The Magic of Living

Her cousin flung an arm around her shoulders. ‘You’re a darling—tell you what, I’ll see if I can get Watts’ holidays changed, then you can go home with her when you get back—how’s that for a good idea?’

Arabella agreed that it was, provided that Doreen didn’t mind, and suppose it wasn’t convenient for her family? Hilary waved the idea away carelessly; she would arrange everything, she said airily. ‘And what’s more,’ she promised, ‘I’ll come back to Wickham’s tomorrow with you, instead of waiting until the next day, then you can have the Triumph to drive us up and drive yourself back on your next days off.’

A bribe—Arabella recognised it as such; she loved driving. One day, when she was a qualified nurse and earning more money, she intended to save up and buy herself a car, but until then she had to depend upon her uncle’s kindness in lending her the Triumph which shared the garage with his Daimler. She said now: ‘That will be nice, thank you, Hilary,’ but Hilary, having got what she had come for, was already on her way to the door.

It was when the twins had been sent away to wash their hands for tea that Nanny, knitting endlessly, had looked up from her work to say:

‘You always were a bonny child, Miss Arabella, and far too kind-hearted. Miss Hilary always had what she wanted out of you, and still does; no good will come of it.’

Arabella was putting the last few pieces of the puzzle in their places, but she paused to look at the cosy little figure in the old-fashioned basket chair. ‘Nanny dear, I don’t mind a bit—did you hear what we were talking about?’

‘Well enough. And what happens, young lady, if Miss Hilary should set eyes on a young man you fancied for yourself, eh? Do you let her have him?’

‘Well,’ said Arabella matter-of-factly, ‘I can’t imagine that happening, and if it did, what chance would I have, Nanny? No one ever looks at me when Hilary’s there, you know—besides, I don’t care for any of the men who fancy her.’

‘That’s a vulgar expression,’ said Nanny repressively, ‘but one day, mark my words, Mr Right will come along and you won’t want to share him.’

Arabella wasn’t attending very closely; she asked eagerly:

‘Nanny, do you believe in orange blossom and falling in love? You don’t think it’s old-fashioned?’

‘How can anything be old-fashioned when it’s been going on since the world began, Miss Arabella? You keep right on thinking that, and leave those queer young people in their strange clothes and hair that needs a good brush…’ she snorted indignantly. ‘Let them think what they like, they’ll find out what they’re missing, soon enough,’ she added darkly.

Arabella got up off her knees and went to look out of the window.

‘I wonder if I shall like Holland,’ she hazarded. ‘The camp’s somewhere in the middle.’ She sighed to herself; probably she would be alternately run off her feet and bored stiff, for Sister Brewster was twice her age and she had worked on her ward and hated every minute of it. It was a pity that Lady Marchant had ever had the idea of asking Wickham’s Hospital to lend two of its nurses to accompany the children—just because she had been a patient there and had taken a fancy to Hilary—perhaps she thought she was conferring a favour, or more likely, she had had difficulty in recruiting anyone else.

‘I think I’ll go for a walk,’ said Arabella; she didn’t want any tea, she felt all of a sudden out of tune with the world, a good walk would settle everything back into its right place again. After all, what did it matter if she went on holiday a couple of weeks later—and she liked children. Besides, it would be an opportunity to see another country, however limited the sightseeing would be.

She went down the back stairs and out of the kitchen door and through the little wicket gate at the bottom of the vegetable garden and so into the woods beyond. It was quiet there, the house stood equidistant between Great Sampford and Little Sampford, a mile or so away from the country road which connected these two villages, so that there was nothing but the quiet Essex countryside around her. She wandered on, and presently came out on to the crossroads, where four lanes met and parted again to go to Finchingfield, Steeple Bumpstead, Cornish Hall End and, behind her, back to the Sampfords. She chose the way to Cornish Hall End, because it went through the neck of the woods once more and at its end she could take the path back through the trees.

It was September and warm for the time of year. Arabella pulled off the cardigan she had snatched up as she had left the house and walked on, wishing she was wearing something thinner than the cotton shirt and rather shabby tweed skirt she had on. There had seemed no point in wearing anything else when she had got up that morning; she had known in advance that she would be asked to pick fruit some time during the day, and later, when she would have changed, she had had the twins wished on her. Thinking about them reminded her of Hilary’s request, and her pleasant little face became thoughtful—it was a pity that her cousin had got entangled with Mr Thisby-Barnes, but Arabella knew from experience that it wouldn’t help in the least if she were to argue with Hilary about him. Hilary had always done exactly what she wanted to do, in the most charming way possible, and would brook no interference.

Arabella dismissed the vexing matter from her mind, sensibly realizing that there was nothing to be done about it except hope that Hilary would tire of Mr Thisby-Barnes as quickly as she had tired of so many other of her admirers. Having disposed of one worry, however, Arabella found her mind turning to another—the bus trip with the children. She would have to find out more about it, and about a passport and what she was supposed to take in the way of clothes. It would be necessary to go and see Sister Brewster, who would probably hate her going just as much as she herself was beginning to.

She turned off the road and started back home, thinking vaguely now of all the things she would like to do and wondering if she would ever get the chance of doing half of them. She would like to marry, of course—some paragon whose hazy picture in her head was a splendid mixture of good looks and charm and endless adoration of her homely self, besides being possessed of sufficient money to give her all she should ever ask for. That she wasn’t the kind of girl to ask for anything seemed beside the point, as did the fact that the young men of her acquaintance tended to treat her like a younger sister and seldom showed any sign of even the mildest interest in her. It would help, she thought a trifle wistfully, if Hilary were to marry and go and live somewhere sufficiently far away to leave her a clear field; not that that would help much, although there had been Jim Besley, a casualty officer at Wickham’s who had shown signs of fancying her—he had driven her home for her days off, though, but Hilary had been home too, and although she had made no effort to charm him, he had had no eyes for Arabella after that. And there had been Tony Clark, a dull young man from the Path Lab—he had got as far as suggesting that he should take Arabella to the cinema one evening, only Hilary had come along just as he was getting down to details as to where they should meet, and somehow they didn’t go after all. He took Hilary out instead and spent so much money on her entertainment that Arabella’s kind heart was wrung by the sight of the economical meals of eggs and chips he was forced to live on in the canteen until pay day came round again.

She had walked rather further than she had intended; she got back to the house only just in time to get ready for dinner, and her aunt, meeting her in the hall as she went in, her mousy hair hanging untidily down to her waist, her cardigan slung anyhow round her shoulders, asked her with some asperity where she had been, and would have doubtless delivered a short, not unkind lecture on her appearance, if Hilary hadn’t come running downstairs, looking like a fairytale princess, to rescue her with a few careless, charming words. Arabella gave her a grateful glance. Hilary was a dear, it was mean to feel annoyed, however faintly at having been coerced into taking her cousin’s place on the children’s outing; it was, after all, a small return for the kindness she had received from her cousin since she had gone, as a small, unhappy girl, to live with Hilary’s parents.

She was still of the same mind the following morning as she drove the Triumph back to London with Hilary beside her, and although she was disappointed when her cousin declared herself too bored with the whole matter to give her any more information about the trip she was to take, she agreed readily enough to wait until Sister Brewster had been informed of the change. ‘She’ll send for you,’ laughed Hilary, ‘and fuss and fret about a hundred and one things, but you don’t need to take any notice, love—I can’t think what Lady Marchant was about, suggesting that old Brewster should be in charge.’

‘How many children?’ asked Arabella.

Hilary shrugged. ‘Do you know, I can’t remember—not many, though, most of them…’ she stopped abruptly and made some remark about the traffic, so that the sentence never got finished.

Wickham’s looked as grey and forbidding as it always did, even on a lovely autumn day, its brick walls and rows of windows looked uninviting, and now, today, under a pale sky with a threat of rain, and a wind blowing the first of the leaves from the row of plane trees across the London square, it looked more inhospitable than ever. But Arabella didn’t notice, and if she had, she wouldn’t have minded; she was happy at Wickham’s—in a year’s time, when she had finished her training, she would probably take a job in some other hospital, but that was a long while yet. She parked the car in the corrugated iron shed set apart for the nursing staff and walked with her cousin to the side entrance which would take them to the Nurses’ Home. She had barely half an hour before she was due on duty; she bade Hilary a swift goodbye and raced along the complexity of passages which would get her to the Home.

On the third floor, where she had her room, there was a good deal of laughing and talking. Second dinner was just over, the young ladies who had eaten it were making themselves a cup of tea. They crowded into her room, obligingly filling a mug of the comforting liquid for her, and carrying on a ceaseless chatter while she cast off her green jersey dress and tore into her blue and white striped uniform. Between heartening mouthfuls of scalding tea, she answered her companions’ questions as to her days off, exclaimed suitably over the latest hospital gossip, and agreed to go with a number of her friends to the cinema on her next free evening. It wasn’t until they were crowding through the door that she told them she was going to take her cousin’s place on the children’s bus trip.

The dozen or so nurses milling around her paused in their headlong flight back to their work on the wards. ‘Arabella, you can’t!’ exclaimed Anne Morgan, one of her particular friends. ‘Old Brewster’s in charge and there are to be twenty-two kids and they’re almost all more or less helpless—it’ll be terrible!’

‘Why can’t your cousin go?’ a voice wanted to know.

Arabella got out of answering that one by exclaiming, ‘Lord, look at the time!’ and belting down the stairs. Going on duty at two o’clock after days off was bad enough, it would be ten times worse if one were late and incurred the displeasure of the Ward Sister.

She slid into Women’s Medical with thirty seconds to spare, and when Sister came through the door a minute later, Arabella was making up an empty bed for all the world as though she had been at it for five minutes or more.

She had no time to herself after that, and when she went off duty that evening, her impending journey was quite overlooked in the scattered conversations carried on between baths and cups of tea and the trying on, by at least six of her closest friends, of a hat which had been delivered to Anne that evening. She was to be bridesmaid to her sister within a short time, and the hat was a romantic wide-brimmed affair, all ribbons and lace. It suited Anne very well—it suited them all, it was that kind of a hat, but when it was offered to Arabella she laughingly refused; her aunt had advised her that the maxim ‘A plain hat for a plain face,’ was a good one, and Arabella had faithfully abided by it. All the same, when she came back from her bath some twenty minutes later and found everyone gone and the hat on Anne’s bed, she settled the masterpiece of millinery upon her head and looked rather fearfully in the mirror.

Aunt Maud had been wrong; the hat did something for her, she looked almost pretty. She winced at the memory of the severe felt she had purchased for church-going last winter, with her aunt’s unqualified approval. The next hat she bought, she vowed, turning her head this way and that before the mirror, she would buy by herself, and it would be a hat to shock the family, the village churchgoers and the parson himself. She took it off with regret. It was a pity that as a general rule she didn’t wear hats; all the same she glowed gently with the knowledge that she wasn’t quite as plain as she had imagined. It would be nice, she thought sleepily, if you were wearing such a hat when Nanny’s Mr Right came along, if ever he came, which seemed unlikely.

Two days later Sister Brewster sent for her, to inform her in tones of disapproval that since her cousin was unable to go on the children’s holiday which Lady Marchant had so kindly arranged, and Matron had signified her approval of Arabella taking her place, she would have to make do with whoever was offered her. Upon this rather unfortunate opening she proceeded to build her plans for the expedition, merely pausing from time to time in order to tell Arabella that she was to do as she was told at all times. ‘I shall have my hands full,’ stated Sister Brewster loftily, ‘and I want no nonsense of any sort.’

Arabella wondered if the programme—and a very muddled one it was too—was to be adhered to, what time there would be left for her to do more than draw breath, let alone give way to any sort of nonsense. She assured the older lady that she wasn’t the nonsensical type, and then enquired how many children they were to escort.

‘Twenty-two,’ said Sister Brewster snappily.

‘Are they all able to help themselves?’

‘Some ten or eleven are capable of doing most things. You will need to help the others.’

Arabella caught her breath, clamped her teeth firmly on to her tongue and remained commendably silent. It was going to be far worse than she had been led to believe; no wonder Hilary hadn’t wanted to go, although she might not have known the details when she cried off. Arabella, who wouldn’t have played a dirty trick on anyone, couldn’t imagine others doing so, especially her own cousin.

She went along to the Sisters’ Wing of the Home that evening and told Hilary about it, and her cousin, sitting before her mirror, doing things to her pretty face, made a sympathetic sound. ‘Poor old Bella, I am sorry, love. Never mind, it won’t be for long and once you get to the camp I’m sure you’ll find swarms of volunteer helpers, then you won’t have nearly so much to do.’

She applied mascara with an expert hand and Arabella watched with an appreciative eye. ‘We’re leaving in two days’ time,’ she told her cousin. ‘Did you do anything about Watts’ holiday?’

Hilary got up and put on her coat. ‘Watts? Don’t worry your head, Bella—everything will be arranged.’

Arabella prepared to leave. ‘Where are you going?’ she enquired.

Hilary gave her a mischievous smile. ‘Just a little dinner for two. I’m late—be a darling and tidy up a bit for me, will you? I’ll be late back and I know I’ll be too tired…’bye, love.’

She was gone in a discreet cloud of Ma Griffe and Arabella started to put away discarded clothes and tidy the dressing table. She had done it before quite a number of times, and as she opened doors and closed drawers she reflected, without envy, that her cousin was certainly the prettiest girl she had ever seen. The thought sent her to the mirror to peer at her own reflection, an action so unrewarding that she made haste to go back to her own room.

Lady Marchant, even though she was in Canada, had seen to it that her work in arranging a holiday for the spastic children should not go unsung; the children were conveyed to Wickham’s in the morning where the bus was waiting for them, together with a battery of cameramen from all the best newspapers and even someone from the BBC.

Arabella, busy arranging the children in their most comfortable positions and then strapping them in, had no time to pose for her photograph, although she was assured by her friends later that there were some excellent shots of her back view on the six o’clock news, but Hilary, who had come down into the courtyard ostensibly to help, turned her lovely face to the cameramen, who realized that she was exactly what they were looking for. They snapped her in a dozen positions and the BBC reporter managed a short interview, in which Hilary, without actually saying so, gave the impression that she was in charge of the whole excursion.

The bus left at length, half an hour after everyone else, because Sister Brewster, at the last minute, had discovered that she had left behind most of the papers she needed for the journey; it was unfortunate that she couldn’t remember where she had left them. They came to light in her room finally, but by then the newspaper men and the reporter had gone home to their lunch.

Contrary to her expectations, Arabella enjoyed the journey; the children were good even though they were wild with excitement; most of them were able to do only a very little for themselves even though they had the intelligence of a normal child. Arabella listened patiently to their slow, difficult speech, pointed out the sights as they went along, and when the bus pulled in to a layby, helped them to eat their lunches. Several of them needed to be fed, several more needed a steadying hand. It took so long that she ate her own sandwiches once the bus had started again, sitting up in front with three of the more helpless of the children. They were pathetically lightweight, so they were close to the driver and the bus door, so that they could be whisked in and out quickly and leave room for those not quite so handicapped. The driver, Arabella had quickly decided, was a dear; quite elderly and rather thickset, a good steady driver too and not easily distracted by the shouts and noise going on around him.

They were to cross by Hovercraft to Calais and spend the night near Ghent, at a convent known to Lady Marchant, and despite Sister Brewster’s misgivings, the journey went smoothly and surprisingly rapidly. Once on the other side of the channel, Mr Burns, the driver, took the coast road to Dunkirk, turning off there to cross into Belgium and so eventually to Ghent. The convent was just outside the town, a charming red brick building enclosed by a large garden and with a gratifyingly large number of helpers waiting to receive them. The children were fed and put to bed and the three of them were sitting down to their own supper in a commendably short space of time. They talked little, for they were tired, and Arabella for one was glad to stretch herself out in her severe little bed in the room allotted to her leading from the children’s dormitory.

They were on their way directly after a breakfast eaten at an hour which had meant getting up very early indeed, but the morning was fine if chilly and spirits were high as Mr Burns turned the bus towards Holland. They had a journey of roughly a hundred and fifty miles to go and more than five hours in which to do it, for they were expected at the camp by one o’clock. Part of the journey at least would be on the motorway, the remainder as far as Arnhem on a first-class road. The holiday camp was nine or ten miles further on, in the Veluwe, and with no towns of any size nearby, that much Arabella had learned from her study of the map before they had left, and as they went along, Mr Burns supplied odds and ends of information concerning the country around them.

They were through Arnhem and off the main road now, tooling along through pleasant quiet country, wooded and sparsely inhabited—a little like the New Forest, decided Arabella, on her way round the bus with sweets for the children. It was as she was making her way to the front again that she noticed that Mr Burns’ driving had become rather erratic; he wasn’t on the right side of the road any more, but well in the middle. The bus shot back to the right far too sharply and then, as though propelled by some giant hand, to the left. Arabella was beside a strangely sagging Mr Burns by now, applying the hand-brake, switching off the ignition and then leaning across his inert body to drag at the wheel. The bus came to a lop-sided halt on the wrong side of the road, on a narrow grass slope leading to a small waterway. It took a few long seconds to decide what it would do next and then tilted sideways and slid slowly over. Arabella had ample time to see a car, coming fast and apparently straight at them. Her head was full of a jumble of thoughts, tilting themselves sideways out of her mind just as the bus was tilting—Sister Brewster, squeaking like a parrot; the children, gasping and crying incoherently for help; Hilary, telling her it would be quite an easy trip and she had nothing to worry about; last and most strangely, a vivid memory of Anne’s gorgeous bridesmaid’s hat.