Tabitha in Moonlight

‘Nurse Smart did quite right, and well you know it, sir. A fine pickle we’d all be in if we handed out pills to any patient who asked for them. And you are a patient, Mr Raynard.’

He glared at her. ‘When I’m on my feet I’ll wring your neck…’ he began, and stopped to laugh at someone behind her. She turned without haste; it would be George Steele, zealously coming to enquire about his chief—probably the new man had let him know what time the list would start and poor old George had had to get up early. It wasn’t poor old George but a stranger; a tall, well-built man with a craggy, handsome face, pale sandy hair brushed back from a high forehead and calm grey eyes. He was wearing slacks and a cotton sweater and she had the instant impression that he was casual to the point of laziness. He said ‘Hi there’ to Mr Raynard before his eyes moved to meet hers, and then: ‘Have I come all the way from Cumberland just in time to prevent you committing murder, Bill?’

Mr Raynard stopped laughing to say: ‘I threaten the poor girl all the time, don’t I, Tabby? This is Marius van Beek—Marius, meet Miss Tabitha Crawley, who rules this ward with a rod of iron in a velvet glove.’

Tabitha looked at him, her head on one side. ‘You’ve got it wrong,’ she observed. ‘It’s an iron hand in a velvet glove.’

Mr Raynard frowned at her. ‘Woman, don’t argue. Your hand isn’t iron—it’s soft and very comforting, if you must know.’

Tabitha said with equanimity: ‘Well, I never—how kind,’ and turned belatedly to Mr van Beek. ‘How do you do, sir?’ She half smiled as she spoke, thinking how delightful it would be if she were so pretty that he would really look at her and not just dismiss her with a quick glance as just another rather dull young woman wrapped up in her work, so she was all the more surprised when he didn’t look away but stared at her with a cool leisure which brought a faint pink to her cheeks. He said at length in an unhurried deep voice that held the faintest trace of an accent:

‘How do you do, Miss Crawley. You must forgive me for coming without giving you proper notice, but I was told it was so very urgent.’

He glanced at Mr Raynard, his sandy eyebrows raised, and Mr Raynard said hastily:

‘It is—you’re a good chap to come, Marius. Tabby, go away and whip up your nurses or whatever you do at this hour of the day and come back in half an hour. See that George is with you.’

Tabitha took these orders with a composure born of several years’ association with Mr Raynard. She went to the door, saying merely: ‘As you wish, sir. If you should want a nurse you have only to ring.’

She went away, resisting a desire to take a good look at Mr van Beek as she went. Half an hour later she was back again, her neat appearance giving no clue as to the amount of work she had managed to get through in that time. She stood quietly by George Steele, nothing in her plain little face betraying the delightful feeling of excitement she was experiencing at the sight of Mr van Beek, leaning against a wall with his hands in his pockets; he looked incapable of tying his own shoelaces, let alone putting broken bones together again. He half smiled at her, but it was Mr Raynard who spoke.

‘Tabby, let me have my pre-med now, will you? The list will start at ten o’clock, so take Mar—Mr van Beek to see the other cases now, straight away.’ He winced in pain. ‘Remember you’re coming to theatre with me, Sister Crawley.’

When he called her Sister Crawley like that she knew better than to answer back, even mildly. She said: ‘Of course, sir,’ and after passing on the news to Rogers, led the way into the ward with George Steele beside her and Mr van Beek strolling along behind as though he had all day.

She went straight to the cases which were already listed because she knew how Mr Bow would need to be talked over and looked at before it was decided if and when he was to have his bones set. She didn’t think they would keep him waiting long though, because now that he had come out of shock it would be safe to operate. Surprisingly, Mr van Beek, despite his lazy appearance, seemed to have a very active mind, for he grasped the salient points of each case as they were put forward, so that they were standing by Mr Bow’s bed much sooner than she had dared to hope. The old man opened his eyes as they approached the bed and a look of such astonishment came over his face that Tabitha glanced at the two men with her to find the reason, to find the same expression reflected upon Mr van Beek’s handsome features. He said an explosive word in a language which certainly wasn’t English and exclaimed: ‘Knotty, by all that’s wonderful! It must be years….’ He put out a great hand and engulfed Mr Bow’s gently in it and went on:

‘The last time I heard from you was—let me see, five years ago—you were in Newcastle, because I wrote to you there and never had an answer.’

Mr Bow smiled. ‘And now I’m here, and I hope you will be able to stick me together again.’

Mr van Beek gave him a long, thoughtful look. ‘Yes, we’ll have a long talk later, but now tell me what happened to you.’

He listened with patience to Mr Bow’s meticulous and long-winded account of his accident, which included a great deal of superfluous information about Podger and a corollary concerning Tabitha’s thoughtfulness of his pet’s welfare, during the telling of which Mr van Beek said nothing at all, but stared very hard at Tabitha when Mr Bow got to the part about her rescue of Podger. Only when the old man at last fell silent, he remarked kindly:

‘Well, don’t worry, we’ll get things sorted out for you—Podger is in good hands and I’m sure Sister will be able to arrange something about your rooms.’ And Tabitha’s heart warmed to him for making it sound as if Mr Bow rented something well-furnished in the best part of the city. The surgeon went on: ‘The important thing is to get this leg of yours seen to as soon as possible, Knotty.’

He turned to George Steele and they examined the X-rays together, then Tabitha turned back the bedclothes and they looked at the bony old leg under its cage. Finally Mr van Beek said: ‘We’ll do Mr Bow after Mr Raynard, Sister.’ He was writing as he spoke and when he had handed the chart to George Steele he looked directly at her. ‘An open reduction and plaster, I think,’ he glanced briefly at the Registrar and received a nodded agreement, ‘and I should count it as a favour if you would take Mr Bow to theatre, Sister—he’s a very old friend of mine.’

Tabitha rearranged the bedclothes. ‘Yes, of course,’ she answered matter-of-factly, aware at the same time that she would have to change her off duty with Staff Rogers to do so, but perhaps that was a good thing anyway, because then she could go to Mr Bow’s lodgings on her way home—there would be a better chance of seeing the landlady in the evening.

Mr van Beek disappeared soon after and Tabitha, caught up in the ward routine, had no time to think about him, but presently, on her way to theatre with a determinedly chatty Mr Raynard, he was brought to her notice by that gentleman remarking on the coincidence of Mr Bow being Marius’s tutor at Cambridge. ‘Lost touch with each other,’ droned Mr Raynard, faintly drowsy. ‘Marius tells me they used to do a lot of sailing together—that would be getting on for twenty years ago.’ He cocked a hazy eye at Tabitha walking beside the trolly. ‘Marius is thirty-eight,’ he offered.

‘Indeed?’ Tabitha wedged herself into the lift with the rest of the theatre party and sought for something to say. ‘Quite old,’ she ventured.

‘At the height of his not inconsiderable success and a distinguished career,’ snapped Mr Raynard, having a little difficulty with the long words. ‘How old are you, Tabby?’

She gave him a rather blank look and he added: ‘You can safely tell me, for I’m doped; I shall never remember.’

‘I don’t really mind if you do. I’m twenty-five.’

‘Just? Or almost twenty-six?’

Tabitha frowned. How like a man to make her feel older than she was! ‘Twenty-five,’ she repeated. ‘Today.’

The porters, who had been listening, chorused ‘Happy birthday, Sister’, and she thanked them; Mr Raynard, with a tongue rapidly becoming too large for his mouth, said: ‘Yes, yes, of course. I shouldn’t be surprised if you haven’t been given the best birthday present of your life.’ Which remark Tabitha took little notice of because, as he himself had said, Mr Raynard was doped. In the anaesthetic room a few minutes later, Mr van Beek, looking massive in a rubber apron, came to have a last word with his patient. Mr Raynard opened his eyes, said clearly, ‘Birthday’ and closed them again, and the anaesthetist, pushing a needle into his colleague’s arm, remarked, ‘What a way to spend it!’ Tabitha, gowned and masked, saw no reason to enlighten him as to whose birthday it was. He winked at her over his mask. ‘Coming in to hold his hand, Tabby?’ he wanted to know. ‘Hard luck on Mrs Raynard—she only went to her mother’s yesterday, didn’t she?’

Tabitha nodded. ‘Yes, and Mr Raynard didn’t want her to know, but I telephoned her just now while he and Mr van Beek were talking on the ward. He’ll kill me when he finds out, but someone had to tell her. She’s on her way back now—with any luck she’ll be here by the time he comes round from the anaesthetic. He’ll be very happy to see her.’

The anaesthetist nodded; Mr Raynard was a happily married man and made no secret of the fact, although Tabitha had often wondered privately if he growled and grumbled at his wife and children in the same way as he growled and grumbled at her.

They went into the theatre then and the white-clad figures rearranged themselves in a group around the operating table—rather like cricket, thought Tabby, taking up her prescribed place by the patient’s head and handing necessary odds and ends to the anaesthetist a second before he asked for them. She was very aware of Mr van Beek on the opposite side of the table, although she didn’t look at him. Instead, she concentrated on the operation and could only admire the way the surgeon wired the patella’s two pieces back into one again. Watching him, she found it strange that only an hour previously she had thought him lazy; he worked fast and neatly and without fuss while he carried on a casual conversation which had nothing at all to do with the work in hand. He was just as quick putting on the plaster too and far neater than Mr Raynard would have been, for he invariably became bad-tempered and tended to get plaster on everything and everyone around him, which Mr van Beek didn’t. When finally he had finished he said: ‘OK, Sister, you know what to do. I’ll be down later,’ and walked over to the sink without looking at her.

They were going to have coffee before the next case, and Theatre Sister, who was one of her closest friends, said: ‘I’ll give you a ring when we’re ready, Tabby—I say, I like the stand-in. Lucky you, seeing him every day. Is he married?’ She was helping Tabitha drape the blanket over the patient and smiled across at her, and Tabitha, looking at her, thought for a second time that morning that it would be nice to be pretty, even half as pretty as Sue, whose blue eyes were laughing at her now.

‘I don’t know,’ she answered, ‘but I should think so, wouldn’t you? I mean, he could take his pick, couldn’t he?’

Sue laughed. ‘I’m going to find out,’ she said as she went back into the operating theatre.

Tabitha was surprised to have a summons to bring Mr Bow to theatre within five minutes of her returning to the ward with Mr Raynard. She barely had time to see him safely into his bed and station a nurse at his side before she was accompanying Mr Bow in his turn. She had imagined that Sue, with her blue eyes and pretty face, would have been reason enough for Mr van Beek to spend at least ten minutes getting to know her better. Perhaps he was married after all.

She saw Sue for a few seconds when they reached theatre, and although they were unable to speak Sue frowned and made a face beneath her mask which Tabitha took to mean disappointment of some sort, but she dismissed the subject from her mind as the anaesthetist signaled her to hold Mr Bow’s arm steady. The operation took longer than she had expected, but both bones were broken and badly splintered and there was a lot of cleaning up to do before the wound could be partially closed and plaster applied to the leg. This time Mr van Beek made a little window above the wound so that it could be observed and dressed, and in the course of time, have its stitches out.

It was half past eleven by the time she returned to the ward for the second time and sent the next case up with Nurse Betts in attendance. She had a hasty word with Staff Rogers about off-duty, sent her to keep an eye on Mr Bow, and went herself to see how Mr Raynard fared. His wife, a small dark woman, pretty and elegant, had just arrived. She turned a worried face to Tabitha as she entered the cubicle and whispered: ‘Hullo, Tabitha—thanks for letting me know. Aren’t men awful sometimes?’

Tabitha didn’t answer, because she didn’t know enough about men to give an opinion, and in any case she imagined that Mrs Raynard’s idea of awful meant having a husband who loved her so much that he couldn’t bear to upset her when he fell down and broke his kneecap. She said instead:

‘Mr Raynard said you weren’t to be told, so he’ll probably be very annoyed when he comes round—not at you, of course. I’ll be close by if he wants to blast me.’

She went away again to confer with Rogers over Mr Bow, and then at Mrs Jeff’s insistence, to drink a quick cup of coffee while she wrote up the treatment book, telephoned the hospital laundry and spoke sternly about the lack of draw-sheets on the ward, ironed out the difficulties of the two junior nurses who both wanted the same day off, and then, with a resigned and quick look in the little mirror hanging on the wall of her office, went back into the ward. Mr Raynard had come round; she could hear his wife talking to him. She went into his cubicle and met his baleful, still cloudy eyes.

His tongue was still unmanageable, he mumbled: ‘You’re nothing but a despot, Tabby. I said…’

Tabitha interposed: ‘Yes, I know. I disobeyed you—I’m sorry, but isn’t it nice to wake up and find Mrs Raynard here?’

He closed his eyes. ‘Yes, dammit, it is.’ Mrs Raynard looked across the bed and smiled at her, and Tabitha took his pulse and smiled back.

Mr Bow was coming round too. Tabitha sent Rogers to get the ward cleared for dinner and to look at the patient just back from theatre, and went to see the next one safely on his way; there was only one more now, with any luck, they would all be back soon after one o’clock. She went back to Mr Bow and found his eyes wide open while he frowned at the big cradle in the bed, under which his plastered leg was drying out. ‘Hullo,’ said Tabitha cheerfully, ‘everything’s finished and you’re back in bed—your leg’s in plaster and I expect it feels a little strange.’ She took his pulse and was charting it when Mr van Beek came in. He nodded at her, half-smiling. ‘Everything all right?’ he wanted to know.

She told him in precise terms of pulse and temperature and blood pressure and he nodded again. ‘Good—I’ll just go and see Bill.’

‘His wife’s with him.’

‘Muriel? I thought I heard her voice. Splendid, I’ll have a word with her. Don’t come—you must have enough to do.’

She was serving dinners in the kitchen when he put his head round the door. ‘The last case will be back in twenty minutes, Sister. Steele’s doing it. I’ll come in again later on today. Steele will be around if you want anything.’

She nodded as she spooned fish on to the light diet’s plates. He asked: ‘When are you off?’