LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER ONE

      SISTER HENRIETTA BRODIE yawned as she climbed the last few treads of the staircase leading to Women’s Medical; she had stayed up late the night before, listening, with three other Ward Sisters, to Agnes Bent, who had Men’s Medical and was leaving to get married in a few weeks’ time and had still to solve the knotty problem of whether to wear a hat or a veil at her wedding. She was a girl of gentle nature, easily swayed by other opinions, and the argument had gone on until after midnight. Henrietta had rather enjoyed it; she liked Agnes, who was pretty enough to wear whatever she fancied and look lovely, but the others had been divided in their opinions, so that the discussion, prolonged with several pots of tea, had gone on for longer than she had bargained for, and when she had at last got to bed, it was to lie awake until the small hours.

       Agnes’ happy chatter had reminded her that she was going to be twenty-nine in a week’s time, and what was worse, she had recently refused Roger Thorpe, the chief pharmacist at St Clement’s, for the second time, and she didn’t think that he would ask her again. If she had had any relatives to advise her, they would probably have told her that she had been silly to have given up the chance of marrying such a worthy man—her own age, steady and serious and hard-working. And so dull, added Henrietta to herself. Roger hadn’t been the first man to ask her to marry him, but he could possibly be the last.

       She had sat up in bed at three o’clock in the morning, struck by the sobering thought that twenty-nine was only a year from thirty. Had she been foolish? Roger had all the makings of a good husband, and yet, she had reflected, he had accepted her refusal with a lukewarm regret; he might have been disappointed, but he hadn’t been heartbroken. Her tired mind registered that fact while it had wondered in a nebulous fashion if she would ever meet a man who was neither too worthy nor dull, and who, if she were fool enough to refuse him, would follow her ruthlessly until she changed her mind—he would have to be rich, because she was poor, and good-looking, and because she was tall and well built, he would have to be bigger than she was… She had slid back against the pillow, and slept on the idea.

       She remembered it all very clearly now as she crossed the landing to her office, her ears registering the various ward sounds; the breakfast things being collected on to the trolleys, the swish of the curtains as the nurses started to draw them round the beds, the metallic clink of bedpans from the far end of the ward and Mrs Pim’s shrill old voice calling: ‘Nurse, Nurse!’ just as she always did after each and every breakfast. But nothing untoward—Henrietta nodded to herself and opened the office door.

       The night nurses were waiting for her, and so was her staff nurse, Joan Legg. She wished them good morning in her quiet, pretty voice, and sat down at her desk. The Kardex was open at the first patient’s name, ready for her to read, but instead she asked: ‘Did you have a good night, Nurse Cutts? That new case—Miss Crow—was the sedation enough or do you want a bigger dose for tonight?’

       She looked up and smiled at the student nurse she was talking to, and the smile lighted the whole of her lovely face. Henrietta might be eight or nine years older than her companions, but it was difficult to see that. She was a tall girl, built on generous lines without being plump, with a creamy skin and dark hair curling gently which she pinned up ruthlessly into a bun. Her mouth was kind as well as generously curved and her eyes were dark and thickly lashed. The student nurse, meeting their inquiring gaze and knowing all about the chief pharmacist, thought it a good thing that Sister Brodie had refused him. She was too dishy to be wasted on anyone so ordinary; she ought to marry someone dramatic—tall and dark and a little wicked…

       ‘Nurse?’ Henrietta’s voice was inquiring, and Cutts abandoned her ideas for her superior’s future happiness and plunged into a businesslike account of the night’s work.

       When the night nurses had gone, Henrietta got up, rearranged her frilled muslin cap before the tiny mirror, tweaked the bow under her chin to a more dignified angle and went to look out of the window. ‘Now let’s see,’ she said, ‘there’s the barium meal at ten and three X-rays, and Mrs Pim to persuade to go down to Physio—get them started on the bed-baths, will you, Legg? I’ll be out in a minute.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘God won’t be here until half past ten, but we’d better be ready by ten if we can manage it.’

       She was referring to the senior consultant, Sir Cuthbert Cornish, whose day it was to do a ward round. He was a peppery man, very tall and thin, with a booming voice which reduced the younger nurses to a state of mindless jelly; a bedside manner which charmed his patients and a confirmed opinion that he was always right. He nearly always was; Henrietta liked him, and not being afraid of his loud voice, treated him

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