Sharp scratch, p.27
Sharp Scratch, page 27
‘I’m Barbara Fenwick, the matron here,’ said a strong and imposing woman of about fifty, rising to shake Lorraine’s hand. She wore the filigree silver belt buckle and starched cap and cuffs of a most traditional matron. She had risen from a table where a trio of patients were gathering up armfuls of paper chains.
‘A few more lengths should do it,’ she advised the little gathering. ‘And don’t forget the sausage rolls.’
Once the patients had left, she turned to Lorraine with a brisk smile on her neatly lipsticked mouth. ‘It’s Henry’s one hundredth birthday party tonight. Everyone is so looking forward to it. Now, do take a seat. I hope you’ve not had a wasted journey. I’m afraid Miss Worsthorne fell ill this afternoon.’
Lorraine perched on a settee and kept Jasmine close beside her, circling her waist protectively. ‘I’m sorry to hear that but I really must see her. I spoke to her earlier on the phone. We’ve driven all afternoon to get here.’
Matron returned her gaze with one of firm deliberation. ‘Miss Worsthorne has a weak heart. I appreciate you’ve gone to a great deal of trouble but I simply can’t—’
‘Is that your dog?’ Jasmine interrupted, pointing to a black Scottie pawing at the French doors. Matron broke off and rose to let the dog inside.
‘He’s called Bert. Do you want to say hello to him?’
Jasmine ran to him and crouched low, tentatively stroking the little dog’s wiry coat.
‘It’s nearly his walk time,’ Matron announced. Comically, the dog’s ears swivelled like antennae and he began to scamper around the room, making excited yelps.
Lorraine knew she would shortly be asked to leave the premises. This matron inhabited the other side of an invisible boundary composed of boundless entitlement to obedience. The prospect of a dreary drive through the night was almost too much to face.
‘Can I come with you and hold his lead?’ Jasmine asked, oblivious to the strained atmosphere.
Matron was clearly struggling in the face of Jasmine’s enthusiasm. ‘Very well,’ she said stiffly. Then more courteously added, ‘Why don’t you both come for a walk to break your journey.’
Ten minutes later, Lorraine settled down next to Matron on a bench in a cove sheltered from the wind. In the distance Jasmine and Bert were investigating rock pools. Jasmine poked around with a stick and Bert waddled comically after her and pawed in the water. Even Lorraine laughed as his square head cocked at a perplexed angle each time he failed to catch a crab.
‘Miss Worsthorne had a bad fall just after you rang, at just after three o’clock,’ Matron told her, with what sounded like a hint of blame. ‘She had been trying to move a heavy box of documents. There’s nothing broken but she is badly bruised. I can’t allow any strenuous activity. I know it’s disappointing but – there you are.’
Even out here she was a powerful woman. Her only concession to the wind was to swap her lace cap for a queenly headscarf and put on a splendid navy cape with a gilt chain and buttons. Disappointment barely described the dismay Lorraine felt.
‘I wonder, have you heard about the police inquiry at the Memorial Hospital?’
Matron said she had and became more attentive when Lorraine introduced herself as the personnel officer who had witnessed the first death. ‘Today the police arrested the wrong person. An innocent colleague of mine. I’m here in search of evidence to uncover the true offender.’
‘I am sorry,’ Matron said firmly. ‘But you must leave these matters to the police.’
Lorraine stared out at the vastness of the sea that was dimming closer to dark bronze each moment. Now Jasmine and Bert were being chased by the tide. Near the horizon she could just glimpse pale crests breaking on the surface. It came into her mind that the ocean was the great symbol of the mind’s unconscious: a maelstrom of desires, not just for sex, but also the drive to succeed and dominate, and achieve status in the world. How could she argue her case to this woman who wore her professional role like armour, and would undoubtedly close ranks with another nurse? What type of personality was she? Conservative, dutiful, moralistic, she decided, brimming with worthy ideals.
‘I’ve only been here for a half-hour or so,’ Lorraine said slowly. ‘But I understand that you have a good hospital here, a rare kind of haven. Your patients seem happy. And I’m sure your care meets the highest standards. And I fully respect your concern for Miss Worsthorne’s health.’
Matron gave a little nod of her head and began to speak. ‘All of this is under threat, of course. Who needs a small cottage hospital, even one that sends its patients home feeling better than ever? The philanthropist who founded Greyriggs left an endowment for the running costs but the Health Authority are taking us to court to challenge it. You see, the land can be sold for a fortune.’
‘How can you stop them?’
‘We have a campaign but sooner or later a property developer will line his pockets. And I will apply for retirement. It has been my privilege to help and heal those in need. But it’s a sad legacy I leave behind.’
Lorraine felt drained of anything cheerful to say. This woman’s life work was being swept away in just one of countless cuts. The breeze was lifting now, growing colder as the sun sank low to the horizon. But before she left she had to tell this woman exactly how their situations differed.
‘The Memorial couldn’t be more different from Greyriggs. The enemy in Salford isn’t greed, it’s poverty.’ She pictured the patients she walked amongst every day. The double walking sticks, missing teeth, NHS glasses and rickety legs. ‘You can look at any indicator – housing, diet, education, addiction – it seems to me they all affect each other and drag each other down. Some staff have told me it’s hopeless. That drug addiction will only increase, that many psychiatric cases are incurable, and the health indicators will never improve.
‘I’ve often thought of leaving my job,’ she found herself saying. ‘In fact I’ve scarcely thought of anything else. But the injustice I witnessed today – I can’t let that go. The Memorial doesn’t deserve it. As a personnel officer I see reports of disciplinary cases every day. I’m sure you also know cases of damaged personalities infiltrating the professions?’
Matron nodded. ‘It’s true. They do the rest of us great harm.’
‘To speak openly, there is an imposter working at my hospital. And I want to stop that person wreaking further harm. She is clever, she has fooled her colleagues for two decades, from here in Cumberland to the Memorial. And the only person I’ve tracked down who might actually remember her true identity is your Miss Worsthorne. On my own, I can’t find the evidence the police need. The truth I need is waiting for me here.’
Lorraine turned her head and gazed towards the edifice of the hospital, growing indistinct in the gathering twilight, its lights twinkling up on the headland.
‘The proof is in Miss Worsthorne’s archive. All I ask is the chance to see her records. To find the truth and present the facts to the police. So that when I do leave the Memorial, I have a chance of leaving it a better place.’
Altruism
Question 52: I have given money or other help to a stranger who needed it.
A. Often
B. Occasionally
C. Never
High score description (option A.): Sympathetic and soft-hearted towards others, generous to the weak and needy.
Lorraine felt a burst of pride as Jasmine led Bert by his best tartan lead into the throng assembled for Henry’s 100th birthday party. The mix of old and young patients fussed over her daughter and filled her plate with crisps and sandwiches from the buffet. Lorraine took a few sausage rolls for herself but soon slipped away to follow Matron up the grand wooden stairs to the East Wing. There was a modest sign for the Museum of Nurse Training but the enterprise was clearly not yet ready to receive the public. Rows and rows of document boxes stood stacked at the corridor’s end, still taped up securely.
‘Here she is,’ said Matron softly, leading Lorraine inside a gently lit bedroom.
The slight figure lying beneath a flowery coverlet opened her eyes and tried to rise. Miss Worsthorne was not quite the decrepit creature Lorraine had anticipated. Her short fair hair was fashionably feathered, though tousled from lying in bed. And when she shuffled upright her features were alert and attractive; the face of an intelligent woman not yet sixty.
‘Miss Quick?’ she asked in the same breathy tone as on the telephone. ‘I’m so glad you finally arrived. My memory isn’t quite what it was. It’s been good to have a few hours to think this matter over.’
Once Matron had propped the patient up against a pile of pillows, she left them alone, after insisting that Miss Worsthorne must not be overtaxed. Lorraine settled beside her with notebook and pen in hand, as the patient recalled all she knew of Felicity Jardine.
‘She was one of our finest young nurses. Brilliant A-levels. She could have gone to any of the London training schools. Such a shame we lost her to a handsome Australian. They met at a cousin’s farm and our loss was his gain.’
‘You said she sent you a Christmas card. Do you still write to each other?’
The former tutor winced as if in pain. ‘No. Sorry. She had to move around with her husband’s job and when my health failed we lost touch.’
‘Is it possible she returned to Britain?’
‘You know, I’m sure that if she had, she would have come to visit me.’
Lorraine opened her satchel and took out the picture of Rikki in the hospital bed.
‘This is a picture taken at Cumberland Infirmary in 1962. Note the woman on the left. The ward sister.’
‘How lovely. Yes, that’s Felicity.’
Next, Lorraine pulled out the tightly wound roll of fax paper. ‘Here are Felicity Jardine’s current records at the General Nursing Council. This is the woman I work with now. Felicity Jardine.’
Miss Worsthorne peered at the photo of the identity card dated 1978. Puzzlement creased her face. ‘Good gracious. What a terrible photo. I don’t think it’s even the same person.’
‘I’m sure it isn’t. Yet it’s fresh from the GNC today.’
‘There must be two Felicity Jardines who both trained as nurses.’
‘That’s exactly what I thought. But how could two Felicity Jardines both have won the Carncross Gold Medal?’
Miss Worsthorne asked Lorraine to pass her a magnifying glass from the dresser. For a long while she peered through the glass at the crudely printed image.
‘It’s no use. What with my eyes going all blurry. I’m so sorry.’
She handed the shiny roll of paper back. Lorraine groped for another way forward. ‘Is there anyone else I might ask?’
Miss Worsthorne shook her head, then said, ‘Actually, you have put me in mind of another girl who might have kept up with Felicity. Christie Kerr, her best friend at the time.’
Lorraine felt the thrill of the chase surge through her nerves. Chris. Phil had talked about Rose repeating a name like ‘Chris’ on the phone and getting upset. This could be the missing link. Somehow Rose might have got to know this Christie Kerr.
‘Who is Christie? Is she local?’
‘Yes, she was from up here on the coast. Just pass me that shiny black book over there.’
Lorraine went to the bookshelf and found a hardback compendium of local history.
‘Look it up in the index, would you? Griseford Hall. It was closed down about ten years ago and a lot of people were glad to see it go. There were always bad rumours about the place.’
Lorraine flicked through the pages and found a black and white photograph of a forbidding edifice titled ‘Griseford Community Home for Orphaned Children’.
‘That was where Christie came from. I don’t believe she ever knew her parents. The children’s home managers were keen that we took her on as a cadet and everyone tried to help her – at first, anyway. After all, she’d had a rotten start in life. She could be sweet to your face but most of the other girls didn’t take to her. She was definitely odd. I think her anatomy tutor put her finger on it. She was rather too fond of the grislies. You know, animal dissections and the horrid pictures you find in surgical books. But she didn’t have the self-discipline to become a theatre nurse. She was an enrolled nurse working at the county asylum when she was told to leave.’
‘What happened?’
Miss Worsthorne leant her head back and stared up at the ceiling. ‘Now what was it? A scandal. It came to light that Christie had been bothering a rather immature student nurse. Betty something or other, she was called. Kept ringing her up at all hours and spreading gossip about how she had cheated in her exams. We tutors were very close to the students back then when we all lived together in the nurses’ home. But somehow everyone missed the fact that Christie, who was the elder of the two, was having an unhealthy relationship with a younger student.’
Miss Worsthorne sighed and shook her head. ‘I don’t mean for a moment that a relationship between two women is unhealthy. But in those days, girls were more discreet about keeping romantic attachments private. Look at me and Barbara, we’ve kept house together for decades and are far happier than most hetero couples. And now I’ve got this problem with my ticker, the dear thing has taken me in here.’ She shrugged and smiled good-humouredly at Lorraine.
‘No, it seems Christie pursued this younger girl when Betty tried to break the liaison off. And then the threats overwhelmed the poor student and she killed herself. Stole some tablets from the pharmacy and overdosed. A terrible tragedy. A dear friend of mine had to tell the parents.’
Lorraine didn’t say anything, but turned the story over in her mind, then asked, ‘Does Christie still live in the area?’
Miss Worsthorne’s watery eyes met her own. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know.’
A burst of raucous singing reached them from downstairs.
‘Felicity and Christie were close friends? They sound an unlikely pair.’
‘They do, don’t they? Felicity had all the altruism of youth and always liked a lost cause. Christie was in danger of failing her exams and Felicity coached her. In return Christie hero-worshipped her. Yes, if Felicity had a weakness, she enjoyed that sort of adulation.’
‘Yet despite all that help Christie left nursing?’
Again, Miss Worsthorne sighed. ‘Oh, yes. Matron insisted on an inquiry after Betty died and Christie was struck off the nursing register. Didn’t even turn up for the hearing. She can’t ever have worked as a nurse again.’
A tap came at the door, and Matron popped her head around and gave them both a stern nod before withdrawing. Lorraine was sure that her allotted half-hour had expired long ago. She stood and shook the patient’s hand.
‘I really can’t thank you enough. I wonder, could you point me to the student files so I can show them to the police?’
Miss Worsthorne shrank back, the lines and hollows of illness more apparent upon her face.
‘I’ve spent the last few hours recalling all I could because I haven’t got much else to give you. When you phoned I’m afraid I discovered Felicity’s file isn’t where it should be. I don’t know how or why. The only paper evidence I have left is her index card.’
She waved a feeble hand towards the table at her bedside. ‘And there’s precious little on that.’
Lorraine picked up a cardboard index card that bore only Felicity Jardine’s name, her date of birth, and the dates her nurse training had commenced and ended. Under ‘Forwarding Address’ was written, ‘Gone to Australia.’
She hid her disappointment and asked, ‘Do you have anything on Christie Kerr?’
‘I can’t say. The two girls were in different years. Christie was at least a year older and began training earlier, so she’d have been with us from when she was sixteen, in about ’59. If there is anything, it should be in one of those blue boxes on the landing. The admission years are written on the lids in felt-tip. You’re welcome to take a look.’
The boxes had clearly not been inspected for years, judging from the dust and desiccated spiders inside them. Lorraine spent an hour searching through them. She found no personal file for Christie Kerr, either. But she did find one item, Christie Kerr’s index card. According to that rectangle of faded cardboard, Christie had been dismissed in October 1963, just after Felicity emigrated. And more importantly, in order to return the cheque for £14 held as deposit against her room in the nurses’ home, the accounts department had recorded a forwarding address:
C/o Mrs I. Wilkins, The Wilkins Boarding House, 43 The Glen, Higher Broughton, Salford.
Narcissism
Question 53: Nothing will stop me getting the status I deserve.
A. True
B. Uncertain
C. False
High score description (option A.): Self-centredness, inability to love, lack of empathy, emptiness, an unremitting search for power.
Back in ’63 Christie was suspended from the wards while Matron Devaux investigated that Betty McBride business. She was made to carry out clerical duties in a little cubbyhole next to Matron’s office. The poor creature couldn’t take much more harassment. Matron had been stupid enough to leave some notes in her desk drawer, so Christie knew the bitch was going to report her to the General Nursing Council. She was furious at the injustice of it all. Looking back, what she did next was a stroke of brilliance.
One day a large yellow packet of paperwork arrived for Matron containing Felicity’s emigration papers to be forwarded to Australia. A gigantic bulldog clip held her original documentation, from her brilliant A-levels to the certificate for the Carncross Gold Medal awarded to the student with the highest exam mark in the county. Unlike Christie, a mere enrolled nurse about to be abandoned and struck off, Felicity was a star nurse, recruited to an exciting-sounding hospital in Brisbane. Christie hid the packet in her shopping bag. When Matron went out to a meeting she read every word, spellbound by the details of Felicity’s perfect life. Then she fully grasped that her best friend would be disappearing to Australia the following week. Abandoning her. She was never going to hear from her ever again.
