My Surgeon Neighbour

by Jane Arbor

  “No please,” begged Sarah. “Do let—what is his name?—Trevor?—come along as Tony Carrage does, whenever you or Mrs. Beacon want him off your hands or when he has nothing better to do. There! We couldn’t find terms for those circumstances, could we? How old is he, by the way? Eleven, perhaps? Twelve?”

  “A hefty eleven and certainly no bookworm. In fact, a shade too big for his boots the last time I saw him. But that was a year ago and the young, like puppies, can sometimes shed their wicked ways incredibly fast. Then I may bring him along to see you sometime after he has arrived?”

  “Please do,” said Sarah, “I should think Monckton can certainly take him in its stride!”

  Not for the world would she have admitted to Oliver Mansbury that his description of Trevor had given her pause. For whatever challenge the man put her to, she was determined to take it.

  When Oliver returned to his study he found Jurice alone there, waiting for him. Looking up at him from beneath her eyelashes, “You don’t appreciate anything that’s done for you, do you, sweetie?” she asked softly.

  “Done for me? What do you mean?”

  “Can’t you guess?”

  He regarded her thoughtfully. Then, “Perhaps I can. But you know, I’ll thank you to keep out of my affairs. D’you mind?”

  His tone was light, without offence. But Jurice could not leave well alone. She said, “I mean, you do want the next door house, don’t you? Or Kate does, same thing. That’s why I thought there would be no harm in a little, er—softening-up process which might make the Sanstead woman wonder if it’s really worth her while to stare you out and stay there. It’d be a slow business, getting her down, but it might work in the end.”

  She broke off, completely unprepared for the sudden movement with which Oliver took her by the shoulders, held them in his strong surgeon’s hands.

  “That’ll do, Jurice! I’ll fight my own battles, and Kate’s too, if necessary. But I’ll do it with clean hands, I hope, and you and Kate can keep out of them. For I’m right, aren’t I? You cooked up this complaint against Sarah Sanstead and egged-on Kate, not because there was anything to it, but simply by way of your idea of ‘softening up’?” he accused.

  Beneath his hold she shrugged her shoulders and he let her go.

  “How did you guess?” she mocked. “And how did I guess you were as likely to go all stiff-necked and noble as you were to see sense and be grateful I cared enough to try to help? But it’s quite like old times again, isn’t it? You going all caveman and masterful and putting me to rights!”

  “You mean before we decided that, since we were always at odds, and mostly on questions of ethics, marriage wouldn’t work?” he asked rather wearily.

  “Yes. Though aren’t we, maybe, beginning to wonder now whether it might be an idea to try again?”

  She moved over to tuck an arm beneath his. She was very close to him and he could not but be aware of the sleek attraction she knew she had once had for him, she told herself. Impossible that he could be entirely indifferent to her, surely? On one violent occasion in the past he had accused her of having neither integrity nor heart. But when she had laughed at him and asked maddeningly “What do you expect? You can’t have everything! I’m a woman, your woman. Shouldn’t that be enough?” he had seized her no less roughly than just now. But that time it had been to crush her lips beneath his in mounting passion ... The memory gave her courage to say softly, coaxingly, “Is it going to be such a bad idea, Oliver, trying again?”

  His answer wasn’t encouraging. “Perhaps you know?” he said.

  She frowned and withdrew her arm from his. Oliver remembered too much too long—old quarrels, old betrayals which hadn’t meant anything at the time and certainly had no significance now. But he was used to her, she amused him. Why shouldn’t she have power over him still? He only needed handling, all men did. Everything would be all right.

  For all her enthusiasm for her job, in those early days Sarah found it considerably more tiring than ward work had been. At the end of a hospital day she had often felt physically worn out, but now the effort of keeping down to her times’ level of thought and talk and reactions and the knowledge that, though she could discuss things with Alice Cosford, any decision for their good was only hers in the final event, put her to more mental strain than she had ever yet known.

  Even at her most tired she could tell herself, “That’s responsibility, that is. You wanted it and you know you love it really,” and mostly a bath and a walk or an hour’s hard tennis at the Club she had joined could work wonders for her morale. But on the evening following that of her brush with Greystones, she found herself craving to relax in the company of someone who knew her well, and upon impulse she rang Dick Finder’s number.

  Dick was obviously delighted that she had called. “Chalk it up, you’ve actually remembered that I exist,” he said. “And now you have, what about it? Dinner at the Fontenoy and a spot of dancing afterwards suit you—no?”

  Sarah chuckled a trifle guiltily. “Oh Dick, I wasn’t fishing. It was just that I felt in need of the boost you always seem to give me, and I was going to ask you to come in for coffee and a talk if you’re free.”

  “Certainly I’m free. But we can talk over dinner at the Fontenoy as well as we can over coffee at your place,” said Dick firmly. “Eightish and I’ll call for you, that do?”

  Sarah said it would and thanked him. She and Alice took alternate nights to be “on call” to the children after they were in bed, so the whole of this evening was her own. It was good to get out of uniform and to “prink” again for a date. She hadn’t dined at a first-class hotel like Fareborough’s Fontenoy for months, and it was dear of Dick to have sensed her mood and her need at once.

  She was rewarded for the bit of extravagant froth she changed into by Dick’s frank admiration when he saw her. “Not that you don’t look just as sweet in your starch. But I’ll say you can blossom when you like. Come on, let’s make a night of it, shall we?” he invited.

  They made their night of it, luxuriously as to the meal, strenuously as to the dancing which followed. They stayed for the beginning of the midnight cabaret and then Sarah said she must go home. Dick demurred that as nights out went, this one was yet fully young. But when Sarah reminded him that she rose at half past six, he said, “Right. Call it a day,” and went to fetch his car.

  On the way he commented, “Well, you could hardly describe that as an orgy. But served your purpose, did it Sarah?”

  “Wonderfully,” she told him gratefully. “It got me away for a few hours and that was what I needed, I’m sure.”

  “Away? In need of escape from something already? You said over the phone you wanted to talk. But you haven’t, you know, have you?” Dick urged.

  “No, well—”

  “Want to now? I’m one great sympathetic ear if you do.”

  She did not know how to tell him that during the evening she had lost the need. His invitation had given her spirits the lift they had wanted and she had resolved not to whine to him, as her thoughts put it, about yesterday’s clash and the misgivings for the future with which it had left her. So she hedged lightly, “Not really. Anyway, tonight has blown all the cobwebs away. Bless you, Dick. You’re a lamb.”

  “Good enough,” he said equably, and though she suspected he guessed she had evaded some issue, he let the subject drop.

  After a calm day the wind had been rising steadily since sundown and when they reached Monckton the headlights showed that the big gate into the drive had blown shut. As Dick braked at the sight Sarah said quickly, “That’s near enough, Dick. Put me down here and I can walk in.”

  “You’ll do nothing of the kind,” he retorted. “In those heels and all that flimsy? When I take a girl out, door-to-door, those are my haulage terms. Just a tick and I’ll have the thing open.”

  “I doubt if you can. It’s warped and when it does this, it jams and you need a knack. I’ll go—”

  Dick laid an imp
erative hand on her knee. “Stay where you are, clot,” he ordered. But already she had her door open and was out of the car, fumbling at the big wooden latch.

  She called to him, “O.K. It knows me, but I’d better hold it open while you get through,” and swung the gate wide.

  But at about the halfway mark a gust of wind caught it and though she fought for its possession it flung heavily from her grasp and as she lunged to catch it her foot slipped on the loose scree of the drive and her ankle turned under with a wrench which stabbed sickeningly up to her knee.

  She dropped down with a stifled cry of pain and instantly Dick was at her side.

  “What did I tell you?” he raged as he helped her up and she leaned against him. “Four inch heels weren’t meant for skating about on shingle, didn’t you know? What is it, Sarah? What have you done? Your ankle? Heavens, you haven’t broken it, have you? Look, dear, if I put you against the gate-post, can you hang on until I get you back into the car?”

  He propped open the gate, drove forward the necessary yard or two, helped her in and drove on to the house, There, her arm across his shoulders and his round her waist, she painfully hopped to a chair in the dayroom and together they surveyed the ankle, now puffed to an incredible size.

  Dick said, “Where’s Mrs. Cosford’s room? I’d better call her, hadn’t I?”

  But Sarah said, “No, don’t please. She would have been stirring if she heard us come in, and if she hasn’t to go to one of the children, she’s entitled to her sleep.”

  “Martha then?”

  “No. All this thing needs is some first-aid.”

  “First-aid! I’m going to ring for a doctor. It could be a really serious break.”

  “It could not,” declared Sarah, her tone rather testy with pain. “Do you think I haven’t seen enough injured ankles in my time not to know a sprain from a break with pretty sure certainty? Fractures swell less at first, for one thing. This is a sprain, I tell you, and if you’ll fetch the needful from the first-aid cabinet in my room and some really cold water from the kitchen, we can do the necessary drill on it between us.”

  “All right, though I don’t like it. What do you want besides the water?” Dick appeared to agree, but was away too long on his errand and when he returned he confessed,

  “Like it or not as you may, Sarah, I rang next door and asked for Mr. Mansbury to come over and have a look at you.”

  “You did what!”

  On the defensive, Dick said, “Well, he’s a surgeon, and if you’d done this in a road accident outside his house, he’d have had to come to you. What was so wrong in my asking him to step these few yards instead?”

  “At this time of night? Just for a sprained ankle and me, a trained nurse, as he knows very well? Asking him of all people, after—!” despaired Sarah, not far from tears of exasperation and shock.

  “After what?”

  “Oh nothing. Just that, with all the friction there’s been, I can’t bear the thought of asking favours from over there,” she said wearily.

  Dick set down the bowl of water and the bandages she had asked him to bring. “Well, keep your hair on,” he advised. “Because you aren’t getting any favours for the asking. He isn’t coming.”

  “He’s not? He refused to come?” Why the thought should dismay her so bleakly and so perversely Sarah did not know.

  “Not in person. I spoke to that cousin of his, the Matron there. I apologized for the hour and said my piece about you. And I said, as I had seen the man drive in to Greystone while you were working on the gate, I thought he might still be up and perhaps he’d be good enough to come over. So then she said it was very late, which we both knew, and that she was sorry, but her cousin had been operating all day over at Betchester General and was extremely tired, and though she would mention I had called, if Miss Sanstead—just like that! ‘Miss Sanstead’—couldn’t cope, with my help or her assistant nurse’s, with what sounded from my description like a sprained ankle, then I’d better call her own doctor to her.”

  “And you said?”

  “What do you suppose? That your own doctor—for you’d have Carrage, wouldn’t you?—happened to live two miles or more away at the other end of town. And then, while I declare I could hear the woman thinking, ‘That’s just too bad’, I went all upstage, told her I was sorry she’d been troubled and rang off.”

  “Oh, Dick,” sighed Sarah, “why will you try to manage things so? Such a mountain out of a molehill and what a moron you’ve made me look to them!”

  “A moron? You? And what does it make them, you tell me? A couple of inhuman, shortsighted, case-hardened flinthearts, that’s what! I mean, could you credit that he wouldn’t stir his stumps just so far? And what do you mean, I ‘try to manage things’ ” demanded Dick, “when all I want is to help you, you know that.” But there he broke off as they both heard the crunch of gravel outside, the perfunctory professional knock and then footsteps in the hall.

  Dick nodded, “Well, bully for him,” and went out there, to return at once at the heels of Oliver Mansbury.

  The latter wasted no time on either greetings or questions, but set down his case and knelt to take the swollen ankle between exploratory but gentle hands. When Sarah winced once he murmured, “Sorry. Just testing for mobility,” and finally sat back on his heels and looked up at her.

  “I’d say you’ve broken nothing,” he told her. “But you’d better get Dr. Carrage to fix an X-ray for you in the morning. Meanwhile, I’ll splint and strap it over a cold compress and you must keep it immobile until you’ve seen him.”

  When he had finished and she had thanked him he stood, looking from her to Dick. “You could do worse than lay on a hot drink, tea or something, for her,” he told Dick. And as Sarah made to lever herself from her chair by pressing down hard on the arms, he added, “Yes, bed for you. But you can’t walk and I’d rather you didn’t hop. Where’s your room?”

  “Upstairs, just along the first bit of the landing.”

  “Then,” he measured her with his eye—“the best way to get you there should be this, I think.” As he spoke he stooped to put one arm beneath her knees, the other across her shoulders and swept her up as if she were featherweight. His head nodded an indication to Dick that the door should be opened for him, then strode across the hall and up the stairs, making nothing personal of his burden nor once glancing down at her face, half crushed against his breast.

  At the stairs’ head they met Alice in her dressing-gown, sleepy eyed and alarmed. But he only swung past her and did not explain his presence until he had lowered Sarah on to her bed.

  “Now, no unnecessary movement for that foot,” he warned. “I’ll ring Carrage myself in the morning and he’ll do the rest.” He paused, then asked, “How’s the pain? Would you care for me to give you a shot of sedative for it?”

  “Oh no, it’s quite bearable, and if I have a cup of tea, I shall be able to sleep, I think,” she told him.

  “Good girl,” he approved. His hand rested for a moment on her shoulder. Then he left her with Alice and went away without, she hoped, an inkling of the disturbance he had created for her with that brief journey in his arms.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IT was not until a week later, when Sarah’s sprained ankle only made itself felt at the end of a long day on her feet, that Oliver Mansbury brought his nephew to see her.

  He asked after her ankle, said, “Well, this is young Trevor,” then added in an aside, “He’s proving a bit of a tough guy, I’m afraid, so don’t invite him over here if you’d rather not.”

  Sarah said, “Oh I expect he’ll fit in.” Then, though the boy’s ungainly size for his age and his slack, scowling expression secretly daunted her, she smiled directly at him and invited, “Do come over whenever you like, won’t you Trevor? And perhaps you’d care to stay and meet the other children now?” To which his only reply was to scuff at the carpet with his feet until he was prompted by his uncle’s sharp, “well?”

  T
hen he looked up with a slatey stare. “I dunno. It depends on who there is,” he said.

  “Well, there’s—” But on Sarah’s patient listing of names and ages of her charges he cut in,

  “Yes, well, I’ve seen all those from your gate and over the wall. Don’t you have any boys?”

  Nonplussed by the question, Sarah stared back. “But I’ve just told you, there’s John and Keith, and Tony Carrage often comes to play too.”

  “But they’re just a lot of babies! I can’t play with them!”

  “Then you needn’t,” returned Sarah evenly. “Keith Tilling is nearly your age anyway, though he isn’t as big. But for instance, Tony Carrage doesn’t always want to play; he sometimes prefers to read. So if you’d rather play alone with the apparatus we’ve got, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t. Or of course no one is forcing you to come at all.”

  Her tone conveyed an indifference which even his truculence could not withstand. For a moment he was silent before allowing himself a reluctant, “Well, perhaps I will when I’ve nothing else to do,” and then, “Where are they all now? In your garden?”

  “Some of them. The little ones are being put to bed, but Keith is there, and Jean, I think. Oh, and—”

  Sarah glanced out of the window, “there’s Dr. Carrage’s car, calling to drop Tony, I daresay. So if you’ll wait a minute, I’ll bring Tony here to you and the two of you can get acquainted for a start.”

  But as she was about to excuse herself to Oliver Mansbury, he did the same for himself. “I must go,” he said. “I’ve a consultation at seven.” On their way out to the door together he added, “Well, so far, so good. I may say I thought that a masterly stroke of yours, that ‘couldn’t care less’ attitude as to whether our young friend chooses to turn up or not.”