The Doubtful Marriage

The week crawled its slow way to Sunday and on Monday Tilly had her days off. She wanted very much to go to her uncle’s house but that wouldn’t be possible; she wouldn’t be welcome. She had written to Emma in the week and mentioned that she would have two days off a week and explained why she wouldn’t be returning to her old home. To her delight Emma had written back; why didn’t Miss Tilly go to Emma’s sister who lived at Southend-on-Sea and did bed and breakfast? The fresh air would do her good.

Tilly had never been to Southend-on-Sea and certainly not in early March, but it would be somewhere to go and she longed to get away from the hospital and its sombre surroundings. She phoned Mrs Spencer, and found her way to Liverpool Street Station early on Monday morning. It was an hour’s journey and the scenery didn’t look very promising, but the air was cold and fresh as she left the station and asked the way to Southchurch Avenue. Mrs Spencer lived in one of the streets off it, not ten minutes from the Marine Parade.

The house was narrow and on three floors, in a row of similar houses, each with a bay window framing a table set for a meal and a sign offering ‘Bed and Breakfast’. In the summer it would be teeming with life, but now there was no one to be seen, only a milk float and a boy on a bicycle.

Tilly knocked on the front door and it was flung open by a slightly younger version of Emma.

‘Come in, my dear,’ invited Mrs Spencer, ‘and glad I am to see you. Emma wrote and I’m sure I’ll make you comfy whenever you like to come. Come and see yer room, love.’

It was at the top of the house, clean and neat, and, provided she stood on tiptoe, it gave her a view of the estuary.

‘Now, bed and breakfast, Emma said, but it’s no trouble to do yer an evening meal. There’s not much open at this time of the year and the ’otels is expensive. There’s a sitting-room and the telly downstairs and yer can come and go as yer please.’

The kind creature bustled round the room, twitching the bedspread to perfection, closing a window. ‘Me ’usband works at the ’ospital—’e’s a porter there.’ She retreated to the door. ‘I dare say you could do with a cuppa. I got a map downstairs so that you can see where to go for the shops, or there’s a good walk along the cliffs to Westcliff if you want a breath of fresh air.’

Half an hour later Tilly set out, warmed by her welcome and the tea and armed with detailed instructions as to the best way to get around the town. It was a grey morning but dry; she walked briskly into the wind with the estuary on one side of her and the well-laid-out gardens with the houses beyond on the other. By the time she reached Westcliff she was glowing and hungry. There were no cafés open along the cliff road so she turned away from the sea and found her way to Hamlet Court Road where she found a coffee bar and she had coffee and sandwiches. Then, since Mrs Spencer had warned her that it was nothing but main roads and shops when away from the cliffs, she walked back the way she had come, found a small café in the High Street and had a leisurely tea, bought herself a paperback and went back to Mrs Spencer’s.

Supper was at half-past six when Mr Spencer got back home; sausages and mash and winter greens and apple pie with cups of tea to follow. It was a pleasant meal with plenty to talk about, what with Mr Spencer retailing his day’s work and Mrs Spencer’s careful probing into Tilly’s circumstances. ‘Emma didn’t tell me nothing,’ she assured Tilly, ‘only of course we knew that you worked for your uncle…’ She smiled at Tilly so kindly that she found herself telling her all about it, even Leslie. But she made light of it and, when she could, edged the talk back to Emma.

It was a fine clear morning when she woke and after breakfast she helped with the washing-up, made her bed and went out. This time she walked to Shoeburyness, in the other direction, found a small café for her coffee and sandwiches and started to walk back again. She hadn’t realised that it was so far—all of five miles—and half-way back she caught a bus which took her to the High Street. Since she had time on her hands she looked at the shops before going back to Mrs Spencer’s. It was poached egg on haddock for supper, treacle tart and more tea. She ate everything with a good appetite and went to bed early. She was on duty at one o’clock the next day and she would have to catch a train about ten o’clock.

It had been a lovely break, she reflected on the train as it bore her to London, and Mrs Spencer had been so kind. She was to go whenever she wanted to, ‘though in the summer it’s a bit crowded—you might not like it overmuch, love. Kids about and all them teenagers with their radios, but it’ll stay quiet like this until Easter, so you come when you want to.’

She would, but not for the next week; she would spend her two days going to the local house agents and looking over flats.

Going back on duty was awful but the awfulness was mitigated by Sister Evans’s real pleasure at seeing her again. They had been busy, she said, but she had felt a bit under the weather and would have her days off on Saturday and Sunday and have a good rest.

Tilly, once Sister had gone off duty for the afternoon, went round the beds, stopping to chat while she tidied up, fetched and carried, and coaxed various old ladies to drink their tea. Some of them wanted to talk and to hear what she had been doing with her free days and she lingered to tell them; contact with the outside world for some of them was seldom and most of them knew Southend-on-Sea.

The later part of the afternoon was taken up with the Senior Registrar’s visit. He was pleasant towards the patients but a little bored, too, and not to be wondered at since he had been looking after several of them for months, if not years.

‘There are one or two temps,’ Tilly pointed out, ‘And a number of headaches.’

‘’Flu? Let me know if they persist. Settling down, are you?’

‘Yes, thank you.’

He nodded. ‘This isn’t quite your scene, is it?’

She had no answer to that so it was just as well that he went away.

By the end of the week a number of old ladies were feeling poorly.

‘I said it was ’flu.’ The registrar was writing up antibiotics. ‘You’ll need more staff if it gets much worse.’

Two extra nurses were sent, resentful of having to work on a geriatric ward instead of the more interesting surgical wing, but it meant that Sister Evans could have her weekend off. She had been looking progressively paler and more exhausted and Tilly went on duty earlier on the Friday evening so that she could go off duty promptly.

‘I’ll do the same for you, Staff,’ said Sister gratefully. ‘You’ve got days off on Tuesday and Wednesday.’

However, Sister Evans wasn’t on duty when Tilly got on to the ward on Monday morning. Instead there was a message to say that she was ill and Staff Nurse Groves would have to manage. The Principal Nursing Officer’s cold voice over the phone reminded her that she had two extra nurses.

‘We are all working under a great strain,’ added that lady. ‘You must adapt yourself, Staff Nurse.’

Which meant, in fact, being on duty for most of the day, for various of the old ladies added their symptoms to those already being nursed in their beds, so that the work was doubled, the medicine round became a major chore and the report, usually a quickly written mixture of ‘no change’, or ‘good day’, now needed to be written at length.

By the end of the week Tilly was looking very much the worse for wear; hurried meals, brief spells of off duty, and the effort of keeping a cheerful comforting face on things were taking their toll. The last straw was the Principal Nursing Officer informing her that Sister Evans was to have a further week’s sick leave and that Tilly could not have her days off until she was back.