The Doubtful Marriage

‘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.

‘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…’