Purposes of Love Read Free Page B

such a windbag. Before he’s got to the point I’m always asl—”
    “Do get on, ” said the staff-nurse. “What do you think we’re having an extra nurse for?”
    When the beds were made Sister Verdun arrived to read prayers. She was a little fretted woman with an anxious bun, entering with a sense of grievance on middle-age. Rising from her knees, she began at once to run poking about the ward like a hen after maize, finding this and that undone and not waiting for the offender to appear, but making a clucking pursuit into passage, bathroom or sluice. She had the patients’ letters in her hand, and, as she darted about, stopped occasionally to distribute one and to say something with eager, brittle geniality. Vivian, dusting, pictured her twenty years back; a popular, skittish little nurse, nervous of responsibility but goaded up the ladder by an inferiority complex and the impossibility of standing still.
    One of the probationers, fresh, round and smiling, was making a patient laugh as she flicked round the bed. Vivian saw the Sister’s face swing round like a sharp little compass needle. She began moving down the ward towards them; but the probationer had pushed the bed back and passed on to the next.
    Presently Colonna went up to the desk to ask about some treatment or other. When she had gone Vivian, who was dusting a light-bracket close by, heard Sister Verdun say to the staff-nurse, “I hoped she was only temporary. Don’t like her. Can’t make these girls out who cut their hair off to look like boys. I’ve seen her out. She’ll never make a nurse. Too many outside interests.”
    Half an hour later, when Vivian was cleaning up the bathroom, the staff-nurse came in to say, “Sister says you can have an evening.”
    “Thank you,” said Vivian unemotionally.
    “You lucky devil,” said the little round probationer. “I was dying for an evening, and I’ve got a morning.”
    “I’d rather have a morning too.” Vivian looked round; the staff-nurse had not gone. “Do you think Sister would let us change?”
    “Sister never changes off-duty time. She bit my head off last time I asked her so I’m not going to again.” The staff-nurse went out. Vivian spent the morning doing blanket baths.
    As she was putting round the knives and forks for dinner, Kimball intercepted her in a corner and asked, “Did Sister let you take your call?”
    “What call?”
    “Someone rang up for you twenty minutes ago. A man’s voice. I had to tell Sister because I knew she’d heard the bell.”
    “It must have been my brother. I was to have met him this morning.”
    “Oh, bad luck.”
    “Silly of him to ring me up on the ward.”
    “She might have told you he did, though.”
    “Yes,” said Vivian without excitement. She had long ago realised that any personal life had to be lived in the hospital’s teeth, and continual protest made the effort more tiring.
    “Is there anything you want to know, Nurse Lingard?” Sister had come in from the linen room. “If there’s anything about the patients’ diets you don’t understand, ask me, not a second-year nurse.”
    Extra beds told most on the probationers, whose routine included every patient while the seniors’ treatments did not; but somehow, always by the skin of their teeth, they got it through nearly to time. When, sticky and aching, Vivian got down to tea at a quarter to six, she found a note in her pigeonhole.
    “I’m sorry I rang you up,” Jan wrote. “And I’m afraid you are too by now. I’ll be with Mic at 20a High Street all day, painting floors, if you can get out. If you’re not there in the afternoon I’ll expect you at half-past five.” Vivian looked at the clock, shrugged her shoulders, and finished her cup of tea.
    “Doing anything? “Kimball, ignoring a table occupied by members of her own year, slipped in beside her.
    “My brother wants me to go round this evening.”
    “Oh. Well, I’m glad you won’t miss him. What is he, by the