Nurse Kelsey Abroad by Marjorie Norrell

escape from Dudley,” her mind added honestly, but she refused to think about Dudley now.
    “Where were you planning on spending the remainder of the evening?” he asked Ann, speaking to her directly and across the table from Jane.
    “I’d thought of taking Jane to see the Golden Fiddle,” Ann said, turning to Jane to add an explanation. “It’s a sort of inn-cum-palais-de-danse,” she laughed. “That’s a dreadful way to explain it, but there’s nothing else to say. The name’s unpronounceable unless one is bo rn to the language, but the sign outside is of a golden violin, so we ‘foreigners’ know it as ‘The Golden Fiddle.’ It’s the inn where most of the locals go for their evening drink and where the young people dance to a three-piece sort of band.”
    “Sounds interesting,” Jane enthused. “How far away is it?”
    “A couple of streets, that’s all,” Jim Lowth spoke crisply and not as though he were personally interested. “I’ll walk there with you, then drive back to the hospital. I’ll call in and tell one or the other of the Bransla brothers to pick you up in about an hour. That ought to give you long enough to show our new nurse the sort of night life which goes on around here. The sort which it’s wisest to attend if one must spend one’s leisure out of hospital precincts, that is!” he amended.
    Jane didn’t know what to say, and at the moment Ann appeared not to have any ideas either. It was something of a relief when Jim Lowth began to tell them of the explosion in the canning factory where the emergency had taken place.
    She listened with interest, but without much knowledge and therefore without any real idea as to what, exactly, had taken place. Apparently the factory was modern up to a point, but machinery was one thing Dalasalavia did not have in abundance, modern machinery, that is. It was one of the ancient oil-powered machines which had exploded, killing one man and injuring several others. Three workers, more extensively injured than the rest, had been admitted to the hospital, and Doctor Lowth expressed his intention of returning to see how they were progressing almost immediately.
    Abrup tl y, as he concluded his brief, succinct description of the accident and of the injured, he turned to Jane.
    “What nursing experience have you had?” he shot at her. “Apart from taking your S.R.N., of course.”
    “I’ve been on every ward in Rawbridge Infirmary,” Jane was annoyed to feel herself on the defensive. “I did my midwifery because at one time I’d thought of joining the World Health Organisation. That was before my, twin sister married,” she added, but he wasn’t interested in whether or not Betty had gone far away and whether Jane had been influenced by the fact that her parents might be lonely. Already, she knew without a word being said, he had forgotten her comments beyond making a mental note of her accomplishments as a nurse.
    “You’ll be O.K. with difficult births, then.” It was a statement rather than a question. He frowned, and it was only much later, when she had come to know him better, that Jane realised her first impression had been right and that this man took every aspect of his job very seriously indeed. “I can’t fathom it,” he went on now, speaking almost to himself but musing aloud. “They don’t starve, they don’t overwork , not really, and they haven’t a bad climate, all things considered. I realise the sanitation leaves a great deal to be desired in the outlying districts, but from every part of this country, not just in the towns or merely in the country areas, everywhere, we have more than the average difficult births each year. None of it ties up with known facts. There must be something else, s o mething whi ch isn’t sufficiently obvious to put a finger on it right away. I think ... ”
    What it was he thought they didn’t learn, either then or later. A waiter edged his way through the now rather crowded little