Never the Time and the Place

She fed Cuthbert his supper and Mrs Whisker, the tabby, and fetched the lamb cutlets from the fridge. She liked cooking. Now she set to work cooking cucumber gently in a big pan, egg and breadcrumbing the cutlets and adding them to the cucumber and while they were simmering gently, she put on the potatoes and peeped at the celery braising in the oven. Her father would be hungry; the waiting room had been full and the phone had been ringing often enough; by the time he had done his evening rounds it would be eight o’clock or half past. Apple crumble and cream would make a nice afters; she set to work happily.

Putting her pie in the oven presently, she wondered idly about the man in the Bentley; he would be hundreds of miles away by now and would have forgotten her entirely. It surprised her that she felt vague regret about this.

He wasn’t hundreds of miles away; he was a bare half dozen, having a drink before dinner with his host and hostess at Branton House, exchanging polite conversation about the weather. During a comfortable pause—for they were old friends and didn’t need to keep up an unceasing chat—he remarked idly, ‘I met a girl as I was coming here. A strapping creature with a lovely face and enormous grey eyes. She had a Labrador with her and they both appeared to be enjoying the weather. She gave me a sound telling off for not sounding my horn. I might add that she and the dog were standing in the centre of the road and seemed to consider it to be theirs.’

His hostess laughed. ‘Josephine Dowling—she’s a darling, the eldest of our doctor’s three children. She’s a Ward Sister at St Michael’s—I daresay you’ll meet her.’

The man’s eyes were half closed. ‘I look forward to that. But perhaps she won’t recognise me…’

‘Don’t be silly, Julius.’ His hostess smiled widely. He was a tall man powerfully built and dressed with a quiet elegance; moreover, he had a face which a woman wouldn’t forget easily. She had no doubt that when Josephine saw him she would know him at once. A pity she was to be married—she might have taken Julius’s mind off his recently broken engagement…

Twenty-four hours later, Josephine was sitting exactly as she knew she would be, in her office at the end of the landing outside the ward, with the door open so that she could keep an eye on the comings and goings of the visitors. It had been a very busy day; there had been four cases for theatre and Mr Bull, the surgeon, had been in a fiendish temper for all of them so that the Student Nurses who had accompanied the patients had come back with eyes like saucers and a greatly increased knowledge of rude words. After the last case he had come on to the ward looking like a thunder cloud, dragging behind him a posse of reluctant lesser fry, trying to avoid his eye and terrified that he might shoot questions at them as he went from bed to bed. Josephine, quite used to him, gave him a soothing good afternoon and watched him blow out his moustache, a sure sign that he was put out.

‘Fools,’ he uttered strongly, ‘I have nothing but fools to work for me.’ Josephine drew herself up to her splendid height and met his choleric eye. ‘Not you, Jo—depend on you, don’t I? And why you have to go and marry some young fool of a GP. I don’t know… How’s that last patient? I knew I’d find CA, but I think she’ll do.’

Josephine led him across the ward to where the operation cases were sleeping peacefully behind their screens. ‘She’s doing nicely, sir. She came back from the Recovery Room an hour ago. I’m glad she’s okay—her husband phoned—he’ll be in presently—not to see her, he just wants to know what’s happened.’

Mr Bull might have a nasty temper but he was a kind man as well. ‘I’ll be in the hospital for another hour, if he comes before then let me know. I’ll have a word with him.’

Josephine beamed at him. ‘How nice of you, he’ll be so relieved.’ She went to the bed while Mr Bull took a look at his patient and then went in turn to the other three.

‘Might as well do a quick round,’ he muttered and set off with Josephine keeping pace, her Staff Nurse, Joan Makepeace, trotting behind, closely followed by the students.

There were sixteen patients in the ward and half of that number were sufficiently recovered from their operations to gather, cosily dressing-gowned, in little groups and discuss and enlarge upon their various conditions. They did this cheerfully, their troubles nicely behind them, the prospect of going home in the near future buoying up their spirits.

Mr Bull waited a little impatiently while the nurses hurried these ladies back to sit by their beds, and then spoke a few words to each of them. For some reason which Josephine never quite fathomed, his patients, almost without exception, adored him. He wasn’t particularly nice to them, but even when imparting some unpleasant news to them he managed to convey his certainty that he would be able to cope with it and restore them to their homes in perfect health.

But most of his time was taken up with the patients who hadn’t reached the happy state of shuffling along to the day room, with these he spent time and trouble, reassuring them, reading up their notes carefully, sometimes asking questions that were pertinent to the apprehensive students behind him. His quick round had taken a good half hour and had left Josephine busier than ever, rearranging her patients once more, sending nurses to a tea they had almost missed, giving the Staff Nurse a hand with the evening medicine round. She sat now, waiting for the last of the visitors to go so that she could do her final round and then finish her report, turning over in her mind Mr Bull’s parting shot as he marched out of the ward. ‘I’m off to Brussels for a month, Jo, lecturing and marking exam papers, heaven help me. An old friend and colleague will be standing in for me—clever bloke, well known and highly thought of.’ He had given a guffaw of delighted laughter. ‘Don’t let him oust that fellow you are going to marry.’

She had said a little starchily, ‘That’s not likely, sir. I hope you enjoy your stay in Brussels.’ And at the same time she had felt a twinge of excitement and interest.

The night staff, coming on duty, interrupted her thoughts; she dismissed them at once and started reading the report.

This took some time; the four operation cases were gone into with meticulous detail and then the remaining ladies discussed at varying lengths. ‘And Mrs Prosser,’ finished Josephine, referring to an elderly lady who had given more trouble than the whole ward put together, ‘Mr Bull sees no reason why she shouldn’t go home in two days’ time—that’ll be Saturday. She’s dead set on staying the weekend, though. Says there’ll be no one at home to look after her. Nobody came to see her this evening, so I couldn’t discover if that’s true or not, but we do need the bed and she’s already been in several days longer than usual.’

She got up to go. ‘And Mr Bull tells me he’ll be going away for a month. He’s got someone coming to do his work, though. Have a good night.’

She picked up the big bag she took on duty with her, filled with the impedimenta needed by a young woman cut off from such things as she might require in the way of make-up, her purse, the letters she hadn’t had time to read, and an assortment of pens, her gold watch and a spare pair of tights, and left the ward. The nurses who had been on duty with her had already gone, the landing was silent as she crossed it, went through the wide swing doors at the further end and started down the stone staircase. She was in the more modern part of the hospital, but not as modern as all that; woman’s surgical and the gyny ward had been built some thirty years before and attached to the central, early Victorian block, a not very happy union, architecturally speaking. It was even worse on the opposite side, where the hospital had been enlarged only recently. It held the most modern of equipment and boasted colour schemes in the wards and such refinements as a tasteful waiting room for relatives, cloakrooms for the nursing staff and silent swift lifts which never broke down. But strangely, the nurses preferred the Victorian wing, despite the lack of colour schemes, even preferring in many cases to work in the central block, where the medical patients were housed in gloomy wards which no amount of modernising would ever disguise.

Josephine sped down the staircase, poked her head round the swing doors of the ward below her own, and finding Mercy Latimer already gone, went on her way. On the ground floor she crossed the entrance hall and went down a dark passage at its back which ended in a large door with ‘Nursing Staff Only’ painted on it. She went through this into another passage, very clean and smelling of furniture polish, and started up the stairs at the end. The Sisters had bed sitting rooms on the first floor, reached by a swing door on the landing and once through that she could hear the steady murmur of voices coming from the end of the corridor before her. She unlocked her door, flung her cap and bag on the bed and went on towards the sound of rattling tea cups.

There were half a dozen young women crammed into the small kitchen, intent on making tea. She was on good terms with them all, for they had all trained, just as she had, at St Michael’s.

‘Late off, aren’t you?’ asked Mercy.

‘Mr Bull did a round and it took me the rest of the afternoon and evening to catch up. He’s going away for a month…’

‘Bully for you,’ the small fair-haired girl spoke. ‘Think of all the empty beds.’

‘You’ll be lucky.’ Caroline Webster, the Senior Theatre Sister, spooned tea into a giant pot. ‘There’s someone coming to do his work for him. A glutton for work, so I’m told. Coming into theatre tomorrow afternoon with Mr Bull to cast an eye around. I expect you’ll get him, too, Jo.’

Jo put milk in a mug and spooned in sugar lavishly. ‘I hope not, you know what it’s like the day after ops, one long rush with drips and dope and the poor dears not feeling their best. And Mrs Prosser,’ she added gloomily, ‘he’ll be someone new to complain to. You see, just as we’ve got her all fixed up to go home on Saturday, she’ll get him to let her stay.’

The night had not gone well, Josephine discovered when she went on duty in the morning. The operation cases had, true enough, slept their way through the night in a drugged sleep, but everybody else had been disturbed on several occasions by Mrs Prosser, who declared herself to be dying, neglected and in need of cups of tea, cold drinks and bed-pans. That she had been on her feet for days now and perfectly able to get herself to the loo was an argument delivered in a fierce whisper by the night Staff Nurse, which she swept aside so noisily that they were forced to give in to her. She lay in bed now, looking smug, having declared herself incapable of getting out of her bed.

Josephine listened with a sympathetic ear to the night Staff Nurse’s report and sent her and her junior off duty with a promise that something would be done before the night, and once her nurses had dispersed to see to breakfasts she asked Joan to stay behind for a few minutes.

‘The side ward, the one at the other end of the ward that we don’t use unless we have to—we’ll put her in there. She’s not to be neglected, mind, but she must get up as usual—she can sit there and have her meals there, and when Mr Bull does his round I’ll see if he’ll talk to her.’

Josephine supervised the move. Mrs Prosser, at first delighted at getting so much attention, became incensed when she discovered that she was to be on her own. Josephine waited until she had finished her diatribe, forcefully delivered, about the cruelty of nurses and herself above all, and then she pointed out reasonably, ‘Well, Mrs Prosser, if you are feeling as poorly as you say, then I think that you should be kept as quiet as possible. I think Mr Bull will agree with me. He’s doing a round later this morning and you can tell him exactly what is wrong. Your temperature and pulse are quite normal, and you ate your breakfast and you haven’t been sick.’

Mrs Prosser said a rude word, but Josephine, inured to the colourful vocabulary of the majority of her patients, took not a bit of notice. She left Mrs Prosser’s door half open and swept back down the ward, distinctly eye catching in her dark blue cotton uniform and frilled cap; other hospitals might dress their nurses in nylon and paper caps, St Michael’s hadn’t changed the material or the cut since they were first designed in the mid-nineteenth century. Perhaps they weren’t as comfortable as the modern overall, but the St Michael’s nurses wore them with pride and spent time getting their caps just so.

With Josephine’s eye here, there and everywhere, the ward gradually assumed the perfection she expected. The ill ladies were attended to, comforted, their hair nicely combed, and set against their pillows, those who were able, got from their beds and were settled in chairs, and the in betweens, not yet quite well enough to do much for themselves, were encouraged to swing their legs out of bed, totter for little walks under the watchful eye of a nurse, and then sit up in their beds, where, feeling pleased with themselves, they read the paper or knitted. And in the meantime Joan Makepeace and a Senior Student Nurse had started the treatments and the dressings. By the time the nurses started going to their coffee the morning was successfully embarked upon its routine.

Mr Bull arrived just as Josephine, having checked that all was going well with her patients, was thinking of her own coffee. He surged into the ward, bringing a wave of good humour with him. He was accompanied by the colleague who was to do his work while he was away; the man in the car, no less. She halted for a moment, on her way down the ward to meet them, and then went on, her colour a little high, but her calm unimpaired.

Mr Bull gave her a jovial greeting. ‘Jo—everything spick and span, I see—I’ve never managed to catch you out yet, have I? I’ve brought Mr Julius van Tacx—he’ll be doing my work for me while I’m away. Julius, meet my favourite Ward Sister, Josephine Dowling. She’s getting married very shortly, more’s the pity.’

Josephine extended a large, well kept hand and had it engulfed in an enormous grip. She said, ‘How d’you do?’ in a rather colourless voice and was taken aback when he replied, carelessly.

‘Oh, we have met already, haven’t we?’

Mr Bull was all ears. ‘Oh, where?’

‘In the middle of a country road in a rainstorm. Miss Dowling took exception to my driving.’

Mr Bull was by no means insensitive to atmosphere. He glanced at Jo’s wooden countenance and then at Mr van Tacx’s amused face and said uneasily, ‘Yes, well—I daresay you’ll work very well together. This is one of the best run wards in the hospital.’

Mr van Tacx bowed his head slightly in what Josephine considered to be a mocking gesture. His, ‘Of course,’ sounded mocking, too.

She said austerely, ‘Naturally I and my nursing staff will do everything to make things as easy as possible for Mr van Tacx.’

‘Oh, I don’t expect things to be easy,’ he told her cheerfully, ‘but I daresay we’ll rub along.’

There was nothing to reply to this. Jo led the way to the first bed and the round began, supported by a posse of students, Joan Makepeace and a Student Nurse clutching a pile of patients’ notes. It took twice as long, of course, Mr van Tacx had to have every sign and symptom explained to him as well as reading the foot of every bed as they came to it. Josephine, longing for her coffee, allowed no vestige of her impatience to show, making suitable replies to the questions fired at her, producing the correct forms seconds before they were asked for, behaving in short, just as a well trained nurse ought. So much so in fact that Mr Bull paused at the end of the ward to enquire what was the matter with her. ‘Swallowed the poker, Jo?’ he asked. ‘You don’t need to be so starchy just because Mr van Tacx is here.’

Jo looked down her beautiful nose. ‘I hope that I shall treat Mr van Tacx exactly as I have always treated you, sir,’ she said sweetly. ‘Would you like to see Mrs Prosser? I’ve put her in the end side ward. She kept everyone awake last night and is convinced that she isn’t well enough to go home. I suggested to her that if she were in a room by herself she might begin to feel better.’

‘Oh, God—must I see her? There’s nothing wrong is there?’

Josephine glanced at her notes. ‘Nothing at all.’

‘Oh, well, in that case…’ He caught her eye. ‘You think I’d better have a word?’

She nodded and led the way to the side ward. Mrs Prosser was sitting up in her bed, waiting for them. She didn’t waste time with any good-mornings, but launched her attack without preamble. They stood listening imperturbably until she stopped for lack of breath.

‘Well, Mrs Prosser,’ said Mr Bull, ‘here is a well-known specialist who has come to examine you. I do feel that if he pronounces you fit you have no option but to take his advice and go home on Saturday.’