The Fateful Bargain. Betty Neels

main entrance, to get into the dark grey Bentley parked outside and drive himself away.

      Emily finished her round and went back to Sister’s desk to con the day report and check that she had done everything necessary. Pearson’s was in the process of being modernised, but the Medical Wing was to be the last to be updated, so that instead of the nurses’ stations, smaller wards and day rooms with TV, and elaborate systems connecting patients with nurses, the ward she was on was long and narrow; ten beds on either side with a table in the centre and bathrooms and sluice room at the far end; in the early hours of the morning, when their energy was at its lowest ebb, leaving the desk to go to the sluice room seemed like a day’s journey. All the same, the ward was a cheerful place, mainly because the Sister in charge of it was young and cheerful herself.

      Emily shrouded the desk lamp with a red cloth, opened the Report Book and Kardex, and bent her neat head over them. Two barium meals for the next day, she noted; they would have to be started at a busy time of their morning too, and both ladies were bad patients. They would roll the narrow catheter round and round in their mouths instead of swallowing it, and precious minutes would be lost… She smiled at her junior nurse as she drew up a chair and sat down beside her; she liked Stella, who worked hard and didn’t grumble overmuch at the endless bedpans and cups of tea which made up a major share of her night’s work. They shared the work as much as possible, but inevitably Emily had to leave her to it when there was treatment of any sort.

      The night went slowly and then, as it usually did, merged into a brief two hours or so of intense activity—rousing the patients with cups of tea, seeing that they went along to the bathrooms, sometimes a slow business with the elderlies who couldn’t hurry and often needed an arm, doing a round with one of the Night Sisters, writing the Report, giving out medicines with her and then the final mad rush to be ready for the moment Sister came on duty. Emily went off duty at last and, careless of her appearance, ate her breakfast, exchanging sleepy gossip with the other night nurses, dragged on her coat and went out into the early morning.

      The sun was shining and she breathed in the chilly air with pleasure; even if it were tainted with petrol fumes from the passing buses and the whiff from a refuse lorry, it was pleasant after a night spent in the closed ward. She made a brisk beeline for the Tube, reflecting with pleasure that pay-day was on the following morning. She would go home, she decided recklessly, taking Podge with her in his basket. She had nights off, five of them, because she had had to cut her last lot short to fill a gap owing to the night nurse on Men’s Medical having ‘flu… She began to do sums in her head. She was still doing them as she unlocked her door and scooped up a welcoming Podge.

      ‘A little holiday,’ she promised him as she fumbled to fill his saucer, ‘and soon I’ll be on day duty and you won’t be lonely any more.’

      She reflected as she got ready for bed that she would have started her third year before the next pay-day, and that would mean more money—another five or six months and there would be enough saved for the first operation. She would get hold of Day Sister and ask her the best way to set about it. Emily closed her eyes, intending to go to sleep, but instead she found herself thinking about the man who had almost knocked her over. He had sounded cross and impatient at first. Perhaps he had his worries too—a wife and children? A mortgage? A car that hadn’t passed its MOT? She dozed off without bothering to answer her own questions.

      Two days later she packed her shoulder-bag, fastened Podge into his basket and went home, a fairly simple journey since the hospital was in the East End and on the South Bank of the Thames; Waterloo Station was a short bus ride away and there was a local train service to Eynsford.

      She sat in the train, one hand on Podge’s basket, and looked out at the Kent countryside, quiet and still green under the autumn sun. One day, she promised herself, she would leave London and get a post in a country town—Canterbury, perhaps, Rochester, even Tunbridge Wells, none of them too far away from her home. She would have a Sister’s post, of course… Her thoughts became woolly; she had been up all night and, even though she would have a nap when she got home, she still had to get there. She pulled her tired wits together as the train drew into the station, and got out.

      Her father lived on the edge of the village. She passed the old Tollhouse at the junction of Sparepenny Lane with the road leading to the ford, and turned down a lane leading to a row of charming cottages. The end one was home; Emily went up the short garden path between the neglected flowerbeds and opened the solid wooden door.

      Her father was sitting in his wheelchair, reading; with the kettle boiling its head off too. Emily put Podge’s basket down, kissed her father, turned off the gas under the kettle and cast off her outdoor things.

      Her father surveyed her with pleasure. ‘What a delightful surprise, Emily! You’re here for a few days?’

      He couldn’t disguise the eagerness in his voice and she answered quickly, ‘Nights off, Father; four whole days after today. I’ll make us a cup of coffee and you can bring me up to date with all the news. How are you?’

      Mr Grenfell eyed her lovingly. ‘Managing very well, my dear. Night duty finished? Have you been very busy?’

      They exchanged their news over coffee while Podge, who had been there before, crept around reviving his memory of the place. Satisfied that it hadn’t changed, he drank the saucer of milk he was offered and curled up on a chair in the sun.

      Emily drank her coffee in sleepy content; it was lovely to be home again. She glanced round the comfortable, rather shabby room, at the comfortable chairs, the Welsh dresser with its complement of rather nice china plates and dishes, the balloon-backed chairs with their mid-Victorian seats which somehow looked quite right with the cricket table. The room was a hotch-potch of charming antique furniture, which, after years of being together, blended nicely. Emily’s eye noted the dust under the dresser; after a good night’s sleep she would give the cottage a thorough clean. Mrs Owen was a dear old thing and willing and very kind, but she had neither the time nor the strength to do more than tidy up each day.

      Because she had wanted to talk about him ever since she had met him, Emily told her father about the man who had almost knocked her over on that wet and windy morning. She made a joke of it and joined in her father’s amusement, but somewhere deep inside her that wistful longing to meet him again was definitely there. Only, she told herself, so that she could see if she liked him; after that she would forget him; he was too unsettling.

      Not too difficult to forget him during the next day or two, as it turned out. Her days were full as she polished and Hoovered, dug the garden and weeded and played bezique with her father. She renewed friendships in the village too, with people who had known her since she was a little girl and who were full of kindly curiosity about her life in London. Emily answered them all in her friendly, matter-of-fact way, told them frankly that she had no young man and no prospect of one either, and lent a sympathetic ear to complaints of illness, naughty children and tiresome grandparents. Perhaps she should be a health visitor or something similar, she mused as she walked back home.

      The evening before she went back to the hospital, she and her father had a talk. He had already told her that his arthritis was getting slowly worse, certainly more painful, and although he had made light of it, she sensed his worry.

      ‘Would it be possible to mortgage the cottage?’

      ‘My dear child, that’s been done some years ago—your mother’s illness…’

      ‘There’s nothing we can sell?’

      ‘There would be very little money left by the time I’d redeemed the mortgage, my dear, and how could we afford to find a house to rent, or even a flat?’ He added slowly, ‘I could go into a geriatric ward…’

      ‘Over my dead body!’ declared Emily. ‘Let’s keep on as we are and hope for the best.’

      She hated leaving her father. London, sprawling to meet her as she sat in the train, looked drab. She was aware that large parts of the city were elegant, with spacious squares and quiet streets lined with lovely old houses, and sometimes on her nights off she would take a bus to St James’s Park, eat her sandwiches there, and