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Authors: Mary Renault
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year, you know, before I came here.”
“You never told me.”
“Didn’t I?” Colonna’s rare but unbreakable reticence dropped, like a steel safety curtain, over some memory. “You’re off duty tomorrow afternoon, aren’t you? Let’s walk and have tea somewhere out.”
“Yes, I’d—no, wait, tomorrow’s Saturday.” The moving of someone else had fitted her, by this time, into the Verdun schedule. “I promised to go to that sculpture exhibition thing.”
“Who the devil with?” asked Colonna, and then began to talk about something else without giving her time to answer.
“I wonder what Matron will say,” Vivian reflected, “when you give notice.”
Colonna told her. She was a good mimic.
Next day in Verdun an old woman died, and the new charge-nurse, Valentine, called Vivian behind the screens to help her with what was necessary. Vivian began to notice her for the first time, because of the grateful reticence with which she worked. During the last months Vivian had learned to excuse indifference at these offices, preferring it to the sentimentality which some nurses thought fit to assume like a kind of badge ritually pinned to their uniform. There stuck particularly in her head the picture of a pink-cheeked girl dressing a dead baby in flowers and muslin, with the dramatised melancholy of a child dressing a doll for a doll’s funeral. “Doesn’t he look sweet?” she said proudly, calling Vivian behind the screen to see.
She realised as the day’s work went on, why Valentine was liked by people who worked for her. She radiated a kind of impersonal comradeship and enjoyment, and, without any deliberate exercise of charm, invited them to work as to an adventure. She was never in doubt. If she ever made mistakes, Vivian was sure she accepted them as the fortune of war, her self-confidence unshaken. Yet behind all her smooth activity there seemed something detached, poised on action and partly satisfied with it, keeping to itself its other needs.
More than the most acrid criticism, Valentine’s mere neighbourhood made Vivian aware of the gulf that still separated her from simple adequacy in her work, still less from any kind of excellence. The thought of Colonna’s departure was still depressing her; and suddenly she began to wonder whether she too had exhausted all that this life could give to her, or, more important, she to it. She thought with longing of the moors at home; of the shabby friendly schoolroom, too much a part of life ever to have changed its name; of her father’s vague, kind, unsurprised welcome, looking up over the book in which half his mind was still entangled; of being free sometimes with Jan. If she gave notice this month, they might canoe up the Loire again in the summer.
Occupied with these thoughts, she had changed into tweeds for a walk alone before she remembered that this was the afternoon when she had promised to meet Mic. She felt that she had no energy just now for social adjustments; but it was too late to think of putting him off. Her tweeds were old and comfortable, and she would have liked to leave them on, but remembered that Mic was poor and difficult and might think she considered him not worth dressing for. She changed into a newer suit, plain too as all her things were, but thinner and better cut.
Mic, when she met him, had on tweeds the exact analogy of those she had taken off, which made her feel a little foolish and unconsciously scratchy. He was in one of his constrained moods and did little to eke out her shortage of conversation. They exchanged civil commonplaces, while Vivian let her mind wander back to Valentine and the ward. It seemed more natural in his company to retreat into her own thoughts than to affect a conscientious brightness. Mic seemed to have reached some similar conclusion.
He was, at least, a comfortable companion for an exhibition, not expecting her to hang over a catalogue with him nor bursting into comment on everything as
“You never told me.”
“Didn’t I?” Colonna’s rare but unbreakable reticence dropped, like a steel safety curtain, over some memory. “You’re off duty tomorrow afternoon, aren’t you? Let’s walk and have tea somewhere out.”
“Yes, I’d—no, wait, tomorrow’s Saturday.” The moving of someone else had fitted her, by this time, into the Verdun schedule. “I promised to go to that sculpture exhibition thing.”
“Who the devil with?” asked Colonna, and then began to talk about something else without giving her time to answer.
“I wonder what Matron will say,” Vivian reflected, “when you give notice.”
Colonna told her. She was a good mimic.
Next day in Verdun an old woman died, and the new charge-nurse, Valentine, called Vivian behind the screens to help her with what was necessary. Vivian began to notice her for the first time, because of the grateful reticence with which she worked. During the last months Vivian had learned to excuse indifference at these offices, preferring it to the sentimentality which some nurses thought fit to assume like a kind of badge ritually pinned to their uniform. There stuck particularly in her head the picture of a pink-cheeked girl dressing a dead baby in flowers and muslin, with the dramatised melancholy of a child dressing a doll for a doll’s funeral. “Doesn’t he look sweet?” she said proudly, calling Vivian behind the screen to see.
She realised as the day’s work went on, why Valentine was liked by people who worked for her. She radiated a kind of impersonal comradeship and enjoyment, and, without any deliberate exercise of charm, invited them to work as to an adventure. She was never in doubt. If she ever made mistakes, Vivian was sure she accepted them as the fortune of war, her self-confidence unshaken. Yet behind all her smooth activity there seemed something detached, poised on action and partly satisfied with it, keeping to itself its other needs.
More than the most acrid criticism, Valentine’s mere neighbourhood made Vivian aware of the gulf that still separated her from simple adequacy in her work, still less from any kind of excellence. The thought of Colonna’s departure was still depressing her; and suddenly she began to wonder whether she too had exhausted all that this life could give to her, or, more important, she to it. She thought with longing of the moors at home; of the shabby friendly schoolroom, too much a part of life ever to have changed its name; of her father’s vague, kind, unsurprised welcome, looking up over the book in which half his mind was still entangled; of being free sometimes with Jan. If she gave notice this month, they might canoe up the Loire again in the summer.
Occupied with these thoughts, she had changed into tweeds for a walk alone before she remembered that this was the afternoon when she had promised to meet Mic. She felt that she had no energy just now for social adjustments; but it was too late to think of putting him off. Her tweeds were old and comfortable, and she would have liked to leave them on, but remembered that Mic was poor and difficult and might think she considered him not worth dressing for. She changed into a newer suit, plain too as all her things were, but thinner and better cut.
Mic, when she met him, had on tweeds the exact analogy of those she had taken off, which made her feel a little foolish and unconsciously scratchy. He was in one of his constrained moods and did little to eke out her shortage of conversation. They exchanged civil commonplaces, while Vivian let her mind wander back to Valentine and the ward. It seemed more natural in his company to retreat into her own thoughts than to affect a conscientious brightness. Mic seemed to have reached some similar conclusion.
He was, at least, a comfortable companion for an exhibition, not expecting her to hang over a catalogue with him nor bursting into comment on everything as
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