Damsel In Green

She was clearing up the small place with an urgent, methodical speed. She said, ‘Thank you,’ but had no time to say more, for Ned interrupted:

‘George, you’ve passed—wonderful! We knew you would, but it’s nice to see it in writing, isn’t it?’ He laughed over at her, and she spared a moment to smile back. He really was rather a dear.

She turned away to help the porters lift the patient on to the trolley which would take him to the ICU. ‘I’ll go up with him,’ she murmured. ‘That blood will need an eye on it.’

When she got back, the other patient had been warded too, and Ned was dealing with the other two men who had been in the crash. She started to work methodically through the waiting patients.

The morning wore on. They snatched their coffee as and when they could get it; indeed, Georgina had barely tasted hers when she was called away to take a toddler to X-Ray; its young, distraught mother insisted on going too, very white-faced and passionately remorseful. She repeated over and over again, ‘Oh, if only I hadn’t left those safety pins on the table!’

Georgina was holding the small boy carefully; they hadn’t been able to discover if the pin had been closed when he had swallowed it—a large one would have stuck, but apparently this one had been very small, small enough to go down a long way before it would begin to do any damage.

‘Try not to worry,’ she said kindly. ‘Children swallow things all day and every day, you know. There’s no reason to suppose he won’t be as right as rain in a day or two. He’ll be quite safe in the children’s ward, and you can stay with him if you like.’

The young woman cast her a look of gratitude out of all proportion to her words—perhaps it was the kindness in Georgina’s voice. When they parted at X-Ray she managed a smile and Georgina found herself promising to go and see how the small boy was doing when she went off duty that evening. She hadn’t really time to do so, she reminded herself ruefully, as she sped back to Cas. It was her day off the next day, and she had a train to catch at seven that evening; but the woman had looked so lost …

She was very late for dinner, but the theatre staff were late too, so that there were half a dozen of them sitting at the table. Two of them had taken their exams with Georgina, and, like her, had passed, but unlike her they were leaving to get married just as soon as they could. Listening to their happy chatter, she felt a small shiver of apprehension; supposing Matron’s ‘splendid career’ was to be her lot in life? She pulled herself together with an effort, aware of a discontent quite alien to her nature. She was a very lucky young woman, and Great-Aunt Polly would be delighted.

Gregg was on duty when she got back, and half an hour later Sister went for her rather tardy half day. Georgina was putting a collar and cuff bandage on a small cyclist who had broken a collar-bone and Ned was washing his hands while she did it. Sister had popped her head round the door as she went and wished them a quiet day, and when she had gone he said in the most casual of voices:

‘They’ll make a wonderful pair.’

‘Who?’ she frowned an enquiry as she tucked in loose ends.

‘Good lord, George, do you go around with your head in a bag? Sister and old Bingham, of course.’

Georgina helped the boy on with his coat and tucked the useless sleeve tidily in the pocket, then sent him outside to the clerk’s desk before she replied, ‘They’re going to be married, you mean? I knew they were friends.’ Although now she thought about it, the Registrar did come very often and sometimes unnecessarily to Cas. She took the towel from Ned and dried her own hands, and said gloomily, ‘I’m glad, they’re both dears, but Gregg will be Sister.’

He gave her a quick look. ‘I shouldn’t be too sure of that, George.’

She had straightened the couch, and now began to refurbish the trolley.

‘You know, Ned, this ought to be a marvelous day, and it isn’t. I feel at least forty, with nothing left to live for.’

He turned at the door, laughing. ‘You need a husband, my girl. Who shall he be? Tall, dark, rich and handsome; clever of course, and ready to buy you all the tea in China.’

She made a face at him. ‘That’ll do splendidly to go on with.’

‘Good. In the meanwhile, talking of tea, I’m going to get some—there’s sure to be a cup going in Men’s Surgical. That’s where I’ll be if I’m needed.’

Georgina nodded understandingly. Ned had a roving eye, which had settled, for the time being at least, on the pretty staff nurse on Men’s Surgical. She hoped that there wouldn’t be anything much in, so that he could get his tea in peace.

She went off duty half an hour late and on the way along the corridor to the Nurses’ Home remembered her promise to the mother of the pin-swallowing baby, and had to turn and fly back again and up two flights of worn stone steps to the children’s ward. As she suspected, he had been operated upon that afternoon in order to preclude perforation. He was lying in his cot, still drowsy from the anaesthetic, and his mother was sitting with him. Georgina spent several minutes listening to her troubled little voice, nothing in her relaxed manner betraying her impatience to be gone.

She caught the train by the skin of her teeth. Great-Aunt Polly lived in a small village in Essex, some miles from Thaxted. It had been Georgina’s home, since she had gone to live with Aunt Polly; that had been when she had been a little girl of nine. Her father, a schoolmaster, had died suddenly and unexpectedly from ‘flu, and her mother had died a week or two after him, leaving a bewildered little daughter, as frightened as she was unhappy. Great-Aunt Polly had carried her off to live with her in her small timbered cottage, and had been father and mother to her ever since. Georgina sat in the train, looking out of the window at the dreary London suburbs, thinking about the old lady. She would be able to repay her now with a hundred and one small comforts … She lost herself in a daydream which lasted until the train slowed down at Thaxted. She picked up her case and jumped out, an attractive girl in her well-fitting corduroy coat and high boots.

The small, rather ramshackle local bus from Thaxted, the last from that town for the day, took her to within a stone’s throw of the cottage. The cottage stood a little way down a narrow lane leading off the village street. There was an ancient hornbeam on the corner, and on the opposite side the apple trees at the end of her aunt’s garden, even on a dark November evening, combined to make a lovely picture in the cold moonlight. She unlatched the little gate and walked, a great deal faster now, up the brick path and beat a tattoo on the Georgian brass door-knocker before opening the door and going in. The passage was brick too, a little worn in places and covered with an Afghan rug, also worn, but still splendid. The back door faced her and each wall held two doors, from one of which a plump elderly woman bustled.

‘Miss Georgina! It’s nice to see you, that it is. Miss Rodman’s had her supper and I’ve kept yours hot … put that bag down, and go and see her. Did you pass?’ She peered at Georgina anxiously and was swept into a violent hug.

‘Yes, Moggy, I did. Isn’t it wonderful? I’ll tell Aunt Polly.’

She opened another door and went into the sitting-room where her aunt was waiting. She sat, as she always did, in a stiff-backed chair, her almost useless legs on a little Victorian footstool, her sticks on either side of her, so that she need not ask for help if she should want to get up. She hated to ask for help—Georgina had been almost sixteen when Great-Aunt Polly had been stricken with polio, and could still remember very clearly the look on the old lady’s face when her doctor had told her that it was not very likely that she would walk again. She belonged to a generation who didn’t discuss their ailments; she hadn’t discussed them then, but over the following years she had progressed from wheelchair to crutches, and finally, to sticks. Georgina and Mrs Mogg, who had been with them for as long as she could remember, had watched her struggles and said nothing, knowing that that was what she would wish, but the day Aunt Polly took her first awkward steps with her two sticks Georgina had gone down to the Three Bells in the village, and come back with a bottle of hock under one arm, because she wasn’t sure what to buy anyway, but quite obviously the occasion called for celebration. She crossed the little room now and slid on to her knees beside her aunt’s chair and hugged her, just as she had hugged Moggy, only with a little less vigour because Aunt Polly was a small dainty person despite her will of iron.

‘I’ve passed,’ said Georgina, knowing that that was what her aunt wanted to hear.

Aunt Polly smiled. ‘Yes, dear. I knew you would, of course, but congratulations all the same—I’m very proud of you.’

Mrs Mogg had come in with a tray on which was Georgina’s supper—steak and kidney pudding and a nice assortment of vegetables and a little baked custard for afters. Georgina got up and took the tray from her, put it on the floor and sat down beside it, and Miss Rodman said:

‘Mrs Mogg, will you get the glasses and the Madeira? We must drink to Miss Georgina’s health—and you eat up your supper, child, you must be hungry.’

Georgina fell to. She had an appetite and enjoyed good food. Mrs Mogg came back with the wine, and they sat, the three of them, drinking it from very old, beautiful glasses which she fetched from the corner cupboard. Presently, when she had disposed of the steak and kidney, Georgina told them what Matron had said and Aunt Polly nodded and looked happy, then glanced at her sharply and said, ‘But is that what you want, dear?’

Georgina polished off the last of the custard. ‘Yes, of course, Aunt Polly,’ she said stoutly, and remembered rather clearly that Ned had said that what she wanted was a husband. She turned her back on the thought. ‘Ned told me that sister and old Bingham are going to get married,’ she went on, anxious to talk about something else. ‘That means that Gregg will get Cas, I suppose. I expect I shall get a Junior Night Sister’s post to start with anyway, and that won’t be for quite while yet, I shall hate working with Gregg.’

‘You might marry,’ said Mrs Mogg chattily, Georgina gave her a wide smile. ‘Oh, Moggy, who? I only meet the housemen, and they’re far too busy and penniless to marry, and if you’re thinking of rich consultants, they’re all married. Besides, it will be nice to earn some real money at last—it’s time I did my share, you know.’

Miss Rodman straightened an already straight back. ‘That is very good of you, dear Georgina, but Mrs Mogg and I are old women. We need very little, and we manage. You’ve worked hard, the money is yours to spend. Why don’t you go abroad?’

Georgina lied cheerfully, ‘I really don’t want to, Aunt Polly. Perhaps later on when I’ve had more experience—I think I’ll stay at St Athel’s for a year or two and get that Sister’s post, then see how I feel.’

She got up and carried her tray out to the kitchen where she put it on the scrubbed wood table, then took the dishes to the sink and washed up, singing cheerfully in a clear voice so the occupants of the sitting-room would hear how happy she was.

CHAPTER TWO

ST ATHEL’S looked grim and grey on Monday morning, Georgina walked into the cold, well polished hall of the Nurses’ Home and started to climb the stairs to her room on the top floor. She fought, as she always had to, against homesickness. The contrast between the impersonal atmosphere of the home and the little cottage was too great. She paused on a landing and looked out of the window. There was a plane tree close by, quite a nice one; she closed her eyes and saw her beloved hornbeam, then, despising herself for being childish, hurried on up the last flight. Once she was on duty she would be all right again. But somehow she wasn’t, despite the fact that Gregg had a half day. She told herself that it was reaction after all the excitement and was glad that the steady stream of patients kept her busy—too busy to think on her own affairs. Sister went off duty at five o’clock and Ned telephoned to say that Bob Baker would be standing in for him until midnight, and would she let the night staff know before she went off duty. She put down the receiver with a grimace. She disliked Baker—he was on the medical side, which didn’t prevent him from knowing all there was to know about Casualty. When she finally got off duty at nine, she was in a thoroughly bad temper, what with Mr Baker delivering lectures about the art of diagnosing, while pronouncing an obvious concussion fit to go home, and calling a Colles’ fracture a Potts’. She had asked him crossly if he hadn’t learned the difference between an arm and a leg, and roundly declared that the concussed patient was to be warded, and he had retaliated by refusing to leave his supper to write up an X-ray form for an old man with a very obviously fractured hip. He came at length, and signed his very ordinary name with a great flourish, demanding to know where Gregg was.

‘Days off,’ snapped Georgina. ‘I’ll tell her you were asking for her when she comes back,’ and had the satisfaction of seeing him look terrified. Gregg made no secret of the fact that she intended to marry a doctor, and Mr Baker would serve her purpose as well as any, she supposed.

He backed to the door. ‘I merely wished to know,’ he stated coldly, ‘because I’m not completely satisfied with your work.’

‘I’ll repeat that, word for word, to Sister in the morning,’ she said with equal coldness. ‘I’m sure she will arrange for you to be replaced by one of the other housemen—she wouldn’t like to think that our standards aren’t up to yours.’ She flounced to the door, took the handle from his unresisting hand, gave him a gentle push, and shut the door with great firmness upon his astonished face.

When she got to her room, it was to find several of her friends there with a large pot of tea and a variety of mugs. Somebody had found a bottle of milk and Georgina rooted around in her wardrobe and produced some sugar and a large homemade cake, pressed upon her that morning by Mrs Mogg. The cake disposed of, and the mugs replenished, the conversation turned, as it always did, to the future. It seemed to Georgina, listening, that everyone there but herself was on the point of doing something exciting. One was going into the QAs, two were going to Canada, the remainder were either on the point of getting married or engaged.

A voice said, ‘George, you haven’t told us what you’re going to do.’

‘Well,’ she began; she wasn’t sure if she should mention about getting a Sister’s post, ‘I thought I’d stay here …’

‘Did Matron dangle a Sister’s cap before you?’ someone wanted to know.

‘Later on … it was all a bit vague. Perhaps I’ll do my Midder.’ She had only just thought of that, but at least it was a future.

Her immediate future was to be taken care of, though. The next morning Matron wanted to see her. There was no chance to change her apron; she turned it inside out, hoping the stains wouldn’t show through, and presented herself, outwardly composed, at Matron’s office. She came out again within a couple of minutes. Night duty—four weeks of it in Cas; valuable experience, Matron had said, by way of sugaring the pill. It meant nights off too, several days at home each fortnight. She brightened at the thought of not having to work with Gregg, and brightened still more when she met Ned and told him, and he said, ‘Thank God! That woman who’s on now calls me for the merest scratch—besides, you’re nice to have around.’

Georgina chuckled. ‘Go on with you, Ned,’ she said comfortably. If she had had a brother, she would have used the same tone of voice she was using now. ‘But I promise not to call you for scratches!’

They started on their separate ways and as they went he called over his shoulder, ‘Are you on tonight?’