you want me?’
‘Father O’Sullivan has come, Matron.’
Beyond the nurse stood a priest with a nakedly pink face and combed-back silver hair. He carried a small case and appeared impatient to see the Matron.
‘Excuse me, Mr Glossop, this is quite urgent, you know. I’ll send someone to fetch you to the Surgery anteroom,’ Matron said, and folding her hands at her waist walked out into the yard leaving Mr Glossop wiping his brow at the exertion he had just endured. He heard their voices die away as they moved off in the direction of Mr Brown’s private room.
‘… not long …’
‘… Ah … such a time … Is he …?’
‘… Very. Failing rapidly, but then he does keep rallying. It can’t possibly go on, of course. I’m not one to believe in miracles, although with the storm …’
The telephone in the Records Office pealed and the little nurse hurried back to answer it. To Mr Glossop her voice sounded like an echo: ‘… Mr Brown’s condition is very low,’ she was saying. ‘Yes, I’m afraid so … failing rapidly.’
Mr Glossop gazed vacantly across the yard at Military 1. His attention was arrested by something white that shifted in the porch entrance. He moved a little closer and then, since he was of a curious disposition and extremely short-sighted, several paces closer still. He was profoundly disconcerted to find himself staring up into Sister Comfort’s rimless spectacles.
‘Beg pardon, I’m sure,’ he stammered. ‘I didn’t know—getting dark, isn’t it? My mistake!’
‘Not at all,’ said Sister Comfort. ‘I could see you quite clearly. Good night.’
She stalked off, down the steps and along the yard, no doubt to harangue yet another benighted soldier, and Mr Glossop turned away with elephantine airiness.
‘Now what the hell,’ he wondered, ‘is that old cow up to?’
While Matron took Father O’Sullivan to minister to Mr Brown, Mr Glossop spent the next twenty minutes fidgeting and worrying in her office. He sat first in the chair opposite Matron’s desk, a lower chair than the one behind her desk, ideal for chastising foolhardy young nurses and miscreant soldiers, he assumed. He loosened his tie still further and rolled up the sleeves of his creased shirt. ‘Too damn hot by half,’ he thought, hoping Matron was right and the storm that had been threatening for days would finally make its way over the mountains tonight, clearing the air. ‘Not too wet though,’ he added to his wishes, ‘that damn bridge is worrisome enough, without the river rising as well.’ The chair creaking beneath his weight, he struggled to his feet and paced several times around Matron’s office. With effort, he bent down and tried the handle on the safe, reassuring himself that it was secure. He looked outside again, across to the row of wards and along the collection of offices hoping that Matron might be on her way back. He wanted someone to sort him out with that cot for the night, he wanted to get some sleep, and above all, he wanted to be on his way with his stack of cash, far too much money to be sitting way the hell out here, locked safe or no.
Wiping his brow and muttering dire imprecations against the weather, the Central Office, the roads and the general state of the nation in wartime, he sat down again, this time in Matron’s own chair. Her desk was covered in papers and he absent-mindedly flicked through them, misplacing the carefully-ordered typed pages of accounts and the hand-written notes.
He shook himself when he realized what he’d done, he’d hate to get in Matron’s bad books and he replaced the sheets carefully one on top of the other, grumbling to himself, ‘If I don’t get away from here at the crack of dawn there’ll be hell to pay, four more rounds to do. Four more and all of them to be paid before Christmas Day with the shops closing up soon enough and turkeys and stuffing and whatnot to cross off the lists. Hell to pay. None of it down to me, not a bit. I told them that old banger had no more in her. If I said it once, I said it a dozen times. I need a new van and hang the expense. Well, now they know the cost.’
Matron checked her watch as she returned to her office. A lovely silver watch, held on an elegant bar, it was given to her by a young man she’d known long ago. He had shyly offered it up just before he left for the last war, the one they had promised would end them all. They had been wrong and the young man had not returned. Not a day passed that she didn’t think of him, and not in a foolish way either, she admitted to herself, standing at the door to her office looking at the dozing irritant that was Mr Glossop, seated in her own chair. With a start, she noticed the papers on her desk had been moved, she crossed to the desk and, making no attempt to keep quiet for the sleeping interloper, she gathered the papers together, settling them once more with a satisfying thump.
‘Well, there we are,’ Glossop woke with a start, pretending he had only closed his eyes for a short while. ‘And how’s it with—you know, the fellow who’s—’
‘Dying?’
‘Yes, yes, that’s the—and the priest chap?’
‘Father O’Sullivan is with him now.’
‘Oh I see,’ Mr Glossop said disapprovingly, ‘All the Catholic doings, smells and bells and that carry on, is it?’
‘Not at all, Father O’Sullivan is an Anglican priest,’ Matron replied, attempting to squash his interest with the look that had her young nurses quaking and, to her chagrin, appeared to further encourage Mr Glossop.
‘Right you are, Matron, I’m sure you’ll tell me when I’m over-stepping bounds. I like a woman who knows her own business.’
Matron decided to ignore him. ‘It’s just gone eight-thirty, Mr Brown’s grandson is coming in on the nine o’clock transport. I hope he makes it in time. You’ll have to excuse me now, Mr Glossop, I’ve work to do.’
Glossop looked at the desk in front of him and realized that the papers he’d been fiddling with had been tidied out of his reach and that he himself was in Matron’s seat.
‘Yes, yes of course. You don’t want a spot of company? Someone to help you go through all those figures? Tricky stuff, numbers, and I’ve a good eye for accuracy, that’s why they gave me the job, of course. You’ve got to have a trusted man on the pay round.’
‘Thank you, but no,’ she cut him off. ‘If you head next door to the Records Office, the young nurse there will take care of you. She knows where the cots are kept and where you’re to sleep and I dare say she’ll be happy to show you to the kitchen. You’ll have to fend for yourself, mind you, our kitchen staff are daily and they left on the last transport back to town. Goodnight, Mr Glossop.’
Knowing himself dismissed, Glossop reluctantly left Matron’s office and went out into the darkening night. And it was still too damn hot by half.
At nine o’clock Red Cross Transport Driver Sarah Warne swung the Mount Seager bus round Gold’s Corner into the last stretch of the route, known locally as the Long Leg. From Gold’s Corner to the bridge the Long Leg ran straight for fifteen miles across the plains towards the foothills. Before the blackout she used to be able to see the hospital lights for the whole way but since Japan came in the front windows had gone blank. In the aftermath of twilight Sarah
