was very late for dinner, but the theatre staff were late too, so that there were half a dozen of them sitting at the table. Two of them had taken their exams with Georgina, and, like her, had passed, but unlike her they were leaving to get married just as soon as they could. Listening to their happy chatter, she felt a small shiver of apprehension; supposing Matron’s ‘splendid career’ was to be her lot in life? She pulled herself together with an effort, aware of a discontent quite alien to her nature. She was a very lucky young woman, and Great-Aunt Polly would be delighted.
Gregg was on duty when she got back, and half an hour later Sister went for her rather tardy half day. Georgina was putting a collar and cuff bandage on a small cyclist who had broken a collar-bone and Ned was washing his hands while she did it. Sister had popped her head round the door as she went and wished them a quiet day, and when she had gone he said in the most casual of voices:
‘They’ll make a wonderful pair.’
‘Who?’ she frowned an enquiry as she tucked in loose ends.
‘Good lord, George, do you go around with your head in a bag? Sister and old Bingham, of course.’
Georgina helped the boy on with his coat and tucked the useless sleeve tidily in the pocket, then sent him outside to the clerk’s desk before she replied, ‘They’re going to be married, you mean? I knew they were friends.’ Although now she thought about it, the Registrar did come very often and sometimes unnecessarily to Cas. She took the towel from Ned and dried her own hands, and said gloomily, ‘I’m glad, they’re both dears, but Gregg will be Sister.’
He gave her a quick look. ‘I shouldn’t be too sure of that, George.’
She had straightened the couch, and now began to refurbish the trolley.
‘You know, Ned, this ought to be a marvelous day, and it isn’t. I feel at least forty, with nothing left to live for.’
He turned at the door, laughing. ‘You need a husband, my girl. Who shall he be? Tall, dark, rich and handsome; clever of course, and ready to buy you all the tea in China.’
She made a face at him. ‘That’ll do splendidly to go on with.’
‘Good. In the meanwhile, talking of tea, I’m going to get some—there’s sure to be a cup going in Men’s Surgical. That’s where I’ll be if I’m needed.’
Georgina nodded understandingly. Ned had a roving eye, which had settled, for the time being at least, on the pretty staff nurse on Men’s Surgical. She hoped that there wouldn’t be anything much in, so that he could get his tea in peace.
She went off duty half an hour late and on the way along the corridor to the Nurses’ Home remembered her promise to the mother of the pin-swallowing baby, and had to turn and fly back again and up two flights of worn stone steps to the children’s ward. As she suspected, he had been operated upon that afternoon in order to preclude perforation. He was lying in his cot, still drowsy from the anaesthetic, and his mother was sitting with him. Georgina spent several minutes listening to her troubled little voice, nothing in her relaxed manner betraying her impatience to be gone.
She caught the train by the skin of her teeth. Great-Aunt Polly lived in a small village in Essex, some miles from Thaxted. It had been Georgina’s home, since she had gone to live with Aunt Polly; that had been when she had been a little girl of nine. Her father, a schoolmaster, had died suddenly and unexpectedly from ‘flu, and her mother had died a week or two after him, leaving a bewildered little daughter, as frightened as she was unhappy. Great-Aunt Polly had carried her off to live with her in her small timbered cottage, and had been father and mother to her ever since. Georgina sat in the train, looking out of the window at the dreary London suburbs, thinking about the old lady. She would be able to repay her now with a hundred and one small comforts … She lost herself in a daydream which lasted until the train slowed down at Thaxted. She picked up her case and jumped out, an attractive girl in her well-fitting corduroy coat and high boots.
The small, rather ramshackle local bus from Thaxted, the last from that town for the day, took her to within a stone’s throw of the cottage. The cottage stood a little way down a narrow lane leading off the village street. There was an ancient hornbeam on the corner, and on the opposite side the apple trees at the end of her aunt’s garden, even on a dark November evening, combined to make a lovely picture in the cold moonlight. She unlatched the little gate and walked, a great deal faster now, up the brick path and beat a tattoo on the Georgian brass door-knocker before opening the door and going in. The passage was brick too, a little worn in places and covered with an Afghan rug, also worn, but still splendid. The back door faced her and each wall held two doors, from one of which a plump elderly woman bustled.
‘Miss Georgina! It’s nice to see you, that it is. Miss Rodman’s had her supper and I’ve kept yours hot … put that bag down, and go and see her. Did you pass?’ She peered at Georgina anxiously and was swept into a violent hug.
‘Yes, Moggy, I did. Isn’t it wonderful? I’ll tell Aunt Polly.’
She opened another door and went into the sitting-room where her aunt was waiting. She sat, as she always did, in a stiff-backed chair, her almost useless legs on a little Victorian footstool, her sticks on either side of her, so that she need not ask for help if she should want to get up. She hated to ask for help—Georgina had been almost sixteen when Great-Aunt Polly had been stricken with polio, and could still remember very clearly the look on the old lady’s face when her doctor had told her that it was not very likely that she would walk again. She belonged to a generation who didn’t discuss their ailments; she hadn’t discussed them then, but over the following years she had progressed from wheelchair to crutches, and finally, to sticks. Georgina and Mrs Mogg, who had been with them for as long as she could remember, had watched her struggles and said nothing, knowing that that was what she would wish, but the day Aunt Polly took her first awkward steps with her two sticks Georgina had gone down to the Three Bells in the village, and come back with a bottle of hock under one arm, because she wasn’t sure what to buy anyway, but quite obviously the occasion called for celebration. She crossed the little room now and slid on to her knees beside her aunt’s chair and hugged her, just as she had hugged Moggy, only with a little less vigour because Aunt Polly was a small dainty person despite her will of iron.
‘I’ve passed,’ said Georgina, knowing that that was what her aunt wanted to hear.
Aunt Polly smiled. ‘Yes, dear. I knew you would, of course, but congratulations all the same—I’m very proud of you.’
Mrs Mogg had come in with a tray on which was Georgina’s supper—steak and kidney pudding and a nice assortment of vegetables and a little baked custard for afters. Georgina got up and took the tray from her, put it on the floor and sat down beside it, and Miss Rodman said:
‘Mrs Mogg, will you get the glasses and the Madeira? We must drink to Miss Georgina’s health—and you eat up your supper, child, you must be hungry.’
Georgina fell to. She had an appetite and enjoyed good food. Mrs Mogg came back with the wine, and they sat, the three of them, drinking it from very old, beautiful glasses which she fetched from the corner cupboard. Presently, when she had disposed of the steak and kidney, Georgina told them what Matron had said and Aunt Polly nodded and looked happy, then glanced at her sharply and said, ‘But is that what you want, dear?’
Georgina polished off the last of the custard. ‘Yes, of course, Aunt Polly,’ she said stoutly, and remembered rather clearly that Ned had said that what she wanted was a husband. She turned her back on the thought. ‘Ned told me that sister and old Bingham are going to get married,’ she went on, anxious to talk about something else. ‘That means that Gregg will get Cas, I suppose. I expect I shall get a Junior Night Sister’s post to start with anyway, and that won’t be for quite while yet, I shall hate working with Gregg.’
‘You might marry,’ said Mrs Mogg chattily, Georgina gave her a wide smile. ‘Oh, Moggy, who? I only meet the housemen, and they’re far too busy and penniless to marry, and if you’re thinking of rich consultants, they’re all married. Besides, it will be nice