Nurse Trent's Children (20 page)

The travelers started to alight. It was quite a while before Cathy recognized the fourth wayfarer as Edith Watts. Had she always been as short and dumpy as that? Divorced from her immaculate uniform, flowing veil and handsome cape, she looked a very ordinary little woman. That crimson cape, once more, smiled Cathy, raising her arm in salutation.

She was aware again of the difference in Miss Watts as she waited beside her to collect her luggage. The stylish gray suit made her Miss Watts, not Superintendent Watts, but she forgot her civilian status when she said, “And how have you been, Trent?” and immediately checked herself.

“I should say Miss Trent or Catherine. When
will
I learn?”

“You sound as though you have need to learn; as though you are not returning to nursing.”

“I’m not.” Miss Watts gave Cathy one of her old looks that said clearly, “No questions, miss,” and Cathy, feeling disciplined, left it at that. For the present anyway. She knew she would find out in time what Miss Watts intended to do.

They were in the taxi a
n
d
f
lying to Burnley Hills.

“Helen and Judith send their love. Helen is amassing a comfortable bank balance by accepting lucrative ‘specials.’ She has been very lucky in her patients. Nursed one in Cairo and one in Marseilles. They both want her back again.”

“And Judy?”

“Judy is marrying the medical registrar.”

“Not Toby Fenwick...?”

“Dr. Thomas Fenwick.” Miss Watts was superintendent again. She peered out at the passing scenery. “It’s all much larger than I remember. I’m sure there weren’t all these grand houses.”

“It’s a big city now, and a big country,” said Cathy.

Miss Watts nodded thoughtfully. “I can see that.”

After a while Cathy coaxed, “Aren’t you going to tell me?”

“Tell you what, nurse—I should say minx.”

“Minx?”

“You were one, weren’t you? Remember that A.W.O.L. of
yours?”

“I should. Six leaves canceled. Miss
...
Miss Watts, you are evading the issue. Aren’t you going to give me the why and the wherefore of this visit?”

“Greedy girl, you want everything at once, don’t you? But you’re not going to get it.”

Cathy remembered as Miss Watts said it how Jerry had spoken the same words. He had spoken them when she had asked him what was wrong about her considering her future with David Kennedy.

He had answered, “Several reasons,” and then, as Miss Watts had just now, “Don’t be greedy. You want everything at once, don’t you? This time you’re not getting it. I’ll keep the other reason for a future occasion.”

What, she wondered n
o
w, was the other reason. When, she wondered, would she learn.

“I remember this turnoff,” exclaimed Miss Watts, and a moment later she called. “The same red gates.”

“Redgates greets you,” said Cathy, jumping out when the cab arrived and beating the driver to Miss Watts’s door.

“Humph,” she observed, “two floors; we only had one. A paved crossing to the boys’ block; we had to wade through mud.” Elvira opened the portals, and there followed an animated discussion of “Do you remember
...
and “Have you forgotten...” during which Miss Watts discovered she recalled Elvira’s mother and had bought the household’s eggs from Mrs. Ferguson’s aunt.

“Any of the old board still sitting?” she asked, following the women into the firelit drawing room where tea was waiting.

“Colonel Manning.”

“Really? He must be getting on.”

“Miss Marriott.”

“Old camphor-bags.”

Cathy gasped. “Not in your time, too,” she disbelieved.

“Yes, my dear. Don’t worry, she never gets down to making them. A good heart, Miss Marriott, and that’s the main thing.” They sipped their tea cozily. Afterward Cathy intended to cloister Miss Watts in her old girls’ room and ply her with more questions about the doings of the old girls of St.
Cloud. Just now she was content to listen to her reminiscing and Mrs. Ferguson and Elvira putting in eager bits and pieces.

A car pulled up. Cathy peered through the slats of the blind and said delightedly, “Christabel.”

She ran out of the room and down the hall, threw the door wide and caught the excited little girl up in her arms.

“Darling, you’ve grown a foot.”

Christabel looked at her own two feet a little dubiously, decided Aunty Cathy was being silly, and nestled into her arms again.

“Where’s my teddy? I like teddy better than Rene. Rene went home to her mommy, but
I’m
teddy’s mommy. He has no other mommy but me.”

“All the girls are longing to see you, honey. Avery has built a special sandcastle.”

“Then I’ll go and play with it now.”

“Not until you change your clothes. Besides, there’s a coming-home treat. Bread and cake. And you’re to have it with another guest in the front room.”

“What’s a guest?” asked Christabel, walking ahead in her usual uninhibited manner. Before Cathy could answer she had reached the room, said, “Hello, Elvie. Hello, Fergie,” and then, to everyone’s surprise, “It’s not a guest, it’s Edith. Hello, Edith,” and she went over and climbed on Miss Watts’s knee. Cathy, behind her, gasped, “You two seem acquainted.”

Miss Watts nodded with maddening calm and fed Christabel a finger of sponge cake.

“Where has she been?” she demanded.

“Infectious diseases hospital.”

“Diphtheria?”

“Yes.”

Miss Watts frowned. “There must have been a slipup then, though that fool of a woman assured me she’d had her injection.”

“What woman?”

“At the hostel where I’d placed Christabel.”

“
You’d
placed her
...
?”

Miss Watts did not explain. She looked at the little girl’s throat and commended, “Very neat tracheotomy.”

“Thank you,” said Jeremy Malcolm dryly.

He had entered the room behind Cathy, and Cathy knew the dryness was because she had failed, in her absorption in Christabel, to acknowledge his presence.

Miss Watts squinted across at him, then deliberately put Christabel on her feet and put on her spectacles and looked again. After a while she shook her head and took them off. Christabel, however, had escaped in search of Avery.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Cathy to Elvira, who stood up to
f
ollow her. “It’s her first day back. Tomorrow we can plague her about clothes.”

“Do you do that?” demanded Miss Watts sharply. “Do you plague these children?”

“I don’t believe so, but you can discover that for yourself during your stay here.”

“I certainly intend to. Indeed, it’s what I’ve come for.”

Cathy glanced questioningly once more at the superintendent, but still received no enlightenment.

“There is also a board meeting tomorrow,” said Dr. Malcolm. “As an old girl you must attend.”

“I shall.” The gray head nodded twice. “If I remember rightly quite a lot of things were gleaned at board meetings, and I don’t suppose things have changed.”

“Nothing is changed at Redgates, absolutely nothing,” said Dr. Malcolm a little wearily, and Cathy knew he was meaning that path between the brothers’ and the sisters’ blocks. He drank his tea quickly, shook hands with Miss Watts and went.

She stood up and peered through the window to see him enter his car.

“Something ringing bells?” asked Elvira shrewdly.

“Yes, but don’t tell me. I like to remember people for myself.” The rest of the day went pleasantly.

Miss Watts settled herself in her room; then she did an inspection of the grounds, where she discovered old Jeffreys, who had not been so old in her time, and stopped for a reminiscent chat.

Meanwhile, Avery and Christabel embraced, quarreled, embraced and quarreled again, and it seemed like the old days when Cathy had two babies, not one, to attend to when the rest of the children were at school.

Miss Watts looked in at brothtime, again at the evening meal, and she watched Cathy as she put the children to bed.

The next morning she was up when they were, sampling their porridge, nodding her head over their packed school lunches, but still not saying a word.

I wonder what she is thinking,
thought Cathy between the extra dusting and extra flower arranging and extra sprucing up for the meeting of the board. There was no doubt about it, these official occasions did cause a lot of trouble.

At four the cars began to arrive, and, last as usual, as though
timed for a grand entry,
came
the most expensive car of all. Out of it stepped Fayette, beautiful, smiling, bland, charming, but her sharp eyes taking in every detail and falling at last on Miss Watts in suspicious inquiry.

As they moved toward the assembly room one of the arched eyebrows was raised again in Miss Watts direction. Miss Watts, Cathy could see, was walking purposefully ahead, no doubt with the intention of letting everyone know that she, too, was going to attend.

“This is for board
members
,”
said Fayette softly, sweetly, but deliberately.

Miss Watts only half turned on her, but it was sufficient. How often, Cathy quailed, had she subdued her young nurses with a quick look like that, how often had she put her senior nurses out of countenance. It seemed that this time Mrs. Dubois had met her match. Unchallenged, the older woman went into the room and took a seat at the long table.

There began an animated conference between Miss Watts and Colonel Manning and Miss Marriott. They all remembered the old days and would have continued doing so had not Fayette Dubois called the chairman’s attention to the time, and he, rather apologetically, for he was enjoying the conversation, rang his bell for silence.

The meeting got underway.

The usual routine business was dealt with—the amounts of butter and eggs consumed, the current rise in the price of vegetables.

Then David Kennedy was called upon in regard to Andrew St. Clair, who had had a bad report from his employer.

“Andrew is not happy in his work,” David said simply and directly.

“What nonsense. He chose it.” It was Fayette speaking, of course.

“Yes, he chose it, but only because it was indicated to him. He was told of the higher remuneration he would receive and, naturally, he was dazzled.”

“He is not a child.”

“He is not a man. He is only seventeen.”

“Old enough to settle down.”

“I quite agree, but not in something he does not like.”

“I hate to repeat myself, Mr. Kennedy, but I must.
Andrew chose his trade
.”

“Lots of children choose things and then change their minds. Some adults do, too. Because a child is an unprivileged child it does not mean he must forgo the privilege of a second choice. We’ve gone into the subject pretty exhaustively. I believe we have reached a solution
.
”

“Really?” The lovely blond head had inclined forward.

David looked a little out of his element.
Homespun,
thought Cathy fondly, recalling his description of himself that day.

“Andrew is interested in being a pastry cook,” said David.

“A pastry cook?”

“I do not take credit for having discovered Andrew’s bent. Mr. Marsdon did that.” David bowed lightly in the direction of the vocational guide.

Mrs. Dubois turned her attention on Mr. Marsdon.

“What an odd finding,” she commented coolly.

“Not entirely, Mrs. Dubois. Whatever else people choose to do, they always eat. I should think in time Andrew would be comfortably placed.”

“In
time
?”

“Meaning,” explained the vocational guide not very happily, “that for the moment Andrew’s remuneration will drop sharply. It’s an apprenticeship that does not pay as much as the other.”

“Then of
c
ourse it is out of the question.”

“Why?” It was Cathy who spoke.

“Because we may be a charitable institution, but we don’t function entirely for charity,” said Fayette clearly. Cathy remembered she had said that once before.

The housemother glanced sensitively away, but not before she had seen Dr. Malcolm. He was sitting staring complacently at the ceiling. Only the knuckles of his hands told of any emotion. They were white and drained of blood in his big clenched brown fists.

Her swift evasion brought Miss Watts into her line of vision. The woman was sitting forward, her attention riveted on Mrs. Dubois. Her eyes, too, were enigmatic.

“Perhaps,” said David, “we can leave the matter of Andrew for a while. He has agreed to stay his month out with Clinton’s and there is still a week’s grace.”

“He has
agreed
...”
took up Fayette, her brows rising sharply. “Isn’t that a curious choice of a word, Mr. Kennedy?”

David mumbled unhappily that it was his policy to have the boys agree rather than obey, and he subsided with relief when the chairman accepted the postponement of Andrew’s fate and suggested the debate of the next issue.

The next issue was Rita.

Fayette took the initiative. She started on Rita’s long history of sullenness and impudence and finished with her dishonesty and deceit in skipping lessons at a business school to which the board had paid top fees.

Cathy intervened. “She is not interested in clerical work.”

“Another peg that won’t fit,” sneered Fayette. “It appears obvious to me that Redgates is specializing in temperamental children—or is it children with a temper? What does Rita think she is? A princess to dictate what she wants?”

“She doesn’t want clerical work.”

“So she takes the deceitful way of avoiding it. She simply doesn’t go. I’ve had a report from the principal of the school. This is what it says
...
”
Fayette read
.

After she had finished, the paper was folded and replaced in her bag.

“It is obvious that Rita has not the brains for secondary education; indeed, she has only the brains for such work as she has been fitted for here at Redgates. The sweeping of floors, the washing of dishes.”

Cathy spoke again. “Rita has not been taught that. None of the children are taught that.”

“Then why not, pray?”

“There is no need for them to do it. The daily domestics come in—there are Elvira and Mrs. Ferguson”

“If the girls were properly trained we could do without Elvira or without Mrs. Ferguson. In fact, with organization,
you
should be sufficient, Miss Trent. After all, you would only have to supervise the girls’ work. However, this is getting away from the question under debate. I repeat that Rita is not worthy of any secondary education.”

“Her elementary school reports do not coincide with that finding. She was first in the primary class in the year she left Gullybank Junior,” said Cathy.

Colonel Manning interrupted nervously, “Has she any bent, Miss Trent?”

“We have not had her interviewed by Mr. Marsdon, but Elvira and I believe—”

“Experts, surely,” put in Fayette.

“We believe we have discovered in Rita a distinct fl
a
ir for the domestic—”

“What did I tell you?”

Cathy turned on Fayette, holding tight to her fast-diminishing temper.

“Not
your
sort of
domestic work, Mrs. Dubois,
creative
domesticity. We think she would do well at fancy cooking, cake decoration—”

“So.” The green eyes were slitted now, the lips thin and unamused. “Andrew a pastry cook, Rita there to decorate his little efforts. Quite a loving team, isn’t it? Is it housemother you are playing, Miss Trent, or Cupid?”