Nurse in Waiting

by Jane Arbor

  “Well—I want to know the real figures of the stock that went to the market last month, for instance. And what price it fetched. I can get from the papers what the market price was, but did we get it? That’s what I can’t get out of that evasive fool, McKiley. And I want the milking figures and the egg returns—”

  “But is René Menden likely to know all that?” asked Joanna dubiously.

  Roger gestured helplessly. “No, probably not. Perhaps I have never expected that he would.”

  “Well, I could ask him,” said Joanna quickly.

  “M’m. I suppose you couldn’t get less than McKiley’s ‘satisfactory’ and ‘measuring up pretty well by last year’s standard!’ As for Menden—he’s at the Dower House. But I suppose you knew that?”

  “Yes. But I couldn’t go there to see him. It’s Mr. McKiley’s house.”

  “It isn’t. It’s ours,” commented Roger aloofly.

  It was the sort of childish quibble which she would have expected from Shuan. In their inability to see anybody’s point but their own they were rather alike, these two, reflected Joanna.

  “Well, it still wouldn’t be politic to ‘pump’ René Mendon on Mr. McKiley’s doorstep, would it?” she responded equably.

  At that he rounded upon her irritably. “Good heavens, woman D’you think I’m asking you to enter into a conspiracy to get facts about my own property? As if I care for McKiley!”

  “I was thinking that it wouldn’t make for easier relations with him,” Joanna pointed out. “And Mrs. Carnehill says you can’t do without him.”

  “Oh, Mother—! She’s unknowable lately. All this frantic journalism, all this keeping of ‘worry’ from me. What is she afraid of anyway? You’d say she was afraid of something, wouldn’t you?”

  “What makes you think that?” Joanna’s tone was guarded.

  “Ah, don’t hedge! Isn’t it staring you in the face? She believes that—that there’s no cure for me. And she tells herself that she is ‘facing facts’. It’s something that Carnehills have to drive themselves to!”

  He spoke with a bombastic defiance, but his eyes were haunted.

  Joanna said quietly: “That’s nonsense. And you know it. Your cure is only a matter of time. And Mrs. Carnehill likes her work too well to give it up. If she’s afraid of anything—”

  “Well, she is, isn’t she?”

  “—it’s that when you are well again, she won’t be able to continue her journalism on the scale to which she is developing it now.”

  He looked at her with his disturbing perception. “Diplomatically turned. But not terribly convincing, my dear Joanna,” he remarked coolly.

  She felt desperately sorry for him, knowing that at present he had no power within himself to combat his destructive self-pity. She longed to be able to give him some of her own strength of conviction that he would get well. But so far he would give her no clue as to how to reach him. She wished, for one thing, that when he first suggested that Mrs. Carnehill was ‘afraid’, she had rejected the idea at once with hearty scorn. He had sensed her hesitation and had worked his own interpretation into it. That he was wrong, Joanna was certain. But that Mrs. Carnehill was indeed ‘afraid of something’ she was almost equally sure.

  Before she left him she asked lightly: “Well—shall I speak to René Menden?”

  But he had apparently already lost interest. “Oh, do as you please. You’ll not learn much, I dare say.”

  On the following Wednesday Shuan went off to Naas market and returned in triumph with the coveted powder-bowl for Mrs. Carnehill. All the week Joanna had tried to penetrate her guard by pretending that she noticed nothing of her hostility. But it was not until Shuan’s enthusiasm for her prize overwhelmed her that she relaxed towards Joanna.

  The bowl was held towards her with shy pride and Joanna took it carefully between her hands.

  “But it is lovely!” she said.

  Instantly the girl was on the defensive. “Didn’t I tell you it was?”

  “But—from a market-stall! I didn’t think—”

  Shuan snatched back her treasure. “It’s Waterford glass,” she said scornfully over her shoulder as she turned away. “D’you suppose I didn’t know that from the start? Mikey Mo didn’t, though!”

  Joanna sighed. Here, if anywhere, lay the clue to the girl’s friendship. She dressed abominably, but she had a dawning connoisseur’s knowledge of lovely things, and Joanna longed to be able to reach her through it. For Shuan—if she would—might help her to understand Roger. And to achieve that would be worth any difficulty of approach to Shuan.

  “How did you recognize it for Waterford?” she asked tentatively. “Do you know about glass?”

  “A bit. We had a postmaster at Tulleen who collected it. He wrote a book about it too,” said Shuan surprisingly.

  “Have you ever thought about collecting it—or any antiques?”

  The girl’s eyes opened widely. “How could I? I haven’t any money!”

  “Well, if you’ve got a flair for it, it seems a pity not to develop it,” persisted Joanna. “What about getting a job in Dublin where you could?”

  “You mean—in a shop?”

  “Perhaps—in an antique shop. Or you might go as a pupil to an interior decorator.”

  Shuan looked her utter scorn of the suggestion. “Mums would have a fit,” she said briefly. “Besides, I couldn’t leave Roger. Or—is it that that you want?”

  “Oh, Shuan, don’t be absurd!” Joanna felt a justifiable irritation as she realized that her well-meant efforts had set them farther apart than before. Shuan was impossible, she decided and tried to dismiss concern with her from her mind.

  More than once during that week she remembered guiltily that she had not sent her promised second letter to Dale. But she did not realize that he would worry at the absence of news from her until one morning when the solitary letter on her tray was a confirmatory telegram.

  She tore it open while Roseen watched with interest.

  She read—

  “Deeply worried no further letter. Are you all right, dear? Reply. Dale.”

  The reply had been paid and a glance showed that the original had been handed in in London early on the previous morning. Joanna looked up at Roseen.

  “There should have been a telegram for me yesterday—by telephone, I suppose. Do you know anything about one?”

  “A telegram, is it? Sure, and wasn’t Miss Shuan at the phone yesterday forenoon while you were with Mr. Roger?”

  “I don’t know. Was she? It could have been an ordinary message she was taking. Did she say anything about a telegram for me?”

  “Divil a word. Was it urgent news, now?” inquired Roseen with compassionate interest.

  “Telegrams are usually fairly urgent,” remarked Joanna dryly.

  “Well, will I hunt Miss Shuan to you, as soon as she’s up? You could be asking her about it—”

  “You needn’t bother to ‘hunt’ her anywhere. I’ll ask her about it when I see her.” And Joanna dressed hastily, trying as she did so to calculate how long her belated reply to Dale would take to reach London.

  When, later, she confronted Shuan with the confirmatory wire the girl took refuge in a sullen defiance.

  “Yes. I took it over the phone,” she admitted. “It came about eleven.”

  “Well, haven’t you any method for dealing with messages and wires? Couldn’t you have written it down?” Joanna felt baffled.

  “There isn’t any paper, and Roseen is always borrowing the pencil. I would have told you, only you were in Roger’s room and you’re always so fussy about being interrupted—”

  “Only because I want a certain amount of privacy for him when I am doing anything for him. Anyway, you could have told me as soon as I was free.”

  “Well, I forgot. If it was terribly urgent—I’m sorry.”

  “You know what it said, so you must know that it wasn’t ‘terribly’ urgent. But it was—worrying,” commented Joanna dryly. />
  She was prepared to leave the matter there, but to her surprise and annoyance she found that when she next went to him, Roger had heard all about the incident.

  He said with reasonable cheerfulness: “I’ve given Shuan a good moral belting for you! She won’t do it again.”

  “Do what—oh, did she tell you about the telegram?” Joanna flushed. “It was all very trivial really.”

  “She didn’t want to tell me. But she came in here with a face like a storm over the Wicklows, and I wormed it out of her,” said Roger with relish. The blue eyes challenged hers. “Why hadn’t you given the young man news of yourself?”

  “I’ve been too busy to write.” She felt annoyed that the contents of the wire as well as the incident had been discussed, but she would not show irritation if she could help it.

  There was a pause while his eyes remained fixed upon her, as if he expected her to go on. When she did not he asked:

  “Well—don’t you mind that Shuan told me the wording? Aren’t you going off the deep end about ‘private correspondence’—and all that?”

  “A telephoned telegram is hardly ‘private correspondence’, is it? I couldn’t complain if the whole of Tulleen knew what it contained!”

  “No, but—well, hang it, haven’t you a grouse at all?”

  Joanna laughed. “You sound as if you want me to have one. All right—I was annoyed—”

  “Come, that’s human of you!” He seemed relieved as he regarded her shrewdly beneath lowered lids. “You’re annoyed—aren’t you?—because you think I’ve been let in on a scrap of that private life of yours that you were so starchy about keeping from me the other day?”

  “No, of course not. And I wasn’t ‘starchy’. It was simply that I felt you couldn’t be interested in gossip about what I do with my time in London.”

  “But I could be!” He was serious now. He put out a hand to take her wrist in a grip which hurt. “I wanted you to talk the other day. Not because I’m nosy or curious, but because I’ve got to make myself remember that there’s a world outside all this.” Her eyes swept from cornice to floor and from wall to confining wall of the room. “Don’t you see how easy, how damnably easy it is to forget? And that everyone here seems intent on making me believe that this is my whole future?”

  Joanna gently disengaged her wrist and wished she hadn’t when he looked rebuffed. “I do understand,” she said, pitying him. “But you’re wrong when you think no one helps you to get outside it. You don’t always help yourself, you know!”

  “Don’t I know it? It’s a kind of black despair that grips me. Sometimes—d’you know, Joanna?—I even use it against them to pay them out for—for swaddling me here!”

  “You use it against yourself more.” Her tone held a quiet conviction which seemed to impress him.

  “I know that too. But it’s the only rebellion I’ve got to my hand, d’you see?” He relaxed slightly and gave her a wry smile. “I’d use it against you too—only you don’t seem to mind. It’s your English imperturbability, I suppose.”

  “Well, don’t trade on it too much,” warned Joanna, smiling. “Even English worms will turn!” Suddenly she felt happy, as if she saw a way to help him opening out before her. Somehow, by talk about herself, by bringing him news of his own estate, by encouraging him to tell her about his life before his accident, she would try to give back to him a belief in a future which lay beyond the confines of this room. She remembered the station-master’s flowery description of him ‘riding through Tulleen with the pride of the wind in his hair’, and knew that she would give much to have seen him so.

  He was saying: “Well, now you know something of the black devils I contend with. Do you have any of your own?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You’re—happy?”

  “Mostly—yes.”

  “I suppose the young man helps. Are you going to marry him?”

  Joanna, taken aback by the question, said nothing, and he repeated like an importunate child: “Well—are you?”

  “He hasn’t asked me.”

  “You know that’s hedging And no answer to what I asked.”

  There was nothing but to be frank with him. She said slowly: “You see, I’ve known Dale for a very long time. He is a research chemist; when I’m in London we go about together and—and perhaps we’ve always supposed that—”

  “—That when he makes up his mind, you’ll be nice and handy, and then he’ll pop you into a box of a house in the suburbs and you’ll see him off on the 8.15 every morning of your lives!”

  “Well—doesn’t that sound like the happy ending?” Joanna was glad to escape into badinage. “Though, as a matter of fact, it wouldn’t be like that at all. More likely I should have to keep his bag packed, ready for when he would be dashing off somewhere to watch or take part in experiments.”

  “Well then, he’ll probably go in for the hydrogen bomb and bore you to death talking nuclear fission,” pursued Roger, unabashed.

  Joanna laughed. “You’re impossible!” she declared.

  “Sure, an’ it’s my Irish blood! Wouldn’t we have to be weavin’ tales for ourselves, the way we’d be dyin’ of boredom from the dullness of our lives without?” demanded Roger in an exaggerated brogue.

  Joanna looked at him thankfully. His eyes were brighter and she believed that the ‘black mood’ of the past few days was passing. If only she could keep him like that! But she would, she would!

  When she left him she wondered at the ease with which she had been so frank with him about Dale. With the beginnings of a new letter to Dale before she sat staring at the paper for a long time. From anyone else she would have resented the question as to what her relation to him was. Yet to Roger Carnehill she had expressed quite easily the doubt that was half a conviction—the belief, shared, she thought, by Dale, that one day before long they would marry.

  It was a warm, comfortable idea, she had always thought—the knowledge that there was someone with whom you could get on as placidly and agreeably as she and Dale did. It was a better basis for marriage than many people had. And yet—the flash of doubt utterly startled her—hadn’t they, so far, missed the love that wrung the heart-strings, stirred the blood? Did she or Dale know anything of the pain and mystery of ecstasy—the flinging of the spirit to the mountain-tops, the plunging to the depths?

  Foolish! she chided herself. As if ecstasy lasted, or love became anything but the easy acceptance of each other which she and Dale had already achieved! They had left romance by the way because their relationship had no need of it. They were adults, weren’t they? Not children crying for the stars!

  Joanna picked up her pen and turned her mind resolutely to the matter in hand. Her mind—but not her heart, which cried, childishly and inconsequentially, for the unknown star which had not yet dawned for her...

  Along with the other casual arrangements of Carrieghmere she found that no provision was made for her to have the regular daily hours ‘off-duty’ on which Matron insisted for her nurses when they were out on private cases. However, though she was busy she was not overworked and she accepted philosophically the knowledge that Mrs. Carnehill or Shuan or anyone else who was handy might—or might not—offer to take over her duties while she managed to achieve some brief private life of her own.

  However, in the midst of wintry storms came a ‘gift’ of a day of sun and warm wind, and Colonel Kimstone with his wife drove over to see Roger.

  “There, Nurse Merivale, we heard you were here!” said the Colonel, greeting her warmly. He turned to Mrs. Kimstone with an air of Joanna’s being his own invention. “Didn’t I say now,” he demanded, “that this was the very thing for Roger?”

  Mrs. Kimstone, a short, buttoned-eye woman whom Joanna had not met while she had been nursing the Colonel in London, pursed her lips and nodded twice, though Joanna thought her appraising glance was a little doubtful.

  “I think I’d been expecting someone older,” she said.

&nbs
p; “Nonsense! There are no old nurses—they all get married before that, eh, Roger?” exclaimed the Colonel, roaring with laughter at his own quip. Then he said briskly: “Now we’ll take care of the patient. Nurse. Off you go and get some rare sunshine into you.”

  Joanna, who had been longing wistfully for some air, accepted her freedom gratefully. She hurried to her room, changed into tweeds and low-heeled shoes and set off for a tramp round the park.

  The gardens behind the house were not extensive; they had an air of having been sacrificed to the outbuildings, stables and kennels ranged alongside. But beyond stretched the wide vista of the park, full of magnificent timber; the spreading branches of many of the old trees were so low that Joanna had frequently to dodge beneath them as she struck off ‘across-country’ towards the boundary wall which was out of sight.

  She knew that the park’s circumference was about two and a half miles, but she had not yet had time or opportunity to walk round it. She half-wondered whether she would ask Shuan to come with her, but in the end she set out alone.

  Towards the end of her walk, she came to the weed-ridden drive leading down to the main gateway and turn up it towards the house. But before she reached it curiosity took her over a narrow path to the right, in order to look at the Dower House where McKiley and the Belgian farm student lived together.

  It was small, of the Georgian period, with a slate roof and characteristic windows; it was more homely looking and seemed to be in better repair than Carrieghmere itself. Joanna was just about to turn away, remembering how she had told Roger that she could not question René Menden” on Mr. McKiley’s doorstep,” when someone came up behind her and she turned about to see it was young Menden itself.

  He clicked his heels and bowed formally, though he was in working-clothes. “Mademoiselle Merivale? You wish to visit us?”

  “No, not really. I only came over to look at the house—”