.’

‘Not going to the disco?’

‘Well, no. I’m going to catch a bus…’

He had come to stand beside her. ‘I’ll drive you back to your hospital.’ He muttered something under his breath, it sounded like, ‘It’s the least I can do.’ But she wasn’t sure of that.

Phoebe said politely: ‘It’s very kind of you to offer, but you have no need.’

For answer he took her arm, banged the door behind them and crossed the pavement to a Mercedes parked at the kerb. Phoebe got in, since there seemed no point in protesting further, and was whisked across London without further ado. Her companion didn’t say a word until they had reached the hospital, and when she thanked him he said carelessly: ‘Not at all. I’d better go and look for my wife, I suppose.’

Phoebe couldn’t think of anything suitable to reply to this; she murmured goodnight and smiled uncertainly. It surprised her very much when he leaned across to say to her: ‘Give him up, my dear—he’s not for you.’

He had driven away before she could think of an answer to that one too.

And it seemed as though he would be right. Phoebe didn’t see Basil at all the following day—nor, for that matter, for several days to come. And when at last she met him face to face as she came back from the Path Lab he gave her a cool nod and would have walked right past her if she hadn’t stopped him with a firm voice which surprised her as much as it surprised him.

‘Didn’t you worry?’ she asked. ‘Leaving me to get back on my own from that party?’

He flushed a little. ‘Worry? Why should I worry? A sensible girl like you—you’re hardly likely to attract unwelcome attentions, are you?’

His faint sneer made her wince, but all the same she asked: ‘Why not?’

She knew the answer; she supposed that because she had thought that she was in love with him, it was going to hurt, however nicely he put it.

But he didn’t bother with niceness. ‘My dear girl, you’re not silly enough to imagine you’re pretty?’

‘Then why did you take me out?’

Basil laughed. ‘An experience, shall we say—a very unrewarding one, I might add.’

Phoebe didn’t say anything to that: she stood on tiptoe in her sensible black shoes and smacked his cheek hard. She was appalled the moment she had done it; it was an unpardonable thing to do, she told herself as she bolted back to the ward, to find Sister irate at the length of time she had been away. She stood meekly before that lady, letting her run on and on, and then, impatiently dismissed, skipped back to the ward to her endless chores.

There was an auxiliary nurse off sick, which meant that there was even more to do than usual; she steadily trotted to and fro, getting hot and untidy, responding to her patients’ wants, glad at the same time that she had so much to occupy her that there was precious little time to think. Only when she was off duty did she allow her thoughts to dwell on Basil—a broken dream, she admitted that honestly, and she had been a fool to indulge in it. He’d been amusing himself between girlfriends, she had no doubt—like eating a slice of bread and butter between rich cream cakes.

She sat down at her functional dressing table, took off her cap and studied her face. Presently she unpinned her hair and pushed it this way and that, judging the effect. It was no good—she remained, at least to the casual eye, uninteresting. In her dressing gown presently, she trailed along the corridor and joined her friends over tea and a gossip, while at the back of her mind the idea of leaving—going right away—was already forming. She could give a month’s notice and start again at another hospital. It would be a wrench, because she had been happy during the last year; she was never going to be brilliant in the nursing world, but she was good with patients and kind and gentle. Besides, she was young enough to start again. The idea had solidified into certainty by the time she was in bed; a fresh start, and she would forget the hurt Basil had inflicted.

She slept soundly because she was tired, but when she woke she knew that her mind was made up. She would go that very morning and see the Principal Nursing Officer, something she hardly looked forward to, as that lady was known among the lesser fry at the hospital as the Tartar—a quite unsuitable name, as it happened, for she was by no means fiery in character, although her wooden expression, and the fact that she smiled only at Christmas and the Annual Ball, made her intimidating. But Phoebe, having decided, wasn’t going to be put off by that. When the breakfasts had been served and Sister had come on duty, she knocked on the office door, ready with her request to go to the office at nine o’clock.

But the speech was unnecessary. Sister looked up as she went in. ‘They’ve just rung through, Nurse—you’re to go down to the office at once. Run along.’

Phoebe didn’t run, mindful of Sister Tutor’s remarks about fire and haemorrhage, but she walked very fast, wondering what on earth she’d done.

She put an anxious hand to her cap, knocked on the door and was bidden to go in. The Tartar’s wooden features wore an expression which Phoebe could only imagine to be sympathy, although she spoke briskly enough.

‘Nurse Creswell, your aunt, Miss Kate Mason, is ill. She has asked her doctor to send for you—apparently you are her only relative.’ She gave Phoebe an accusing look as though that was her fault. ‘She feels most strongly that your place is by her side so she may be nursed back to health. I should add, Nurse, that your aunt is suffering from chronic bronchitis and crippling arthritis and is unlikely to regain a state of health when she will be unable to do without your care. It means, of course, that you will have to give up your training for at least the immediate future.’

Phoebe stared at the Tartar’s cold eyes while she digested this information. Here was help not quite what she would have wished for, but a loophole of escape. Aunt Kate was a holy terror; dictatorial and on the mean side, she had ignored her family for years and Phoebe, the last member of it left, hadn’t seen her for some time. So like Aunt Kate, she mused, to turn a cold shoulder on the family and then demand help as though it was her right. But it was an escape…

‘Am I to go at once, Miss Ratcliffe?’

‘Naturally. I consider this an emergency and the doctor who is attending her stresses the need for nursing help as soon as possible. You will be given compassionate leave until your leaving date and you will, of course, receive payment until that day. You may go today, Nurse Creswell, and I trust that your year with us as a student nurse has given you a good grounding for whatever tasks you will need to undertake.’

Phoebe sorted this out. ‘Yes, Miss Ratcliffe, I’ll do my best.’ She added rather shyly: ‘I’ve been very happy here.’

The Tartar inclined her head graciously. ‘I trust that your future will be as happy, Nurse. Goodbye.’

Very doubtful, thought Phoebe, speeding back to the ward to tell Sister. Aunt Kate lived in Suffolk, in a village which she remembered only vaguely—but even if it had been a large town, she doubted very much whether she would get a great deal of time to spare. All the same, she liked the country; she would use some of her savings to buy a bike, so that when she had an hour or so… She was already making the best of a bad job when she knocked once more on Sister’s door.

Sister was surprised and flatteringly reluctant to let her go. ‘Not that I can do much about it,’ she grumbled. ‘I quite see that if your aunt has no one else to look after her, there’s nothing else to be done.’

Phoebe refrained from saying that Aunt Kate had sufficient money to employ a private nurse if she so wished.

‘Well, you’d better go,’ sighed Sister, ‘and you were turning into quite a good nurse too.’

Phoebe bade her goodbye, announced her departure to the nurses on the ward, explained to the patients, and took herself off to her room, where she started to pack. She was about halfway through this when two of her friends came over to change their aprons. They listened to her with astonishment, heedless of returning to their wards, begged her to write, and promised to say goodbye on her behalf to her other friends.

‘What about Basil?’ one of them asked.

Phoebe bent over her case, ramming things in with some force. ‘I’ve had no time to see him or let him know,’ she said casually. ‘I daresay we’ll meet up some time.’

Her companions exchanged glances. ‘Well, have fun, Phoebe—we shall miss you.’