Free Purposes of Love by Mary Renault Page B

in it, as of a simple exercise after a complex one that had strained concentration a little.
    While they were tidying up the sluice one of the other probationers said, “By the way, Lingard, is it true you’re going to leave?”
    “No, of course not,” said Vivian at once. “Who told you?”
    “They were saying it in the dining-room. Just one of these rumours, I suppose. The brainy ones always seem to, like Carteret who used to draw, you know.”
    “I’m not nearly clever enough to leave.” Vivian rubbed an enamel bowl with Vim, remembering suddenly, from a remote distance, the meditations in which she had spent the morning. “I shall just wait till I’m pushed, I expect.”
    The probationer laughed appreciatively. “Matron will need a few more names on the waiting-list before she pushes a nice quiet girl like you. Now I nearly did get sacked last year. I was out, you see, without late leave, and the boy I was with—”
    Nurses,” said Sister in the doorway, “you may or may not be aware that the noise of your chattering can be heard halfway up the ward.”
    Vivian was walking down to the dining-room after duty, feeling less tired than usual, when Colonna caught her shoulder from behind.
    “Don’t go in to supper. Cut it. I want you to go to a party with me.”
    “Whose party?” Vivian looked round to see if the Home Sister were watching for defaulters. “Am I invited?”
    “Yes, at least she said I could bring whoever I liked. Do come it’s going to be awful, I can’t think why I was such a bloody fool as to say I’d go.” But she sounded pleased.
    “Who’s giving it.”
    “Valentine.”
    “Not Charge-nurse Valentine? Why ever did she ask you?”
    “God knows. To rope me into some hell-begotten society or other, I expect. Folk-dancing, or singing glees, you know the things they do. Oh, Lord, is she a Grouper by any chance?”
    “I shouldn’t think so. All right, I’ll come. Can we wear dressing-gowns?”
    “I’m going to, anyway. I hope there’ll be enough to eat.”
    “Oh, well,” said Vivian comfortably, “I had a good tea.”
    “Like hell you did. We’re going to talk about that.”
    Evidently Collins had wasted no time.
    Valentine had a big room, nearly as big as a Sister’s, at the top of the building; part of the old structure, with a huge mansard window from which the lights of half the town and the nearest villages could be seen. It was a good party, with much more than enough to eat, and cocktails as well. There was no one else there nearly so junior as Colonna, let alone herself; the other half-dozen guests were seniors to whom she had hardly spoken. Valentine herself had on a red flowered kimono, and had tied back her dark wavy hair from her forehead with a red ribbon. It made her look surprising young; seniors two or three years younger than oneself always appeared, somehow, to be older on the wards.
    Everyone was very gay and silly, but with rather more imagination than at other hospital parties to which she had been. They told, as usual, improper stories, but subtler and more allusive ones. Presently someone—Valentine, as far as she could afterwards remember—suggested charades. Valentine picked one of the sides, choosing Colonna first; she had a name, of course, for such things.
    Vivian, who was on the other side, could never remember later what word it was that Valentine chose. It ended with a dumb-show, fairly heavily burlesqued, of the tomb scene from Romeo and Juliet. Valentine was Juliet in a white satin nightgown (she had, Vivian noticed, an immature but charming figure) and Colonna was Romeo, wearing a white silk shirt, a sash, and her own black pyjama trousers—a costume that made her look more than ever like a steel plate of Lord Byron gone blond.
    Even the audience enjoyed it. Nurses are easy to excite emotionally, like soldiers and other persons strictly regimented and in too frequent contact with death: and no one noticed that the principals guyed their