The years 1941-1949. Shelagh's point of view.
The events of life and death rolled over the problems of a conflicted novice, who soon became a nun, a Sister Bernadette. In the year 1943, Sister Julienne died. In her will, she had reserved a sum of money to Shelagh's medical studies. That seemed odd to some. The same year Sister Bernadette left the convent and her nursing work and became again a Miss Mannion, a medical student.
After the death of Sister Julienne, she grew closer to her Musgrove family. Fred's son Tom, a clergyman, had married one of her old nursing colleagues, Trixie Franklin in 1944, and they now had two small girls. The Musgroves had the courtesy of not making too much fuss over Shelagh's journey in life, which surely looked wayward to some.
In the intervening years, news about Doctor Turner were scant. It seemed he had received a grant to study neurology in America in 1944. From what she heard, there was no indication that he had married again. Neither there were news from Aldwych neighbours nor from anyone about his ex-wife or mother-in-law.
Then something surprising happened in the early months of 1949. The younger doctor Turner, Timothy, took a position as a neurologist at the London Hospital. He was a popular guy, much more sociable than Patrick, although some may have expressed a preference for the more sober elder brother. Cynthia, Trixie Musgrove's sister, who was doing her midwifery course at the London, fell in love with Timothy, and after a short courtship they were engaged. Soon, however, it came to a close in a tragic manner. Cynthia caught polio in that year's epidemic and died in March. The grief of the families Franklin and Musgrove was great. The event shattered Timothy so that he made an abrupt decision to leave for Australia where he was offered a teaching job at The University of Queensland in Brisbane.
"Those Turner boys, such rolling stones," was a murmur heard by some of the members of the medical community, but by and large, the Franklins and the Musgroves didn't join the chorus. The loss of Cynthia had one somewhat odd outcome, though. Trixie, pregnant with her third child, became anxious and was certain that something would go wrong. She had a habit of making herself the focus of attention in many ways, but childbirth had never been her worry before. Tom tried to speak sense to her, but he made a promise that extra care would be taken in the face of the coming event.
The romance of Cynthia and Timothy had been conducted at such a whirlwind speed that Shelagh had met Timothy Turner only twice. He had a fairer complexion and a more sanguine temperament than...her Doctor Turner, as she sometimes shamefacedly called him. Shelagh had been disturbed by the expectation of becoming so close a relative with the Turner family. Thus, she felt an unreasonable guilt over Cynthia's death. She had promised to Trixie that she would be her midwife.
It seemed odd that the Turner family with such a long engagement in the fight against viruses, especially polio, would have to suffer a polio death among their own. The circumstances strengthened her decision to continue her medical studies, a decision that was still sometimes frowned upon by some.
"She will be an excellent doctor. But her talents would suit domesticity as well." That was a general idea in the Musgrove family and the opinion of some of her braver male colleagues who were begging for a date.
It was also odd that a family like hers, with pacifist roots, had been engaged in so much war work, albeit medical. Shelagh closed her eyes. The heritage of Sister Julienne and Dick Sheppard, there wasn't much left of it.
She had at last, in 1943, after she had left the convent, read Doctor Turners's three letters to her which he had sent in 1941. How she had managed to get the letters to herself, that had needed some detective work and a thorough knowledge of how a convent operates. She felt justified in her actions: there was no harm in getting them. because at first, she wasn't going to read them. When she was still a nun, she would only look at his handwriting and touch his name on the envelope.
The first one had just a few personal tidbits.
Dear Miss Mannion,
I hope you received my post card. I hope that you have recovered from whatever ailed you when we spent the air raid at the lab.
Do you recall one idle chat about Brief Encounter and Trevor Howard at the London coffee break? I have always considered myself a man of reason. Suddenly it seems like I am a character in a romantic movie, and it may be true, as you yourself once said, that we can understand the value of a feeling only when it has overmastered us.
Yours sincerely,
Captain Patrick Turner.
The second one seemed to be from a man leading a life of quiet desperation. It really hurt her, even after all this time.
Shelagh.
Please let me at least hear that you are alive and well. Surely you owe me that.
I saw today some nuns from afar: there is, oddly enough, a Catholic monastery here. They made me think of you. The sunrises are really magnificent here. They make me think of you at the lab after the birth of the Carter twins.
Please write a few words.
Yours,
Patrick.
The last one was different in tone. It was from a man who had given up, even if angrily.
Miss Mannion,
"I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow?"
I think we all have known Gerard Manley Hopkins's hope of a spring that does not fail. I suspect that some uncertainties in my fate will remain with me for the rest of my life.
I truly think that a man is responsible for his or her actions and that he or she must not escape from the duty of correcting a wrongdoing or a faulty decision.
You believe in seeking or bestowing forgiveness. Grace, absolution of sins or forgiveness may be good, but they don't compensate for this striving of man. That is the humanity I believe in.
I don't believe that you are intentionally losing yourself in your religious vocation. I just think in general that it may be an easy way out of some of the strides of life. Like a relationship between a man and a woman.
There. I have said what I think. I do not think you are a coward, but I think that we have different ideas of courage and how it should be applied.
Yours sincerely
Captain Patrick Turner.
The letters didn't hurt anymore as much as they did in the beginning. She could see his stand, but she could also understand her own. She had been weak, but there was no ill will in her weakness.
Yet how eloquent she could have been, if she had been asked about this issue. She had a conviction now, learned rather late in life. Youthful fancies are not to be ignored, they should be nourished, they would not always lead into temptation and misery but into a full bloom.
Full bloom was what was missing in her life.
She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning. Even though the imminent arrival of Doctor Turner made her anguished and revived some of her former pain, she still could not be entirely unhappy of the course of the events. She was glad, in a melancholy way, that she had met him. He was everything to her, except hers.
She checked the time. It was her turn this week to visit Mrs. Smith. The burdens are given, she had once said. Carrying this special burden made her own pains somehow lighter. Like she was a fellow passenger of Doctor Turner the senior. Like she was in some invisible way taking part in his life.
