Free A Distant Dream by Pamela Evans

never excel at drawing because she wasn’t gifted that way, she did seem to have an eye for colour, and Doug encouraged her to use it to interpret her own thoughts and the things she saw around her. The other patients teased her about her efforts.
    ‘What’s that supposed to be?’ asked Connie one day in late October when May had produced a colourful piece. ‘It looks like nothing on earth.’
    ‘It’s Guy Fawkes night,’ explained May. ‘Can’t you see the bonfire and the guy?’
    ‘Not really. It looks more like an accident with a few pots of paint to me,’ laughed Connie, who was very outspoken but never in a malicious way.
    ‘It’s surreal art,’ Doug explained. ‘Not everyone expresses what they see in the same way.’
    ‘It’s kind of you to make it seem significant, Doug, but I wouldn’t know surreal art if it jumped out of the paint pot and landed on my nose,’ said May. ‘It’s just me doing the best I can and having fun with a few colours. I haven’t got a clue.’
    ‘At least you’re enjoying it,’ he said. ‘That’s the whole idea.’
    ‘You need sunglasses to look at that,’ joked Connie, because May had used a lot of red and yellow.
    ‘Let’s see what you’ve done then, clever clogs,’ said May. She had to admit that her friend’s picture of the view from the window was recognisable.
    ‘I was always pretty good at drawing at school,’ Connie said breezily.
    ‘Didn’t anyone ever suggest that you take it up?’ May enquired.
    ‘Don’t make me laugh,’ she said. ‘I’m one of six kids and I needed to be earning. I went straight into domestic service, cleaning up other people’s mess. Being in here is like a holiday for me.’
    ‘Anyway, that’s it for this week, ladies, so if you could start clearing up please,’ asked Doug.
    They did as he said and May was about to follow the others back to the ward when Doug came over to her.
    ‘I hope you’ll still come to class despite your friend’s derogatory attitude towards your work,’ he said.
    ‘Take no notice of Connie. She’s only joking, even though I know I’m rubbish at drawing. But of course I’ll still come to your class,’ she assured him casually. ‘I enjoy it. It’s better than embroidery or basket-making and the nurses will make me go to one of those if I don’t come to your class. They like us to do something.’
    ‘So I’m the lesser of the evils then, am I?’ he said with a half smile.
    She gave him a look. ‘In the nicest possible way, yes you are,’ she replied.
    Having spotted what could be construed as fraternisation, a nurse swept on to the scene. ‘Come along, Mr Sands, back to your own neck of the woods, if you please.’
    ‘Righto, nurse,’ he said, giving her a salute.
    ‘Enough of your cheek,’ she came back at him.
    Although the discipline here was very strict, the nurses weren’t without humour and long-term patients like May got to know them quite well. She thought they did a magnificent job for little pay and she respected every one of them, even the few who overdid the authority of their position. It wasn’t an easy job and it took dedication as well as a lot of hard work. She took her hat off to them all.
    ‘What was all that about with Doug just now?’ Connie wanted to know when May got back to the ward, a long, sparsely furnished room containing thirty closely spaced beds with a locker beside each one.
    ‘He was asking me if I would be going to his class again,’ May told her.
    ‘Well well,’ said Connie. ‘He didn’t ask me or anyone else for that matter. Do I detect a spark?’
    ‘Of course not,’ denied May. ‘He’s too old for me. He only wondered if I would be going again because I’m so hopeless at drawing.’
    ‘What was all that about you being a genius with colour?’ asked Connie.
    ‘To make me feel better at being so bad at art, I should think.’
    ‘That isn’t what they call it where I come from,’ said Connie. ‘We call it