and who were full of kindly curiosity about her life in London. Emily answered them all in her friendly, matter-of-fact way, told them frankly that she had no young man and no prospect of one either, and lent a sympathetic ear to complaints of illness, naughty children and tiresome grandparents. Perhaps she should be a health visitor or something similar, she mused as she walked back home.
The evening before she went back to the hospital, she and her father had a talk. He had already told her that his arthritis was getting slowly worse, certainly more painful, and although he had made light of it, she sensed his worry.
‘Would it be possible to mortgage the cottage?’
‘My dear child, that’s been done some years ago—your mother’s illness…’
‘There’s nothing we can sell?’
‘There would be very little money left by the time I’d redeemed the mortgage, my dear, and how could we afford to find a house to rent, or even a flat?’ He added slowly, ‘I could go into a geriatric ward…’
‘Over my dead body!’ declared Emily. ‘Let’s keep on as we are and hope for the best.’
She hated leaving her father. London, sprawling to meet her as she sat in the train, looked drab. She was aware that large parts of the city were elegant, with spacious squares and quiet streets lined with lovely old houses, and sometimes on her nights off she would take a bus to St James’s Park, eat her sandwiches there, and then roam the neighbouring streets. A very different London from the one in which she worked and lived.
Back in hospital, the notice board informed her that she was to go to the Men’s Orthopaedic Ward in six days’ time—day duty, of course. Crowded round the notice as she and the other night nurses were on their way to the wards, she was surprised to hear cries of envy from such of her friends as were being posted at the same time.
’emily, you lucky creature!’ declared the pretty student nurse who was to report to Women’s Surgical. ‘You’ll see that new consultant!’
Emily turned away from the noticeboard. ‘You can have him as far as I’m concerned,’ she observed matter-of-factly, ‘though I like the idea of Orthopaedics.’
A nice change from the medical ladies, mostly chronic bronchitis, bad hearts and diabetes and, by the very nature of their illnesses, dispirited. Emily was a shy girl, but nursing a man was quite a different matter from socialising; she was completely at ease with her patients, but put them into their clothes and let her meet them away from their beds, outside the hospital, and she became a quiet, mouselike girl with no conversation. Yet she was liked at Pearson’s; the students and the young housemen looked upon her as a rather silent sister, always ready to make cocoa or cut them a sandwich if they had been called out during the night. But none of them had ever asked her out.
Her last few nights on duty were busy ones; a sudden influx of elderly ladies with nasty chests, naturally enough sorry for themselves, anxious about husbands they had left to manage on their own, cats and dogs dependent upon neighbours and uncertain as to whether they had turned off the gas. Emily soothed and encouraged, listened endlessly to their worries and even, for one old lady, offered to go to her nearby flat and make sure that the canary was being properly fed. It made her late, which was why Mr van Tecqx saw her on the way home. He had walked to the hospital since it was a fine day and he was nearing it as she hurried down the street towards the Underground. She had a plastic bag under one arm and was so deep in thought that she didn’t see him. She was, as she so often was, engaged in mental arithmetic.
She spent her nights off turning out her room and reading up Orthopaedics so that at least she would have some idea about that branch of nursing. The Sister on the ward was reputed to be an old tartar but a splendid nurse. Even the more lively of her companions had declared that they would go anywhere but Orthopaedics, although now that the mysterious consultant was there they were prepared to change their ideas. Emily, if given the chance, would quite cheerfully have exchanged a posting with any one of them.
She climbed the staircase in plenty of time on her first morning of day duty. Sister Cook set great store by punctuality and, although she wouldn’t be on duty until half an hour after the nursing staff, she invariably asked her staff nurses if there had been any latecomers.
In her first year, Emily had spent six weeks on the women’s side, but since she had had very little to do with the actual treatment of the patients then, what knowledge she had gleaned was of little use to her now.
Staff Nurse Ash was a large comforting type. ‘You’ll soon get the hang of things,’ she assured Emily. ‘Don’t worry if Sister Cook blasts your head off, it’s just her way. We’ve just got time to go round the ward before she comes on duty.’
All the beds were occupied and most of them had various frames and cradles to support or protect the inmates’ broken bones. They were a cheerful lot of men, calling up and down the ward to each other, joking with Staff Nurse Ash, and wishing Emily cheerful good mornings. It was a far cry from Women’s Medical; she was going to like it.
She wasn’t quite so sure an hour later. Sister Cook was in a testy mood that morning; she disliked having her nurses changed, and here was a girl who didn’t look capable of the quite heavy work she would be expected to do. True, her reports from the other wards were good, but she looked as if a strong breeze would knock her down. Sister Cook, a big woman herself, rather despised the smaller members of her sex.
Over coffee in the canteen, Emily was questioned by her friends. They brushed aside her comments about Sister Cook and the patients; they wanted to know if the Dutch consultant had been on the ward, and if so, was he as marvellous as rumour had it?
Emily hadn’t seen him. There had been a couple of housemen who had been friendly and there was a consultant’s round at eleven o’clock, but she had no idea who was going to take it. With a customary eye on the clock she hurried back to the ward.
There was an hour before the round was due to start. Sister Cook marched up and down the ward, her hawklike eye searching out every small defect which might spoil the perfection of it. A junior nurse had already retired into the sluice room in tears, it just needed someone to trip over a Balkan Beam or drop a bowl; heaven forfend that she would be the one to do it, thought Emily with unhappy memories of the French consultant who had been so scathing about her clumsiness.
The ward clock pointed to eleven and the ward doors swung open. Sister Cook had taken up her position facing it; behind her stood the staff nurse, Nurse Ashe, and the junior staff nurse, both holding X-rays, Path Lab forms and all the paraphernalia necessary for the round, and behind them stood Emily, entrusted with a small trolley upon which were laid out, in an orderly fashion, the patients’ notes.
It was a very good thing that they were laid out so neatly on the trolley, for when the door was thrust open and she saw who it was who came in, she would have dropped the lot if she had been holding on to them. The man who had almost knocked her down, no less, looking quite different in a dark grey suit of impeccable design, looming head and shoulders above the group of people milling about him; his Registrar, his housemen, medical students, the rather hearty lady from Physiotherapy and the social worker, the whole party swollen by Sister Cook, her staff nurses and Emily, trying to look as though she wasn’t there. Not that she needed to worry; his gaze swept over her with no sign of recognition.
The round pursued its usual course with frequent pauses to assess a patient’s mobility, lengthy arguments as to treatments, and even longer pauses while Mr van Tecqx listened patiently to the complaints, fears and doubts of the occupants of the beds. It took all of an hour, and the smell of the patients’ dinners was strong from the ward kitchen
