The Hive (14 page)

‘You’re quite right, of course. I suppose I
am
being impatient.’

‘Ambition always is.’

‘It wouldn’t be ambition if it weren’t——’

She turned to go, and stopped at the door.

‘It would be a great help to me, in sounding out the nursing opinion on your idea, if I understood it in more detail.’ She smiled at him with great charm. ‘Perhaps you could find time to talk to me about it?’

‘By all means.’

‘Perhaps—shall we say next Friday? In the evening? If you could dine with me in my flat, we could be sure of—talking without interruption. Does that sound possible? During the day, I’m very busy, and of course, you are too. As long as Jennifer wouldn’t object, that is.’

He was still sitting on the table, his head in a nimbus of light that effectively shadowed his face.

‘Friday? To talk about my idea? I don’t see why not. May I discuss her plans with Jennifer? As long as she hasn’t already arranged something for us, we would be delighted to come. Thank you.’

‘Oh. Yes, of course. I’ll be happy to see you both, then.’

‘Of course, Jennifer will find our discussion desperately boring. May I suggest, if it isn’t an imposition, that you include another person in your dinner party? That would give us a chance to talk without neglecting Jennifer’s interests.’

‘By all means,’ she said smoothly. ‘Friday, then, about seven thirty. Good afternoon, James.’

And she went, leaving him with a smile on his face.

‘One to him,’ she told herself savagely, as she reached her office and prepared to interview Miss Baker about the next day’s appointments. ‘But the next will be mine, so help me it will.’

‘I shall have to do something,’ Elizabeth thought irritably. ‘All she’s doing is parading her obsessions and enjoying it, and I’m getting nowhere. And she’ll just go on as she always has, and if I try to bring this subject up again at another discussion, she’ll think I’m making a butt of her. I’ll have to do something——’

But she sat silent still, watching Josephine talk while she steadily ate her way through the major part of the box of chocolates she was sharing with Mary Cotton, and described in great detail her method of linen cupboard arrangement.

The first of the sisters’ discussion group meetings had been going on now for more than an hour. They had been tense at first, unwilling to talk much at all, and had passively accepted Elizabeth’s suggestion that she should be the chairwoman for the first meeting, not even Dolly East attempting to argue. They had accepted Elizabeth’s choice of subject—the place and uses of routine in hospital work—with equal passivity.

She had tried, at first, to get them to talk of the deeper implications of routine, but she had failed. Josephine had ridden over her attempts, not because she understood what Elizabeth was trying to do (and that’s the whole trouble with her; she just can’t comprehend what I mean, Elizabeth had thought), but because for Josephine, routine meant only the technicalities of ward planning, nothing more.

‘At least they’ve relaxed,’ Elizabeth thought now. ‘She’s made them feel safe. They were frightened they’d display too much of themselves, and she’s lulled them with all her dreary nattering about lists and rotas. She’s been useful after all, perhaps. Now they’ve relaxed, I might get somewhere. But I think I’ll have to do something fairly brutal——’

Josephine took another chocolate, and almost beamed round at the group of women, at Daphne and Susan sitting side by side, at Dolly in the self-imposed discomfort of a hard backed
chair, at McLeod and Arthur and Cotton half asleep in their armchairs, at Swinton slightly removed from them in the window seat.

‘Anyway, that’s how I do it,’ she finished. ‘But if anyone has any better ideas, I’m more than willing to hear them. No one can say I’m not open to suggestions, if they’re good ones,’ and she looked sideways at Elizabeth to make sure she had observed this statement of willing pliability.

‘Has anyone anything to add about linen cupboards?’ Elizabeth said. ‘No? Good. Because now we have dealt with some of this detailed matter, perhaps we can get on to what is really rather more interesting and important. That is, the
uses
of routine.’

‘I thought that was what we were talking about,’ Dolly said, almost rudely. ‘We’ve heard nothing but how to use a routine since we started.’

‘Only details,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Only details. But as I see it—and you can argue with me if you disagree—routine has other functions. It can be a comfort.’

‘Oh, I agree,’ Josephine said at once. ‘The patients are
far
more comfortable when you have a well run ward because nothing is left undone. Everything is planned for—back rounds, bedpan rounds——’

‘I don’t mean in that sense,’ Elizabeth said with careful patience. ‘Isn’t it possible that a routine is a comfort to the people who administer it?’

‘Of course it is,’ Josephine said, eagerly. ‘Of course it is. I would worry very much indeed if I thought any part of our nursing care had been forgotten——’

‘Again, Sister, you misunderstand me,’ Elizabeth said, a little sharply, ‘I am suggesting that a sister’s routine protects her from some of the deeper implications of her work. Just think about it. We are faced every day with pain, with unhappiness, with death and grief and loneliness. We have to face these things, help the sufferers, but not get involved with their suffering as human beings, don’t we? If we work to a strict routine, then the routine can become an end in itself, become more important than the people it is supposed to serve—important to the nurse who uses it, because while she uses it,
she need not concern herself with her patients and their misery. Don’t any of you feel that?’

‘I rather think I do,’ Daphne said, unexpectedly. ‘Come to think of it, I’ve got a pretty fixed routine in the theatres, of course. You’ve got to have one in such a technical sort of department. But there’s more to it than that. There
is
a lot of emotional strain in the theatres—of course there is, and a well planned system takes the edge off. If you’re thinking about the routine, you haven’t time to worry about the cases as patients. I could worry about them, if I let myself, you know. I’m not all technician, whatever some of you may think. There was that girl who had primaries in her liver—do you remember, Pip?’

‘I remember,’ Susan said. ‘She was just a kid, wasn’t she? It was a few months ago. This girl was about twenty—pretty little thing she was, and she went to theatre for a laparotomy and they just had to sew her up again—there wasn’t a thing they could do, and Daphne here was really cut up about her——’

‘She died,’ Ruth said. ‘Judith Levy, her name was. Her mother nearly went stark staring mad all over my kitchen when she died. I won’t forget that one in a hurry either.’

‘Well, that one upset me,’ Daphne said. ‘And I wasn’t much use around the place for days after that case. Well, you can’t be like that, can you? Getting all het up all the time about the patients.’

‘We make progress,’ Elizabeth sounded brisk. ‘Nursing, as I said, can be painful. We see things, hear things, that hurt us as people. With a routine we can protect our feelings. We lessen the stress on ourselves.’

‘I think that’s ridiculous,’ Dolly said flatly. ‘A lot of sentimental rubbish. We’ve got a job to do, and that’s all there is to it. I’m sure I’ve more sense than to get sentimental over the patients. The world’s full of these sad cases. Hospitals don’t have a monopoly of them. You make us sound like a lot of babies who need Mother to keep us happy by putting us down for a nap at the same time every day. It’s almost insulting.’

‘That’s what I think,’ Josephine said, her face reddening, carefully not looking at Elizabeth. ‘All this deep psychology—
well, really, Matron, you’ll forgive me, but I think all this is just looking for something that isn’t there. I care a lot about my old women. I certainly don’t have a routine to
stop
me from caring about them. I have it so that I can do the best for them.’

‘Now, Jo, just a minute.’ Swinton spoke for the first time that evening, startling them a little. ‘You know you get into a flap about things, and that you sometimes have trouble with your nurses because of it—your routine, that is. You run that ward like clockwork. If something happens to change your system, you get into a tremendous state.’

‘Well, I know that—I can’t deny I get upset when it goes wrong. But only because I like everything to be nice——’

‘Well, isn’t that what we’re saying? I think Matron could be right. In fact, I’m sure she is. You’re an obvious case, aren’t you? Your routine’s an end in itself to you, and I think it’s because it makes
you
feel better, not because of the patients, even though you think it is——’

‘That’s not true! Of course it isn’t—I just—I——’

‘I think it’s true of all of us to a greater or lesser degree,’ Elizabeth said carefully.

She leaned back in her chair, and stared up at the ceiling as she spoke, picking her words carefully. ‘Look, just as an exercise, let’s see if we can define the extremes of this. Let me tell you how I visualise the sort of nurse who has a positive need for a rigid routine as an end in itself rather than as a useful tool. I see her as a somewhat-obsessive personality. She will show herself to suffer from a sense of insecurity off duty as well as on. She may, if she is really unfortunate, develop an addiction—drink, drugs—and of course drugs are all too easily available to nurses—food——’

‘Food?’ Daphne said, and then laughed. ‘Oh, Matron, that’s a lovely thought. Quick, give me a great big sandwich. I feel a stress coming on——’

‘It may sound funny, Sister,’ Elizabeth said. ‘But it
is
true. Food is a great comfort to many people. And it’s logical it should be. Think of babies. All they want is food, whatever happens. And because it is mother who gives them their food, they come to equate it with love and security. Some people,
who for one reason or another don’t progress beyond this stage of emotional development, never lose this infantile need for food. They use it just as alcoholics use drink, or drug addicts use their heroin or whatever—a bulwark against unhappiness——’

‘Poor old Jo. Got you in one,’ Ruth Arthur murmured, and laughed.

There was a sharp silence, and Elizabeth looked round with a display of innocence. Josephine’s face had gone a patchy red, and she was sitting very straight. Arthur was looking at her with a rather malicious amusement on her face, and Mary Cotton had an expression of almost ludicrous anxiety on hers as she sat beside Josephine, carefully not looking at her.

‘I didn’t quite catch that, Sister Arthur——?’ Elizabeth said, also trying not to look at Josephine.

She had led the talk towards this attack on Josephine carefully, because it had been necessary. If she’s ever to get any benefit out of all this, she’s got to be made to understand, Elizabeth told herself defensively. She’s got to, for her own sake. But it wasn’t a pleasure to do it. She could feel Josephine’s shock and distress as though it were her own, as though someone else had said to her, Elizabeth, ‘You are an immature, obsessive character, and not much more than a joke——’ For a moment, she regretted her action, and wanted to sheer away, to leave things as they were. But that would be pointless, she thought quickly. Pointless. I’ve done it now, and if I don’t follow it through, it makes it just a piece of gratuitous cruelty. I must follow it through. ‘What did you say, Sister Arthur?’ she said again, and raised her eyebrows in interrogation.

Ruth shrugged, embarrassed now, but Elizabeth still sat with her eyebrows raised, waiting for an answer.

‘Oh, I didn’t mean anything at all really,’ she said uncomfortably. ‘Just chattering. I didn’t mean anything.’

‘Look, Sister—all of you,’ Elizabeth said gently. ‘I told you before we began—if these discussions are to have any value at all, we must be honest. As chairwoman of this session, it’s my job to see that we develop an idea to its conclusion. Now, you just said something that means something important to somebody.
I don’t know you all very well yet, but I can tell that something has come out of this discussion that has some kind of direct meaning. I can feel it in the—atmosphere, your comment has created. Now, please, what did you say?’

‘I think you heard, Matron. She said, “Poor old Jo. Got you in one,”’ Dolly said loudly.

There was a silence, and then Josephine moved sharply. ‘It’s not fair!’ Her voice was high and thin, with tears only just under control. ‘You’re getting at me—me—just because I try hard and I care about what I do, and don’t want a ward like a pigsty, like you’ve got, Arthur, you and your catty talk——’

‘Whoops, that’s me got in one!’ Ruth said easily, seeming to show a sense of relief at Josephine’s attack. ‘Not that I mind! I daresay I’m as obsessed or whatever as you are, Jo, so not to worry. We’ll be happy nuts together——’

Josephine ignored her, but her voice rose higher as she went on, ‘You think I’m a sort of case, that I’m neurotic or something—well, I’m not, and if I am, there’s others just as much as I am—and they show it more——’ She looked round almost wildly. ‘I’m not like—like McLeod there. What about her, eh? What about her?
She’s
always going off sick, always moaning about her head, or her legs, or her back, or a cold or something. She’s neurotic if you like! She hasn’t enough to do to need any routine like I need on my ward because it’s a heavy one, so you can’t say she’s got one because she’s neurotic, you just pick on me——’

‘Me! Neurotic! Well, I like that! I run myself off my feet to keep this Home nice for you, and you think I’ve got nothing to do, and then you say I’m neurotic—I never heard such a thing in all my life! Don’t you go trying to make
me
the one who’s bad, madam! Neurotic! If anyone is, it’s you! The way you flap about, the way you’re always eating. She’s right, Matron’s right. Like a great baby, that’s what you are, a great baby. Don’t tell me! I know who’s been stealing the biscuits from the kitchen, why I never have enough to see through the week! You must think me a great fool if you think I don’t know what
you
are! I’ve seen the great meals you cook up there, the stuff you keep in that cupboard of yours—you make
me sick, you and your——’