Philomena's Miracle

Philomena could see the girl vividly in her mind’s eye; dazzlingly pretty, loaded with charm, small and dainty so that men rushed to open doors and lift things for her… Why, oh, why couldn’t she have been just a little like that? Certainly she was small, but she was what her stepmother laughingly called verging on the plump, which somehow carried an awful warning of what she would be like in ten years’ time, but prettiness had passed her by and she had always been in the habit of doing things for herself; no young man had ever felt the urge to open doors for her. She had charm, but she was quite unaware of that, just as she could see nothing remarkable about her green eyes and golden hair. She said humbly: ‘She sounds quite something. I expect you like taking her out.’

He smiled at her across the table. ‘Oh, I do, although I find it rather exhausting. She likes to dance until the small hours, on top of dinner too.’ It was hardly the moment for him to ask Philomena if she would like to go on somewhere and dance.

She schooled her voice to polite regret and seethed under the green dress. ‘I’m on early,’ she explained in a slightly wooden voice. ‘It’s been a delightful evening and I’ve enjoyed it so much. I really should get back…’

He glanced at the paper-thin gold watch on his wrist. ‘I did put it badly, didn’t I? I’m sorry. Won’t you change your mind? It’s early—barely half past ten.’

And now he was being polite, which made it even worse—he must be thinking of that cousin and wishing she were opposite him now. Philomena stifled a strong urge to burst into tears for no reason at all and repeated, just as woodenly, her regrets.

He was too well mannered to persist. He said all the right things and asked for the bill and while he paid it she looked around her, making a note of her luxurious surroundings so that later, when her friends asked her where she had been, she would be able to give a glowing account of her evening. It had been a lovely evening, she chided herself silently, and why on earth should she expect a chance acquaintance who had been kind enough to ask her to share his dinner to be more than casually friendly? And kind. She mustn’t forget that. She was aware, because her stepmother had told her so on many occasions, that she had very few social graces. It hadn’t been said unkindly—her stepmother was too easy-going to be unkind—merely a stated fact; probably the doctor had been bored stiff for the entire evening…

‘Why do you look so stricken?’ asked her companion quietly.

Philomena composed her ordinary features into a smile. ‘Oh, I suppose I was thinking about work tomorrow—rather a comedown after this.’ She waved a small, practical and well-kept hand at their surroundings. ‘An evening to remember—I can never thank you enough.’ She added inconsequently: ‘Celebrating after the occasion is never celebrating, is it?’

‘No, Philomena, it isn’t. Shall we go?’

The streets were quieter now and the short journey seemed even shorter than it was. She couldn’t remember afterwards what they talked about, but it couldn’t have been anything important. He got out and opened the car door for her when they reached the hospital, and walked with her to the entrance. The old building loomed dark and almost silent around them, its small night noises almost unnoticed; the hiss of steam from the boiler room, a child’s cry, the quiet voices coming from the Accident Room in the far corner and the bang of an ambulance door.

‘Oh, well,’ said Philomena, her hand on the door, and then took it away to offer to her companion. ‘Thank you once again, Walle.’ She smiled up at him, looming beside her in the dimness. ‘I hope you enjoy your seminar.’ She had quite forgotten the shopping.

His hand closed round hers. ‘Goodnight, Philomena. I’m not much good at quoting, but your Shakespeare had the right words: “Fortune, goodnight, smile once more, turn thy wheel.” King Lear, and rather apt, I would say.’

He opened the door for her and she went past him with a murmur. She longed to look back, but she didn’t, hurrying through the hospital while his words rang in her ears. Had he been polite again, or had he meant it? Probably polite, she decided sensibly as she opened her room door, just to round off her evening for her.

She would have liked to have sat and thought about it, but there was no chance; several of her friends had returned from their own celebrations and someone had made the inevitable pot of tea; it was nice to be able to throw a careless ‘Kettner’s’ at Jenny when she asked where she had been, and to see the looks of interest turned upon her person. Everyone broke into talk then, saying where they had been and what they had eaten, and just for once, instead of playing the role of interested listener, Philomena was able to toss back champagne, paté maison, lobster and Vacherin into the pool of conversation. She retired to bed presently, nicely sated with her companions’ cries of ‘Oh, Philly—how super!’ She should have slept soundly in deep content, but she didn’t; she lay awake for hours thinking about Doctor van der Tacx.

CHAPTER TWO

OF COURSE, Philomena overslept; she didn’t doze off until the early hours of the morning and although she heard the night nurse’s thump on her door, she turned right over and went to sleep again. The subdued thunder of nurses’ feet and the banging of doors brought her awake again, and by dint of bundling her hair up anyway and doing nothing at all to her face, she managed to get down to the breakfast table in time to swallow a cup of tea and gobble bread and butter and marmalade before making for Men’s Surgical. Sister had her days off, which made them short-handed for a start, and as well as that, there was a theatre list. Philomena took the report from the Night Staff Nurse, scanned the notes of the two new admissions since she had gone off duty, and plunged into the ward, to be instantly swallowed up in its routine. Drips to check, dressings to do, theatre preps, blood pressures—she didn’t do them all, of course, but she had to check that they were being done. She was glad when she could escape to the office and drink her coffee, and even that precious five minutes was blighted by a telephone call from the second part-time staff nurse to say that her youngest had the measles and she wouldn’t be coming in that afternoon. A sad blow for Philomena, for the other part-timer was on holiday, so it would mean that she would have to stay on duty all day and the next day as well, unless the Office sent someone to relieve her. But nobody suggested that when she telephoned the Office, only a harassed voice wanted to know if she thought she could manage. She replied that yes, she could and wondered fleetingly what would have been said if she had declared flatly that no, she couldn’t.

The Registrar, Toby Brown, came in then, so that she had no time to feel sorry for herself; they did a round of the ward and she pointed out a little worriedly that Commander Frost didn’t seem so well. He was naturally peppery, they both knew that, but now he seemed strangely subdued.

‘Are the X-rays back?’ asked Philomena. ‘I wonder what they found? He’s having trouble with his breathing…’

‘The chief’s got them—said he’d meet me here presently—they’re not too good, I gather.’ He gave her a brief glance. ‘I say, Philly, you look like a wet week and I’ve quite forgotten to congratulate you—sorry. You deserved it, nice, hard-working girl that you are.’

She was digesting this sincere but not too flattering remark when Mr Dale arrived and she hurried to meet him. Her step faltered only very slightly when she saw that Doctor van der Tacx was with him. She had thought about him quite a lot since the night before, but somehow she hadn’t expected to see him again. Mr Dale muttered something and glanced at them both, and the Dutch doctor said at once: ‘We’ve met already,’ and smiled at her, then transferred his attention to Mr Dale again. Toby joined them then and they all went off to take a look at Commander Frost. After they had examined him, Mr Dale said: ‘All right, Staff Nurse, we shall just have a little chat—there’s no need for you to wait.’

Her ‘Very well, sir,’ was brisk as she made herself scarce, but his words sounded an ominous note in her ears; little chats usually meant bad news delivered in a carefully wrapped up way so as not to alarm the patient, but she doubted very much if the Commander would stand for that. And she was right, for doing a dressing on the other side of the ward presently, she could hear the old gentleman voicing his opinion about something or other in no uncertain manner, followed by Mr Dale’s surprisingly conciliatory voice and the deeper murmur of the Dutch doctor. Presently they came from behind the curtains and in answer to Mr Dale’s demand for her presence, Philomena handed over to the nurse assisting her, and led the three men into the office.

‘Operating this afternoon, Philly,’ said Mr Dale, who had called her Philly unofficially for years. ‘Commander Frost—hasn’t a chance unless I do, and not much of a one then. Better than lingering on, though. Bronchus quite useless on the right side and the left rapidly worsening.’ He looked round him and enquired: ‘Coffee?’

She whisked out of the little room, put her head round the kitchen door with an urgent message for a tray of coffee, and went back, while Mr Dale continued, just as though he had never interrupted himself: ‘He’ll be last on the list—what have I got?’

She told him. It wasn’t a long list, luckily; the Commander would go to theatre at four o’clock. ‘There’s just one thing,’ went on Mr Dale, ‘he refuses to go anywhere but here afterwards. You’ll have to fix that…off duty then?’

‘No,’ said Philomena in a carefully cheerful voice, ‘I shall be here.’

‘Good—he’d like you to be there with him. Stretch a point for once and stay on for a while, will you? There won’t be much to do—usual recovery stuff. Got enough nurses?’

‘I daresay the night staff will be on by the time he’s recovered,’ she pointed out sensibly.

The coffee arrived just then and she said quietly: ‘Unless you want me for anything else, sir, would you excuse me? Dinners…’

‘Of course.’ And as she reached the door which Doctor van der Tacx was holding open for her, ‘Philly, the Commander hasn’t a chance, you know, but he wants me to operate.’

She said ‘Yes, sir, I understand,’ and slipped past Doctor van der Tacx with no more than the briefest of glances.

She took the old man to theatre herself, holding the thin bony hand in hers as she walked beside the trolley, and when, in the anaesthetic room, he said in the commanding voice the pre-med hadn’t quite dimmed: ‘You will be with me when I wake, Philly,’ she said in her calm way: ‘Yes, I’ll be there, Commander.’ He had never called her Philly before.

The anaesthetist came in then; Doctor van der Tacx. She supposed that she should have felt surprise, but he seemed to be popping up all over the place, and besides, she was worrying about the Commander.

He came back from the recovery room just after seven o’clock, looking like a bad reprint of himself, and the nurse who had accompanied him handed Philomena the chart with a small expressive shrug. As she helped Philomena with the tubes and drips and all the paraphernalia attached to him, she remarked: ‘He’s not round, Philly. Mr Dale said he was to be returned to you before he regained consciousness; the rest’s as well as can be expected. Mr Dale’s been in to see him; he’s coming here presently. Who’s the anaesthetist? A super heart-throb, even Sister smiled at him.’

Philomena was frowning over Mr Dale’s frightful writing on the chart. ‘Oh, he’s a friend or something…I say, is this a two or a three? Why didn’t someone teach Mr Dale to write?’

The nurse went and Philomena hurried back to the Commander, sat down by the bed and began to fill in the last of the day report. The ward was quiet now, the other operation cases were sleeping, the patients who had been allowed up were being got back into their beds, she could hear their cheerful talk among themselves and the quieter voices of the nurses. The men were a little subdued, though; the Commander had been in the ward for a long time and they all liked the peppery old man.

He hadn’t roused when the night staff came on duty. Philomena left a nurse with him and whisked into the office to give the report, and that done: ‘I’m going to stay with Commander Frost for a bit,’ she explained to Mary Blake who was taking over from her. ‘I promised I would.’

Mary was pinning the drug keys to her starched front. ‘OK, Philly—shall I let Night Sister know?’

But there was no need of that. Miss Cook, the Night Superintendent, already knew, for the telephone rang at that moment and her unhurried voice informed Mary that she had been informed of the Commander’s operation and that Staff Nurse Parsons was to remain as long as she thought fit.

‘Well, I never!’ declared Philly. ‘Fancy him remembering to let her know…’

‘He didn’t—Doctor van someone or other did—he anaesthetised, didn’t he? I met Jill as I was coming on duty and she said the whole theatre had fallen for him.’

Philomena sped back down the ward, whispered a goodnight to the nurse who had been relieving her and bent over her patient; he was about to wake up, her experienced eye told her, and a moment later he opened his eyes, focussed them on her and demanded in a thread of a voice why they didn’t get on with it.

‘They have,’ she told him serenely. ‘It’s all done and over and you’re in your own bed again. All you have to do is to lie quiet and do what we ask of you.’

He gave a weak snort. ‘What’s the time?’

‘Evening. Are you in any pain, Commander Frost?’

He shook his head. ‘Can’t feel a thing—feel most peculiar, too.’

‘One always does. Will you close your eyes and sleep for a little while?’

‘You’ll be here?’

‘Yes—not all night, of course, but for a while yet.’

He nodded. ‘Just like my Lucy,’ he muttered, and closed his eyes.

Mr Dale came half an hour later and Doctor van der Tacx with him. They looked at Philomena’s carefully maintained observation chart, took a pulse she hadn’t been able to get for several minutes, asked a few complicated questions of her in quiet voices and bent over their patient. Presently they straightened up again and Mr Dale said in a perfectly ordinary voice: ‘You’ll be here for a while, Philly? I’ll speak to someone and see if I can get a nurse to take over presently until you come back on duty in the morning.’

They were all watching their patient, aware that although his eyes were shut, he could hear them quite well. ‘That suits me very well, sir,’ said Philomena matter-of-factly. ‘Is there anything special for the morning?’

A question Mr Dale answered rather more elaborately than he needed to; they all knew that Commander Frost wasn’t going to be there in the morning, and when he had finished and wished her goodnight he said goodnight to his patient too, adding that he would see him in the morning when he would probably be feeling a good deal better.

After the two men had gone, Philomena sat down again and took the Commander’s hand in hers, and he opened his eyes and smiled at her and then winked. She winked back. ‘You old fraud,’ she said, ‘you were listening. Listeners never hear any good of themselves.’

He gave a tiny cackle of laughter. ‘Only when they’re meant to. Don’t let my hand go, Philly.’

And she didn’t, she held it, feeling the warmth leaving it as he slipped deeper and deeper into unconsciousness, until she knew that it didn’t matter any more whether she held it or not.

It was almost eleven o’clock when she finally left the ward; she had done what she had to do in a composed manner, bidden the night staff goodbye and left quietly. Only when she was in the dim silent passage and going down the staircase did the tears begin to fall. By the time she had reached the ground floor and the empty echoing entrance hall she was sobbing silently in real earnest, impatiently smearing the tears over her tired cheeks as she went. At least it was so late that there would be no one about.

She was wrong of course. She hadn’t seen him standing quietly at the side of the bottom step of the staircase; she walked right into him and only then stopped to lift a woebegone face and say: ‘Oh, so sorry,’ and then: ‘Oh, it’s you…’

‘Yes. When did you last eat?’

It seemed a strange question, coming out of the blue like that, but she answered obediently: ‘I had a cup of tea…’

‘I said eat, Philly.’

‘Well…’ She sucked in her breath like a child and thought. ‘I couldn’t go to dinner—I couldn’t leave the ward, you see, no trained staff…and at supper time I— I was with the Commander.’ Two large tears rolled down her cheeks and she added: ‘So sorry,’ and wiped them away with the back of her hand.

His ‘Come along,’ was firm and kindly and she made no protest as they went through the main door. His car was close by, he opened the door and stuffed her gently into the seat, then got in beside her and drove out into the almost deserted streets. He didn’t go far; the neighbourhood was a shabby one, full of Victorian houses converted into flats and bedsitters, with a pub on every corner and a fish and chip shop every few hundred yards. He pulled up outside one of these and turned to look at her. ‘You’ll feel better when you’ve eaten something,’ he said placidly, ‘and you can have it here.’

She spoke in a tired little voice. ‘You’re very kind, but I don’t think I could manage…’

She felt his arm, large and comforting, gently drawing her head down on to his shoulder. ‘There, there, my pretty,’ he said in a comforting voice, and she thought: He must be blind or hasn’t looked at me; she was only too well aware that when she cried she looked a quite pitiful object, with a red nose, puffy eyelids and an unhappy tendency to hiccough. Her giggle was watery. ‘I’m not, you know—I look an absolute fright when I howl.’

He took her chin in one hand and turned her face deliberately to the light. ‘A pretty face is a poor substitute for compassion and loving kindness—you’ll do very well as you are.’ He took his arm away and opened the door. ‘I’ll only be a few minutes.’

He was back in less than that, two newspaper-wrapped, fragrant-smelling parcels balanced in one hand. In the car once more, he unwrapped one and set it carefully on her lap. ‘I’m not quite sure which fish it is, but chips are chips anywhere in the world. Eat up, there’s a good girl.’ He unwrapped his own supper, and the sight of him, sitting back comfortably eating it with his fingers as though he did it every day of his life, somehow made everything seem normal again. Philomena tried a chip and found it good. Before long she had polished off her impromptu supper and her white face wasn’t white any more, even though it was still blotchy from her crying.

The doctor ate the last chip and licked a large finger. ‘It was better this way, you know,’ he remarked. ‘The Commander would have lived for only a short time without operation and so deeply drugged that he wouldn’t have known what was happening. When that was pointed out to him he swore some very naval oaths and insisted upon operation. I think he was right, too.’ He took the empty paper from her lap and rolled it up neatly. ‘He liked you, Philomena.’

She felt much better; it was a relief to talk too. ‘Yes, I think he did. My father was a bit peppery too…’

She found herself talking, still sad about the Commander, but able to talk about him, and presently she was telling the doctor about her father too. She hadn’t talked about him for a long time; her stepmother and sisters spoke of him seldom, not because they hadn’t loved him in their own fashion, but because his death had spoiled the pleasant tenor of their lives. The doctor listened, interpolating a remark now and again as though he were interested, and gradually she began to feel better, almost cheerful again. It was the fish and chip shop shutting its doors which roused her to think of the time, and when she saw that it was midnight she gave a gasp of horror. ‘The time! Why didn’t you say something—you must be longing for your bed instead of sitting here listening to me boring on about someone you never met…’

‘I’ve not been bored and I’m certainly not tired, indeed I’ve enjoyed your company.’

‘You couldn’t have,’ burst out Philomena. ‘Just look at me!’

Which he did, taking his time about it. ‘I’m looking,’ he said at length, ‘and I like what I see.’

She could think of nothing to say to that as he started the car and drove back to the hospital, saying nothing much himself. He wished her a quiet goodnight at its entrance and made no reference to meeting her again. As she got ready for bed she thought it very unlikely that she would see him—he had been more than kind for the second time within a week, but circumstances had made their meetings inevitable, although it struck her now that he might have been waiting for her as she had gone off duty that evening. She dismissed the idea, though; after all, he was presumably working in the hospital for a short time—probably with Mr Dale. They seemed to know each other very well, and what was more likely than that they should meet occasionally?

Contrary to her expectations, she slept immediately her head touched the pillow.

She saw nothing of him the next day, although one of her friends, the theatre staff nurse, assured her that he was anaesthetising for Mr Dale again, and on the next day he had gone.

A week later she went home—it was Chloe’s birthday; she was to have a party, a big one to celebrate the fact that she was eighteen. Philomena had a long weekend for it and had bought a new dress; cream silk with a high neck and long sleeves and a full skirt. It was trimmed with narrow lace and was, she considered, exactly right for the occasion; Chloe and Miriam would look enchanting in whatever they wore; they always did, and she knew that it would be quite impossible to rival them; she wouldn’t have dreamed of doing so, anyway. She put on her nicely cut grey flannel suit, tossed her raincoat over her arm, picked up her overnight bag, and took a taxi to the station.

There was no one to meet her at Wareham station, although she had telephoned the day before to say that she was coming, so she took a taxi to the charming Georgian house by the river. There was no one home, only Molly, the housekeeper, who had been with them for such a long time that Philomena couldn’t remember life without her. She came from the kitchen as she went in, wiping her hands on a towel, her nice wrinkled face beaming with pleasure.

‘Miss Philly, how lovely to see you—the Missus and Miss Chloe and Miss Miriam have gone over to Bournemouth to get something or other—they said you wouldn’t mind getting yourself here. They’ll be back by teatime.’ She glanced at Philomena’s disappointed face. ‘So you’ve passed those exams of yours, you clever girl. How proud your dad would have been of you—just as I am, Miss Philly.’ She took the bag from Philomena’s hand. ‘I’ve a nice little lunch all ready for you—you just come into the kitchen and eat it, there’s a good girl.’

It was a very nice lunch and Molly was interested in her hospital life; she stood at the other end of the big kitchen table, making pastry and plying Philomena with questions, so that very shortly Philomena began to feel a good deal more cheerful, and presently, when she had unpacked in her pretty bedroom overlooking the river, she went downstairs and strolled through the garden to the water’s edge until Molly called her in for tea, and soon after that her stepmother and sisters came home. They embraced her warmly, all talking at once about the party, and swept her upstairs to admire their dresses, and it wasn’t until they were going to their rooms to tidy themselves for dinner that her stepmother observed carelessly: ‘Did you pass your exams, Philly? I do hope so—so boring for you, darling, I can’t think why you want to stay at that horrid hospital. Which reminds me, Nicholas Pierce and his wife have asked us all to lunch tomorrow—so convenient, because we shall have enough to do with the party without feeding ourselves. We’re to meet them at the Priory Hotel at half past twelve. I hope you’ve got something smart to wear?’