Casualty ward, p.13
Casualty Ward, page 13
‘And then …?’
‘He had a stroke. The horror was that the first one did not destroy him, something which, unfilial as it may seem to be, I had prayed for him. He lived on for some months almost helpless. He changed a lot in that time; possibly it is hard for anyone to live through those trials and tribulations without changing. It seems a dreadful thing to say of your own father, but when he went I was glad, for his sake. In that stage there is so little one can do. I wish …’ He paused for a moment looking down at the sherry beside him. ‘I wish we lived in the era when we could know that the answer is a nice kind doctor willing to help. It is so wrong that they should go on suffering.’
She nodded.
The maître d'hôtel was hovering in the background. It seemed that Ernest Henderson always had this particular table in the far corner where he could see the whole restaurant. It was not brilliantly lit, yet not too dark like some of the modern restaurants, and she liked that. She looked around and felt that it had an amiable air, which was attractive and which she found friendly. The food was delicious. He had ordered carefully, and she knew by the way he went into details that he was a specialist.
They finished the soup and the fish, and came to chicken done in a divine manner, she did not know when she had ever tasted anything so nice. Also this man was a good host; he hurried nothing, and so often the eager young men who took one out did hurry it. They were impatient to get through with the food and on with the dance perhaps, and there never seemed to be the time to enjoy oneself.
He was interested in her training, in her work as a Sister, in her affairs. Somehow she admitted more about Jeremy than she perhaps should have done, and the way she had felt when Lady Helen walked into his life, and when he finally married her.
‘And he is still hanging about?’
‘Yes. You see, his marriage went bad on him, and then he came back to me.’
‘Surely it would be a wise move to be rid of him? He can’t marry both of you, and apparently he has married the other one. What about this other young man? Tony something-or-other?’
‘Our introduction was hardly propitious!’ she said, and felt that was putting it mildly.
‘I gather that it was fairly harmless?’
Before she could stop herself Emma had said, ‘Anything which involves dangerous drugs is scarcely harmless.’
He laughed at that. ‘One does silly things when one is young, and it is wise to realize this. All of us make absurd mistakes. One should not blame people too much, one should not always find fault,’ and then a little sadly, ‘I wonder if your mistake has been that the men in your life were too young for you? Sometimes age has advantages.’
He is right, Emma thought. Aloud she said, ‘You might have got something there, but women meet the men of the moment, the men in their world. Nobody can choose who they will meet, can they?’
‘I know, but then one gets worried.’
The waiter came for the plates and returned with coffee meringues. She did not know when she had tasted anything quite as delicious as these were, and he watched her eating them with a schoolgirl appetite; then he spoke quietly. ‘The first time I saw you, I knew that you had been badly hurt. It was, of course, that broken engagement. These things come into our lives and bruise us more than some of us can bear.’
‘I’ve got over it now.’
‘Have you, I wonder? If I were you I should put that young gentleman right out of your life.’
‘If you want the truth, that is exactly what I am trying to do.’
They had come to the coffee in tiny amber cups, with bulrushes painted on them. This was a restaurant which gloried in perfect appurtenances, and could offer everything. He leant over the table.
‘As you know, I am one of those men who are not free. There is very little that I can say to help you, nothing that I can do, alas. I wish so much that I could. That first time I saw you you looked so sad, I knew that there was nothing in this world that I wanted more than to help you, and I was the last man in the world who could do it.’
For one quivering moment it seemed that a new world opened under her feet, she saw it and suddenly realized how wonderful it could be. This man was dead reliable, he was one of those people whom you could trust entirely, and for ever.
‘There is nothing anyone can do, and I have got over it. I truly have got over it,’ she said.
She got the impression that she stood on the threshold of a great promise. Jeremy had Lady Helen in the background of his life, and she was the inescapable for him; she knew that there was Inez in this man’s life. Two women ‒ two men.
He said, ‘I want to help you. If there is ever anything I can do, let me know, and it will be done. I am in many ways a very lonely man, and this has always been, for I do not make friends easily. But I knew that I felt deeply for you when we saw each other for the first time ‒ across a hospital bed. I just knew.’
Emma thought again of that meeting. He had come to visit a patient, and the student nurse had told her that he was there. She had gone to the cubicle where he was with his patient, and they had stood on either side of the bed. She had had a sudden inspiration which had told her, ‘This man is kind.’
He said, ‘One day you will marry.’
‘I don’t know. This affair with Jeremy has put me off the idea. Once I thought of it as a certainty, longed for it, waited for it ‒ well, you know what girls are. Then that broken engagement hurt me a little too much.’
He smiled tolerantly. ‘That is just for the moment, you know. Perhaps we all feel this way at the start to life, when things go desperately wrong at times. But we outgrow that stage.’ He put out his hand and gripped hers. His was a kind fond hand which clasped hers closely. He is a very wonderful person, she thought, and for a single instant they looked into each other’s eyes. ‘If only this could last for ever,’ she told herself, ‘how different everything could be! How changed the future!’
Almost as if he read her thoughts he said, ‘The future is always ours, you know. Whatever we do or say, that is something none of us can change, for the future is always our own.’
She nodded.
Chapter Thirteen
A man was coming into the restaurant.
The table alongside the one which Emma and Ernest Henderson were occupying had been vacant ever since they had arrived, with a ‘reserved’ card on it. Now the maître d'hôtel appeared, bowing obsequiously, and escorting what was plainly an old and valued patron to his place. He was a man in his fifties, a man who had lived hard, one would have said, stoutish, with features which reminded Emma vaguely of someone whom she knew. For the moment she could not place him.
Just as he was about to sit down, he glanced round the restaurant and caught sight of Ernest Henderson sitting there; at once his eyes brightened.
‘Henderson? This is a bit of luck!’
‘Lord Mellam!’
So that’s who it is! she told herself and thought quickly, what a very small world this is, how closely it pinches, and how the surrounding walls of it are something like a prison to one’s personality!
‘I say, Henderson, you are the very chap I wanted to see.’
Lord Mellam was quite jovial about this and obviously enchanted to meet an old friend. For the moment he almost ignored Emma, though he had of course met her before. ‘I’ve been having trouble with my son, and one of your hospitals, too. The young fool got in with the dangerous drugs, said he was trying to get something for a friend, but you know what the young are. Now there is trouble.’
‘I think I’ve heard something about it,’ and then, ‘Sister Morris works at the hospital, and I believe that she was on night duty at the time.’
‘Oh, was she?’ Instantly Lord Mellam was interested and he looked again at Emma. She wished that Dr. Henderson had not said that, maybe it would have been better to leave it out, to lie forgotten, then he said, ‘You and I will have to get in a session with a long talk. This was such a damn fool thing to do, and the difficulty is that of course it gives other people a nasty taste in the mouth. But the young are impossible today!’
Ernest Henderson laughed.
It seemed to Emma now that the pleasant duet which had been part of this dinner together, the sharing of personal experiences, likes and dislikes, and the acceptance of each other, was now submerged. She was disappointed. Already she had found within herself a warming to this older doctor, the quiet dignified man who understood humanity so well. Now a third person had entered on to the scene; he was the sort of personality who would never for a moment realize that he was encroaching. Full of his personal difficulties with his son, he went burbling on.
‘Of course I had to come up to town immediately to see about it. Silly young jackass! Matron was very decent over it, I must say that everyone has been awfully nice, but of course he had no right to do it, and should be ashamed of himself. He paints. I don’t approve of that too well, seeing what shocking people paint these days, and anyway he had no right to do this.’
‘He paints well?’ Ernest Henderson asked.
‘I wouldn’t have said so, but somehow he managed to get himself into Burlington House. I confess that surprised me, and I went to see it because I didn’t believe it was really there, but it was. He must have used the ’fluence.’
‘I don’t see why,’ the doctor said, rather slowly.
Lord Mellam turned to Emma. ‘You are the girl who can help most, of course. Matron was reserved, and I could not find out what actually did happen. You know the way these matrons are made.’
‘She is a very good matron,’ Emma said it quietly, but with some reserve, ‘and I could not tell you anything more than she could, I’m afraid.’
Ernest butted in. He said, ‘However stuffy Matron may have seemed …’
‘Not stuffy, charming, but not talking, and that always gets me down. I like a good talk.’
‘Yes, of course,’ there was the hint of amusement in the doctor’s eyes, ‘but after all if you are the matron of a big hospital, chatter is rather outside your line. She is a very wise woman.’
‘Not with me.’ Plainly he was huffed.
For a moment Tony’s father said nothing, then he turned again to Emma. ‘I suppose you have not seen his pictures?’
‘Well, to tell you the truth, I have.’
‘You have? And what did you think of them?’
‘I’m afraid I thought that they were beautiful! One may not have a liking for modern pictures, but there one is. They have a place in the world.’
Tony’s father stared at her.
‘If you ask me,’ he said, ‘the whole of the world has gone mad. Look at the people in it, and Burlington House seems to be infected by it. I saw some of the most ghastly pictures there, under the name of modern art. Barmy, absolutely barmy!’ Mercifully the waiter brought up the menu and at this moment his Lordship’s attention was diverted to the greater problem of what to eat.
Ernest Henderson glanced at Emma. He looked absurdly young at this moment, like a schoolboy who has planned a joke. In a very soft tone he said, ‘This has upset everything, and how do we make our escape? Thank God we have got to the coffee but what next? I would suggest that you come round to my place, it’s easier to talk there.’
With some knowledge she said, ‘Maybe he would want to come, too? He looks to me to be that sort of man, a busybody.’
‘We are going to see a patient. He can’t be a busybody about that. I suggest that we do this. How do you feel?’
‘I think it is the only thing to do,’ she admitted. She would love to see his private flat. She was one of those people who believe that the environment reveals the character of a man. Would it be supremely modern, or wildly old-fashioned? A man’s flat with good books, quiet lights, and an easy chair? Or something worth looking at like Inez’s flat which had been enchanting in its own way?
The rest of the meal became difficult, for Lord Mellam was so full of his personal trouble with his son that he could talk about nothing else, and it seemed that he had an awful lot to say. Privately he was not at all sure as to how he would get out of this worry, and he wanted advice, but for the moment was too proud to ask for it. At last Ernest Henderson was decisive.
‘I am afraid Sister and I have to leave early.’
‘But why? I thought this was a social affair?’
‘It was social as far as a doctor’s life goes, but I have to see a patient.’ Ernest signalled for the bill.
‘Too bad,’ said Lord Mellam.
‘Otherwise I would have asked you round to my flat, and we could have continued our chat there, but that is out of the question tonight. I wish it were possible.’
It was now obvious that nothing would have pleased Lord Mellam more than to go back with them and sit half through the night talking about the sickening folly of his son.
In desperation he said, ‘I need your advice. Lunch with me tomorrow?’
‘I’m afraid I am at the hospital all day tomorrow. It is my big day, with a long string of patients to be seen, and I have to go.’
‘And Miss Morris? I must see Miss Morris again.’
She had the very ready plan of escape. ‘I am so sorry, Lord Mellam, but as you know, I am on night duty (that was how I met your son), and I have to sleep most of the day to make up for lost time.’
Possibly he appreciated that this was a hopeless quest. With a bad grace he turned gauche. She and Ernest Henderson walked out of the restaurant together. You would have thought that the alibi they had produced was superb, but somehow both of them felt that Lord Mellam suspected it. She detested him for coming like this, it had spoilt the atmosphere of the evening which she would have enjoyed so much, but now she was going to Ernest’s home. Perhaps the truth was that you could judge a man better by his home than by anything else. It was his backcloth through life.
She turned into the ladies’ cloakroom for her coat which she had left there. The attendant was a middle-aged quiet Italian woman with greying hair beautifully arranged, a skin like the petals of a narcissus, and flashing dark eyes. She wore a black dress which fitted her perfectly, and poised on it something which was ridiculous as an essential, and quite absurd as an ornament, a mere handkerchief of an apron.
She was speaking to an indignant girl who stood with her back to Emma.
‘But madam, you not leava the stole ’ere, I tell you. There is no stole.’
‘I left a sable stole here with my coat. The girl who took it was not yourself, and here is my ticket for it.’
The woman took the ticket.
‘Eem say one coat. It not say a stole, madam.’
The girl was shaking with rage. She was on the verge of flying into a virago temper. ‘That’s a lie. I left both, and don’t call me madam, I’m “My Lady”.’
‘Yes, my Lady.’
The girl spun round in a fury, and then saw Emma. She was so rapt with rage that possibly she did not see her as a stranger but merely as another woman who would help her in dire difficulties. ‘My father gave me that stole, and he will be very angry with me. He always says I am careless. What do I do?’
She was beautiful, even in her temper there was an enchantment about her, with that virulent pouting red mouth, the exquisite make-up, and the flashing bright eyes. Emma tried to soothe her down. The girl was wearing a short dark mink coat, surely she had not needed a stole as well?
‘But did you really bring it, it is so easy to make a mistake?’ Emma said. ‘A coat and sables? Surely not?’
‘If I said I brought it, I brought it, and I left it here. This woman has stolen it.’
‘But that can’t be true!’ Emma was dismayed.
‘Oh yes she has. I am Lady Helen Hayes.’ As she said it Emma could have fainted from the shock, and her next reaction was to say to herself, ‘Poor Jeremy, he did not deserve quite as much as this. Poor, poor old Jeremy!’ This was the night when everything was happening. Tony’s father in the restaurant, and Jem’s wife here in the ladies’ cloakroom. It is quite time I went home, she told herself.
The girl was beautiful in a vivid passionate manner, she was also a termagant as anyone could see, and when Jeremy had said that he simply could not abide another moment of her, he had been dead right. He had Emma’s sympathy there. She got her own coat handed to her by the tearful Italian woman.
‘Don’t go,’ insisted the Lady Helen, ‘you are a witness of everything that happened, you can’t leave me with my sables stolen from me.’
‘But I am not a witness of anything. I came in here in the middle of your row, and have no idea whether you left the sables, or whether you didn’t.’
‘Liar!’ flashed the young woman.
‘Please?’
‘You heard me say that I had a sable stolen which I left here?’
Emma could not resist the sharp answer. ‘Your saying you had one, is no proof. The proof should be on the acceptance ticket which you must have looked at before you went off to dine?’
This was the girl who had cheated her out of Jeremy and who had made her so unbelievably unhappy for that long time, the girl who had ruined everything for her. She walked to the door with the mean but rather human feeling that anyway she had got one back, and just as she got to the door a small sable tippet (it was not a stole at all) slipped out of the pocket of Lady Helen’s fur coat and dropped on to the floor.
‘Oh my God!’ said Lady Helen.
Emma turned. She was so angry that she said, ‘So that is your sable stole! I should have called it a tippet, and nothing more,’ then she walked out of the ladies’ with the exultancy of victory. It was a magnificent exit!
Undoubtedly she should be ashamed of herself, for Jeremy had behaved as badly to this girl possibly as once he had behaved to her, and the girl was to be pitied. At the same time she felt relieved that somehow or other she had managed to say this, and she had a lovely sensation of elation over it. I must be a very nasty person, she told herself, to rejoice in making somebody else hate me. But what a termagant the Lady Helen had been! If Emma had not been so angry with Jeremy, she would have said that she was sorry for him.
