The Nurse's War
Page 25
She heard one of the guards say, ‘Just a minute, sir. We’ll have to check. Mr Harte is already here and he’ll vouch for you.’
No, her heart was saying. Don’t bring him to the door. Please don’t. But the guard had gone inside the house.
‘I don’t need Grayson to vouch for me,’ the man was saying in his slightly odd accent. ‘Now let me through, old chap.’ And it seemed as though he would try to shoulder the remaining guard to one side.
She started forward as though every demon in hell had just landed on her shoulders. ‘Don’t let him through.’ Her voice was cracking. Find your voice, she begged herself, shout it loud and clear. ‘Don’t let him through,’ she yelled. ‘He’s not Mr Corrigan.’
The guard must have heard her because his hand went immediately to his gun. Sweetman heard, too, and spun around, pulling a gun from inside his jacket. For a moment when he saw her, it looked as though he would drop it in sheer astonishment. But a voice from the door made him turn again, and this time he levelled the weapon.
‘What’s this about?’ Grayson’s figure was silhouetted in the doorway. ‘Is that you, Mike?’ He peered into the darkness, his hand above his eyes.
‘Unfortunately not,’ Sweetman snarled and his hand was on the trigger. The guard was raising his rifle to take aim, but it was too late. Too late, she thought. The stone in her pocket became large, urgent. She fumbled for it and, with all her waning strength, hurled the stone at the back of Sweetman’s head. It hit him dead centre, pitching him to the ground and sending the gunshot flying harmlessly into the air. Throwing a mean stone was something else she’d learned at Eden House.
CHAPTER 18
‘How are you feeling?’
Her friend’s face leant towards her. What was Connie doing here? Where was here?
‘How are you, Daisy?’ Connie’s voice was a little shaky.
‘I’m fine,’ she murmured automatically. That’s what you always said, wasn’t it? She tried to raise her head but the effort was too great and she slumped back onto stacked pillows.
‘You’re not to think of getting up,’ Connie warned. ‘You need to rest.’
‘I’m in the sick bay?’ she hazarded.
Her friend nodded. ‘And you’re staying here until you’re completely recovered.’
She’d hardly ever been to the sick bay. She knew nurses were sent here immediately they felt at all unwell, not so much as a sniffle was allowed to pass unnoticed on the ward. But she’d managed to survive eighteen months’ training without a sniffle, and her only visit to this part of the hospital had been on errands for Sister Elton.
‘I’m fine, really I am,’ she repeated. Her neck was still sore and inflamed and she ached from head to toe, but otherwise there didn’t seem a great deal wrong. Her mind, though, was cloudy.
‘You may think you’re okay but you’ve been through a tremendous ordeal,’ Connie soothed, ‘and you need time to get over it.’
Her mind grappled with the idea of an ordeal and memory kicked in just a little. There had been guns, she recalled, and a dark, gravelled drive.
‘Grayson,’ she said suddenly.
‘He’s fit and well. He’s been here most of the time you’ve been sleeping. He’s only just left.’
‘He’s been here, in the sick bay?’ She was incredulous.
‘He was given special permission—under the circumstances. But he had to leave and check in at Baker Street. There’s a lot of sorting out to do apparently. He promised to come back later—that’s if you want to see him.’
She wasn’t sure she did. There was a lot of sorting out for her to do too. But she was overcome by such heartfelt relief that he was safe and not dead at Sweetman’s feet that she pushed the doubts aside. Instead, she tried to concentrate on remembering. In her mind’s eye, she saw the house, Pitt House, and then Sweetman levelling his gun at the figure in the doorway. She felt the stone in her pocket and that last desperate effort, using every ounce of her remaining strength to deflect the gun. But everything else was a blank. How had she got there? How had she come here?
‘You blacked out and you’ve been unconscious ever since,’ her friend explained, sensing her confusion. ‘But it’s so good to see you awake and talking.’ She bent over the bed and gave Daisy an enormous hug.
‘What time is it then?’ She struggled to see the clock, but once again had to slump back onto her pillows.
‘It’s four in the afternoon. You’ve been out for sixteen hours. That wicked man injected you with insulin, and you’ve been in a delayed coma. I can’t believe how you managed to do what you did.’
It seemed there had been trouble and she’d been in the middle of it, but she could remember nothing beyond that one scene. And what was Connie doing here in the middle of the afternoon?
‘Shouldn’t you be on the ward?’
‘More special permission. I’ve been given an hour off to come and see you. I’ve been sitting here willing you to wake up, and then you did! Evidently, I’m just the medicine the doctor ordered.’
‘Evidently.’ For the first time, Daisy’s face creased into a smile. ‘And you say that Grayson was here.’ Her tone was wondering.
‘For hours.’
She was overcome by a rush of vanity. ‘What must I look like?’
‘You don’t look too special,’ Connie said frankly, ‘but then you have been through the wars.’
‘Give me a mirror.’
‘I wouldn’t, really I wouldn’t.’
‘Give it to me this minute, Telford.’
Connie shrugged her shoulders resignedly. ‘Okay, but remember you’re the heroine of the hour, so it doesn’t matter what you look like.’
Daisy took a quick glance in the mirror. No almond cream skin greeted her but a sallow wash, enlivened only by strips of pink sticking plaster dotted at intervals around her face. One cheek sported a very large, mauve bruise.
‘How did that happen?’ She pointed to the plasters and then to the bruise.
‘Don’t ask me. That’s how you were when you were brought in. Your legs and arms are pretty trashed too.’ Daisy pushed up the sleeves of her nightdress. A neat row of darkening bruises greeted her, interspersed with a lattice-work of cuts.
The inspection left her silent and brooding. ‘Would you like some tea?’ Connie asked brightly.
‘Thank you, that would be good.’ Her response was automatic, her mind elsewhere. ‘Those cuts … I climbed through broken glass. I remember now.’
‘You’re not to worry about them. They’re not too deep and they shouldn’t leave a scar.’
‘And the bruise,’ she continued without hearing her friend. ‘I fell. That’s right, I fell into a grave. I was in a cemetery. The grave had broken open and I tripped on some gashed stone.’
‘Think about it later,’ Connie advised. ‘When you’re back on form.’
But her mind was chasing memories and wouldn’t let go. It was all coming back. ‘I picked up one of the broken stones. It was the one I threw.’
Her companion shook her head. ‘You won’t give up, will you?’
‘What happened to Sweetman?’
‘The baddie, you mean? He must be in prison, but other than that, I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Grayson when he gets back. That’s if you’re willing to see him. He told me you’d given him the heave-ho.’
Daisy looked down at the starched white sheet and plucked at its trimming. ‘I can’t have been thinking straight.’
‘You can’t have,’ Connie agreed. ‘What made you do it? The last I heard you were both deliriously happy. I know you felt bad about Willa, but why dump Grayson?’
‘I can’t expect you to understand.’ She closed her eyes, as if to shut out thoughts she still found painful. ‘I don’t really understand it myself.’
‘Try me.’
She opened her eyes again and looked uncertainly into Connie’s. ‘I was overwhelmed … bad memories crowding in on me. Such a lot of hurt. Memories of all t
he people I’d known who had died. I felt as though it must be my fault, that I had to make up for it in some way.’
So many deaths, she thought. A mother she’d never known, Anish and Gerald, Willa, her own small baby all those years ago on-board ship. For a while, her life has seemed nothing more than one long roll call of the departed. No wonder she’d refused to welcome happiness when it came calling.
‘But how are you, Connie? What’s been happening?’
‘Quite a bit and I’m feeling nervous,’ the girl confessed. ‘It’s tomorrow I meet Colin’s parents and I do so want them to like me.’
‘You’ve no reason to feel worried. You’ll go down a storm.’
‘I think it may be an extra special occasion.’ Daisy saw her friend’s plump cheeks flush a bright pink. ‘Colin wants me to fix a wedding date and make it soon.’
‘And will you? Set the date, I mean.’
‘Of course. I want to marry him as soon as possible. I really love him, Daisy.’
‘That’s wonderful.’ And it was, she thought. She was delighted for her friend but finding it difficult to keep the fatigue from her voice.
‘You need to get more sleep,’ Connie said quickly. ‘And I need to get back to the ward.’
‘How is everything there …?’ Her voice trailed off. She should be going with Connie, returning to the ward herself. But she was so very tired.
‘Everything is fine, but we want you back as soon as possible. Fit and raring to go!’
Despite her fatigue, she didn’t sleep. Her mind refused to rest, so she simply closed her eyes and tried to remember. Talking to Connie, she had seen the whole of that last scene unwind in slow motion. The stone hitting Sweetman at the back of the head, the gun firing uselessly into the air. Grayson silhouetted in the doorway, the dark drive she’d followed. But now her mind wandered back even further: along the drive, along the walk she’d taken, the endless walk, and before that … a cemetery filled with gothic terror. Tall, white walls floated hazily into a corner of her mind and she recoiled instantly. She had reached the mausoleum, reached the moment of her imprisonment and her mind closed down. She could not bear to relive those hours of cold desperation and the horrifying risks she had taken to escape. How had her body stood up to such an onslaught? But it had. Somehow she’d reached Pitt House and done what she had to. She knew what had driven her—love, pure and simple. Love for Grayson and the dread she would lose him forever. But he was safe, and so was she. She could relax.
Or could she? What would she say to him when he returned? What could she say? It was clear he was concerned for her. He’d been here hours, Connie said, watching and waiting. When he came back, he’d want to check she was feeling better, want to thank her for her part in the night’s doings. But there would be nothing more, nothing deeper. She remembered how tight-lipped he’d been when she’d last seen him. How lacking in warmth as they’d stood together by the ruined house in Ellen Street. He’d sent her away with Michael Corrigan, refusing to offer one jot of sympathy for Gerald’s brutal death. He had been cold and unforgiving, and she understood why. They had loved each other passionately, and then she’d walked out of his life. Curtly, refusing to talk, refusing to explain. That would be uppermost in his mind. And why would it not?
It wasn’t the first time she’d rejected him. Not the first time she’d behaved unreasonably, or so it must seem. For so long her feelings had been in conflict, missing him when he’d gone back to India, waiting eagerly for his letters to arrive, yet when he’d returned, unable to relax, to enjoy his company. And why was that? He was an attractive man, very attractive; he was interesting and intelligent, and he’d made it plain how much he liked her. But there had been a bar of ice where her heart should be and it had refused to melt, a bar that had the past running through its very centre like a seaside stick of rock.
Until the Ritz, when, for one glorious night, she’d broken free of her bonds. But guilt, as always, had been waiting in the wings and it proved a short-lived freedom. It was only when Grayson was threatened, when she knew she was about to lose him forever, that her heart had found its truth again. Without a doubt, she loved him. Perhaps she always had, from those very first moments in India. But Gerald had been her husband and she’d not allowed herself to feel more than friendship. Gerald had got in the way of anything deeper. And when a month ago he’d come back from the dead and sent her life haywire, he’d got in the way again. But not any longer. Once the post-mortem was over, she would sever the last link in a chain that for years had held her fast. She would stand by his grave as she had by Willa’s, and send him on his journey with as much dignity and respect as she could muster.
He came bearing flowers, an enormous bouquet of early summer blooms. Passers-by stared at him as he walked from his car, but it was the moment he entered the hospital that he felt most awkward. Here he was, bringing a surfeit of flowers to a woman who’d made clear that she wanted no part of him. But she was a patient, he reasoned, and that’s what you did for patients—you brought them flowers.
Cautiously, he put his head around the open door. She was propped up against what seemed a hundred pillows, and her face had still not regained its lovely colour.
‘Where on earth did you get those?’
It wasn’t the greeting he’d expected, but it broke the ice.
‘Don’t ask. They’re strictly off ration.’ He walked up to her bedside and deposited the flowers on a nearby table. There was barely room to accommodate them.
‘From someone’s garden?’
‘Something like that, but a very important someone.’ He wouldn’t tell her that the blooms had been hand-picked that morning from the Palace gardens. ‘You’re the nation’s heroine right now, and nothing is too good for you.’
She gave a weak laugh. ‘It’s not kind to make fun of me when I’m feeling so feeble.’
‘I’m not, on my honour.’ He took the seat by the bed and looked at her closely. ‘You’re the David who slew Goliath, although a very pasty David, it has to be said. How are you feeling, or is that a foolish question?’
‘I keep telling everybody I feel fine, and I do. A few cuts and bruises, that’s all. I could get out of bed this minute and go back to work.’
‘Don’t even think of it. David needed to rest after his momentous victory, and so do you.’
‘Sweetman wasn’t much of a Goliath.’
She slithered down the bed as she spoke. She’s tired already, he thought. God knows what she’d had to contend with before she’d appeared on the drive of Pitt House.
‘Sweetman is a very dangerous man,’ he remonstrated. ‘He holds the most extreme views and isn’t afraid to act on them.’
‘Have you discovered who sent him to England? I imagine he must have supporters back home.’
‘He’s still being interrogated. But you’re right. It looks as though he was sent undercover to sabotage any attempt to bring India into the war on our side. There’ll be a group or several groups somewhere in the homeland, rooting for the Germans to win this war, and that’s who we need to get to.’
‘And his colleague? Do you know who he was?’
‘His name was Hari Mishra and from what we’ve managed to piece together from contacts in India, he seems to have been as much a dupe as a conspirator. He’s currently lying in the morgue awaiting a post-mortem.’
‘What will happen to him?’
‘He’ll be cremated as soon as the coroner releases his body. Then his ashes will be scattered at sea.’
‘And Sweetman?’
‘Once we’ve finished with him, he’ll be handed to the police and charged with Mishra’s and Gerald’s murders.’
She said nothing and he could see the mention of her husband had disturbed her. He wished he’d kept quiet. ‘But for you, it would have been three deaths,’ he said, as lightly as he could.
‘That must mean Michael Corrigan is still alive. I didn’t like to ask. I know he’s a close friend of yours.’
He leaned forward and fixed his eyes on her face. He had something to say and he didn’t want to be deflected. ‘You’re adept at changing the subject, Daisy. I’m not sure how you do it, but you’re very good. Before Mike intruded into our conversation, I was trying to say thank you—awkwardly, I know—but thank you for saving my life.’
‘There’s really no need. Consider it a fair exchange.’ She sunk deeper into the bedclothes, as though trying to hide from the spectre of her own rescue in Jasirapur.
‘But there is. Most definitely. If it hadn’t been for you, I’d be lying alongside Mishra in the morgue at this very moment. What an aim you’ve got. And I thought girls couldn’t throw straight. Doesn’t that just show me!’
Without warning, she began to cry. The small, clear teardrops gathered and spilled onto her wounded cheeks and she made no attempt to brush them away.
He reached for her hand and drew it from the bedclothes. ‘My poor girl. What you must have been through. One day I want a full account of your adventures, but I won’t press you to talk right now.’ He took out a large white handkerchief and gently wiped away the tears. ‘We’ve plenty of time for that. At least I hope so. We are speaking now?’
She looked as though she might begin crying again, but instead she gave a very loud sniff. ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured brokenly, ‘I’m sorry for what I said when we met in the square. I was so stupid.’
He shushed her. ‘I was the stupid one, not to realise how devastating these last few weeks have been for you.’
She balled his handkerchief tightly between her hands. ‘I felt so guilty about Willa, you see … I went to pieces. And that made me unjust. I hope you’ll forget what I said.’