“I hope you will,” the Matron told her pleasantly. “Supper is at eight. Come down when you are ready, and I’ll introduce you to some of the staff.”
Then she went away and Alma took stock of her situation and told herself she was a lucky girl. It was not like her very own flat in Chelsea, of course. For one thing, Jeremy was not downstairs on the first floor. But—all that was over, anyway. She had better unpack her things and accept the fact that a new life had begun.
So she unpacked her case and spread a few personal belongings about the room, making it look more like her own place. And when her watch said five minutes to eight, she went downstairs to the staff dining room.
This too was a pleasant and well-appointed room, and here she was introduced to the Assistant Matron—a short, energetic, grey-haired woman of about fifty—and several of the other nurses.
The staff were of varied ages, but, on the whole, older than her companions at All Souls. This, however, was to be expected, as the staff at a teaching hospital tend to be on the young side.
Among those of her own age, and sitting within talking distance, Alma noticed a charming redhead, who reminded her reassuringly of Judith, and a perfectly beautiful girl with smoothly coiled dark hair, who had been introduced as Nurse Grayce.
Redhead—whose name turned out to be Alison James—was very chatty and expansive. But about the other girl there was a withdrawn, almost enigmatic quality which was not entirely friendly. She was quite courteous when spoken to, but no actual warmth emanated from her. Only a cool, provocative sort of charm which would, Alma supposed, be very attractive to some men.
Later, however, when they went upstairs, it turned out that Nurse Grayce had the room next door to Alma’s, and, rather unexpectedly, she invited Alma in, to see the slightly different view from her corner window.
“Why, thank you.” Alma was only too willing to accept the overture, and she followed the other girl into an attractive room which looked away across the roof tops to the green trees of Regents Park.
“It’s a charming view,” Alma said. “And a delightful room.”
She looked round. And, as she did so, she received an almost physical shock which made her feel as though something had hit her. For, standing on the neat, built-in dressing-table, and smiling almost directly at her, was an excellent photograph of Jeremy.
She had the presence of mind to pretend to examine some books on a nearby shelf, which gave her a moment in which to force herself to be calm and to steady her voice. Then, almost casually, her glance returned to that photograph, and she said, “Who is this? A relation of yours?”
“Oh, no.” The other girl smiled, in that faintly secret way of hers. “That’s my fiancé. We got engaged only last night, so you’re really the first person to know about it.”
CHAPTER TWO
Alma stood very still before the photograph of Jeremy. She pretended to examine it with no more than academic interest, but it seemed to her that she saw his smiling face, and the inscription, “To Geraldine with love,” through a sort of red mist of fury and despair.
Then she heard herself say, with inconceivable composure,
“You became engaged—last night? Why, how lovely! My best wishes to you.”
She even smiled as she said it, though something primitive, and hitherto unsuspected in her, made her long to seize hold of Geraldine Grayce, shake her unmercifully and cry,
“It’s not true! It’s not true! Jeremy belongs to me. I love him. And he loved me too before you came on the scene.”
But because ordinary civilized behavior laid its restraining hand upon her, she managed to keep her hands at her sides and to mouth those silly words about her best wishes.
She wondered wildly how she was to get out of the room—extricate herself from this intolerable position—without betraying herself. And then, even as she wondered, there was a tap on the door and Alison James looked in.
“You’re wanted on the phone,” she told Nurse Grayce. “Nice masculine voice with a hint of the devil in it. Lucky girl!”
And she looked across at Alma and laughed, as though inviting her to share the moment of teasing laughter.
But Alma was powerless to respond. She guessed, from anguished instinct and from the apt description of the voice, that it must be Jeremy who had telephoned, and it took all her self-control not to thrust Geraldine Grayce aside and rush to the telephone herself.
She could not achieve even the ghost of a smile. She could only stare bleakly across at Alison James’ engagingly cheeky face, while Geraldine pushed past and went quickly out of the room.
“I—I’m sorry, Sister.” Alma realized that the other girl was speaking in a rather subdued tone. “I didn’t mean to be impertinent. We’re rather more informal here than in hospital, and I forgot for a moment that you were the new Theatre Sister and I—”
“You weren’t impertinent.” Alma roused herself with an effort, for the last thing she wanted was to snub the friendly Alison. “I—I was thinking of something else.” For a second her glance went to Jeremy’s photograph and then slid away again. “It’s—it’s difficult to—get used to things,” she said flatly. “That’s all.”
She spoke half to herself, and she meant the remark only as it referred to the new and horrible situation. But the other girl responded with immediate sympathy.
“I know! I’ve been here six months, but I found it awfully difficult settling down at first. Would you”—she hesitated, with unwonted diffidence—“would you care to come to my room for a cup of tea and a chat?”
Alma really longed to escape to her own room and her own thoughts, chaotic and agonizing though they might be. But it was difficult to refuse this invitation without appearing to reject a friendly overture.
So she managed to smile and say, “Thank you.” And she followed Alison James to yet another pleasant bed-sitting room, where at least there was no smiling photograph of Jeremy, bearing a loving message to another girl.
As Alison addressed herself to the task of making tea, with the aid of an electric kettle, she poured out a reassuring stream of talk.
“I’m sure you’ll like it here after a while,” she declared. “In working hours there’s the strictest discipline imaginable. But when we’re off duty there’s much more of a let-up than you get in any hospital.”
“I think I expected that.” Alma forced herself to an appearance of intelligent interest. “You’re on the general nursing staff, I take it?”
“Yes. Most of us live in, though not all, and we have an unusually big staff for the number of patients. But then”—Alison’s bright eyes twinkled—“patients who pay the fees at this sort of nursing home expect a lot more personal attention than in a big hospital ward, I guess.”
“Of course. And—Nurse Grayce?” Alma was pleased to hear that her voice was perfectly steady as she uttered the name. “Is she on the general staff?”
“Yes. She came just a bit before I did—that’s to say, about eight months ago. And, like you, incidentally, she was a recommendation of Mr. Perring’s.”
“Was she?” Alma looked surprised. “But I don’t think she could have been an All Souls nurse. I’d have known her by sight at any rate.”
“No. I believe she’s some sort of ward of his.”
“Ward of his? She can’t be, surely.” Alma found she disliked the idea with quite unreasonable intensity. “He’s not old enough to be anyone’s guardian.”
“Well, I think it’s his sister who was the actual guardian perhaps,” agreed Alison, who seemed to think the exact degree of guardianship unimportant. “But she’s a funny girl, you know, for all her charm and good looks. She doesn’t talk about herself much. Not the way the rest of us do.”
“Perhaps she’s reserved,” Alma made herself say. “N-no. It’s not exactly that. She’s a good nurse, and quite a pleasant colleague. But—I don’t know”—Alison laughed half vexedly—“perhaps I’m being unfair, but I always have the impression that she d
oesn’t really much like her own sex, and that in her quiet way, she’s fiercely competitive.”
“I see,” said Alma, and if possible her heart sank even further.
“But I shouldn’t talk like this!” Suddenly the other girl was rather remorseful. “I haven’t a thing against her, really. And you may find that you like her immensely,” she added, as she began to pour out the tea.
Somehow, Alma managed not to laugh hollowly at this, nor to say how improbable it was that she would ever like Geraldine Grayce immensely. Instead, she drank her tea and smiled and listened to whatever Alison chose to tell her about the nursing home and its staff.
In essence, it was the same as hundreds—thousands—of conversations she had had with colleagues at All Souls or at Westchester General. A mixture of news, views and gossip, peculiar to every rather close community. The very familiarity of it served to soothe her jangled nerves, and she felt vaguely grateful to Alison for drawing this veil of normality over a scene which had presented such terrifying possibilities.
Presently she got up, thanked Alison for her hospitality, and said she must go and finish her unpacking. And she went across the landing to her own charming room, where she had thought, only a few short hours ago, that she was going to make a tranquil new life for herself.
It was unbearably ironic. Now—next door, with only a wall between them—was the constant reminder of all she had lost in her old life.
For a panic-stricken moment, she thought she could not go on. She must put her things back into her suitcase and flee from the place. It was impossible—impossible—that she should live and work, eat and sleep under the same roof as the girl who had taken Jeremy away from her.
But then common sense returned to her, and with it some of the sense of self-discipline which she had learned in the hard, hard years of her early training.
One simply did not fall down on a job just because of personal feelings. Mr. Perring had chosen her for this position, relying on qualities he thought he had detected and admired in her. It was certainly not in his estimate of her that she should run away from a splendid professional opportunity because she could not face a difficult personal issue which went with it.
“I could never face him again!” Alma thought, recalling those shrewd, penetrating eyes of his. “I’ll stay, even if I have to see that girl married to Jeremy from this very house!”
And, even as she came to this wryly courageous conclusion, there was a knock on her door. She called out, “Come in,” in a calm, almost cheerful tone, and in came the girl who was so much in her thoughts.
Alma braced herself, and her cool tone held the faintest note of authority as she said, “Yes, Nurse?” A note which set them either side of a glass barrier and should have prevented any possibility of intimate conversation.
But Geraldine Grayce either failed to notice it or deliberately ignored it. She said, bluntly, as one girl to another,
“You didn’t tell me you knew Jeremy.” Whatever Alma had expected it was not this. She flinched very slightly, and she knew it. But her tone was impeccably cool as she replied,
“There wasn’t much time to make any sort of comment before you were called to the telephone.”
“But you didn’t say anything about knowing him when you first noticed the photograph. You just asked who he was and if he were a relation of mine.”
“Wasn’t that a very ordinary enquiry to make? People don’t necessarily like strangers claiming acquaintance with their friends and relations.” Alma wondered if this sounded as thin to the other girl as it did to herself. “Jeremy had a flat in the same house as I did. That’s all.”
“He spoke as though he knew you very well. He seemed quite taken aback when I mentioned your name.”
Yes, she supposed, he well might be!
“Not unpleasantly so, I hope.” She actually managed to laugh with apparently unforced amusement. “He was a very congenial sort of neighbor. Let me in with his key when I’d got myself locked out and that sort of thing.”
“O-oh—” The tone implied, “Was that all?” and Geraldine Grayce looked less tense all at once.
It was a moment’s respite, and Alma determined to press her advantage by boldly changing the subject. She said coolly,
“We seem to have quite a number of acquaintances in common. I hear you know Mr. Perring quite well.”
“Oh, yes, of course.” She would have preferred to go on with the subject of Jeremy, Alma saw, but it was difficult. And after a moment she said, almost reluctantly, “I’m a sort of remote cousin of Max. And when my parents were killed in a car accident, I went to live with him and his sister. Do you know him well, then?”
“Only professionally. I worked with him when I was Theatre Staff Nurse at All Souls in Eastcastle. He remembered me—my work, that is—and that was why he asked me to come here.”
“I remember now. Matron said something about it.” But it was obvious that Alma’s connection with Maxwell Perring was less important to her than any association with Jeremy.
She would have liked to stay and ask more questions, Alma thought, but this she was not going to allow. She was not Theatre Sister for nothing, and she put on an expression which said, in the nicest way possible, that the conversation was at an end.
Geraldine Grayce withdrew, silenced if not satisfied, and Alma was left to make what she could of the so-called hours of rest which stretched before her.
Inevitably, she had a troubled night. She would, in any case, have been a little nervous and disturbed about her first day in a new place. But, in addition, the deep agitation which had accompanied the discoveries of the evening followed her even into her sleep.
Nothing, however, is more steadying than familiar routine, and Alma had no difficulty in waking at the right time, her mind completely clear about the details of her work, her memory even supplying her with an exact list of Maxwell Perring’s preferences in instruments when he was operating.
Every surgeon has his special likes and dislikes—his individual preferences—in the work of the theatre, and the nurse who can remember these and supply everything almost before the wish has been expressed is already half-way to being a good theatre sister.
This exact recollection was one of Alma’s special gifts, and she had reason to be glad of it during her first day at the nursing home.
It was to be an unusually busy day, she gathered from the staff nurse who assisted her in the scrubbing up and the setting out of the instruments.
“Mr. Perring has a long morning list,” she told Alma. “And in the afternoon Mr. Colbridge is doing a complicated abdominal.”
“Mr. Colbridge?”
“He’s the senior surgeon here,” the staff nurse explained. “Very reliable, but slow. Rather tiring to work for.”
“I know,” Alma said comprehendingly.
“Mr. Perring is brilliantly quick, of course. And although you have to be terrifically alert all the time, it’s not so tiring because your interest never flags.”
“I know,” Alma said again, and this time she smiled, in pleased recollection of the way Maxwell Perring worked.
When he came in, he greeted her politely but formally. No hint of anything beyond the surgeon-nurse relationship followed him into the theatre, she noticed. And for a moment she felt very much as she had on that first day in the theatre at All Souls. Not so frightened, of course, but very much aware of that quality about him which had made her set him down as remote and rather haughty.
But, from the moment the first patient was wheeled in and the operation began, she was aware of that intense exhilaration and interest which had always been part of working with Maxwell Perring.
She supposed he had grown even more experienced in the last year or two; or possibly she had forgotten just how gifted he was. At any rate, her first morning’s work in the theatre of the nursing home proved so completely absorbing and rewarding that her own affairs retreated to the very back of her mind and remained almost beyond the ri
m of her consciousness.
Not until the last case had been wheeled away, and he was standing at the sink washing his hands, did he glance over his shoulder and say,
“A good morning’s work, Sister. Thank you. It’s nice to have someone really knowledgeable at one’s elbow.”
“Thank you, sir.” Alma smiled and felt the color come back into cheeks that had grown a little pale with strain and concentration.
“You’ve settled in all right?” He took the towel she held out to him and stood there drying his hands. “Oh, yes, thank you, sir.”
“Have you met my young cousin yet?”
“Nurse Grayce? Yes. We met last night and—had a chat. She told me about her—her connection with you.”
“I suppose that was what turned her thoughts towards nursing, when the time came for her to choose a career. But I’m not sure”—he frowned slightly—“that her heart’s entirely in it. I’ll be glad for her to have some contact with someone like you. It might give her a fresh slant on the profession.”
“Thank you, sir. But I hear she is an excellent nurse,” said Alma, with splendid objectivity.
“In practical fact, I’m sure she is. It’s more an attitude of mind that I was thinking of. I must get her to bring you down to our place one weekend.”
“To your home, do you mean, sir?” Alma felt the shade of Matron positively rustle in the background of her memory at this unusual departure from hospital protocol.
“Yes. I live with my elder sister—as perhaps I told you some time? It’s only a short drive out of town, and a day in the country is good for anyone who works as hard as a theatre sister. I think you said you had no family of your own?”
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