Seven Dials (26 page)

The next few days seemed dreamlike to Charlie. She walked through her last few days of work at East Grinstead and seemed to the other staff and to her patients there to be the same as she always was, quiet, but aware of and genuinely interested in them and their doings, but all the time she knew she was only giving half of herself, if that, to what she was doing.

Even at the surprise goodbye party they threw for her in Ward Three, with the men sitting up in bed in their bandages and plasters, some with the battered faces of recent surgery, some with the dependent lumps of misshapen tissue which were half completed pedicle grafts, but all with friendly and affectionate expressions in their eyes, she stood there seeming to listen demurely to Archie McIndoe’s flattering speech about her abilities, but without really hearing anything. Because all she was doing was thinking about Brin, running over and over again in her mind that incredible half hour in his flat and reliving her delight in it.

And it was the same when she left the Queen Victoria Hospital and went back to Nellie’s as a new registrar on the surgical side. She walked through her work in a state of abstraction, coping well, operating on her patients, supervising dressings and checking charts, doing all that was necessary, yet not really there. Brin’s face and Brin’s voice and Brin’s smell and touch and presence seemed to accompany her everywhere.

Brin himself, somewhat to her surprise, seemed to be able to be exactly as he had always been; friendly, charming but not at all loverlike. Since she had herself told him that was the way he ought to behave, she should not have felt any chagrin because he did; but all the same, there was some regret in her that he had found it so easy to be obedient.

She had gone back to East Grinstead that night, taking the bus to Victoria to catch the last train, and he had hugged her warmly and kissed her soundly as they had waited at her bus stop, and told her with real admiration in his voice that she was a spitfire underneath all that surface quietness of hers, and she had laughed, feeling oddly as though she weren’t really herself at all, but an actress studying a part. She had told him that it was always dangerous to make assumptions about people on the basis of mere appearance and then had said, a little awkwardly, ‘Look, Brin - if I’m to go on being your doctor, this - I mean this can’t happen again.’

She had looked up at him then and managed a small smile. ‘Damn it,’ she had added softly.

‘Why not? Didn’t you enjoy it?’

‘You know damn well I did. You don’t have to ask. No - it’s just that doctors aren’t supposed to have - they aren’t supposed to be as close to their patients as we were tonight.’ She chuckled softly in the darkness. ‘It’s usually men doctors and women patients they worry about, the powers-that-be, but it’s frowned upon this way round too, I imagine. We really oughtn’t to see each other again except strictly as doctor and patient till after your operation is over and done with -’

She had expected him to argue about that and had been quite prepared to make some sort of plan to meet him quietly, knowing there would be no real problems about their relationship. Neither she nor he would ever talk about it, of course, so there was no real risk. And anyway, as a woman doctor she wouldn’t be seen by even the most censorious of her colleagues as taking advantage of the special doctor-patient relationship. Such an idea would be impossible to them, she knew, for they could never imagine a woman taking the initiative in any entanglement, so it would be reasonably safe to go on from their starting-point.

But he had nodded in instant understanding. ‘I hadn’t thought of that - damn it, just my luck! Now I’ve really got to know you properly we’ve got to pretend we’re the same as everyone else, all stuffy and drear. Never mind, my darling old Charlie. We can wait - let’s get this damned operation over and done with and then we’ll see where we go from there! Let me know if you can hang on to admit me to Nellie’s till after the show, will you, as soon as you can? If you can’t, then I’ll
have to go and try my wiles on the Dame. One way or another, I’ve got to have this damned scar dealt with as soon as possible. Goodnight, ducks - see you soon -’, he had added as the big red bus came grinding to a halt beside them and then he had handed her up onto the platform and stood on the kerb waving to her as the bus took her on its trundling way.

She had stood there swaying as she held on to the strap over her head, peering out into the darkness at his diminishing figure and then had sat down, feeling deflated and suddenly very tired. He was right of course to accept so willingly the need to return to an arm’s-length relationship, but all the same, it would have been nicer if - and then she had shaken herself and bought her ticket from the yawning conductor and settled down to make the long journey back to her lonely bed in West Sussex, thinking of Brin all the way.

And so it had been ever since; she thinking of him and he being very busy with his work and offering her no more than the shortest of cheerful and friendly but undoubtedly impersonal conversations on the telephone when she called him. She spent a good deal of time in the admissions office at Nellie’s poring over the waiting lists and arguing with the clerk as she tried to get a new date for his operation, and when she managed to arrange for a bed to be available just ten days after the Benefit night, she was jubilant. Just another week to go to the show, and then the operation and he’d be over that, she estimated, within a couple of weeks and then,
then
they could be themselves again. And her eyes had actually misted with tears of happiness as she had contemplated a future in which episodes like the one they had shared on the floor of his sitting-room would be a nightly experience.

There had been a moment when she had suddenly stopped being quite so starry-eyed and found herself thinking of any possible outcome to their love making. It had all happened so suddenly and been so spontaneous that she hadn’t given any thought to that possibility, and now she tried to work out from her diary just how risky that night had been. Could she possibly, she asked herself, leafing through its pages crowded with details of patients and dressings and letters she had to write to other doctors, could she have been at a vulnerable stage of her cycle? But the relevant information wasn’t there; she had not bothered to enter it, and after all why should she?
Women who were not making love need not concern themselves with such matters, and until that night she had been one of the unconcerned.

For a little while she had worried, trying her hardest to remember the necessary dates, and then had relaxed. She was almost certain that she had been within safe limits, especially as her body had always behaved erratically in such matters, sometimes refusing to function altogether for a while when she overworked and became too thin; all she could do was wait and see, she told herself, and firmly put the thought to the back of her mind. It was exceedingly unlikely, her doctor’s mind lectured her woman’s mind, that she had any cause for concern. Every doctor who had ever worked in gynaecological wards knew how difficult it was for many women living in active marriages to start families; a single experience like hers, the doctor said firmly, was unlikely to give rise to alarm. And the woman who was Charlie listened and believed, needing to have that to hold on to. And perhaps hoping, somewhere so deeply inside her that the idea was not accessible to her conscious mind, that there had been a risk, after all -

The hospital was now buzzing with talk of the Benefit that was to happen at last on the next Saturday night. The posters had gone up and glittering name after glittering name adorned it. There was to be ballet and opera, musical comedy and jazz, sketches and songs and dances and everything the most jaded of theatrical appetites could desire. The writer and the choreographer and the director of the show were of the highest calibre, and altogether, the staff told each other, it was going to be the hit of the year.

The only pity was that none of the nursing staff could possibly afford to go, because the tickets were to cost an astronomical amount, from ten shillings in the gallery up to the heady box-seat charge of fifteen pounds each. It was clear this Benefit Night was designed to solve Nellie’s financial problems once and for all from the pockets of the extremely wealthy, and the nurses watched enviously as the more senior and therefore richer doctors bought themselves their tickets from the special booth that had been set up in the lobby, right under the Founder’s statue.

A poster had been painted to hang across the front of the
building and it announced the Benefit to the public at large and also begged for donations to help Nellie’s reach its target of twenty-five thousand pounds, and many were the shabby individuals who came scuttling through the doors to drop their threepenny pieces and sometimes lavish sixpences into the collecting boxes. But they didn’t consider for a moment the possibility of seeing the show, for too few of the people of Seven Dials could afford threepence, let alone the price of a seat at the Stoll Theatre.

Two days before the show was to happen, Charlie was in the Casualty Department standing in for a junior houseman who had developed a raging toothache and taken himself off to the Eastman Dental Clinic in Gray’s Inn Road. She had nothing else to do and though she had had a long day in the theatres, the prospect of an evening spent in Casualty seemed to be more agreeable than one spent sitting alone in the common room. She ached to talk to Brin, but that was impossible. They must be at a crescendo of busyness, she told herself, at this stage of rehearsals, and he wouldn’t welcome hearing from her. He knew she had a bed for him next Wednesday fortnight and that once he was admitted they would have time to talk contentedly; so she told herself firmly that it wouldn’t be sensible to make a nuisance of herself now, and settled down to read the
Lancet
at the Casualty Officer’s little desk, hoping there wouldn’t be too much to do.

The big clock ticking ponderously in the big terrazzo-floored waiting-hall and the occasional clatter of a nurse’s heels as she went busily about the small dressing-clinic that was going on in the far corner was all the sound there was, for the department was unusually quiet tonight, and Charlie yawned and looked at her watch. Another half hour and the night people would be on duty and she could go to bed herself and tomorrow she could look forward to a short but interesting theatre list of minor surgical procedures, all of which demanded some concern for the cosmetic result; she was feeling more relaxed than she had for some time. Not since Brin -

The big double doors swung open and a woman in an expensive satin coat which was streaked with blood came hurrying in. A man beside her in full evening dress was holding her round the shoulders with great solicitude as she
held a large and very bloody handkerchief to her face.

‘Quickly, quickly!’ he shouted as he came bustling into the big waiting-room. ‘We need a doctor at once - oh, please, be quick!’

Charlie came out of the small office at the same time as a nurse went hurrying across to lead the woman into one of the patients’ cubicles amid much fussing from the very agitated man and saw her settled on the examination couch. She was a young woman, certainly a good deal younger than her companion, and her eyes above her bloodstained handkerchief were wide and frightened within their frame of heavily mascara’d lashes.

‘What happened?’ Charlie asked quietly as the nurse stood aside to let her bend over the couch.

‘We were walking along, talking you understand, going to a little late dinner after the theatre and suddenly, there’s this piece of metal sticking out on the pavement! I step on it, it flies up - whoosh!’ The man gabbled and Charlie cocked an eye at him, intrigued a little by his accent, which was clearly mid-European.

‘I’m sure it wasn’t your fault,’ she said as soothingly as she could. ‘These things happen - there are still all sorts of pieces of debris around since the bombing - we see a lot of such injuries. Now, my dear, let me look -’

As she gently unprised the girl’s terrified fingers the man gabbled on, explaining that they had indeed been passing a patch of bomb damage when it had happened, that he had done all he could to stop the bleeding, but knew it was bad, had been so grateful that Nellie’s was so close, so wonderful a hospital - so much all a hospital should be, such fine doctors, such noble nurses -

‘Where are you from?’ Charlie asked, as much to stem the flood of explanations as because she was really interested, and the man stopped and then said carefully, ‘I came to England in 1937. I was a refugee, you understand, in 1937 - from Poland -’

‘It’s all right,’ Charlie said gently. ‘No need to be worried.’ She could hear the fear in the man’s voice and knew its source; so many people with European accents had been hounded by the ignorant during the War, had had ‘German bastard’ shouted after them, been spied on and been accused of being
spies. It couldn’t have been easy for a man like this and she smiled at him again and after a moment he smiled back.

‘I am so anxious,’ he said simply. ‘My wife, you understand -’ And then as Charlie looked down at the girl whose injury was now at last clear to see as she had mopped away the blood, the man added in a low voice, ‘Ah - this is my friend, you understand. My wife, she is excellent, a superb wife, but this is my friend whom she does not know -’

‘Not a word shall she hear from us,’ Charlie said cheerfully. ‘Now, Miss—’

‘Dorning,’ the girl said in a muffled and very London voice.

‘Jayne Dorning, with a “y”. Is it all right, doctor? Is it going to be an awful scar? I can’t have a scar, not in my line of work - I’m a mannequin, you know. I gotta look good -’

‘She shows my clothes from my business,’ the man said wretchedly. ‘It is so important it is right, you understand, doctor? My wife, the business -’ And he almost wrung his hands with anxiety.

The cut was a jagged and messy one, involving the side of the nose as well as the cheek and Charlie looked at it very carefully and then straightened up, nodding.

‘You’re in luck,’ she said as lightly as she could. ‘I’ve had special training in such injuries. I can mend that for you so that you’ll never see the scar. Do as you’re told about the after-treatment and you’ll have no problems -’