Victorian edifice, very ornate on the outside and distressingly bare within.
She followed the porter along a corridor painted in margarine-yellow and spinach-green, waited while he tapped at its end on a door and then went in. She hadn’t much liked the look of the place so far; now she felt the same way about the woman sitting behind the desk, a thin, acidulated face topping a bony body encased in stern navy blue.
‘Miss Groves?’ The voice was as thin as its owner.
‘Yes,’ said Tilly, determinedly cheerful. ‘How do you do?’
‘I am the Principal Nursing Officer.’ The lady had beady eyes and no make-up. ‘I see from your letter that you are seeking work as a staff nurse. A pity that you have not worked in a hospital for a while. However, your references are quite in order and we are willing to give you a trial. The ward to which you will be assigned has forty patients. I hope you don’t mind hard work.’
‘No. Would I be the only staff nurse?’
The beady eyes snapped at her. ‘There are part-time staff, Miss Groves. We take a quota of student nurses for a short period of geriatric nursing—they come from various general hospitals—and we also have nursing auxiliaries.’ She paused, but Tilly didn’t speak, so she went on, ‘You will do day duty, with the usual four hours off duty and two days free in the week. It may be necessary from time to time to rearrange your days off. You will be paid the salary laid down by the NHS, monthly in arrears, and your contract may be terminated at the end of the month by either of us. After that you will sign a contract for one year.’
‘I should like to see the ward,’ suggested Tilly, and smiled.
She got no smile in return, only a look of faint surprise.
‘Yes, well, that can be arranged.’
In answer to a phone call, a dumpy little woman in a checked uniform joined them. ‘Sister Down,’ said the Principal Nursing Officer, ‘my deputy.’ She turned the pages of some report or other on the desk and picked up her pen. ‘Be good enough to let me know at your earliest convenience if you are accepting the post, Miss Groves.’ She nodded a severe dismissal.
The hospital was left over from Victorian days and as far as Tilly could see no one had done much about it since then. She followed the dumpy sister along a number of depressing corridors, up a wide flight of stone stairs and into a long narrow ward. It was no good, decided Tilly, gazing at the long rows of beds down each side of it, each with its locker on one side and on the other side its occupant sitting in a chair. Like a recurring nightmare, she thought as they traversed the highly polished floor between the beds to the open door at the end. It led to the ward sister’s office, and that lady was sitting at her desk, filling in charts.
She greeted Tilly unsmilingly. ‘The new staff nurse? I could do with some help. How soon can you come?’
She looked worn to the bone, thought Tilly, not surprising when one considered the forty old ladies sitting like statues. There were two nursing auxiliaries making a bed at the far end of the ward and a ward orderly pushing a trolley of empty mugs towards another door. Tilly didn’t know what made her change her mind; perhaps an urge to change the dreary scene around her. Music, she mused, and the old ladies grouped together so that they could talk to each other, and a TV…
‘As soon as you want me,’ she said briskly.
She didn’t tell her aunt or Jane, but confided in Emma, who had mixed feelings about it.
‘Supposing you don’t like it?’ she wanted to know. ‘It sounds a nasty ol’ place ter me.’
‘Well, it’s not ideal,’ agreed Tilly, ‘but it’s a start, Emma, and I can’t stay here.’ Her lovely eyes took fire. ‘Aunt has changed all the furniture round in the drawing-room and she says an open fire is wasteful there, so there is a horrid little electric fire in there instead. And she says Herbert wants all the books out of Uncle’s study because he is going to use it as an office. So you see, Emma, the quicker I settle in to a job the better. I’ve a little money,’ she didn’t say how little, ‘and I’ll go flat hunting as soon as possible. It’s not the best part of London but there’ll be something.’
She spoke hopefully, because Emma looked glum. ‘You do realise that it will be in a street and probably no garden? You’ll miss the village, Emma.’
‘I’ll miss you more, Miss Tilly.’
Leslie came to see her on the following evening, and without thinking she invited him into the drawing-room. She had nothing to say to him, but good manners prevailed. She was brought up short by her aunt, sitting there with Jane.
She wished Leslie a stiff good evening and raised her eyebrows at Tilly.
‘Will you take Mr Waring somewhere else, Matilda? Jane and I were discussing a family matter.’ She smiled in a wintry fashion. ‘I’m sure it is hard for you to get used to the idea that you can’t have the run of the house any more, so we’ll say no more about it.’
Tilly clamped her teeth tight on the explosive retort she longed to utter, ushered Leslie out into the hall and said in a voice shaking with rage. ‘Come into the kitchen, Leslie. I can’t think why you’ve come, but since you’re here we can at least sit down there.’
‘That woman,’ began Leslie. ‘She’s… She was rude, to me as well as you.’
Not quite the happiest of remarks to make, but Tilly let it pass.
She sat down at the kitchen table and Emma gathered up a tray and went to set the table in the dining-room. No one spoke. Tilly had nothing to say and presumably Leslie didn’t know how to begin.
‘You can’t stay here,’ he said at length. ‘You’re going to be treated like an interloper—it’s your home.’
‘Not any more.’
‘Well, your uncle meant it to be; surely your cousin knows that?’
‘Herbert is under no legal obligation,’ Tilly observed.
Leslie stirred uncomfortably. ‘I feel…’ he began, and tried again. ‘If circumstances had been different… Tilly, I do regret that I am unable to marry you.’
She got up. ‘Well, don’t.’ She kept her voice cheerful. ‘I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on earth, Leslie. Besides, I’ve got a job in London; I shall be leaving in a few days.’
She watched the relief on his face. ‘Oh, that is good news. May I tell Mother? She will be so relieved.’
He went awkwardly to the door. ‘No hard feelings, Tilly?’
She opened the door and stood looking at him. ‘If you ask a silly question you’ll get a silly answer,’ she told him.
When he had gone she sat down again and had a good cry; she was a sensible girl, but just at that moment life had got on top of her.
Herbert arrived the next day, stalking pompously through the house, ordering this to be done and that to be done and very annoyed when neither Tilly nor Emma took any notice of his commands.
‘I expect co-operation,’ he told her loftily when he asked her to move a chair from one room to another.
