Pilgrims Way Read online

  He saw her around in the next few days, and saw how quickly she was making friends with the regular theatre nurses. One day, a few days after first meeting her, she spoke to him. She asked him to get something for her. She had rushed out of a theatre with the surgeon’s demands for a protractor ringing in her ears. She saw him strolling past, a newspaper tucked under his arm, making for the rest room. She knew he was an orderly, or as one of the Staff Nurses had said, a kind of glorified cleaner.

  ‘Can you go and get me a protractor?’ she said, and he walked right past her, as if she had not uttered a word, as if she was not there at all. ‘Excuse me, can you get me a protractor?’ she called out, and regretted the hint of desperation in her voice. She saw him stop and turn to look at her, and then start to walk back. She was not to know that the newspaper under his arm contained an article analysing the previous winter’s disastrous tour of Australia by the West Indian cricket team. He had glanced at it before he left home, and memories of those screaming, demented Aussies tormenting and taunting the poor lads in maroon caps had flooded back. He had had to force himself to start off for work at all, let alone be civil to some heartless, mindless Colonel’s daughter who was demanding a protractor from him like he was the club punkah-wallah.

  ‘What do you mean protractor? What protractor? We don’t keep protractors,’ he said. ‘Do you mean retractor?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, relieved that it existed.

  He showed her where the retractors were and went off while she was still trying to force a Thank you past her lips. He sat in the rest room and read the grisly details of the Australian tour, a tragedy that he found to be almost more than flesh and blood could bear. In any case, the open-mouthed emergency look irritated him. He would not have thought, in the first few minutes after meeting S/N Mason outside the eye theatre, that there was anything she could do to irritate him. But these things happen, he consoled himself. Life is like that. And sad though it was to see such a gift of nature turning corrosive and rejecting his feeble homage, it would not make him sour. He would still go on enjoying her beautiful face and her body of lavish grace.

  It was his last day at work before a month of night-duty, and the custom was to allow the condemned wretch some degree of freedom during these last hours. Daud lounged in the rest room for as long as he could, accepting, with what he thought was a heroic stoicism, the commiserations of those who knew his fate. There were some advantages to a month of night-duty. The money was better and there was more time off, but Daud hated being forced to sleep during the day and eat sandwiches in the middle of the night. The nights were long and boring. Nothing happened except occasionally some unfortunate who had fallen down a mine shaft or plunged his head into a hungry piece of machinery was brought in to be poked about and messed around by the doctors until he died. There was always, of course, the possibility of an emergency Caesarean when the hospital would at last come into its own. Doctors would bark down the telephones, midwives would strut into the theatre and shift the furniture so that their view of the baby’s entry into the world would not be impeded. The anaesthetist would check and double-check his drugs and gases and the nurses would remember again the sense of vocation that had sent them into the profession. Daud would know that the patient would be heavier than most other patients, and that lifting her on to the table would be more difficult. There would also be a lot more blood about as the surgeon slashed his way into the uterus. The baby, though, was always nice when it came out. He had seen the most hardened cynics in theatres turn suddenly human at the sight of that snuffling slug, and break into smiles and applause.

  He would have refused night-duty if it had been an option, as it was for the nurses. The orderlies had no choice. At the end of the month he always felt a little crazy and his stomach was in a mess. It was as if he had been hidden away and the world had passed him by. He returned to it with a sense of having missed, something, of having wasted time. All the books he would have promised himself to read during the empty hours he would not have read. All the letters he had intended to write would still be buzzing in his head. Dear Theatre Superintendent, he began. I greet you, Ineffable Solomon. An orderly is an orderly, and little can be done about that. I write simply to register a protest concerning your cruel rule that I should have to do a month of night-duty. I am of a sensitive disposition, and I find the solitariness of those long nights turns me into a hysterical paranoid. I cannot promise not to run amok in the plaster store.

  He checked to see who would be on duty on his first night: Sister Wintour and Staff Nurse Chattan. Both were night-duty veterans and could be relied upon to disappear for several hours sometime during the night. Any possibility of conversation, which the long empty hours invited, was unthinkable with those two professionals. The Staff Nurse usually made a little effort to hold up a conversation, less out of interest, Daud thought, than out of a misplaced notion of what politeness required. The Sister, he knew, would have no such silly concern. She would talk for half an hour about her latest dinner party and then retire to the doctors’ rest room for a long snooze.

  When he turned up for work the following Monday, it was in the expectation of a quiet and cosy night, boring and uneventful, like spending an afternoon with relatives at home. The sense of being incarcerated in a futuristic tomb did not usually strike him until the third or fourth night. He discovered as soon as he arrived at work that his expectations were to be disappointed. Staff Nurse Chattan, alias the Dodo because she came from Mauritius, the last and only home of that now extinct creature, had suffered a serious attack of venereal enphlebitis, requiring that she spend a day and a night helping at the wedding of her younger sister which was being held at the family manse in Tooting SW17. Her relief for the night was a student nurse.

  ‘Morgan or Moore or something. She’s been in theatres for forty-eight hours and they’ve forced her to do nights. It’s disgraceful. Just because they’re too bloody lazy to do . . .’

  ‘Mason,’ Daud said. ‘And she’s been here two weeks. Her father’s a Colonel in the Coldstream Guards.’

  ‘Really,’ said the Sister, wary and watchful, but suddenly raising the register. ‘This is not one of your little fibs, is it?’

  They found S/N Mason in the rest room, looking as if she expected someone to give her something to do. ‘Catherine Mason, isn’t it?’ the Sister asked. ‘I’m Sister Angela Wintour and this is Daud, our orderly. Although I gather you’ve already met . . . Now there’s quite a lot to do, so we’ll have coffee first of all. Daud tells me that your father is a Colonel in the Coldstreams. You must have seen a lot of travelling . . . although less, of course, since the pull-out east of Suez. We were in the other army, doing mission work in Eastern Nigeria. My son was born there.’

  Plucky devil, Daud thought.

  ‘I was talking to Bernard Findlay the other day . . . Do you know him? Oh, I must get you to meet him. Next time he comes to dinner . . . He’s wonderfully expert on the Army. He was Chaplain in something now, the Gurkhas or one of the Frontier Corps. Native troops but I can’t remember the regiment. He was saying that there is this remarkable connection between mission work and the Army. It appears that most missionaries came from military families, including himself, and certainly my husband. Isn’t that a remarkable connection?’

  Daud watched the results of his handiwork with complacent glee. Catherine Mason was too polite to tell the Sister that she was mad, and Wintour was too thoroughly in her stride to notice the look of bewilderment on the young woman’s face. After a while, even the Sister’s suspicions were raised and several knowing looks were directed at Daud. She consoled herself with a ritual account of her last dinner party: terrine of veal farcé, devilled poisson accompanied by countless salads, and flambeaux pastries washed down with an ancient Sauternes. The Sister liked to make a bit of a show of her dinners, and had tantalised Daud several times with vague invitations to come and eat with us some time, all of which had come to nothing. He was always happy to off
er suggestions whenever she chose to consult him, though. The curried mussels were his idea, as was the papaya and mozzarella flan for a troublesome vegetarian guest. It was soon clear that the dinner had exhausted Sister Wintour. She found herself so tired that she was forced to retire to the doctors’ rest room for a while.

  ‘Coffee?’ suggested Daud as he got up to put the kettle on.

  ‘When did my father join the Army?’ Catherine asked, smiling to show that she could take a joke. ‘He was a conscientious objector when he was called up for National Service, you know. I don’t think he would take kindly to being described as a Colonel in the Coldstream Guards.’

  ‘What’s wrong with the Coldstream Guards? Is your father a communist?’ he asked.

  He saw her face waver between a frown and a sneer – was he a shit or a dunce? ‘Well, he’s not in the Guards, anyway,’ she said, ignoring his question. ‘The Sister said your name was . . . Daud? Is that right? Where do you come from?’

  ‘Do you take sugar?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ she said, and burst out with a sudden, loud chuckle. ‘Why did you say that? About my father being a Colonel? I know you were only teasing the Sister, but what made you think of the military?’

  ‘It was the way you said protractor,’ he said. ‘It sounded like a Colonel’s daughter.’

  ‘Really? Did it sound posh?’ she asked, laughing with surprise.

  ‘Very posh! As if you were addressing the club punkah-wallah,’ he added since he guessed that she liked this image of herself.

  ‘Punkah-wallah sounds colonial,’ she said, sensing that he was laughing at her.

  ‘Only the best colonial could’ve said protractor like that.’

  ‘That was so stupid! Rushing out like that without listening properly,’ she went on, changing the drift of the conversation, and making a face. She spoke in a different voice, one that insisted on not being laughed at. ‘It could have been important. Instead I just ran out and cried for help . . . which I almost didn’t receive.’

  He stopped pouring water into the mugs of coffee and looked at her from under lowered eyebrows. ‘I can’t take criticism,’ he said.

  ‘All right then,’ she said after a moment, smiling. ‘Notice how politely I’m asking the question, which means you have to give a helpful answer. What am I supposed to do here? Can you show me?’

  ‘Drink your coffee. It’s only your second cup and you’ll have plenty more yet.’

  ‘Is this all that happens?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, grinning at her. ‘Unless somebody falls sick. You can go to sleep, of course. Everybody does.’ He told himself to calm down, not to strain so much with the jolly conversation. That was the least likely way of persuading her to like him, and he knew now that he wanted her to think him smart and pleasant. It was nothing so deliberate as a campaign to win her. She looked too secure and self-confident to be the kind of English woman who would respond with anything but fastidious alarm if he showed interest in her, he thought. He liked the way she looked at ease, and the light in her face when Sister Wintour was making a monkey of herself. He liked the stillness in her blue eyes as she listened to him talk, and admired her unflurried replies. He suspected that the assurance was partly a hoax, a manner; but he was still made envious. It was as if she spoke without calculation, although he knew this could not be so.

  She gave him a little nod as he handed her the coffee. ‘Anyway, I thought night-duty in theatres meant coping with terrible emergencies. Accidents and minor catastrophes and things like that. I didn’t expect things to be this relaxed.’

  ‘Sometimes it gets very dramatic,’ he said. ‘Most of the time it’s quiet . . . sorting out the shelves, changing the gas cylinders, packing instruments, generally re-stocking for the day. How long are you on for?’

  ‘Only one night,’ she said, folding her legs under her and curling up a little in the chair. ‘Then it’s back to days.’

  ‘You don’t like it in theatres?’ he asked.

  She made a mildly disgusted face, and they shared a smile.

  Daud’s prediction turned out to be correct, and nothing dramatic happened. The Sister appeared now and then to replenish her cup, or to complain about some chore that the day staff had not performed, but otherwise left them to lounge the night away drinking coffee and talking. She talked about her parents and about her year at the hospital. He told her about his home, going on and on, he thought afterwards.

  ‘What made you decide to be a nurse?’ he asked her. She looked at him for a moment longer than she needed to. He saw the blue of her eyes turn darker, and she looked in some pain. ‘You don’t have to bother answering that,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘No, no,’ she protested. ‘It’s just complicated.’

  ‘Well, tell me another time,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll tell you now. Don’t make such a fuss. Why should you think I wouldn’t want to answer? I didn’t expect you to ask, that’s all. Nobody has since I’ve been here. I wanted to be a nurse, I think. For the same reasons that everybody else does . . . My mother tells me that even as a child my favourite game was playing nurses. When I was thinking of it as a career . . . vocation,’ she corrected herself with a smile, ‘I told myself that I was not going to be romantic about it. I was not going to expect to have to care for a handsome pilot or a quiet, intense young poet. But I think that’s exactly what I have been expecting – you know, the kind of thing you read about in teenage novels, romantic intrigue in the hushed light of a ward at night. You see, you’re laughing.’

  ‘You hate nursing, I can tell,’ he said.

  ‘Of course I don’t hate nursing,’ she objected, laughing. ‘It’s a bit boring, the work is hard and dirty, the hours are too long and the money’s terrible. Why should I hate nursing, for God’s sake? But I think my father was disappointed.’

  ‘The Colonel,’ he said. ‘Let me guess. He wanted you to be . . . er . . . a physicist.’

  ‘He’s not a Colonel. He’s a solicitor. And he wanted me to study music, not physics,’ she said. He winced from the rebuke in her voice. Perhaps the Colonel joke had had its run, he agreed. Or perhaps she had resented it from the very first, and now felt the time had come to lay it to rest. ‘He’d encouraged me for years. He used to say I had talent in music but I could never believe him. I couldn’t take it seriously. Nobody else I knew was bothered. I think I was afraid of being exposed, of turning out to be just another mediocrity. My brother thought I was. Richard . . . he’s the star of our family. Shall I tell you about him?’

  ‘Yes, do,’ he said. He watched her as she talked, and wondered if he should feel his pulse to see if he was falling in love. Not your type, he admonished himself, remembering other rebuffs.

  ‘Richard’s a solicitor too,’ she said. ‘He runs a Legal Aid clinic in east London. He’s always busy . . . involved in a crucial test case or something like that, you know. Really enjoys his work, and works very hard at it. I lived with them for a while, him and his girlfriend Chris, before I came down here. He used to treat my musical accomplishments as something of a joke, turning up the volume on his radio when I was practising, that kind of thing. Or complaining that he couldn’t get his work done with all the noise. My mother used to make me stop, because Richard’s work was important. Then when things had quietened down, and I was sitting in a corner sulking, he used to sneak away from his work to come and gloat.’

  He sounds charming, Daud thought, hearing the sense of inadequacy in her voice.

  ‘We didn’t really get on then,’ she said, and from the way she smiled he guessed that this was an understatement. ‘But things are much better now.’

  ‘Does he approve of you being a nurse?’ he asked, wondering if he should have kept quiet. She wondered too, looking at him before being seduced by an intimacy prompted by the lateness of the hour.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t think he approves of me. No, that sounds pathetic. I don’t think I w
ant to talk about Richard after all.’

  ‘Time for another coffee and a change of subject then,’ he said. ‘Unless you plan to go to supper, in which case you have twenty minutes before the dining room shuts.’

  ‘Oh God, you must be joking. It’s nearly two o’clock. I can’t eat that stuff at this time of night.’

  ‘Exactly! Another coffee coming up, then,’ he said, rising.

  ‘No thanks,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll go and check what the Sister is up to. I don’t want her to think that I’ve abandoned her. I’ll probably find out later that she has to write a report on me. Maybe later on.’

  He felt worse than he knew he should, as if he had made a fool of himself in front of her. He realised with her departure that he had been feeling elated by the openness with which they had been talking, and had been misled into asking that prying question. He knew what would happen now. She would avoid him because she had shown too much of herself. She would shun him for the intrusion into her life. At such moments, he thought, they resented him more for being a foreigner, as if he had touched their inner selves with unclean and leprous hands. He hated most of all the unspoken rebuke that he had been trying to gain some kind of advantage.

  She came back sooner than he expected, and he was almost too angry to worry about the reasons. He saw the regret in her eyes, and the way her lips pressed together as if to check the torrent that would burst from her mouth. He was distant to her at first. What a carry on, just because he asked a question. It was obvious that she was embarrassed by his hostility, but she went on talking, and he responded, if only to prevent a complete disaster. They were more watchful now, without the freedom of earlier in the night. The Sister took her away towards morning, to help with the packing for the day’s cases. Daud went into the instruments room once, but he was in the way, and did not like the amused glint in the Sister’s eyes. Catherine was not around when he was ready to go off duty. The Sister had let her off early.