Nurse in the Sun

by Claire Rayner

  “Fine - he’s going to be fine. But he wants her - tell her, will you, Jaime?”

  There was a long silence, and she stood there in the hallway of the small hospital holding the phone to her ear and watching the nuns and the doctors bustling about, the mothers with their children in pushchairs and black-shawled old ladies shuffling through, and thought “Hospitals - all the same, wherever you go. Same smells, same feeling of rush and bustle, same patients, same staff, same problems - ” and then she heard the faint hiss as someone at the other end of the line breathed in, and she pulled herself back to the here and now, realizing she was quite desperately tired, and not really thinking at all clearly.

  “Mrs. Rendell?” she said quickly, and there was a pause, and then a husky voice at the other end of the line.

  “Yes. Yes, this is she - ”

  “He is all right, my dear,” Isabel said, and felt the knot of guilt and anger that had lain in her belly all afternoon begin to melt. “He’s all right - just concussion. He’s been lucky. We both have, you and I, because - I’m so sorry, Mrs. Rendell. I shouldn’t have said the things I said to your husband, but I was angry with myself because it was partly my fault - he came to speak to me and I brushed him off - and he - well, I was angry. I’m sorry.”

  “But you were right,” the husky little voice came thinly to her, and she could suddenly see her, standing there in the telephone kiosk at the Cadiz, her hair falling heavily over her face, her head bent. “I’ve - I treated Daniel the way they treated me once - I forgot, you see. And I wanted - oh, I don’t know. I’m - I want to see him so much. He - will he let me come to see him? Will you ask him for me?” and the pleading note in her voice was so clear, and such an echo of Daniel’s own voice that tears sharply pricked behind Isabel’s eyelids, and she had to take a deep breath before she could answer.

  “He’s asked for you. That’s why I’m calling. He wants you very much. He isn’t Fred any more. He’s just Daniel - ”

  There was an odd sound, half laugh, half tears, and then the husky voice said “I should have known what it meant, shouldn’t I? I should have known - I’ll come now - Señor Garcia said he’d bring me - I’ll come now - ”

  “Won’t your husband bring you?” Isabel said it involuntarily and then could have bitten off her tongue, for there was a silence at the other end of the phone, so thick and heavy that it seemed to ring bells in her head.

  “No, not him. I - he isn’t my husband yet. He was going to be, but - well, anyway. Señor Garcia said he’ll bring me. I won’t be long, tell him I won’t be long - ”

  She went back to sit beside Daniel’s bed and wait and as she sat there, one hand lightly resting on the curled fist on the counterpane, the picture fell neatly into place in her mind. The girl’s intense anxious absorption in the man, his aggressive posturing possessiveness, his resentment of the boy, and above all the boy’s resentment of him; it all made a much more logical pattern now, and she could have wept for both of them. The lonely girl, and her lonelier child, both looking desperately for love from someone, anyone - from Rendell for the girl, from herself for the boy - when all the time there were the two of them, needing to find each other, but not quite able to -

  Sebastian brought her in, and she walked straight past Isabel, giving her only one long grave glance from her wide blue eyes, as blue as Daniel’s own, and then she leaned over the bed and said softly “Danny - ”

  He moved, opened his eyes, and looked at her, his brows furrowed, and then he smiled his huge gap-toothed smile and put his arms up and she took his hands and linked them behind her neck, and said “Hallo - ”

  And he murmured “Funny Mummy - ” and closed his eyes again, and she twisted herself so that she was sitting beside him on the bed, and his head with its thatch of yellow hair was thrust happily against the curve of her body, and she could let her hand rest gently on his.

  “We’ll go home tomorrow or the next day, Dandini,” she said softly. “Shall we? Back to London? Just us?”

  He opened his eyes sleepily again. “Just us?”

  “Yes. Promise. This time I promise. Just us - ”

  Sebastian put his hand on Isabel’s elbow and she looked round, momentarily startled, and then nodded, and together they went towards the door.

  She looked up just once as they reached it, and gazed at Isabel, and then smiled, a strained polite and uncommunicative little smile.

  “Er - Nurse Cameron - thank you. You’ve been most kind, to both of us. We do appreciate it - ” and she looked down at Daniel again, dismissing everyone from the tight circle of their relationship, and Isabel nodded and said formally “Not at all. I do hope all goes well for you both - ”

  And then she was outside the door, and Sebastian was standing beside her, his hand still on her elbow, and looking gravely down at her.

  “So now you know what nursing’s all about, Sebastian!” she said with an attempt at gaiety. “Love ’em and leave ’em - patients come and patients go, and we go on for ever - ”

  “You are distressed,” he said flatly, and she shrugged her shoulders a little as they walked together along the corridor towards the hospital entrance.

  “I suppose I am - more than I should be. I let myself get emotionally involved with a patient, and you should never do that. I suppose - well, he didn’t seem like a patient. Not here, at the Cadiz. Of course he was, but I let my guard down. I should have known better.”

  “And now you are rejected, yes?” His car was standing outside and she was momentarily startled as she realized that the light was beginning to drain out of the sky. It was early evening now, and the whole afternoon had gone, so quickly.

  “I suppose, so, again!” she let him hand her into the car, and he came round and settled himself beside her, lifting his chin at the chauffeur in his imperious signal, and the car purred into life. “Not that I should feel so - it’s his mother he needs, not me, after all - ”

  He laughed then, gently, and said “And perhaps you need the children of your own, verdad?” and she suddenly reddened and he laughed again, softly.

  When they reached the hotel he led her through the lobby towards the lift and she was grateful for his company, for the guests came swarming round, asking questions eager for news of Daniel’s condition, and she tried to tell them, repeating it over again “He’ll be fine - concussion - just a little concussed - he’s been very lucky, yes - concussion.”

  “I will see to it that dinner is sent to you in your room, Isabella,” Sebastian said as he deposited her on her floor. “I suspect you are very tired, and in need of peace and quiet to regain yourself, yes? Tomorrow, I look forward to seeing you again. Goodnight, my dear.”

  And he pressed the button to close the lift door and was gone, and she rode up to her room, grateful for his perceptiveness, for she was quite desperately tired, and even more desperately in need of solitude.

  She bathed and put on a comfortable dressing gown and sat on her balcony to eat the delightful dinner that Carlos brought her, watching the lights come up over the Bay, and seeing them spring into existence below her on the hotel terraces.

  She could see the green glow of the restaurant roof, with the jagged edges of the broken glass showing blackly against the green shutters, and almost unwillingly was a little amused; he had wasted no time, the efficient Sebastian, in making his essential repairs. The blind fixed today, and tomorrow, no doubt, the glass. Soon it would be as though Daniel’s drama had never happened, as though he and his mother had never come to the Cadiz - and she sighed a little and finished her meal, and went to bed.

  It wasn’t until she was almost asleep that she remembered that she hadn’t thought about Jay and his letter for the entire afternoon and evening. “Which must mean something” she told herself drowsily, and then fell asleep with the suddenness of an exhausted child.

  13

  In a way it was as though Daniel’s experience had come between her awareness of Jason and her own essential self, for as t
he days succeeded each other and March slid into April, she found that whenever she tried to think about Jason’s letter and what it really meant, all that came into her mind was the day it had arrived - and Daniel. How was he? Had there been any after effects of his concussion? Did he remember anything of what happened to him? Above all, were he and his mother now on better terms with each other?

  They had flown back to London a week or so after the accident, not returning to the hotel at all. Señora Lupez, the hotel housekeeper had packed and dispatched their belongings for them, and it was as though they had never existed somehow. Almost immediately new guests were in their rooms, and everyone seemed to have forgotten them.

  The entire hotel indeed seemed to change its personality week by week, for the season was now swinging into summer, and holidaymakers came thick and fast. Only Vanda Connaught among the guests remained a constant factor, and she kept herself at arms’ length as far as Isabel was concerned, looking icily through her whenever they happened to meet in the restaurant or the lounges. Which suited Isabel well enough, for she felt she had enough to cope with without getting any more involved with anyone else then she had to.

  For she was busy. The frequent changeover of guests meant she had more and more work to do, for now more children were arriving, and with them the inevitable rash of upset tummies, cuts and bruises and aches and pains and fevers and headaches. And she used this busyness as an excuse not to think about Jay. She wrote him a brief and colourless acknowledgment of his letter, saying merely that she would think about what he had said and would write again; and indeed she meant to - when she had thought about it. But she couldn’t, not in any constructive way.

  She used her off duty business as an excuse too, telling herself each time that she prepared for a date with either Biff or Sebastian that tomorrow, next week, soon, she would write that letter to Jay, would go off somewhere quiet on her own and really think. And then felt a stab of guilt. For in many ways both of them were becoming more and more important to her. Biff for his warmth and friendliness and genuine concern for her, his patent determination that wherever they went would be somewhere she would enjoy, rather than he. As long as she found pleasure in their dates, then he did, and he asked no more of her than that she should laugh with pleasure or gasp with surprise or simply be interested in the places he showed her, liking this nightclub or that restaurant, enjoying this new dish or that unusual drink.

  Sebastian never asked her, as Biff did, where she would like to go, what sort of entertainment she was in the mood for; he merely arranged matters in advance, taking it for granted that she would enjoy it - and she usually did. They rode, and drove and danced, went to concerts and some private parties with his friends (all of whom treated her with a careful politeness, if no real acceptance, though she realized that the language barrier contributed to this sense of being an outsider). But even though she did not always find quite so much easy pleasure in her dates with Sebastian as she did with Biff, still she found a certain excitement in his company, found herself becoming more and more affected by him as a person.

  With Sebastian she was always very conscious of being a woman, a different sort of creature; with Biff she was a friend, a companion, an equal person, but with Sebastian always she was special, feminine and for that reason important.

  And so it could have gone on, April moving into May, and then June coming with its steady build-up of heat that shimmered the hotel terraces into slumbrous afternoons when even swimming was too much effort, and the only really sensible way to pass the hours after lunch was to lie stripped on the bed with the curtains closed and the air-conditioning turned up to full blast, reading and dozing. The summer seemed to stretch before her, unchanging and eternal, as predictable as each day’s blazing heat. Her relationships with Biff and Sebastian had the same feel of stasis about them. Each date like the one before, no real changes at all. Neither ever attempted to make any physical approaches beyond the established pattern; Sebastian gripping her elbow sometimes, kissing her hand when they parted, always punctilious; Biff accepting her friendly kiss of farewell on his cheek each time, but never seeming to expect any more overt signs of affection.

  That it didn’t go on was in part due to her own behaviour, and long after she was to feel hot with embarrassment whenever she remembered how it was that the summer changed gear, when she traced back the chain of events that altered it all.

  It was one Sunday late in June. Biff had hired a car, and had asked her if she would enjoy a picnic over towards Andraitx, where his development was progressing well, and she had agreed that this sounded a delightful way to spend her day off. Felipe packed a picnic for her, and at eight thirty in the morning when the sun was well up but not yet oppressively hot, she went swinging cheerfully out to the front of the Cadiz to meet him, her swimsuit as well as her picnic packed into her beach bag.

  “Good morning!” she cried as she saw him, sitting there behind the wheel of the little S.E.A.T. and he grinned and leaned over to open the door for her, and she settled herself comfortably, stretching her bare sandalled legs as far as the little car would let her. “I’ve been looking forward to this,” she told him, as he put the car into gear and sped through the thin early traffic towards the Andraitx road. “I need to get right out of the town today - ”

  He grinned at her, momentarily taking his eyes from the road. “Now, why, I wonder? Palma going sour on you?”

  “No - not Palma. Just people. Too many silly greedy people. Yesterday - Ye Gods, what a day I had yesterday!”

  “So tell me all about it. Therapy, isn’t that what it’s called?”

  “Therapy! Huh! It’s not me that needs the therapy! It’s them. Honestly, there were three men who arrived on the overnight flights - got to the hotel about seven in the morning, you know? And would you believe it - by seven o’clock last night I had all three of them lying moaning and groaning on their beds, sunburnt to a crisp, sick from eating too much, filled to the gunwhales with brandy, and wondering why they felt so lousy! You’d think grown people’d have more sense than to ruin their holidays within less than twelve hours of getting to the place! You’d think they’d have the sense to take it easy the first few days - ”

  “You do sound severe! Don’t be so unkind, Isabel! You’re here for the whole summer - for them this is the culmination of fifty weeks of hard saving, isn’t that so? You can understand them trying to pack in as much as they can right from the moment they arrive!”

  “Pack it in is right - you’d never believe people could eat or drink so much in so short a time! Ah well, I daresay you’re right - but it happens every Saturday. Always someone whose head I have to hold before the day’s out. Still, I’m being a bore. Let’s forget ’em! Where exactly are we going?”

  “You could never be a bore,” he said, and turned his head to smile at her again and she grinned cheerfully back. “Where are we going? Well, I thought maybe I’d show you the development, and then we’d have coffee in one of the little cafes by the harbour where the fishing boats come in, and then there’s a place I know - a really quiet little bay no one else ever seems to go to where we could swim and have our picnic. Would that be fun? Or have you any other ideas? We could drive farther up into the mountains, maybe and - ”

  “It sounds a gorgeous plan Biff - just perfect. And it’ll be fascinating to see the development, too. You don’t talk about your work much, you know, not usually. I feel very honoured that you should show me! Like I’m a bit more than just some girl you’ve made friends with?” and she looked at him sideways through her lashes and smiled rather provocatively, and knew she was doing it. She didn’t know why, but quite suddenly she wanted to provoke him a little to see just how much he cared about her. Was this simply the comfortable friendship it seemed or was there more to it? And perhaps it wasn’t just that she wanted to provoke him into showing how much feeling he had for her; in a way, perhaps, did she want to find out how much feeling she had for him?

  He tur
ned his head again and looked at her gravely for a moment, and then returned his attention to the road and said with an air of casualness that for once seemed too relaxed to be real “You could say you’re more than just some girl - ” and then he grinned with a flash of his usual good humour, and added “ - you’re Isabel - and who could imagine a world with more than one Isabel? I’m darned sure I can’t! You’re more than enough for this mother’s son to cope with, you and your Scots severity!”

  “I’m not severe!” she protested, and was grateful to him for making a joke of it; to have displayed the sort of coquettishness she had always so despised in other girls - what on earth had possessed her? And she shook herself mentally and settled to enjoy the drive, talking only in the usual bantering way they did.

  The development was indeed fascinating; a series of small blocks of flats, flat-roofed and pretty, clustered round a curve of blue swimming pool with carefully planted young trees and bushes to give shade to the communal terraces, the whole tucked into a curve of valley in the foothills of the mountains in such a way that the buildings looked, for all their modernity, as though they had been there for centuries.

  She said as much as they stood beside the pool, staring up at the façades of the white buildings, and he reddened with real pleasure.

  “Really? Gee, Isabel, you couldn’t have said anything nicer? That’s just the effect I wanted! I told the Old Man - I’m always telling him - that you can make money and still produce a piece of work that’s beautiful, and doesn’t insult its environment - this time, I made up my mind to prove it to him - seeing he isn’t around to keep coming and poking his nose in and arguing with me and the architect the way he usually does - ”

  “He sounds a real brute, this Old Man of yours,” she said. “How long have you been working for him?”