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Preview chapter: Doctor and Debutante by Barbara Blackburn
If you enjoyed Her Australian Summer we think you’ll love Doctor and Debutante by Barbara Blackburn. Read the first chapter here.
Chapter One
It was at Lady Salvington’s garden party that the world of Hugh Weatherby first came into my orbit. I was twenty-two, and recovering from the worst heartache of my life.
People who live a frivolous life without being naturally suited to it are taking a frightful risk, the risk that one day they will fall through the thin ice they have been skating on and sink without a trace. Ever since I was sixteen I had been dashing around madly enjoying myself. Sixteen was the significant age; it was when Father died. He was a famous surgeon, and though since he died I have learnt a lot about his noble character; how, though sought after by celebrities and royal personages, he would still give three-quarters of his time and skill to humble people; how he was loved by hospital staffs and patients; his genius and his patience; though I have heard all this since his death from people who knew him, to me he was simply my father and three-quarters of my world. I adored him, probably a lot more than I ought to have done, because at sixteen one should be looking forward and not back. When he died life became so black in colour that I almost gave up.
I only thought about myself. I did not listen ‒ not then ‒ to the things people said about him and wrote about him in the newspapers, though these things gave some consolation to Mother. I did not think about her grief, I was too wrapped in my own.
Still, I was only sixteen, and before a year had passed I was at a finishing school in Switzerland, learning to ski, and learning a lot of other things as well, amongst others, that I was rather attractive to the opposite sex. In my two years there I grew from a wretched angry girl to the Debutante of the Year.
Well, that is what the papers called me. Of course no one is actually the Debutante of the Year, it just means that one is pretty and popular and happens, by luck, to catch the eye of one of the columnists. In my case, it wasn’t even fair play, because the columnist in question was my cousin, Jeremy Fellowes, the younger son of a lord, celebrated in his own right for such exploits as being sent down from Oxford for driving a flock of sheep into Christ Church quad for a bet. He and I were great friends, and it was with his assistance, and under the wing of Aunt Lucy, his mother, that I was launched into the fashionable world.
After that Debutante of the Year label, I went a bit mad. I had a string of proposals, and laughed them all off, and was proud of being called heartless and tough. When I went home to Mother, who had taken a small house in Dorset, and lived there doing good in the village, I did not brag about my exploits, and something in me was even a little bit ashamed of them. Mother never criticised me, she went on loving and being interested in everything I did, but I could not help knowing that underneath she was a bit worried.
And then I had a terrible jolt. I met Clive Raikes, a glamorous personality of nearly forty, and he took me everywhere that season. I was seen with him at Lords, at Henley, at Ascot, and my name and his began to creep into the gossip columns. ‘The lovely and witty Sarah Lacy, seen with Wing Commander Clive Raikes …’
Clive had rather a high-powered past, which included one divorce. But in the world I was now dancing through, that seemed to make no difference. Anyway, I told myself, I was not in love with him. He was simply the current admirer, and his casual, cynical manner, combined with the mock serious way he paid me compliments, made me think he was not in earnest either. This fact, of course, made me even keener on his society, because most of the young men who took me about declared themselves directly.
And then at some party a gossip columnist for a Sunday paper asked me if I were engaged to him.
‘Of course not,’ I said.
This encounter appeared in the gossip column as: ‘Sarah Lacy, a former Debutante of the Year, and still considered by the best judges as outshining all current stars, opened her wide blue eyes in amazed innocence when I asked her if her engagement to the gallant Wing Commander could be confirmed or denied. She answered in words we think we have heard before; ‘Of course not. We are “just friends”.’
Suddenly I felt rather sick. I went home to Mother and hoped against hope that she had not seen the paragraph, as she did not take in that particular paper. But of course, in the usual way, a kind friend showed it to her, and she was disturbed enough to ask me about it in a hesitating way.
‘Sarah, darling ‒ I know of course there’s nothing in it, it’s just that they have to gossip about someone ‒ but surely you’re not getting involved with a man of that age and that reputation?’
I saw myself losing Clive, who at that moment seemed to me the most marvellous man I had ever met, and I began to pour out a stream of explanations and excuses. What was wrong with Clive anyway? He was a wonderful man really. I hated little boys ‒ he was a real man. Why should there be anything wrong even if I did get engaged to him? Though of course there was nothing really in it, I was terribly fond of him and he was terribly fond of me, and that was as far as it went.
I stopped then, because I saw her stricken face.
‘I should think about it first,’ she said. ‘It’s not only that he’s a lot older, but ‒ Please think about it a lot, Sarah.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You may be getting further involved than you think. And then, what about his feelings?’
I felt a horrible pang of sorrow and guilt, but even then I did not admit I was wrong. I lay awake that night trying to pretend to myself that my friendship with Clive was nothing but friendship, and that all I minded about was having fun with him. Or if he was unfortunately in love with me, he would have to snap out of it like my other admirers.
Scenes from the past few months kept coming up in my mind. I thought of the first time I had met him, at the dance where he had come up and danced off with me in front of half a dozen young men, saying in my ear: ‘I felt it was time you had a little adult conversation.’ I thought of the amusing times we had had going round together at the various functions. And then I thought of how last night I had been dancing with him at the Aspen Club, and how in the taxi coming home he kissed me, and said good night in a deeper, tender voice …
Then suddenly I saw Mother’s stricken look, and I knew with absolute conviction that I did not really love Clive, and he was not the right person for me. It was simply an infatuation that could do neither of us any good.
Next morning, without saying anything to Mother, I rang up Aunt Lucy and told her I was going to stay with Mother for the rest of the season. ‘I feel she’s not awfully well,’ I said.
‘Sarah, my love, are you awfully well?’ said Aunt Lucy in her rather drawling voice. ‘This attentive daughter line is surely a bit out of character.’
‘Oh, well,’ I said, ‘I expect I deserved that. Give my love to Jeremy and tell him to keep the gossip hounds from barking.’
‘Ah!’ she said. ‘Is that what’s worrying you? Don’t be silly, my dear. The only way to treat gossip is to laugh.’
‘I don’t feel all that amused as it happens,’ I said.
And during the next few weeks I was far from amused. I was sunk in gloom most of the time, except when Clive’s letters and telephone calls made me drown myself in floods of tears. I hadn’t felt so miserable for years ‒ in fact my misery now reminded me of that far more acute misery of six years ago. I real
ised that Clive had begun to fill a gap for me that I had tried to cover up since Father died, and now it was yawning wide in my life again. I realised that parties, dancing, admiration, fun, had been only a screen that I threw before the gap.
What made it worse, absolutely agonising, in fact, was that I now knew that Clive cared, really cared. His wild letters and desperate appeals; his promises; the way he threatened to throw up everything; career, friends, future ‒ his pitiful appeals that I would only see him, his complaints of my coldness and cowardice; ‘I would face anything for you! You can’t even stand up to a little disapproval from narrow-minded puritans.’ The day that he came to the house, and I saw him drive up and ran away into the woods, and Mother had to see him and ask him in her sweet way not to insist on seeing me, and how that evening I was absolutely horrible to Mother, and brought out a lot of statements that I did not really believe about how one should snatch at what happiness life offered, and perhaps I did love him, and how did she know she was not ruining my life and his? The misery I suffered ‒ the misery I caused ‒ I can’t bear even now to think about it.
The only real help in those days came from my cousin Jeremy. He drove down for the week-end in his sports car and was at once so utterly sensible and unemotional that I began for the first time to see my predicament from the outside.
‘It isn’t the first time it’s happened, old girl,’ he said. ‘The pages of history are stiff with this sort of thing. In six months you’ll be quite cheerful, and in a year you’ll be crazy about someone else.’
‘How can you say that?’ I said indignantly. ‘I’ve never been in love before, and I quite likely never shall be again.’
‘Like to bet?’ said Jeremy. ‘You’re only a late developer, that’s all. Once one starts this sort of thing, one goes on.’
‘Well, when are you going to start being in love?’
‘Matter of fact, I’m never out of it.’
‘That’s what you call in love. Love isn’t just having a fancy for someone. I see now it’s a ghastly tearing feeling. It makes people do mad things. He says he’s going to throw up everything and go off into the Sahara ‒ that’s what turning him down has done for him. Don’t you see how it makes me feel responsible?’
‘Don’t worry, old girl,’ said Jeremy. ‘Next season you’ll see him consoling himself with some lovely from the next batch of debutantes.’
This silenced me, and by the time Jeremy left I felt a slight lifting of the burden. After all, however painful it was, I knew in my heart that I had done the right thing to break with Clive. Perhaps there is some slight compensation in the fact that one has done the right thing. Small as this consolation prize was, I clung to it.
About a fortnight later, Jeremy rang me up to say he was coming down to stay again. He had to cover Lady Salvington’s garden party at Upcliff Hall in aid of the Redroof Home. He would come on Friday night, take me with him to the party on Saturday, and get back to town on Sunday in time to turn in his column.
I was not particularly excited at the prospect of going to the garden party. It would be, I knew, just like one of those village affairs which Mother was always concerned with, only on a much larger and grander scale. The Opener would make a boring speech saying how hard everybody had worked, the local society women would run tombolas and hoopla and gift stalls, dozens of nasty little children would come round with raffle tickets and ask you to guess the name of a pet duck or the weight of a cake or the number of peas in a bottle. Perhaps some minor royalty would be present. The beautifully smooth green lawns of Upcliff Hall, where I had once been to a summer coming-out dance, would be covered with torn paper and ice cream cones. The roses would get picked, the rock plants trampled on. In the background you would see McWhirter, the grey-haired head gardener, scowling at the company.
I asked Mother if she was coming.
‘Oh no, I do wish I could. Such a splendid cause. But I’ve got to go with the Darby and Joan Club to Weymouth, there aren’t enough helpers and some of the dear old things are so frail.’
I nearly asked Mother what the ‘splendid cause’ was, then I thought it was probably something sordid about hospitals and anyway every cause to Mother was ‘splendid’. So I just said I supposed I should have to go with Jeremy, and I only hoped he would pay for everything, because you get so plundered at these places and I hadn’t a bean.
Mother hardly listened. ‘Yes, darling. Don’t forget to give my love to Sabina, will you? And do say I wish them every luck.’ Sabina was Lady Salvington.
So now, on this hot Saturday afternoon, I was standing near the mike while Jeremy got out his notebook, and Lady Salvington, a pretty woman, prematurely white-haired with an aquiline nose, was just standing aside after a few words of introduction which I did not listen to ‒ when suddenly I saw him. He stood up to the mike, waiting for the applause that greeted the sight of him to die down, with a little smile on his face, a kind but utterly detached smile. He was tall and rather thin, and dressed in a light grey summer suit which had a casual air; his hair was thick and light brown but not curly, his face was thin and clever-looking, but his eyes were warm.
He started to speak, and to say his voice was deep and sincere is not to say enough; the words were nothing compared with the feeling behind them. He spoke as if what he was saying was terrifically important; a life and death message he had to pass on.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began, ‘I must first of all thank you for taking the trouble to come here this afternoon. Everyone has worked very hard both selling and spending ‒’ there was a mild ripple of laughter, but I listened impatiently for him to go on talking. ‘I feel particularly,’ he went on, ‘indebted to the spenders, because we do need your money ‒ desperately. As you know, we are not state supported, and to carry on our work we must have more capital.’
He started to read out some figures. I turned excitedly to Jeremy. ‘What does he do?’ I asked in a low voice.
Jeremy raised his eyebrows. ‘Do you mean to say,’ he said cynically, ‘that you’ve been here all afternoon spending my money, and you don’t know what it’s for?’
Lady Salvington caught my eye and frowned slightly. I took the hint and shut up, listening attentively to the rest of the speech.
‘In our work,’ he was saying, ‘we are able to give a chance to those people who have so long lived without hope. We are able to rehabilitate them, so that they can go back to their countries ‒ if they are lucky enough to have countries who will take them, most of them are stateless ‒ in any case they can go back and be of some use to the community they live in, instead of being a useless drag on it. All our patients are displaced persons, and because of the shortage of specialists and accommodation, we at Redroof Home have had to limit the variety of cases to those with orthopaedic disabilities. Now there are hundreds of other types of cases we have as yet been unable to cope with; ear, nose and throat patients, heart and lung disabilities, and so on, to mention only a few.’
At this moment a very old lady walked down the middle of the audience and said loudly to her companion, a harassed looking middle-aged man: ‘Couldn’t hear a word at the back. Don’t suppose I’ll hear at the front, either.’
He silenced her by shushing loudly and putting a finger to his lips, but she went on muttering, till he had found her a place near the front, disturbing a large area of the crowd to do so.
I looked anxiously at the speaker, afraid that the interruption would have made him lose the thread of his speech, and to my surprise I saw him looking at the old lady not with impatience, but with an amused and compassionate smile.
When the half muffled titters had died down, he started again: ‘Why do we do this work at all, you wonder? The numbers we take a year are so infinitesimal, it can have no effect on the vast army of sufferers. Well, my staff and I feel that is a defeatist attitude. We’re looking at the bottle half full instead of calling it half empty. And I know with your generous support we can maintain and increase our wor
k, and have the satisfaction of knowing that we have helped some of these people in a small way.’
He stood down, and there was a ripple of applause. I clapped till my hands were sore, because I felt there was not nearly enough appreciation of this amazing young man. For the first time I was seeing someone living and fighting for what was almost a lost cause, and I felt I wanted to live and fight for it too.
I looked round for Jeremy, but he had disappeared. Lady Salvington was talking to a woman whose face I had often seen on the front of newspapers, photographed fighting for improvements of various sorts, the kind of person Jeremy contemptuously called a do-gooder.
‘Oh, Sarah,’ said Lady Salvington graciously including me in her conversation, ‘do you know Mrs. West? Edwina, this is Sarah Lacy, Mary’s daughter.’
That was it, of course. Edwina West, the great champion of the children of displaced persons.
‘How do you do?’ I said with my finishing school charm. ‘What a wonderful work this is, don’t you think?’
‘How do you do,’ she replied briskly. ‘It’s also jolly hard work I can tell you.’
‘Oh, are you connected with it?’ I asked with rather more interest.
‘Yes, I’m on the committee.’
‘Hugh must be a marvellous person to have as Chairman, I should think,’ contributed Lady Salvington.
‘Yes, he’s good,’ said Mrs. West in her abrupt way. ‘Very wrapped up in his work.’
‘No time for a love life,’ said Lady Salvington.
‘No. Nothing of that kind ‒ now,’ said Mrs. West.
I longed to ask what she meant by now, but just as I was trying to phrase a question about Hugh’s love life tactfully, without sounding impertinent, Lady Salvington broke in:
‘Have you seen the Produce Stall, Edwina? Honestly, I’ve never seen such large gooseberries in my life. One of the village women sent them up.’
Her Australian Summer: Corazon Books Vintage Romance (novella) Page 6
