Consulting Surgeon

by Jane Arbor

  “Not forgetting that ‘later’ in the circumstances was likely to be upon my own ward, even in front of my own juniors?” asked Ursula hotly.

  “Not forgetting even that. On your own ward, Sister, you have all the armour-plating of your authority to protect you. Why, the awful majesty of a ward sister on duty—let him pierce that who dares!”

  For a moment Ursula was tempted to turn away, making some excuse to leave him, thereby acknowledging defeat at the hands of his remorseless mockery. But then her lovely little head went up proudly. This man’s arrogance expected her to show herself hurt and unsure. Well, she would not, that was all. She would not! So she nodded coolly when he indicated her empty glass which he still held.

  “Sherry, if you please,” she said.

  When he returned with drinks for them both he said casually: “I suppose I mustn’t now be niggardly with my case-history, or you will think I have some dark secret to hide.”

  “You are coming to Sheremouth soon?”

  “Very shortly. In a week or two, in fact. At present I am finishing a vacation I gave myself after returning from Egypt a month or two ago.”

  Egypt? So that explained his sunburnt appearance and the air she had noticed of his not seeming quite to fit into the English scene!

  He went on: “I finished up my war out there, in the R.A.M.C. Then, a couple of years ago, I was invited to go back to put in a course of orthopaedic surgery in Cairo hospitals and to prepare some memoranda on the latest developments in our research on bone disease. When I returned here two alternatives offered—Harley Street, or the devotion of most of my time to a particular hospital. I decided that Harley Street could wait for a few years yet. So I took the consultancy at Sheremouth.”

  “Harley Street could wait for a few years yet!” Ursula found herself envying his confidence and sureness of his own ability. It was a quality which, until today, she too would have claimed in full measure. Had she then lost it to this man’s ridicule? No, she had not!

  He was asking: “And about yourself? Have you been long at the Easterbrook Trust?”

  “I did my training there, and I was offered a ward about nine months ago,” she told him.

  “Wouldn’t you have been wiser to gain some broadening experience elsewhere when you became State Registered?”

  “I judged that I owed my first loyalty to the hospital which had trained me. I could afford to leave wider experience for myself until later.” She felt pleased with the tone of assurance which she believed matched his own.

  “Your career in nursing sounds planned and extremely permanent,” he remarked.

  She raised calm eyes to his. “Surely it’s best to know where one is going?”

  “Oh, surely—so far as any of us can. But doesn’t a woman take account of such will-o’-wisp beckonings as love and marriage? Were we not assured by friend Charles that the marriage figures in your profession are higher than in any other? Wouldn’t you find your own career interrupted by such a chance?”

  “Not unduly, I think,” said Ursula dryly.

  “You mean that you would expect to continue your work after marriage?”

  “On the contrary, if I married I think I should regard the care of a man, his home and our children as a privilege that would also be a full-time job.”

  “Then what did you mean?” he rapped out.

  There was a little pause. Then:

  “I meant,” she said gravely, “that I think marriage is one of the chances which my career can afford to discount.”

  “Indeed?” His tone was non-committal, seeming to mark the dropping of his interest in the subject. So she changed it to ask him whether he had known Sheremouth before he decided to go to the Easterbrook Trust.

  “Yes, I had,” he told her. “In fact, this morning I was returning from staying with my aunt, Mrs. Rupert Damon, who lives at Shere Court on the top of the Downs, about a mile beyond the hospital. She is a widow, and her only son, Foster, is a captain in the regular army, and is stationed in Cairo. I was able to see a good deal of my cousin and Averil, his wife, while I was in Cairo, so naturally I had some word-of-mouth news of them to bring the old lady. Do you know her?”

  Ursula shook her head. “I must admit to knowing very few people in Sheremouth. For the resident staff, the calls of hospital life don’t give overmuch opportunity for social contacts outside.”

  He regarded her unsmilingly. “You could still make the best of the opportunities you have. Meanwhile, what are your recreations?”

  “Well, I read; I ride whenever I can afford it; I swim. Yes, and as Sheremouth is one of the leading ‘try-out’ places for West End plays, I manage to see some of them during the season. I enjoy myself.”

  “I haven’t a doubt of it. Self-sufficient to a degree, are you not?” He stood a little back and put his head on one side as if in brief appraisal of her. Then, stepping forward again, in an almost conspiratorial whisper he asked: “But tell me, Sister Craig, has any lesser mortal ever dared to murmur in your presence the criticism smug?”

  How dared he? She would have retorted hotly, even searingly, if the same awareness as before had not whispered that to show herself offended was what he wanted. All the same, her wine glass made a little clatter on the occasional table at her side as she set it down with fingers that trembled. And she was glad when she saw Coralie approaching. She would introduce her to Mr. Lingard and leave them together. He could scarcely disapprove of Coralie as pointedly as he did of herself. For to disapprove of Coralie was equal to wasting your substance disapproving of a kitten.

  She made the introductions and then turned to her stepsister.

  “Coralie, I’m worried about our having left Mama,” she said. “I’m going straight back, if you can find someone to see you home?”

  Coralie began: “I dare say—” But Matthew Lingard intervened: “If you’d allow me?” His glance flashed to Ursula’s face. “I know the address, don’t I?”

  “I believe so. That would be very good of you,” she murmured, though she regretted having put herself under even so slight an obligation to him.

  When she had gone Matthew looked as appraisingly at Coralie’s dainty figure and dark, curled head as he had previously regarded Ursula. “For sisters,” he remarked, “you two are extraordinarily different.”

  “Oh, but we’re not sisters,” said Coralie, fluttering her eyelashes at him. “My surname is Sefton, not Craig; Ursula—I call her Bear for short—is my stepsister.”

  “And the ‘mama’ of whom Ursula—Bear for short—spoke?”

  “That’s my own mother and Ursula’s stepmother.”

  “I see.” He took out his cigarette-case, and while Coralie bent over the flame of his lighter she was envying Bear this attractive acquaintance. They evidently did not know each other well. So had Mrs. Grazebrook introduced them? Or had they met earlier?

  For Coralie to wonder was to ask questions, for she had the primitive curiosity and the occasionally embarrassing directness of a child. She demanded of Matthew: “Have you known Bear long?”

  “We met for the first time today,” he told her.

  “You mean tonight—just now?”

  “No, earlier today. We travelled up from Sheremouth together, and I was privileged to give her a lift in my taxi to your flat.”

  As he spoke the characteristic lift to the corner of his mouth was, for Coralie, like a quotation from her currently favorite film star, and she felt her pulses quicken. She said rather blankly: “Oh. She didn’t say anything about it. I thought Ned met her train.”

  “Ned? A slightly scholarly looking man with vague eyes?”

  “Yes, Ned Primrose. He does scientific research. And he is vague—almost cuckoo, I sometimes think. But he adores Bear— fairly worships her.”

  “So I gathered,” commented Matthew dryly, remembering that kiss dropped upon Ursula’s cheek. She hadn’t been surprised by it, he had noticed. It was probably the common currency of an accepted relationship between
them.

  “Of course," Coralie was saying, warming to her theme, “we’re always wondering when they are going to get married. I mean, they are ideally suited to each other, wouldn’t you say? Or didn’t you see them long enough together to judge?”

  “I certainly didn’t.” The brusquerie of the words held the hint of a snub, but Coralie persisted relentlessly: “Well, you must have begun to know something about Bear at least. What do you think of her?”

  There was a pause. Then Matthew said slowly: “She reminds me of an angel in a painting by Botticelli.”

  “Botticelli?” Coralie wrinkled her brow as she searched for something cultural to say about Botticelli.

  “Yes. He portrayed his angels in a characteristic way—rather lovely, but always cold, austere, aloof—

  “Sort of self-satisfied—not quite human?” prompted Coralie with a giggle.

  Matthew turned amused eyes upon her. “Something like that.” he admitted.

  Coralie giggled again, this time with a certain relief. Obviously he couldn’t but admire Bear’s quiet poise and those beautifully chiselled features of hers—after all, everyone did. But she had been silly to envy Bear’s advantage in meeting him first. He had summed up Bear at once, and he hadn’t been impressed at all...

  “Of course, men hate that sort of thing, don’t they?” she murmured, glancing at him from beneath her lashes. And was not prepared for the sudden irritable movement with which he flicked ash from his cigarette.

  “Forgive me,” he said curtly, “but in such matters I like to voice my own opinion—without finding it classed in a general way with that of ‘men’.”

  “I really meant that you sound as if you hated it,” she corrected hastily. And when he did not reply she found herself without a clue to his thoughts.

  When Ursula reached the flat she found that Mrs. Craig had gone to bed and was already in a deep sleep. By the softly shaded light which was still on at her bedside Ursula noticed the bottle of sleeping tablets upon the bedside table. She picked it up, frowning as she did so. She felt sure that Nicola had said she had not consulted a doctor about her headaches. Yet, as Ursula well knew, these tablets were far too potent for anyone to be taking without medical advice. She determined to carry off her stepmother to a doctor as soon as possible—the very next day, if she proved well enough.

  She switched off the bedside light, waited a moment to see if the click of the switch had disturbed Mrs. Craig, then tiptoed from the room.

  In the lounge she stood thoughtfully for a moment before going to the kitchen for a tray, glasses and some drinks. She filled the electric kettle and set it near another tray holding coffee-cups. She supposed that if Mr. Lingard brought Coralie home, Coralie would ask him up to the flat, and somehow she believed he would accept.

  She returned to the lounge with a book, meaning to read while she waited for them. But her thoughts were too intrusive; she could concentrate on nothing but the fruitless rehearsal of what is known as “staircase wit”—all those smart, crushing things she might have said to Mr. Matthew Lingard, had she only thought of them in time!

  She tried not to think of what it was going to be like working under his direction. Christian Shere was a surgical ward, in constant and inevitable touch with the operating theatre. She had never yet had to doubt her ability to run it to the various surgeons’ satisfaction. But how she was going to react to the new consultant’s requirements she did not know. If their professional contacts were to be anything like their social exchanges, life on the ward promised to be difficult.

  And yet—hadn’t talking to him been somehow stimulating demanded her innate honesty. She remembered how her hands had trembled when she had finally set down her wine glass. Part of the cause of that had been annoyance. But part also, she realized, had been caused by the man’s sharp challenge to her own strength of character—a challenge as vital as the successful striking of a spark from a tinder, a challenge which, sooner or later, must be answered in full.

  Strange that she had never felt equally annoyed or stimulated by Ned, she thought. If contact with Matthew Lingard was like setting a tentative bare foot upon an Indian fakir’s bed of nails, then Ned’s company was like sinking into the gentle comfort of a feather mattress. She felt pleased with the simile but she shied from deciding which she preferred.

  Suddenly Coralie was in the room and standing at her side, seeming to bring a breath of the summer night air with her. She swung her handbag in the direction of a settee, tore the tiny Juliet cap from her curls and flung it after the bag. Then she stretched her arms and dropped them dramatically to her sides. “Bear,” she breathed ecstatically, “where did you collect him?”

  Ursula thrust aside the book she had not been reading and started up. “Who—Mr. Lingard? Where is he, Coralie? Didn’t he bring you back as he promised?”

  “Yes—oh, yes, he did.” Coralie dropped upon a pouffe and began to rock upon it, hugging her knees.

  “But didn’t you ask him to come up? It would have been polite.” (She would not admit to a sense of disappointment!)

  “I did ask him, but he excused himself, saying that he wouldn’t intrude upon Mummy if she wasn’t feeling fit.”

  “Oh. Well, that was considerate of him.”

  “And he said too”—Coralie cocked her head and eyed Ursula impishly—“that he was quite sure you subscribed to the worthy maxim, ‘Early to bed and early to rise,’ so he wouldn’t disturb you either! Bear, if you didn’t meet first at the party, and he says you didn’t, how did you get to know him? He says you travelled up from Sheremouth together today.”

  “That was an overstatement. We met casually in the train. But oddly, enough, he is to be orthopaedic consultant at the Easterbrook Trust shortly.”

  “Bear—you have all the luck!”

  “Do I?” queried Ursula dryly.

  “Of course. Why, he’s devastating! I knew he was a surgeon, but he didn’t tell me the Easterbrook bit. I wonder why not?” puzzled Coralie.

  “He probably didn’t think it important to you. And for him I gather it’s merely a milestone on the way to Harley Street.”

  “Talking of Harley Street,” Coralie twisted about on the pouffe and was suddenly serious, “I told him about Mummy’s headaches. He asked who our doctor was, and when I said we hadn’t had one since Dr. Bleen died he said he knew a good man, a friend of his, and if Mummy will consent to see him, he’ll arrange it. You are to ring him up.”

  “Oh, Coralie, you shouldn’t have troubled him. I could have done all that was necessary,” protested Ursula.

  “But why, when he offered, and he probably knows far better than you who is a good man for Mummy to go to? You are always so impossibly prickly, Bear, about this ‘professional etiquette’ of yours.”

  “This isn’t a question of etiquette,” returned Ursula quietly. “It’s simply that there was no need to put ourselves under an obligation to Mr. Lingard.”

  “Well, if he didn’t mind, why should you? And if you are afraid he’ll take it out of you when he gets you on the ward, I’ll beg leniency for you when I see him again!” mocked Coralie.

  Startled, Ursula asked sharply: “Why—are you seeing him again?”

  Coralie glanced up beneath the curtain of her lashes. “I may be. I could if I tried—” She broke off evasively, but contrived to leave a vague suggestion hanging upon the air when, claiming that she was “starving,” she went off to the larder to forage.

  Disturbed, Ursula went about the room, plumping up cushions and smoothing chair-covers preparatory to leaving the lounge tidy for the night. Coralie was so impressionable, but surely, surely she wasn’t getting ideas from any charm which Matthew Lingard had chosen to turn upon her?

  Ursula stood hugging a cushion and staring down at the chair from which she had taken it while she listened to a small voice within her which asked how she knew the man had charm, since she had certainly not encountered it?

  For a moment she stood silent. T
hen she thrust back the cushion, giving its corner a vicious tweak in the process. She didn’t know, she told the voice. So far as she was concerned, he had no charm—only the power to provoke, to challenge. But Coralie was of an age and of a type for whom mere sophistication might have charm, and so might an older man’s assured manner. Coralie had claimed to be in love before, but she was very volatile, and was usually ripe for new romance. But if, upon the strength of one meeting with Matthew Lingard, she was going to imagine herself in love, she might get hurt. And to be hurt by love was something that Ursula did not want Coralie to experience.

  Mrs. Craig was unexpectedly amenable to the suggestion that she should see a doctor about her headaches. Ursula, realizing that she had been having them for some time without bothering to consult one, had an uneasy thought that she was impressed, even a little flattered, by the surgeon’s interest in what Coralie had told him of her. But she dismissed this as unworthy, though when she suggested that they could have chosen a new doctor for themselves, Mrs. Craig brushed this aside.

  “Nonsense. It is far better to have the recommendation of a man of Mr. Lingard’s standing. I must say I’m very grateful to him. Or should I be more grateful to you, darling?” she asked of Coralie.

  “I only told him about you. And he promised to do what he could,” said Coralie. “Ursula is to ring him up, he said. And then he’ll arrange it.”

  Ursula went to the telephone, knowing that she should be grateful to Mr. Lingard, yet still reluctant to be under an obligation to him.

  When she spoke to Matthew something in her tone may have conveyed as much, for he assured her quickly: “This is no particular trouble to me, you know. Dr. Contin is an old friend of mine. We walked the same hospital as students. I’ll willingly fix an appointment for Mrs. Craig.”