You Took My Heart (2 page)

“Scoot!” warned Garth in quite a scared aside. “Sister won’t like you to talk to me. I’ll ring you up at the Home tonight and we’ll fix a meeting. You’ve got to have dinner with me your first free evening.”

“Love to,” said Joan and fled. Sister Millet followed her into the ward and when the vases of gladioli had been set down on the, centre table she said icily, “Nurse Langden, please don’t let me find you
talking
in the corridor with any doctor or houseman again. It’s against the rules.” She turned on her heel and stalked away, leaving Joan crimson.

“Can’t I even say ‘how-do-you-do? to someone I’ve known since I was in the nursery?” she grumbled to Gemma a little later in the privacy of the sluice-room. “Biting my head off like that in front of the patients! She made me feel like a worm.”

Gemma grinned. “Thank your stars she didn’t report you,” she said tersely. “If you as much as lift an eyelash in the direction of a houseman in this place you’re flirting.”

“But Garth isn’t a houseman.”

“All the worse. The Millet adores honoraries and she has a special crush on Mr. Perros. Once, it is said, he was rash enough to take her out to dinner, and she’s dreamed about him ever since.”

Joan washing dusters looked serious. Had Garth really been unwise enough to offer a casual friendship to this tight-lipped woman with the greying hair and homely, middle-aged face? Women of Sister Millet’s type wouldn’t know how to be casual. Didn’t Garth realize that? And her fury just now had been out of all proportion to the incident which prompted it.

“It must have been rather thrilling knowing Garth Perros in the nursery,” Gemma was saying curiously. “What was he like in those days?”

“Like any other boy, ” snapped Joan rather shortly. She didn’t want to discuss Garth with Gemma.

“His father is the doctor at Dipley, isn’t he?” Gemma persisted.

Joan nodded.

“But surely he was a lot older than you as a playmate—Garth, I mean. You’re what is it? Twenty-one? And Garth Perros must be nearly thirty.”

“He’s twenty-nine. Eight years older than I am. But it didn’t use to matter somehow when we were kids. I suppose because we were both a bit lonely. Anyway, we always got on quite well.”

“I bet you did,” sighed Gemma enviously. “And I bet you still will when you get the chance. Anyone could get on with a lamb like Garth. Are you going to meet him in your off-duty times? That’s against the rules too, you know.”

“Blow the rules,” said Joan vigorously and slapped the wet dusters down on the splashboard. “Where do I dry these things?”

“In the hot press,” Gemma told her and went away to the dispensary, an empty carboy under each arm, her freckled face wearing a particularly demure expression because she was thinking of the few moments’ flirtation she might have with her special friend the dispenser. Gemma was an incurable opportunist and the watchfulness of a Donald Duck or a Millet only added zest to her small affairs.

* * * *

It was seven o’clock that evening when Joan crossed the grassy square once more, her first hospital day behind her. She was so tired she felt as though she had been beaten all over and her feet, she confided in Gemma, ached like “a couple of toothaches.”

“Everyone feels like that at first,” Gemma consoled her. “My first few days I ached all over. It’s all the lifting and running about. You’ll soon become hardened.”

Joan murmured fervently that she hoped she would and sat through supper in a daze of weariness. After supper Garth telephoned her. She had to confess that she didn’t yet know her off-duty time and hadn’t the courage to ask Sister Millet. “She was wild with me for talking to you in the corridor,’ Joan told him indignantly, and Garth chuckled.

“The Millet
is
a bit of a sergeant-major, but I’ll fix her for you. She eats out of my hand.”

“So I’ve heard,” Joan put in drily, and refused to be drawn when Garth, still chuckling, begged for the source of her information.

“If you listen to hospital gossip you’ll hear some apocryphal tales,” Garth warned. “And furthermore, if you go and look at the notice-board in the hall of the Nurses’ Home you’ll soon know your off-duty time. You’ll find it all tabulated there.”

“You seem to know the ropes,” Joan murmured, and Garth said naughtily that she wasn’t the first nurse he had taken out to dinner by a long chalk.

“The Millet?” enquired Joan.

“Yes,” he admitted; “on two occasions, the Millet. It pays to get on the right side of that good lady, as you’ll very soon find out.”

“It’s something to know she’s
got
a right side,” Joan said rather crossly, and went away to look at the notice-board.

She would be able to have dinner with him the following evening, she told him. Her voice softening she added, “And thank you so much for all you’ve done in helping me to get here, Garth, my dear. I meant to say that this morning but Sister Millet didn’t give me time.”

“You don’t have to thank me, Joanna, darling. Anything I’ve done has been pure selfishness. You don’t know how marvellous it is for me having you on the spot like this!” His tone was tender.

Joan’s face was thoughtful as she went upstairs to her room. In the .summer twilight she sat a long time, her eyes fixed on the motionless tree-tops beyond the window.

Garth was a puzzle to her. Garth had been a puzzle for years now. He liked her ... even, it seemed at times, he loved her. That quickening in his dark grey eyes when he looked at her, the warmth of his voice, the eagerness. And it wasn’t altogether because they had been brought up like brother and sister. It wasn’t a brotherly Garth who had held her in his arms one sudden passionate moment last summer holiday under the rectory apple trees. It wasn’t a brotherly Garth then who had kissed her yielding lips. And afterwards he had looked at her so queerly, so miserably. “Forget that Joanna, will you?” he had said. “I had no right to do that; only you looked so sweet, my angel, so tempting. It’s not fair of you to be
so
beautiful, Joan.”

She had
puzzled
over that incident a good deal. And other incidents like it.

Garth had come faithfully twice every year to the house beside the rectory, and it wasn’t only because of his mother and father. “I’ve got to see you every now and again to make life bearable,” he’d told Joan once. And ever since he went away at nineteen to walk St. Angela’s as a student, they had spent the long holidays together. Save for one year, one long black year when he didn’t come home and had scarcely written. That was when he was twenty-one. Eight years ago; but she could still remember the pain of his absence, the inadequacy of his letters during that period. And when he did turn up again he was a changed Garth for
a while
, a white-lipped, haggard young man with bitter eyes. She’d worked hard over him that holiday and she’d won him back to his ordinary cheeriness in the end, so that they had a more wonderful time than ever before.

Joan sighed to herself, sitting there in the small dim bedroom, only vaguely conscious now of her aching, weary body because of that other familiar ache at her heart.

She thought of Garth’s father and mother who loved her. She knew that they too had hoped his friendship for her would ripen to something more.

And Dad. Dad had been so sure that it would. When he lay dying it was of Garth he had spoken. “Garth will take care of you, little Joan,” he had whispered, his voice suddenly full of peace and certainty.

In the black days after his death Joan had remembered that. She had wondered if Garth would come to her in her sorrow. But Garth had not come. Instead he had written suggesting that if she really wanted to take up nursing, as she had so often said, now was her chance. Would she care to come to St. Angela’s?

With slow fingers she took off her stiff belt and folded away her crisp white apron. Brushing her hair at last in a comfortable dressing-gown she asked herself if Garth really wanted her near him why he did not do something more practical about it? Garth knew she was fond of him. In her honesty she had never tried to hide her affection for him. It was an integral part of herself and she did not dream of denying it. There had never been anyone but Garth in her heart; there never would be. And now Garth was established. Garth was even affluent in a mild way with his Welbeck Street house and fashionable clientele. Wouldn’t it have been natural for him to have asked her to marry him at this crisis? He needed her; he’d said so. And she needed him. Just how much she suddenly let herself realize, her blue eyes clouding with unshed tears.

Of course it was grand to be near him, she hastily assured herself. Half a loaf was a lot better than no bread at all. And it was good to be entering upon this period of hospital training, with its vital absorbing work. But when you are young and very much alive, work, no matter how absorbing, cannot be everything.

There was no answer to the puzzle that was Garth, Joan told herself for the hundredth time, and went along to the bathroom. Lying in luxurious hot water she dismissed Garth from her mind. Tomorrow she would spend the evening with him. After all there was always tomorrow. A buoyant hope welled up within her—that bright unquenchable tide of hope which is the very heritage of youth.

She was singing softly to herself, rubbing down briskly with the big, cosy towel, aching bones and aching thoughts all stilled with comfort. In hospital you couldn’t go on for long maundering about your small private worries. In hospital there was so much to occupy one’s mind.

With glowing eyes she thought back through the hours of the day. In spite of its rigors, being a nurse was going to be a lot worth while. She was quite sure of that now, remembering her crowded moments in Dale ward. She’d done a lot that seemed menial and irrelevant today, but she’d done other things too; things quite
thrillingly
professional. Scatty had let her take the evening temperatures and showed her how to fill up the charts. She had wheeled the trolley for the late dressings and watched them done without batting an eyelid. Scatty was pleased with her about that; brisk, hard-faced little Scatty who was so desperately keen on her job that it made you like her in spite of yourself.

There were the patients too. They were so ready, so quick, poor darlings, to absorb any little fragments of sympathy or tenderness you were able to give them. Groaning Mrs. Eldon, for instance. Joan hadn’t rested until she got to the bottom of those groans. It wasn’t physical suffering at all it turned out; merely a craving for pity. Over the evening washing Mrs. Eldon had confided her plight in whispers. Her illness was a catastrophe which had broken up her life. At sixty-five it is difficult to start again. Coming to hospital she’d lost her job as caretaker in a block of
flats
, and when she went weak and ailing from her comfortable bed in Dale Ward she would have nowhere to tum. She was quite alone in the world—and penniless into the bargain. Her problem was worrying her day and night, retarding
recovery
.

Joan told Scatty about it and Scatty said in her hard-boiled way, “It’s not a good idea to let the patients become too personal, but if there is anything in Mrs. Eldon’s tale of woe the almoner will help her. I’ll ask the almoner to come and talk to her tomorrow. You can tell old Eldon that if you like, and you might add that it would be a great relief to us all if she’d stop that moaning of hers. It depresses the other patients.”

Then there was Mary Bree, Joan’s own age. Poor Mary Bree lying all strung up with pulleys and propped on cushions because she had been smashed so terribly in a car accident when she was out driving with her young man one bright July even
ing
. The young man had died of his injuries. But Mary did not know that and thinking of him in the men’s block across the way, sent him daily messages of tenderness. No one had the heart to tell her the messages weren’t any use.

Back in her room again, climbing into her small white bed, Joan thought of Mary Bree with a catch in her throat. No, you couldn’t worry about your own trivial heartaches in St. Angela’s. Metaphysical troubles faded to extreme unimportance before the suffering and courage which kept those twenty beds going in Dale Ward. You’d just have to be brave too in a place like this, you’d be shamed into it.

With a yawn Joan snuggled into her pillows and long before Gemma came up to bed she was sleeping the sleep of exhaustion.

CHAPTER TWO

The next day
Joan was free of the wards at tea-time because it was her long evening “off.” She was bright-eyed and flushed, dressing for her appointment with Garth. In her beaded silver bag lay the pass which permitted her to be away from St. Angela’s until 11.30 p.m. That was early enough for the ending of a party, but none too early when you remembered you would have to be up by six the following morning.

She chose from her small stock a black dinner-frock, because she was still wearing mourning. But tonight the sombre hue did not match her mood and she longed for color. Perhaps Garth would have flowers for her. He had—a great spray of orchids, tawny and gold and mauve. They lent a touch of sophistication to Joan’s simple toilette.

“They don’t look like Dipley-on-the-Marshes, do they?” she said, as she held them against her soft creamy shoulder. “Hot-house flowers—all glamorous and extravagant. I always feel orchids are a little sinister. They make me feel like a vamp with green eyelids.”

“You don’t look like a vamp,” Garth said disappointingly, stooping to fasten the pin for her. He was very close for a moment, his hands shaking a little in their clumsiness, his lean face alight.

He had waited for her in the foyer of his club, a dim, red-carpeted place with a forbiddingly masculine atmosphere.

“Shall we have cocktails here or push on to the Berkeley right away?” he asked.

Joan said, “Are we going to the Berkeley, Garth? Oh, how wonderful!”

In the taxi he caught at her hand, turning its soft palm over, studying it. “It isn’t a nurse’s hand yet,” he said. “A year from now you’ll have hard little palms and nobbly knuckles—unless you’re extraordinarily lucky. All doctors and nurses acquire ugly hands burned with the constant application of disinfectants and hot water. Look at mine!” He held them out to her and gently her finger-tips touched them.

“They’re nice hands, Garth,” she said, her voice a little shy suddenly.

He said, “I hate to think of how hard you are going to work—how tired you’re going to be before you are done with St. Angela’s.”

“But I like it, Garth,” she assured him. “It’s a gloriously interesting life.”

“I can think of a much more interesting life for you,” he said softly. “Or at least I flatter myself that you might find it more interesting!”

Joan flashed him a look.
“
Interesting
isn’t exactly the word I’d use for it,” she said unguardedly, and saw the dull red leap to his cheeks.

“If I wasn’t tied up the way I am,” he said in a muffled voice, “I’d never dream of letting you start training. But as things are it is the only way to have you anywhere near me.”

Joan didn’t answer that, but a warm glow of happiness flooded her. Garth
did
want to marry her, then, But he couldn’t because of the way things were. That meant economic things, of course. He had borrowed money to enable him to take over that expensive Welbeck Street practice. She knew that from the things Garth’s father had said to Dad. And something mysterious, called “overheads,” kept him constantly hard up. After all he was very young in his profession—a brilliant beginner. Later on, when he was better off financially, everything would be all right. She’d wait forever quite contentedly if only she were sure of his love, she told herself, and unconsciously moved nearer to him so that her soft, brown head all but touched his shoulder.

His eyes were enigmatic, looking down at her. Disturbing eyes.

Arriving at the restaurant broke the queer, tremulous silence between them. They were very gay all at once in the
lofty
room with its mulberry curtained windows. They ate spiced, deliciously chilled melon, smoked trout, and Garth ordered grouse, although it was so early in the season that they cost the earth. With the grouse they drank a smooth Chateau Lafitte, like melted rubies in the tall, slim glasses. Garth was clever about food, though poached eggs on toast would have tasted like ambrosia to Joan that evening. She was very happy, a throbbing ethereal happiness that turned the whole world into a shimmering rainbow dream.

And Garth too was happy. They laughed easily as children as they chattered. Everything seemed to conspire to their gaiety. It was a rare hour of companionship. Then it was over and Garth was asking what she would like to do next.

“There’s the ballet,” Joan suggested. “I’ve never seen a real ballet in my life.”

Garth looked dubious and said they ought to have seen about getting tickets in advance. Ballet was popular at the moment. But they could try their luck at the booking-office. The theatre was close by and they walked to it through the soft summer twilight. Garth in his dinner-jacket looked more distinguished than any man she had ever seen, Joan thought. She was very proud of him.

In the theatre foyer he left her to see about the tickets. She waited in a tranced state of interest, savoring the vivid life about her, beautiful women in diamonds and summer ermine moving slowly from limousines to the theatre entrances, their escorts immaculate in formal “tails.” It wasn’t a fashionable moment for ballet, Garth had said. The real ballet season was in June. But fashionable or not, tonight’s display was glittering enough to Joan’s country eyes.

On the walls of the foyer were photographs of the ballerinas. They were all posed to look soulful and impossibly ethereal. Joan found her attention caught by one face particularly, an odd, pointed face with high, Slavonic cheekbones and great starry eyes. It wasn’t a beautiful face classically but it had a strangely arresting quality. It had more character than the others, a little hard perhaps, but very alluring with its full pouting mouth and rounded chin. There was a scrawled feminine signature in one corner which she could not read.

When she turned from the pictured face Garth was hurrying back to her. There were no places he told her, or at least nothing but side seats left and they wouldn’t be good. “I’ll bring you here next time you’ve got an evening to spare,” he promised, and she tried to hide her disappointment.

His hand was warm on her bare arm. “I don’t really want to watch other women dancing, darling,” he whispered. “I want to watch you. I want to dance with
you.
Let’s go some place where we can.”

She smiled up at him then, all her disappointment vanishing.

It was leaving the theatre that they walked bang into Sister Millet, unfamiliar but quite unmistakable in a dowdy brown lace wrap.

She glared at them, recovered herself quickly and said coldly, “Good evening, Mr. Perros.” To Joan she said nothing.

Garth was swearing under his breath, hailing a taxi. “Who in heck would have thought of that old trout turning up?” he growled as they got into the cab.

Joan laughed uncomfortably. “Gemma Crosbie says we get complimentary tickets for everything at St. Angela’s sooner or later. I suppose the Millet picked up a couple for tonight’s ballet. I knew it was her half-day ‘off,’ but I never dreamt she’d be here.”

“To hell with her,” snapped Garth, furious now with the foolish, cramping rules which bound the girl at his side.

“It will be ‘to hell’ with me, tomorrow,” Joan reminded him.

“No, it won’t,” Garth said stoutly. “I’ll see Miss Darley myself first thing in the morning. It is all very well making it a law that probationers are not to run about all over the town with housemen and students, but you and I are different. I refuse to be separated from one of the oldest friends of my life because of the narrow-mindedness of a pack of nursing old women. Not that Miss Darley is narrow. Miss Darley is the soul of reason and I’m sure she will see my point of view. In any case I shall tell her that I intend to go on taking you out, rules or no rules, and if she has any sense she will give in gracefully.”

“Let’s hope so, anyhow,” Joan murmured, feeling much assured by his outburst.

They went to a night club, quiet and demure as a church vestry at this early hour. But there was a heavenly floor and a heavenly band and they danced to their heart’s content. In an amazingly short time it was eleven. Joan had to
remind
Garth of the hour and his face fell.

“Damn all hospitals and their regulations,” he grumbled. “We are only just
beginning
to enjoy ourselves.”

“I’ve been enjoying myself frantically all the time,” Joan told him wistfully.

He grinned delightedly, his ill-humor vanishing. “That was a sweet thing to say, Joanna!
I
’ve
been enjoying myself mightily also. All I meant was that I hate to let you go with the night so young.”

At the door of the taxi-cab he said good night, then changed his mind and stepped in beside her.

“I’m coming with you,” he told her. “I refuse to take you out by stealth. I’m going to be quite bold about it and return you to the Nurses’ Home as though I had every right to be with you. Because I
have
got every right.”

It was well for Joan perhaps that he did make this decision. Sister Millet was waiting for them in the hall of the home, Miss Darley at her side. Miss Darley, still on duty at this, late hour after an arduous day, looked tired and faintly disgusted. The bitter Sister Millet was not one of her favorite colleagues and the spite in her voice was unpleasant as she poured out her complaint against the new probationer.

It was a dramatic moment when the new probationer walked in calmly, Mr. Perros behind her.

Sister Millet gasped. Miss Darley smiled. In a quiet way she would enjoy the interview which followed.

“I’ve come to throw myself on your mercy, Miss Darley,” Garth said, his smile ingenuous and appealing. “I’ve stolen one of your probationers for the evening, but now I deliver her up to you safe and sound again. Have I offen
d
ed too grossly against your code, I wonder? Miss Langden, as I have already told you, is an old a friend of my family’s.”

Miss Darley’s wise face was expressionless. “Of course you haven’t offen
d
ed, Mr. Perros,” she said gently. “Sister Millet has done her duty in reporting Nurse Langden, but as it happens there has been no infringment of rules. Naturally we demand discretion in behavior of our nurses where the resident medicals and the students are concerned. There is no rule against friendship with visiting doctors. As a matter of fact the point has never before arisen. It would not arise in an old and established family friendship like yours and Miss Langden’s. I hope you have both had a pleasant outing. And now. Nurse, you had better hurry away to bed if you are to be fresh for your work in the morning!”

Her good night nod was very kindly and with a glow at her heart Joan skipped off downstairs. It was only human to feel elated over the downfall of the Millet, she told herself. But her elation suffered a little when she recalled the look of suppressed fury on the Sister’s face. They’d got away with it for the moment, she and Garth, thanks to Miss Darley. They had triumphed over old Millet most beautifully. But they had probably made an exceedingly dangerous enemy of the woman. For herself, Joan reflected bleakly as she slowly undressed, that enmity would most likely be translated into a hundred pin-pricks of humiliation every day that she continued to work in Dale Ward. Tonight wasn’t the end of the unfortunate episode by a long way!

* * * *

Joan’s forebodings were justified. The days that followed were made so difficult for her that it couldn’t all have been accidental. Her work in Dale Ward now seemed to be full of subtly prepared pitfalls. No doubt some of her blunders were caused by her inevitable ignorance, but when working directly for Sister Millet there were so many things she was unfairly supposed to know. The names of the instruments on the dressing trolley, for example, and the mysteries of asepsis. There were so many complicated details about sterilizing things. Hurried Scatty outlined a few of them, answering her nervous questions as fully as she could. But even so there were dangerous gaps in her knowledge.

It was a bad day when Scatty had a whole holiday and the buffer of her experienced presence was removed. Joan was entirely at the mercy of Sister Millet that black Monday and with a glint in her eye she seemed to glory in that fact, bidding Joan wheel the trolley for the important morning dressings, though it was Gemma, as senior pro, who ought to have been given that task. But Gemma had been sent away to scrub an already painfully clean linen cupboard at the other end of the corridor.

To make matters worse it was Sir Humphrey Rassat, the great gynaecologist, who was seeing his patients that morning, the House Surgeon respectfully dancing attendance on him, accompanied by a handful of students. Joan paled before this
awe-inspiring
assembly and inwardly prayed that she would not be called upon to do anything very special. She could manipulate the electric switch on the sterilizer or hold the kidney-trays or pass swabs. But that was about all. Sister Millet would have to see to the more important details.

With trembling limbs Joan pushed the trolley from bed to bed, breathing a sigh of relief as each dressing or consultation was accomplished. Then the dreadful moment came when Sister Millet whispered, “Go and get a Nelaton’s probe, Nurse Langden.
Quickly
!”

Joan fled. She hadn’t the faintest notion what a Nelaton’s probe might be. Standing in front of the instrument cupboard her eyes went misty with apprehension and small drops of perspiration stood out on her brow. There were hundreds and hundreds of probes here and they were all different. Already she had been an unwarranted time over her errand she felt. The patient was lying with wound exposed and it was a crime of the most heinous kind to keep Sir Humphrey waiting. The Nelaton thing, whatever it was, ought to have been on the trolley before they started.

As a last resource Joan rushed down the corridor. “What’s a Nelaton probe look like?” she panted.

Gemma shook her head blankly. “Search me,” she murmured without much sympathy.

So Joan had to go back to the ward and falter out to Sister Millet that she was very sorry, but she didn’t know what a Nelaton probe was.

“Then for God’s sake why didn’t you say so at first, woman!” roared the impatient Sir Humphrey. Joan went red and white and Sister Millet with a twisted little smile on her mouth produced the necessary instrument from the tray where it had lain all the time.

That was the kind of thing that was always happening. Joan’s nerves suffered and she began to dread her hours on duty. Sometimes Sister would keep her scrubbing shelves or winding bandages for hours together. But that wasn’t so bad. She could tackle any amount of boring hard work. It was things like the Nelaton probe that got her down. In the evenings she pored over every book she could find which would teach her the rudiments of surgery. But there was so much to learn. Much more than any brain could take in in a few snatched hours of leisure, and there remained so many ways in which Sister Millet could trip her up if she wanted to.

At the end of a fortnight she told Joan she would have to pull herself together if she wanted to remain in Dale Ward.

“The work is too s
tr
enu
ou
s here for the toleration of stupidity,” Sister Millet said gravely.

Had
she been unusually stupid? Joan wondered, and began to doubt herself—which wasn’t any help. She made mistakes now which were begotten of sheer nervousness and over-anxiety to please.

“What will happen to me if I’m kicked out of Dale?” she asked Gemma forlornly.

“You’ll be sent to the Ripley Trust Ward,” Gemma told her, “where they do nothing but kids’ adenoids and tonsils. That’s where all the dumbest of pros are broken in.”

Joan caught herself thinking miserably that apart from the disgrace of a descent to adenoids and tonsils she wouldn’t ever see Garth if she went to the Ripley Trust.

She tried harder than ever after that and for a day or two outwitted Sister Millet’s machinations so completely that life was almost sweet again.

In a way it was an excellent, if somewhat heroic, beginning to her training.