Never While the Grass Grows

‘I for one shall mind,’ Octavia assured her warmly. She ignored the large man looming over her and told the student nurse hovering to telephone Doctor Waring.

‘Tell him it’s a mugging, an elderly lady, no visible fractures, contusion on temple, cut eye, cut lip, not yet fully examined, rather shocked. Ask him to come at once, please.’

She began very gently to take off the old lady’s coat, a shockingly shabby garment, now freshly torn and ruined for ever. Octavia got out her scissors. ‘Look, my dear, I’m going to cut your coat so that I can get it off without hurting you; we’ll replace it for you.’

She had been busy cutting up one sleeve, and now when she went to do the same with the other, the patient’s rescuer took the scissors from her. It was then that she saw that his knuckles were bleeding and that there was a small cut across the back of one hand, the blood congealing now.

‘Oh, you’re hurt!’ She added forcefully: ‘I hope you knocked them down and jumped on them!’

Her companion continued his steady plying of the scissors. ‘I knocked them down—they—er—hardly needed to be jumped on, I fancy.’

She was easing the old lady’s jumper and put out her hand for the scissors again. ‘Good for you,’ said Octavia, ‘now if you wouldn’t mind just going into the next cubicle, Nurse will clean that hand up and the doctor can take a look at it. You’ll need ATS too—a knife, I imagine?’

‘You imagine correctly, Sister.’

She nodded without looking at him. ‘I’m going to telephone the police very shortly, perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling them just what happened? This little lady is hardly fit to be questioned just yet. We shall need your name and address too… Nurse will see to it.’ She turned as she heard John Waring’s step. ‘Hullo, again.’ She flashed him a tired smile. ‘I’ve not done too much—I thought you’d better take a quick look first. There’s a small wound here…’ They bent over the patient together, everything else forgotten for the moment.

It was some time later, when Octavia had discovered her patient’s name, wrapped her in a dressing gown, Mr Waring had dealt with her injuries, and she had taken her to X-ray and finally seen her safely off to one of the women’s wards, that she discovered that the man who had brought her in was still there. The police had come and gone, John Waring had disappeared too and she had sent the two nurses and Mrs Taylor off duty. It was ten o’clock by now and she had started to tidy up the cubicle before writing up the Casualty Book. Snoopy Kate hadn’t been near—typical, thought Octavia, racing round the little room transforming it to its usual spick and span appearance; when there was nothing to do, she would bustle around, picking holes in things that didn’t matter at all, but when the day staff were delayed by a case, Snoopy Kate kept well away until everything was quiet again. Octavia shot the last receiver into its allotted space and nipped across to the office to be brought to a halt by a voice behind her.

‘This place is very inefficiently run,’ remarked the big man coolly. ‘You send your nurses off duty and remain behind to do work which is theirs; and apparently there is no one to take over—just when do you go yourself?’

Octavia, quite short-tempered by now, answered him snappily: ‘I might ask the same question of you. Doctor Waring saw you, didn’t he? and Nurse told me that your hand had been attended to. And really it is no concern of yours as to when I go off duty.’ She was about to wish him goodnight and show him the door when she was struck by a sudden thought. ‘Did you have your ATS?’

‘Ah—I wondered when someone would give it a thought,’ he told her nastily.

She whisked back to the trolley she had just tidied so carefully and found syringe, needle and ampoule. ‘I’m sorry,’ she told him contritely, ‘you should have said sooner, but I quite see that you wouldn’t want to do that because we were a bit busy. I hope it hasn’t spoilt your evening…’

The man’s lip quivered slightly. ‘My evening was spoilt some hours ago,’ he reminded her.

He had got to his feet and taken off his jacket and rolled up a sleeve. Silk shirt, she noted, and a beautifully tailored jacket; she wondered fleetingly who he was. Rather an arrogant type, she considered, and given to saying just what he thought, but he had a nice voice and the trace of an accent…

‘Why did you look like that when your patient told you that she had not a soul to mind?’

She stood beside him, the syringe in hand, her lovely eyes wide. ‘Look like what?’

‘Worried—upset, angry.’

She shot the needle into the arm like a tree trunk before she answered him. ‘Oh, well—there was a man this morning, the police brought him in, half starved and ill and elderly—he said almost the same thing.’ She added almost to herself: ‘There must be someone…’

‘You like helping lame dogs?’ He had his jacket on again.

She said indignantly: ‘That sounds horrid, as though I were a do-gooder, but everyone deserves a chance to be happy and have enough to eat and a home.’

He sat down again and she interrupted herself to ask: ‘Don’t you want to go? There’s nothing more…’

He glanced at his watch. ‘I’ll stay until you go off duty—anyone might come in and you’re alone.’

He was nice after all. Octavia gave him a friendly smile. ‘That’s very nice of you—do you imagine that the muggers will come crawling in here to have their bruises seen to? I’m not easily frightened—besides, one of the night Sisters will be here any time now.’

‘Ah, yes,’ he murmured, ‘Snoopy Kate. Nurse told me about her while she was cleaning up my hand—she sounds interesting. I believe I hear footsteps now.’

It was Snoopy Kate right enough, coming in from the other end of Casualty so that she could peer and prod at the equipment and move all the trollies half an inch, tut-tutting as she came. She could see Octavia but no one else and she began grumbling while she was still the length of the department away. ‘Ten o’clock,’ she declared, ‘and still not finished. I don’t know, you girls can’t work like we did when I was young—What are you doing here anyway? There’s no patient…’

The large man came into view then, holding his strapped knuckles rather ostentatiously before him, so that Octavia, suppressing a grin was able to point out to her superior that there was indeed a patient. ‘This gentleman brought in an old lady who had been injured by muggers,’ she told her, and added coldly: ‘A few minutes before nine o’clock, but since I wasn’t relieved and there was a lot to do, I’m only just finished.’

Snoopy Kate shot a look at the man, who was looking down his nose again, looking detached and a little bored. ‘I was hindered,’ she explained awkwardly. ‘I’ll take over now, Sister.’

‘No need,’ Octavia told her cheerfully. ‘He’s ready to go and I’ve finished the clearing up. The book’ll take me two minutes.’ She nodded a general goodnight and went into the office and shut the door. She could hear Snoopy Kate questioning the man while she made her entries and smiled to herself. He was quite nice, she conceded, but he had been rude to begin with and obviously liked his own way and wasn’t above being sarcastic, although Nurse Scott should have remembered the ATS—she would have to speak to her in the morning. She heard a door creak and the rustle of Snoopy Kate’s uniform. They had gone. She closed the book, and went back into Casualty on her way to her bed at last. The man was still there.

‘Oh, I’m going,’ he told her blandly. ‘That was a nasty trick, leaving me to parry your colleague’s questions—you seem to have a grudge against me.’

He was smiling and he looked nicer than ever. ‘It was mean of me,’ she allowed, ‘but you were rather nasty when you came in this evening, you know. Just as though you expected everyone to do exactly what you said at once—I see in the book that you’re a professor, so I expect that accounts for it. Teaching people must make you a bit bossy—boys or girls?’ she asked.

The face he turned to hers was without expression. ‘Both.’ He went to the door. ‘I hope—no, I know that we shall meet again, Sister. Goodnight.’

Octavia was halfway to the Nurses’ Home when she remembered that she had promised to visit the man who had been admitted that morning. It was late; most patients would have been settled for the night, but she could just take a peep. She whispered to the staff nurse in charge of Men’s Medical and went quietly down the ward to find him awake. He looked quite different now; he had been shaved and bathed and put into clean pyjamas and looked ten years younger, although woefully thin. He smiled when he saw her.

‘I said ter meself: She’ll come, and yer ’ave. Looked after me a treat, they ’ave, too.’

‘Splendid. Now, Mr…’

‘Call me Charlie, Sister.’ He looked wistful. ‘Like friends…’

She took a hand, still ingrained with grime despite the washing, and held it firmly in hers. ‘Friends it is,’ she told him, ‘and now you just listen to me, Charlie, you just lie there and eat and sleep for a day or two and don’t worry about a thing. I feel in my bones that your luck’s changed. And now go to sleep, there’s a dear.’ Upon which heartening words she bade him goodnight.

She went to see him each day after that, watching his face slowly fill out and his eyes brighten. The Ward Sister was a friend of hers, so it didn’t take much persuasion to get her to recommend that Charlie should stay where he was for another week at least. And she went to see the little old lady, Mrs Stubbs, too, smaller than ever in a hospital nightgown and with her grey hair neatly arranged over her bruised head. She had a black eye too, which gave her a decidedly rakish air, but despite her injuries she insisted on sitting out of bed each day and before very long had coaxed the nurses to let her do any little odd jobs of mending or sewing. She was, the Ward Sister told Octavia, very good with her needle.

‘Well, surely a job could be found for her?’ asked Octavia. ‘What about the sewing room?’

‘Huh—two were made redundant last month. The Social Worker’s scouting round though and there’s at least a week before discharge—longer, I imagine.’

The week neared its end and Octavia, weary from the rush and urgency of a constantly busy Casualty, went happily off duty on the Friday evening. She had been to see Charlie and Mrs Stubbs and it seemed reasonable to suppose that they would still be there when she returned on Monday afternoon. They were making progress now, but as yet their futures were uncertain; a problem which somehow had come to be very important to her. She caught the train by the skin of her teeth and found it crowded and resigned herself to standing in the corridor until Guildford, where she got a seat, crushed between a stout elderly lady and a small boy who ate crisps for the rest of the journey. She was kept so busy brushing crumbs off her new skirt that she had no time or inclination to think of anything much and at Alresford she discovered that her father wasn’t waiting for her, something which happened from time to time, for he was a Professor of Physics and remarkably absentminded. She could telephone from the station, but on the other hand it would be as quick—quicker, to take a taxi.

Her home was in the centre of the little town, a small Georgian town house in a row of similar dwellings. It had no garden in the front, but tucked away at the back was a pleasant walled lawn with flower beds and vegetables, kept alive by Octavia’s care on her frequent but brief visits. She opened the front door now and went into the narrow hall just as Mrs Lovelace, the daily housekeeper, came from the kitchen, dressed to leave.

‘There you are, Miss Octavia,’ she remarked comfortably. ‘There’s supper for you keeping hot, your pa’s had his.’ She nodded her head in its severe felt hat in the direction of one of the doors. ‘Busy with something or other, he is—did he know you were coming? I did remind him, but he didn’t hear, I imagine.’

Octavia smiled. ‘He never does, Mrs Lovelace. Thanks for the supper.’ She put down her case and took off her gloves. ‘I’m starved!’

‘And I’ve no doubt of that,’ declared the housekeeper. ‘I doubt you get good wholesome food in those hospitals. Can you manage if I don’t come in tomorrow?’

‘Yes, of course—I’ll have to go back on Sunday evening, though. I’ll get Father’s supper before I go.’

Mrs Lovelace nodded. ‘Thank you, Miss Octavia. I’ll be here Monday as usual.’

Professor Lock greeted his daughter with an absentminded warmth which she took in good part; her father had always been absentminded, and now that he was elderly, he was worse than ever. She kissed his bald pate, begged him not to disturb himself—something she was well aware he had no intention of doing, anyway—and went along to the kitchen to see what was for her supper. It smelled delicious; she took her case upstairs to the comfortable bedroom she had had since she was a child, and without bothering to unpack it, went downstairs again to put Mrs Lovelace’s tasty steak and kidney pie on a tray and carry it along to her father’s study. She ate in silence until he had finished what he was writing and then listened with interest to the theories he had been expounding. She wasn’t in the least scientific herself, but she was intelligent enough to make sensible observations and was rewarded presently by his: ‘You haven’t my brain, my dear, but for a girl you don’t do so badly.’ He peered at her over his old-fashioned spectacles. ‘Are you here for a weekend?’

She nodded, her mouth full of pie.