The Fateful Bargain

The solid bulk of Pearson’s Hospital loomed over her as she left the Underground, its windows lighted, and as she entered a side door, greeting her with a variety of sounds she had come to recognise and ignore. She left her outdoor things in the cloakroom, picked up the plastic bag holding her knitting and study books, and went unhurriedly up two flights of stairs. She was in good time, but then she always was, there was nothing to hinder her; no boyfriend to keep her lingering until the last minute, no visit to a West End cinema to see the latest film, no mother up for the day to shop, nobody to see off home again…Emily didn’t allow herself any self-pity and indeed she felt none; she was doing something she had made up her mind to do, and do it she would, without fuss. She was only twenty-three, and in less than a year her father could have his first operation and she would be qualified. Beyond that she resolutely refused to think, although right at the back of her mind was the shadowy hope that one day someone might fall in love with her and marry her.

As she climbed the last flight she thought fleetingly of the man who had bumped into her. It was to be hoped that he hadn’t been late for his work. She frowned. He hadn’t been the usual type she saw on the streets at that early hour of the morning, he had been well dressed and had had the air of someone unworried by clocking-in machines. In a bank, she guessed vaguely, or perhaps a solicitor.

He was in fact walking unhurriedly along the corridor leading from the Orthopaedic theatre to Sister’s office, where, still in a white drill trousers and green smock, he sat himself down at her desk and began to write up the notes of his patient. Someone brought him a mug of coffee which he drank absentmindedly as he wrote, presently to be joined by his Registrar, Henry Parker, and his Theatre Sister, a stern-featured lady who, on hearing that there was to be a Dutch specialist in Orthopaedics for a short period, had declared herself reluctant to work for him. ‘I remember,’ she had confided to the main Theatre Sister, ‘what a terrible time you had with that Frenchman, and I dare say,’ she added darkly, ‘that a Dutchman will be even worse.’ She had drawn such a deep breath that her old-fashioned corsets had creaked. ‘Foreigners!’ she observed.

The Dutchman, when he arrived, had addressed her in English as fluent as her own, and had treated her with a quiet courtesy which had won her over completely. Moreover, he remained calm while he operated and never left the theatre without thanking her nicely for her services.

Rather grudgingly she had admitted that he was every bit as considerate as Mr Griffiths, the consultant he was standing in for until that gentleman had recovered from a severe attack of shingles. As for Mr Beck, the second orthopaedic surgeon, he was on the best of terms with him, and the housemen and nursing staff considered him to be the very acme of perfection. The nurses lucky enough to work on the orthopaedic wards or in theatre bought new lipsticks, made play with their eyelashes and had their hair done far more often than usual, going to meet him in corridors or on the stairs by deliberate accident, but they were forced to admit not one of them had struck even the smallest spark of interest in him.

Mr van Tecqx finished writing as Henry Parker joined him, and they spent a few minutes discussing his patients before he bade his Registrar goodnight and made his way through the hospital. He was at the head of the staircase when the muted sounds of its late evening activities recalled something to mind and he turned back to cross the corridor which would bring him to the medical wing. There were wide glass doors at each end of the landing. He glanced through the first of them and then walked its length to glance through the second door—Women’s Medical, its occupants being settled for the night. The tall, rangy girl was scuttling down the ward in the direction of the sluice room, and going slowly from bed to bed, turning off lights, smoothing sheets and pausing to speak to the occupants, was the girl whom he had met that morning, very neat in her uniform, her hair smoothed into an unfashionable chignon under her cap, her small waist, nicely accentuating her pretty shape, encircled by its stiff white belt. As she paused under the bed lamp he could see her profile clearly; a very ordinary one with its slightly turned-up nose and wide mouth. He turned away with a shrug, wondering what quirk of fancy had made him seek her out, and went on his way down to the entrance hall, to pause at the porter’s lodge and exchange good-nights with Briggs the head porter, before walking unhurriedly through the main entrance, to get into the dark grey Bentley parked outside and drive himself away.

Emily finished her round and went back to Sister’s desk to con the day report and check that she had done everything necessary. Pearson’s was in the process of being modernised, but the Medical Wing was to be the last to be updated, so that instead of the nurses’ stations, smaller wards and day rooms with TV, and elaborate systems connecting patients with nurses, the ward she was on was long and narrow; ten beds on either side with a table in the centre and bathrooms and sluice room at the far end; in the early hours of the morning, when their energy was at its lowest ebb, leaving the desk to go to the sluice room seemed like a day’s journey. All the same, the ward was a cheerful place, mainly because the Sister in charge of it was young and cheerful herself.

Emily shrouded the desk lamp with a red cloth, opened the Report Book and Kardex, and bent her neat head over them. Two barium meals for the next day, she noted; they would have to be started at a busy time of their morning too, and both ladies were bad patients. They would roll the narrow catheter round and round in their mouths instead of swallowing it, and precious minutes would be lost… She smiled at her junior nurse as she drew up a chair and sat down beside her; she liked Stella, who worked hard and didn’t grumble overmuch at the endless bedpans and cups of tea which made up a major share of her night’s work. They shared the work as much as possible, but inevitably Emily had to leave her to it when there was treatment of any sort.

The night went slowly and then, as it usually did, merged into a brief two hours or so of intense activity—rousing the patients with cups of tea, seeing that they went along to the bathrooms, sometimes a slow business with the elderlies who couldn’t hurry and often needed an arm, doing a round with one of the Night Sisters, writing the Report, giving out medicines with her and then the final mad rush to be ready for the moment Sister came on duty. Emily went off duty at last and, careless of her appearance, ate her breakfast, exchanging sleepy gossip with the other night nurses, dragged on her coat and went out into the early morning.

The sun was shining and she breathed in the chilly air with pleasure; even if it were tainted with petrol fumes from the passing buses and the whiff from a refuse lorry, it was pleasant after a night spent in the closed ward. She made a brisk beeline for the Tube, reflecting with pleasure that pay-day was on the following morning. She would go home, she decided recklessly, taking Podge with her in his basket. She had nights off, five of them, because she had had to cut her last lot short to fill a gap owing to the night nurse on Men’s Medical having ‘flu… She began to do sums in her head. She was still doing them as she unlocked her door and scooped up a welcoming Podge.

‘A little holiday,’ she promised him as she fumbled to fill his saucer, ‘and soon I’ll be on day duty and you won’t be lonely any more.’

She reflected as she got ready for bed that she would have started her third year before the next pay-day, and that would mean more money—another five or six months and there would be enough saved for the first operation. She would get hold of Day Sister and ask her the best way to set about it. Emily closed her eyes, intending to go to sleep, but instead she found herself thinking about the man who had almost knocked her over. He had sounded cross and impatient at first. Perhaps he had his worries too—a wife and children? A mortgage? A car that hadn’t passed its MOT? She dozed off without bothering to answer her own questions.

Two days later she packed her shoulder-bag, fastened Podge into his basket and went home, a fairly simple journey since the hospital was in the East End and on the South Bank of the Thames; Waterloo Station was a short bus ride away and there was a local train service to Eynsford.

She sat in the train, one hand on Podge’s basket, and looked out at the Kent countryside, quiet and still green under the autumn sun. One day, she promised herself, she would leave London and get a post in a country town—Canterbury, perhaps, Rochester, even Tunbridge Wells, none of them too far away from her home. She would have a Sister’s post, of course… Her thoughts became woolly; she had been up all night and, even though she would have a nap when she got home, she still had to get there. She pulled her tired wits together as the train drew into the station, and got out.

Her father lived on the edge of the village. She passed the old Tollhouse at the junction of Sparepenny Lane with the road leading to the ford, and turned down a lane leading to a row of charming cottages. The end one was home; Emily went up the short garden path between the neglected flowerbeds and opened the solid wooden door.

Her father was sitting in his wheelchair, reading; with the kettle boiling its head off too. Emily put Podge’s basket down, kissed her father, turned off the gas under the kettle and cast off her outdoor things.

Her father surveyed her with pleasure. ‘What a delightful surprise, Emily! You’re here for a few days?’

He couldn’t disguise the eagerness in his voice and she answered quickly, ‘Nights off, Father; four whole days after today. I’ll make us a cup of coffee and you can bring me up to date with all the news. How are you?’

Mr Grenfell eyed her lovingly. ‘Managing very well, my dear. Night duty finished? Have you been very busy?’

They exchanged their news over coffee while Podge, who had been there before, crept around reviving his memory of the place. Satisfied that it hadn’t changed, he drank the saucer of milk he was offered and curled up on a chair in the sun.

Emily drank her coffee in sleepy content; it was lovely to be home again. She glanced round the comfortable, rather shabby room, at the comfortable chairs, the Welsh dresser with its complement of rather nice china plates and dishes, the balloon-backed chairs with their mid-Victorian seats which somehow looked quite right with the cricket table. The room was a hotch-potch of charming antique furniture, which, after years of being together, blended nicely. Emily’s eye noted the dust under the dresser; after a good night’s sleep she would give the cottage a thorough clean. Mrs Owen was a dear old thing and willing and very kind, but she had neither the time nor the strength to do more than tidy up each day.

Because she had wanted to talk about him ever since she had met him, Emily told her father about the man who had almost knocked her over on that wet and windy morning. She made a joke of it and joined in her father’s amusement, but somewhere deep inside her that wistful longing to meet him again was definitely there. Only, she told herself, so that she could see if she liked him; after that she would forget him; he was too unsettling.

Not too difficult to forget him during the next day or two, as it turned out. Her days were full as she polished and Hoovered, dug the garden and weeded and played bezique with her father. She renewed friendships in the village too, with people who had known her since she was a little girl and who were full of kindly curiosity about her life in London. Emily answered them all in her friendly, matter-of-fact way, told them frankly that she had no young man and no prospect of one either, and lent a sympathetic ear to complaints of illness, naughty children and tiresome grandparents. Perhaps she should be a health visitor or something similar, she mused as she walked back home.

The evening before she went back to the hospital, she and her father had a talk. He had already told her that his arthritis was getting slowly worse, certainly more painful, and although he had made light of it, she sensed his worry.

‘Would it be possible to mortgage the cottage?’

‘My dear child, that’s been done some years ago—your mother’s illness…’

‘There’s nothing we can sell?’

‘There would be very little money left by the time I’d redeemed the mortgage, my dear, and how could we afford to find a house to rent, or even a flat?’ He added slowly, ‘I could go into a geriatric ward…’

‘Over my dead body!’ declared Emily. ‘Let’s keep on as we are and hope for the best.’

She hated leaving her father. London, sprawling to meet her as she sat in the train, looked drab. She was aware that large parts of the city were elegant, with spacious squares and quiet streets lined with lovely old houses, and sometimes on her nights off she would take a bus to St James’s Park, eat her sandwiches there, and then roam the neighbouring streets. A very different London from the one in which she worked and lived.

Back in hospital, the notice board informed her that she was to go to the Men’s Orthopaedic Ward in six days’ time—day duty, of course. Crowded round the notice as she and the other night nurses were on their way to the wards, she was surprised to hear cries of envy from such of her friends as were being posted at the same time.

’emily, you lucky creature!’ declared the pretty student nurse who was to report to Women’s Surgical. ‘You’ll see that new consultant!’

Emily turned away from the noticeboard. ‘You can have him as far as I’m concerned,’ she observed matter-of-factly, ‘though I like the idea of Orthopaedics.’

A nice change from the medical ladies, mostly chronic bronchitis, bad hearts and diabetes and, by the very nature of their illnesses, dispirited. Emily was a shy girl, but nursing a man was quite a different matter from socialising; she was completely at ease with her patients, but put them into their clothes and let her meet them away from their beds, outside the hospital, and she became a quiet, mouselike girl with no conversation. Yet she was liked at Pearson’s; the students and the young housemen looked upon her as a rather silent sister, always ready to make cocoa or cut them a sandwich if they had been called out during the night. But none of them had ever asked her out.

Her last few nights on duty were busy ones; a sudden influx of elderly ladies with nasty chests, naturally enough sorry for themselves, anxious about husbands they had left to manage on their own, cats and dogs dependent upon neighbours and uncertain as to whether they had turned off the gas. Emily soothed and encouraged, listened endlessly to their worries and even, for one old lady, offered to go to her nearby flat and make sure that the canary was being properly fed. It made her late, which was why Mr van Tecqx saw her on the way home. He had walked to the hospital since it was a fine day and he was nearing it as she hurried down the street towards the Underground. She had a plastic bag under one arm and was so deep in thought that she didn’t see him. She was, as she so often was, engaged in mental arithmetic.

She spent her nights off turning out her room and reading up Orthopaedics so that at least she would have some idea about that branch of nursing. The Sister on the ward was reputed to be an old tartar but a splendid nurse. Even the more lively of her companions had declared that they would go anywhere but Orthopaedics, although now that the mysterious consultant was there they were prepared to change their ideas. Emily, if given the chance, would quite cheerfully have exchanged a posting with any one of them.

She climbed the staircase in plenty of time on her first morning of day duty. Sister Cook set great store by punctuality and, although she wouldn’t be on duty until half an hour after the nursing staff, she invariably asked her staff nurses if there had been any latecomers.

In her first year, Emily had spent six weeks on the women’s side, but since she had had very little to do with the actual treatment of the patients then, what knowledge she had gleaned was of little use to her now.

Staff Nurse Ash was a large comforting type. ‘You’ll soon get the hang of things,’ she assured Emily. ‘Don’t worry if Sister Cook blasts your head off, it’s just her way. We’ve just got time to go round the ward before she comes on duty.’

All the beds were occupied and most of them had various frames and cradles to support or protect the inmates’ broken bones. They were a cheerful lot of men, calling up and down the ward to each other, joking with Staff Nurse Ash, and wishing Emily cheerful good mornings. It was a far cry from Women’s Medical; she was going to like it.

She wasn’t quite so sure an hour later. Sister Cook was in a testy mood that morning; she disliked having her nurses changed, and here was a girl who didn’t look capable of the quite heavy work she would be expected to do. True, her reports from the other wards were good, but she looked as if a strong breeze would knock her down. Sister Cook, a big woman herself, rather despised the smaller members of her sex.

Over coffee in the canteen, Emily was questioned by her friends. They brushed aside her comments about Sister Cook and the patients; they wanted to know if the Dutch consultant had been on the ward, and if so, was he as marvellous as rumour had it?

Emily hadn’t seen him. There had been a couple of housemen who had been friendly and there was a consultant’s round at eleven o’clock, but she had no idea who was going to take it. With a customary eye on the clock she hurried back to the ward.

There was an hour before the round was due to start. Sister Cook marched up and down the ward, her hawklike eye searching out every small defect which might spoil the perfection of it. A junior nurse had already retired into the sluice room in tears, it just needed someone to trip over a Balkan Beam or drop a bowl; heaven forfend that she would be the one to do it, thought Emily with unhappy memories of the French consultant who had been so scathing about her clumsiness.

The ward clock pointed to eleven and the ward doors swung open. Sister Cook had taken up her position facing it; behind her stood the staff nurse, Nurse Ashe, and the junior staff nurse, both holding X-rays, Path Lab forms and all the paraphernalia necessary for the round, and behind them stood Emily, entrusted with a small trolley upon which were laid out, in an orderly fashion, the patients’ notes.

It was a very good thing that they were laid out so neatly on the trolley, for when the door was thrust open and she saw who it was who came in, she would have dropped the lot if she had been holding on to them. The man who had almost knocked her down, no less, looking quite different in a dark grey suit of impeccable design, looming head and shoulders above the group of people milling about him; his Registrar, his housemen, medical students, the rather hearty lady from Physiotherapy and the social worker, the whole party swollen by Sister Cook, her staff nurses and Emily, trying to look as though she wasn’t there. Not that she needed to worry; his gaze swept over her with no sign of recognition.

The round pursued its usual course with frequent pauses to assess a patient’s mobility, lengthy arguments as to treatments, and even longer pauses while Mr van Tecqx listened patiently to the complaints, fears and doubts of the occupants of the beds. It took all of an hour, and the smell of the patients’ dinners was strong from the ward kitchen as they all halted at the doors and polite exchanges were made before the consultant’s posse moved off down the corridor.

‘Nurse Grenfell, take the patients’ charts back to my Office.’ Sister Cook was already sailing in the opposite direction, intent on ticking off a patient who had had the temerity to complain to the consultant, of all people, about the breakfast porridge.

Emily escaped thankfully. It had been exciting meeting the man again, and thank heaven he hadn’t recognised her, although it had been pretty mean of him to let her ramble on about her work when he was working at Pearson’s himself.

She gained the office and started to stack the notes exactly as Sister liked them. She was almost finished when the door opened and Mr van Tecqx walked in.