Promise the Doctor

by Marjorie Norrell

  ‘You should get angry more often, Joy,’ Lana said surprisingly. ‘It suits you, doesn’t it, Quentin? Look at her colour, and the sparkle in her eyes! Quite a change from the calm, collected Sister we’re accustomed to seeing.’

  ‘She always looks attractive,’ Quentin said gallantly, ‘but I doubt whether her patients would want to see their Sister Benyon with the light of battle in her eyes! There’s a time and a place for everything, Lana, and I quite agree with you, it’s high time Joy stopped letting everyone walk over her, use her, and got round to standing up—just a little—for her rights as an individual! After all,’ he took a sip of his tea, and it seemed to Joy his eyes were mocking her over the rim of his cup, an idea which would have appalled Quentin had he known what was racing through her mind, ‘if you hope to end up as a Matron one day, and that’ll be the next step if you get a post as Assistant somewhere, you’ll often find yourself doing battle for the rights of your nurses, things you’ll want changing and developing and all manner of things! You might as well get used to the idea.’

  ‘Assistant Matron? Matron somewhere? But I thought...’ Lana was beginning, but Quentin interrupted her so hastily that for a moment Joy wondered what her sister had been about to say which he was so obviously intent upon preventing her from saying.

  ‘All in the lap of the gods, Lana my child,’ he said quietly. ‘One doesn’t talk of these things.’

  ‘But one does talk of the Samuel Bainbridges of this world and how one can best help them,’ Aileen put in quietly. ‘What was this idea of yours you were going to put to him, Joy? Wouldn’t you like to tell me about it?’

  It did not take long to explain the scheme Joy had thought might help bring a little easement of the situation between Sam Bainbridge and the people of Fernbank, but even though she listened to the end, Aileen shook her head when Joy had finished.

  ‘I’m sorry, pet,’ she said sadly, ‘but somehow I don’t think it would work out half so well as you anticipate. I don’t think Sam is really bothered about possessing Fernbank for his staff and so on, not now. He was, in the beginning, and it certainly seemed a good idea, but he’s a strange man. The mere idea that you opposed him from the very beginning seems to have made him all the more determined. He isn’t accustomed to opposition, you see, not from anyone.’

  ‘He can’t force me to sell,’ Joy said sadly, ‘or I know he would have lost no time in doing so. I know there’s nothing he can do about it. I went to see Mr. Belding the other day,’ she confided suddenly. ‘I was so disturbed. I didn’t want you’—she smiled at Aileen—‘to be upset all over again, but he assured me there was nothing Sam Bainbridge could do, no step he could take he hadn’t tried when Miss Muriel was alive. That, Mr. Belding said, was why she had left the place in my care. It made me feel whatever happened I should ... sort of keep faith with her.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more, darling,’ Aileen smiled back at her daughter. Quentin, watching them, decided she was the least upset of either of them. ‘Don’t worry about me,’ she said firmly. ‘I know Sam loves me, wants me to marry him, but he’ll have to learn the way to win any woman’s heart isn’t to trample on those who’ve already got a claim on her affections...’

  She broke off abruptly, and before Joy could make any response as a furious knocking sounded on the front door. Quentin and Pete looked at one another, and Eric Wrenshaw got to his feet.

  ‘I’ll go,’ he said quietly. ‘After all, it’s part of my job. Sounds to be someone in trouble.’

  They heard him go along the hall, and both young men were not far behind him, while the womenfolk looked at each other, wondering who on earth would come knocking at their door at this hour of the night. They were not left long in suspense. Eric returned in a few moments, with Michael, a strangely dishevelled Michael, following closely on his heels.

  ‘Sorry to come barging back at this hour of the night, Mrs. Benyon,’ he apologized. ‘I know I ought to have gone to one of the hotels in town, but I felt I had to talk to someone who understood. I’ve had a fearful row with Dad,’ he confessed. ‘He said I wasn’t to come round here any more, and that Cara wasn’t to come either, when she gets any free time. He’s got to learn we’re neither of us children to be told what to do and where to go, not any longer. I’ve left the firm and everything to do with it. I shall telephone the London firm who were asking for Civil Engineers willing to go to Nigeria, first thing tomorrow morning,’ he concluded.

  ‘Have you had anything to eat lately?’ Joy was surprised by her sister’s calm, practical tone. Usually she thought of Lana as an onlooker at life, or at least an inactive participant. Now she was seeing for herself that there was more of a change in Lana than she had realized. ‘I know you didn’t have time for any dinner,’ Lana went on. ‘You told me yourself you worked right through on the new scheme for that specially difficult bridge.’

  ‘I ... no.’ Michael capitulated so abruptly the situation was almost comical. ‘I don’t think I’d have said half the things I did say if I hadn’t been so hungry,’ he confessed. ‘But I’d been along to the kitchen to see what I could coax out of Cook, and found she and the maid had packed their cases and left on the late train. Seems they’d already had words with Father, because he said some unkind things when he told them he wouldn’t come back and work with them.’

  ‘In his customary tactful fashion, I suppose,’ Lana said softly. ‘Jenny, have we anything we can give Michael to make a decent meal?’

  ‘There’s steak in the fridge,’ Jenny offered, ‘and some of that tomato soup I made this morning. I can do a few vegetables or some french fried potatoes.’

  ‘The steak will do fine, Jenny, thank you very much,’ Michael told her. ‘Don’t make a fuss. Just a little something will do ... and a bed for the night, if you’ll be so kind. I shall have to go round to the Mount first thing in the morning and collect the rest of my things. I just flung a few odds and ends into the car and ... came.’

  ‘You did quite right,’ Lana told him, ‘didn’t he, Mother? That’s what friends are for, isn’t it? To turn to in time of trouble, I mean.’

  ‘We’ll do all we can,’ Joy was beginning, but she too was looking at Aileen, remembering that the man who was Michael’s father was also the man who wanted to marry her mother! ‘Where was your father when you left him, Michael?’ she asked. ‘Was he all alone?’

  ‘I left him in his study,’ Michael said briefly. ‘He’ll be all right. He often stays there until the small hours of the morning, thinking things out, he says. I must admit he’s had some pretty useful ideas during his midnight sessions ... but I’d like to bet he won’t have any flashes of inspiration this time!’

  ‘If you’ll all excuse me,’ Aileen said suddenly, rising and taking up her bag and other things from the low table where she had been sitting, ‘I’ll go up and lie down for a little while. Give me those tablets now, will you, Lana, please. I don’t want any of you to disturb me. I’ll take these and try to get some rest. Things may look better in the morning.’

  They watched her go, and as Joy went across and kissed her mother goodnight she felt an unexpected lump in her throat. It wasn’t fair, she thought fiercely. Aileen and her second love should be as happy as any youthful lovers, they had everything’ they could wish for, looking at the matter from a strictly material angle, that was. Why, oh, why did people’s emotions have to enter so deeply and so fiercely into the most commonplace things of life, complicating everything for everyone, whether it was their own doing or not?

  ‘I’ll look in when I come up, love,’ she offered, but Aileen shook her head, smiling so that Joy might be deceived into thinking she was no longer upset.

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t disturb me, if you don’t mind,’ she said with a firmness she had not used since they were children. ‘I shall be quite all right.’ At the door she turned and spoke to Michael. ‘I think you’ll be comfortable in the room next to Pete’s,’ she told him. ‘I hope you too think things may be brigh
ter in the morning.’

  ‘I hope so, Mrs. Benyon,’ Michael said politely. ‘Heaven knows I didn’t want to quarrel with Dad. We never have before, simply because I’ve always given in to whatever he’s wanted. But this time I just wasn’t having any. Nothing short of a miracle is going to make any difference this time, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Then we must hope for a miracle, that’s all,’ Aileen said quietly. ‘Goodnight, everyone.’

  She went quickly and quietly upstairs and to her own room, but she put the two tablets safely away, for she had no intention whatsoever of using them. She had plans of her own, and she did not intend any of the family or their friends to interfere.

  ‘I’ll make him listen to me,’ she told herself as she changed into a warm jersey and skirt and repowdered her nose. She hesitated a moment before applying a fresh coat of lipstick, but the choice of a brighter shade than she normally wore gave her the feeling of having nailed her colours to the mast!

  ‘If it means we quarrel too,’ she told her reflection, ‘at least it’s better to happen now than if we decided to marry! It would be too late then to try and convince him he couldn’t bully me into doing whatever he wanted, whether it was against my principles or not!’

  She crept downstairs, her handbag under her arm. There was a taxi rank at the end of the shore road, and there would not be many other people requiring a cab at this hour of the night. She was right in her assumption. The rank, save for two drivers dozing at the wheels of their cars, was deserted, and in next to no time she was seated in the first one, being driven to the Mount.

  The driver was curious. In common with everyone else in Vanmouth he knew this large, somewhat ostentatious house was the home of Mr. Samuel Bainbridge, the millionaire, or so gossip had it, who was planning to rebuild the town to suit his own ideas.

  ‘Shall I wait, ma’am?’ he asked as he opened the door. ‘Don’t appear to be anybody at home so far as I can see.’

  ‘Yes, please wait,’ Aileen instructed him. ‘I’ll not be many minutes.’

  She went up the wide steps and rang the bell. There was no light to be seen anywhere, but when she tried the door it opened at her touch. For a moment she hesitated, then the taxi-driver was beside her, plainly having watched what had happened and guessed she was distressed.

  ‘I’ll come in with you, if you’d like me to, ma’am,’ he told her, and, suddenly afraid, Aileen nodded dumbly, walking into the wide hall and down the first corridor she came to, switching on every available light as she passed the switches.

  They found Sam outside the door of his study. Inside the room the light still burned on his desk and on the walls, but it was evident he had been intending to go somewhere ... maybe, Aileen thought now, in pursuit of his son, when the heart attack brought on no doubt by his own rage had overtaken him.

  ‘Loosen his collar, please,’ she directed the man, ‘and then switch on all the heating you can find. Get some blankets ... anything,’ and even as he started to obey her instructions she was dialling the number of Fernbank.

  CHAPTER XIX

  Quentin rose, stretched and yawned, smiling across at Joy, who was beginning to feel rather tired after her unexpected evening of gaiety, the evening which had started so happily and ended with Michael’s unexpected entrance. Michael was in his usual place, on the low chair beside Lana’s couch, and afterwards Joy wondered If it had been this instinctive placing of himself in the usual position which had prompted Quentin’s next words.

  ‘We must do this sort of thing more often, Sister Benyon!’ he said teasingly. ‘After all, all work and no play isn’t good for either Jack or Jill!’

  ‘It has been fun,’ Joy agreed, accompanying him to the door, which in itself was something unusual, but which he seemed in some undefined way to be waiting for tonight. ‘I wish that hadn’t happened between Michael and his father, though.’

  ‘It had to come,’ Quentin told her, opening the door. ‘Sam will have to remember that his children are grownup people now, with minds and lives of their own, and that they’re both intelligent people, and therefore he ought not to expect them to behave like a couple of puppets of which he holds the strings. He wouldn’t respect them if they never stood up to him. Great heavens!’ he broke off suddenly as he stood out on the top step. ‘What on earth’s happening? Come round to the back of the house with me, Joy.’

  There was no doubt as to what ‘that’ was when they reached the back garden of Fernbank. The stacks of timber, some of the chalets and heaven alone knew what else were well ablaze in the half-created holiday village next door.

  ‘Back to the phone,’ Quentin directed. ‘We must get the fire brigade.’

  ‘What could have happened?’ Joy was asking the questions as she hurried beside him and he flung the answers over his shoulder.

  ‘Who knows? Lots of things could have started a conflagration like that, I suppose. That will be for the police, the insurance companies and, I suppose, the fire brigade to decide. Right now...’

  Before he had time to finish the sentence the telephone shrilled loudly. Quentin was nearest, and he snatched up the receiver, determined to deal as quickly as possible with whoever their caller might be.

  ‘Quentin?’ He recognized Aileen’s voice, strained though it was. ‘It’s Mrs. Benyon,’ she told him. ‘I came to the Mount. I felt I had to come. It’s as well I did. Sam’s ... he’s lying on the floor outside the door of his study. He’s cold and clammy to touch, and his face is a dreadful grey colour ... and I don’t like the sound of his breathing.’

  ‘Feel in his coat pocket or look on his desk,’ Quentin said crisply. ‘He carries—or should carry—little glass capsules for these attacks. Break one in a handkerchief and hold it under his nose. He also has some small white tablets. Give him two, and keep him as warm as you can. Loosen his collar and any tight clothing...’ He heard her quick whisper that she had complied with what he had said except for the capsules and tablets. ‘Good,’ he went on cheerfully. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be along in a few minutes, but when he comes round keep him as quiet as you possibly can, there’s a dear.’

  ‘What is it?’ Joy asked. ‘Who was that? It sounded like Mother’s voice from where I’m standing.’

  ‘It was.’ Quentin was dialling the emergency service as he spoke. She waited until he had given the details of the address, telephone number and service required, then as he hung up, assured the brigade would be on its way almost before he had time for anything more, he turned to Joy.

  ‘Sam’s had a heart attack,’ he said briefly. ‘He knows he ought not to allow his emotions—particularly his anger—to get the better of him, but don’t worry. He’ll be all right. Your mother appears to have coped extremely well. If you’ll just let Michael know about the fire and about his father, I’ll be on my way to the Mount to see what I can do for Sam.’

  Joy lost no time in complying with Quentin’s orders, for orders they were. She went first into the living-room and told the others what had happened, then raced upstairs to hammer on the doors of the two rooms occupied by Pete and Michael. ‘She shouted her information between the two doors, and within minutes the two young men, who had barely had time to start to undress, were downstairs and out in the garden looking at the holocaust over the fence and wall which divided Fernbank from the proposed holiday village.

  ‘It’s got a good hold,’ Pete muttered. ‘It looks as though it’s consuming something highly inflammable.’

  ‘That’s the stack of creosoted boards,’ Michael burst out so suddenly and so loudly that Pete jumped. ‘If it gets along that way the next thing’s the petrol and diesel stores for the machines and vehicles, then the cabin with Dad’s plans and papers. I left them there today ... I intended to take them home with me and put them in the safe and I forgot.’

  He was gone before Pete had realized what he was about to do, and from inside the house they could hear Lana calling at the top of her voice, demanding to be carried out to ‘see’.


  ‘We can carry her between us.’ Joy glanced at Pete. ‘Chair fashion.’

  Pete nodded, but he wanted to be active, doing something, anything to help this conflagration from spreading. They carried Lana out of doors to where Jenny had already placed a chair, one of the old-fashioned armchairs with high backs and wooden arm rests which had been part of Miss Muriel’s legacy. Emma, who had stayed to don a warm coat, came out then with a thick travel rag which she tucked round the shivering girl in the chair.

  ‘I’ll go and call the twins,’ Jenny muttered. ‘They’ll want to see this ... it’s a sight they’ll never see again throughout their lives, I hope.’ But she was too late. The twins had heard Joy’s call to Pete and Michael and were already glued firmly to the attic windows, resisting Jenny’s entreaties to ‘Come down from there! If the fire spreads, or a spark or something catches on Fernbank, you’ll both be trapped!’

  She went on her way to Aileen’s room, opening the door when she received no answer to her knocking, and when she came down, white-faced, to tell Joy her mother was missing, the girl realized for the first time just how much their little family had evidently come to mean to the devoted couple who shared their home.

  ‘Don’t be so upset, Jenny.’ Joy put her arm round the old woman’s bowed shoulders. ‘Mother’s all right. She telephoned a while ago ... that was her call, just as we were going to ring the fire brigade. She went to the Mount. It’s as well she did. Mr. Bainbridge had had a heart attack, and if she hadn’t gone...’

  ‘That’s why the fire’s got such a good hold, then?’ Jenny muttered, although it was plain she wasn’t really thinking about the fire or the holiday village.

  ‘I suppose so,’ Joy agreed. ‘Come and sit down outside. You can keep an eye on Lana, if you will, and make certain none of the sparks get on to her rag. I’m going to see if I can do anything to help.’