Before the war, he may have been handsome, but now it was hard to tell. He had what can only be described as a splodge of a face. I suppose that’s not kind, but I’m not sure how else to describe it. A puckered welt ran from above his left eyebrow, across his misshapen nose, and down to his chin. The skin around the wound looked raw and mottled. He didn’t make me nervous – there were plenty of injured men around when I was growing up. Still I kept noticing how his skin pulled as he spoke and how each expression dragged on long after his words. It was difficult to act naturally. He seemed a kind and tired man.
I thought he was my father’s age, and maybe he was. He said that when the war started he had only recently qualified. Like so many young men, he’d been persuaded by the call to arms.
‘I assumed I would be given ambulance duty,’ he said. ‘Like the writers in the Great War. Instead, they planted me in a field hospital as a surgeon. That didn’t last long. A bomb fell on us and they sent me home.’
He told me that on my first day. I guess he wanted to get it out in the open. After that, he never spoke about the war, nor did he speak about his return home, so I needed to fashion that part of the story myself. A long convalescence in a grand manor house somewhere in the west of Edinburgh. Daffodils on the lawn. Starched sheets and painkillers. I imagined a nurse with gentle hands. Soft eyes meeting his. And tragedy, too. There must have been tragedy because I knew he lived alone. That part of the story needed work. Maybe she was married; maybe she had died. Influenza perhaps, but that didn’t strike me as wonderfully romantic. Maybe she’d been caught in an air raid. London then, I supposed, but maybe Edinburgh. Mum had told me about the planes over Marchmont on the night I was born. Maybe Dr Ballater’s sweetheart was killed that night. How strange to imagine.
This was how I passed afternoons at the surgery, keeping an eye on the mantel clock, and half dreaming out of the window. At quarter past four, Dr Ballater liked a pot of tea brought through to his desk. At first, that was my least favourite part of the day. The kitchen always smelled like bleach, and the bamboo tray felt too light to be sturdy. I balanced my way along the short hallway from the kitchen, and Dr Ballater opened the door just as I arrived. I hated knowing that he stood waiting for me, listening to my steps. That face behind the door. It was better when he walked back towards his desk and cleared a space for the tray. He opened a drawer and removed an elaborately embroidered tea cosy. The lost love must have made it for him, of that I was sure. He set it on the teapot with such precision and told me he was happy to have me. My typing was good, and the patients thought I was friendly.
He started asking me to join him in the afternoons. ‘Just a wee blether and a cup of tea, wouldn’t that be nice?’
He told me about his childhood in the countryside, not far from Biggar, about the hills there and the clear sky at night. He asked me how I liked school, about my parents and how they were feeling. Once he asked me what my plans might be for after school and I waffled nervously. I really hadn’t thought that far, not in detail at least. I imagined a flat somewhere. Maybe over in Glasgow, though Edinburgh might be more practical. I would be chipping in with other girls, of course. Cooking small meals over a hotplate, sharing adventures. The previous Christmas, I’d worked the January sales in Patrick Thomson’s, and one of the other temporary girls talked on about her bedsit, which sounded exciting. I could imagine that. But just what I’d be doing there, I hadn’t a clue. That wasn’t an answer to Dr Ballater’s question. So, I said I was looking into university and might read geology. It didn’t sound unreasonable as I said it.
He suggested that nursing might be a better fit.
‘It’s a good life and there are always those that need helping.’
In the end, that’s what I did. Signed up for the new degree programme at Edinburgh University and found a flat-share which was cold and nowhere near as romantic as I’d hoped. We all worked hard and stayed over in the hospital when we could, to keep warm. Sometimes, we went for coffee or to the films, and on Saturday evenings we were welcome to join the boys at the student union for the weekly dance.
The spring I graduated, one of the medical students invited me to the May Ball and I cut my hair like Sylvie Vartan, bobbed and fringed. I barely knew him and we danced until they turned the lights on. Was that polite? I suppose it was. Then he walked me home to my student digs in Marchmont, a long beautiful saunter along Coronation Walk. The cherry blossom was thick overhead and underfoot – blossom soup, blossom salad – and the night was so clear and almost bewitching, but he was certainly polite and I wished he wasn’t. I climbed the stairs alone and felt a little guilty for my loneliness as I fell asleep. In the morning, I caught a train home to East Lothian to see my parents, the sea and the sky dirt-pearl grey.
There was a job waiting for me with Dr Ballater. That worked out rather well. My parents were happy to have me home again, and we all knew that it wouldn’t be a permanent arrangement, but in the meantime, I could save up for a car. I banked my money in an empty margarine tub on the shelf next to my alarm clock.
For the next five years, I worked for Dr Ballater. Each year, I weighed and measured all the schoolchildren, and inspected their scalps. I bought that car and established a rota of housebound widows who might benefit from a visiting nurse. In the autumn, I helped with the kirk jumble sale. In the spring, it was the Easter tea. Mum couldn’t be bothered with all the village business, as she called it. She was far happier pruning the trees in her orchard or foraging about in the hedgerows. Sometimes, she would have the minister’s wife round for a cup of tea or Muriel would come up from Drem, but mostly, she and Dad lived quietly and left the social affairs to me. I found I liked it when the village ladies dropped by the surgery with invitations and requests for assistance. It kept me busy and helpful. Cheerful, as befits.
Then it was February 1967 and I noticed snowdrops beside the surgery door. Maybe they grew there every spring but I only noticed them that February afternoon when the front windows were open and Dr Ballater was whistling, a thin, windy whistle, lilting and sweet.
I opened the door softly, hung my coat on the hook in the hallway and checked my hair in the mirror. Combing it back into place with my fingers, I wondered if it might be time for a trim.
Dr Ballater was still whistling when I entered his room and noticed the tea tray was already placed on his desk. He asked me to marry him.
Abrupt as that.
I said nothing, and he apologized, the meat of his face flushing red.
‘I should let you come in the door properly. I should let you settle.’ He turned away from me, adjusting the mugs on the tray. ‘Can I pour you a cup of tea?’
‘Yes. Thank you, Dr Ballater.’ The words felt brittle in my mouth.
‘George. Please,’ he said, and his hands shook a little as he filled a mug, or maybe it was just that the pot had been overfilled. ‘There. Milk? Sugar?’
‘Yes. Please.’
A splash and then two spoonfuls, heaped, and he placed the mug in front of me, awkwardly passing me the spoon, too, in case I wished to stir my tea. I did and then crossed my ankles.
‘So, will you?’
‘I … I don’t know. I didn’t …’
‘No, no. I’ve rushed things, I’m sure. You didn’t expect this. I can see that now. But I do … I should think you will need to marry someone. You are not the kind of girl who wouldn’t. I should be glad if you would have me. I can always find another nurse.’
The wind caught the curtain, blowing it out into the room with a curve like a bell, and I thought of those snowdrops outside. They must have been there every year. They must.
‘Here, this is for you, Felicity,’ he said, my name sounding too soft as he held out his hand stiffly, giving me a twenty-pound note. ‘Take it. You might like to go buy yourself a dress from Edinburgh, or something of that ilk over the weekend, and think, think about it. We will speak next week.’
The steps out of