Henrietta's Own Castle. Betty Neels
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of the night’s work.
When the night nurses had gone, Henrietta got up, rearranged her frilled muslin cap before the tiny mirror, tweaked the bow under her chin to a more dignified angle and went to look out of the window. ‘Now let’s see,’ she said, ‘there’s the barium meal at ten and three X-rays, and Mrs Pim to persuade to go down to Physio—get them started on the bed-baths, will you, Legg? I’ll be out in a minute.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘God won’t be here until half past ten, but we’d better be ready by ten if we can manage it.’
She was referring to the senior consultant, Sir Cuthbert Cornish, whose day it was to do a ward round. He was a peppery man, very tall and thin, with a booming voice which reduced the younger nurses to a state of mindless jelly; a bedside manner which charmed his patients and a confirmed opinion that he was always right. He nearly always was; Henrietta liked him, and not being afraid of his loud voice, treated him with a sangfroid which he enjoyed. She went and sat down again after Staff had gone and sorted through the patients’ notes and X-rays, refreshing her memory, for God, while permitting her to speak her mind when it concerned the patients or the ward, would brook no slipshod treatment; he expected the right answer when he asked a question.
Presently she got up once more and went into the ward, a little pile of letters and parcels in her hand; it killed two birds with one stone, giving out the post and having a short chat with each patient as she did her round. It took quite a long time, but she never tried to hurry it, some of the women had few visitors and almost no post; they needed to talk even if only for five minutes, the other, luckier ones, with large families to visit them and letters every day, took up only a few minutes of her time, but even so, with thirty patients the round took an hour and sometimes longer, with constant interruptions, small emergencies and the occasional early visit from a doctor. This morning, however, there were few interruptions to take up her time. She went from bed to bed, finding time to keep an eye on the running of the ward as she did so, and by the time she had reached old Mrs Pim in the last bed by the door, the morning’s routine was nicely started—even if God came early they would be ready for him. Henrietta dispatched the cases to X-Ray, sent a nurse down with the barium meal, who was a nervous woman and would probably be sick when she got there anyway, sent the first of the student nurses to their coffee break and went back into her office.
Legg knocked on the door a minute later. ‘Coffee, Sister?’ she asked. ‘Everything’s going nicely.’
Henrietta nodded. ‘Bring a cup for you,’ she invited as she picked up a letter addressed to herself from the desk. Sam, the porter, must have brought it up when he came for the stores list; he knew that on round days she had no chance to leave the ward to collect her post from the nurses’ home. She turned it over idly; it looked official and as it was typed, she had no idea from whom it might be, only that the postmark was London. She slipped it into her pocket, to be read later on when the round was over.
Sir Cuthbert Cornish arrived early; usually he was late but just now and again he turned up at least twenty minutes too soon, presumably in the hope that no one would be ready for him and he would be able to complain, but Henrietta had been Ward Sister for some years now and was up to his tricks; he was met, as always, by his registrar, his houseman, the social worker and the girl from Physio, with her a yard or so in front, so that he might be greeted in the correct way, and Staff lurking discreetly in the background, reinforced by a student nurse ready to do any of the odd jobs the great man might think up. Today, however, he was in a genial mood; the round went well with a few setbacks and a kind of interval half way up the ward while he told Henrietta a funny story. The round done at last, they parted on the best of terms at the ward door, and while his little procession made its way to Men’s Medical on the other side of the block, Henrietta went back into the ward, where the dinner trolley, concealed in the kitchen, had been rushed into place ready for her to serve the patients’ dinners. She doled out steamed fish, diabetic diets and stew for the well ones, while she and Staff conned over the round. She had made notes from time to time, but most of God’s instructions she held in her head; after their own dinner she and Legg would go to her office during the visiting hour and go over the notes together so that his orders—and they had been many—might be carried out to the letter.
Henrietta didn’t remember her letter until the visitors had gone and the patients were having tea. The ward was almost quiet, with only two nurses keeping an eye on its occupants while the rest of the staff went to their own tea. Legg had gone off duty at half past two and would be back at half past six to relieve her. She looked out of the window at the grey dreary January afternoon, trying to make up her mind if she would go out that evening or go to bed early—bed would be nice, she decided as she drew the Kardex towards her and began the bare bones of the day report so that Legg could fill it in later, but she pushed it aside when Florrie, the ward maid, came in with her tea; a good excuse to take a few minutes off, she told herself, and at the same time remembered her letter.
She opened it without much curiosity and paused to sip her tea before she read it. It was from a firm of solicitors, informing her that her aunt, Miss Henrietta Brodie, had died a week previously and that, by the terms of her will, she, her niece and sole surviving relative, was to inherit the property known as Dam 3 in the village of Gijzelmortel, situated in the province of North Brabant, Holland, together with its contents and such moneys as remained after the payment of certain legacies. The writer begged her to pay him a visit at the earliest opportunity and remained hers faithfully, Jeremy Boggett, of Messrs Boggett, Payne, Boggett and Boggett.
Henrietta read this exciting information through a second time, looked at the back and then the envelope to make sure that she had missed nothing and then laid it down on the desk and drank her tea. Her first reaction was that she was dreaming, to be quickly supplanted by the idea that it was a mistake. She had had an Aunt Henrietta, true enough, a vague relative she had never seen and whom her parents, when they had been alive, never mentioned. She had presumed her dead for years and had never known where she had lived or anything about her. She poured herself another cup of tea and lifted the telephone receiver; private calls were not allowed from the hospital, but this, she considered, justified breaking that rule. She dialled the number engraved on the letter, not quite believing that anyone would answer her—but they did; an efficient feminine voice, enquiring what might be done for her, and when she asked rather uncertainly if she might see Mr Jeremy Boggett the following morning and gave her name, the voice asked her to hold the line, and after a few minutes an elderly man’s voice, owned presumably by that gentleman, assured her that he would be glad to see her at her earliest convenience and would ten o’clock suit her?
Henrietta put the receiver down and reread the letter while a number of exciting ideas raced round inside her head. A house of her own—she could go and stay…and money too, perhaps enough to allow her to give up nursing for a while. After all, she could always get another job when the money had run out. The prospect was tempting; she would see what the solicitor had to say and then go and see Miss Brice, the Principal Nursing Officer. Meanwhile there was her work to get on with. She put the letter into her pocket and drew the Kardex towards her.
She wasn’t on until one o’clock the next day, time enough to go to the solicitor’s office, have a snack in a coffee shop somewhere and be on duty on time, and because it was a fine morning, though cold, and she had time on her hands, she walked for the half hour needed to get her from the hospital to Lincoln’s Inn. Messrs Boggett, Payne, Boggett and Boggett had an office on the top floor of a narrow Georgian house: Henrietta climbed the stairs, the letter clutched in her hand as a kind of talisman, still not quite believing it.
It was true, however. Mr Jeremy Boggett, surely the senior partner, she thought irrelevantly, for he was white-haired and whiskered and very, very old, offered a chair and applied himself to the task of reading her aunt’s will.
The house was indeed hers. ‘A snug little property, Miss Brodie, but small—furnished, of course, and extremely economical in upkeep.’ He peered at her over his glasses and smiled. ‘I believe, from your aunt’s letter sent to me just before her death, that you have no relatives, in which case it will be doubly pleasant for you to have a home of your own, although you are quite free to do what you wish with the property. Sell it, perhaps?’