Nurse Trent's Children (6 page)

But now she was at journey’s end, and apart from the duties of housemother that after her strenuous St. Cloud regime promised to be fairly easy, she would have nothing to occupy her but her thoughts.

That is what Cathy had anticipated. She soon learned otherwise.

She learned that a housemother, unlike a trainee, unlike a guardian on a ship, is
never
away from work.

Rita and Gwen and a score of others might be absent from nine to three, but their personalities and the problems arising from their personalities were as real and present to Cathy as family problems are real and present to any mother of a household.

She found the work totally different from child nursing. She had loved tending sick little bodies in the children’s ward at St. Cloud, but the tending of minds as well she found infinitely more satisfying.

At St. Cloud she had gone off duty with a sense of relaxation. Here one missed the relaxation because there was never a feeling of being right away from duty. However, there was a fulfillment she had not known before, not even in ministering to sick children, and instinctively Cathy sank herself deeper and deeper into her work. It was absorbing work. One did not hand the children over to another nurse at six o’clock; instead, one followed each day in the life of each child until the day grew into the next day and a week grew into
a
month. It was with a sense of surprise that Cathy realized one morning that she had been in Australia a
month.

The children were back at school. There had been a board meeting one afternoon that had decided where Cathy’s twenty were to be educated. Now the school bus took away six of them, six went to the local Burnley Hills school, six Cathy drove herself in the house truck to the Thornvale and Gulleybank schools, and the other two, Avery and Christabel, were tutored by Cathy during the day. They were old enough to absorb kindergarten, but the local nursery classes were overcrowded and the school age had been raised to several months more than either Avery or Christabel could claim.

A blackboard and a sandpit took care of the babies while Cathy took care of stray buttons off school shirts and new elastic in navy shorts. The boys had not arrived yet, but the work on their building was nearly completed, so it would not be long before they were all together again. Cathy found herself looking forward to David Kennedy.

She had received several letters from him. The letters were typical of David, bright, breezy, meeting difficulties as they occurred and overcoming them blithely. He was a very satisfactory person to know, she thought gratefully.

She had been pleased when Mrs. Ferguson, who had come to cook temporarily, had decided to stay on. She was a good-natured woman with an understandingly light hand on spinach and turnips and an instinctive knowledge of the encouragement of an occasional frivolous dessert instead of prunes and blancmange. Elvira said Mrs. Jessopp had only served two dishes, stew and molasses pudding. Nourishing, perhaps, but not very exciting, and even little children must have heydays as well as schooldays.

Rita was one of Cathy’s problems. She was now a woman, but just at the age when childhood still overlaps maturity. It left her bewildered and uncertain of herself, often irritable, occasionally rude. Cathy knew that in a year Rita would overcome all that.

Denise was another worry. She was an intense sort of child, always fretting because of some imagined injustice. She was not a naughty little girl but an instinctively unhappy one. However per
fec
t an institution may be, there is always a child who cannot live closely with other children. Denise would have been the unhappy one in an actual family. She was born to be the odd person out. The only solution would be to place her as an “only” with adoring parents where she would thrive until she married and became an “only” to some adoring husband. She could not cooperate with her own contemporary sex and never would. Cathy felt sorry for her and helpless when it came to a solution. Little Families did not adopt out their wards, so it seemed that Denise must stay on and suffer her “injustices.”

Leila was not so involved. She was a giddy little soul too easily dazzled by a new face. Within minutes of her arrival Leila had made Cathy acutely aware of her feverish adoration. She had flamboyant taste verging on the showy and even vulgar. At present she was going through a passion for bright and shining things and had actually stolen, according to Elvira, Miss Dubois’s ring when she had taken it off to plant a tree in the avenue of remembrance. Elvira had told Cathy that Miss Dubois had made a horrible fuss that only Dr. Jerry, bless him, had been able to subdue. Miss Dubois, reported Elvira, was simply crazy for Dr. Jerry.

Cathy had not yet met this Miss Dubois. She did not look forward to the quarterly meeting at which the patroness would certainly be in attendance. Meanwhile, she tried tactfully to encourage Leila into better taste by showing her her own modestly pretty lingerie—soft, simple garments that had sent Rita and Gwenda into squeals of joy—but all Leila had said was, “I like something shiny, Aunty Cathy, like satin.”

“
Things don
’
t have to be shiny to be good and pleasing, Leila.”

“Yes, they have. The Sunday school song says so. It says, ‘All things bright are beautiful.’
”

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

Leila shook her head. “Not the song our class sings.”

Cathy did not press the correction. She recalled a housemother in England telling her how one of her children had the fixed idea that God’s name was Harold. “It says so, aunty. It says Harold be Thy Name.” Cathy did not think she would have much to worry about in Leila.

On Mrs. Ferguson’s day off Elvira took over the cooking. Cathy was pleased at this, for although she had undergone an invalid cooking course at St. Cloud, her thirty charges had robust appetites and probably would not have relished the steamed chops, gruels and junkets that had mainly comprised the dishes she had been called upon to serve. She had liked to dabble at home, but that had been only for mommy and daddy and herself, and then only on occasion, and she did not think her crepes suzette or special fruit curry would have evoked warm approval from the board.

Mrs. Ferguson was a gem. She had the rare talent of serving wholesome dishes so that they were even more wholesome, though in some magical manner appearing to the children as attractive as forbidden fruits.

Cathy had asked her the secret, and Mrs. Ferguson had smiled, “Five children, my dear, and then fourteen grandchildren. You’ll come to it.”

Cathy took notes in case she was called upon one day, but the scribbled hints in her little black book had not even filled one page when Elvira came from the telephone on Mrs. Ferguson’s day off to ask if it would be all right if she went off as well.

“It’s mother, Aunty Cathy. Poorly again. I’d like to have my Saturday off on Wednesday.”

Cathy said of course it was all right. Elvira asked if Aunty Cathy could manage the meals, and Cathy gave her the assurance that she would do it without any trouble. Elvira had a high opinion of Cathy’s ability, so did not give it another thought. If she had guessed how dubious the temporary cook was about her abilities, she might have delayed her Saturday-off-on-Wednesday.

It was a half-holiday, and the children were home for lunch. The meal went off well with the aid of a cookbook Cathy found in the cupboard and the hints she had written down in the little black book. The cold meat fritters, potato balls, and jam tart to follow were well received, and encouraged, Cathy sat down and studied the books for tea.

The few hints she had gleaned so far from Mrs. Ferguson were exhausted, and most of the recipes in the cookbook were too involved to be multiplied in time and material by thirty. Cathy decided on tinned soup and toast, and a butterscotch blancmange to follow.

She assembled the blancmange materials, lit the range, and began stirring. She was just up to the stage when the milk mixture was leaving the sides of the saucepan and demanding her close attention when the kitchen door opened behind her.

“No snacks between meals, girls,” she called. “You may each go out to the barn and take an apple.”

“Thank
you, housemother,” said a voice, and wheeling around she faced Jeremy Malcolm.

It was the first time she had met him since the night of her arrival. She knew he had been here, for Elvira had told her so, and once she had seen his green convertible in the driveway, but either fate or her own curious reluctance to renew their acquaintance had kept them from a face-to-face encounter as they were now face to face. Cathy remembered to pull the blancmange aside; then she said a little stiffly, “Good afternoon, Dr. Malcolm.”

“The natives say Dr. Jerry. That will do just as nicely, Miss Trent.”

“You forget I am not a native, Dr. Malcolm.”

He bowed at the correction, growing oddly withdrawn as he had on the evening she had come here, when she had rushed too hastily into telling him that it would be wiser if he did not stay overnight. She supposed he was thinking again that she was a little English prude.

He was even bigger than she had remembered. Perhaps it was because she was now in a world of little people. Elvira was barely higher than the children, and Mrs. Ferguson, too, was short—but had he always been such a towering giant? He seemed to fill the kitchen with his great hard bulk.

“They tell me you are cook today,” he said teasingly. “The meat fritters and jam tart went off with high marks. Any left over for a peckish M.O.?”

“None at all.”

“Good for you, Aunty Cathy.”

“And you, too?”

“I can’t give you a decision, not having sampled wares. What’s for tonight? Thirty eggs broken into a pan of water and brought to the boil a la Malcolm?”

Cathy shuddered. “Just a simple meal. Tinned soup, toast
...
”

“Ah, yes, toast. We were experts on that, weren’t we?” Suddenly her eyes were meeting his. She was thinking unwillingly of that night. The cutting of the bread, the buttering, the serving, and all in that companionable silence. Then later the bathing of little bodies and the carrying them into bed.

She was aware she was flushing warmly, and aware, too, of what he must be thinking. He must be thinking again of Catherine Trent, the prude, who had stuttered like a schoolgirl in her agitation to have him promptly and correctly out of the house.

Hurriedly, and uncomfortably conscious of the quizzical light in his eyes and the one tilted eyebrow, she said, “After that
...
after the soup and toast, I thought—”

He raised a hand. “Walt, Mrs. Beeton. Don’t tell me. Let me guess.”

Before she could protest he had crossed to the stove. Instead of coming to the opposite side, he leaned over her and peered down. As he did he rested each large palm on either side of the range. It imprisoned her within the circle of his arms, her face only a few inches from his. For a moment he looked at Cathy, not at the saucepan. His eyes were inscrutable. One moment they were speculative, the next searching, the next gentle as they had been the night she had taken Christabel in her arms and fondled her, and then they were mocking. He leaned closer. Cathy edged back and he laughed. “Don’t be alarmed, my little one. It is broad daylight, not dangerous night as it was that other time. Also, my intentions are strictly culinary. I am sure I am not mistaken when I pronounce that glutinous mess to be none other than gelatin.”

“It is blancmange.”

“Correction, please, gelatin. I have not supped in a London boardinghouse for two hundred nights in succession for nothing. Every evening of those two hundred nights my landlady served me gelatin. Tell
m
e, are English people so addicted to gelatin?”

“It will be better,” stammered Cathy unhappily, “when I top it with butterscotch.”

“But to my memory still gelatin.”

“It is blancmange,” she said quite angrily, “and I’m sure the children will like it.” Tears of frustration pricked her eyes. “It’s simple and nourishing, and it took me a great deal of time to select something suitable.”

Suddenly the palms of his hands had left the stove, but she was not released. Instead he was cupping her chin and looking into her eyes. “Foolish child, I was only teasing. I’m sure it is a most delectable gelatin—a thousand pardons, blancmange, but I’m sure, too, you will infinitely prefer a peach Melba.”

“A what?”

“Haven’t you ever experienced the pleasures of a peach Melba
... or a cr
e
me Chantilly
... or a—”

“Stop. Stop it at once. I must get this dessert done or there’ll be nothing for our tea.”

“For
their
tea. For the girls’. You, Miss Trent, are dining with me.”

She turned her blue eyes on him and his brown ones looked steadily back. He nodded as though to affirm his statement.

“I can’t dine with you,” she declined. “Both Elvira and Mrs. Ferguson are off. Of course”—hastily—“you are welcome to stay
...
”

He bowed derisively at that. “So long as I leave at sunset?” he asked.

She reddened and ignored him. “Though, disliking blancmange as you do, perhaps it would be wiser to wait for a more experienced cook.”

“I do not dislike it as much as you think. I am prepared to believe that with a butterscotch topping it would be moderately successful. However, not tonight. Tonight we have a Bombe Alaska or
a...”

If you mean you are inviting me to dine with you
...
”

“I did mean that.”

“Then it is impossible. The rest of the staff, as I just said, is out.”

“Quite true, but Elvira will be back by seven, and by then the children will be fed and thinking—
o
r being persuaded to think—of bed. And you, Miss Trent, will be taking off this becoming but housewifely overall and putting on a party dress. Have you a party dress?”

“Of course,” murmured Cathy unwillingly, “only
...
”