Nurse in Waiting

by Jane Arbor

  “He is frequently a curmudgeon because he probably knows more about nervous exhaustion than I hope I ever shall,” Joanna pointed out.

  Dale fingered the edge of a plate. “Yes, but—well, it’s your personal preoccupation with it all that worries me. In the course of no more than a few weeks you seem to be intent on wrapping yourself around their lives!”

  “You can’t live in close contact with people like the Carnehills without finding even their oddnesses—absorbing,” commented Joanna dryly. “I’m sorry I wrote so fully about them if you weren’t interested. Of course, I couldn’t expect you to be—”

  “Well, they all sound mad. That loopy, jealous girl, throwing her weight about! And the journalist mother. And not only the Carnehills. There’s that French chap—René, and this agent who is going to take you back tonight—Do you realize that you’ve crossed the Irish Sea, put your watch back a few minutes, changed your money into coins with pigs and harps on them—and travelled a thousand years away from what you were before? Why, you’re not even interested in me any more. I’ve watched you while I’ve been talking. And you’ve scarcely been listening!”

  Joanna laid a hand lightly over his. “Don’t be silly. Dale. Of course I’ve been listening. It was just what I wanted—to hear you talk and to—to realize how well I know you after all!”

  It was the wrong thing to say, and he fastened upon it.

  “So you have been moving away from me during these weeks? I sensed it somehow.”

  “Simply travelling alone, I think,” answered Joanna thoughtfully. “Adjusting myself to a different country and to rather an odd set of people. I haven’t had much time to myself, and yet I’ve been extraordinarily—alone.”

  Dale looked at her without speaking for a moment. Then it seemed that he came to a decision to take her meaning literally. He said casually: “Well, of course you haven’t been away so far to a case before. And it’s been longer than most, hasn’t it?”

  Joanna was conscious of an acute disappointment. They had been at the brink of a quarrel and though she did not want that, yet she felt that if only Dale had wondered what she meant when she spoke of being “alone,” had asked her about it, they might have gone on to talk of real, personal things instead of the mere externals they had touched on so far. Now that he had concluded that she was speaking only of being far from London and of being over-busy with a case, how could she broach the whole thing again and try to explain that it was a different kind of loneliness she had wanted to express—a loneliness of the heart, a reaching-out, a hungering for something as yet beyond her dreams?

  She could not try.

  So she answered him in his own mood. She said: “Mrs. Craigie’s case was much longer.”

  “Yes, but you were only in Surrey. I’d like to be in a position to tell your matron to send a relief, to bring you back to Town for a bit, even if you came out again later. I’m missing you! Don’t you realize that?”

  He looked so injured that Joanna had to smile. She reached for her gloves as she said lightly: “Well, I’m glad you’re not in any such position. This is my case and I want to stay on it to the end. It—it challenges me!”

  They regained the street to find that they had sat longer over tea than they realized. It was almost time for Joanna to go to the Greville to meet Justin McKiley. As they walked towards the hotel Dale asked idly:

  “This fellow McKiley—what is he like? I think you’ve said less about him than about the others. Is it that you find him less absorbing”—there was a hint of sarcasm in Dale’s tone—“or more so?”

  “He—well, I don’t see much of him. You see, he isn’t actually at Carrieghmere itself.”

  “Neither, I gather, is the Belgian. But you were quite expansive about him!”

  “Well, I think he interested me more. He is so correct in some ways, so boyish in others, and so very desperately in love!”

  Dale shrugged. “Poor devil,” he said briefly. “He’ll get over that.”

  “I don’t think he needs pity. Or—or that sort of assurance,” said Joanna slowly. “Shuan mayn’t love him in return, but he’ll have lost nothing by loving her as he does. Love—gives things back to people.”

  Like their tea-shop, the lounge of the Greville was artificially darkened rather than lighted, by means of heavy oak beaming and antique lanterns hung around the walls. They were forced to accustom their eyes to the dimness before Joanna was able to distinguish Justin McKiley talking to the girl named Magda in a corner.

  Magda was in blue this evening—a sharp ‘electric’ blue which most women could not wear at night at all. But it suited her vivid looks to perfection. She was looking less bored than at Justin’s party and was talking animatedly to him as the other two threaded their way towards them.

  It was she who saw and recognized Joanna first. Instantly her heavy lids veiled her eyes. But her lips still wore a smile as she said to her companion:

  “Why, here comes your ‘novelty’! This is a surprise. You didn’t tell me that there was to be a rendezvous!”

  Justin McKiley swung about, setting his glass down on the table behind him. He smiled a greeting to Joanna, glanced briefly and appraisingly at Dale, and over his shoulder answered Magda:

  “Perhaps—I didn’t mean you to know!”

  It was a deliberate, provocative taunt and, though between intimate friends it could have been taken lightly, the swift frown which crossed Magda’s smooth brow showed that she had not taken it so.

  Nor indeed had Dale, as Joanna could sense from the slight stiffening of his figure at her side. She glanced up at him and he down at her, his lips set in a thin line.

  She felt more than angry with McKiley. By that one remark he had deliberately hinted at some relationship which did not exist between them. And Dale actually believed in it!

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Three-quarters of an hour later she was sitting in silence at Justin McKiley’s side as he guided the car through the suburban streets.

  She was thinking of the brief ‘foursome’, the cordiality of which had had no real chance from the moment of that ill-timed joke of his.

  After a while she had been only too glad to look at her watch and to ask Justin if they might leave. Before they parted Dale had taken her aside to say:

  “I shall be free again the day after tomorrow, Joanna. You’ll come in again?”

  She had said: “I’ll try, Dale. I mustn’t promise. It depends how things are at Carrieghmere—”

  His mouth had hardened again and he did not smile as he replied significantly:

  “Of course it depends how things are at Carrieghmere! I’m beginning to understand that. But you should come. I think—we ought to talk to each other.”

  She had protested: “You aren’t being just, Dale!”

  “Well, you haven’t been particularly frank, have you?”

  “But it was only a joke! I knew that Magda was to be here. She must have known he was expecting me! He said it only to tease her—”

  “Or to intrigue me? To set me wondering just what the standing between you is?”

  “That’s absurd. He hasn’t any ideas about—about us. Simply that you are a friend unexpectedly hero on business.” Secretly she had a suspicion that Justin had meant to intrigue Dale as well as to taunt Magda, but she did not intend to say so.

  Dale had said then: “Well, it has made me think I’ve been inclined to underestimate the opposition at Carrieghmere. McKiley is a ‘woman’s man’. You realize that, don’t you? I wish you had described him more fully—given me an idea of the type of fellow I was going to meet. Why didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know. Somehow he didn’t signify.”

  “Didn’t he?” Dale caught at the phrase gratefully. “I’m glad about that. Joanna—you will come in to Dublin again before I go back to England?”

  Again she had promised that she would try. And when Justin had come back from taking Magda to Inn flat and to say that the car was ready to lea
ve to Carrieghmere, she and Dale were friends again.

  And Justin, apparently unconscious of the rift he had done his best to cause, was merely amused at Magda’s latest display of ill-humor.

  When he began to talk of it Joanna said quietly:

  “It seemed to me that you did your best to provoke it.”

  “Well”—he paused to swing the car round a turn—“Magda enjoys intriguing me. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t play the same game upon her.”

  “You involved me,” Joanna pointed out.

  “Come on! You enjoyed it! Any woman likes to be played off against another—so long as she is on the scoring side!”

  “And you have no doubt, an intimate knowledge of what a woman enjoys?”

  He laughed, not having missed the quiet sarcasm in her tone. “Experience has taught me that your sex enjoys a sense of personal triumph as much as most, even if you have to fight to achieve it. Magda happens to enjoy fighting, so I take care to provide her with a test every now and again. She would despise me for being dull if I didn’t.”

  Joanna did not reply. She was thinking that every relationship between men and woman seemed to exist on a plane peculiar to itself. There was hers with Dale—placid and accepted; there was Shuan’s blind devotion to Roger Carnehill and his sense of duty towards her at which Mrs. Kimstone had hinted; here, between Justin and Magda there appeared to be a rather nightmarish system of thrust and counter-thrust which she herself would have found unendurable. Did either of them, she wondered, claim that it added up to “love?”

  As if answering her thought, Justin said: “Of course, I can’t afford to quarrel with Magda. She has—contacts that are too valuable to me. Tell me now, have you ever realized the extent to which a clever woman can be of value to a man?”

  Joanna threw a sideways glance at him. He sounded more expansive, as if he were upon the verge of becoming confidential. She wondered whether he might have had more than enough to drink before she and Dale had joined him at the Greville.

  She said lightly: “I’ve always heard that a clever wife can be if inestimable value!”

  “A wife. Yes.” He pondered this, then gave a laugh that was slightly out of control. “And yet—Magda as a wife? No, that doesn’t fit!”

  Silence fell for a minute or two. Then, in order to change the subject Joanna remarked upon the performance of the car.

  He accepted the compliment without comment. Then, leaning forward over the wheel as if to peer into the darkness ahead, he said dryly: “You’re wanting to ask, of course, how, on the pay of an agent, I manage to run a car like this at all!”

  “I am not!” Joanna was too indignant to realize that she had used inadvertently a piece of Irish idiom to express her denial.

  “Not? But I assure you—the story is interesting to a degree! Shall I tell you?”

  She was beginning: “I’m not very interested—” when there was a sudden checking upon the smooth movement of the car and her companion uttered an exclamation. There was another jerk and his foot thrust down upon the accelerator; another check, and he was forced to pull up.

  Joanna’s heart sank. “What’s the matter?” she inquired.

  “I don’t know. A bit of a choke, perhaps. But it could be—petrol.”

  “You mean—you mightn’t have enough to get us to Carrieghmere?”

  He regarded her quizzically. “Even the best American makes won’t run without it!” he commented before alighting to lift the hood and to inspect the carburetor.

  Joanna was too worried to take the check philosophically. If there were any length of delay here she would be very late back at Carrieghmere, and Shuan was alone.

  Justin got back into his seat. “It’s petrol, I’m afraid,” he said. “Have a cigarette?”

  Joanna wanted to gasp with impatience. This, she supposed, was where the Irish temperament could say: “Ach—there’s time enough”—and mean it. But she could not.

  “Well—what do we do?” she demanded.

  Justin stretched his legs comfortably before him. “Having reviewed the situation, presumably we accept our fate,” he said maddeningly.

  “But—but I can’t! I must get back to Carrieghmere. Shuan has been left alone long enough.”

  “Well, do you propose to get out and push? After all, no one could suggest that the delay is your fault.”

  Exasperated and worried though she was, Joanna tried to lay hold on her patience.

  She protested again, trying not to sound too desperate: “But there must be something we can do. We can’t just sit here!”

  “Why not? Besides, we’re not just sitting’. I, at least, am reviewing the situation—”

  She knew by the light unconcern in his voice that he appreciated nothing of the seriousness of their plight as she saw it. “Please,” she said. “There must be something we can do!”

  Lazily he put up a hand and switched on the interior light above their heads. By its adequate glow he looked at her.

  “Say ‘please’ again—just as you said it then,” he demanded. “It actually achieved the effect of making you appear—vulnerable!”

  She ignored the remark and did her best to conceal her instinctive movement of recoil. After all, they were in this together; he was not in a pleasant mood and she could not afford to antagonize him. She laid a hand upon the door-handle.

  “Well,” she said lightly, “since I’m the one who is anxious to be upon her way. I could always walk. How far is it to Carrieghmere?”

  He laughed. “Another fifteen miles.”

  “Fifteen miles? So far?” Her dismay sounded in her voice.

  “Thereabouts. Do you still mean to walk?”

  “No, of course not. But hasn’t your own ‘review of the situation’ yielded anything yet?”

  “Nothing. Except that rescue will ultimately be achieved. Until then I am content. I am sheltered from the elements, I have a lovely, if hitherto unapproachable, companion—”

  Joanna’s patience snapped. Conciliation, she decided, was useless. She riposted quickly: “And you are behaving like the villain of a melodrama! Do try to realize that this could—could cost me my job.”

  If she had sought to impress him she had failed. He said merely “Job? When I could offer you a more attractive one at three times the money?”

  “I’m not interested,” she retorted distantly. “Merely, for the moment, in getting back to my present one. What do you propose to do about it?”

  “Nothing, I think. Nothing, that is, without encouragement which you could give—”

  He bent over her, his intention plain.

  “No—no!” Joanna turned her head away, knowing that she had not kept her lips inviolate for this. Even Dale had never kissed her except in friendliness.

  He was saying urgently: “We could make a team—you and I. ‘A clever woman’—Magda is that. But you could be more—”

  Joanna shrank farther into the corner of her seat. This was the sort of ‘cheap’ situation for which, hitherto, she would always have said a woman had only herself to blame. She did not know what kind of co-operation with him Justin McKiley was hinting at. She only knew that she did not want to share it or anything else with him, and that Carrieghmere, a long fifteen miles away, was a kindly refuge which she could not reach without his help.

  She began a little unsteadily: “This is absurd—” but broke off as the distant sound of a car was to be heard upon the flat bog-road.

  Justin heard it too: He sat back in his own seat, took a cigarette, and said with a shrug: “Sir Galahad approaches! That’s what you are thinking?”

  “Merely,” retorted Joanna crisply, “that it’s a car, that it’s going our way, and that it can probably do something for us.” She was out on the road by this time, ready to step into the beam of the approaching headlights. But now he was at her side, drawing her back and preparing to ‘flag’ the oncoming car himself.

  “At least,” he said lazily, “you might let me play the gent
leman!”

  Joanna was too anxious to reply, and waited in silence until she saw with relief that the car was slowing. Then she gave a start of recognition. Of course! Why hadn’t she thought of it! It was the Carrieghmere car itself—its occupants were Michael and Roseen, themselves returning from Dublin.

  Michael alighted and came forward. “ ‘Tis Mr. McKiley, surely?”

  “It is,” came the dry reply. “Have you got any spare petrol aboard?”

  “Bless me soul, I have not! Are ye dry, now? Will I nip back to Arneen or the next place beyond, to see could I get ye some in a can?”

  But at this Joanna stepped forward. Michael’s “nipping back” to anywhere along the road would mean she would be forced to another session alone with Justin McKiley. And that she did not want. She said quite firmly:

  “I can’t help feeling that the important thing is to get me back to Carrieghmere. So if Mr. McKiley wouldn’t mind the delay I think it would be better if I came along with you and Roseen, and then you could bring petrol back afterwards from there. Do ‘you mind—?”

  Her brief appeal to her companion was perfunctory, formal, and he was wise enough to recognize it as such. He made a gesture towards a bow in her direction as he said equally formally: “The urgency is yours entirely—” and strolled back nonchalantly towards his own car. When they started, for a long way down the road the beam from its powerful headlights seemed to pursue them. Then, at a dip, it winked and disappeared.

  Joanna was startled at the speed which Michael coaxed from the Carrieghmere car. In the hands of Mrs. Carnehill or even Shuan it seemed heavy, sluggish. But tonight the road seemed to streak like a black ribbon being unwound beneath its flying wheels.

  She inquired pleasantly about the trip to Dublin and about the merits of the “filum” at the Rialto. But Roseen was overcome by unaccountable shyness, and conversation lapsed.

  And then, out of the silence, Michael said reflectively: “ ‘Tis a wonder now that Mr. McKiley would have been at letting his reserve petrol as well as his main tank go dry on him.”