A Mother's Gift (17 page)

Mary Anne sat down on the sofa and picked up her embroidery. She was sewing a cross-stitch picture for the nursery, a picture of Peter Pan and Wendy, flying through the air under a starlit sky. She would have liked to be sewing a layette for the baby coming (and it would come, he would come, oh yes, he would), but she couldn’t get rid of the superstition that having a layette all ready would offend the gods. She was well aware of the contradiction in the two thoughts but still …

She heard the front door open, Matthew’s deep tones as he spoke to John and John answering. Quickly she put down her embroidery and rose to her feet though in truth she was hardly aware of it.

‘Matthew,’ she said as he opened the door and walked over to her, pecking her on the cheek and holding his hands out to the blaze almost in the same instant.

‘Good day, Mary Anne,’ he answered. She smelled a little of lavender water, a scent he had always associated with old ladies. Her breath was bad too, not exactly foul but unpleasant. Well, she had bouts of indigestion with this pregnancy of course. He should not be too critical; he didn’t want to upset her. Poor cow, he thought. It was amazing how last night had put him in a more sympathetic
mood
.

‘I’ll ring for lunch shall I?’ she asked.

‘Yes, of course, I’m famished,’ said Matthew.

‘Where did you spend the night? I hope you had a proper breakfast,’ she said and immediately his mood changed at the idea that she was questioning him.

‘Where do you think I spent the night, Mary Anne? In the arms of some floozies? Have you forgotten that there was a mining disaster at one of my mines and it was the funerals yesterday? Or did you think I shouldn’t bother about a few dead men, after all they were only miners,’ he barked.

‘Oh, no, I’m sorry, Matthew, I didn’t mean—’ she looked at his angry face. Of course he was upset having to witness the results of the accident, the distress of the mourners at the funerals too. But why had he had to spend the night there? She decided not to ask, after all, there must have been a good reason or he would have come home to his comfortable bed.

‘Let’s go in to lunch, Matthew,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry if I upset you. I meant nothing by it, I assure you.’

Oh dear, she didn’t want him to be in a temper when the children came home from school at the weekend. It was the mid-term holiday and she had hoped they could be like a real family even if just for a few days. Of course, they weren’t his children, she reminded herself. But if only he acted as though he was, especially to Robert. Her son was growing up, fifteen now and he needed a father to look up to. Why, Matthew didn’t even like her son to bring a friend home, she had had to discourage him when
he
had asked to do that this weekend.

But that was the problem really, the boy was her son and not Matthew’s. Sometimes she despaired of ever getting Matthew to really accept him as one of the family.

Dr Roberts, the Head Physician at the South-East Durham General Hospital, took his stethoscope out of his ears and nodded to Sister.

‘Don’t worry, Nurse, you will be fine,’ he said. ‘Sister and I will just have a word.’

Katie looked at him and quickly down again. This was the first time she had had anything to do with the great man and it wasn’t in connection with a patient but herself. Yet she didn’t care, she didn’t care about anything just at the minute. Sister had administered a bromide to her on Dr Roberts’s orders and Katie was sinking into a cocoon of warm, woolly sleep …

‘Well, Sister,’ the doctor said when they were both safely in the office with the door closed firmly. After all, this was the nurses’ sick bay and one never knew if a patient heard and knew what they were talking about. ‘Well, Sister, I don’t know. I question whether the girl is of the right calibre to make a nurse. I know she has suffered a dreadful shock but it was just her grandfather, wasn’t it?’

Dr Roberts had been an army doctor in the Great War to end all wars and he disapproved of any suggestion of lack of moral fibre. After all, where would they have been in the war if everyone had collapsed when a tragedy happened instead of stiffening their resolve and going on?
Sister
murmured something that could have been agreement or not depending on what you wanted to see in it.

‘Well, we will keep her sedated for a few days and then see how she is. She may pull herself together. I sometimes think we are bringing in girls who are not from the right sort of background, you know?’

Sister, who was the daughter of a docker but had been lucky enough to get her training in the war when nurses were at a premium, nodded again.

‘I must be going now, my ward rounds wait. I can’t spend all my time on one little probationer,’ said Dr Roberts and went out. Sister went back to the four-bedded ward that was the main part of the sick bay and peeked at Katie who was the only bed patient. She looked pale and worried even in sleep. Her brows were knitted above the sweep of her long lashes, her lips parted as she breathed with quick, shallow breaths. Sister pushed back the lock of hair that had fallen over her brow and pulled the covers up over her shoulders.

It took a great deal of moral fibre or what ever you cared to call it to get from a poverty-stricken pit village in the depths of the great slump to being a probationer in a large hospital, she thought. Moral fibre be blowed. What the hell did high and mighty Dr Roberts know? She went out, softly closing the door behind her. There was a window in her office looking out on to the ward and she would keep an eye on the girl from there.

‘YOU HAVE A
visitor, Nurse,’ said Sister.

Katie looked up in surprise. Only one or two nurses knew she was in the sick bay and no one from outside that she knew of. Nurse Trotter perhaps? She had shown herself to be friendly.

It wasn’t Nurse Trotter. She heard a man’s voice outside the door of the ward saying something to Sister as she went out and Katie went pale.

‘Mr Hamilton,’ she said. She was overcome with embarrassment as scraps of memories from that awful night came back to her. She could feel the heat rising in her face as she flushed. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him. During the first week Katie had been in the sick bay she had scarcely known or cared where she was. She had been plagued with horrible dreams and nightmares and was almost convinced that the scenes she remembered from the night after the funerals were all part of them. The drugs she had taken made everything seem vivid but somehow unreal. This second week the dose of bromide
had
been cut down and she felt more herself. All she wanted to do was get back to work, to some sort of normality. She wished with all her heart that Mr Hamilton would simply go away so that she need never see him again.

Matthew gazed at her. The flush, though fading now, had left her cheeks pink and her dark blue eyes were as striking as ever. What was it about her, he wondered, he couldn’t leave her alone though he had had every intention of doing just that. Through his contacts he had found out where she was. When he had made inquiries, under the guise of being her father’s employer simply asking on behalf of her family, he had been shaken when Dr Roberts had told him she was suffering from neurasthenia. And when he looked it up in a medical dictionary he hadn’t come near her for a week. Yet in the end he couldn’t stay away, she must be a witch he reckoned or at least she had bewitched him.

‘Hello, Katie,’ he said now, more for the benefit of Sister than Katie, ‘how are you? I’ve brought you some flowers.’

‘Oh, aren’t they lovely? What a lucky girl you are, Nurse Benfield,’ Sister enthused. ‘I’ll put them in water, shall I?’ But she looked speculatively from Matthew to Katie and back again.

Katie looked at the sheaf of carnations in their artistically arranged greenery in disbelief. No one had ever given her flowers before. No one could afford such luxuries in Winton Colliery. In fact the only times she had ever seen flowers from a florist before had been at
weddings
or funerals. These reminded her forcibly of her grandfather’s funeral and she was filled with unbearable sadness.

‘Mr Hamilton, go away,’ she whispered. She couldn’t hide from it any longer, that night had not been a nightmare, it had been real. And this man, this old man had put her through it. Impotent anger rose in her.

‘My name is Matthew,’ he said as the door closed behind Sister and the flowers.

‘Can’t you call me Matthew? I’m very fond of you, Katie. I want to look after you.’ He sat down by her bed and took her hand in his but she pulled hers away violently.

She felt so tired, weary to death and her weariness was compounded by the strong sedative she had been given. What did it matter? Her anger began to seep away. Her life was over anyway, she told herself. She felt as though she were fighting to escape from layers of cotton wool and getting nowhere. The feel of her hand in his lingered and it wasn’t unpleasant, it felt strong and dependable. As he was himself a powerful man who knew what he wanted. Oh God, what was she thinking?

‘You’re a married man, Mr Hamilton,’ she said and in her own ears the words sounded trite, like something out of a cheap B film. Everything was still so unreal, she thought wildly. In fact she was sure she had said those words in just the tone that Clara Bow had used in a picture she had seen once with Billy—Oh Billy, she had been determined not to think of him and her treacherous thoughts had betrayed her. Misery rose and threatened to
overcome
her. What did anything matter, now that Billy was dead?

‘Not happily, Katie. My wife and I – well, we live separate lives really.’

Katie suddenly felt even more exhausted. She was still under the effects of the bromide she had been given the night before.

‘Dr Roberts said you could come out in a day or two. Have a few days’ sick leave at home. Would you like that Katie?’

‘Oh! I thought I could go back on to the wards,’ she said weakly. ‘I don’t want my grandmother to know I’ve been ill. I’m all right now, really I am. It was just the shock, I’m sure it was.’ And even if she wasn’t now, she would be all right, she would.

‘Still, better not go back to work, dear.’

She didn’t notice the endearment, being too wrapped up in her own thoughts. It meant Gran would have to know she’d been ill and she had had enough worry and sorrow since the accident. But what could she do? And in any case, she was longing to see Gran, find out how she was bearing up.

‘I’ll take you, Katie. If you want to go, that is. Or would you rather go somewhere else?’

‘No, no, I want to go to Winton.’

Just at the minute all she wanted to do was sleep, preferably in her own bed with the warm oven shelf wrapped in a towel at her feet. She had woken in the middle of the night and she had been dreaming of Winton. She had been a schoolgirl again and the Means-test man
was
coming and Billy was calling, ‘I’ll save you, Mrs Benfield, I’ll save you!’ And the Means-test man had gone away and she had been happy. When she had woken up she had still been happy until memory flooded back and with it the desolation.

‘Righto, I’ll take you,’ said Matthew. ‘I’ll go now and let you sleep.’ He stood up and bent over her and kissed her gently on the forehead like a father would, like Noah sometimes did and she hadn’t the energy to stop him.

Had she dreamed that night? Had she imagined him in bed with her when she had thought it was Billy? Maybe she had. She was so confused. Maybe he was just a kind man. Katie fell into a light doze. If only she could think straight …

‘By all means, take her home,’ said Dr Roberts. ‘It will do her good, I’m sure.’ He looked across his desk at the ironmaster, wondering what his interest was in the probationer nurse. Was he a philanthropist then? Somehow he didn’t think so. But then, he was a man of the world himself, he wouldn’t ask questions. The hospital depended on the large donations given by the ironmasters. He couldn’t afford to jeopardise that. Rich and powerful this man was reputed to be.

‘Are you sure she will be able to return to her duties here? In time, I mean. Or perhaps not …’ Matthew let his voice trail into silence.

Dr Roberts leaned forward on the desk and put on a confidential air. ‘I do have my doubts, Mr Hamilton,’ he said carefully for he was feeling his way, trying to decide
what
Matthew wanted him to say. ‘It may be that she is simply not strong enough.’

Matthew nodded, satisfied. ‘Well, then, I’ll take her to her grandmother tomorrow morning. I have to go over to Winton on business. Is that suitable?’

‘Yes, of course. I’m sure that she will recover in familiar surroundings,’ Dr Roberts said heartily. He rose to his feet in the same instance as Matthew and they shook hands in perfect understanding.

‘I have brought you a warm coat to travel in, we don’t want you catching cold, Katie.’

Katie looked at the coat that Matthew was holding open for her to put on. It was a deep blue, almost the colour of her eyes and a warm soft, expensive wool. She hesitated.

‘Oh, I don’t know, Mr Hamilton, I shouldn’t take such an expensive gift,’ she said. Gran would go mad if she took such a present from a man.

‘Nonsense,’ Matthew said briskly. ‘You need a warm coat, you’ve been ill. Come along now, put it on, I want to be back in Bishop Auckland by twelve.’ He shook the coat slightly, imperiously and Katie was silenced. It wouldn’t hurt to try it on.