‘How about a little tiny bit of ice cream? Do you think that might help?’
Ice cream was on the menu for all tonsillectomy patients; so was jelly. She turned her head on the pillow, nodded, half smiled.
‘I’ll be back.’
He made his way to the kitchen, took a small tub of ice cream from the big fridge, found a spoon and was just leaving when the night sister appeared.
‘Is there anything I can do for you, Mr Welles?’
‘No, no, Sister, thank you. Everything seems in excellent order.’
‘I see.’ She looked rather pointedly at the tub of ice cream. Ned smiled at her.
‘Joanna Brigstock’s obviously in pain. I thought a bit of ice cream might help.’
‘Mr Welles, this is hardly the time for a child to be given such food. We don’t want her vomiting. And if the other children wake up, they’ll all want it.’
‘I don’t think either of those things will happen. If they do, I promise I’ll deal with it. And I think a little ice cream combined with a bit of attention would help Joanna.’
‘Very well.’ She sighed heavily, clearly envisaging disasters on an apocalyptic scale. ‘If you insist. Give it to me.’ She held out her hand. ‘I’ll get one of the probationers to feed her.’
‘No, no, I’ll give it to her. Something’s troubling her. I’d like to talk to her.’
‘Very well,’ said Sister again, her face etched with disapproval. A consultant, feeding a child! It was most unsuitable. But Mr Welles was renowned for his slightly odd behaviour. There was much gossip about him in the nurses’ room, she knew, particularly about his film-star looks, and the fact that he was not yet married.
One theory was that he had had his heart broken in his youth and never loved anyone else; another that a much adored fiancée had died.
‘Or maybe,’ one girl had said, ‘he’s – you know, one of those.’
‘He couldn’t be. He’s a consultant. That’s impossible.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I’ve heard the most ordinary, normal people are that way,’ said someone else. ‘They just keep it covered up.’
‘Hardly normal.’
‘Well, you know what I mean. Mind you, I think—’
‘We are not interested in what you think, Nurse Brown.’ It was Sister’s voice, cutting through the chatter. She had clearly heard every word. ‘I would like the subject changed and not raised again. And since you clearly have too much time on your hands, you can do the napkin round.’
‘Right,’ said Ned now, to the small Joanna, putting the ice cream tub into her hot little hands. ‘Tell me what the matter is. And what’s this?’ He pointed to the bundle of blanket she was clutching.
‘I’m pretending it’s Teddy. They took him away.’
‘Who took him away?’
‘The nurses,’ she said, her voice shaky. ‘They said I might get blood on him. And I need him. I haven’t got Mummy or Daddy – Teddy was instead. Sort of.’
‘Well, in a minute I’ll go and find him for you and make sure it doesn’t happen again. Now, how is that throat feeling?’
‘Much better.’
Ned left the hospital with a heavy heart. The encounter with Joanna Brigstock and its implications had upset him. Every day he became more distressed by the grief caused to the children. He felt that children needed their parents more than ever when they were ill. As for depriving them of their teddies – that was appalling. Night Sister had handed over Joanna’s most reluctantly.
Something close to a lovers’ meeting had taken place between Joanna and Teddy, who was sweet faced, blind in one eye, hugged almost bald. She had clutched him to her, covering him with kisses, and then had laid down, cuddling him under the bedclothes, and was asleep in five minutes. It was, Ned supposed, a victory for his views, but it would take many such to see them taken seriously.
Nevertheless, each day saw him more determined to make that happen: no matter what cost to him.
Chapter 41
The morning of the dinner with Josh and his friends was supremely beautiful, the sun breaking slowly and gently through the early drifting mist, soaking up the heavy dew; the tops of the trees ghostly pale; the shrubs below still a young, fresh green. Jillie, leaning out of her bedroom window, smiled at it, and blew it a kiss, a rather fanciful trick of her mother’s when confronted by any particularly glorious view, and hoped it would be a good omen for the evening.
Her parents were indeed away; she had told Mrs Hemmings to poach a small salmon, and to serve it with baby new potatoes from the vegetable garden, or rather the useful garden as her father always called it, and summer pudding for dessert. She could never do wine, so when he arrived, considerately early, Josh was dispatched to her father’s cellar to choose. He came up fifteen minutes later, looking rather dazed. ‘That is a real treasure trove he’s got down there. Anyway, I’ve found a really nice white burgundy, and a Sauternes to go with the summer pudding. I’ve put them in the fridge. Lucky people, getting all this.’
‘Well, let’s have a cocktail in the morning room, shall we, before they arrive. Something really easy like Bellinis,’ she said, reminded painfully only when Josh arrived with the jug of peach juice and the bottle of champagne that Bellinis were the drink she and Ned had always had on special occasions. No longer the wild grief, just – joylessness in everything.
Too late now, though; she took her Bellini, smiled at Josh and drank it with reckless speed. It would help: it had to.
She was just slightly tipsy when the car scrunched on the gravel; just enough to be a tiny bit dizzy, and – she could feel it – flushed. She stayed in the morning room, while Josh let them in. Nell came in first – pretty, brown-haired, with a dimpled smile – holding out her hand, saying how kind of Jillie this was; and then Julius appeared from behind her.