a moment, with the heat burning her eyes, she whispered, ‘Good night.’
Then there was only work.
The days and nights seemed longer and harder without Jack to look forward to when her duty spells ended. Amy felt wearier than she had ever done after the strenuous night-clubbing and party-going. She went mechanically through the rituals of living as the cold, wet winter dragged interminably on and then grudgingly slipped into a damp, chilly spring. There was little else for her to focus on, and even if there had been anything outside the hospital and hostel walls to tempt her away she could scarcely have afforded the time. For all the nurses of Amy’s set, the final examinations for State Registration loomed in May.
When she came off the wards each day Amy would sit over her textbooks and her lecture notes, anxiously aware that her mind seemed to be working only at half pressure. She seemed to be forgetting even the simplest facts that she had known for years. The anxiety nagged at her, and even though she was perpetually exhausted she slept badly. She had no appetite either, and she lost so much weight that the bones showed too sharply in the planes of her face.
Adeline was concerned when she saw her. She sat on one of her white sofas, with a posy of waxy-white overpoweringly scented stephanotis in a bowl beside her, and took Amy’s hands.
‘I can’t bear it, Amy. You look so ill.’
The scent of the flowers was making Amy feel sick. She tried to smile at Adeline. ‘I’m working hard and sleeping badly, that’s all. I’ll take a holiday after the exams. I’ll go to Chance and stuff myself with butter and eggs.’ Her stomach heaved at the mere thought of it. Adeline’s face suddenly went stiff.
‘My dear, I don’t want to pry, of course. But is it possible that you are enceinte?’
Amy smiled crookedly at her mother’s delicacy. After her own stints on the Lambeth’s labour and maternity wards she had acquired a matter-of-fact view of the female mysteries.
‘No. I’m certain of that.’
When she had first started sleeping with Jack she had trusted him so implicitly that she had left the responsibilities to him. Later, at the height of her happiness, she had believed that she would be glad to bear him a child. Yet nothing had happened, and Amy knew that she wasn’t pregnant.
‘At least that’s something. Darling, it rends me to see you so sad. I wish I hadn’t ever introduced damned Jack if he’s done this to you. But you do understand, don’t you, that that’s the man he is? Gloriously here, and then not here and a vale of tears left behind him?’
‘Yes. I always knew that. It’s all right, I promise. I’m not in love with Jack. Just let me get these bloody exams over…’
‘Amy.’
Even though Amy was conscious of being absurdly and unnecessarily on the verge of tears, Adeline comforted her. Her gaiety was like a rock.
The week of the exams came. Amy fumbled through them, panic alternating with dull apathy. By the time they were over, she was convinced that she had failed. On the night after her last paper, she went to bed with a headache that was almost blinding her. She woke up again at five in the morning shivering uncontrollably, and soaked in her own sweat. She pushed back the bedcovers and tried to stand up and her knees buckled beneath her. Somehow she crawled back and lay down. She was puzzled by the illusion that she seemed to be floating somewhere above the narrow bedstead, and almost amused by the way that the room changed its dimensions around her. Amy had no idea how long it was before her door opened and someone leant over her. A hand that felt as cold as ice touched her forehead. After that Dr Davis appeared. Amy tried to struggle respectfully upright, certain that he was on ward rounds and had caught her asleep on an empty bed.
‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured. ‘I’m so sorry. It was a silly mistake.’
After that, time was confusion. Night and day came at unpredictable intervals, and her head and chest hurt unbearably. Once or twice Amy woke up and saw Bethan knitting at her bedside. It convinced her that she was a little girl again, and she turned her head on the pillow towards Isabel. She called for her, and then cried when she wouldn’t come.
Then, one morning, she woke up and found herself in her own room at Bruton Street. A nurse she didn’t recognize was opening the curtains on a fresh, pale blue summer sky.
‘Hello, dear,’ the nurse said brightly. ‘Are we feeling ourself this morning?’ She took Amy’s hand to feel her pulse. Amy tried to struggle upright, and felt her physical weakness.
‘What is the matter with me?’
‘Nothing that won’t mend. Don’t worry yourself. Mr Hardwicke will be in later to see you.’
Sure enough, the family doctor came with his leather bag and a watch chain looped across his waistcoat front. For a moment Amy was disoriented again, wondering if she was still a little girl with measles, and everything else no more than a dream.
‘What’s the matter with me?’ she repeated, hearing weak petulance in her voice.
‘Mhmm. Mhmm.’ Mr Hardwicke was examining her. He took the stethoscope out of his ears. ‘Well now. You’ve had a nasty bout of influenza. I think you were a little rundown before it, so it laid you particularly low. There was a touch of chest infection which worried us all for a day or two as well, but I think you’ve got the better of that now. You’ll be up and about in no time. Nurse?’
He was talking to the attendant who had woken her up, but Amy felt herself jump automatically to attention at the summons. She laughed weakly, with a touch of hysteria.
‘That’s it,’ the doctor said benignly. ‘Soon be your old cheerful self.’
After Mr Hardwicke came Adeline, perfumed and jewelled and like a breath of summer in the sickroom.
‘Have I been very ill?’ Amy asked in bewilderment. Adeline put her arms round her to hide her face for a moment. When she had it under control again she answered, ‘My darling, for twenty-four hours at death’s door. I actually went down to St Margaret’s and said a prayer. Can you imagine? Me?’
Amy lay back against the pillows. The room was light and bright, washed with pale sunshine. The sun touched her pictures and the tattered covers of her girlhood books and the flowers, and shone on her mother’s dark red hair. Outside were the windows of the houses opposite, clear sky, and the rumble of London. The world was beautiful. She felt calm, and warm, and glad to be in it.
It was two weeks before Amy was well enough to go to Chance. When the day came she tottered down the stairs, supported by Mr Glass and one of the footmen. Adeline sailed ahead to where her chauffeur was waiting with the Bentley. They lowered Amy into her seat, and wrapped the fur rugs around her legs as gently as if she might break.
‘I can manage,’ she protested, half-laughing. ‘And it’s June. I don’t need rugs.’
‘Don’t argue,’ Adeline said.
Chance soothed her as it hadn’t done for years.
As the long summer days began to slip past Amy got better by steady leaps. She had been recuperating for almost a week when the letter came from the Royal Lambeth. She had passed. She was almost at the bottom of the list, but she had passed. She was a State Registered Nurse at last. Amy tucked the letter into
