Bittersweet Page 4

  Gertrude Newdigate had listened, but wasn’t prepared to take the blame for Frank Campbell’s parsimony. “Fight your own battles with that awful man!” she said coldly. “My hands are tied.”

  “Rot! I’ve known you for twenty years, and you don’t scare me. Nor does Frank. Gertie, think! Those four young women are so good, that’s the real tragedy of it! Why on earth are you risking four potential matrons just to please a gang of petty West End nurses who don’t know sodium from potassium? Who wouldn’t know a Latin or a Greek medical root if it bit them on the bum? Devote your energy with the West Enders to convincing them that in future Medicine will demand educated nurses, so look to their daughters. Don’t be so in tune with yesterday!”

  Her natural detachment was returning; she could see what Liam meant, though she hadn’t intended it to happen. The trouble was that she was too new to Corunda Base, and hadn’t understood how dismal the quality of West End nursing was when it came to science and theory. Still, she had one dagger she could slip in.

  “How is your wife?” she asked sweetly.

  He didn’t bite, he spurned the bait. “Philandering, quite as usual. Some things never change.”

  “You should divorce her.”

  “Why? I’ve no mind to take another wife.”

  The Latimer girls loved Dr. Liam Finucan, a solitary ray of light in a densely black tunnel. Having discovered how bright and well prepared they were, he applied himself with vigour and enthusiasm to the task of tutoring them, thrilled to find that their knowledge of mathematics and physical phenomena enabled them to understand things like the gas laws and electricity already. They were as competent as men in the early years of a medical degree. When it came to subjects new and strange, they seized upon knowledge eagerly. Even Grace, he was learning, had more than enough brains to cope with the theory; what slowed her down was lack of true interest. To Matron he had said “four matrons”, but three was more correct. Whatever Grace burned for, it was not to become a registered nurse.

  His favourite among the four was Tufts, whom he always called Heather. Edda was the more gifted and intelligent, but the pathologist in Liam admired order, method, logic, and in those areas Tufts reigned supreme. Edda was the flashy surgeon, Tufts was the plodding pathologist, no doubt about it. His liking for her was reciprocated; neither the monocled handsomeness of the surgeon Max Herzen nor the bubbling charm of the senior obstetrician Ned Mason held anything like as much attraction for Tufts as Dr. Finucan did, with his white-winged black hair, long and finely featured face, ship’s grey-blue eyes. Not that the unromantic Tufts mooned over Dr. Finucan, or dreamed of him when asleep; simply, she liked him enormously as a person and loved being in his company. Understanding her nature, her sisters never made the mistake of teasing her about men, especially Dr. Liam Finucan. Though nothing about her was nunlike, Tufts did bear some resemblance to a monk.

  The fire Liam lit under Matron was a little like a torch, in that Matron lit a fire under Sister Bainbridge, who kindled one under the leader of the West End nurses, Lena Corrigan, and she felt the flames enough to set the whole West End nursing coterie ablaze. The after-burns went on for weeks.

  Suddenly the nurses’ house was opened up and ruthlessly scoured: the four girls each had a private bedroom; four easy chairs and desk sets appeared in a common room, which even held a wireless set; the kitchen could be used for light meals; there were two bathrooms, and hot water was laid on at the bottom of a hastily dug trench. Harry the porter picked up their uniforms for laundering every single day, and the kitchen cupboards held hard biscuits, tins of jam, bottles of sauce, plenty of tea, Camp Essence of Coffee & Chicory, cocoa powder, saline powder for cool drinks, and blackcurrant cordial. All of which paled before the vision of the ice chest, big enough to hold a large block of ice and keep the eggs, bacon, butter and sausages cool.

  “I’ve died and gone to heaven,” said Grace with a sigh.

  Out of the blue, totally unexpected, Sister Bainbridge was moved to a small house next door on the same ramp. But before she went she introduced the girls to the magic of Epsom salts; dissolved in hot water in a tub or basin, they cured aching bodies and aching feet. How had they ever survived without the bliss of Epsom salts?

  “It’s my turn to die and go to heaven,” said Edda. “My feet are human again.”

  And though the West End nurses took many months to admit that the stuck-up new-style trainees were every bit as good at old-style care as they were themselves, the malice died out of West End persecution. What was the use of malice, when its targets always managed to survive it?

  “It dates back to the middle of July,” said Edda as September expired in a tossing yellow sea of daffodils. “Someone had the kindness to intervene — but who?”

  Their guesses were many, and varied from Deputy Matron Anne Harding to the least offensive West Ender, Nurse Nancy Wilson; but no one, even Tufts, suspected the hand of Dr. Liam Finucan. Who sat back contentedly and watched his four protegées flourish in this happier, more rewarding atmosphere.

  “The Great War brought many advances in surgery,” he said in his soft voice to his class of four, “but did far less for physical medicine. The great killers are still killing in huge numbers — pneumonia, heart disease and vascular disease. You young women represent the greatest advance in pneumonia treatment in the history of the world to date.” His brows flew up, his eyes danced. “What? Can’t see it? Because, ladies, the Powers-That-Be now understand that a properly trained and educated nurse tackles the nursing of pneumonia intelligently. Grounded in anatomy and physiology, she doesn’t limit her care to emptying the patient’s sputum mug, bed pan and urine bottle, and making his bed. No, she badgers him into constantly exercising even when confined to his bed, she makes him believe he can get better, she explains to him in simple language what the doctors never do — the nature of his ailment — and she never leaves him alone to languish like a stuffed dummy without attention, no matter how busy she is. Only one thing saves the pneumonia patient — relentless, informed nursing care.”

  They listened avidly, and assimilated what Liam Finucan was not allowed to say: that only knowledge of the underlying science could push a nurse to the extra work Liam Finucan’s kind of care demanded.

  “It’s what’s wrong with the West Enders,” Edda said to her sisters over sausage sandwiches in their warm kitchen. “They live at home, have all those cares and worries on their shoulders as well as here, can hardly read or write beyond the basics, and know only what medicine they can pick up on the wards. Some of them are very good nurses, but to most of them it’s just a job. If a pneumonia case needs pummelling, moving around, to be forced to cough, and have his bed changed, it depends on how busy the nurses are, what the Sister-in-Charge is like, and which West Enders are on duty. There’s no underlying foundation of knowledge.”

  Grace sniffled. “That’s not likely to happen to us,” she said mournfully. “My head aches from all the terms and diseases.”

  “Go on, Grace, your head aches because it’s got something to do with itself apart from swooning over Rudolph Valentino.”

  “I love the tuition,” said Tufts, nose in Gray’s Anatomy.

  “If you drip sausage fat on that page, Tufty, you’ll be in hot water,” said Edda, face menacing.

  “When have I ever lost a drop of sausage fat?”

  Their instruction went on; Dr. Finucan never flagged.

  “There are no medicines or pharmaceutical techniques worth a pinch of pepper,” he said, “for any of the major killers. We know what germs are and can destroy them in our surroundings, but not once they’re inside our bodies. A bacillus infecting tissue, like pneumonia in the lungs, is untreatable. We can look at the thing under a microscope, but nothing we can administer by mouth or skin or hypodermic injection can kill it.”

  For some reason his eyes went to Tufts — a perfect matron!

  “As I am Corunda’s Coroner, I conduct autopsies, which are surgical dissections of
the dead. The other name for autopsy is post mortem. You’ll learn your anatomy and physiology standing around the morgue table. If the dead person is an itinerant without family or friends, I’ll carve the corpse minutely to show a particular system — lymphatic, vascular, digestive, for example. We’ll have to hope that I get enough indigents, but usually I do.”

  He gazed at them sternly. “Remember this, nurses, always! Our subject under the knife is one of God’s creatures, no matter how humble. What you see, what you hear, what you touch and handle is, or was, a living human being and a part of God’s grand scheme, whatever that may be. Everyone is worthy of respect, including after death. Nurse Latimer, you must remember that the patient’s wishes count as well as your own. Nurse Treadby, that not all children are angels in character or inclination, Nurse Scobie, that there are times when your most cherished systems will not work, and Nurse Faulding, that even the foulest mess a patient can produce has its place in God’s plan.” He grinned. “No, I am not religious like your father, ladies, for the God I speak of is the sum-total of everything that was, or is, or will be.”

  A fine man, was Edda’s verdict, echoed by Tufts; to Kitty he was a little bit of a spoilsport, but to Grace he was the Voice of Doom reiterating the background chorus of her nursing life — messes, messes, and more messes.

  Of one thing they were very glad: though Matron, Dr. Campbell and Dr. Finucan knew they were twinned sisters, no one else did. A whole world existed between St. Mark’s Rectory and Corunda Base Hospital.

  5

  In Edda’s opinion, no man could hold a candle to Jack Thurlow, whom she had met on the bridle path along the Corunda River when she had been all of seventeen. Then as now, he was riding a tall thoroughbred of dappled grey with a blackish mane and tail, the kind of horse Edda, astride fat old Thumbelina, would have given much to own, and knew she never could.

  Still she could remember the day: winter coming, and the long, graceful canes of weeping willows were flying yellow leaves like a blizzard of slender darts. The river water was as clear as glass, freshly shed along the crest of the Great Divide whose rounded old mountains hunched against Corunda’s eastern rim. A magic world of sharply tangy winds, the far-off breath of snow, pungently redolent soil, a streaming mackerel sky…

  He was cantering down the bridle path, so she first saw him through the rain of frozen willow tears. Sitting his horse so well, his brown, sinewy arms loose across his mount’s neck, barely holding the reins. Horse and rider were old friends, she thought, pulling Thumbelina off the path and waiting to see if he would just thunder by without acknowledging her presence, or stop to greet a fellow rider.

  The overcast day meant he wore no hat; slowing, he lifted his hand to his brow, fingers curled as if they gripped a brim that wasn’t there. No film star, he, but to Edda he was better than one of those artificial gentlemen, with their pancake make-up, mascaraed lashes and lipsticked mouths. A true Corunda landsman, and beautiful in Edda’s adolescent eyes. Displaying good manners, he halted, dismounted, then helped Edda down, for all she didn’t need helping.

  “This old lady needs turning out to pasture,” he said after introducing himself, patting Thumbelina’s nose.

  “Yes, but now Daddy has a motor car, she’s the last horse left in the Rectory stables.”

  “I’ll trade you.”

  The hooded pale eyes widened. “Trade me?”

  “The Rector, really. My home paddock is too small for a good young horse, but it would suit your old lady just right. I’ll take her in exchange for a four-year-old mare named Fatima, provided you keep her exercised,” said Jack, rolling a cigarette.

  “If Daddy says yes, it’s a bargain!” Edda cried, feeling as if in a dream. A horse worth riding as well as a lush little paddock for Thumbelina! Oh, pray Daddy said yes!

  At the time Jack Thurlow was just thirty years old, tall and well built without seeming clumsy or lumbering; his thick, waving hair was streaked between golden and flaxen, his face was handsome in a masculine mould, and his eyes were a stern blue. A Burdum to the core, Edda thought, from hair to eyes.

  “I’m old Tom Burdum’s heir,” he said gloomily.

  Her breath caught; Edda laughed. “You’re complaining?”

  “Darned right I am! What would I do with all that money and power?” he demanded, as if money and power were disgusting things. “I’ve managed Corundoobar for old Tom since I was eighteen, and Corundoobar is all I want. The fat lambs bring in a steady income, and the Arab horses I breed for lady’s hacks are beginning to win me prizes at some important country shows. Anything more would swamp me.”

  A man with finite ambitions, thought Edda, fresh at that moment with the heartbreak of learning she couldn’t do Medicine. If old Tom Burdum gave me £5000 to do Medicine, he wouldn’t even notice a pinprick in his wealth, while his heir is of a mind to renounce everything except a pinprick. Corundoobar is 5000 acres of magnificent land, but it’s not even the biggest or the best of old Tom’s properties. What circles we run in!

  That had been the start of a curious friendship limited to rides along the Corunda River, a friendship that Edda was surprised to find her father did not oppose in any way, from Fatima the gift horse to the unchaperoned nature of his daughter’s contacts with Jack.

  For which, blame Maude. The ready-reckoner in her mind began to hum and then to click as the indignant Rector informed her of Jack Thurlow’s cheek in scraping an acquaintance with his virgin child, and there would be no Fatima in exchange for Thumbelina, and definitely no more rides for Edda along the bridle path…

  “What utter piffle!” snapped Maude, astonished at the Rector’s stupidity. “You will drive me out to Corundoobar this evening, Thomas, and thank Jack Thurlow very prettily for his kindness in giving Edda a decent hack. Oh, what fools men can be! The man is very comfortably off, a Burdum by blood, and at the moment old Tom Burdum’s only heir. You ought to be down on your knees at the high altar thanking God for throwing Edda in Jack Thurlow’s direction! With any luck as well as plenty of good management, she’ll be his wife within three years.”

  A tirade that all four girls overheard, and discussed many times over those three years. The object of it, Edda, took it better than her sisters, as success meant Fatima and a new friend. The one who cringed and flinched at such naked determination was poor Kitty; if Maude could behave like that over Edda, about whom she didn’t care, what would she be like when Kitty’s turn came?

  Friendship was all it could be, of course. Virginity was highly prized, and the Rector’s daughters brought up to believe that a decent man expected his wife to be a virgin on her wedding night; pregnancy out of wedlock was the worst sin imaginable.

  There were reasons, of course, and the Rector, as religious instructor to his daughters, made sure they understood that this was not a caprice, but a logical law. “A man has only one proof that he is the father of his wife’s children,” said the Reverend Latimer in his most serious voice to his fifteen-year-old girls, “and that is his wife’s virginity on her wedding day, coupled to her fidelity during the marriage. Why should a man give food and shelter to children who are not his? Both Old and New Testaments condemn unchastity and infidelity.”

  From time to time Thomas Latimer repeated this sermon, though without understanding that his greatest help in assuring the innocence of his girls was the fact that none of them was tempted to throw her cap over the windmill, including Edda.

  For all his attractions, Jack Thurlow didn’t tug at Edda’s heart. Nor had any other man, for that matter. Knowing herself capable of fascinating men, Edda waited for the tug at her heart that never came. Because it is human nature to blame the self, she ended in deciding that she lacked profound emotions. I am a cold person, she said to herself; I can’t feel as others feel. Not one of the boys and men who have kissed me since the C.L.C. ball in 1921 has provoked a deep response. A bit of a pash-up in a dark corner that I inevitably remember as ending in my slapping sweaty male hands away fro
m my breasts — what on earth gets them so excited?

  Despite such fancies, she continued to encounter Jack Thurlow on the bridle path, grateful because he never tried to embrace her or kiss her. Oh, there was a definite physical attraction between them, but clearly he disliked its ruling him as much as she disliked its ruling her.

  Then in January of 1926, she kissed him.

  The moment he saw her he kicked the grey gelding to a hasty meeting, slid off its back, and yanked her from Fatima with trembling hands.

  He was shaking and openly weeping, which didn’t stop his lifting her off the ground and twirling her in a crazy, stepless dance — a kind of fool’s caper.

  “A new Burdum heir has crawled out of the woodwork!” he said, putting her down. “Edda, I’m let off old Tom’s chain! At ten this morning I became the legal owner of Corundoobar free and clear, and signed a paper renouncing any other claims on old Tom’s estate. Free, Edda! I’m free!”

  She couldn’t help it; she kissed him on the lips, a warm and loving message of congratulations that went on for long enough to hover perilously on the brink of becoming something more serious, more intense. Then he broke away, face wet with tears, and took her hands in one of his.

  “I am so happy for you,” she said huskily, smiling.

  “Edda, it’s my dream!” He groped for his handkerchief to mop his eyes. “Corundoobar is a prime property of just the right size, and there’s not a ruby within cooee of it anywhere, so money and power will pass me by.” Grinning, he ruffled her bobbed hair, something she hated. “With you going nursing in three months and our rides at least curtailed, I didn’t know what I was going to do. I even thought of going out west to merino country. Now this!”

  “We can still ride on my days off,” she said seriously.