A Caring Heart

by Margaret Carr

  Isobel was full of warring emotions as she rode the now smooth path down to the road. They had been out twice more to the restaurant in Rennington and once to the Foremans’ for Barbara’s birthday party. Other than that the only place they met was on Isobel’s visits to the farm when Jack would make the effort to be there at the same time.

  That night she went along to The Apple to see Sylvia. No sooner was she in the door than Sylvia said, ‘Norman had a blazing row with your fella last night. Nearly came to blows they did. I had to get some of the lads to help bundle Norm into the back.’

  Isobel stared back at her friend. ‘Do you mean, Jack?’

  ‘How many fellas have you got?’

  ‘I’ve told you he’s not my fella, he’s just a friend. Why on earth did he fall out with Norman?’ Isobel’s brows pulled down in a frown.

  ‘Heaven only knows,’ Sylvia shrugged, ‘you know what men are like, pick a fight with their own shadows they will, though I must say I didn’t think Jack Lewis was the type.’

  ‘What was it about?’

  Her friend became all agitated, then with a great sigh slumped over the bar and said quietly, ‘I wish she’d never come.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Our Brenda picked up some talk from among the girls and repeated it to our Norm didn’t she, well you know Norman, couldn’t keep it to himself could he, had to repeat it in the bar. Your fella overheard your name being mentioned and that was it, he grabbed my Norm by the collar and nearly choked the life out of him, I wouldn’t have said he had the strength.

  ‘What was it she said?’

  ‘She said you were two-timing your fella with the Polish worker at the farm.’

  Isobel was stunned. ‘Why would she say a thing like that?’

  ‘It’s just gossip. We all know what these young girls are like, what they don’t know, they make up. I’ve caught her on more than one occasion prancing about in her underwear in front of Norm and I’ve asked her time and again not to do it. Now I’ve had old Crombie ticking me off about her skiving off work. But the other night the Polish POW had told the girls that officers at the camp turned a blind eye to the prisoners meeting girls in the woods.’ Her mouth took on a hard line then she burst out, ‘She’s more trouble than she’s worth to me,’ she added meaningfully.

  When Isobel caught her meaning it was all she could do not to burst out laughing. What on earth did Sylvia think a young girl like Brenda would find attractive about a greasy-haired old leech like Norman. Suddenly she felt very sorry for her friend.

  ‘Surely not, with all these handsome young servicemen around. I don’t mean to be rude, Sylvia, but Norman is twice her age.’

  ‘Oh I know, but she’s such a flirt. The other girl is no bother at all. I hardly know she’s there,’ she said, turning to face the two men who had just come into the bar.

  When Isobel caught sight of Macky she remembered Bobby telling her what Macky had said when Alan had died. ‘I see your arm is better now,’ she addressed him.

  ‘No thanks to you,’ he grouched.

  ‘Perhaps, but then I don’t go around telling people you’ve got rid of me just because I lost my brother.’

  ‘What?’ The man who had entered the pub with him stepped back in surprise. ‘You never said that did you, Mac?’

  Macky Mackenzie had gone a sickly shade of grey and he stared at her with anger in his eyes. His mouth quivered as he opened it to deny what she had said, but then he turned his back on her and said, ‘I only told that old dolt, Bobby Dunn. It’ll be him spreading the rumours around.’

  The other men in the bar had turned to stare at them and Isobel, with a goodnight to Sylvia, left. She couldn’t help but wonder why Jack had jumped to her defence in the bar when he had been so cold to her at the farm.

  * * *

  He was standing by the car waiting for her when she returned home.

  ‘Jack?’

  ‘Is the girl at home?’

  Isobel shivered at his tone of voice. ‘No, she’s out with friends.’

  ‘Then could I have five minutes of your time?’ It was more of an order than a request.

  With a slight lift of her brows Isobel led the way into the cottage. In the living room he spun round to face her. ‘How dare you gossip about me to all and sundry? It is imperative that my job at the Hall is kept low key yet now I hear you are asking questions about my work there.’

  Whatever Isobel had been expecting it wasn’t this furious tirade. The shock sent her backwards into the chair.

  She bounced up again and standing toe to toe with him lifted her chin as she announced. ‘I don’t gossip.’

  Dark blue eyes stared down into grey ones. ‘Do you deny that you have been questioning Bobby Dunn about his relationship with Wally, or that you asked Barbara Foreman about me?’

  Isobel screwed her face up as she thought back. ‘No I don’t deny it, but I wasn’t gossiping.’

  ‘Perhaps, but your nosing into my affairs gave rise to gossip and I may lose a very important job.’

  ‘Well I’m very sorry to hear that, but it’s none of my doing. What happened, did your escaped prisoner get back to Germany and give all our secrets away?’

  ‘Sarcasm doesn’t suit you.’

  She flung herself back into the chair and with a shrug he too sat down.

  ‘I met Barbara in the park and we talked about everything. She mentioned that you and Andrew went back a long way and because I was interested in your recovery I asked her about you, but she wouldn’t talk about you and that made me feel that they were hiding something about you from me.’

  ‘That’s rubbish.’

  Isobel leant forward and studied her toes. ‘That’s what I would have thought except that Alan had already warned me about you.’

  There was a long silence. The ticks of the old grandfather clock in the far corner echoed around the room. The kitten that had been fast asleep in the hearth woke up startled as a cinder fell under the grate. Isobel bent down to pick up the kitten and bring it into her lap.

  ‘I see,’ Jack said, then getting to his feet he walked out.

  ‘YOU’VE PROVED YOU CAN BE TRUSTED’

  Mrs Crombie did not mince her words. ‘I was shocked when I heard the gossip, Nurse. For someone in such a responsible position to have her name being bandied about in that disgusting manner is quite unacceptable.’

  Isobel had invited the magistrate into her home and they stood now face to face on either side of the table. ‘Mrs Crombie I have no idea what you have heard, but whatever it is has no bearing on anything I have done or said to bring disgrace to my profession.’

  The woman’s double chin wobbled with indignation. ‘Mr Mackenzie has lodged a complaint against you saying you refused to attend to a dressing on his arm when he asked for help, and that you actually attacked him on one occasion in a public bar. As if that wasn’t bad enough we now have people talking about two men fighting over you in that same bar. I know you have just lost your brother nurse but . . .’

  ‘Enough.’ Isobel slapped her hand down on the table top.

  A stunned Mrs Crombie stood with mouth open and stared at Isobel.

  Isobel was the first to recover. ‘My apologies, but Mr Mackenzie is a trouble maker as Doctor Turnbull will verify, and as to the fight in The Apple I have no idea what it was about.’

  ‘I see. So Mrs Brown was mistaken?’

  Isobel gave her visitor a look of confusion before offering her a seat. ‘I don’t understand what Sylvia has to do with this?’

  The magistrate had recovered herself and accepted the chair gratefully. ‘I have had some trouble with Mrs Brown’s cousin, young Brenda Douglas. So I called around to speak of this matter but Mr Brown was the only person available,’ she stopped talking and gave Isobel a knowing look. ‘An objectionable man at the best of times,’ she said.

  Isobel didn’t see what any of this had to do with her but waited patiently for the woman to continue.

  ‘He was
extremely rude and suggested that I look into more important matters, one being this fight that he said concerned a so-called upstanding member of the community. Not long after which I received Mr Mackenzie’s complaint. I was very busy, you understand, with the evacuees. However when I bumped into Mrs Brown on the street she confided in me the details of the upset and what people had been saying about it.’

  ‘Please tell me, Mrs Crombie, because I know nothing of what ensued.’

  The woman straightened her shoulders and looked about her. ‘There are rumours about you and Captain Lewis and while this is your own business, as long as it is a respectable relationship, that was what the angry exchange was about in the public house. It would appear that the Douglas gal had reported something to Mr Brown and he had foolishly accused the captain of organising, well one can only say improper, parties in the woods.’

  Isobel’s hand rose to cover her mouth and Mrs Crombie seeing the gesture nodded her head. ‘The real reason I am here, Nurse Ross, is because the captain is a close acquaintance of mine and it is important that he be allowed to continue with his work in peace and not be the butt of village gossip.’

  ‘But none of this was my doing,’ Isobel protested.

  Mrs Crombie’s face had taken on a serious demeanour. ‘I am aware of that now, my dear, but please in the future be more careful. We cannot take too much care these days.’

  Isobel frowned. ‘What does Captain Lewis do, Mrs Crombie?’

  ‘Why he looks after the prisoners of war my dear. What else can the poor man do?’ With that she rose from her seat indicating that the meeting was over.

  After Isobel had seen her out she stood in front of the fire and mulled over all she had learnt. So Jack was afraid for his job. And the mischievous Brenda had repeated to Norman some naughty gossip which had been bad enough to upset Jack to the point of taking a punch at him.

  * * *

  It was autumn now, the weather had broken and low cloud had once more returned to clothe the hills in mystery. Isobel’s breath came in small white puffs as she cycled up the road to Pine Tree Farm.

  Jack was never there now when she went to attend to Duncan’s vein, which persistently refused to heal.

  She propped her bicycle against the wall and called for attention. Today it was the POW who came to shoo away the geese. He was a quiet man with dark eyes and a sober countenance but always courteous. His brows pulled down in a frown as he let her through the gate and waved her towards the kitchen. She turned to see why he wasn’t following her and her heart leapt in her chest as she noted the dark Austin growling up the hill towards the gate. Jack.

  In the kitchen her welcome was as warm as it ever was. Today there was an air of suppressed anxiety as Duncan repeatedly urged Bobby to go see if Jack was coming.

  ‘Jack is here now,’ she told Duncan.

  ‘Boss won’t come until he sees Jack,’ Bobby told her when she tried to get them to go into the other room.

  ‘It won’t take a minute, Nurse,’ Joyce apologised.

  ‘What’s all the fuss about?’ she asked Joyce.

  ‘The magistrate was up here and took little Brenda Douglas away. The other girl, Margery, is out in the field with Ned, but Dad got himself worked up and nothing would do but that Jack must come.’

  When Jack came in through the door Isobel was taking her time washing her hands at the sink.

  ‘What’s up now, Dad?’ he asked, coming over to where Duncan sat in his chair.

  ‘They’ve taken the lass away and we need help,’ Duncan said.

  Jack turned to his mother.

  ‘It’s Brenda Douglas, Mrs Crombie came and took her away. She said something about her being in trouble, but your dad’s head is full of the news and how the Germans might be invading us and how we have to be on the lookout for spies and he’s convinced that Brenda must be a spy.’

  Duncan was nodding his head in agreement. Jack bent down and taking his father’s hand in his, looked into the other man’s anxious face.

  ‘She’s working for us, Dad, not the Germans. She’s helping the police to find the spies.’

  ‘She’s on our side?’

  ‘Yes, Dad.’

  ‘You hear that, Mam, she’s on our side.’ The lines on his face smoothed out and he smiled. ‘Jack says she’s on our side.’

  And that, Isobel thought, was all it took. If Jack said it was all right then Duncan was happy. Why couldn’t it be like that for her, she wondered.

  The surgery was crowded that evening and Doctor Turnbull was in a bad mood, so much so that he sent several of his patients off with a flea in their ear. Isobel was kept very busy and it wasn’t until the last patient had left and she was tidying up that she noticed how quiet he had gone.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ she asked warily expecting a sharp reply snapped back at her.

  He looked up from under shaggy brows. ‘I need a partner,’ he said. ‘Someone young that can take night calls; I’m getting too old to be pulled out of bed in the middle of the night.’

  Isobel felt her jaw slacken. ‘You’ve always said you would never have a partner getting under your feet.’

  ‘Yes, well, I’ve changed my mind. There’s plenty of room here he can live in.’

  ‘What does Mrs Holland think about that?’

  ‘Nothing to do with the woman.’

  ‘Are you ill?’ she asked with concern and a frown pleating her brow.

  ‘No, just tired,’ he said rising from his chair.

  Isobel’s heart skipped a beat, for the first time in the five years she had worked for him, he looked his age. It was in the stiffness when he straightened up and though he wasn’t a tall man he appeared shrunken. The wrists that peeped from beneath the leather-edged cuffs of his worn tweed jacket were suddenly thinner than they should have been. He looks so frail, she thought.

  Going through into the house she found Mrs Holland in the kitchen. ‘The doctor doesn’t look too well,’ she said, watching the housekeeper preparing the evening meal.

  ‘He’s just tired,’ she said, repeating the doctor’s self diagnosis.

  Isobel watched the woman work for a while then said, ‘I don’t think so, I think something is wrong.’

  Mrs Holland looked up and smiled across at the worried looking young woman standing on the other side of the table. ‘There’s a new doctor coming next week to help out for a while.’

  ‘That soon?’ Isobel’s shocked tone showed her surprise.

  ‘He’s a young man who wants to go off and fight, but he has a mild medical condition that means he’s unacceptable in the forces.’

  Isobel raised her eyebrows in question, and the housekeeper laughed. ‘I listened at the door when he came for his interview. Can’t be looking after someone if I don’t know anything about them now, can I?’

  ‘Did he make a good impression then?’

  ‘Well, you know the doctor. When I asked him he just grunted something and dismissed it. But the young man was the only one who came so I think we can safely say he’s the one.’

  Oh well here’s hoping, she thought, as she left the surgery and headed home, but she still wasn’t happy about the doctor and determined to keep an eye on him

  * * *

  Half-past-one in the morning she was woken by repeated knocking on her door. Throwing on her dressing gown and slippers she hurried down stairs. When she opened the door she found a soldier standing on the doorstep.

  ‘Yes, what do you want?’

  ‘There’s been an accident up at the camp. Captain Lewis sent me to ask you if you could come with me now, please.’

  ‘You had better come in while I get dressed.’ She showed him into the living room then hurried upstairs.

  Once ready she followed the soldier down the path to the gate where the usual black car awaited, it was empty. So she climbed into the front seat as the soldier dropped into the driving seat and started the engine.

  She tried to engage him in conversation to find out mo
re about what had happened as they headed out to the camp, but he gave little away, then they were turning into the Hall, gates now barricaded and manned. They were stopped by a guard but one look at the soldier driving and they were waved straight through.

  Isobel stared at the rows of long huts that sectioned out what had once been parkland to the front of the house. The high wire fence that closed off the woods on one side and the river on the other, while along the bottom the moors rose to cover the high crags and peaks that hide their faces in the clouds.

  She was hurried through the main door and up the grand staircase to a room at the end of the corridor. Here she was met by Jack, while the soldier hurried away.

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ Jack nodded and ushered her into the room. A lamp was on by the bed throwing a dull glow across the pale face of Wally stretched out beneath the blankets.

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘Bullet wound.’

  ‘What?’ An astonished Isobel swung round to face him.

  ‘It was an accident.’ He was watching her from the scarred side of his face, the shadowed light making the ridged lines and puckered skin appear more damaged than it really was.

  She moved over to the side of the bed and Wally gave her a grin. He pushed back the bedclothes and revealed a temporary covering just beneath his shoulder. Smiling back at him she lifted the pad and examined the wound. Replacing it and giving the patient a reassuring smile she turned back to Jack.

  ‘What are you playing at? He should be in hospital. Have you sent for Doctor Turnbull?’

  Taking her by the arm he pulled her across to the far side of the room. ‘You wanted to know more about me and what I do here? Well I’m going to tell you, but when I do it is on the understanding that you can never, and I mean never, reveal what I am about to tell you to anyone on pain of death, do you understand.’

  A little annoyed, and if she admitted it, a little afraid even, she stood and stared at him.

  He shook her by the arm. ‘Do you understand?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, yes. I understand.’

  ‘I was ordered up here to create a group of men who would build an underground relay of radio stations to be used in the event of a German invasion. It is on a strictly need-to-know basis and secrecy is top priority. Once in, there is no out.