of my sight, Matron. You bet I won’t.’
‘It’ll be out of your sight when you’re asleep, Mr Glossop.’
‘I won’t—’
Matron shook her head. ‘No. I can’t take the responsibility. We’ll give you a shake-down in the anteroom to the Surgery. I don’t expect you’ll be disturbed, but we can’t have the door locked, our medicines are stored in there and I can’t guarantee something won’t be needed in the night. The money’s done up in separate lots, isn’t it?’
‘It is, yes. I’ve got it down to a system. Standardized rates of pay, you know. I could lay my hand on anybody’s pay with my eyes shut. Each lot in a separate envelope. My system.’
‘In that case,’ said Matron briskly, ‘a large canvas bag will do nicely.’
She took one, folded neatly, from the back of the safe. ‘There you are. I’ll get you to put it in that and you’d better watch me lock it up.’
With an air of sulky resignation, Mr Glossop emptied one after another of the many compartments in his japanned box, snapping rubber bands round each group of envelopes before he stowed them in the bag. The Matron watched him, controlling any impatience that may have been aroused by the slow coarse movements of his hands. In the last and largest compartment lay a wad of pound notes held down by a metal clip.
‘I haven’t made these up yet,’ Mr Glossop said. ‘Ran out of envelopes.’
‘You’d better count them, hadn’t you?’
‘There’s a hundred, Matron, and five pounds in coins.’ He wetted his thumb disagreeably and flipped the notes over.
‘Dirty things,’ said the Matron unexpectedly.
‘They look lovely to me,’ Mr Glossop rejoined and gave a stuttering laugh.
He fastened the notes, dropped them in the bag and shovelled the coins after them. Matron tied the neck of the bag with a piece of string from her desk. ‘Wait a moment,’ she said. ‘There’s a stick of sealing-wax in the top right-hand drawer. Will you give it to me?’
‘You are particular,’ sighed Mr Glossop.
‘I prefer to be business-like. Have you a match?’
He gave her his box of matches and whistled between his teeth while she melted the sealing-wax and sealed the knot. ‘There!’ she said. ‘Now put it in the safe, if you please.’
Mr Glossop with difficulty compressed himself into a squatting posture before the safe. The light from the office lamp glistened upon his tight greasy curls and along the rolls of fat at the back of his neck and the bulging surface of his shoulders and arms. As he pushed the bag into the lower half of the safe he might have been a votary of some monetary god. Grunting slightly he slammed the door. Matron, with sharp bird-like movements, locked the safe and returned the key to her pocket. Mr Glossop struggled to his feet. ‘Now we needn’t worry ourselves,’ said Matron.
As she turned to leave, the little nurse from the Records Office appeared in the doorway. ‘Yes?’ Matron said. ‘Do you want me?’
‘Father O’Sullivan has come, Matron.’
Beyond the nurse stood a priest with a nakedly pink face and combed-back silver hair. He carried a small case and appeared impatient to see the Matron.
‘Excuse me, Mr Glossop, this is quite urgent, you know. I’ll send someone to fetch you to the Surgery anteroom,’ Matron said, and folding her hands at her waist walked out into the yard leaving Mr Glossop wiping his brow at the exertion he had just endured. He heard their voices die away as they moved off in the direction of Mr Brown’s private room.
‘… not long …’
‘… Ah … such a time … Is he …?’
‘… Very. Failing rapidly, but then he does keep rallying. It can’t possibly go on, of course. I’m not one to believe in miracles, although with the storm …’
The telephone in the Records Office pealed and the little nurse hurried back to answer it. To Mr Glossop her voice sounded like an echo: ‘… Mr Brown’s condition is very low,’ she was saying. ‘Yes, I’m afraid so … failing rapidly.’
Mr Glossop gazed vacantly across the yard at Military 1. His attention was arrested by something white that shifted in the porch entrance. He moved a little closer and then, since he was of a curious disposition and extremely short-sighted, several paces closer still. He was profoundly disconcerted to find himself staring up into Sister Comfort’s rimless spectacles.
‘Beg pardon, I’m sure,’ he stammered. ‘I didn’t know—getting dark, isn’t it? My mistake!’
‘Not at all,’ said Sister Comfort. ‘I could see you quite clearly. Good night.’
She stalked off, down the steps and along the yard, no doubt to harangue yet another benighted soldier, and Mr Glossop turned away with elephantine airiness.
‘Now what the hell,’ he wondered, ‘is that old cow up to?’
While Matron took Father O’Sullivan to minister to Mr Brown, Mr Glossop spent the next twenty minutes fidgeting and worrying in her office. He sat first in the chair opposite Matron’s desk, a lower chair than the one behind her desk, ideal for chastising foolhardy young nurses and miscreant soldiers, he assumed. He loosened his tie still further and rolled up the sleeves of his creased shirt. ‘Too damn hot by half,’ he thought, hoping Matron was right and the storm that had been threatening for days would finally make its way over the mountains tonight, clearing the air. ‘Not too wet though,’ he added to his wishes, ‘that damn bridge is worrisome enough, without the river rising as well.’ The chair creaking beneath his weight, he struggled to his feet and paced several times around Matron’s office. With effort, he bent down and tried the handle on the safe, reassuring himself that it was secure. He looked outside again, across to the row of wards and along the collection of offices hoping that Matron might be on her way back. He wanted someone to sort him out with that cot for the night, he wanted to get some sleep, and above all, he wanted to be on his way with his stack of cash, far too much money to be sitting way the hell out here, locked safe or no.
Wiping his brow and muttering dire imprecations against the weather, the Central Office, the roads and the general state of the nation in wartime, he sat down again, this time in Matron’s own chair. Her desk was covered in papers and he absent-mindedly flicked through them, misplacing the carefully-ordered typed pages of accounts and the hand-written notes.
He shook himself when he realized what he’d done, he’d hate to get in Matron’s bad books and he replaced the sheets carefully one on top of the other, grumbling to himself, ‘If I don’t get away from here at the crack of dawn there’ll be hell to pay, four more rounds to do. Four more and all of them to be paid before Christmas Day with the shops closing up soon enough and turkeys and stuffing and whatnot to cross off the lists. Hell to pay. None of it down to me, not a bit. I told them that old banger had no more in her. If I said it once, I said it a dozen times. I need a new van and hang the expense. Well, now they know the cost.’
Matron checked her watch as she returned to her office. A lovely silver watch, held on an elegant bar, it was given to her by a young man she’d known long ago. He had shyly offered it up just before he left for the last war, the one they had promised would end them all. They had been wrong and the young man had not returned. Not a day passed that she didn’t think of him, and not in a foolish way either, she admitted to herself, standing at the door to her office looking at the dozing irritant that was Mr Glossop, seated in her own chair. With a start, she noticed the papers on her desk had been moved, she crossed to the desk and, making no attempt to keep quiet for the sleeping interloper, she gathered the papers together, settling them once more with a satisfying thump.
‘Well, there we are,’ Glossop woke with a start, pretending he had only closed his eyes for a short while. ‘And how’s it with—you