As the weeks passed I gradually grew accustomed to the rhythms of my new life, the awkward boys, the lack of bustle, my pleasant flat. Happily, Anne and I fell into friendship. Such was the nature of the infirmary that I had never before had a married friend, and sometimes I longed to ask what was it like, having a man so close all the time, but there was a delicacy about Anne that forbade intrusions. One Saturday in early October, she suggested a walk to the nearest village, on the far side of the valley. By road it was over four miles; using the footbridge across the river less than two. “I'll show you the pub,” she said, “and we can look at your mother's school.”
The afternoon was so clear and still that, as we descended the stairs to the river, I could hear each separate leaf falling in the woods around us. We crossed the bridge and followed the track up the hill, between fields of sheep. Anne asked about Barbara: Had she been good at school?
“Not especially.” I tried to recall David's stories. “She had to
stand in the corner for a whole afternoon because she got caught carving her initials on her desk. And she left when she was fifteen.”
“I used to write things on my desk but I don't remember carving. That sounds very enterprising.”
The village was a mere few dozen houses clustered around the school, the church, and the pub. A young woman, face puffy, hair dishevelled, answered our knock at the schoolhouse door. Anne and I exchanged guilty glances; she had clearly been asleep. I apologised for disturbing her and explained our errand.
Still yawning, the teacher fetched the key. Inside, while Anne questioned herâHow many children? Did she teach languages?âI pretended to study a map of the Holy Land.
“Come to me,” I whispered, closing my eyes. I imagined the photograph of Barbara that hung above my bed coming to life. But when I looked around, I saw only Anne and the teacher.
“Maybe we can find her initials,” said Anne. “How long have these desks been here?”
“Since well before my time.” The teacher had sat down at the front, as if about to commence a lesson.
Every desk I examined was a mass of initials, swearwords, caricatures. I was gazing despairingly at a stick figure when a slight noise caught my attention. Near the window the lid of a desk was rising slowly into the air. Fortunately, Anne was engrossed in another desk, the teacher oblivious. I hurried to press down the lid.
Amid the dense tangle the initials emerged, the
B
nicely chubby, the
M
not quite finished. I ran my finger over the letters. In them I glimpsed my mother, not the misty, demure woman of the photograph, whom I had tried to summon a few minutes earlier, but the lively girl of David's storiesâgood at party games, able to recite
the whole of “Tam O'Shanter,” a terrible cook. Already, I thought, I was six years older than she had ever been.
When I showed Anne, she clapped her hands. “I knew we could find it,” she said, and I was touched by her belief.
Outside the school, we thanked the teacher and were about to retrace our steps when a man emerged from the pub, bareheaded. “Anne,” he called, and walked towards us, smiling. He bent to kiss her cheek, and she made introductions.
“Eva McEwen, Matthew Livingstone.”
“Like the explorer,” he remarked, just as the same thought crossed my mind. “I wanted to ask your permission to visit one of your patients, Douglas Best.”
Later it was to seem a good omen that almost the first thing I noticed about Matthew was his owl-like glasses, similar to those Barbara had worn. His hair was the shade of brown that fair children often have as adults. I told him he could visit the san any time between two and five. Then he offered us a lift, but Anne said no, we were on our constitutional. As we headed out of the village, I asked what Matthew taught.
“English and first-form Latin. He came to the school a year before us and was friendly from the start. He helped me with the garden, and he's a great games player: cards, consequences. Rumour has it he came north to escape a broken engagement.”
“Really?” I said, my attention caught by the coincidence. Not that Samuel and I had ever been engaged.
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Back at the san, Lily's weekly letter was waiting. She enclosed a photograph she'd discovered among David's papers: the three of us picnicking
on the beach one summer afternoon before the war. David was smiling broadly, holding a sandwich; I had my skirts hitched up from paddling, and even Lily, although she wore a hat, had taken off her shoes. Gazing at our sunlit faces, I yearned to be back in that time and place.
In the unit the trickiest cases were the men who displayed photographs of themselves, as if they could, miraculously, be reunited with their former features. Here, doctor, they would say, you can see my eyes were always a little close together; my nose did have a bit of a bump. I recall the awful day Archie's fiancée came to visit. It was shortly after Samuel had operated, pulling a flap of skin down from Archie's forehead to form new nostrils, and we were all optimistic that this time the graft would take. But Cecily had sat by his bed, sobbingâ“I can't, Archie. I just can't”âuntil the staff nurse turned on the wireless, full volume.
Later, after Cecily left, sniffling away on her high heels, I approached, thinking to offer the inadequate solace of tea or the paper. Without a word, Archie held out a photograph. A handsome young man in RAF uniform gazed up at me. Cecily's new beau, I assumed, the man who had tempted her away from Archie; then I saw the inscription:
Darling Cecily, with much love from your very own high flyer, Archie.
I was still looking back and forth between the man in the picture and the man in the bed when Archie plucked the photograph from my hand and, in one swift movement, tore it in two.
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On Monday Matthew arrived at the san with a grammar book and settled down with Douglas Best. “Do you know what the possessive is?”
“No, sir.” The boy shook his head emphatically.
They worked for an hour, until I brought the tea tray. “Now,” said Matthew, “what about a game?” In a few minutes he had organised Best, the two other boys in the ward, himself, and me into gin rummy.
The following week he invited me to see
Major Barbara
in Perth; he had wangled an extra allowance of petrol. I accepted his invitation unthinkingly. Romance had become as foreign to me as the phrases the Plishkas tossed back and forth; besides, who else would he ask? The two school secretaries were cut from the same cloth as Nora Blythe, and the only other single women were the girls working in the kitchens.
I had last been to the theatre with Samuel, and as the usher showed us to our seats I could not help wondering where he was, whether he ever thought of me. Then Matthew drew my attention to the fresco on the ceiling. “That cherub in the corner looks a bit like Best,” he said.
The lights dimmed, and soon, almost in spite of myself, I was smiling at Barbara's attempts to bully her family into good behaviour. Beside me, Matthew laughed heartily.
Afterwards at the George Hotel he ordered beer, and in a moment of daring I asked for a whisky mac, Daphne's favourite tipple. We secured a window table, with a view across the River Tay. Matthew remarked that this was the first time he had been to the hotel since the blackout ended. We had the usual conversation about where we'd each spent the war. He had taught in a school in his hometown of Stoke-on-Trent. “Bad eyes,” he said, indicating his spectacles as if I might have missed them.
I wanted to ask why he had come north. It was a natural question but not one I thought I could ask naturally. I sipped my drink.
“Did Major Barbara remind you of anyone?” he said.
“No.”
“Are you sure?” He puffed out his chest.
“Mrs. Thornton.”
“She who knows what's best for you, better than you know yourself.” We both laughed.
Back at the san, only the hall lights were on. The Plishkas had retired for the night and my patients, when I went to check, were sleeping peacefully. For a moment, standing at the foot of the dark ward, I longed for the infirmary. Even on the quietest night, someone had always been awake, eager for conversation. Then I opened my sitting room door and found the woman seated by the hearth.
“Hello, I'm watching Tizzie sleep.” She pointed to the other armchair, where the cat lay, paws twitching.
I slipped off my coat and scooped Tizzie onto my lap. “I went to see
Major Barbara.”
“Matthew is a nice man, don't you think?”
I stared; it was so unlike her to offer this kind of opinion. “I hardly know him,” I said at last.
The woman gave a little frown. “What about the play?”
“I liked it, though I think they made it too easy to laugh at Barbara.” I scratched Tizzie's head. “I didn't even notice that she has the same name as my mother.”
“I can't imagine your mother ordering people about.” The woman was gazing at the feathery ashes.
I remembered what David had said in the hospital. “Did you know Barbara?”
She nodded.
“Can you tell me about her?”
The woman stepped over to the mantelpiece, where Barbara's blue jug had the place of honour. Delicately, she touched the rim. “You know her by being here, by walking these roads and seeing what she saw. You should let that content you.”
Alone, I carried the protesting Tizzie out to the corridor. She stalked off, tail waving. The woman had known Barbara. In the midst of so much loss, here was one small gain.
Christmas brought three weeks' holiday. Anne and Paul were staying at the school, Matthew was going home to Stoke-on-Trent, and I took the train to Edinburgh. I had pictured spending the days with Lily much as we used toâshopping, doing the housework, enjoying the occasional outingâbut I soon realised how foolish these imaginings were. Violet seldom left us alone for a moment, and she bossed Lily endlessly: clean this, cook that. Worst of all, though, were her comments about David. Once when Lily was reminiscing about his habit of putting out delicacies for the birds at Christmas, she exclaimed, “Heavens, Lily, what a feckless man, giving plum pudding to the sparrows. If it weren't for me, you wouldn't even have a roof over your head.” Only Lily's quick glance prevented me from vehement contradiction.
To escape Violet's tyranny, I began to take the bus into the centre of Edinburgh, where I could wander around the museum or sit in a tearoom, reading a book. One afternoon I ended up in George Street, and the next thing I knew I was searching for Mr. Rosenblum's shop. Dusk was falling, it was close to four, and I was on the point of giving up when, on the other side of the street, I spotted the name. Slowly, almost on tiptoe, I crossed over. The other shops were brightly lit, even though there still wasn't much to buy. Mr. Rosenblum's, however, was dark, and when I put my face to the grimy window the display cases were empty. I searched in vain for the words FIFTH COLUMNIST scrawled there not so long ago. If anyone had asked, I would have said I had already given up all hope of Samuel; yet, staring at the desolate shop, I felt a painful rending as if, quite unbeknownst to myself, some tiny, hardy shoot of expectation had persisted and was only now, finally, being uprooted. As I sat on the bus back to Violet's, I counted off on my gloved fingers the days until I returned to the school. Mrs. Thornton's wish for meâthat I would grow fond of the valleyâwas coming true.
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I had been back at Glenaird for a little over a week when one evening a timid knock at the sitting room door interrupted my letter to Lily. I went to answer, expecting Mrs. Plishka; sometimes after supper I joined her and her husband in a hand of cards. Instead, a small boy swayed on the threshold.
“I know this isn't when you see people,” Scott whispered. “I just feel so rotten.”
In the surgery he began to cry. When his sobs tapered, I took his temperature. The mercury rose swiftly past a hundred. He told me
that he ached all over, could hardly climb a flight of stairs, utter a sentence. I put him to bed in a private room and telephoned his housemaster.
“I thought he'd been shirking,” growled the master. “He tried to get out of soccer yesterday.”
“He has a temperature of a hundred and one,” I said in my best official voice. “I'll let you know what the doctor says tomorrow.”
I went back to my letter to Lily.
Maybe in the summer the two of us could take a holiday. A fortnight at the seaside. I'm sure by then hotels will be open again. We can stay somewhere posh and be waited on hand and foot. Weeks pass here without my spending a shilling. I'll have plenty saved by July.
On my way to bed I stopped to check on Scott. He was asleep, but his hair was wet with perspiration and his breath rose in sour gusts. Watching him, I was suddenly afraid. It was one thing to have a patient ill in hospital, quite another here in this remote valley with no sister to turn to, no doctors on call. I telephoned Dr. Singer.
“Flu,” he said, when I described the symptoms. “Diphtheria,” as I continued.
Half an hour later we were standing on either side of Scott's bed. Together we ministered to the semiconscious boy. Dr. Singer listened to his chest, peered into his eyes. “I don't know what to think,” he said at last, and promised to return first thing in the morning. After he had gone, I fetched a blanket and settled myself in an armchair near the door of the small room.
By morning Scott's temperature was 104. But when Dr. Singer
examined him, his skin was unblemished, his glands unswollen. The doctor took samples of urine and blood. Presently he telephoned to say that, according to the tests, Scott was in perfect health. “I'm baffled, Eva. Maybe this is just a bad case of flu?”
“Maybe,” I said, but instinct told me otherwise.
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During the days that followed I scarcely saw my flat. I was either in Scott's room or tending other patients. Dr. Singer called morning and evening, and Scott's friend, Fox, came steadfastly to ask after him. Besides them, my only company was the Plishkas. Anne and I sent notes but did not meet. I was worried, mostly on her behalf, a little on my own, that Scott's mysterious illness might prove contagious. Like most of the masters, she and Paul had no telephone.
One night when Scott was especially restless, I came back from fetching a basin of water to find the woman at the foot of his bed. She was leaning forward, watching him intently. Scott uttered a series of groans, the more heartrending for being almost inaudible. “Can't you make him better?” I begged. “He's only a child.”
For a moment I thought she would shake me. “Eva, I can't save lives any more than you can. In fact lessâI don't have your nursing skills. People can die at any age. One of my own children nearly died.” Her eyes shone with sorrow.
Over the next few hours Scott's temperature slowly fell, and by morning he was sleeping quietly. After breakfast the other boys on the ward settled to homework, and I took advantage of the lull to have a bath. Waiting for the water to run hot, I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror. I wiped away the condensation to discover a half-familiar face. When had my cheekbones become so sharp, my
eyes so large? Briefly I thought of the patients on the unit, the ones I felt sorriest for, who had lost their eyelids and were reduced to endless, ragged staring. Now I too looked more like a patient than a nurse. Don't be daft, I told myself. I had scarcely slept for a fortnight. No surprise if I was exhausted.
Later that morningâit must have been a SaturdayâMatthew came to invite me to lunch. “Mrs. Plishka will watch Scott,” he said. “I already asked her.”
Although the sky was overcast, we decided to walk across the river to the village; I was desperate for fresh air. We strode along, our paces nicely matched, and Matthew pointed out the pheasants rooting in the frozen stubble, the bullfinches pecking at last summer's shrivelled rose hips. In the pub we sat near the fire, eating bangers and mash, while a father and son played darts by the bar. As I watched the father rocking back and forth, preparing to throw, I felt as I had sometimes in Glasgow after weeks of night duty, a stranger in the daylight world. Fortunately, Matthew seemed to understand and kept up an easy flow of undemanding conversation: teaching Milton, his ongoing struggles with Best.
When we emerged from the pub, the sun had broken through and the weathercock was glinting on the church steeple. Suddenly the idea came to meâI wondered why I hadn't thought of it beforeâthat my grandparents might be buried here. I asked Matthew if we could take a look in the churchyard. As we pushed open the gate, half a dozen sheep surveyed us warily from among the gravestones. Matthew explained that the minister had died the previous spring and they had yet to appoint a new one. “A local farmer minds the place in exchange for grazing. What were your grandparents' names?”
“Malcolm. William and Morag Malcolm.”
He began to examine the graves along the path. A ram rose from beside a fallen cross. I was watching it make its way between the stones when I caught sight of the girl. She raised a finger to her lips and beckoned. With a hasty glance at Matthewâhe was peering at an inscriptionâI followed her between the graves to a tall yew tree on the south wall.
“Here they are,” she said, gesturing towards two stones, leaning on a third. Close up I could see that her face was pinched with cold; she wore neither gloves nor scarf. Before I could urge her to dress more warmly, she scrambled over the wall.
I stared at the matching grey stones. Then I saw that the third gravestone, where the girl had stood, was for Barbara's sister, Elizabeth, the one who had died of polio, whose grave she had visited as a little girl. SUMMONED BY OUR SAVIOUR read the inscription. Beneath it was a knot of flowers. Quickly I stepped forward to press my lips to Elizabeth's stone.
“Your ancestors,” said Matthew, when I showed him. “Maybe in the spring, after they've moved the sheep, we could plant flowers hereâpeonies or lavenderâthat will bloom year after year.”
He was smiling at me, and after a moment I returned his smile. “I'd like that,” I said.
Back at the san I hurried upstairs, worried Scott might have taken a turn for the worse, but as I reached his room the gentle percussion of Mrs. Plishka's knitting reassured me. She furled her needles with a smile. “He's getting better,” she said.
Drawing near the bed, I saw she was right. Scott's breathing was easier and his cheeks were tinged with colour. After years of nursing I knew how easily a patient can slip back and forth across the line
between health and illness, but I could not help hoping that he was at last on the mend.
That night, as I sat reading beside him, the woman again appeared at the foot of his bed. Since my arrival at Glenaird her occasional fierceness had been held in abeyance. Now it was as if the window had been abruptly thrown open onto the winter's night. A cold, crackling current swept through the room. “He's not yours,” she said. “You need one of your own.”
“What do you mean?”
“Remember David's wish. What do you need for happiness?”
She bent over me, and I understood her words. In my loneliness, I had been pretending Scott was my son and that these weeks of intimacy need have no end. “A family,” I said.
She seemed to soften slightly. “Ask Matthew to plant heart's-ease on the graves. It was your grandmother's favourite flower.”
“I will.”
For some reason my acquiescence served only to exasperate her again. “Eva, use your brain. You're fond of Matthew, aren't you?”
I nodded. Fond was exactly the word. However often I counted his many virtues, there was none of that quickening of the eyes and limbs I had known with Samuel.
“Well, there you are.” She drifted over to the bed. “Sleep,” she whispered. “Sleep and grow strong.”
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Now that Scott was better, Dr. Singer said it was safe to see Anne again. During the intervening weeks her belly had grown, and she was convinced the baby was a boy. We headed along the road, bypassing the Grange, to the top of the track called Patten's First. The
field below us was occupied by a flock of sheep, many of them ewes newly brought to lamb, and as we leaned on the gate, the back and forth of their bleating filled the air. I felt as if the world had been made afresh. Scott's recovery, Anne's baby, the brightness of the day, all were cause for rejoicing. “What a beautiful morning,” I said.
“Yes. Paul's taking the boys on a run this afternoon.”
I saw her smile as she said her husband's name, and I thought of how they were together. A continual flow of small gestures: hands meeting over a cup, a pat on the arm or shoulder. They were more than fond. “Have you chosen names?” I asked.
“Robert,” Anne answered, without a second's hesitation.
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A fortnight later I found a note on the san door
â4 a.m. gone to Perth Infirmaryâ
and presently Mr. Thornton telephoned with the news that Anne was safely delivered of a boy. The chapel bells pealed, and I joined the Plishkas in a toast. They served a curious colourless liquid which made me cough. “Very good,” they said, as I tried to repeat their Polish.
Next day I was in the surgery, filling in the notes, when the girl appeared. Her stockings drooped and she was breathing hard. “Come for a walk,” she said.
“I have to catch up on the notes. I've let them go for nearly a week.”
“Please. There's a flock of geese I want to show you. They have beautiful long necks and dappled feathers.”
She opened her eyes wide and I laid aside my pen. “All right. A very short walk.”
We hurried downstairs and out into the damp afternoon. Rain threatened. Once more I was about to protest, but she took my
arm. “The geese will be going home soon. Let's send a message to the snow princess.”
As we reached Front Avenue, there came the sound of a car. The girl vanished behind a beech tree and Matthew's decrepit green Ford pulled up. We greeted each other and remarked on the wonderful news about the baby. “I'm on my way to Perth,” he said. “Would you like a lift to see Anne?”
“But I don't have my things.”
“What do you need? I can lend you money”âhe delved into a pocket to demonstrateâ“and a handkerchief. Clean, I promise.”
His car, always noisy, had reached a new crescendo. As we clattered down the main road, he apologised for the muffler. I nodded, too excited for conversation. Because of the war I had never been assigned to the maternity ward and only once or twice had I seen a a newborn. At the door of Perth Infirmary, Matthew promised to be back in an hour. I watched him drive away and, turning to the hospital, forgot him. Inside, the familiar odour engulfed me. A couple of nurses were walking purposefully amid the uncertain visitors; I joined the latter.