report you to Matron,’ said an isolated falsetto. ‘Call yourselves gentlemen? Well!’
‘Did you hear that?’ Sister Comfort demanded. ‘Did you hear it?’
‘I heard,’ said Matron grimly. The chorus was renewed. She folded her hands lightly at her waist and with an air of composure walked through the porch doors into the ward. The chorus faded away in three seconds. The isolated voice bawled a final line and died out in a note of exquisite embarrassment. Mr Glossop, who had hung off and on in the doorway to Matron’s office, approached Sister Comfort.
‘She’s knocked them,’ he said. ‘She’s a corker, isn’t she?’ He waited for a reply and getting none added with an air of roguishness: ‘It’s a wonder she hasn’t made some lucky chap very happy, isn’t it?’
With a brusque movement Sister Comfort twisted her head so that the light from Matron’s office fell across her face. Mr Glossop took a step backwards and then checked as if in surprise at himself.
‘What is the matter?’ asked Sister Comfort harshly.
‘Nothing, I’m sure,’ Mr Glossop stammered. ‘Nothing at all. You looked a little pale, that’s all.’
‘I’m tired out. The work in that ward’s enough to kill you. It’s the lack of discipline. They want military police.’
‘Matron’s fixed them for you,’ said Mr Glossop, and recovering from whatever effect he had experienced he added in his fat and unctuous voice: ‘Yes, she’s a beautiful woman, you know. Not appreciated.’
‘I appreciate her,’ said Sister Comfort loudly. ‘We’re very friendly, you know. Of course, in public we have to be formal—Matron and Sister and all that—but away from here she’s quite different. Quite different.’
‘You’re privileged,’ Mr Glossop murmured and cleared his throat.
‘Well, I think I am,’ Sister Comfort agreed, more amiably.
The Matron returned and with a brisk nod to Mr Glossop led the way into her office. After they had left her, Sister Comfort stood stock-still in the yard, her head bent down as if she listened attentively to some distant, almost inaudible sound. Presently, however, she turned into Military I but went no further than the porch; standing there in a dark corner and looking out obliquely across the yard at the Records Office. A few moments later a VAD scurried out of the ward. She experienced what she afterwards described as one hell of a jolt when she saw Sister Comfort’s long heavy-jowled face staring at her out of the shadow.
‘Doing the odd spot of snooping, that’s what she was up to, the old stinker,’ said the VAD. ‘She’s got a mind like a sink. And anyway,’ the VAD added complacently, ‘my fiancé’s in the air force.’
Matron took a key from her pocket and opened the safe.
Mr Glossop hesitated and she looked to him, ‘Yes?’
‘Are you quite sure you don’t have a single spare tyre out here, Matron?’
‘As I told you earlier, Mr Glossop, on both occasions that you asked, we do not. There are two spare tyres for the transport bus, that’s all. You know as well as I do that the bus is far bigger than your van, the tyres simply won’t fit. We’ve all had to make sacrifices for the war, up-to-the-minute repairs and plenty of extras in stock being just two of them.’
‘If you say so,’ he grumbled.
She looked at Glossop’s pay-box, sizing it up with a practised eye. ‘I’m afraid that great case of yours is too big,’ she said. ‘Try.’
Mr Glossop approached the japanned box to the safe. It was at least three inches too long.
‘Oh, Lord!’ he said. ‘Things have been like that with me all day.’
‘We shall have to find something else, that’s all.’
‘It’ll be all right. I won’t let it out of my sight, Matron. You bet I won’t.’
‘It’ll be out of your sight when you’re asleep, Mr Glossop.’
‘I won’t—’
Matron shook her head. ‘No. I can’t take the responsibility. We’ll give you a shake-down in the anteroom to the Surgery. I don’t expect you’ll be disturbed, but we can’t have the door locked, our medicines are stored in there and I can’t guarantee something won’t be needed in the night. The money’s done up in separate lots, isn’t it?’
‘It is, yes. I’ve got it down to a system. Standardized rates of pay, you know. I could lay my hand on anybody’s pay with my eyes shut. Each lot in a separate envelope. My system.’
‘In that case,’ said Matron briskly, ‘a large canvas bag will do nicely.’
She took one, folded neatly, from the back of the safe. ‘There you are. I’ll get you to put it in that and you’d better watch me lock it up.’
With an air of sulky resignation, Mr Glossop emptied one after another of the many compartments in his japanned box, snapping rubber bands round each group of envelopes before he stowed them in the bag. The Matron watched him, controlling any impatience that may have been aroused by the slow coarse movements of his hands. In the last and largest compartment lay a wad of pound notes held down by a metal clip.
‘I haven’t made these up yet,’ Mr Glossop said. ‘Ran out of envelopes.’
‘You’d better count them, hadn’t you?’
‘There’s a hundred, Matron, and five pounds in coins.’ He wetted his thumb disagreeably and flipped the notes over.
‘Dirty things,’ said the Matron unexpectedly.
‘They look lovely to me,’ Mr Glossop rejoined and gave a stuttering laugh.
He fastened the notes, dropped them in the bag and shovelled the coins after them. Matron tied the neck of the bag with a piece of string from her desk. ‘Wait a moment,’ she said. ‘There’s a stick of sealing-wax in the top right-hand drawer. Will you give it to me?’
‘You are particular,’ sighed Mr Glossop.
‘I prefer to be business-like. Have you a match?’
He gave her his box of matches and whistled between his teeth while she melted the sealing-wax and sealed the knot. ‘There!’ she said. ‘Now put it in the safe, if you please.’
Mr Glossop with difficulty compressed himself into a squatting posture before the safe. The light from the office lamp glistened upon his tight greasy curls and along the rolls of fat at the back of his neck and the bulging surface of his shoulders and arms. As he pushed the bag into the lower half of the safe he might have been a votary of some monetary god. Grunting slightly he slammed the door. Matron, with sharp bird-like movements, locked the safe and returned the key to her pocket. Mr Glossop struggled
