The Secret Pool

He sat down on the side of the bed and addressed himself to Mr Owen. He explained very nicely, even Fran had to admit that, with a mixture of frankness and confidence which cheered the patient. ‘And if Sister can arrange it, perhaps your wife would like to travel with you in the ambulance?’

He glanced at Dr Beecham who nodded and then turned his cold blue eyes upon Fran. ‘Sister?’

‘Mrs Owen lives close by, I am sure something can be arranged.’

They had coffee next, squashed in her office, discussing the round, pausing from time to time to alter drugs and give her instructions.

They had finished their coffee when Dr Beecham reached for the phone. ‘I’ll warn the medical side, Litrik. What about his wife?’

Dr van Rijgen turned to Fran and found her eyes fixed on his face.

‘Mrs Owen? Can you get her here so that we can have a word with her, Sister?’

He frowned impatiently when she didn’t answer at once. She had never thought of him as having any name other than van Rijgen; the strange name Dr Beecham had said made him seem different, although she didn’t know why. A strange name indeed, but quite nice sounding. She realised that he had spoken to her and flushed a little and the flush deepened when he repeated his question with impatience.

‘Certainly, sir. I can telephone her, she lives less than five minutes’ walk away.’ She spoke crisply and thought how ill-tempered he was.

Dr Beecham had finished with the phone, and as she dialled a number he said, ‘Right, Fran. We’ll go along to X-Ray and look at those films. Litrik, will you talk to Mrs Owen?’

He patted her on the shoulder, said, ‘See you later, Litrik,’ and went away, taking Dr Stokes with him.

Mrs Owen was a sensible woman; she asked no unnecessary questions but said that she would be at the hospital in ten minutes. ‘I’ll not ask you any questions, Sister,’ she finished, ‘for I’m sure the Doctor will tell me all I want to know.’

Fran put down the receiver and glanced at Dr van Rijgen, sitting on the window ledge, contemplating the view. She had no intention of staying there under his unfriendly eye; she picked up the charts on the desk and got up.

‘Don’t go,’ said Dr van Rijgen without turning round. ‘However sensible Mrs Owen may be, she’ll probably need a shoulder to cry on.’

He spoke coldly and she, normally a mild-tempered girl, allowed her tongue to voice her thoughts. She snapped, ‘Yes, and that’s something you wouldn’t be prepared to offer.’

The look he gave her was like cold steel; she added, ‘sir’ and waited for his cold calm voice to utter something biting.

‘It is a good thing that my self-esteem does not depend upon your good opinion of me,’ said Dr van Rijgen softly. ‘Would it be a good idea if we were to have a tray of tea? I have found that tea, to the English, soothes even the most unhappy breast. Come to that, the most savage one, too.’

Fran didn’t look at him but went in a dignified way to the kitchen and asked Eddie, the ward maid, to lay up a tea tray.

‘’As ’is nibs taken a liking for it?’ asked that elderly lady. ‘Not like ’im, with ’is foreign ways.’

Fran explained, knowing that if she didn’t Eddie was quite capable of finding out for herself.

‘Give me ’arf a mo’, Sister, and I’ll bring in the tray. Three cups?’

‘Well, yes, I suppose so. Mrs Owen won’t want to sit and drink it by herself.’

She would rather not have gone back to the office but there was no reason why she shouldn’t. Dr van Rijgen was still admiring the view and he didn’t look at her when she sat down at her desk. Indeed, he didn’t move until one of the nurses tapped on the door, put her head round it in response to Fran’s voice and said that Mrs Owen was there.

Fran sat her down: a small plump woman, her round face so anxious. ‘It’s Jack, isn’t it, Sister? He’s not so well. I’m that worried…’

Fran poured the tea and said in a quiet way, ‘Mr Owen has been seen by Dr Beecham and Dr van Rijgen this morning, Mrs Owen.’ She handed the doctor a cup. ‘Dr van Rijgen will explain how things are…’

He had got to his feet when Mrs Owen had been ushered in; now he sat on the edge of the desk, half turned away from Fran. He looked relaxed and unworried and Mrs Owen’s troubled face cleared. His explanations were concise and offered with matter-of-fact sympathy; he neither pretended that there was much chance of Mr Owen recovering, nor did he paint too dark a picture of his future. ‘We shall do what we can, Mrs Owen, that I can promise you,’ he told her finally and Fran, listening, was aware that if she were in Mrs Owen’s shoes she would believe him; what was more, she would trust him. Which, considering she didn’t like the man, was something to be wondered at.

Dr van Rijgen went away presently, leaving Fran to give what comfort she could, and Mrs Owen, who had kept a stern hold on her feelings while he had been talking, broke down then and had a good cry, her grey head tucked comfortingly into Fran’s shoulder. Presently she mopped her eyes and sat up. ‘So sorry,’ she said awkwardly, ‘but it’s a bit of a shock…’

Fran poured more tea and murmured in sympathy, and Mrs Owen went on, ‘He’s nice, isn’t he? I’d trust him with my last breath. Funny, how you can feel he means what he says. Though I suppose he has to talk to lots of people like that.’

‘Oh, yes, I’m sure he must. He’s a very eminent doctor even though he’s not English, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t understand your husband’s case, Mrs Owen, and have every sympathy with you both.’

‘And you, you’re a kind girl too, Sister. My Jack thinks a lot of you.’

Fran made a comforting murmur and, since Mrs Owen was calm again, embarked on the business of ways and means. ‘I still have to arrange things with the ambulance; it’ll be some time tomorrow morning, quite early, if you could manage that? If you could come here? The ambulance will have to come back here, but I expect you’d like to stay for a bit and see Mr Owen settled in? Do you have friends in Bristol where you could stay?’

Mrs Owen shook her head.

‘Then I’ll phone the Infirmary and ask them to fix you up—they have a room where you can be comfortable and they’ll see that you get a meal. There is a morning bus from Bristol, isn’t there? And another one in the late afternoon. I should take an overnight bag.’ She added in a gentle matter-of-fact voice, ‘Are you all right for ready money, Mrs Owen?’

‘Yes thank you, Sister. You don’t know how long I might have to stay?’

‘Well, no, but I’m sure the ward sister will tell you and you can ask to see Dr Beecham and Dr van Rijgen.’

Mrs Owen went away presently and Fran went into the ward to cast an eye on things and to reassure Mr Owen that his wife would be with him when he was transferred. Other than that there wasn’t a great deal to do; she sent the nurses to their dinner and Jenny with them and, leaving the aides in the ward, filling water jugs, went back to her office, where she sat down at her desk and started on the laundry list. She felt restless; perhaps it was the sight of the quiet country she could see from her window, or perhaps it was the knowledge that, after her busy days at the Infirmary, she wasn’t working here up to her full capacity. Anyway, she felt unsettled and a little impatient with her life. Was she to go on for ever, living and working in this little country town? Her aunts were dears but they still treated her as though she were a child and she would be twenty-six on her next birthday. Another five years and she would be thirty… She shook her head at her own gloom; nothing ever happened. She turned back to the laundry list and Willy, the porter, came in with the second post. A handful of letters for the patients and one for herself. She got up and went into the wards and handed them all out. Jenny had done the dinners while she had been busy with Mrs Owen and the patients were resting on their beds for an hour. She made her quiet way round the two wards, stopping here and there to have a whispered word, and then went back to the office.

The letter on her desk had a Dutch stamp. It would be from a cousin she hardly knew; the aunts had had a brother who had died and his daughter had married a Dutchman and lived in Holland. Fran remembered her vaguely as a child when her own mother had taken her to visit the family. She had gone to her wedding, too, but although they liked each other their paths didn’t cross very frequently.

She opened it now—it would make a nice change from the laundry—and began to read. When she had finished it, she went back to the beginning and read it again. Here was the answer to her restlessness. And one the aunts could not but agree to. Clare wanted her to go and stay. ‘You must have some holidays,’ she had written, ‘two weeks at least. I’m going to have a baby—I was beginning to think that I never would—and I’m so thrilled, I must have someone to talk to about it. I know the aunts make a fuss if you go off on your own, but they can’t possibly mind if you stay with us. Do say you’ll come—phone me and give me a date. Karel sends his love and says you must come.’

Fran put the letter down. She had two weeks leave due to her and the wards were slack enough to take them; moreover it was a good time of year to ask before autumn brought its quota of bronchitis and asthma and nasty chests. A holiday might also dispel this feeling of restlessness.

She went to the office after her dinner and asked for leave and Miss Hawkins, aware of Fran’s worth, graciously allowed it: starting on the following Sunday, and Sister Manning might add her weekly days off to her fortnight.

All very easy. There were the aunts to deal with, though. Fran, off duty that evening, tackled that the moment she got home. The ladies were sitting, as they always did of an evening, in the old-fashioned drawing room, knitting or embroidering, waiting for Winnie, the housekeeper, to set supper on the table. Fran, poking her head round the door to wish them a good evening before going up to her room to tidy herself, wondered anew at the three of them. They were after all not very old—Aunt Kate was the eldest, sixty-seven, Aunt Polly next, a year or two younger, and Aunt Janet a mere fifty-eight. And yet they had no place in modern times; they lived now as they remembered how they had lived in their childhood years between the two wars. It was only Fran’s mother, five years younger than Aunt Janet, who had broken away and married, and had died with Fran’s father in a plane crash when Fran had been twelve. She had missed them sorely and her aunts had given her a home and loved her according to their lights, only their love was tempered with selfishness and a determination to keep her with them at all costs. She remembered the various occasions when she had expressed a wish to holiday abroad; they had never raised any objections but one or other of them had fallen ill with something they had referred to as nerves, and each time she had given up her travels and stayed at home to keep the invalid company, fetch and carry and generally pander to that lady’s whims. She had been aware that she was being conned, but her kind heart and her sense of obligation wouldn’t allow her to say so.

She greeted them now, and whisked herself away and presently went downstairs armed with Clare’s letter. Her aunts read it in turn and agreed that, of course, she must go. Looking after a cousin wasn’t the same as gallivanting around foreign parts and, as none of them had ever lost their old-fashioned ideas about childbirth—a conglomeration of baby clothes, feeling faint, putting one’s feet up and not mentioning the subject because it wasn’t quite nice, eating for two and needing the companionship of another woman—they saw that Fran’s duty lay in joining her cousin at once. She was, after all, their dear brother’s daughter and Fran, they felt sure, was aware where her duty lay.

Fran agreed, careful not to be too eager, and in answer to Aunt Janet’s question said that she thought that Matron would allow her to have two weeks, starting on the following Sunday. ‘I’d better phone Clare, hadn’t I?’ she suggested and went to do that, to come back presently to say that Karel would meet her on Sunday evening at Schiphol.

‘Sunday?’ asked Aunt Kate sharply.

‘Well, dear, he’s free then, otherwise I’d have to find my own way…’

The conversation at supper was wholly given up to her journey. She said very little, allowing the aunts to discuss and plan and tell her what clothes to take; she had no intention of taking any of their advice but to disagree would be of no use. She helped Winnie clear the supper things presently, laid her breakfast tray ready on the kitchen table, wished her aunts good night and went up to bed. It was too soon to pack, but she went through her wardrobe carefully, deciding what she would take with her. Clare was only a few years older than she was and, contrary to her aunts’ supposition, the last person on earth to lie with her feet up; a few pretty dresses would be essential.

There was no time to think about her holiday the next day. Getting Mr Owen away to Bristol was a careful undertaking and necessitated sending Jenny with him. Mrs Owen had arrived, breathless with anxiety and haste, and had had to be given tea and a gentle talk, so that the morning’s routine started a good hour late, and that without Jenny to share the chores. Then, of course, there was a new patient coming into Mr Owen’s bed and Miss Prosser was making difficulties, something she always did when they were busier than usual. It wasn’t until Fran got home at last that she allowed her thoughts to dwell on the delights ahead. She was listening to Aunt Janet’s advice about her journey and thinking her own thoughts when the image of Dr van Rijgen popped into her head, and with it a vague but surprising thought that she might not see him again for a long time. Not that I want to, she admonished herself hastily, horrid man that he is, with his nasty sarcastic tongue, and then thought, I wonder where he lives?

Surprisingly he came again at the end of the week, on his way back to Holland, to examine with Dr Beecham one of her patients who, recently returned from the tropics, was showing the first likely symptoms of kala-azar, or so Dr Stokes thought. To be on the safe side, Fran had put her in the single ward and had nursed her in strict isolation, so that they were all gowned and masked before they went to see the patient. Dr van Rijgen, being tied into a gown a good deal too small for his vast person, stared at Fran over his mask. ‘Let us hope your praiseworthy precautions will prove unnecessary, Sister,’ he said. She caught the faint sneer in his voice and blushed behind her own mask. She had, after all, only done what Dr Stokes had ordered; he had spoken as though she had panicked into doing something unnecessary.

Which, after a lengthy examination, proved to be just that. Acute malarial infection, pronounced Dr van Rijgen. ‘Which I think can be dealt with quite satisfactorily here. It is merely a question of taking a blood sample to discover which drug is the most suitable. I think we might safely give a dose of chloroquinine phosphate and sulphate…’ He held out a hand for the chart Fran was holding and began to write, talking to Dr Stokes at the same time. ‘You were right to take precautions, Peter, one can never be too careful.’ A remark which Fran considered to be just the kind of thing he would delight in; buttering up Dr Stokes after sneering at her for doing exactly the same thing.

He had the effrontery to look at her and smile, too, as he said it. She gave him a stony stare and led the way to the office where she dispensed coffee to the three of them and ignored him. It was as they were about to leave that Dr van Rijgen asked, ‘Who takes over from you when you go on holiday, Sister?’