Nurse Errant Read online

  Nurse Errant

  Lucilla Andrews

  Copyright © The Estate of Lucilla Andrews 2018

  This edition first published 2018 by Corazon Books

  (Wyndham Media Ltd)

  27, Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX

  First published 1961

  www.lucillaandrews.com

  The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, organisations and events are a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organisations and events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Cover artwork images © Andrew Fletcher Amelia Fox karkas rido stockfour (Shutterstock)

  Cover artwork design © Wyndham Media Ltd

  Also by Lucilla Andrews

  from Corazon Books

  The Print Petticoat

  The Secret Armour

  The Quiet Wards

  The First Year

  A Hospital Summer

  My Friend the Professor

  One Night in London (The Jason Trilogy Book 1)

  A Weekend in the Garden (The Jason Trilogy Book 2)

  In an Edinburgh Drawing Room (The Jason Trilogy Book 3)

  Corazon Books is reissuing

  all of Lucilla Andrews’s novels.

  Be the first to know about the next reissue

  by signing up to our free newsletter.

  Go to www.lucillaandrews.com

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Preview: Also by Lucilla Andrews

  Preview: A Nurse’s Life by Jane Grant

  Preview: A Country Practice by Judith Colquhoun

  Preview: The Country Doctor by Jean McConnell

  Preview: A Doctor’s life by Robert Clifford

  Preview: Home from Home by Cath Cole

  Preview: City Hospital by Keith Miles

  For DOROTHY and GEORGE

  Chapter One

  MAN OFF A ROOF

  The telephone woke me that morning. ‘Nurse, I do apologise for disturbing you so early on your day off,’ said old Dr Grimmond’s voice, ‘but I want to say good-bye to you before leaving for hospital.’

  ‘Hospital, Dr Grimmond?’ I was awake now.

  ‘I’m afraid so, Nurse. You know that specialist, Ferguson, I mentioned to you? I spoke to him yesterday, and he thinks I should go into St Martin’s for a spell to-day. When I said I could not possibly get away at such short notice he even produced a locum for me. A man called Ellis, who has recently been his registrar. Ellis came down last night and takes over this morning. So my wife and I are taking the fast eight-thirty to London.’

  ‘Doctor, I am sorry.’ I was, too. ‘I do hope all goes well with you in Martin’s.’

  ‘It will. Ferguson’s a good man. He’ll put me right. I’m only sorry to have to leave my practice. But I expect Ellis will do very well ‒ and, incidentally, Nurse, there’s one thing more ‒ those bulbs.’

  ‘Bulbs?’ I echoed absently, my mind on his news.

  ‘Those assorted daffodil bulbs I said I’d let you have last week after our Baby Clinic. They ought to go in at once, so I’ll get Ellis to drop them in some time this morning when he comes over to your village to look at the Withers children. Get them in quickly. They should make a good show next spring.’

  I promised I would, wished him good luck, and he rang off. I put down the receiver thoughtfully. I had known he had not been well for some time, but it had never occurred to me his condition was as serious as it obviously was. No specialist would have insisted on removing a busy country G.P. in midweek without good reason. He was going to be missed by many people, including myself. Ever since my arrival in the village a few months ago, he had helped me tremendously. He really was a family doctor, had built his scattered practice into an enormous family during the last thirty years, knew every other person on the marsh by his or her Christian name, and was known as the Old Doctor in each of the seventeen marsh villages.

  I was far too awake to consider going back to sleep. I dressed, and went down to cook breakfast and wear off some of my concern in energy.

  My sister Ann came into the kitchen a few minutes after me. ‘Lesley, darling, what are you doing up? Forgotten it’s your day off? And my promise to bring you breakfast in bed?’

  ‘I felt energetic,’ I said, and explained.

  ‘Darling, I am sorry. He’s an old pet. How sweet of him to remember the bulbs.’

  ‘And typical. He’s a good man, Annie. Bacon?’

  ‘Thanks.’ She helped herself to tea. ‘Who’s this Ellis? Another old-timer?’

  ‘Doubt it. He’s recently been a registrar at Martin’s.’ The frying-pan began to splutter, so I moved it off the hotplate. ‘I’ll tell you more this evening. He’s bringing the bulbs when he comes over to see the Withers infants. Measles.’ I glanced at the clock. ‘Honey, if you’re going to get that train you’ll have to move.’

  ‘When I’ve had some food.’ She reached for the cereal, and ate standing. ‘I’m hollow this morning.’

  Ann was always hollow despite a massive appetite. No matter how much she ate, she never put on extra weight. She was very fair, very slim, not exactly pretty, but in certain moods could look quite beautiful.

  I was four years older. Our parents had been killed in a car accident when she was in her last term at boarding-school and I was half-way through my general hospital training. We had been left with only one living relative, a great-aunt who had come magnificently to our rescue, paid for Ann’s secretarial training, and later bequeathed us the cottage that was now our home.

  The cottage and our village stood on the edge of the great marsh over a hundred miles from London. During our great-aunt’s lifetime she had seemed to us to live in a different world to our own, and we had only been able to afford visiting her occasionally. It had never dawned on us that we would one day live in her village. Then she died a few years back, and her solicitor travelled to London to show us her will and discuss the cottage. ‘No doubt you wish me to sell it for you, Miss Sanders? It is too far off the map for your hospital work or your sister’s commercial career.’

  When he said that, Ann and I had looked at each other and had the same idea. The cottage meant we could have a home again. A home was something we had lost with our parents. We were instantly determined to work out some scheme that would allow us to work and keep the cottage.

  It was the matron of my hospital who showed us the way. She advised me to train as a district nurse. ‘Let the cottage furnished for the time being, Nurse Sanders. Once trained, apply to work in or near the village. There must be a market-town reasonably near in which your sister could obtain a secretarial post. Good secretaries are in demand all over the country.’

  At first our plans seemed to drag, then quite suddenly they speeded up. Seven months ago I was given the job I wanted in our village. Ann followed me from London after six of those months. She had had to stay in town, as she had promised her previous boss not to leave until the holiday season was over.

  As my matron had guessed, there was a market-town ten miles away. It took Ann only a couple of days to find a job as secretary and bookkeeper t
o the owner of an antique shop in the High Street there. The local branch-line railway-station was only two miles from our cottage. Every morning Ann cycled over the winding marsh road. She never left until the last possible second, and so far had never missed her train.

  That morning was no different. ‘Lesley, have you seen that big parcel I had for Mrs Graves?’ she bellowed, clattering downstairs tying a scarf round her head. ‘It’s a clock we‘ve had repaired for her. I told my boss I’d leave it with her on my way last night or this morning.’

  ‘It’s on the hall table, but you can’t possibly take time off to deliver it. You’ve barely ten minutes. I’ll take it round in the car.’

  ‘Sure it won’t be a bore, darling? I’d be awfully grateful. Thanks.’ She blew me a kiss and tore out to the shed.

  I went down to open the front gate for her and wave her off, then stayed outside. It was one of those early autumn mornings when the whole world seems golden. Yesterday we had had a violent gale blowing in from the sea, but it had blown itself out in the night, and the air was quiet, crisp, and very clean.

  I strolled round to the back and looked across the marsh. It curled inland for miles along that part of the coast, and was broken by the dark-brown slits of the dykes that pointed long fingers towards the faint line of the sea-wall and the invisible sea.

  Our cottage, like all the old buildings on the marsh, was built with a long, sloping, windowless roof that reached to just above the kitchen door on the weather side, the back. The small building seemed crouched on its knees with shoulders hunched against the marsh winds; not in fear, but simply as if it had learned that was the way to take the gales that had been hurled against it in the four hundred years which had gone by since it was built.

  It had stood solidly yesterday, not a tile had shifted, but the garden was wrecked. Black, green, and red blackberries were strewn everywhere. The last of the late roses were scattered on the front lawn; the currant bushes were half-uprooted and shrivelled, the lavender was dead. But in the flower borders the chrysanthemums and Michaelmas daisies were battered but brilliant splashes of colour.

  I collected a spade from the shed, replanted the currant bushes, then went in to get on with the chores. Domestic work was still a novelty to me, and I liked pottering round, cleaning peacefully, shifting bits of furniture, and rearranging cupboards. Not that anything needed shifting or rearranging; our great-aunt had been an orderly old lady with excellent taste. But being able to shift and rearrange underlined the glorious fact that it was our home to do as we liked in.

  I had just placed a red-plush winged armchair in a new position when a car drew up behind our front hedge. The hedge was too high for me to see the car, and I wondered if it was the locum and if he would object to finding the district nurse in a sweater and slacks.

  I tidied my hair quickly but ineffectually in the hall mirror, and opened the front door as our vicar’s wife shut the front gate.

  ‘Nurse, I’m so glad I found you in.’ She hurried up the path and thrust a cardboard cake-box at me. ‘My girls and I have been experimenting with a new scone recipe. They’ve turned out so well that I brought you some. I know you have little time for ‒’ She broke off as a second car drew up, and this time at our gate. ‘Another visitor for you.’

  A tallish, sturdy young man in a neat, dark suit and carrying a medical case came briskly up the path. He made for Mrs Carter. ‘Nurse Sanders?’ he asked politely. ‘My name is Ellis.’

  ‘Oh, dear me, no!’ Mrs Carter beamed. ‘This is Nurse Sanders.’

  I was gaping open-mouthed. The spruce newcomer bore little resemblance to the very untidy rugger-playing student and houseman I knew back at St Hilary’s; even the lines of his face had altered. The Mike Ellis I remembered had been anything but a severe young man. All the same, I knew him. I stepped forward. ‘Mike Ellis, it has to be you!’

  He set down his case and gaped just as I had done. He could not have seemed more surprised if I had announced that I had come from the other side of the moon.

  ‘Lesley Sanders!’ He smiled suddenly, and came towards me with both hands outstretched. ‘Is it really you?’

  I was delighted to see him again. We had never been great friends, but we had always got on very well. What was more now, we had walked the same wards, been scolded by the same ward sisters, danced at the same dances, gossiped the same gossip, knew the same people.

  ‘It’s me, Mike. I’m the village nurse ‒ and you’re the locum!’ I drew my hands away and turned to the still beaming vicar’s wife. ‘Mrs Carter, do forgive me and let me introduce my old friend from St Hilary’s, Dr Ellis.’

  She shook his hand warmly. ‘Such a happy reunion. How charming!’

  ‘Won’t you both come in and have some coffee?’ I suggested.

  ‘My dear, I’d love to ‒ but I have to rush back to my girls.’ She shook Mike’s hand again. ‘Nurse must bring you up to the vicarage to meet my husband. We must have a little party!’

  He said he would like that, but she must not go because of him. ‘I’d like to stay, but really must get on, as I’ve a lot of visits. I only called in to introduce myself and deliver some bulbs which are still in my car.’

  Mrs Carter insisted on leaving us together. ‘I know you must both have so much to say to each other. I refuse to intrude one more minute! Good-bye, Nurse, dear. I shall be seeing you! You, too, Doctor!’ She wagged an arch finger at us. ‘We must have that little party!’

  He watched her go, then shook his head at me. ‘Lesley, I’m still not sure I believe all this. I didn’t even know you had taken up District, much less exiled yourself in these wilds.’

  ‘No exile, Mike. Behold, my home.’ I told him about our legacy. ‘You’ll like it down here. It’s a nice spot filled with nice people. And they’ll like you.’

  He considered me, thoughtfully. ‘You haven’t changed at all. You don’t know how good it is to be able to say that in a changing world.’ He sighed. ‘I’m getting old. I find I’ve a yen for a home, these days.’

  I knew how he felt. I had so often felt the same in the old days when homes were places other people had.

  ‘Any time you feel like dropping in for a meal or a chat, just come along here. Ann and I adore entertaining. And, incidentally, you must meet her.’

  ‘I’ll take you up on that, Lesley. Thanks.’ He produced his visiting-book. ‘Now I’m here, can you tell me where these Withers children live?’

  I walked down to the car, directed him, and collected my bulbs. ‘It’s been nice seeing you, Mike.’

  His old smile transformed his new face. ‘I’ll say!’

  I went back indoors and noticed Mrs Graves’s parcel in the hall. I had forgotten my promise to Ann. I decided to deliver it before I forgot again or someone else called. My urban friends often asked me what I found to do in the country when I was off-duty. I had not yet had time in which to discover the answer to that one. What with the cottage, the garden, and our very sociable neighbours, my free time was as hectic as my working week.

  Mrs Graves lived three miles out of the village. She was a general’s widow, her children had long grown-up and married, and seemed to be living in either Kenya or Canada. She was a magnificently tough old Edwardian who never complained of loneliness, the effect of the rising cost of living on her stationary pension, or her very bad arthritis. Instead she kept an open house for any stray grandchildren in the school holidays, and odd nieces and nephews for occasional weekends in between.

  I was about half a mile from her cottage when I saw her tall, spare figure leaning on her well-known ebony stick at the bus-stop just before the turning to the railway-station. I stopped the car and walked over to her.

  ‘Oh, no, m’dear,’ she boomed when she had heard about the parcel, ‘I did hope it would come to-day, but I wasn’t worried. It’s only an old clock of which I’m rather fond. How kind of you to have brought it over. If you’ll let me have it now I’ll take it along with me.’

  �
�It’s very heavy. Can’t I take it along for you? Is anyone at your cottage to let me in?’

  Her slightly rigid face relaxed in a charming smile. ‘Would you, m’dear? I’d be most grateful. My nephew, Patrick Larraby, is staying with me. He has come to escort me to Dublin for our wedding. That’s why I’m now bound for the hairdresser’s!’

  ‘Mrs Graves, how splendid! When’s the wedding?’

  ‘Tomorrow. We are flying over from London tonight. I am so looking forward to seeing my sister and her family, and as the bridegroom is my godson as well as my nephew, of course I must be there!’

  ‘Of course you must. I hope you have a wonderful time. How long will you be away?’

  ‘Just a week. That’s why I did hope that clock would be back to-day. I would not have liked your sister to make the journey and find no one in. Would you be very kind and leave it just inside the front door? It is unlocked. My nephew is probably still asleep. I left him in bed.’ She glanced at her fob watch. ‘How provoking! This bus is late. I could have rung George Mercer about my roof after all.’

  George Mercer was the local builder. ‘Gale damage?’

  ‘Yes, indeed, Nurse. I was afraid the roof would blow right off, and was so glad to have my dear nephew with me for company.’ She smiled indulgently. ‘Nothing worries that dear boy. He’s such a comfort. But, alas, at least thirty tiles are off and I want George to see to it while I’m away. Ah ‒ here is the bus!’

  Her cottage was hidden behind high hedges. It stood alone on that stretch of marsh, and because of the hedges was invisible to anyone not in an aeroplane. The gate was so overhung that I had to stoop to go in. I wondered how Mrs Graves managed, since she was very much taller than I was, and then why one of her nephews did not do something about it. This particular nephew, for instance, could easily cut it back instead of spending half the morning in bed, even if he was on the brink of marriage.

  She could have used some help in her garden, too. The gale had left the same havoc as in ours, but because of her arthritis she could not replant and stake the many uprooted shrubs and bushes. Nephews, I thought, huh! Why couldn’t this one even pick up the fragments of broken tiles that were strewn around everywhere. Elderly Edwardian ladies worry about appearances. The appearance of that garden was bad enough to spoil poor old Mrs Graves’s wedding.