Surgeon of Distinction

by Mary Burchell

  SURGEON OF DISTINCTION

  Mary Burchell

  Maxwell Perring was a surgeon with a special distinction about him; “star quality” it might have been called in another profession. Nurse Alma Miles admired his work, but had never thought about him as a man. All her thinking of that sort was centred on Jeremy Truscott—and he was presenting quite a problem.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Alma turned and looked across the green lawns to the immense pile of grey stone which was the hospital.

  There would never be anything quite like All Souls, she supposed, a little nostalgically. Even the wearisome routine, the gruelling discipline (somewhat relaxed, one understood, now that a younger matron was in charge) and the agonizing crises of one’s first year of training, took on a faintly endearing quality, viewed through the reassuring veil which time draws over all but the worst of one’s past experiences.

  “Funny, but you have to love the place!” exclaimed Judith, who had shared all those early years of training with her.

  “I was thinking the same thing.”

  “There were times during that first year when I could have committed murder without a qualm—or rushed out to drown myself in my own tears. And yet—no one is ever going to tell me there’s a finer training hospital than All Souls.”

  “I know.” Alma laughed softly and reminiscently, and the unusually long black lashes which shadowed her grey eyes flickered for a moment. “When I first got the invitation to this centenary celebration, I thought, ‘Not me! Not while the memory of Matron is still green and grisly—””

  “Me, too,” interjected Judith feelingly. “Though I’m a married woman now—at least I have been for the last six weeks—I still sometimes dream of her lightning inspections.”

  “And then I thought, ‘Well, it’s the place where one learned it all. One owes a debt to it. Perhaps one should go and pay one’s respects.’ And when I got here, and the new Matron said, ‘Oh, Nurse Miles, I remember your name. My predecessor always spoke so highly of you,’ I felt as though I’d been unexpectedly decorated by the Queen, and I could have cried to think I had remembered Matron so critically.”

  “But with some reason,” Judith observed pensively. “She really was a bit of a menace, you know. Do you remember the time she caught poor Benson flirting with that very good-looking house surgeon? The one with the red hair—I’ve forgotten his name.”

  “How unkind of you! You flirted with him enough yourself,” Alma reminded her. “You might at least have remembered his name. Wasn’t it Conway or Collier or something? No—Condrey! That was it.”

  “So it was. But it’s not much good talking to me about names. It’s all I can do to remember my own new name,” Judith declared. “I still find myself signing Judith Truman, instead of Starke. But fortunately Gordon is indulgent about it.”

  “And about most other things to do with you, I imagine, from the way he looked at you this afternoon.” Alma smiled in affectionate amusement at her blissful and pretty ex-colleague, who had paraded an obviously devoted husband during the earlier part of the afternoon, before he had had to leave for an urgent business appointment.

  “Well—I married the man I wanted,” Judith said simply. “I guess most of the happiness one can know is wrapped up in that statement.”

  “I suppose it is.”

  Judith glanced curiously at the girl she had once known so well, and said,

  “You haven’t told me much about yourself during the year and a half since we left All Souls, Alma.”

  “But you know! I had six months at Westchester General, and since that I’ve been doing private nursing.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean that. I meant the more personal things. Who’s the man in your life, darling, and that sort of thing?”

  “There isn’t one.”

  “Really not?”

  Alma thought quickly and painfully of Jeremy. She dared not let her thoughts linger on him too long, or she felt she might begin to tell Judith how desperately she loved him and how happy she had been until these last few months when he had—changed in some way. At least, she thought he had. Or was it just some nervous trick of her imagination? Oh, if only it might be no more than her imagination!

  Aloud, she said lightly, “There’s no one. Really.”

  “Well, there will be,” Judith asserted with conviction. “You’re much too attractive not to marry—and marry well, probably. Besides, you have something that none of the rest of us had.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I’m not sure that I do, quite.” Judith laughed. “It’s hard to describe. In an actress, one would call it ‘star quality’.”

  Alma made a slight face.

  “Then in a nurse one would have to call it ‘matron quality,’ I suppose.”

  But Judith said,—“Oh, no, that wasn’t what she meant at all. And then some of the others who belonged to their year came strolling across the lawn, and conversation of the “do you remember?” type became general.

  Most of them were taking a last look round before departure now, for the real activities of the day were over. But it was pleasant to linger in the early evening sunshine and recall the past, whether one were, like Judith Starke, happily married and free from all nursing duties now, or like Alma, a credit to the profession (or so one hoped) in private practice or in other hospitals or nursing homes scattered about the country.

  “I think they did us proud,” remarked one fair-haired girl, with bright, sparkling eyes and an eager manner. “Particularly over the refreshments. I never remember Catering Department putting on anything like that in our time.”

  “Perhaps, as it’s a centenary, it’s literally a case of once in a hundred years,” suggested someone else, with a laugh. “The speeches were a bit heavy going, weren’t they?”

  “Except for Matron’s. I thought she was pretty snappy in some parts. The Thunderer”—for thus had they referred to the Matron of their day—“wouldn’t have approved of that last crack at all.’’ “Maxwell Perring was good too,” Alma remarked. “I didn’t know he had it in him to be quite so amusing. I remembered him as reserved and slightly haughty.”

  “That’s because you were in theatre,” Judith assured her. “It’s difficult to be witty when you’re carving up bods.”

  “He’s quite a big noise in London now,” declared the fair girl, whom Alma suddenly remembered as the daughter of a well-known surgeon herself. “My father says he’s one of the most brilliant men they’ve ever had at St. Edwin’s. He operates there two days a week, and the theatre’s always crowded with students watching him.”

  “I thought he had his own nursing home,” Judith said.

  “Not exactly. He’s attached to one somewhere near Cavendish Square, I believe, and of course he may have a controlling interest in it too, for all I know.”

  “Hm—well, he’s worn well,” Judith observed judicially.

  “What do you mean?—worn well!” asked the surgeon’s daughter rather indignantly. “He’s still in his thirties, I’d say.”

  “Would you? With all that experience behind him? I doubt it. And I distinctly saw a grey hair or two, when he was standing under the light, making that amusing speech.”

  “You didn’t! It’s just that he has that kind of fair hair that glints rather in the light.”

  “She’s teasing you,” Alma said soothingly! “Don’t you remember? Judith always did tease. Oh, dear”—she glanced at her watch—“I’ll have to be going, if I’m to catch the London train. Judith dear, don’t forget that you’ve promised to come to London and see me sometime between now and Christmas.”

  “I’ll make it one weekend when Gordon has to go to the head works in Glasgow,” Jud
ith promised. “He goes every month or two, and I shan’t always want to go too.”

  “Whenever you say. I can always put you up, if you don’t mind being squeezed into a tiny flat.” Judith said she didn’t mind at all. And then Alma kissed her, bade the others a friendly goodbye, and went off, taking the short cut through the grounds of All Souls to the exit half a mile down the main road from the town, which would bring her out nearer the station.

  The extensive grounds which stretched between the hospital and the nurses’ home provided one of the greatest attractions of All Souls. And, as Alma threaded her way through the well-remembered paths of the long shrubbery, it suddenly seemed hardly any time since she had hurried along as an anxious pro, on her way to or from the home.

  Five and a half years ago. And she had not even known then that Jeremy Truscott existed.

  Suddenly the years at All Souls seemed to merge into each other, so that they shrank into nothing more than the indeterminate period between leaving school and meeting Jeremy. Alma’s step slowed a little and, with a sort of painful clarity, she recalled Judith’s almost careless enquiry, “Who is the man in your life, darling?”

  Oddly enough, until Jeremy came along, there really had been no one of any importance. The casual flirtations and “crushes” of student days had meant nothing to her. She had watched them in others, but she had not taken part in them, for she had been whole-heartedly devoted to her work. Perhaps a trifle too seriously devoted for her own peace of mind.

  In addition, she had no gay and social home background into which she could retreat during off-duty times. She was an only child end her mother had died while she was in her last year at boarding school. Her father, one of the principal executives in a big firm of travel agents, had married again quite soon, and, because his much younger wife liked living abroad, he had chosen to fill a vacancy in the New York office of the firm.

  Without being devotedly attached to her, Alma liked her young stepmother, and felt no special resentment over her father’s second marriage. But the new arrangement did leave her very much alone, and it was therefore fortunate that her inclination had always been towards a nursing career. All Souls had become not only her place of work. It had become all she had in the way of a home during her training years.

  Because of this, as soon as she had qualified, Alma had concentrated on having a place of her own, however small. And, even during her six months of midwifery at Westchester General, she had arranged to live out, in the little flat she had managed to secure on the more unfashionable fringe of Chelsea.

  Here it was that she had first met Jeremy. His flat, on the first floor of the old-fashioned converted mansion, was a much grander affair than Alma’s couple of modest though attractive top-floor attics, for he was a highly successful free-lance journalist. And Jeremy’s parties were the pride of those neighbors who were included and the despair of those who were not.

  Alma met him (in rather humiliating circumstances) on the first day of her occupancy. She had gone forth, proudly and happily, into the nearby King’s Road in order to do her first domestic shopping ac a householder—and she had forgotten to take with her the big key which unlocked the front door of the house.

  Her own small personal key reposed snugly in her bag, but she was not quite used to requiring two keys, and the big one—she realized, as she reached the gate—was lying on her dressing table, four floors up.

  Setting down her laden shopping basket, she tentatively pressed the ground floor bell, and, while she waited, composed an apologetic little speech in her mind. Ten minutes later, she had pressed all the bells in the house, and had given up composing apologetic speeches.

  It was all very silly and embarrassing, and, in addition, it had now begun to rain. So that when someone came running up the steps behind her and said, “Hello, got yourself locked out?” she turned upon the newcomer with a smile of almost tremulous greeting and relief. Even so must the maiden in days of old have greeted her rescuing knight, when he arrived just as the dragon was about to take a good nip at her.

  “Oh, yes! Do you live here?”

  “I certainly do.” He produced a bunch of keys and selected one which looked familiar. “Are you what our landlord calls ‘the new top-floor front’?”

  “Yes.” She smiled shyly at him.

  “Good!” he said, with an air of such unmistakable satisfaction that she blushed slightly. “We can do with someone like you.”

  “What do you mean, exactly?” They were both safely out of the rain by now, and standing at the bottom of the magnificent staircase which must have been one of the great beauties of the place when it was a private house.

  “You’ll bring down the average age of the inhabitants quite considerably,” he told her with a grin. “I have a great respect for old age, but it’s nice to meet something young on the stairs occasionally. Are you doing anything this evening?”

  “N-not really—no.”

  “Then drop into my place around eight-thirty, will you? I’m having a few people in, and it will be a way of meeting some of your neighbors.”

  So—feeling tremendously excited and curious, though looking very calm and lovely in a beech-brown chiffon dress which she rushed out and bought for the occasion—Alma dropped in at his place around eight-thirty. And although, as far as she could discover, she met only two other people who lived in the house, she found that Jeremy Truscott certainly had a talent for collecting round him some very entertaining people.

  But it was not the people round Jeremy who interested her, even on that first evening. It was Jeremy himself. And, to her almost incredulous delight and relief, it very soon became obvious that the interest was mutual.

  Alma no longer visited picture galleries or read books or went window-shopping in her precious off-duty time. She attended first nights with Jeremy, or motored into the country with Jeremy, or just sat and talked with Jeremy or made nice intimate little meals for them both in his exotic-looking kitchen.

  Within six months, she was hopelessly in love with Jeremy. And one of her principal reasons for changing over from hospital work to private nursing was that she could more easily make herself available when Jeremy wanted her.

  He maintained towards her an affectionate, sometimes reassuring manner, which balanced delicately between actual love-making and easy camaraderie. He never formally proposed marriage to her, but he always spoke as though a shared future stretched before them. At least, he had done so until quite recently.

  Now, as she walked along through the shrubbery of All Souls, on the way to the station and the train that would take her back to London—and Jeremy—Alma resolutely forced herself to review the small but cumulative impressions which had tom her hopes and confidence to shreds.

  He had remained as casually friendly as ever, and there was certainly no actual shadow on their good relations. But—it was five weeks, to a day, since she had last made supper for them in the black and scarlet kitchen. And, try as she would, she could not recall a single instance during that tune in which he had referred to the future. Their future.

  That he might be specially busy was understandable. She knew that, in his sort of life, there were times when he simply had to sacrifice his social interests to his professional ones. But hitherto it had always irked him if more than a few days had had to pass without one of their intimate meetings. Now she had the odd feeling that the airy exchange of greetings on the stairs constituted all that he required of her.

  Even so, she might have quieted all her vague anxieties and doubts if it had not been for that shattering glimpse of him the previous evening when she was on her way home from the Nursing Agency.

  She had gone to report that she would not be available “on call” for a couple of days and, discovering that she was much later than she had supposed, she had taken a taxi home. There had been a momentary hold-up in the traffic at the corner of Knightsbridge and Sloane Street. And suddenly, as she gazed out idly at the passing crowds, she saw Jerem
y.

  He was with a girl, his arm intimately linked in hers, but because her head was turned away and she was looking at something in a shop window, Alma could not see her well. All she saw was the beautiful curve of neck and cheek.

  Then, with a jerk, the taxi started again, and Alma was borne away. But clearly etched on her mind, with the acid of jealous and terrified dismay, was the picture of Jeremy leaning forward, laughing, and speaking to that other girl in a coaxing, teasing manner.

  Only a momentary glimpse, it was true, but so telling in its implications that, even now, Alma felt her head go light and her hands clammy with the furious shock of it all.

  “I mustn’t jump to conclusions,” she told herself. “I mustn’t exaggerate.”

  But, as she finally passed through the side gate and out into the main road, the scene of Jeremy and that girl was so much with her that she hardly knew where she was going.

  After a moment or two, however, she regained control of herself and began to walk more rapidly, for she still had some distance to go, and her time was getting short. So short that she was inordinately relieved when a car slid to a standstill beside her, and a clear, authoritative voice said,

  “Can I give you a lift?”

  “Oh, thank you!” Turning, she realized that the car was a sleek-looking black Jaguar, and the man at the wheel was Maxwell Perring.

  “Where to? The station?” he enquired, as Alma slipped into the seat beside him.

  “Yes, please. I’m catching the six thirty-five to London.”

  “To London? I’m afraid you’re not, you know,” he said regretfully. “The London train goes at six-ten these days. It has for the last four months.”