'Keep a nurse by him for the next hour,' he was saying, his words clipped with anxiety. Sister's reply was inaudible.
'Anyone you like,' responded the doctor. 'Anyone but Nurse Parker. She gets worse as she goes on.'
Elsie dropped the sheet she was washing and ducked her head as though she had received a physical blow. She felt stunned with shock. As from a great distance, she surveyed her submerged hands resting on the bottom of the deep sink. The clear cold water acted as a magnifying glass, and every hair and pore looked gigantic. Elsie observed the tiny bubbles on the fleshy part of her thumb, uncannily like the seed pearls her father had given her on her confirmation day.
Her mind seemed to dwell, with unusual clarity, on many things long forgotten. The terrible words, uttered a second before, and all that they implied, had as yet no real meaning for her. She remembered the beads of sweat on the hairy upper hp of one of her sixth-form admirers whom she had not met, or thought of, for years. She remembered bright hundreds and thousands, scattered on plates of junket, which she used to love as a child. She dwelt with compulsive intensity on the visual memory of a spider's web spangled with drops of dew. And all the time her gaze was fixed upon the tiny bubbles clustering on her thumb.
She was roused from her trance by the sound of sister returning. All that day she went automatically about her duties, oblivious of the world about her. Late that night, lying straight and cold in her bed at the nurses' hostel, the tears began to flow, running down the side of her temple and dripping silently into the pillow. She wept noiselessly at first, and then, as the treachery and cruelty of those dreadful words began to burn into her, the paroxysm increased in intensity until she was choking with tears, her head throbbing and her chest aching with pain.
When dawn came she was red-eyed, swollen-faced and in a state of complete exhaustion.
'A cold,' she told her fellow nurses. 'I'm going home this afternoon anyway. I'll get over it during the week-end.' She was reported sick, took the two aspirins handed to her, and fell to weeping again. In the early afternoon she rose, dressed, packed her case and went to the station. She felt like a very frail old lady just recovering from a serious illness.
The sight that met her eyes on her return home brought her almost to a state of collapse. In the long room of the new wing she found her mother. The blonde parquet floor, the pride of Mrs Parker's heart, was stripped of its rugs and shone with much polishing. Against the wall stood tables already dressed in virgin-white cloths. Flowers were banked on window sills, lamps were wreathed with garlands. The room awaited young company, music, laughter and, above all, the gay presence of the daughter of the house.
Elsie put down her case very carefully. She felt that she might overbalance or even faint dead away. Her mother looked at her with a smile. She seemed not to notice anything amiss. Her mind was too occupied with ices, cherry sticks, blanched almonds and wine glasses to register much else.
'I'm ill,' announced Elsie. Her voice seemed to sound a long way off. She tried again, intent on making herself understood.
'I'm not well,' she said a little louder. 'I can't be at the party.'
'Elsie!' breathed Mrs Parker incredulously. She advanced towards her, her poor face working. 'Can't come to the party? But, Elsie, you must—you simply must!'
She gave a small despairing gesture with one hand indicating the preparations. Elsie leant against the wall and closed her eyes. Inside her eyelids was imprinted the face of the man she loved. She studied it intently. Her mother was speaking again. Now her voice was firmer, her resolution returning.
'A nice lay-down,' she was saying. 'Slip under the eiderdown for an hour or two. I'll bring you up your tea and an Aspro. You'll soon be as right as ninepence.'
As if in a dream, Elsie found herself being propelled upstairs, her clothes removed, and her unprotesting body thrust into her bed. Still concentrating on her beloved's swarthy face she dropped instantly into a heavy sleep.
Her mother roused her at seven. The anxiety in Mrs Parker's face brought all Elsie's misery flooding back. She longed to turn away and abandon herself again to grief, but her mother, she knew, could not be disappointed. She rose and dressed, automatically making-up that lovely face which seemed recovered from its earlier ravages, and going at last to take her place in the hall to welcome her guests. She felt as though some part of her had died, and that she dragged it with her, a cold heavy weight, draining strength from her.
To outward appearances she seemed much as usual, lovely, smiling and as desirable as ever. Halfway through the evening, the vicar's son engineered a trip into the garden with his hostess, and there poured out his heart whilst offering his dank hand. With all her habitual skill Elsie extricated herself and contrived to leave the young man tolerably resigned. During the last waltz, she received her second proposal of the evening, but was cool-headed enough to realise that claret-cup had enflamed this suitor as much as her own looks. He was thanked, refused and mollified, all within the time it took to dance from the French windows to the dining table. Grief, it seemed, had not dulled either Elsie's wits or her attractions.
She returned to work, her passion still raging. Elsie thought bitterly that those who say that unrequited love soon dies know very little of the matter. In the face of her beloved's impatience, and even dislike, despite the torturing memory of those chance-heard words, Elsie adored him more as the weeks went by. It was enough to walk the same corridors, to touch the same door-handles, to read the same hospital notices. When, on September the third, war was declared and a week later she heard that he had gone into the R.A.F. and was to be posted almost immediately as medical officer to a windswept station in Scotland, she felt that she could not live without his presence.
But work, with all its blessed urgency, drove complete despair away. There were patients to be evacuated, wards to reorganise and a hundred and one matters to attend to. Only at night, before she fell asleep, did Elsie have any time to mourn her beloved, and then the pain was almost more than she could bear.
On Christmas Eve she heard terrible news. The doctor and two other officers had been killed in a car accident as they returned to the station late one foggy night. After the first few days of shock and grief, an extraordinary change came over Elsie. It was as though released, at last, from the bondage of her infatuation, she found freedom. It was over. Nothing could hurt him now, and nothing could hurt Elsie for that reason. She could look around, begin to live again, welcome kindness, affection and admiration and, perhaps, one day, return it.
During the years of war Elsie Parker was the cause of much head-shaking in Bent.
'A fast hussy!' declared one righteous matron, with three plain unmarried daughters. 'A proper flibbertigibbet, always running after the men!'
'No better than she should be, I don't doubt, up there in London where her parents can't see her!' quoth another.
There was certainly a hard gaiety about Elsie these days. She was now Sister Parker, conscientious and hard-working in the hospital. But off duty Elsie craved excitement. The admirers were more numerous than ever. Americans, Poles and Norwegians joined Elsie's village wooers, and she parried their advances with the same skill, if not perhaps quite the same endurance, as before.
When the war ended Elsie was twenty-five. There was a spate of weddings as the young men returned home. The villagers of Bent smiled kindly upon the newly-married couples and welcomed with genuine joy the offspring who were born into a world full of shortages, inordinately tired, but at least at peace.
And still Elsie remained unattached. The years slipped by. Roger Parker died one winter. His wife followed him two years later. Elsie, as sole heir, found herself in control of the house, a flourishing business and a comfortable sum of money in the bank. She was now thirty-eight. Her hair was untouched by greyness; in fact, its golden hue was rather brighter than it had been. Her teeth, though much-stopped, were her own. Her figure was as trim as ever, her blue eyes as devastating. Levelheadedly, Elsie took stock of her position.
The business could carry on, as it was doing, under its reliable manager. She would give up nursing, return to her home at Bent, and get married. Without her parents she might well be lonely. A husband was the thing and, with luck, there might still be time for children. Elsie set about putting these practical plans into action.
Within three months she was ensconced in the house, had joined the Caxley Golf Club and the Caxley Drama Group. She gave a handsome contribution to Caxley Cottage Hospital in gratitude for the kindness extended to her parents and was made a member of the hospital board. Her garden was lent for various local functions, she visited and was visited, and generally took her place in the gentle whirligig of Caxley's social life. People were genuinely glad to see her so engaged. The Parkers had always been liked, and Elsie deserved a break after those years of nursing, they told each other.
Unfortunately, Elsie's aims were only too apparent and soon became the object of derision by the less charitable. She had never been a very subtle person. One of her charms was her openness. Now that time was running short for Elsie, she became alarmingly direct in her hunt for a husband. Naturally, eligible men were scarce. In Caxley society, at that time, there were half a dozen elderly bachelors, about the same number of widowers, and a few middle-aged' men separated from their wives for an interesting variety of reasons.
They were not a very inspiring collection, but Elsie was a realist, and did not expect to find anyone who could compare, even remotely, with her first and only love. She looked now for kindness, companionship and protection. If humour and some physical attraction were added, she would count herself lucky, she decided. Financial stability was not essential, for her own position could comfortably support a husband, if need be.
Her first choice fell upon one of the widowers, a childless man in his forties, who was a partner in one of Caxley's firms of solicitors. She had known him slightly during her years of nursing and knew him to be liked by the little town. He played golf and took leading parts in Caxley plays. Elsie pursued him resolutely and charmingly, to the surprise of the flattered man and the intense interest of the neighbourhood. But, before long, the hunt was off. Elsie, to her dismay, found that her intended had one small, but unforgivable' fault. He did not wash—at least, not enough.
After this set-back, Elsie began to wonder if
cleanliness
perhaps should take precedence over
kindness
on her list of desirable qualities. She had not reckoned to be troubled by such elementáis, and was not impressed by excuses put forward by well-meaning friends who seemed to have guessed the cause of her withdrawal.
'Poor dear Oswald,' they said. 'So terribly cut up by Mary's death, you know. Seemed to go all to pieces. You can see that he really needs a woman to look after him.'
Maybe, thought Elsie privately, but not to the extent of washing his ears for him or cleaning his teeth. Personal fastidiousness, heightened by a nurse's training, did not condone greasy collars, black fingernails and the same filthy handkerchief for a week. Oswald, in his expensive, well-cut and smelly suits, was rejected.
Others, observing Elsie's aims and aware of her comfortable circumstances, made themselves pleasant. Elsie earnestly did her best to see them in the role of husband, never blinding herself to the true aim of their attentions but willing to ignore it if other less ignoble qualities were present. Too often there were none.
Time passed. Elsie continued her search, an object of pity to some and derision to others. She was still lovely, though now in her forties, and her energy seemed unimpaired. But at heart she was beginning to despair. Was marriage never to be her lot?
One bleak December afternoon she made her way to the churchyard at Bent bearing a bright-berried cross of holly for her parents' grave. She walked slowly between the mounds, reading the well-known inscriptions yet again.
'Loved and Loving wife of John Smith,'
said one.
'A beloved wife and mother,'
said a second. '
This stone was erected by a sorrowing husband to the memory of his much beloved wife,
said a third.
All wives, all loved, all missed, all mourned, thought Elsie bitterly. Of what use was beauty, health, a loving heart and worldly possessions, if marriage never came? What would be written on her own tombstone for others to read?
Elsie Parker, Spinster?
What a hateful word that was! She hastened her steps at the very thought, and reached her parents' resting-place.
'And Lily, his dearly-loved wife,'
read Roger's daughter.
'In death they are united.'
Controlling an impulse to rush away from the spot, Elsie set the cross gently against the headstone, stood motionless in the biting cold and offered up a small prayer for her parents, and for their only child.
She made her way quickly to the gate, carefully averting her eyes from the inscriptions around her. There was only one other person in the churchyard, and he too was setting a holly wreath upon a grassy mound. As she came near him he stepped forward into her path. He was a big dark man, much about her own age, and unknown to Elsie.
'Elsie Parker?' asked the man gently. She nodded.
'I'm John Blundell,' said the man. 'I'd have known you anywhere. But you've forgotten me.'
Elsie felt a warm surge of recognition.
'John!' she exclaimed. 'My goodness, how many years is it since we saw each other?'
'I left Bent to join up in 1939,' he said. I don't think we've met since then, though I've heard about you.'
Elsie looked at him. John Blundell, the little dirty boy who had been her very first suitor! Undoubtedly he had prospered. His air was quiet and authoritative, his appearance immaculate. He had come a long way from the ragged child with the handkerchief pinned to his jersey who had been such a faithful admirer all those years ago.