The Hive (26 page)

‘Come and sit here, Jo—I want to talk,’ she said, but Josephine shook her head sharply, helping herself to a roll and butter as the maid served a bowl of soup for her.

‘If you want to talk about what happened yesterday, I’m not interested,’ she said clearly, and the maid sniggered as she went out to get the next course.

‘Why not?’ Ruth said, grinning. ‘I’m not going to take sides—I’m as sorry for Manton as you are——’

‘I don’t want to talk about it!’ Josephine almost shouted. ‘It happened—so it happened. Now forget it. There’s been a good deal too much talk already.’

The maid came back with meat pie, and defiantly, Josephine helped herself to potatoes and cabbage. Ruth grinned again, but said nothing.

Ruth stood at the back of the stalls, half hidden behind a pillar, watching the end of the last act. It wasn’t a very good play but she might as well see all of it. And from her vantage point she could see him, too, sitting beside her empty place, moving his head from time to time to peer towards the ladies’ room exit. But he couldn’t possibly see her, and she grinned softly in the darkness. He’s spent about three pounds on that meal, she thought. It had been good steak at that restaurant. And the seats were twenty-five shilling ones. Poor sod. Nearly six: quid, and she’d gone to the lavatory and left him. It got easier all the time, easier and easier.

On the stage, the actors moved into a love scene, and she watched with more interest, her mouth a little open. When the man pulled the woman into his arms, holding her in an elegant grasp as he kissed her, Ruth felt the shiver of pleasure move through her skin, as familiar as an old friend, yet as new as though she had never before felt it. For a moment, Ruth became the girl on the stage, standing with her feet neatly arranged with her partner’s, her head thrown back, the kiss hard and warm on her lips. It was all most agreeable.

When the curtain came down, the man in the stalls got up, quickly, and began to move towards the ladies’ room exit. But Ruth was in the foyer by the time he reached the end of the row, and out into the street before he could possibly see her. Next week, she thought, maybe someone will take me to see that thing at the Royal Court. It’s supposed to be the randiest thing out. In the train, going back to the hospital, she began to
think about what might have happened if she had stayed in her seat in the stalls until the end of the play. It was so much better thinking about it now. Now that she really knew.

Susan’s mother folded the letter carefully, and smiled in satisfaction. ‘Susy wants to bring Daphne down to stay here for a month, she says! They’re going to go in for district nursing, she says, she’s tired of hospital. If they can get posts near here, they want to live here—that would be nice, wouldn’t it dear?’

‘Very nice,’ her husband said. ‘You’ve always missed her—you’ll be better off if she’s at home.’

‘Of course, I don’t think we can have Daphne here
always.
But we’ll see how it goes. She’s a very nice friend for Susy, of course, but still—it’ll be nice to have her home.’

‘Yes. Very nice.’

‘Nursing is a very satisfying career,’ wrote the student in the third row, and then stopped and looked out of the window of the classroom at the bulk of the ward block across the courtyard. She bent again to her essay. ‘It calls for qualities of personality, sympathy and understanding that must appeal to any girl, because nursing gives us opportunities to help people while being happy and successful ourselves. Also, it is very nice to be able to live in a Nurses’ Home with lots of other girls. It is sometimes hard work, and we do not get a lot of money, but it is a very important job. That is why I want to be a nurse.’