Heartbreak Surgeon (1960s Medical Romance Book 2)

by Sheila Burns

  Lorna had asked them to telephone her parents. The big plain clock on the wall told her the time (she had been longer than she would have thought with that man, and in imminent danger, and she did not want them to be frightened). The police were kindly discreet. Lionel Strong would go back in a police car to where he had left his own, and a policeman would drive Lorna to her home.

  ‘I ‒ I don’t think I could do it myself,’ she confessed.

  ‘Goodbye,’ she said to Lionel Strong on the steps of the police station, ‘and thank you so much for all you did. I am sure that you saved my life.’

  ‘I wish I had done more. I never caught actual sight of the chap. The moment he knew I was there, he was off.’

  ‘Which was what I wanted!’

  He hesitated for a moment beside the car. ‘You will need something of a change from those wards after this, you know; an adventure of this type can have a nasty back kick. Don’t think too much about it.’

  She knew of the back kick already.

  ‘Possibly I shall come to Cornwall,’ she said.

  Mrs. Vane was deeply concerned.

  From the moment that Lorna had come home for the ten days’ leave, she had been privately convinced that something was wrong with her, and somehow she had an idea that this dreadful episode was all part of the trouble.

  ‘I’m all right. Mum, really I’m absolutely all right.’

  But for the next three days Lorna was very far from being all right. The local doctor came round, a sturdy middle-aged man, with bushy eyebrows, and obviously the one anxiety to get on to the next patient. He said that quite a lot of strange things went on, you were always reading about them in the newspapers. He ordered sedatives, a rest, and then rushed off to the next case. If they wanted him, perhaps Mrs. Vane would ring him up, otherwise he was quite sure Lorna would be all right.

  ‘Nurses are tough, we know,’ he said as he rushed off.

  Lionel Strong sent red roses, the long-stemmed kind that seem to live only in florist’s shops. He called to enquire, making a great impression on Mrs. Vane, who had read some of his novels, but thought privately that they were a bit too modern for her, though she would not have admitted this.

  ‘Also I know Mrs. Liskeard. It’s a small world, isn’t it?’ he asked. ‘A world of coincidence. I always laugh when publishers warn writers against coincidences, because, hang it all, real life is full of them.’

  Mrs. Vane dared not admit that she had no idea who Mrs. Liskeard could be, but eventually she learnt that she was the lady who had so unfortunately advertised in the Times personal column the other morning. The advertisement had attracted Lorna from the first. Now Mrs. Vane gathered, and with considerable reluctance, that Lionel Strong lived near and was putting in a good word for Lorna.

  Two days later Mrs. Liskeard phoned.

  Mrs. Vane answered the call, and was almost annoyed at having to admit that the voice was kindly, and that she sounded to be just the right kind of person, but all the time vaguely, deep down within herself, she was considerably worried. It seemed so regrettable to leave the hospital which had trained Lorna, before she actually became a Sister. It was such a short time more that was asked of her, and having done the time behind her, why not finish the job properly?

  ‘It’s no good. Mum, I can’t go back to the hospital,’ Lorna said.

  ‘But why ever not?’

  ‘There are reasons, they are quite my own, and I simply can’t explain.’

  ‘Was it a love affair, dear?’ Mrs. Vane hoped that her voice sounded tender. ‘Because that sort of thing is only passing, we’ve all had them, and you’ll feel much better about it soon.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it, Mum. Hasn’t there ever been anything in your own life that you didn’t want to talk about? Something that hurt just too much?’

  With a pang Mrs. Vane recalled the young man who had sung in the choir at home, and had fascinated her with his honey-coloured eyes and his charming voice. Her parents had noticed it, and had split the couple, sending her away to an aunt in the north of England, and what they called ‘out of harm’s way’. When she returned the young man with the honey-coloured eyes had married a fat girl from the more squalid part of the country town, a girl who, as far as Mrs. Vane could see, had nothing to recommend her. That is the way love goes. She had met him again ten years later, when she herself was married, and he was just a fat little man with a podgy tummy, a cheap suit and an accent that she disliked very much indeed. The honey-coloured eyes had faded to a rather dingy brown. They no longer fascinated her. She’d been a fool, and her parents seeing it coming had saved her from herself. But privately she didn’t thank them for it.

  ‘He hasn’t got golden eyes?’ she asked, and did not really know why she even said it.

  ‘They were black,’ Lorna answered. No more. But that one statement told her mother quite a lot.

  ‘There, there, dear! Time marches on, don’t think about it if you can help it, for it will come right. Everything does in the long run. It all comes out in the wash.’

  ‘What happened the other night with that dreadful young man I picked up, simply won’t come out in the wash.’

  ‘No, of course not, but that was very different.’

  Lorna wrote to Mrs. Liskeard after the telephone conversation.

  Lionel Strong had had a long talk with her. He was a married man, once a stockbroker, but he had retired when polio had shattered him at twenty-eight. He lived within ten miles of St. Ives, and had built himself a most attractive modern home on the hills above the small harbour where Mrs. Liskeard lived. He wrote books when the spirit took him, and had done far better than he had ever dared to hope in this way, for he had a vivid imagination and loved the work.

  He had read between the lines and had already guessed that the reason for Lorna’s wish to leave the hospital had been in the nature of a love affair there. Perhaps in her agony of mind after the unhappy affair in the lay-by, she had admitted this. He was kind.

  He thought that Cornwall could be the road to recovery and to forgetfulness; it would help memory let down the curtain, and that was what she most needed now. Perhaps the door had finally closed on the old love affair when, in the lay-by, she had faced death, not for others as she had frequently faced it in hospital, but for herself. And death hurt!

  She for her part longed to set aside the bustle of the wards, the rustle of print and aprons, the eternal footsteps to and fro, and sometimes so dog-tired. The jangle of trolleys, instrument trolleys, food trolleys, stretchers going to the theatre, or returning. The constant cry of ‘Nurse?’

  ‘I’ve got to get away from it,’ she insisted to herself. Mrs. Liskeard offered a small flat in a corner of the ancestral home where she lived. There was a small Mini-Minor in the garage which she could look upon as being her own, and the salary was inviting. It would be something to be against a fresh background, with new people, and truly happy.

  ‘This is my big chance, Mum, and I’ve got to grab it,’ she said, after discussing it with Mr. Strong.

  ‘Then you’ll never be a Sister,’ said her mother.

  ‘But does that matter so much?’

  If her mother only knew what the nurses said about Sisters, then she might realise what a mixed blessing it could be. She wrote to Wiseways, and she took the job.

  Mrs. Liskeard’s letter was rapturous; obviously she had been influenced by what Lionel Strong had said. She was a diabetic, sick to death of coping with the daily injection; she had broken her right arm very badly in a serious car accident a few years previously, and had to be helped in a great many trivial ways which would seem nothing to others, but which were insupportable to her. Patently she was a woman who made very little fuss, disliking illness, in fact she never even mentioned the fact that she had had a threatened thrombosis (fortunately it had not materialised); it was Lionel Strong who told Lorna about it.

  Wiseways had good servants; the butler had been with the Liskeards for many years; M
rs. Henderson the personal maid had started service with them as a mere tweeny, and now they could not live without her. Mrs. Liskeard added a postscript; she had enclosed a cheque to cover the fare, and also there might be some things which Lorna would want to buy and which Mrs. Liskeard considered to be her own personal liability, so that she trusted that Lorna would not be offended.

  ‘She sounds marvellous,’ she told Lionel that night when she explained about the cheque, and wondered whether she ought to accept it.

  ‘She’d be deeply hurt if you sent it back, I can tell you that.’

  ‘Then I must keep it.’

  He told her more. Mr. Liskeard had died only five years previously. He had committed suicide, the world thought, though the coroner, who had a kind heart, had been very gentle in his verdict. Mrs. Liskeard always tried to foster that fact that it had been a bad mistake with a bottle of sleeping pills, when he was exhausted from a couple of bad nights, and did not really know what he was doing. Lionel thought John Liskeard was not the sort of man to make mistakes. He was the type which bullocks its way through life, not caring much what happens as long as he does what he wants, and it had always puzzled Lionel that such a charming, elegant and delicate creature could have married him. It must be the allure of opposites, he supposed.

  That night Lorna wrote to the hospital and finished with them. She did not mention it to her mother, but somehow felt that Mum knew, for she had a way of discovering such details. If the word ‘Sister’ was mentioned again, Lorna would go clean raving mad. And that’s that, she thought.

  The police came round twice that week for further details. There was something dreadfully trying in harping on the same story, for Lorna had no more to tell. She had not actually seen the man’s face, she had only got an idea of it. However many times they asked her these questions, she had no further answers to give, but that did not seem to satisfy them. Whilst she stayed here, and they came round, she could never try to put the whole thing out of her mind. She must be left alone with her own courage to face it and forget it. This was one of the things that she must forget and bury away, and she only prayed that the Cornish police would let her alone. She gathered that Lionel had considerable influence in that direction and could perhaps help her.

  ‘I so like him,’ she told her mother.

  ‘He’s married,’ Mrs. Vane warned her.

  ‘Don’t be silly, it is not that sort of liking. He’s a friend, and there are so few good friends in this hard world.’

  ‘I just wondered if … on the rebound, you know …’ and although Mrs. Vane said it in a low voice, Lorna heard and it worried her. I’ve simply got to get away from here, she thought.

  Lionel Strong had returned to Cornwall before she left. The parting with her parents was a little strained as from the first they had been quite insistent that she should not go.

  Perhaps they did not understand the tremendous help that a new setting could be for her, and Wiseways was charming, she had seen a photograph of it; besides, it would be very helpful to have sufficient money. In hospital she had never had quite enough. There had been those bad times in the month when even the buying of a new bra was a crisis!

  On the morning itself she went early, her father taking her into Hitchin, and she caught the London train there. London never changes, she thought as she came into King’s Cross and went out into the yard to get a taxi for Paddington. Not a very enjoyable ride along hot and fusty streets, the cheaper part, the poorer part, in places the slummy and commercial part. In the country for this short time she had grown used to fresh air, and had not realised that London smelt so stuffy. Paddington was even worse and crowded with people. She had dallied with the thought of an ice cream when she got there, then decided against it, and finally bought magazines and newspapers, then went through the barrier to the train itself. A fat little man with grey hair and a cigarette stub crammed behind the ear, accepted her ticket and smiled at her.

  ‘Cornwall’s lovely,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I’m lucky, aren’t I?’

  ‘You are indeed, and I wish you all the best.’ Plainly he had an eye for a pretty girl, and liked them to be auburn-haired.

  She boarded the train and went immediately to the dining-car. Mrs. Liskeard had reserved a seat for her, and a table, everything that could be done to make the journey easier had been done, and she ought to be really grateful. The efficient steward told her that lunch would not be served until they were out of London, but that she could stay where she was if she wished, so she did that.

  She opened the Times, and somehow she thought of this journey as being the golden latchkey which opened the door on the happy future. The crossword puzzle attracted her for a moment, then she put it by for the late afternoon when perhaps the journey might be wearisome.

  She did not know why she turned to the Court and Society page, because she was not court and society and usually it did not interest her at all. She saw the small notice right at the bottom of the Forthcoming Marriages column, just as the train chugged out of the station into the dreary slums beyond, and she knew that the door was finally shut behind her.

  MR. MICHAEL BLAND

  AND MISS FRANCES FORD

  The marriage arranged between

  Mr. Michael Bland F.R.C.S. and

  Miss Frances Ford will not take place.

  Chapter Three

  The train must have travelled a great number of miles before Lorna recovered from the impact of that information. She read it again and again, not actually seeing it, most certainly not letting it soak into her mind, for this was something that she had never thought could possibly happen. She had been convinced that Michael’s wedding would definitely take place.

  Now she realised that the one girl whom he would never marry, was Frances Ford. She might be rich, and was; she might be beautiful (the photograph of her had been quite breath-taking, leaving Lorna staring helplessly into space); but all that was over and done with now.

  She could not imagine what had happened, and her thoughts went back to the deer park and the gracious house, and the day Michael and she had spent with that kind old man. Had he advocated the marriage, and pushed his son into it? Had there been pressure from some outside source, or was it a whim, something that had happened suddenly, at a dance, on the river, some romantic venture which had made Michael propose to her, and later on he had found it was the wrong thing to do?

  He was impulsive; she had found that in their brief acquaintance. The man who on duty hardly knew you, and yet could be so kind and gentle when he wished, off duty.

  Every moment the grinding wheels of the train were taking Lorna further and further away from all that, from the hospital where she had seemed to work for such an interminable time, from the grim routine, and the love affair. She recalled her own misery when she had discovered that Michael meant nothing, the anguish, and the despair.

  Forget it now, she thought, and ordered her lunch.

  She must learn to control her emotions better, to rein them in and control them. She supposed that almost every girl in the world had a broken love affair somewhere tucked into the past, and had recovered from the pain of it. She was not alone in that, even if she thought she was. Probably almost every girl had also had some unpleasant affair with a man, though probably not quite so bad as her own had been, for hers had been very close to death, and even today as she travelled towards Cornwall, her ribs still bore the vivid bruises of the gun pressed into them. She must forget that she had ever been in love with Michael Bland, and that she had had an affair with a man in a lay-by, a man who had threatened to kill her.

  She was able to enjoy a pleasant afternoon tea, with the train moving fast through Devonshire. There were the red sands of Dawlish, the busy port of Devonport, and then across the river into Cornwall itself. It was escape. It was flight from everything that had distressed her. It was a journey to her brave new world.

  It had been spring in London, it was early summer in this county of King Arth
ur. Cerise clusters of roses smothered countrified porches, and the clematis was in flower. If she disliked the grey houses and the ugly flat roofs, the sea was sheer turquoise, and clear, and already the occasional palm tree showed her that she was moving towards the Cornish riviera. It would be seven o’clock when she arrived.

  The train was split and her portion became a little local one, which stopped at wayside stations, and the last part of the long journey was dead slow. She would be met, she knew, not by Mrs. Liskeard who was not well enough to do that, but by her nephew who was staying with her for the moment.

  Roger will take care of you, she had written, he is a dear boy, I am very fond of him, and I know you will like him.

  By the time she was approaching the cliffs, and the rocky barrier of the beaches, she knew that she too was going to like Roger. Her life had to change, and she was glad that she had had the courage to make this escape. It had been the only thing to do, to start all over again.

  The train jolted to a standstill, and she got out at a small very ordinary little station. She was glad that she had worn the navy silk frock, the small white hat on her auburn hair, and had travelled light, for it was much warmer here than it had been at Hitchin. She was glad too that she had bought the white suitcase, for her immediate needs; she had bought it with the generous cheque that Mrs. Liskeard had sent her, and it gave her a new personality, she felt. She was indeed a new person.

  Few people got out of the train; relations embraced, children called a welcome to their friends, and the platform cleared. She stood there uncertain, a little dismayed, and the porter who had grouped her luggage on to his barrow, asked, ‘And who would you be wanting, miss?’

  ‘I am to be met. I am going to Mrs. Liskeard at Wiseways.’

  The man smiled. ‘Ah, that’ll be Mr. Roger Liskeard fetching you. A very nice lady is Mrs. Liskeard, and a gentleman is Mr. Roger. Are you a relation, too, miss? That is, begging your pardon if I would seem nosey?’