Sister Dawes was speaking and Judith struggled to remember what she had said; something about measles. She turned a blank face to the lady, who laughed and said: ‘You’re half asleep, Judith. I was telling you there’s a measles epidemic on the way—a nasty one, I gather. We must keep our eyes open. I know you’re on Surgical, but even measles patients can develop an appendix or perforate an ulcer—for heaven’s sake, if you see a rash on anyone, whisk them away. You’ve had measles, of course?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ declared Judith. ‘I should think so—everyone has, and besides, I never catch things.’
She remembered that three nights later. Earlier in the evening a young boy had been admitted with a suspected appendicitis; he had been flushed, his eyes and nose were running and his voice hoarse. Judith eyed him narrowly and peered inside his reluctantly opened mouth. Koplik’s spots were there all right; she thanked heaven that he had been admitted to a corner bed and that only she and the staff nurse on duty had been anywhere near him. They moved him to a side ward, made him comfortable, and Judith left the nurse with him while she telephoned—the houseman on duty first, Sister Dawes next and finally the Admission Room. The Casualty Officer was new and it was his first post and he might be forgiven for overlooking symptoms which showed no rash at the moment, but the staff nurse should have been more alert. Judith was brief, severe and just as pleasant in her manner as she always was. She gave instructions that everything that had come in contact with the boy should be disinfected and that the nurse should change her uniform. ‘I’ll send someone down,’ she ended, ‘but don’t let her touch anything until you’ve dealt with it.’
It took a little organising to find nurses to take over while the surgical staff nurse went away to do the same thing, and then Judith herself went to change, making sure that everything went into a laundry bag with a warning note pinned to it. It took a small slice out of her night and left her, as usual, short of time.
During the next ten days there were three cases of measles—the nurse who had been on duty in the Admission Room, a ward maid and one of the porters. Another four days to go, thought Judith with relief, and they’d all be in the clear.
It was on the very last day of the incubation period that she began to feel ill; a cold, she decided, only to be expected, since although it was late spring, the weather wavered from cold and wet to fine and warm; no two days had been alike, enough to give anyone a cold. She took some aspirin and went to bed when she came off duty instead of taking her usual walk, but she didn’t sleep much. Her head ached and so did her eyes and her throat felt sore; she got up and made tea and took more aspirin. She felt better after that, and presently dressed and went down to her meal, to be greeted with several candid opinions as to her poor looks from her friends. It was the Medical Wing Night Sister, a rather prissy type Judith didn’t much like, who observed smugly: ‘You’ve got the measles.’
She was right, of course—she was one of those infuriating young women who always are. Judith was examined by the Senior Medical Consultant, who happened to be in the hospital, told to go to bed and stay there, and warned of all the complications which might take over unless she did exactly as she was told.
As she was a sensible young woman, she obeyed him to the letter, and was rewarded by an attack of severe conjunctivitis and, just as that was subsiding, broncho-pneumonia. It took a couple of weeks to get the better of these, but she was a strong girl and disinclined to lie about in bed feeling ill, and in a minimum of time she was on her feet once more, still beautiful but a little on the pale side and a good deal slimmer than she usually was. The tinted glasses she still wore lent her a mysterious air and what with her wan looks she presented a picture to wring any man’s heart. At least, Nigel seemed to think so; he had kept away from her until she was free of infection, but once she was back in the Sisters’ sitting room, waiting to see what lay in store for her, he came to see her, more tiresomely cocksure than ever, quite certain that the mere sight of him would be enough for her to agree to marry him. She still tired easily; ten minutes of his self-important prosing gave her a headache, and she said rather crossly: ‘Look, Nigel, I’m not quite myself yet, but I haven’t changed my mind. Do go away and find someone else—there must be dozens of girls longing to marry you.’
He took her seriously. ‘Oh, yes, I know that—I could have anyone of them whenever I liked, but I’ve made up my mind to marry you and I dislike being thwarted.’
‘Well, I’m thwarting you,’ she declared with something of a snap, and then: ‘Nigel, why do you ask me at such unsuitable times? The middle of a busy night—that time I was taking a patient to theatre, and now…’
He had got to his feet huffily. ‘I can see you’re determined to be irritable. I won’t bother you until you’ve recovered your temper. I’ve got tickets for that new Burt Reynolds film this evening—I shall take Sister Giles.’
‘Have fun,’ said Judith, and meant it, although how anyone could have fun with Ruth Giles, a spiteful cat of a girl if ever there was one, was beyond her.
She was given a month’s leave the next day. She telephoned her parents, threw a few clothes rather haphazardly into a case, took leave of her friends, got into her Fiat 600, a tight squeeze but all she could ever afford, and set off home through a June morning the brilliance of which made even the streets of London look lovely.
The country looked even lovelier. Judith was making for Lacock in Wiltshire, and once through London and its suburbs and safely on to the M4, she kept going briskly until she turned off at the Hungerford roundabout on to the Marlborough road; it wasn’t very far now and the road, although busy, ran through delightful country, and at Calne she turned into a small country lane and so to Lacock.
The village was old and picturesque, a jumble of brick cottages, half-timbered houses and jutting gables. Judith went down the High Street, turned into a narrow road and stopped in front of a row of grey stone houses, roomily built and in apple pie order. The door of the centre house was flung open as she got out of the car, and her father crossed the narrow pavement, followed by an elderly basset hound who pranced ponderously around them both and then led the way back into the house. The hall was long and narrow with a staircase at one side and several doors. Judith’s mother came out of the end one as they went in.
‘Darling, here you are at last! We’ve been quite worried about you, although that nice doctor who was looking after you said we had no need to be.’ She returned Judith’s kiss warmly, a woman as tall as her daughter and still good-looking. ‘You’re wearing dark glasses—are your eyes bad?’
‘They’re fine, love—I wear them during the day if the sun’s strong and it makes driving easier. It’s lovely to be home.’ Judith tucked a hand into each of her parents’ arms and went into the sitting room with them. ‘A whole month,’ she said blissfully. ‘It was worth having measles!’
After tea she unpacked in the room she had had all her life at the back of the house, overlooking the long walled garden which her father tended so lovingly and already filled with colour. Judith sighed deeply with content and went downstairs, looking in all the rooms as she went. The house was bigger than one would have supposed from the outside: too big just for her parents, she supposed, but they had bought it when they had married years ago and her father had been a partner in a firm of solicitors in Calne, and when he retired two years previously there had been no talk of moving to something smaller and more modern. Her mother had said that it would be nice to have enough room for Judith’s children when she married, and meanwhile the extra bedrooms could be kept closed; if she was disappointed that they were still closed, she never mentioned it.
The weather was fine and warm. Judith shopped with her mother, helped her father in the garden and renewed her acquaintance with the large number of friends her parents had. The gentle, undemanding life did her good. Her pallor took