Tabitha in Moonlight

‘He’s got me, Sister—it’s taken him the whole evening, but he’s finally done it.’

‘How?’ asked Tabitha, remembering with a grief she still felt keenly the games of chess she and her father had played before he had married again. It was one of the memories she tried her best to forget, and she thrust it aside now and listened intelligently to Mr Oscar’s triumphant explanation before wishing them a cheerful good night and going finally into the cubicle outside her office.

Mr Raynard was waiting for her, looking bad-tempered—something which she ignored, for she had long ago learned not to mind his bristling manner and sharp tongue. Now he asked; ‘Is there something coming in?’

She told him briefly and added: ‘If you’re quite comfortable, sir, I won’t stay—there are several things…I hope you’ll sleep well. You’ve been written up for what you asked for and I hope you’ll take it—you need a good sleep. Nothing after midnight, either, in case you go to theatre early—that depends upon your colleague, I imagine. I shall be here at eight o’clock anyway, and your pre-meds are written up.’

Mr Raynard snorted. ‘All nicely arranged. You’ll go with me to the theatre, of course.’

Tabitha raised her eyebrows. ‘If you insist, sir—though I must remind you that it’s theatre day tomorrow and there’s a list from here to there; you made it out yourself last week.’

Mr Raynard looked sour. ‘Well, you’ve got a staff nurse who’s quite able to carry out your pernickety ideas.’ He added reluctantly, ‘You run the ward so efficiently that it could tick over very well by itself.’

Tabitha looked surprised. ‘Fancy you saying that,’ she remarked cheerfully. ‘I’ll be getting too big for my boots!’ Her too-wide mouth curved into a smile. ‘Just for that, I’ll take you to theatre, sir.’

Her quick ear had caught the sound of trolley wheels coming down the corridor. ‘There’s our patient, I must go.’

The old man on the trolley looked like Father Christmas; he had a leonine head crowned with snow-white hair and his handsome old face was wreathed in whiskers. He groaned a little as he was lifted on to the bed, but didn’t open his eyes. It was a few minutes later, after he had been tucked into the warmed and cradled bed and Tabitha had checked his pulse and turned back to take a second look at him, that she encountered his startlingly blue gaze. She said at once: ‘Hullo, you’re safe and sound in hospital. How do you feel?’

His voice came threadily. ‘Not bad—not bad at all, thank you, Sister.’

She smiled. ‘Good. Then will you close your eyes and go to sleep again? Presently, when you’ve had a rest and a little nap, one of us will answer any questions you may want to ask. Unless there’s anything worrying you now?’

He closed his eyes, and Tabitha looked to the drip and checked his night drugs and was on the point of turning away when he said in a voice which was a little stronger: ‘There are one or two questions. What is the time?’

She told him and he frowned so that she asked quickly: ‘Is there someone who should know you are here? We got your address from your papers in Casualty, but there was no one home when the police called.’

‘My cat—Podger—he’ll wonder what’s happened. My landlady won’t bother. He can’t get out—he’ll starve.’

‘Indeed he won’t,’ said Tabitha instantly. ‘I’m going home in a very few minutes. I live quite close to you, I’ll feed your cat and see what arrangements I can make, so don’t worry.’

He smiled a little. ‘There isn’t anyone…’ he began. He closed his eyes and Tabitha waited for him to say something more, but he didn’t; Pethedine and shock and weariness had carried him off between them to a merciful limbo.

It was almost ten o’clock by the time she left the hospital in her small Fiat. A few minutes’ drive took her through the main streets of the city and into the older, shabbier quarter where she found her patient’s house without difficulty. It was one of a row of two-storied Victorian houses which at one time would have been described as desirable family residences, although now they were let out in flats or rooms.

The woman who answered Tabitha’s knock, had a flat Midlands accent which sounded harsh to Tabitha’s West Country ears. She said stridently:

‘What d’yer want?’ and Tabitha felt a sudden pity for the old man she had just left, and for his cat. She explained why she had called and the woman stood aside to let her in with casual cheerfulness. ‘Upstairs, dear—back room, and I ’opes no one expects me to look after ’is room or that cat of ’is. I’ve enough ter do.’

She opened a door and shuffled through it, shutting it firmly on Tabitha, who, left on her own, went briskly up the stairs and into the back room. She switched on the light, closed the door behind her and looked around. The room was small and very clean, and although most of its furniture was strictly of the sort found in furnished rooms, she was surprised to see what she took to be some good pictures on its walls, and several pieces of Wedgwood and Rockingham china on the mantelpiece. There was a desk in one corner of the room too—a beautiful piece of furniture which she thought to be Sheraton; it bore upon it a small ormolu clock and a pair of silver candlesticks which would probably have paid the rent for a year. It wasn’t her business, anyway. She set about looking for Podger.

He was squeezed under the bed, a large black cat with a worried expression on his moonlike face. She gave him bread and milk which he gobbled noisily and then looked at her for more. It was impossible to leave him alone, at the mercy of anyone who chose to remember him. She gathered him up easily enough and went downstairs and knocked on the landlady’s door. Podger cringed a little as it was opened and Tabitha said more firmly than she had meant to: ‘I’ll look after the cat. Perhaps you would be good enough to lock the door while…’

The woman eyed her with indulgent scorn. ‘Till ’is rent’s due I’ll lock it. After that it’s out with ’is things. I can’t afford to leave me rooms empty.’

Tabitha put a gentle hand on Podger’s bull neck. ‘Yes, of course. I’ll come back tomorrow evening—perhaps something could be arranged.’

She made her escape, and as she settled the trustful Podger beside her in the car her mind was already busy with the problem of what was to be done. The old man must be hard up, even though some of his possessions, if sold, would keep him in comfort for some time. She started the car, and still pondering the problem, went back through the city to the quiet street where she had her flat.

As she parked the car outside the little house, she could see Meg standing in the open door, and as she crossed the road, Podger under one arm, she heard her soft Dorset voice. ‘Miss Tabby, where have you been? It’s all hours—and what’s that you’ve got with you?’

Tabitha shut the street door firmly behind them and opened the door into the flat, then crossed the minute hall and went into the kitchen, where she put Podger on a chair. She said contritely: ‘Meg dear, I’m so sorry. I’ll tell you what happened, but I must feed this poor creature.’ She rummaged around and found some cold ham and gave it to the cat, explaining as she did so. When she had finished, Meg clucked her tongue just as she had always done when Tabitha had been a very little girl and she had been her nanny.

‘Well, what’s done can’t be undone,’ she remarked comfortably, ‘poor old man. Did you get your supper?’

‘No,’ confessed Tabitha, ‘not all of it,’ and was prevailed upon to sit down immediately at the table and given soup while Meg made sandwiches. With her mouth full, she said: ‘You spoil me, Meg. You shouldn’t, you know. You could get a marvelous job with an earl or a lord or someone instead of being cooped up here with me on a wage Father would have been ashamed to offer you.’

Her erstwhile nurse gave her a severe look. ‘And what would I be doing with earls and lords and suchlike? Didn’t I promise your dear mother that I’d look after you, and you didn’t think that I would stay behind when you left home, now did you, miss?’

Tabitha offered Podger a morsel of cheese and jumped up to hug Meg. ‘I’d be lost without you,’ she declared soberly, and then: ‘I don’t want to go to Chidlake on Friday.’

‘You must, Miss Tabitha. It’s your stepsister’s birthday party, and though I know there’s no love lost between you, nor yet that stepmother of yours, you’ve got to go. When you left Chidlake after your father married again you did promise him you’d go back, Christmas and birthdays and suchlike.’

‘Oh, Meg, I know, but Father was alive then. Stepmother and Lilith don’t really want me there.’

‘Maybe not, but it’s your home, Miss Tabby dear, whatever they say—you belong there and they never will. You can’t leave the old house to strangers.’

Tabitha went over to the sink with her plate. She loved her home very much; Meg was right, she couldn’t leave it completely. She said heavily: ‘Of course I’ll go, Meg. Now we’d better go to bed. I’ll take Podger with me, shall I, in case he’s lonely. And don’t get up early, Meg. I’m on at eight and I’ll have plenty of time to get something to eat before I go.’ But Meg was already laying the table for breakfast; Tabitha knew that whatever she said, the older woman would be down before her in the morning, fiercely insisting that she ate the meal she had cooked. She yawned, suddenly tired, ‘Today’s been beastly,’ she observed.

Meg gave her a shrewd look. ‘Tomorrow’s always a better day,’ she stated firmly. ‘Go and have your bath and I’ll bring you up some hot milk—there’s nothing like it for a good night’s sleep.’

But hot milk or not, Tabitha found sleep elusive, perhaps because she had been talking about her home, and doing that had awakened old memories. She had had a happy childhood, accepting her happiness with the blissful, unconscious content of the very young. She had had loving parents, a beautiful home and no cares to spoil her days. She had been happy at school too, and because Chidlake had been in the family for a very long time, she had known everyone in the village as well as a great many people in nearby Lyme Regis. She had been fifteen when her mother died and almost twenty when her father married again, and by then she was a student nurse, living in hospital in the cathedral city some thirty miles away, so that she came home only for days off each week. At least, it had been each week to begin with, but she had come to dread them, for her stepmother made no pretence of her dislike of her and lost no opportunity of poking sly fun at Tabitha’s lack of looks and young men, so that Tabitha, whose placid nature could turn to a fiery rage if sufficiently badgered, had made the journey home less and less frequently, and finally had thankfully qualified and with her increased salary and the small annuity her mother had left her, had set up house for herself in the tiny flat near the hospital. Her father had allowed her to choose enough furniture from Chidlake to take with her, and had raised no demur when Meg had announced that she had appointed herself housekeeper of the small menage.

Tabitha had continued to go to Chidlake from time to time, but after her father’s death she went less and less—and only then because she had promised her father that she would and because she loved the old house so dearly. Sometimes she wondered what would happen to it, for her stepmother disliked it and Lilith hated it; probably it would be sold. When Tabitha allowed herself to think of this she longed to have the money to buy it, for it was, after all, hers by rights and she had been given to understand that her father had asked her stepmother to leave it to his elder daughter when she died. But Tabitha was only too well aware that that would be the last thing she would do, for she had bitterly opposed Tabitha’s inheritance of a few small pieces of furniture and family silver and had ignored his request that she should make provision for Tabitha, although she had been powerless to prevent the payment of Tabitha’s annuity and Meg’s few hundred pounds.

Tabitha sat up in bed, switched on her bedside light and thumped her pillows into greater comfort. It was past twelve o’clock and she had to be up soon after six, but she had never felt so wide awake. She gazed around the room, soothed by its charm. Although small, the few pieces of furniture it contained showed up to advantage and the pink shade of the lamp gave the white walls a pleasant glow. She began to think about the weekend. Lilith’s party was to be a big affair, and although she disliked Tabitha almost as much as her mother did, she had invited her with an outward show of friendliness because, after all, Tabitha knew a great many people around Chidlake; they would find it strange if she wasn’t present. At least she had a new dress for the occasion—a green and blue shot silk with a tiny bodice, its low-cut neck frilled with lace and the same lace at the elbow-length sleeves. She had tried it on several times during the last week and had come to the conclusion that while she was unlikely to create a stir, she would at least be worth a glance.

Tired of lying awake, she rearranged her pillows once more, and Podger, who had settled at the end of her bed, opened a sleepy eye, yawned, stretched and then got up and padded across the quilt to settle against her. He was warm—too warm for the time of year, but comforting too. She put an arm round his portly little body and went to sleep.

She went to take a look at her newest patient as soon as she had taken the report the next morning, and found him more himself. He stared at her with his bright old eyes and said quite strongly: ‘I’ve seen you before—I’m afraid I wasn’t feeling quite myself.’ He held out a rather shaky hand and she shook its frail boniness gravely. ‘John Bow,’ he said.

‘Tabitha Crawley,’ said Tabby, and gave him a nice smile. ‘I’m glad to hear that you’ve had quite a good night—the surgeon will be along directly to decide what needs to be done.’

He nodded, not much interested. ‘Podger?’ he enquired.

She explained, glossing over the landlady’s observations and telling him that they would have a little talk later on, before she crossed the ward to Mr Raynard’s cubicle. He greeted her so crossly that she asked:

‘What’s the matter, sir? You sound put out.’

‘My knee’s the matter. I’ve hardly closed my eyes all night.’

Tabitha looked sympathetic, aware from the report that he had wakened for a couple of short periods only, but there was no point in arguing.

‘I expect it seemed like all night,’ she observed kindly.

‘Bah! I told that fool of a night nurse to get me some more dope and she had the temerity to refuse because it wasn’t written up.’

Tabitha took up a militant stance at the foot of his bed, ready to do battle on behalf of the night staff, who was a good girl anyway and knew what she was about.