“Well, I hope you find it. I don’t like the thought of this place becoming a shrine.”
Jean laughed. “I must admit, I hadn’t considered that as a by-product.”
“We will be besieged by virgins,” he said with a shudder.
You probably think I am one, Jean thought.
“This person here,” she said, pointing to a photograph in which a middle-aged woman in a dark dress and white bonnet was seated in the center of a row of nurses in pale uniforms and starched aprons, “must be the head nurse.” She appeared, similarly attired, in several other pictures. “Do you mind?”
Jean lifted the print carefully from its fragile, tissue-thin corners and turned it over. As she had hoped, some dutiful record keeper had written on the back in brownish ink: L to R: J. Soames, R. Forbes, M. Cox, A. Halfyard, M. Smith, D. Baker, V. （Pegs） Austin, 1946.
“A. Halfyard,” said Jean. “That must be her.”
“That’s a blessing,” said the headmaster, taking the picture from her and replacing it in the album. “There can’t be many of those in the telephone directory. Miss Trevor will have one in her office.”
The secretary was talking on the telephone and simultaneously cranking the handle of a mimeograph in full cry when Jean knocked on the open door. She summoned Jean in with a jerk of her chin, without pausing.
“I suppose we could manage modest expenses,” she was saying. “Though the other candidates are coming from farther afield and they haven’t asked.”
The air was heavy with the smell of spirit; Jean could feel it stinging her eyes. Miss Trevor continued to belabor the mimeograph until the last sheet of blurry violet type had flopped out into the tray. Her desk was buried under cliffs of clutter—books, ledgers, manila folders, box files. And yet in spite of this, at the words, “Yes, all right, let me take your details,” she flailed helplessly for want of something to write with or on until Jean felt obliged to offer her own notebook and pen.
Having dispatched the caller and straightened her skirt, which had become rather twisted during her exertions, she gave Jean her full attention.
“Do you have a local telephone directory?” Jean asked.
“Somewhere,” Miss Trevor replied, giving the overflowing desk a baleful glance. “It’s not usually like this,” she confided in a lowered voice. “We’ve got a bunch of interviewees coming tomorrow and I’ve just changed offices. Everything’s at sixes and sevens.”
“I won’t get in your way,” Jean promised. “I’m trying to track down someone who used to work here when it was a private clinic. I’m hoping she’s still in the area.”
The secretary had ducked under the desk and bobbed up again holding a slim yellow booklet with an air of triumph.
“I knew I had it somewhere. What name are you after? Goodness, this type’s small.”
Jean began to find her lack of confidence in even the simplest administrative task rather disarming.
“Halfyard,” said Jean. “There surely can’t be many.”
Miss Trevor stopped peeling through the pages. “Alice Halfyard? Well, I can tell you where she lives.”
“You know her?”
“She’s a friend of my mother’s. She lives on Wickfield Drive—the corner house. You can walk from here—it’s only a mile or so.”
“She used to be the head nurse at St. Cecilia’s?”
“Yes, that’s right. She worked here right through the war up until it closed.”
“I don’t suppose you know any of the other people who would have been working here just after the war?”
Miss Trevor shook her head. “No. I didn’t have any connection with the place until the school took over the buildings. I only know Alice because she was a friend of Mother’s. I used to call in myself once in a while after Mother died, but I’ve got out of the habit. I expect she’ll be glad of a visit. She’s had a rotten life really, but she was always happy to see me.”
The telephone started to ring again and so Jean was able to escape without hearing the detail of Alice Halfyard’s rotten life, which Miss Trevor looked all too eager to relay.
It was now midday, so Jean decided to postpone her trip to Wickfield Drive until the afternoon, on the basis that a former head nurse would surely have strict views on visiting times. She cycled back into town and sat on a bench overlooking the beach to eat her sandwich—Cheddar cheese and the last of the green tomato chutney from the previous year. It had to be made, and once made it had to be eaten, but it gave her no pleasure. I have measured out my life with preserving pans rather than coffee spoons, she sometimes thought.