Heaven is Gentle

She turned round and sped back the way she had come, up and down corridors and a staircase or so, until she came to the Office door, where she stopped for a moment to fetch her breath before tapping on it, and in response to the green light above it, entered.

Miss Smythe, the Principal Nursing Officer, was sitting at her desk. She was a stern-faced woman, but at the moment Eliza was relieved to see that she was looking quite amiable. She waved a hand at a chair, said, ‘Good afternoon, Sister Proudfoot,’ waited until Eliza had sat down and began: ‘I have received a letter about you, and with it a letter for yourself—from Professor Wyllie.’

Wyllie, thought Eliza, a shade uneasily, the name rang a bell; asthma research and heart complications or something of that sort, and hadn’t someone told her once that he himself was a sufferer? She said cautiously:

‘Yes, Miss Smythe?’

For answer her superior handed her a letter. ‘I suggest that you read this for yourself, Sister, and then let me have your comments.’

Miss Trim had done her work well; the letter, while astonishing Eliza very much, could not help but flatter her. She read it to its end and then looked across at Miss Smythe. ‘Well, I never!’ she declared.

The lady’s features relaxed into the beginnings of a smile. ‘I was surprised too, Sister. It is of course a great honour, which will reflect upon St Anne’s. I hope that you will consider it well and agree to go.’

‘It’s a long way away.’

Miss Smythe’s voice was smoothly persuasive. ‘Yes, but I believe that you have a car? There is no reason why you shouldn’t drive yourself up there, and Professor Wyllie assures me that the whole experiment, while most important to him, will take only a few weeks. Sir Harry Bliss thinks that you should avail yourself of the opportunity, it may be of the utmost advantage to you in your career.’

Eliza frowned faintly. She had never wanted a career; somehow or other it had been thrust upon her; she had enjoyed training as a nurse, she had liked staffing afterwards and when she had been offered a Sister’s post she had accepted it with pleasure, never imagining that she would still be in it five years later. She wasn’t a career girl at all; she had grown up with the idea of marrying and having children of her own, but despite numerous opportunities to do this, she had always hung back at the last minute, aware, somewhere at the back of her mind, that this wasn’t the right man. And now here she was, as near as not twenty-nine and Miss Smythe talking as though she was going to be a Ward Sister for ever. She sighed. ‘May I have a little time to think about it? I should like to see exactly where this place is and discover precisely what it’s all about. Am I to be the only woman there?’

‘Yes, so I understand. That is why they wanted a somewhat older girl, and a trained nurse, of course. As a precaution, I believe; Professor Wyllie is a sufferer from asthma as well as having heart failure; his health must be safe-guarded. Over and above that, he seems to think that a woman nurse would be of more benefit to the patients. There will also be a number of technicians, the patients, of course—and a colleague of the professor’s. A Dutch Professor of Medicine, highly thought of, I believe.’

Eliza dismissed him at once; he would be learned and bald and use long words in a thick accent, like the elderly brilliant friend of Sir Harry Bliss, who had discussed each patient at such length that she had had to go without her dinner.

‘Let me know by this evening, Sister Proudfoot,’ advised Miss Smythe, ‘sooner if you can manage it—it seems that Professor Wyllie wants an answer as soon as possible.’

An observation which almost decided Eliza to refuse out of sheer perversity; she was by nature an obliging girl, but she didn’t like being pushed; there were several things she wanted to know about the job, and no chance of finding out about any of them in such a short time. She walked back through the hospital, her head bowed in thought, so that when she narrowly avoided bumping into Sir Harry she was forced to stop and apologise.

‘Deep in thought,’ pronounced that gentleman, ‘about that job my old friend Willy Wyllie has offered you, eh? Oh, I thought so—take it, girl, it will make a nice change from this place, put a bit of colour into those cheeks and a pound or two on to your bones.’

Eliza stared at him thoughtfully. ‘Probably,’ she agreed amiably. ‘You seem to know all about it, sir, but I don’t, do I? I mean the bare facts are in the letter, but where do I live while I’m there, and what about time off and how far away is it from the shops and shall I be expected to do night duty?’

‘Tell you what,’ said Sir Harry, ‘we’ll go and telephone someone this very minute and find out.’

‘But I’m on duty. And you, sir, if I might remind you, are expected in Women’s Medical…’ She glanced at her watch. ‘You were expected…’ she corrected herself demurely, ‘fifteen minutes ago.’

‘In that case, five minutes more won’t be noticed.’ He swept her along with him to the consultants’ room, opened the door and thrust her inside ahead of him. ‘Well, really,’ began Eliza, and seeing it was hopeless to say anything, watched him pick up the telephone and demand a number.

He talked for some minutes, firing questions at his unseen listener like bullets from a gun, and presently said: ‘Hold on, I’ll ask her.’

‘Two days off a week, but probably you won’t get them, three hours off a day, these to be arranged according to the day’s requirements. You will have a little cottage to live in—by yourself, close to the main house. There will be an opportunity to go to the nearest town and shop if you should wish to, but it’s only fair to mention that there isn’t much in the way of entertainment.’ He barely gave her time to absorb this sparse information before he barked: ‘Well, how about it, Eliza?’ He grinned at her. ‘I recommended you, you can’t let me down.’

She gave him a severe look. ‘Did you now, sir? Miss Smythe said that I could think it over.’

‘That was before you knew all these details I’ve gone to so much trouble to discover for you,’ he wheedled. ‘Come on now—it’ll make a nice change.’

She gave him a sudden smile. ‘All right, though I shall have to miss the hospital ball.’

He had picked up the receiver again. ‘Pooh, you can go dancing any night of the week; there isn’t a man in the hospital who hasn’t asked you out, one way and another.’ He turned away before she could reply and spoke to the patient soul at the other end of the line. ‘OK, she’ll come. Details later.’ And when she started to protest at his high-handed methods: ‘Well, why not, girl? You said you would go—you can fix the details with Miss Smythe.’ He bustled her to the door. ‘And now I’m late for my round, and it’s your fault.’

He trod on his way, leaving her speechless with indignation.

Mary Price had tea ready, the ward under control and five minutes to spare when Eliza got back to Men’s Medical. They sipped the dark, sweet brew in the peace and quiet of the office while Eliza explained briefly about the strange offer she had been made.

‘Oh, take it, Sister,’ begged her faithful colleague. ‘We shall miss you dreadfully, but it’ll only be for a week or two, and think of the fun you’ll have.’ Her brown eyes sparkled at the thought. ‘You could go up by car.’

‘Um,’ said Eliza, ‘so I could. Miss Smythe said that I’d been chosen from quite a long list of likely nurses. Why me, I wonder?’

‘Sir Harry, of course—you said yourself that he knew all about it.’ She refilled their cups. ‘What are you supposed to do once you’re there?’

‘I’m not quite sure. It’s an experiment—cardiac asthma as well as the intrinsic and extrinsic kinds—they want to prove something or other about climate and the effect of complete freedom from stress or strain.’

‘Sounds interesting. When do you have to leave?’

‘I have to report for duty on the fifteenth,’ she peered at the calendar, ‘eight days’ time. We’ll have to do something about the off duty, if you have a weekend before I go…’

They became immersed in the complicated jigsaw of days off, and presently, having got everything arranged to their mutual satisfaction, they left the office; Staff to supervise the return of the convalescent patients to their beds and Sister Proudfoot to cast her professional eye over the ward in general.

So that Mary might get her weekend off before she herself went away, Eliza took her own days off a couple of days later. She left the hospital after a long day’s work, driving her Fiat 500, a vehicle she had acquired some five years previously and saw little hope of replacing for the next few years at least. But even though it was by now a little shabby, and the engine made strange noises from time to time, it still served her well. She turned its small nose towards the west now, and after what seemed an age of slow driving through London, reached its outskirts and at length the M3. Here at least she could travel as fast as the Fiat would allow, and even when the motorway gave way to the Winchester bypass, she maintained a steady fifty miles an hour, only once past Winchester and on the Romsey road, she slowed down a little. It was very dark, and she had wasted a long time getting out of London; she wouldn’t reach Charmouth until midnight. The thought of the pleasant house where her parents lived spurred her on; they would wait up for her, they always did, and there would be hot soup and sausage rolls, warm and featherlight from the oven. Eliza, who hadn’t stopped for supper, put her small foot down on the accelerator.

The road was dark and lonely once she had passed Cadnam Corner. She left the New Forest behind, skirted Ringwood and threaded her way through Wimborne, silent under the blanket of winter clouds. Dorchester was silent too—she was getting near home now, there were only the hills between her and Bridport and then down and up through Chideock and then home. Here eager thoughts ran ahead of her, so that it seemed nearer than it actually was.

The lights of the house were still on as she brought the little car to a halt at the top of the hill at the further end of the little town, it lay back from the road, flanked by neighbours, all three of them little Regency houses, bowfronted, with verandahs and roomy front gardens. She was out of the car, her case in her hand, and running up the garden path almost as soon as she had switched off the engine; the cold bit into her as she turned the old-fashioned brass knob of the door and went inside. Her mother and father were still up, as she knew they would be, sitting one each side of the open fire, dozing a little, to wake as she went into the room. She embraced them with affection; her mother, as small a woman as she was, her father, tall and thin and scholarly. ‘Darlings,’ she declared, ‘how lovely to see you! It seems ages since I was home and I’ve heaps to tell you. I’ll just run the car across the road.’

She flew outside again; the car park belonged to the hotel opposite but the manager never minded her using it. She tucked the Fiat away in a corner and went back indoors, to find the soup and the sausage rolls, just as she had anticipated, waiting for her. She gobbled delicately and between mouthfuls began to tell her parents about the unexpected job she had been asked to take. ‘There was a list,’ she explained. ‘Heaven knows how they made it in the first place or why they picked on me—with a pin, most likely. I almost decided not to accept it, but Sir Harry Bliss thought it would be a good idea—and it’s only for a few weeks.’

Her mother offered her another sausage roll. ‘Yes, darling, I see. But isn’t this place miles away from everywhere?’

‘Yes. But I’m to have my own cottage to live in and I daresay I’ll be too busy to want to do much when I’m not on duty.’

‘There will be another nurse there?’ asked her father.

She shook her head. ‘No—I’m the only one and it sounds as though I shan’t have much to do. A handful of volunteer patients—all men, a few technicians and the two professors; William Wyllie—he’s an asthma case himself and I may have to look after him; he’s quite old—well, not very old, touching seventy.’

‘And the other doctor?’ It was her mother this time.

‘Oh, a friend of his. I daresay he’ll have asthma too, he’ll certainly be elderly.’ She brushed the crumbs from her pretty mouth and sat back with a sigh of content. ‘Now tell me all the news, my dears. Have you heard from Henry? and has Pat got over the measles?’

Henry was a younger brother, working in Brussels for the Common Market, and Pat was her small niece, her younger sister Polly’s daughter, who had married several years earlier. Her mother embarked on family news, wondering as she did so why it was that this pretty little creature sitting beside her hadn’t married herself, years ago. Of course she didn’t look anything like her age, but thirty wasn’t far off; Mrs Proudfoot belonged to the generation which considered thirty to be getting a little long in the tooth, and she worried about Eliza. The dear girl had had her chances—was still having them; she knew for a fact that at least two eligible young men had proposed to her during the last six months. And now she was off to this godforsaken spot in the Highlands where, as far as she could make out, there wasn’t going to be a man under sixty.

The two days passed quickly; there was so much to do, so many friends to visit, as well as helping her mother in the nice old house and going for walks with her father, who, now that he had retired from the Civil Service, found time to indulge in his hobby of fossil gathering. Eliza, who knew nothing about fossils, obligingly accompanied him to the beach and collected what she hoped were fine specimens, and which were almost always just pebbles. All the same, they enjoyed each other’s company and the fresh air gave her a glow which made her prettier than ever, so that one of the eligible young men, meeting her by chance in the main street, took the instant opportunity of proposing for a second time, an offer which she gently refused, aware that she was throwing away a good chance.

She worried about it as she drove herself back to London. Charlie King was an old friend, she had known him for years; he would make a splendid husband and he had a good job. She would, she decided, think about him seriously while she was away in Scotland; no doubt there would be time to think while she was there, and being a long way from a problem often caused it to appear in a quite different light. She put the thought away firmly for the time being and concentrated on her driving, for there had been a frost overnight, and the road was treacherous.

The next few days went rapidly, for she was busy. Mary Price had gone on her promised weekend the day after she got back and although she had two part-time staff nurses to help her, there was a good deal of extra paper work because she was going away. It was nice to see Mary back again and talk over the managing of the ward while she was away. Eliza spent her last day smoothing out all the last-minute problems, bade her patients and staff a temporary goodbye and went off duty to while away an hour with her friends in the Sisters’ sitting room before going to her room to pack ready for an early start in the morning—warm clothes and not too many of them—thick sweaters and slacks, an old anorak she had brought from home and as a special concession to the faint hope of a social life, a long mohair skirt and cashmere top in a pleasing shade of old rose.

She left really early the following morning, her friends’ good wishes ringing in her ears, instructions as to how to reach her destination written neatly on the pad beside the map on the seat beside her. She planned to take two, perhaps three days to get to Inverpolly, for although the Fiat always did its best, it wasn’t capable of sustained speed; besides, the weather, cold and blustery now, might worsen and hold her up. She had three clear days in hand and she didn’t suppose anyone would mind if she arrived a little sooner than that.

She made good progress. She had intended to spend the night at York, but she found that she had several hours in hand when she reached that city. She had an early tea and pressed on to Darlington and then turned on to the Penrith road where she decided to spend the night at the George. She was well ahead of her schedule and she felt rather pleased with herself, everything had been much easier than she had expected. She ate a good supper and went early to bed.