The Doubtful Marriage

‘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.

‘If you wish any of the heavy furniture to be moved, then I suggest you do it yourself, Herbert. After all, you are a man, aren’t you?’ Tilly said it in a placid voice which stopped him doing more than gobble like a turkey cock. It was an opportunity to tell him that she would be leaving; she had had a letter from the hospital asking her to report for duty in two days’ time—a Monday. It didn’t give her much time to pack up but, if she didn’t manage it all, Emma could finish it for her and send the rest on.

When it came to actually leaving, it was a wrench. The nice old house had been her home for almost all of her life and she had been very happy there. Besides, there was Emma. She promised to write each week and to set about finding somewhere to live just as soon as possible.

The nurses’ home at the hospital was as gloomy as its surroundings. Tilly was shown to a room on the top floor with a view of chimney pots and one or two plane trees struggling to stay alive. At least they would provide some green later on to relieve the predominant red brick. The room was of a good size, furnished with a spartan bed, a built-in dressing-table and a wardrobe with a small handbasin in one corner. There was no colour scheme but the quilt on the bed was a much washed pale blue. There was a uniform laid out on it, blue and white checks, short-sleeved and skimpily cut. With it was a paper cap for her to make up. She stood looking at it, remembering the delicately goffered muslin trifle she had worn when she had qualified, and the neat blue cotton dress and starched apron.

She was to go to the office as soon as she had unpacked and changed into her uniform. The Principal Nursing Officer was there to bid her a severe good afternoon and speed her on her way to the ward. ‘Sister Evans is waiting for you, Staff Nurse.’

It was barely three o’clock but the monumental task of getting forty old ladies back into their beds had already begun. As far as she could see, Tilly could count only four nurses on the ward, and one of those was Sister, who, when she saw her, left the elderly lady she was dealing with and came to meet her.

She nodded in greeting and wasted no time. ‘I’m off duty at five o’clock, Staff Nurse. I’ll take you through the Kardex and show you where the medicines are kept. You do a round after supper at seven o’clock. Supper is at six o’clock; ten patients have to be fed. You’ll have Mrs Dougall on with you—she’s very reliable and knows where everything is kept. There’s a BP round directly after tea. The trolley’s due now, but you’ll get a few calls before the night staff come on at eight.’ Sister Evans smiled suddenly and Tilly saw that she was tired and doing her best to be friendly.

‘You’ll be able to manage? I’m having days off— I’ve not had any for two weeks. The student nurses aren’t due to come for another two weeks and one of the part-time nurses has left. There’ll be one in tomorrow after dinner, so that you can have the afternoon off.’ She was sitting at the desk, pulling the Kardex towards her. ‘I’m very sorry you’re being thrown in at the deep end.’

Tilly stifled a desire to turn and run. ‘That’s all right, Sister, I’ll manage. This Mrs Dougall, is she trained?’

‘No, but she’s been here for five years, longer than any of us, and she’s good with the old ladies.’ She nodded towards a chair. ‘We’ll go through the Kardex…’

The rest of the day and the two which followed it were like a nightmare. Mrs Dougall was a tower of strength, making beds, changing them, heaving old ladies in and out of their chairs, a mine of information. When she wasn’t on duty Tilly had to manage with the three other nursing auxiliaries, whose easy-going ways tried Tilly’s temper very much. They were kind enough, but they had been there long enough to regard the patients as puppets to be got up, fed and put back to bed. Which wasn’t the case at all. At least half of them could have been at home if there had been someone to look after them; the patient despair in their eyes almost broke Tilly’s soft heart. It was always the same tale—daughter or son or niece didn’t want them, because that would mean that they would have to stay at home to look after them. Tilly was of the opinion that a good number of the old ladies were perfectly capable of looking after themselves with a little assistance, but the enforced idleness and the hours of sitting in a chair staring at the patients opposite had dulled their energy and blunted their hopes. However strongly she felt about it, there wasn’t very much that she could do. She suspected that a new principal nursing officer might alter things; it was lack of staff and the adhering to the treatment used several decades earlier which were the stumbling blocks. The geriatric wards in her own training school had been light and airy, decorated in pastel shades, and the patients had been encouraged to take an interest in life.

Sister Evans looked ten years younger when she came back on duty.

‘You coped?’ she asked, and added, ‘I see that you did. We’ll be able to have days off each week now, thank heaven.’

At Tilly’s look of enquiry she said, ‘No staff, you see. They won’t stay because Miss Watts won’t allow us to change the treatment. She ought to retire—she’s not well—but she won’t. I’d have left months ago but my fiancé is in Canada and I’m going out to him as soon as he is settled.’ She looked at Tilly. ‘You’re not engaged or anything like that?’

‘No, Sister.’

‘Well you ought to be, you’re pretty enough. If you get the chance,’ went on Sister Evans, ‘don’t let a sense of duty stop you from leaving. As soon as Miss Watts retires all the things you need doing will be done.’ She opened the Kardex. ‘Now we’d better go through this…’

The week crawled its slow way to Sunday and on Monday Tilly had her days off. She wanted very much to go to her uncle’s house but that wouldn’t be possible; she wouldn’t be welcome. She had written to Emma in the week and mentioned that she would have two days off a week and explained why she wouldn’t be returning to her old home. To her delight Emma had written back; why didn’t Miss Tilly go to Emma’s sister who lived at Southend-on-Sea and did bed and breakfast? The fresh air would do her good.

Tilly had never been to Southend-on-Sea and certainly not in early March, but it would be somewhere to go and she longed to get away from the hospital and its sombre surroundings. She phoned Mrs Spencer, and found her way to Liverpool Street Station early on Monday morning. It was an hour’s journey and the scenery didn’t look very promising, but the air was cold and fresh as she left the station and asked the way to Southchurch Avenue. Mrs Spencer lived in one of the streets off it, not ten minutes from the Marine Parade.

The house was narrow and on three floors, in a row of similar houses, each with a bay window framing a table set for a meal and a sign offering ‘Bed and Breakfast’. In the summer it would be teeming with life, but now there was no one to be seen, only a milk float and a boy on a bicycle.

Tilly knocked on the front door and it was flung open by a slightly younger version of Emma.

‘Come in, my dear,’ invited Mrs Spencer, ‘and glad I am to see you. Emma wrote and I’m sure I’ll make you comfy whenever you like to come. Come and see yer room, love.’

It was at the top of the house, clean and neat, and, provided she stood on tiptoe, it gave her a view of the estuary.

‘Now, bed and breakfast, Emma said, but it’s no trouble to do yer an evening meal. There’s not much open at this time of the year and the ’otels is expensive. There’s a sitting-room and the telly downstairs and yer can come and go as yer please.’

The kind creature bustled round the room, twitching the bedspread to perfection, closing a window. ‘Me ’usband works at the ’ospital—’e’s a porter there.’ She retreated to the door. ‘I dare say you could do with a cuppa. I got a map downstairs so that you can see where to go for the shops, or there’s a good walk along the cliffs to Westcliff if you want a breath of fresh air.’

Half an hour later Tilly set out, warmed by her welcome and the tea and armed with detailed instructions as to the best way to get around the town. It was a grey morning but dry; she walked briskly into the wind with the estuary on one side of her and the well-laid-out gardens with the houses beyond on the other. By the time she reached Westcliff she was glowing and hungry. There were no cafés open along the cliff road so she turned away from the sea and found her way to Hamlet Court Road where she found a coffee bar and she had coffee and sandwiches. Then, since Mrs Spencer had warned her that it was nothing but main roads and shops when away from the cliffs, she walked back the way she had come, found a small café in the High Street and had a leisurely tea, bought herself a paperback and went back to Mrs Spencer’s.

Supper was at half-past six when Mr Spencer got back home; sausages and mash and winter greens and apple pie with cups of tea to follow. It was a pleasant meal with plenty to talk about, what with Mr Spencer retailing his day’s work and Mrs Spencer’s careful probing into Tilly’s circumstances. ‘Emma didn’t tell me nothing,’ she assured Tilly, ‘only of course we knew that you worked for your uncle…’ She smiled at Tilly so kindly that she found herself telling her all about it, even Leslie. But she made light of it and, when she could, edged the talk back to Emma.

It was a fine clear morning when she woke and after breakfast she helped with the washing-up, made her bed and went out. This time she walked to Shoeburyness, in the other direction, found a small café for her coffee and sandwiches and started to walk back again. She hadn’t realised that it was so far—all of five miles—and half-way back she caught a bus which took her to the High Street. Since she had time on her hands she looked at the shops before going back to Mrs Spencer’s. It was poached egg on haddock for supper, treacle tart and more tea. She ate everything with a good appetite and went to bed early. She was on duty at one o’clock the next day and she would have to catch a train about ten o’clock.

It had been a lovely break, she reflected on the train as it bore her to London, and Mrs Spencer had been so kind. She was to go whenever she wanted to, ‘though in the summer it’s a bit crowded—you might not like it overmuch, love. Kids about and all them teenagers with their radios, but it’ll stay quiet like this until Easter, so you come when you want to.’

She would, but not for the next week; she would spend her two days going to the local house agents and looking over flats.

Going back on duty was awful but the awfulness was mitigated by Sister Evans’s real pleasure at seeing her again. They had been busy, she said, but she had felt a bit under the weather and would have her days off on Saturday and Sunday and have a good rest.

Tilly, once Sister had gone off duty for the afternoon, went round the beds, stopping to chat while she tidied up, fetched and carried, and coaxed various old ladies to drink their tea. Some of them wanted to talk and to hear what she had been doing with her free days and she lingered to tell them; contact with the outside world for some of them was seldom and most of them knew Southend-on-Sea.

The later part of the afternoon was taken up with the Senior Registrar’s visit. He was pleasant towards the patients but a little bored, too, and not to be wondered at since he had been looking after several of them for months, if not years.

‘There are one or two temps,’ Tilly pointed out, ‘And a number of headaches.’

‘’Flu? Let me know if they persist. Settling down, are you?’

‘Yes, thank you.’

He nodded. ‘This isn’t quite your scene, is it?’

She had no answer to that so it was just as well that he went away.

By the end of the week a number of old ladies were feeling poorly.

‘I said it was ’flu.’ The registrar was writing up antibiotics. ‘You’ll need more staff if it gets much worse.’

Two extra nurses were sent, resentful of having to work on a geriatric ward instead of the more interesting surgical wing, but it meant that Sister Evans could have her weekend off. She had been looking progressively paler and more exhausted and Tilly went on duty earlier on the Friday evening so that she could go off duty promptly.

‘I’ll do the same for you, Staff,’ said Sister gratefully. ‘You’ve got days off on Tuesday and Wednesday.’

However, Sister Evans wasn’t on duty when Tilly got on to the ward on Monday morning. Instead there was a message to say that she was ill and Staff Nurse Groves would have to manage. The Principal Nursing Officer’s cold voice over the phone reminded her that she had two extra nurses.

‘We are all working under a great strain,’ added that lady. ‘You must adapt yourself, Staff Nurse.’

Which meant, in fact, being on duty for most of the day, for various of the old ladies added their symptoms to those already being nursed in their beds, so that the work was doubled, the medicine round became a major chore and the report, usually a quickly written mixture of ‘no change’, or ‘good day’, now needed to be written at length.

By the end of the week Tilly was looking very much the worse for wear; hurried meals, brief spells of off duty, and the effort of keeping a cheerful comforting face on things were taking their toll. The last straw was the Principal Nursing Officer informing her that Sister Evans was to have a further week’s sick leave and that Tilly could not have her days off until she was back.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.