The Test Case

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 738, 4 September 1953, Page 8

The Test Case

BY

L.

EDMOND

buttoned her brown costume and pulled on the brown regulation beret. It wasn’t a bad uniform, she decided, collecting a few extra bandages -to put in the box in the back of the car. Suddeniy there was a knock at the door. It was Joshua, small and dark and stniling, with black hair sticking out all over his head like a chimney sweeper’s broom, and great soft brown eyes. His trousers, inherited from a long line of elder brothers, reached below his knees, and his hortiy feet were bare. "Please, Nurse, hullo, Nurse, and what about a ride to school, please?" he said; wriggling with the intensity of his politeness. "Cold thorning, eh?" he added conversationally. "How many of you are there?" enquired Nola, familiar with this sort of situation, "Well, there’s me, and round by the front door there’s Piki end. Rewa and ‘Tony and Janet and Wai. Oh, and Joe from next door, but, please, he got a very little bottom." He grinned at her. They hed walked a mile and a half from the far end of Matai Road, which just missed the school bus limit. "Hop in," said Nola, "but don’t sit on my box." ; Twittering and shuffling, they piled in. "You gotta look out for her box of stuff," hissed Joshua as he shoved the others along. "She got Poison in it!" A row of brown eyes grew enurmous with awe, and as Nola edged into tite small space left for the driver the silence of the deeply impressed fel] on her passengers. "Gee," said several in a breathless undertone, while Joshua gazed nonchalantly out of the window, doubtless conjuring up colourful détails he could add when they got out at the school gate. " "Bye, Nurse." "Bye, Nurse." "Coming to school Chcosdie, Nurse?" "Silly, its Thursdie she comes. I vot & big thing on my leg to show you. Nurse, nex’ time." "’Bye, Nurse. Thanks for nite ride." She watched them straggling through the school gate. nodding their black heads vigorously. They were shouting with pride, "We been in the Nurse's cer! Dishrick Nurse brought us to school. see!" It was a cold mofning for even those leathery feet to have no shoes on, and they had no decent coats,’ either, must of them, Still, it didn’t seem to quench their good spirits; they disappefred, laughing, mingling with the pakeha éhil- dren as the bell sounded for them all. Nola drove on, to begin her daily calls. Today wads to be a4 test case, She had lately often been tempted to apply for a job in one of the big hospitals in town. Ycu had a definite routine there; it was real nursing. People were sick, and you made them well-or at least They came in weak and discouraged, and you brushed them up into the briskness of the hospital routine, kept them fresh and. fed, and sooner or later wheeled them into sunporches, afid then saw them off home. Even the old dead-beats you could wash zr was twenty to nine. Nola

and brighten up-keep their covers smooth and their charts in order. But this eternal visiting of homes where just abcut all you could do was try to persuade people to eat better food or spend their money differently-did it do any good? Mightn’t she just as well spend her enefgy in the comforting certainty of work in a ward? Well. the decision was to. be made today..It was, by a private resolve, to depend on whatever the day might have in store for her. The pale winter sunlight gleamed on the car, and drew brilliance from the snow on the moun-

tains away to the west of the ‘town. It was perhaps point number one, .she feflected, that she

was, in a temporary séfse, at léast, ownér of this comfortable old car} a bit heavy when it came to the mud, but one got used to that. MBS: WAHEA was waiting at her door, The track in from the road was muddy, and be¢oming more so as the sun thawed’ the frost. It stil) lay in a crisp sheet over the ground in the shadows; it would be easy driving if I came about dawn, thought Nola. She left the car on the road and plodded through the crackling mud. There was no step up to the door, which was about two feet up from the ground. "I’m 80 glad you’ve come, Nurse," said Mrs. Wahea. "Jimmy's awful this morning. He just grizzles all the time. afd I don’t know what to do with him." She managed, however, a smile as she offered a hand ‘when the step should have come, "Like a lift, eh? Young one like you?" and she laughed good naturedly. Jimmy was six morths old, a limp little fellow with great round eyes and thin legs. He gave Nola a tentative and gummy smile. She felt .his arms and legs gently. . ‘

"You’te a good boy, aren’t you?" she said. "But he’s too soft and much too thin, I suppose you got that dried milk from the chemist? That és what Jimmy’s been having?" "Well," Mts. Mahea hesitated. "Curly was going to go in, but he forgot, and I missed the bus last Friday. . "Tll get you sorne and send it out with young Lenny from next door," said Nola briefly. She wrote down directions for the milk mixture, her pen scraping quietly in the little, overfull room. Mrs. Wahea stood silently watching, her plump arms in the ancient purple cardi-

gan folded over her freat bosom, a smile still creasing her pleasant face. "Maybe next

week when you come we have new step," she said. "Curly say so." Nola laughed heartily, "He often says so, doesn’t he?" "Oh, yes," stniled Mrs. Wahea imperturbably, "But you never know. You like a cup of tea?" "There isn’t really time this morning." It Was impossible to maintain one’s @xasperfation with Mrs. Wahea, She lookéd disappointed. It was not unlikely that she had prepared everything just in casé. "T’ll be sure to come early enough next week," said Nola. Mrs. Wahea stood at the door and watched till the car Was out of sight; then she went inside. It seemed a long time till’ next week. The Williarnsons were next. Thei: house was a tiny thing of three rootns., its furnishings threadbare but spotlessly clean. "Hullo, my friend," said the mother of four visible Williamsons and several absentees, "Come in. What do you think of this boy now, eh?" This boy detached himself from the crowd and stood obediently before Nola. He had on a shabby but neat navy blue shirt and trousers, and worn sandshoes. He gazed at Nola with solemn eyes. She had the

impression ‘that his fate was gently in--flating before het gaze. "T think he’s got. mumps,’ she. said after a long silence, "and ought to zo to bed." Mrs. Williamson’s face fell. "I wouldn't ‘have’ to ‘keep the other ' kids home, eh?" she said disconsolatély. "They fight like mad, the little devils, when they’re all here together." It was not difficult to believe, in that amount of space. How they fitted in at-all was a mifacle; not’ to méntion how Mrs. Williamson managed to keep it so neat and tidy. Just then a little girl poked her head through from the tiny pantry, which was a corner of the kitchen, separated from the rest by a piece of ancient tasselled green velvet strung up on a wire, "Them pies is hot now, Mum," she said in a husky voice, with a shy smile at the visitor. Nola and Mrs, Williamson exchanged glances; vegetables, vitamins, and human frailty hung heavily in the air, but what was there to say? What, indeed, that had fot been said many times before? Nola contented herself with a reference to the silver beet growing in front of the cottage. Mrs. Williamson smiled with pleasure. "Not bad, eh?" she said without a trace of irony. "See yot' next week, Nurse." NOLA waved as she climbed into the car. Tw6 more calls, and then lunch with Mrs. Parakura. She was a welleducated woman, used to acting as interpreter at any functions where there were many pakehas. Her husband was active on the tribal committee; they both spoke, Nola thought, like pakehas, except for the beautiful cotrecthess, still unfamiliar to her, of their pronunciativn of Maori names. Over onion soup, déliciously made, Mrs. Paradkura was chatty and entertaining. tei "You'd laugh at us," she Said, "if you could see us playing cards. We have an evening every Week, you know, to raise money for the new pa, ahd we all get so excited about who’s going to win that we shout and dance arid hop all over the place." Her thin brown. face ctinkled with laughter. "Last night Janie Wahea grabbed my whole handful of cards, and somebody tore the joker in half!" "How much do you make?" Mrs. Parakura laughed again. "Oh, hardly anything. They all come, and pay their money all right, but they spend nearly all of it on the sujiper and getting taxis from town to take them o afterwards." She stopped and rowned. "It’s no good, though, really, We enjoy oufselves, but that’s not the only point. L think we’ll have to. try something else as well." She looked wut the window, to.where the neat rows of her winter cabbages glistened as. the sun struck them for the first time. "I think we'd better have a sale, a sort of bring and buy thing. What do you think?" "Well," said Nola cautiously, "who would bring, and who would buy?" "We all would-all of us round here. It could be a huge success, or. it could be a flop. It depends entirely on how keen everyone feels. Listen, Nurse, what about helping us? You could make all the difference, You are the only good influence that. everyone likes!" Nola laughed. . ~ ‘, "Yes. you afte," insisted "Mrs. Parakura.."‘Apart.from. families and relations, ‘you’re far more important to. us than anyone else." OLA went away looking thoughtful. A mile down the road she collected her patients for the chest clinic, thirty miles away. They weré two shy young (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) men who boarded with a pakeha farmer and did light work on the farm. Their faces lit up at the sight of the car. "Gee, Nurse, we thought you weren’t coming." "Nice day now, eh? Let’s go about sixty, Nurse-Government car, she 20 fast!" This amused them both. Both, in fact, were unusually jovial and talkative all the way there. They waved to people they passed on the road, opened the windows and exchanged jokes with a drover they met, leading his tired sheep up one of the hills; they even teased Nola herself, and begged her to come to the dance down at the pa the next Saturday. But it was another matter coming back. Nola had to keep the conversation going almost alone. They: were crestfallen, as deflated as children, about their reports from the clinic, Neither was good, and Nola was worried, too. She felt tired and dispirited. The task seemed hopeless. There was so much to be done, but was it possible to do it? She felt again the relief of routine . dozens of temperatures, dozens of meals, dozens of nurses all saying "Yes, Sister," and getting things done. Regular hours, certain freedom when you were off duty — nothing like this sense of responsibility, of entanglement, all the time. There was a curious knot of people at Mrs. Parakura’s gate; they waved

vigorously as the car drew up, and looked expectantly at Nola as she sot out. There must have been about twenty of them, including some of the children ‘who had come home on the school bus. The sun was low now, and their faces glowed in its light. "I say, Nurse-," "Listen, Nurse--," said several voices. It was Mr. Williamson, leaning on his bike, on the way home from the market gardens where be worked. who told her. "Going to have a big do, Nurse, and Miri here says you'll help us make a whole heap of money for the’ new pa. We thought we’d all get things-you know, all sorts of stuff-and you help us fix it all up, and maybe we make so much we start building in the spring, eh?" The others grinned encouragingly at her, She smiled back at them, with a queer mixture of feelings. She only half understood the way they thought and reacted; often they seemed hopelessly indolent and casual; nearly always she felt they were beyond her reach. For the first time she saw enthusiasm, a sort of energy, on those pleasant brown faces. Were they perhaps offering her a key to the understanding of their strange world? Suddenly she laughed in immense affection for them. I am committed to this, she thought. The test is over. g "Yes," she said, "I'll help. Now when shall we have it, this big do?"