Heartbreak Surgeon (1960s Medical Romance Book 2)

by Sheila Burns

  For she knew!

  She had tried to set the feeling far from her, foolishly believing that emotions were something one could manage, and check, and treat as one treated servants. It was not so. Emotions came into life in a great tidal wave, sweeping everything else, including sound common sense, before them.

  Roger was watching her curiously; for a moment he looked again like that other man, then not like him at all.

  Perhaps he realised that he had committed himself, or had noticed something about her bearing, for his eyes dropped, almost as if he were afraid that he had admitted something that he did not want her to know. Emotionally she felt that she stood on the threshold of peril. He did not speak for some time, only when the waiter brought the coffee.

  ‘We’ll go home after the coffee, it is not wise to leave my aunt too long.’

  ‘No, it is very unwise, and I am wanting to get back to her.’

  But it was not the sole reason for wanting to go home. Suddenly she was remembering that before they got to Wiseways the half light would have come, and then the darkness; there was the underlying horror that once in the darkness she had been alone in a car with a man who was not unlike Roger. They had driven together into the night.

  Roger did not delay her, as though he sensed that she was afraid. ‘We’ll go now,’ he said, and called for the bill.

  When the man brought it, Roger went through every detail with the uttermost care, he was the sort of man who did this, and brought out the money to pay only when he was satisfied that it was correct.

  Then he got up.

  ‘We shall get home before it is quite dark if we hurry,’ he said, ‘come along.’

  They walked down the restaurant to the door, and there the woman who ran the place was waiting. She was a quiet-looking woman who might have been the widow of a doctor or a clergyman, with her greying hair beautifully parted, and coiffed.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said to Roger, ‘but about your bill. What you gave the man was ten shillings short.’ She held out the cheese plate to him, with the money he had prepared laid there and a few shillings for the waiter. It looked to be just as Lorna had seen it when he counted it out.

  ‘There was a ten shilling note there also, when I gave it to the waiter,’ he said.

  There hadn’t been!

  Lorna knew that quite well, she had watched him bringing out two pound notes from a soft leather wallet, which was extravagantly edged with a flexible gold rim. He had counted out the change very carefully.

  A little timidly, she said, ‘I think you are wrong, Roger. I never saw any ten shilling note, only two pound ones, and I was watching you.’

  He stared at her. A dark flush had come into his cheeks, creeping up from his neck, in a dark purple flush which was almost frightening in its intensity.

  ‘You’re absolutely wrong,’ he said.

  ‘I am quite sure,’ she answered calmly, and then. ‘Pay her the other, Roger. I really think you owe it.’

  He brought out the case again, drawing from it a ten shilling note, and then suddenly he pulled himself together. ‘Heavens! You’re quite right. It is here all the time, and I thought I had given it to her with the pound notes. You are right.’ His tone was almost joyous. ‘I’m so sorry. I suppose any one of us can make a mistake.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ but all the time Lorna knew that the woman who ran the restaurant suspected him.

  He put an arm round Lorna; it was not an attempt at love-making, it was just to help her out into the street where the car waited, and finish a rather unpleasant moment. They got into the car, neither of them saying another word, and she felt wretched. It was that hour in the evening when the first lights were appearing in windows, and considerably brighter than the daylight left outside. Somewhere near by, a local band was playing dance music, and there was the slurring sound of people dancing, like waves on a beach. Across the sea they could see a ship approaching, her lights lit and brilliant, and the first of the stars were coming out.

  ‘We’ll make it,’ Roger said. ‘Jump in, Lorna.’

  She had heard him use her Christian name again, and somehow she did not like the sound of it on his lips. They drove rapidly out of St. Ives; through Lelant and across the bridge which spans the estuary. After a time he spoke.

  ‘I always hate myself for making mistakes, especially where money is concerned. I don’t know why, but it worries me a lot, and I always feel such a fool.’

  The darkness was coming faster than she would have thought to be possible. ‘I don’t want to be too late back,’ she said and only hoped that her tone did not convey a hidden fear of which she was rapidly becoming conscious.

  ‘I’ll see you’re not late.’

  They came now on to the moorlands, barren and calm, a type of country which rolls over so much of Cornwall, with here or there a ruined tin mine standing in decay, dripping with a confusion of ivy about it, and looking pretty in the half light. Roger gained speed, driving a great deal faster than Lorna liked, but they had to be quick for the night was darkening fast, the west light saffron, and that fading almost as you looked at it.

  ‘We shan’t be late?’ she asked again.

  ‘No, we shan’t be late,’ he answered quickly.

  He went like the wind then and on until he had passed through the park gates, into the real velvet-soft darkness of the chestnut trees in the avenue. She could see the lights of Wiseways itself like great stars that had fallen to earth, and knew that she was immensely thankful. To be in the dark, in a car alone with this man who still reminded her perhaps wrongly of that stranger who had thumbed a lift from her, was too much.

  ‘Oh, I’m so glad to be back,’ she said when she got out.

  ‘I believe you’re afraid of me?’

  ‘Of course not! Why should I be afraid of you, Roger? You have done nothing to make me afraid.’

  ‘No, there is that about it. See?’

  Brown had opened the big doors, and stood there with the well-lit hall behind him. There was no longer any fear in her, the danger, if danger there had ever been, was behind her. She ran almost gaily up the steps.

  ‘Is Mrs. Liskeard all right?’

  ‘Quite all right, and better, Nurse.’ Brown smiled encouragingly at her. Old Brown, as Mrs. Liskeard always called him, had been with them such a very long time, and loved them all.

  Lorna did not wait for Roger, but ran upstairs to Mrs. Liskeard’s room. She opened the door softly, and saw Henderson sitting beside the bed with her knitting. They had been talking, she knew, and as the door opened Henderson rose.

  ‘She isn’t tired?’ Lorna asked.

  From the bed came the delighted voice. ‘No, Lorna, I’m better, I think it is the medicine your nice doctor gave me. It’s wonderful.’

  She was better. Lorna knew that as she laid a restraining hand on Mrs. Liskeard’s brow. ‘Yes, but be careful. Take life very very easily, please.’

  ‘I will, of course.’

  Henderson discreetly withdrew and Lorna started tidying up the room for the night. This and that went into their places. Under her careful fingers everything became orderly and in place, and the tired eyes of Mrs. Liskeard watched her. This was the dangerous time, when recovering somewhat the patient always wanted to do more than she should, and had to be gently kept in order. Lorna brought the lavender water and turned on the fans to keep the air fresh, for the night was warm.

  ‘Now go to sleep,’ she suggested.

  ‘Roger? How was Roger? He is not angry with me for being ill, I hope?’

  ‘Of course not! How could he be? He is deeply worried, of course, but you are better now, and he will be less concerned.’

  ‘Yes. He is a dear boy, and has always been so good to me, to my husband, too. Roger has always been good.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Lorna.

  She sat down to wait whilst Mrs. Liskeard dozed off. She dared not read the evening paper lest the rustling wakened her, she was very sensitive to noises, and as
she sat there Lorna was telling herself how difficult it was to live in a world in which a ghost kept tormenting her. She had not enjoyed the journey back from St. Ives tonight in the dying daylight, with the man who, whatever she thought, was still very like the stranger. In her own mind she talked to herself of him as being ‘The Stranger’. All the time she had been horribly apprehensive of something happening, and could not put a brake on her own emotions.

  Of course it had been silly, but the night had been so horrible to her and she could not entirely quench the feeling that what she had endured that night could happen again. The thrusting, bruising point of a gun against her ribs, and all of it in the agony of the darkness, so that she never actually saw the face of the stranger.

  She kept trying to convince herself that this was the ordinary reaction of anyone after a big mental strain, but she could not entirely destroy the memory. It still could hurt.

  After a while Mrs. Liskeard began to breathe more evenly, and Lorna was able to undress and creep across to the sofa to sleep. This had become her nightly bed, the place where she must rest until she was less worried for her patient.

  As she lay there she could see through the uncurtained window of the dressing-room, the night riding over Wiseways park, there was a rim round the moon tonight, which she had never liked, and the vista of the moors beyond the trees which boundaried the park. There was something mysterious about the moorland, she thought, and her mind turned to the last stronghold of the piskies above Zennor, and all those innumerable fairy tales in which the Cornish folk believe so strongly.

  It’s a strange world, she thought.

  Chapter Seven

  Maudie was convinced that he, and not Michael Bland, had produced the change for the better in Mrs. Liskeard. He bounced into Wiseways next day and after a sojourn at the sideboard in Roger’s room (for without his morning tipple he was lost) he came on up to Mrs. Liskeard immediately afterwards. He was in a talkative mood.

  ‘These big London chaps come down and throw their weight about, charging the earth for the visit, and what happens? It’s always the fellow on the spot who gets the little lady round, isn’t it?’

  Mrs. Liskeard seemed half to believe him. ‘But Mr. Bland did prescribe that very helpful new drug,’ she said, ‘and I am so glad that he’s coming back to see me next week.’

  ‘Ah!’ Maudie tapped his nose, a significant movement of his when in doubt, which Lorna had noted before. ‘I hear that Mr. Bland has booked himself a room at the Cross Keys, and intends to take a week’s holiday down here. That’ll surprise you, I’m sure. I shouldn’t have thought that our common or garden Cross Keys would be quite his cup of tea, for I’d have thought he was one of the collar-and-cuff brigade.’

  He was laughing at his own joke so that he did not notice the horror in Lorna’s eyes as she glanced quickly at him. The thought of Michael being in the neighbourhood for a week was a terrifying one! It couldn’t be true! Maudie was right and surely the Cross Keys had not the suitable kind of accommodation for him? Yet Maudie sat there laughing gaily; he was one of the most detestable doctors that she had ever met, but somehow or other the Liskeards seemed to believe in him and like him.

  Mrs. Liskeard said, ‘He has done wonders for me, and Lorna has been so good to me, too. I am feeling a great deal better.’

  ‘So you’ll be able to entertain the genius from London! Maudie giggled a little. ‘Well, don’t forget the old firm sometimes,’ and he patted her hand.

  ‘He really is rather a dear,’ said Mrs. Liskeard when he had gone, back to the sideboard as Lorna knew only too well, and there he and Roger would stay talking for quite a time. ‘If it’s true, I really am rather glad that Mr. Bland is coming down here for a week. Do find out if it is true, Lorna.’

  ‘I don’t see how I can without asking. Wouldn’t it be almost better if Roger rang up?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ She could see that Mrs. Liskeard was turning a problem over in her mind. She lay there staring into the distance. ‘I know what we’ll do. We’ll ask him to stay here, in Wiseways! It would be far nicer for him than the Cross Keys where everybody knows it is most primitive, though I’m told that the food is good. That’s what we’ll do. We’ll ask him to stay here.’

  Lorna wanted to scream, ‘Don’t do it! Don’t say it!’ but somehow she could not speak lest the tone of her voice betrayed her. At this moment everything seemed to be conniving against her.

  ‘Do fetch Roger,’ said Mrs. Liskeard.

  She went downstairs to get him, for there was nothing else that she could do, and whilst the two of them talked together, she hovered in the corridor, unable to trust herself to interrupt. Michael must not come here to stay, because she could not bear being with him almost every hour; never opening a door without the chance of him being on the other side of it. Seeing him again the other day for a mere couple of hours had been rather too much for her, but a whole week looked at this moment like an eternity.

  She had found it possible to fall in love with a man who just wasn’t worth while, and that was what Michael was. His behaviour had hurt her horribly, even if his father was to blame, and to see him for a whole week would be a terrible thing for her. Seeing him was wrong. She should never have sent for him to come down here, but she had done it because she adored Mrs. Liskeard and did believe that Michael could save her life.

  Just then Maudie had been doing all the wrong things, simply because he had not a clue as to the right ones. He prided himself that he had seldom opened another medical paper since the day when he had left hospital, and was enchanted that he knew nothing of the newest drugs, and the progress of modern research.

  As she waited for the conversation between Roger and Mrs. Liskeard to end, she saw Henderson slowly approaching her. She looked grave; when she came to think about it, Henderson was a most unsmiling person, she did not mean it really (she was the nicest woman ever), but those who knew her would have given a lot for the occasional smile.

  ‘Henderson?’ she said. ‘Mr. Roger is with Mrs. Liskeard for the moment, they rather want to get Mr. Bland to come here to stay.’

  ‘I think that would be a very good idea, Nurse,’ and still she did not smile; then hurriedly, in a low voice, she said, ‘Between ourselves, Nurse, I never quite trust Dr. Morde. He is the very casual kind, and far too fond of, well, you know what I mean …’

  Lorna did know.

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed.

  ‘I do hope Mr. Bland comes here, I liked him so very much, Nurse, a very nice gentleman, I thought.’

  ‘Yes, he is.’

  The cautious eye of Henderson regarded her. ‘You knew him when you were training at the hospital, Nurse?’

  ‘Yes, we met that way.’

  ‘I think his wife must be a very lucky lady.’

  ‘He isn’t married,’ and perhaps she was a fool to say it, for Henderson must never guess how she felt. Henderson had turned and looked at her; she gazed solidly; she gazed without blinking, then she said, ‘You’re tired!’

  No more! and Lorna had a horrible idea that wasn’t really what she meant. She went on.

  ‘He’ll come here, I’m sure. Mrs. Liskeard is clever at getting her own way when she’s set on a thing,’ then she went on down the corridor, to the sewing-room set apart for her, at the far end of it.

  I hope she doesn’t guess, thought Lorna.

  Mrs. Liskeard and Roger went on talking for quite a long time, and then he could be heard speaking on the telephone. They were probably ringing up Michael in London. Surely he would have the decency to refuse, and go to the Cross Keys? Lorna asked herself, and in the slight panic she could feel her pulse racing. Surely he would never come here on a visit, knowing how she felt, and knowing what had already happened between them?

  Roger came out of the room.

  ‘May I go in now?’ she asked him.

  ‘Oh, I am so sorry, was I keeping you out?’ He was in fine fettle today, the bronze of his very fair skin being quite wonderful
, and that same very bright light in his eyes. There was something about the look in his eyes that embarrassed her and she drew away from them. Instantly he recognised it.

  ‘You’re still afraid of me, you know.’

  ‘Of course I’m not! Why should I be?’

  ‘That’s what I want to know. I’m a quite ordinary person, leading a quite ordinary life.’

  He came nearer. He was in one of those playful moods of his, which she detested; a mood which fingered her hands with a certain careless enchantment, and he looked at her in a way which set her on edge. He was not the same man as the stranger, she knew that, of course, but most certainly he did behave oddly at moments. Also there was the occasional similarity, a turn of the head in the darkness, the movement of a compelling hand, and the look in the eyes themselves.

  His fingers were pressing her wrist. ‘It’s so silly of you to feel this way about me, Lorna. I’m harmless as a babe, surely you know that?’

  ‘Yes, I know it, but I am here as a nurse. My job is with your aunt, not with you.’

  He looked at her again, but he had released her hand. In one way she could sense hostility behind that smile; once he had told her that he had always had a dislike of ginger hair, and although she tried to convince herself that hers was rather deeper in tone than that, she supposed that at a pinch it could be called ginger.

  ‘I know,’ he said, ‘but I’m the sort that happens to worry if people don’t like me. I just want the whole world to like me.’

  She had heard that story so often when she had worked for that brief time in the mental institution, and looked into the hungry tired eyes of those who were mentally sick, and whose longing to be liked set a barrier between themselves and their alarmed friends. They were the people who fought the wrong way against the world and drew criticism upon themselves, then shrank from it. Most of them felt alone, unwanted, and this so often was the root of their trouble. If they could not attract the attention they sought by kindliness and charm, then violence became the next best thing. She would never know why she told him the truth, but she did, standing in the big bay window of the corridor with the view of the park below, the sunshine and the summer day.