The Real Christmas Message

Was she dreaming? She blinked to find him still looking down at her expectantly.

‘I—I’d love to,’ she stammered.

The disc jockey put on ‘I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas’ by Bing Crosby, and he took her into his arms.

It defied all description. She would nurse the memory for years, like a special friend, reliving it time and time again. Recalling dreamily the light touch of his hands on her waist. The elusive, wonderful masculine scent of him. The smiling way he had bent to talk to her.

In the few minutes it took for the famous crooner to croon out the most famous Christmas song in the world, he managed to coax a hesitant life-story out of her. That she lived with her parents in Stonebridge, that she had an older brother who was hoping to go to university.

‘And what do you want to do, when. . .’ There was a slight pause.

She was sure that he had been going to say ‘when you grow up’, but instead he said ‘when you leave school’.

She frowned. ‘Oh—be a nurse. Or a teacher—I’m not sure.’

His eyes twinkled. ‘Be a nurse,’ he said. ‘You’ve got a beautiful smile. You’d be a good nurse!’

Had he really said that?

The dance ended, he excused himself, and Lara wandered out to the washroom in a happy daze, her cheeks flushed, her blue eyes sparkling.

She heard only the tail-end of the conversation.

‘Fancy dancing with fat Lara King!’

‘Did you see her dress? She must have used two pairs of curtains to make it!’

‘Thank goodness she didn’t step on the poor man’s foot—she’d have broken it!’

Their giggles drowned out the sound of her retreating footsteps. She found her shawl and her friend Joan MacCormack, and they walked home, Lara strangely silently.

But she never forgot Nick Cunningham, or the dance, or the things those girls had said, and the following morning she had refused sugar in her coffee, and a second slice of toast, and the sweet shop missed seeing her cheery face on the way home from school every day.

She did a year’s nannying in between leaving school and starting her nurse training. She also lost three stones in weight. Her parents retired and moved up north, but Stonebridge was her home, and last year, after her hospital staffing experience, she had come back to Stonebridge to work for old Dr Cunningham.

She had answered the advertisement in the Nursing Times, not really thinking about who the GP asking for a practice nurse might be. After all, Stonebridge was a medium-sized town with nearly eighteen thousand patients—and there were more than eight doctors practising there.

None the less, Lara was surprised and delighted to find that Dr Cunningham was the doctor in question—even more so when she got the job. And if she was perfectly honest with herself, she knew that part of her delight lay in the possibility of seeing Nick again, wondering what he would think of the young woman who was no longer a fat, gauche schoolgirl, but a qualified nurse who was slim, fit and confident.

But her girlish hopes quickly faded, and her memory of Nick grew tarnished, when she realised with a pang that he had little time for his father. His visits were few, and fleeting—apparently—for he had never once called at the surgery in the year she’d worked there. . .

Her blue eyes clouded over at the thought, as she neatly folded up the empty cardboard box.

Dr Cunningham looked at her fondly. ‘A penny for them, my dear? You looked miles away—and why so pensive?’

Lara liked and respected her boss immensely. It simply didn’t occur to her not to say the first thing which came into her head.

‘I was thinking that Nick doesn’t come to see you very often.’

Dr Cunningham signed the last of the prescriptions she had placed before him with a flourish. ‘Oh—Nick’s far too busy a young man to spend all his time trotting to Stonebridge and back. He’s doing surgery, you know! Busy men, surgeons!’

She knew that all right. She also knew that Dr Cunningham’s own dreams lived on vicariously through his son.

John Cunningham had himself cherished hopes of becoming a surgeon. At school he had excelled, winning the prestigious Forman science cup. There were great hopes for the tall young man with the slight stoop.

And then a man named Adolf Hitler had invaded Poland, and, along with the lives destroyed in the second great war which followed, lay the dreams of John Cunningham.

By the time he returned from fighting, his burning ambition had left him. He was older, wiser, and a great deal sadder. He took up his deferred place at medical school, but the many years of training needed for surgery now seemed an insurmountable obstacle, and instead he opted for general practice.

Eventually he married, and his son Nick instead proved to be his finest achievement, especially when his mother succumbed to and died from influenza when he was still a boy.

It was no wonder, thought Lara as she ticked the last box of ampoules off on the pharmacy list, that he was so proud of his son’s achievements. It was just a pity the son couldn’t spend a little more time at home.

It was a busy morning. Dr Cunningham was a single-handed practitioner and Lara wasn’t just his practice nurse, but his receptionist and his secretary all rolled into one!

In the morning she booked patients in for the first surgery of the day, answered the phone, and took requests for repeat prescriptions. After surgery, on some days she gave injections, or took blood-pressure readings. Then she—rather slowly—typed up the hospital referrals. She’d started going to night-school to improve her typing, and since then it had progressed from the faltering two-fingered variety to something fast approaching forty words a minute!

The trouble with a doctor’s surgery, she had thought more than once, was that there were always interruptions—which meant that inevitably you never had as much time as you thought you did.

Lara had returned from visiting a mother with her new baby at home, and was collecting together the cards for the afternoon surgery when the phone rang. Dr Cunningham was out on an emergency visit, and he was due to start surgery in ten minutes, and, what was more, Mrs Morgan was bound to complain loudly and bitterly if she was kept waiting!

Please don’t let it be a visit, she prayed, as she picked up the phone.

‘Hello?’

She almost dropped the receiver. She hadn’t heard the voice for seven years, and it had only spoken a few words to her, but those words were engraved on her memory as boldly as if they had been written in letters of fire—and just as memorable was the voice that had spoken them.

‘Hello?’ The voice repeated, sounding puzzled. ‘Is that Dr Cunningham’s surgery?’

‘Y-yes,’ stammered Lara, making a huge effort to pull herself together. ‘This is Dr Cunningham’s surgery—how may I help you?’

‘Who’s that?’ The voice sounded interested.

‘This is Lara.’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘Lara King—the practice nurse and receptionist. Who’s speaking, please?’ She felt such a fraud as she asked the question, but imagine his horror if she’d suddenly said, ‘Hello, Nick.’

‘This is Nick—Dr Cunningham’s son. Is he there?’

‘I’m sorry, no. I’m afraid he’s out on a visit. Can I ask him to ring you?’

There was a pause. ‘No, I’ve got to go out now. Will you give him a message for me?’

‘Certainly.’

‘Just tell him that I’ll be home, would you? I’ll be home for Christmas.’

It was a pity that a whooping cough epidemic should coincide with the return of the prodigal son, thought Lara, a touch bitterly, as she pushed the wire trolley round the brightly lit supermarket. And poor Dr Cunningham had been rushed off his feet—it wasn’t good at his age. So what alternative did she have but to offer to do the shopping for him?

She put a packet of figs into the already loaded trolley and added one of dates for good measure. Dr Cunningham had invited her to join them for Christmas lunch—and then promptly asked if she’d mind cooking it!