Nurse in Waiting

by Jane Arbor

  She said gently: “If I had guessed you would care so much I would have discussed it with you. But”—she hesitated—“it hasn’t been easy to talk to you lately.”

  Roger said: “It hasn’t been easy to talk to you either. I hoped you might understand when I tried to tell you why you must go.”

  “I did understand!” It was almost a cry.

  Roger looked at her, a long look in the merciful dark.

  “Did you?” he said. “I wonder!”

  In the drawing-room behind the waltz had ended and had been followed by a wild Irish round dance involving nearly everyone. It ended with a burst of music of tarantella speed; the men spread their arms to trap the girls as they sped past; Shuan caught, found that she must choose between René and Justin McKiley.

  She hesitated. Then, with a look which the older man found provocative, she danced away with René.

  “Too bad!” drawled Magda behind him as the music stopped. She, too, had joined in the dance, but she was as cool and unruffled as a newly blown lily.

  His only reply was to motion her towards the open french windows. They passed through them on to the terrace just as Joanna and Roger left it.

  In silence Justin offered his companion a cigarette. By the tiny flare of the match which lit it she glanced at him—a look which did not attempt to veil the anger and contempt she felt towards him.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE INEVITABLE air of lassitude of the “morning after” descended upon Carrieghmere next day. At breakfast Mrs. Carnehill announced that, though she was bone-tired, she must go to Dublin. Roger, after bidding her good-bye and joking with her about her work as he would never have done earlier, disappeared out on to the estate, and Shuan, coming late to the table in a tweed suit which effectually dispelled the memory of the ethereal Shuan of the previous night, was brief and non-committal in her conversation. Then she, too, went out, and Joanna, with her sailing for England only a few days ahead, went to her room in order to begin her packing.

  As she worked she was wondering whether by now she was perhaps glad to go ... What, after all, had she hoped for from that brief excursion into the personality and the clothes of the dead Clarissa Carnehill who had belonged here as she could never hope to? Hadn’t she guessed what it would be like to return to being plain Joanna Merivale, a nurse who had always loved her work, but for whom it seemed to stretch before her now as a series of one soulless case after another?

  The telephone rang, interrupting her thoughts. And a few minutes later Roseen came to her room.

  “You heard the ‘phone, maybe? ‘Twas Mr. Roger, to say he wouldn’t be back for lunch. He has fallen in with Major Petrie, and the two of them are over to Ballycurie or somewhere. You’ll be in yourself. Nurse?”

  “Yes. But don’t bother about much for me—”

  Roseen lingered at the door. “Sure, we’ll be missing you when you’re gone,” she said.

  Joanna looked up and smiled. “I shall miss all of you, too. Tell me, have you thought any more of taking up nursing yourself?”

  Roseen fidgeted with her apron. “Well, I have, so. And I haven’t, if you know what I mean.”

  “Is it your mother who is the difficulty still?”

  “Arrah, it is not. Isn’t herself at me, all the time now, to be gone? For she says—what do you think?—that Michael couldn’t keep me! And him with his stable apprenticeship behind him these three years, and knowing all he does be knowing about cars!”

  “Are you engaged to Michael?” asked Joanna gently.

  Roseen looked evasively ceilingwards. “He has asked me. But I haven’t said I will or I won’t. Tell me now”—she fixed Joanna with an earnest eye—“do you think it is a good thing that a husband and wife would be at quarrelling all the while?”

  “All the while? And about big things—or little ones?”

  “Little ones, mostly. And maybe not all the while. With Michael there’d be some strange, sweet times—And sometimes, when I think of any other girl getting him in my place I know I’d be wanting to scratch out the eyes of her. That’d be a good test that’d prove I really love him, wouldn’t it?” she added hopefully.

  Joanna hesitated. “It could be one, Roseen,” she said slowly. “But I don’t know that it could be the best. You see, I think that if you love someone very much you want for them whatever they want. Or at least, whatever you believe would make them most happy. It could be that you could even bring yourself to—to give them up for that reason.”

  “You mean—if there was another girl after Michael I’d have to give him up?”

  Joanna shook her head. “Only if that was the way Michael wanted it. Or if you believed that he would find more happiness with her than with you. It’d be an awfully difficult decision to make, I know—”

  “And supposing I came to deciding that way, what would become of me?” asked Roseen blankly.

  “Well—you’d be the one who would go on alone. You’d have to tell yourself”—Joanna spoke slowly, looking into her own future rather than into Roseen’s—“that another door—a door to a different kind of happiness—would open for you one day. You’d have to hope that or—you wouldn’t be able to go on.”

  For a moment there was silence. Then Roseen said simply: “But Michael doesn’t want any other girl. He wants me!”

  Joanna smiled. “In that case, this is what might be described as a purely academic discussion, isn’t it?” Then, as Roseen looked puzzled, she added: “I mean, I expect you’ve already made up your mind to marry Michael, haven’t you?”

  Roseen blushed. “Maybe I have. But maybe I won’t be telling himself that—yet!”

  She went away then, returning rather breathlessly a minute or so later to ask Joanna to come to speak to “Mr. Menden, the French gentlemen, who’s in the hall now, in a great tear to see Mr. Roger or the mistress. Something about Miss Shuan—”

  Joanna’s heart seemed to turn over. Had that vague ‘something’ which she had feared might be lying in wait for Shuan caught up with the girl—with all of them—at last?

  René was not waiting patiently in the hall. He was pacing up and down, his apprehension written all over his pale, set face. In silence he followed Joanna into Mrs. Carnehill’s study and faced her as she shut the door.

  “Monsieur Carnehill—they tell me he is not here?”

  “No. He has just left a message to say that he won’t be in to lunch.”

  She believed that René looked almost relieved at her reply. But he went on: “And Madame Carnehill?”

  “She had to go to Dublin. What is it, René? Roseen said it was something about Shuan—She—she’s not hurt or anything?”

  “Mon Dieu—not that!” he breathed. “But something has happened. I must tell you—”

  “Go on—”

  “Eh bien, it was an hour ago—perhaps more—that Shuan has come down to the Dower House and soon has driven away with Mr. McKiley in his car—”

  “They went quite openly?” put in Joanna.

  “Oh, they make no secret of it. Me, I am hurt—here”—René laid an expressive hand over his heart—“but I think nothing of it. Recently it has been often so. But when they have been gone some time the telephone rings and it is Magda, saying Justin McKiley has taken Shuan to keep a rendezvous with two men at Musveen, on the border of Eire and Northern Ireland. But it is no friendly meeting, you understand. For these men are of the underworld; they make le contrebande. They—” René sought the word—“smuggle drugs which are brought in by air through Shannon and passed by Justin, helped by Magda, to agents who carry them across the border or over to England. When Justin is not free to keep the rendezvous, Magda takes his place. But always it is different. Today Musveen. The next time somewhere else—”

  Joanna gasped, feeling that the implications of this news were too vast to take in all at once. She said in bewilderment: “You mean—Magda was betraying Justin McKiley? Betraying him to you?”

  “She has done more than
that. Before she has telephoned to me she has told the police of the rendezvous at Musveen. She has said that perhaps they do not believe she tells the truth over the telephone. Naturellement, she has not given them her name ... But she knows that they will risk nothing—the police will be at Musveen too.”

  “And Shuan has gone with him? Could Magda know that?”

  René nodded. “Mr. McKiley has told her that he would take Shuan with him. Last night—I think—they have quarrelled. And Magda, who for a long time has been the liaison, you understand, between him and the people with whom he must do business, has refused to go to Musveen with him. He has told her that he will take Shuan instead. So, for hate and jealousy of Shuan, she has betrayed them both. I think”—René’s voice was bitter—“that Magda has enjoyed her conversations at the telephone this morning. And me—because I must hear and understand all that she has to tell me—must listen instead of going to her, taking her throat between my hands and strangling her!”

  “But what did you mean,” protested Joanna, “betrayed them both? Shuan is absolutely innocent! She can’t know anything of the purpose of this journey!”

  “Magda has said something more,” said René quietly. “She has said that she told the police that there are to be four people at the rendezvous—the two men, McKiley, and—a woman. A woman who has been acting as liaison between the parties for months. And, you understand, there will be a woman there—Shuan!”

  “But she knows nothing!” repeated Joanna wildly.

  “That will have to be proved. There cannot but be a—sullying of her name, if no worse,” replied René gravely.

  The horror of the situation seemed to flood in upon Joanna. And it was scarcely so much of Shuan that she thought as of Roger. Roger, whose pride of name, whose pride in Shuan herself must not be stained by such associations as these—police inquiries, suspicion, mud that would stick...

  She said urgently: “What can we do? Can we follow them? Warn her?”

  René said: “We must do that—even if we may not be in time. The car?”

  “Michael drove Mrs. Carnehill to Tullen station in it. But he’ll be back by now. I’ll find him—”

  She turned to the door, then stopped. “René—McKiley’s Lincoln!—how can we hope to equal the speed he can get out of that?”

  René’s lips set grimly. “He is ahead of us by perhaps an hour and a half—but he may not hurry. We shall. And if anyone can overtake him, Michael can!”

  Joanna nodded, a little comforted. She remembered that night journey back from Dublin when the Carrieghmere car had travelled as if on wings beneath Michael’s hands.

  At his suggestion René then went to fetch Michael while she hunted up road maps and wondered what message she ought to leave for Roger.

  She was still struggling with this when René came back.

  “Leave nothing,” he advised. “What is it possible to tell him, after all?”

  Joanna doubted the wisdom of this, but there was no time for argument. René said: “Are you ready?” And she knew that she was glad that neither in his mind nor in hers was there any question that they should not go together to Shuan’s aid.

  The long road stretched before them like a white ribbon. Joanna sat alone in the back seat; René, the map open on his knees, directed Michael without check. Apart from this, no one spoke.

  As the miles slipped by Joanna had time to think, though for the most part her thoughts were a jigsaw pattern of bewilderment, lacking coherence.

  She remembered again Roger’s criticism of Shuan. How right he had been when he had said that, for the sake of pursuing a single-minded channel of her own, she cared little for the peace of mind of those about her—people she claimed to love! How far, Joanna wondered, had she become involved with Justin and his shady activities? And why, why had she ever dared to meddle with them in the first place?

  For Joanna believed that she understood matters so far. Somehow, Shuan had stumbled upon the truth—though probably only upon half the truth—of Justin’s dealings in this filthy illicit traffic. Justin himself had possibly given her the first boasting hint. For, looking back now, Joanna realized that Justin, secure in his almost undisputed authority at Carrieghmere during Roger’s illness, had barely attempted to conceal the fact that he had other sources of income than his pay.

  The luxury of his car, the bizarre modernity of his part of the Dower House, even his shameless boast that Magda was dependent on him for her own luxuries—everything went to show that he had few qualms that he might be found out.

  He had boasted to Joanna—why not to Shuan also? But it was strange that it had taken Shuan’s inexperience to follow his complacent hints to some kind of conclusion! Roger had always distrusted the man, as she, Joanna, had done later. And Mrs. Carnehill, long before she had voiced her fears either to Joanna or to her son, had known that there was something deeply wrong at Carrieghmere. But Shuan alone had acted—however disastrously!

  Joanna felt her anger against the girl softening to something near to understanding. She remembered how, lonely and undaunted, Shuan had said of her latest ill-conceived crusade—“I must go on. But I couldn’t hope that anyone would understand!”

  Poor Shuan! Why had she done it? For the hatred of Justin McKiley which she had suspected? Of for the love of, and in service of, Roger himself? What, supposing she did gam irrefutable evidence against Justin, did she intend to do with her facts? And had she ever considered the possibility of what had happened now—that she herself might be caught up in the amateurish web she had prepared for her victim?

  ... Leitrim ... Balieborough ... Drumkerry—the little towns along the road began with a scatter of cottages, quickened into a life in a broad marketplace fed by cross-roads, and became things of the past as the last animal inhabitant of each scurried from the path of the speeding car.

  René said: “We ought, I think, to find out if the Lincoln has been seen.”

  “Oh, don’t stop,” urged Joanna. “Surely every minute is precious if we’re to catch them before they reach Musveen?”

  “Yes. But it would encourage us—no?—if we could learn certainly that they are in front—that we are upon the right road. So much is possible—”

  Joanna’s heart sank. So much was indeed possible—even that this journey was a hare-brained scheme doomed to failure. Resignedly she agreed. “All right. Will you stop somewhere and ask? I suppose the chances that they have, or have not been seen, are about even.”

  “The Lincoln—it is a car d’elegance,” said René shrewdly. “It is more than possible that someone has noticed it and envied its owner.” He looked at his watch. “Perhaps they have even stayed somewhere for a drink or perhaps for luncheon. At the next town we will ask.”

  Joanna’s silence was agreement—a tacit acknowledgment of René’s leadership. At Carrieghmere he was so quiet, so self-effacing, so content, apparently, to be a part of Shuan’s background that, as Roger had once said of him, he seemed to lack reality. But today she was utterly grateful for his quiet strength, his determination to see this thing through.

  At their first inquiry they draw blank. No one had noticed the Lincoln. But at the next village they learned that it had passed through more than an hour earlier.

  “An hour!” Joanna said in dismay. “That means we have gained very little! Have we any hope, René?”

  He looked grave, but he said staunchly: “For them there is no need to hurry. And I think that somewhere they will have stayed to take luncheon. At Ballyboy, perhaps ... It is—how do you say—a landmark on the route and more than half-way. We will ask again at Ballyboy.”

  In the town they drew up outside the only hotel which René thought McKiley would have been likely to visit. Michael went into the car-park at the side to inquire about the Lincoln, and René alighted too. He stood by the open door of the car and, looking at Joanna, he said with a half-smile: “The little Shuan—gives much trouble, does she not?”

  “Yes. The worst of it is t
hat she could never have meant to. She must have believed that she was doing something ‘big’ for Mr. Carnehill—for Carrieghmere itself, perhaps—by following up some suspicions she had of Mr. McKiley. That’s how it seems to me.”

  “To me also. She is brave—and so very, very foolish!” There was no censure in René’s voice—only a great tenderness.

  “For you—it doesn’t matter that for the purpose of this ill-conceived scheme of hers has cultivated McKiley’s attentions for weeks, that she has set out unescorted on this trip with him, that she is liable even now to find herself—and all of you—mixed up with the police?” asked Joanna impulsively.

  René shook his head. “For me—none of it matters. Me, I could not mind if we did not overtake her until she reaches Musveen—except for the shock which awaits here there and the shame involved for her guardian, for Mr. Carnehill. You see—I love her.”

  “You do, don’t you?”

  “She is—all my sunrising,” said René simply. It was a phrase which seemed to express everything.

  At that moment Michael came back, got into his seat, and switched on the engine. They had moved off before he said: “There’s a fella’ in the yard says the Lincoln was parked there for over half an hour, an’ a man an’ a girl drove off north in her about twenty minutes back!”

  “Twenty minutes! That is better!” commented René with satisfaction. Joanna said nothing. She, too, had felt the grip of a hope that there was a good chance now of their overtaking the Lincoln, but for the moment she was almost more preoccupied with thoughts of René himself. How fortunate Shuan might have been if only she could have loved him as he sincerely loved her! He neither judged nor even questioned—he simply loved. Could Shuan ever hope to find with Roger the same, unwearying acceptance of her as she was? For Roger, as Joanna well knew, did judge Shuan’s immaturity. For him it was something with which he had lived since he was a schoolboy; for René it was no more than a flowering, for the full blooming of which he was prepared to wait...