Nurse Trent's Children (11 page)

CHAPTER EIGHT

The moment of breaking down i
n Cathy’s arms was Rita’s first and last.

The next day she was a different Rita, quieter, more reserved, not vulnerable anymore. She has grown a crust, thought Cathy, trying again and again to break through the polite veneer, but it was no use. Rita had left childhood.

That was as it should be. All these children must grow up. The best equipment for the life that awaited them was a hard endurance and a practical approach, but somewhere deep within her Cathy wept for the vanished softness of a young girl.

She found it difficult to follow the advice she had been given in London—not to take an experience too much to heart, never to become too personal. You will get nowhere unless you are firm and practical, she had been told, but even then she would have abandoned the advice had Rita shown one moment of indecision, one fleeting glimpse of her need for help. But Rita didn’t. She
was
as cool and self-composed as Fayette Dubois herself. When once Cathy murmured something about time passing quickly and that when Rita was ready to take a position they would both go lipstick shopping together, she shrugged an indifference that did not seem assumed.

With a sigh Cathy abandoned the matter for more pressing problems. One thing, she thought, a housemother never found time to become introverted, or for that matter, absorbed in any one person. There seemed always too many to attend to, too many troubles to be heard.

The current worry was Denise. Denise was suffering from her usual “injustices.” Her sharp-little eyes scanned her tray and then her companions’ trays at mealtimes. Wasn’t that a little more on Daphne’s plate?

Everyone’s dress was a little nicer than Denise’s. She had been
sure Pam’s bed was in a better position than hers, and when Cathy had the beds changed she wanted her own back again. “She’s what you call an ‘agin’ type,” sighed Cathy to Elvira. “Probably needs a good spanking.”

I don’t think so, Elvie.”

David Kennedy had organized a basketball team and stimulated the girls’ interest in their gardens. He was giving a prize to the month’s best garden, and those who were not big enough for the team or who were too big for the slippery slides and swings worked feverishly in the patch set aside for the children raising vegetables and flowers.

The basketball team comprised many more members than was officially correct, just as Uncle David’s soccer team had more than the required number. Denise was one of the players, not very good, but making up in jealous determination any skill she lacked.

Cathy was watching the girls practice when it happened, two small heads bumping each other as Brenda and Denise rose simultaneously to take the ball. There was a dull crack, and two voices set up a howl of pain and indignation.

Cathy took Denise first. “There, darling, there, you’ll be all right. It wasn’t so much. Just a tap. Be a good girl and stop crying, honey. Be good for Aunty Cathy.”

Denise’s eyes swam with self-importance more than pain. There was something else in the childish depths, there was a deep satisfaction. “Oh, Aunty Cathy,” she said, snuggling close, “you do love me, don’t you?”

“Very much, Denise.”

“Better than the other girls, don’t you, Aunty Cathy?”

“How is the head now, Denise?”

“Say you do, Aunty Cathy. Say, ‘I love only you.’ Go on, Aunty Cathy.”

“I’m putting you down now, dear. I think you’re feeling better.”

“I’m not, I’m worse. Aunty Cathy, where are you going?”

“To comfort Brenda.”

“Brenda doesn’t need comfort. She wasn’t hurt. Not like
I
was hurt. You don’t like Brenda, do you? Not
really.
Not the way you like me.”

“I do like Brenda, Denise.”

“
But you
l
ove
me.”

“I love all my little girls.”

“Only me, Aunty Cathy, only me.”

“
All,
Denise, and now, dear, you must let me go.” Gently, Cathy withdrew herself from the child’s grasp and went across to the other patient.

David Kennedy was feeling her for bumps, Brenda giggling ticklishly the while.

“This one can go back onto the field,” he said, and Brenda raced off.

He came to Denise, but she backed away, her eyes sullen. “It’s a dangerous game. Girls bump you. I’m not playing.”

Uncle David ruffled her hair. “That’s all right, Denise. We can do with another gardener.” He took her hand and led her off to the patch where he found her a small new spade and watering can and a packet of seeds. The seeds were in a gaudy wrapper that promised bright harvest to young gardeners, but Denise’s eyes did not light up.

All she said was, “I’ll never play basketball again.” Then she added. “Wendy’s plot is bigger than mine.”

“There’s a problem for you,” sighed Cathy after they had left the child growers, and David agreed.

“You get them like that sometimes, and there’s nothing to be done. You just have to wait and see what fate hands out. It’s remarkable, really, what old Lady Destiny can dish up. Let’s hope it is a good dish for Denise.”

Meanwhile, there was the equally pressing problem of Leila, but for Leila, Cathy felt sure, there would be absolution. She was too cheerful, too extroverted a type not to reach smooth waters. Just now she was having her difficulties, but they were unimportant difficulties. In short, Leila still clung to the bizarre in life, the gold and the glitter. “All things bright are beautiful,” was still her faith.

Cathy would have ignored this phase in the child’s life except that it had its embarrassing moments. At Sunday chapel Leila had crept away from the Little Families’s pews and been found on the floor beneath the pew reserved for Mrs. Meldrum.

Mrs. Meldrum lived in Burnley Hills’s most imposing home, and it was the hope of Little Families to interest her in Redgates. So far they had been unsuccessful. She maintained there were Australian children to be cared for without bothering about children from overseas. However, they were not discouraged. Many uninterested people could be won by the promise of their name on a tablet in the hall of patrons and patronesses, or a plaque beside a newly planted tree in the avenue of remembrance. Meanwhile, Little Families bowed deferentially to Mrs. Meldrum and kept on sending her invitations that one day surely she would accept.

On this morning Mrs. Meldrum was misguided enough—as regarded Leila, anyway—to finish off her elegant black ensemble with an elegant pair of patent shoes. The sun threading its way through the stained-glass window did not find many things on which to shine, and Leila was bored. Then Mrs. Meldrum
changed
her position and the shoes glowed in the diffused light. Leila knew she must sit still, so she tried counting the little panes of the stained window, but alas, she found herself looking at the shoes again. It was no use, they called her. Slipping silently fro
m t
he pew, she crept unnoticed across the aisle to kneel silently at the shining feet.

Presently she touched the leather with an adoring finger, and Mrs. Meldrum, feeling the movement and imagining many things—“a mouse—a rat—a bat,
anything,
my dear”—let out a sharp squeal. She killed the squeal promptly, of course, but not before the whole congregation had heard it. The minister stopped in his sermon and peered above his spectacles. The worshippers in front of Mrs. Meldrum turned, the worshippers behind craned.

Cathy, who was level with the scene, took it all in at once, rose quietly and removed Leila.

“What were you doing in Mrs. Meldrum’s pew?” she scolded out in the vestry. “What were you doing sitting on the floor?”

As though she didn’t know, she despaired inwardly, she had seen those shoes when they had arrived and had known even then a moment of panic.

“I’m sorry, Aunty Cathy.” Leila, as usual, was easily shown her wrongdoing.

“You must apologize to Mrs. Meldrum, too.”

“Oh, I shall, Aunty Cathy.”

Cathy sighed heavily and Leila asked anxiously, “Was it
very
bad, Aunty?”

“Not very, darling, but I’m afraid it will put that tablet back on the shelf for another year.
”

Leila did not understand, but she did sense Aunty Cathy’s disappointment. “The song says, ‘All things bright are beautiful,’ ” she defended a little uncertainly.

“All things bright
and
beautiful, Leila.”

“Not
our
song.”

Church was coming out. Cathy took Leila firmly by the hand and approached the rather frigid Mrs. Meldrum.

“It’s an odd mania with her, Mrs. Meldrum.”

“Extremely odd. Are you sure it wasn’t my
handbag
she was after?”

“Quite sure.” For once Cathy’s voice was equally frigid.

“How can you be sure, Miss Trent?”

Cathy glanced quickly down at her, then backed away. “Because,” she said triumphantly, “it’s a
dull
leather,” and pulling Leila behind her she returned to her charges.

“There,” she said to David Kennedy, nodding her head to Mrs. Meldrum’s big car, “goes a donor we’ll never corner. Not now.”

“There are other fish,” cheered David. “I wouldn’t worry.”

C
athy was determined she would follow his advice. They could do without Mrs. Meldrum, and Leila’s taste eventually must reach a true level.

It did—but in a painful manner for Leila.

Leila was a tomboy. She preferred boys’ company to girls’. Unlike the Curtises and Bannermans, she would have appreciated a brother. She joined heartily in the boys’ games and because she was rather good at them they tolerated her.

When Frankie Jenner spread the news about the oranges on Smith’s trees and the boys decided to help themselves, Leila was with them. Even if it had not been their company that urged her, Frankie’s description would have been a magnet on its own. “Big and golden and shining,” gulped Frankie, and that was all Leila needed.

The first Cathy knew of the adventure was the telephone call from Mr. Smith.

“You’d better get ready for some casualties,” he said grimly, “I’ve just put some saltpeter in your charges’ pants.”

“I don’t understand you,” gasped Cathy.

“I reckon they do, the scallywags. Look here, Miss Trent—” Mr. Smith was a Little Families supporter and known and liked by Cathy “—I’ve tried barbed wire, a dog, persuasion, and even giving them a bellyful. Did it do any good? No. They climbed over the wire, made friends with the dog, ignored the persuasion, and as for the gift, well, stolen fruits are always the best. This time, however, I think I’ve won. Ever had saltpeter in your p
a
nts?”

“No,” said Cathy faintly.

“Well, it’s no picnic,” said Mr. Smith. “I thought I’d warn you to get out the hot water, tweezers and iodine. No hard feelings?”

“None.”

“Good, then there’s none on my part.” And Mr. Smith hung
up.

“
I wonder why he rang
me
,”
Cathy said to Elvira. “It’s David he should contact.”

“Is it?” said Elvira.
“Look...
”

Racing up the drive like something possessed and howling painfully was a small girl.

“Leila,” said Cathy.

Between them they removed the rock salt, bathed the spots and dabbed on the iodine. Leila cried
throughout
the operation. “It stings,” she said.

Cathy put her to bed, conferred with Elvira, and decided to ring Dr. Malcolm. “Boys are boys,” she said. “Girls are different clay.”

She told Jerry briefly over the phone what had happened.

“Where did he shoot her?”

Cathy felt irritated. “Where are small fry generally shot when they plunder fruit trees?”

His voice had a note of laughter in it. “You seem to know the process, housemother. Don’t tell me you, too, once plundered fruit. Was it in the pants?”

“Yes,” said Cathy stiffly. She added, “Leila, I mean, of course.”

“Of course.”

A pause, and then, “I’ll be over.”

He came in due course, nodded his head over the hot water and iodine, then examined Leila thoroughly for any undetected injury. There was none—only to Leila’s pride. She lay very embarrassed and completely, Cathy suspected, cured, especially when Dr. Jerry gave her a little smack and pronounced solemnly, “You’ll live, young lady.”

When he had been shown out Cathy went back to her. She was a very chastened, prideless, extremely humiliated little girl.

“
What was it
your
song said, Aunty Cathy?
”

“ ‘All things bright and beautiful,’ Leila.
”

“Not all things bright
are
beautiful?”

“No, dear.”

Leila pulled a wry face as she took the weight off her small seat. “I think that might be right,” she said wisely, “Anyway, it sounds best.”

Cathy did not pursue the subject. One knew when one had won. She kissed her and said good-night and came out to a hovering Elvira. “That,” she smiled, “is one problem less.”