A Mother's Gift (9 page)

‘Perhaps a few minutes, Sister? The theatre will not be ready for another thirty minutes.’

Sister had to bow to the surgeon’s wishes; she stood back. ‘If you insist, sir,’ she said. ‘Though I hope the visit does not upset my patient.’

‘Indeed. Yet it might be just the thing to settle her down.’

Matthew looked back impatiently at the orderly who was in charge of his wheelchair. The man was doing his
best
to show that the argument had nothing to do with him; he was gazing at the green-painted wall of the corridor.

‘Come along then man,’ he snapped. But Sister was not going to allow that at least. ‘Nurse Benfield,’ she called. ‘Come and push Mr Hamilton in to see his wife.’

Hurriedly, Staff Nurse had covered the trolley and was pushing it out of the side ward. Katie went out to the corridor before the two god-like surgeons, for that was the impression she had got of surgeons, they were gods, almost, and pushed the man in to the side ward where Mary Anne was lying with her eyes closed. Not that she was really asleep but she hoped Matthew would think so. Sister came and stood just inside the door, watching suspiciously and Matthew turned to her.

‘You can go now,’ he said. ‘I’ll call you—’ He stopped, having just noticed Katie behind him. Katie turned to go.

‘Not you, girl,’ he said. ‘You Sister, I mean you.’

Both Katie and Sister gasped and the older woman turned crimson beneath her stiff white cap with the frill at the edge and the ribbons tied in a bow under the chin. But she could do nothing, she had perforce to back out into the corridor where the two surgeons were standing, talking lightly now.

‘What’s your name, girl?’

‘Nurse Benfield, sir,’ Katie managed to say.

So it was the same girl. Benfield, that was what Thompson had called her grandfather, why, it must be five years ago. Momentarily diverted from his intention of talking to Mary Anne, he studied Katie openly and she
lifted
her chin and gazed back at him. He looked somehow familiar, had she seen him before? He was a big man though not so big as her grandfather and he sat uneasily in the chair, dressed in a satin dressing-gown. One leg stuck out in front of the chair covered by a plaster cast from toes to mid-calf. He caught her gaze and smiled.

‘Aren’t you from Winton?’ Matthew asked.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I thought so,’ said Matthew. He continued looking at her and she stood simply, waiting for him to stop. She had been striking as a young girl, he thought, now she was grown, she was beautiful, even in the ugly nurse’s uniform with the mid-calf-length apron and striped dress, the black lisle stockings and sensible shoes. If she took off the silly cap that was tilted slightly to the right, she would be even more striking, he thought.

‘Matthew?’

Though it had only been a minute Mary Anne had got tired of pretending to sleep and had opened her eyes and seen that her husband was in a wheelchair.

‘What on earth happened?’ she cried in alarm. He turned back to the bed and his wife. She’d failed him again, he thought, what a bloody Christmas this had been.

‘Wait outside,’ he said over his shoulder and Katie went out though inwardly she was seething. Who the heck did he think he was, coming in here and behaving like he owned the whole hospital?

‘IT’S NOTHING, A
slight accident at the works. I have a broken ankle and a few bruises, that’s all,’ Matthew said to Mary Anne. He didn’t mention that Jackson, the works manager, had head injuries and hadn’t come round yet. Mary Anne wouldn’t know whom he was talking about anyway.

‘What happened with you, madam? I thought you were going to carry this one. I suppose you’ve been lifting that great girl of yours, you never learn.’

Mary Anne laid still, the lethargy induced by the pre-medication drug creeping back over her now that the shock of seeing Matthew in a wheelchair was fading. Though she still felt the depressing ache of failure, she could read correctly the contempt in Matthew’s expression.

‘I didn’t,’ she said. ‘It just happened. Sometimes it does, Matthew. It’s not my fault.’

‘Then whose—’ Matthew began to ask then saw the tear that slid down Mary Anne’s pink-tipped nose. He
wasn’t
entirely free of compassion, it was simply that he was so disappointed in her. He hadn’t only married her for the prospect of gaining her father’s works; he needed an heir, a proper heir. She had produced two children, why couldn’t she produce one for him?

‘Oh for heaven’s sake, don’t cry, Mary Anne,’ he said roughly, too roughly he realised but he couldn’t think of anything else to say. Luckily they were interrupted by a knock at the door and Sister came in.

‘The trolley’s here to take Mrs Hamilton to theatre,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry but you’ll have to go now, Mr Hamilton.’

Matthew looked at the officious little woman but didn’t deign to reply to her. Instead he looked at his wife’s white face. ‘I’ll see you later. You’ll be all right,’ he said. He meant it kindly so that it was a pity that Mary Anne took it as a vague sort of threat.

The girl from Winton was not in the corridor despite the fact that he had told her to wait there and this added to his irritation. But as he passed the open door of the sluice he saw she was in there, washing bedpans and that irritated him even more. She had nice hands, well shaped though a little red and with the nails cut very short and it was a shame to use them for such work.

‘Wait a moment,’ he ordered the man pushing his chair. He looked at Katie and, feeling his eyes upon her, she turned and he felt the full impact of her dark blue eyes.

‘So you are nursing now,’ he said. ‘It’s a long way from Winton Colliery rows, surely?’

Katie flushed. ‘Not so far,’ she replied and belatedly
added
, ‘Sir.’ She stood, rubber apron covering the white cotton one and with bedpan in one hand and scrubbing brush in the other and he thought she looked delightful. She in her turn saw only the man, his dark hair swept back from his high forehead, his brown eyes, keen and seeming to take in everything at once. He looked about thirty-something to her, an older man though not as old as her grandfather. Why was he bothering with her? She was too lowly a nurse to be concerned with the care of private patients.

Matthew had been staring, he realised and now, recollecting, he glanced back at the orderly.

‘Righto, man,’ he said. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

Matthew forgot about his intention to have himself transferred to a private hospital. The chairman of the Hospital Board, who was a fellow member of the Board of Guardians and a friend of sorts, soon had him transferred to a private ward in the South-East Durham. Somehow he never thought of having Mary Anne transferred to the wing too, she was in a side ward anyway, wasn’t she?

He hadn’t exactly forgotten about Katie in the years since he had last seen her. But now he had nothing else to think about as he lay in the hospital bed and he amused himself finding out about her.

‘She is a first-year probationer nurse,’ Lawson reported to him. ‘She’s only been at the hospital for a month or two.’ Her home address was still West Row, Winton Colliery; her next-of-kin was Noah Benfield, her grandfather. And she had a sweetheart. All this Lawson had
discovered
in the café outside the hospital gates and all for the cost of a few cups of coffee for the junior nurses who frequented it.

‘I have a deep respect for your work,’ he had told them. ‘But I’ll put my cards on the table. I really like that nurse on F Ward. Nurse Benfield, is it?’ The first thing they told him was about Katie’s sweetheart.

‘I don’t think the nurses should be encouraged to have followers,’ Matthew said to Lawson and the chauffeur managed to keep his face expressionless despite his inward amusement. Matthew frowned at him. Logic told him that a girl as beautiful as Katie would have a beau but all the same he couldn’t bear to think of it.

‘I’m sure Florence Nightingale did not encourage them,’ said Matthew.

‘No sir,’ said Lawson. ‘Neither do the hospital authorities.’

Flaming hypocrite, he thought to himself. Being his chauffeur, Lawson was in a good position to know how Matthew Hamilton spent some of his time when out of the house and it was not always at the works. There was a certain house in Middlesbrough … Still, that was rich men for you. Liked to indulge their appetites.

Matthew was visiting his wife every day, first in a wheelchair and later, as his ankle improved, with the aid of crutches. It was very nice of him, thought Mary Anne, but not at all in character when she thought about it. But she was starved of affection and warmed to him as he showed her small kindnesses, patting her hand, insisting on
bringing
in the children to see her despite the scandalised opposition of Sister.

‘Good morning, Nurse,’ he said to Katie one bright frosty morning. It was the New Year’s Day and once again he was on his way to F Ward ostensibly to see his wife. Somehow he was always there when Katie was on duty.

He was being discharged today and was dressed in a suit and crisp white shirt brought in by Lawson and had exchanged his crutches for a walking stick.

‘It would have been better if you had waited a day or two more,’ Mr Caine had said and Matthew had frowned.

‘I tell you it feels fine,’ he had snapped. ‘I have work to do in any case.’

‘I hope you don’t intend to walk very far on that ankle,’ had said Mr Caine. ‘I’m warning you—’

‘Oh never mind,’ said Matthew and the surgeon had subsided. It was Matthew’s opinion that the doctors kept you down as long as they could if only to inflate their fees. Scoundrels and charlatans, the lot of them. Though Caine was not so bad, he had to concede. He’d made a good job of setting his ankle, so why couldn’t he leave well alone now?

The conversation with the surgeon was running through his mind as he walked along the corridor leaning heavily on his stick. Because, if he had to admit it, the ankle did pain him if he walked more than a few steps on the specially reinforced plaster. Seeing Katie outside the ward was a piece of luck, he’d hit just on the right time. It drove any thought of his ankle out of his mind.

Katie went pink. ‘Morning sir,’ she replied, hoping neither Sister nor Staff Nurse would come out and catch her talking to him, a patient and a private one at that. ‘Er, how are you feeling?’ she went on as he stood still and seemed to be waiting for her to speak.

‘I’m going home today,’ he said. ‘I feel much better, thank you.’

‘Oh, good.’

He gazed at her; she was so obviously uneasy in the way she kept glancing back at the closed door to the ward. She edged away.

‘I have to go, I have a message for Matron,’ she said. ‘Goodbye, sir. I hope everything will be all right.’ She slipped past him and walked rapidly away. He watched her and felt a small tingle of satisfaction as he saw her turn to glance back at him before turning a corner.

Katie left her message at Matron’s office and went on to the nurse’s dining-room for her break. She collected a cup of coffee and a biscuit and sat down at a table on her own, for she had things to think about. Mr Hamilton she thought about most of all. She realised now that he must be going out of his way to bump into her and she couldn’t think why he should be so interested.

Now she remembered where she had seen him before. It had been years ago, during the awful, hungry times of the Great Strike and after she remembered the lake of pitch, the sack filled with pitch balls, the feel of the pitch on her hands. And walking along the path in the bitter cold with bare legs stinging and fingers numb. And the taste of the raw carrot left by the galloways, the pit ponies, she
could
almost feel the hard lumps in her mouth now. She looked at the biscuit on the plate before her; it was a digestive biscuit, plain and wholesome but she couldn’t eat it. Then there had been the gentleman in his thick overcoat and felt hat and the striped trousers below the hem of the coat and his shiny shoes, only barely touched with the black mud of the path by the wagon way. How he had looked at her grandda, diminishing him somehow.

Now she knew who he was though she hadn’t at the time. She doubted her grandda had known either. The big boss, the supreme gaffer. The owner of the ironworks that used the coal and coke produced at Winton Colliery and no doubt half a dozen other collieries.

Life was strange, thought Katie as she drank her coffee and rose to go back to the ward. Mr Hamilton lived in a different world and no matter how she worked and studied and tried her best she would never be in a position to enter that world. And she didn’t want to, she told herself as she strode briskly along the corridor.

Now there was work to do, Mrs Hamilton was going home today too and the side ward had to have the bed stripped and made up again and she had to help the maid wash the walls and the furniture and polish it until it sparkled ready for the next patient. Not a private patient this time but one who was terminally ill with cancer of the uterus and permanently on morphine to keep the pain at bay.

When Katie returned to the ward there was no sign of either of the Hamiltons. The rest of the morning was taken up with scrubbing and making up the bed. And
when
she thought she had it right Sister came to the door.

‘Strip that bed and start again, Nurse,’ she ordered Katie. ‘Have you learned nothing about bed making since you came? Turn the openings of the pillowcases away from the door if you please and straighten that corner. Both should be alike, you should know this. And don’t forget to turn the bed wheels in—’