By the Pricking of My Thumbs - Agatha Christie [68]
‘But what am I doing being ill in a hospital?’ thought Tuppence. ‘I mean, I nurse in a hospital, so I ought to be in uniform. V.A.D. uniform. Oh dear,’ said Tuppence.
Presently a nurse materialized near her bed.
‘Feeling better now, dear?’ said the nurse with a kind of false cheerfulness. ‘That’s nice, isn’t it?’
Tuppence wasn’t quite sure whether it was nice. The nurse said something about a nice cup of tea.
‘I seem to be a patient,’ said Tuppence rather disapprovingly to herself. She lay still, resurrecting in her own mind various detached thoughts and words.
‘Soldiers,’ said Tuppence. ‘V.A.D.s. That’s it, of course. I’m a V.A.D.’
The nurse brought her some tea in a kind of feeding cup and supported her whilst she sipped it. The pain went through her head again. ‘A V.A.D., that’s what I am,’ said Tuppence aloud.
The nurse looked at her in an uncomprehending fashion.
‘My head hurts,’ said Tuppence, adding a statement of fact.
‘It’ll be better soon,’ said the nurse.
She removed the feeding cup, reporting to a sister as she passed along. ‘Number 14’s awake. She’s a bit wonky, though, I think.’
‘Did she say anything?’
‘Said she was a V.I.P.,’ said the nurse.
The ward sister gave a small snort indicating that that was how she felt towards unimportant patients who reported themselves to be V.I.P.s.
‘We shall see about that,’ said the sister. ‘Hurry up, Nurse, don’t be all day with that feeding cup.’
Tuppence remained half drowsy on her pillows. She had not yet got beyond the stage of allowing thoughts to flit through her mind in a rather disorganized procession.
There was somebody who ought to be here, she felt, somebody she knew quite well. There was something very strange about this hospital. It wasn’t the hospital she remembered. It wasn’t the one she had nursed in. ‘All soldiers, that was,’ said Tuppence to herself. ‘The surgical ward, I was on A and B rows.’ She opened her eyelids and took another look round. She decided it was a hospital she had never seen before and that it had nothing to do with the nursing of surgical cases, military or otherwise.
‘I wonder where this is,’ said Tuppence. ‘What place?’ She tried to think of the name of some place. The only places she could think of were London and Southampton.
The ward sister now made her appearance at the bedside.
‘Feeling a little better, I hope,’ she said.
‘I’m all right,’ said Tuppence. ‘What’s the matter with me?’
‘You hurt your head. I expect you find it rather painful, don’t you?’
‘It aches,’ said Tuppence. ‘Where am I?’
‘Market Basing Royal Hospital.’
Tuppence considered this information. It meant nothing to her at all.
‘An old clergyman,’ she said.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Nothing particular. I–’
‘We haven’t been able to write your name on your diet sheet yet,’ said the ward sister.
She held her Biro pen at the ready and looked inquiringly at Tuppence.
‘My name?’
‘Yes,’ said the sister. ‘For the records,’ she added helpfully.
Tuppence was silent, considering. Her name. What was her name? ‘How silly,’ said Tuppence to herself, ‘I seem to have forgotten it. And yet I must have a name.’ Suddenly a faint feeling of relief came to her. The elderly clergyman’s face flashed suddenly across her mind and she said with decision,
‘Of course. Prudence.’
‘P-r-u-d-e-n-c-e?’
‘That’s right,’ said Tuppence.
‘That’s your Christian name. The surname?’
‘Cowley. C-o-w-l-e-y.’
‘Glad to get that straight,’ said the sister, and moved away again with the air of one whose records were no longer worrying her.
Tuppence felt faintly pleased with herself. Prudence Cowley. Prudence Cowley in the V.A.D. and her father was a clergyman at–at something vicarage and it was wartime and…‘Funny,’ said Tuppence to herself, ‘I seem to be getting this all wrong. It seems to me it all happened a long time ago.’ She murmured to herself, ‘Was it your poor child?’ She wondered. Was it she who had just said that or was it somebody else said it to her?
The sister was back again.
‘Your address,’ she said, ‘Miss–Miss Cowley, or is it Mrs Cowley?