The Edge of Winter

by Betty Neels

  Araminta ate two of them, for she was peckish. The walk had sharpened her appetite and then there had been the climb down the cliffs and some considerable time waiting beside the child. The sandwiches were excellent—smoked salmon and very fresh brown bread; she eyed the rest of them hungrily as she wrapped them up again, but Mary Rose might wake and feel hungry too. But she didn’t; not once during the rest of the rather unpleasant hour did she stir, and a good thing too, thought Araminta, for the sea was now quite rough and the wind had veered, slowing their progress. The elderly man had come below briefly to give her another mug of coffee and ask her, in his peculiar English, if she needed anything and was the little girl all right. She accepted the coffee gratefully, not moving from her stool, and wondered as she drank it if anyone had missed the child yet. Surely by now—she glanced at the clock and saw to her astonishment that it was almost half past eight; they must have been on the beach much longer than she had thought. Her father and Aunt Martha would certainly be wondering where she was, and Mary Rose’s parents would be frantic… Her thoughts were interrupted once more by the dark man, who stayed just long enough to tell her that they would be entering the harbour within the next few minutes. He disappeared as quickly as he had come.

  She knew almost nothing about sailing, but it seemed to her that the yacht was berthed very smoothly and in a few minutes both men came into the cabin; when the boat’s owner bent to pick the little girl up, Araminta observed urgently: ‘She’s very sound asleep. She’s all right, isn’t she?’

  His severe expression softened into a brief smile. ‘She’s a very little girl and she’s had a lot of brandy.’

  There was nothing she could answer to that; she picked up their damp clothes and followed him up on deck. It was raining still and very dark, and there was no sign of the wind easing. There were a few lights here and there, shining through the curtain of rain, but no one about. The three of them made their way silently down the small harbour’s arm and on to the quayside, the little girl cradled in the dark man’s arms, Araminta close at his heels and behind her the elderly man, walking stolidly into the rain.

  Araminta skipped a step or two and caught up with the leader of the party. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘A pub—somewhere where there are people who will know whose child this is and where we can telephone.’

  ‘There’s the Lobster Pot just along here.’ She waved into the dimly lighted narrow street ahead of them, which ran round the harbour. ‘They’re…’

  ‘I know—I’ve been here before.’

  ‘How rude,’ said Araminta severely, and went past him to open the hotel door. It was in the side wall of the hotel and led straight into the downstairs bar. There were quite a number of people in it, among them her father and aunt, in deep discussion with the hotel’s owner, but they paused in mid-sentence when they saw her and her companions, and Aunt Martha, a formidable-looking lady with severe features and a well-disciplined hair style, made her way briskly through the throng around her and demanded briskly: ‘Araminta, where have you been? We’ve been very worried—and who are these people?’

  Her sharp eyes took in the child in the man’s arms and his companion and then returned to her bedraggled niece.

  ‘Sorry you were worried, Aunt,’ said Araminta, knowing that under the rather fierce exterior was a very nice old lady who loved her. ‘I found this little girl, and these gentlemen very kindly picked us up in their yacht and brought us back. The child’s leg is broken and this gentleman is a doctor, so if…’ she paused and looked at him, standing silently beside her. ‘If you would say what you want us to do?’ she asked him. ‘A room with a firm table—something I can use for splints, and someone to telephone for an ambulance to take the child to hospital and to discover to whom she belongs.’

  It was like being back at St Katherine’s, carrying out a consultant’s orders without waste of time. ‘There’s an office behind the reception desk, I’m sure the owner…’ She was already there, asking for its use and if someone would see about the ambulance. ‘Two sticks,’ she reminded herself aloud and heard the man chuckle; worse, he followed it with a: ‘You’ve more sense than I imagined.’ He spoke in a faintly mocking voice which made her grit her splendid teeth. But it was no time to consider her own feelings, so she pushed the table into a better position and went to fetch the variety of sticks offered as well as a splendid collection of scarves, ties and napkins to tie them with. She chose the most suitable of them, smiled briefly at her father, standing quietly in a corner, and went back to where Mary Rose, still mercifully tipsy, lay.

  She admitted to herself later that the child’s bony little leg had been expertly splinted, the ends of the bone brought into alignment before the splints were put on; probably they were in as good a position as they needed to be before the plaster was applied. It was a pity she would never know that; Mary Rose had been whisked off to Falmouth in the ambulance and the dark man had gone with her, while his companion had gone back to the yacht. Both men had said goodbye to her, the elder with grave courtesy, the younger with a curt brevity which allowed her to see that he couldn’t care less if he never saw her again.

  She went to bed much later, having repeated her story a great many times for the benefit of her father and aunt, the owner of the hotel and most of the guests staying at the hotel. The police had come too, bringing with them a distraught young woman who had slipped out to the shops, thinking it was safe to leave her small daughter alone for a little while. Araminta answered the police-man’s questions, accepted the woman’s thanks awkwardly and asked if the child was safely in hospital. The police sergeant said that yes, she was, with the leg nicely plastered, and that the gentleman who had been such a help us there too. Possibly, he added, Araminta herself would see him on the following day, for he would be returning to his yacht.

  But in the morning there was no sign of him, although the yacht was still in the harbour. Araminta, put out for no good reason, dressed in her well-cut tweed suit, put her shining hair up in a neat coil on the top of her pretty head, got into her elderly Mini and began the drive back to London. Her father and aunt saw her off. Her father, as usual, had very little to say beyond wishing her a good journey and not too much work. It was Aunt Martha who said in her measured tones:

  ‘That was an interesting man who brought you back yesterday. A pity you won’t see him again, my dear.’

  Araminta put a stylishly shod foot down on the accelerator. ‘He was the rudest man I’ve ever met,’ she pronounced coldly. ‘The only pity is that I shan’t see him to tell him so.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  ST KATHERINE’S was one of the older hospitals, maintaining its proud reputation despite its out-of-date wards, its endless corridors and numerous, quite unnecessary flights of stairs. It looked particularly depressing and down-at-heel as Araminta parked the Mini in the shed reserved for the nursing staff and walked across the wide forecourt and in through the hospital’s forbidding entrance. She had driven the two hundred and seventy-odd miles with only the shortest of breaks and it had taken her eight hours; she was tired and hungry and anxious to get to her small basement flat not five minutes’ walk away from the hospital, but first she had to let Pamela Carr, the relief Sister who had been doing her duties for her, know that she was back, so that she wouldn’t need to come on duty in the morning. She found her in the Accident Room, and for once there was a mere handful of patients there, and none of those in dire need. Sylvia Dawes was there too, sitting in the office, frowning over the pile of forms on the desk. She was a small, neat girl, Junior Sister on the department and a great friend of Araminta. She looked up as she went in and said in a relieved voice: ‘Oh, good, you’re back—now I can leave these wretched things for you. Did you have a good time?’

  Araminta perched on the edge of the desk, ‘Lovely. Quiet—rotten weather most of the time, though, but a smashing hotel; oak beams and comfy chairs and gorgeous food.’

  ‘No men?’

 
She shook her head. ‘Middle-aged, and one or two sailing enthusiasts.’

  ‘Did you go sailing, then?’

  ‘No—yes—well, I did, just once.’

  ‘Was it fun?’

  Araminta allowed her thoughts to dwell on the ill-tempered giant who had rescued her and Mary Rose. ‘No, not really,’ she admitted, and felt regret that it hadn’t been. ‘Anything happen while I was away?’

  ‘The usual,’ Sylvia told her, and Araminta nodded her head. ‘The usual’ covered a multitude of things: road accidents, small children who had fallen into the washing machine, old ladies with fractured thighs, old men dying for lack of warmth or good food, housewives who had fallen off chairs while hanging the curtains, youths with broken noses and badly cut up faces, coronaries, and distraught men and women of all ages who had taken an overdose. She got off the desk, said: ‘Oh, well—back to work tomorrow. Pam’s off in the morning, isn’t she? Are we on together at eight o’clock?’

  Sylvia nodded. ‘I’m off at one o’clock and then two days off—you’ve got Staff Nurse Getty, though, and that nice Mrs Pink as well as two students.’

  Araminta nodded in her turn. ‘I’m going home now—see you in the morning.’ She said goodnight and went back to the Mini and drove herself back into the street, to turn into a narrow, dark thoroughfare not a stone’s throw away. It was lined with grim Victorian houses, all exactly alike and all long since turned into flats. She stopped half way down the terrace, opened the squeaky area gate and descended the steps to the neatly painted door of her flat, and went inside. There was the tiniest of lobbies leading to a quite large sitting room where she cast down her handbag, wound the clock, switched on the radio and then went back to the car for her luggage before driving a few yards down the road where she had a lock up garage. The little car safely stowed, she went back to the flat, shut the door on the dark evening and went along to the minute kitchen to put on the kettle.

  The little place looked pleasant enough with the lamps switched on and the gas fire burning; she went to the bedroom next and unpacked her case, then made tea and sat down to drink it, casting a housewifely eye round her as she did so. The place needed a good dust, otherwise it was as clean and tidy as she had left it; its cheerful red carpet brushed, the colourful cushions nicely plumped up, the small round table where she had her meals shining with polish. It was a very small flat and rather dark on account of it being almost a basement, but Araminta counted herself lucky to have a home of her own, and so close to her work, too.

  She poured herself a second cup and looked through her post; the electricity bill, a leaflet asking her if she had any old iron or scrap metal, and a letter or two from friends who had married and gone to live in other parts of the country. She read them all in turn and poured more tea. ‘What I would really like,’ she told herself out loud, ‘would be a huge box of wildly expensive flowers and a note begging me to spend the evening at one of those places where the women wear real diamonds and there’s a champagne bucket on very table.’ She kicked off her shoes for greater comfort. ‘I should have to wear that pink dress,’ she mused, absorbed in her absurd daydream, ‘and I’d be fetched by someone in a Rolls—the best there is—driven by…’ She stopped, because the dark, bad-tempered man in the yacht had suddenly popped into her head, so clearly that there was no question of anyone else taking his place.

  ‘Fool,’ said Araminta cheerfully, and took the tray out to the kitchen.

  The morning began badly with a severely burned toddler being brought in by a terrified mother. Araminta, her honey-coloured hair crowned by a frilled cap, her slim person very neat in its navy blue uniform and white apron, sent an urgent message to James Hickory, the Casualty Officer, to leave his breakfast and come at once, and began the difficult task of saving the child’s life; putting up a plasma drip, assembling the equipment they would need, preparing the pain-killing drug the small screaming creature needed so urgently. It was an hour or more before Mr Hickory, the redoubtable Mrs Pink and Araminta had done everything necessary; the small, unconscious form was wheeled away to the ICU at last, and she was able to turn her attention to the less serious cases which had come in and which Staff Nurse Getty was dealing with.

  The morning followed its usual pattern after that, with a steady stream of patients arriving, being treated, and dispatched, either home again or to the appropriate ward, and because there was a sudden rush at midday, Araminta didn’t go to the dining room for her dinner, but gobbled a sandwich, washed down with a pot of tea, in her office. She didn’t mind much; she was off duty at five o’clock; she would cook herself a meal when she got home, go to bed early and read. Viewed from the peak hour of a busy day, the prospect was delightful.

  She managed to get over to the Nurses’ Home for tea; the Sisters had a sitting room there, and it had long been the custom for them to foregather at four o’clock, that was if they could spare the time. There had been a break in the steady stream of patients coming into the Accident Room, and Araminta, leaving Mrs Pink—a trained nurse of wide experience—in charge, felt justified in taking her tea break.

  There was quite a crowd in the sitting room, bunched round the electric fire while Sister Bates, by virtue of her seniority both in service and in years, poured out. Araminta squeezed in between a striking redhead of fragile appearance, who ruled Men’s Medical with an iron hand, and a small, mousey girl who looked as though she couldn’t say bo to a goose, but who nevertheless held down the exacting job of ENT Theatre Sister. They both said: ‘Hi—how’s work after the Cornish fleshpots?’

  ‘Foul,’ declared Araminta succinctly. ‘That trachie we sent you—how’s it going?’ she asked the mousey girl, and the three of them talked shop for a few minutes while they drank their tea and ate toast and the remains of someone’s birthday cake. ‘Going out this evening?’ asked Debby, the redhead.

  Araminta shook her head. ‘Supper round the fire, bed and a book.’

  ‘And that will be the last time for weeks,’ observed Sister Bates, who had been eavesdropping quite shamelessly. ‘Who’s the current admirer?’

  Araminta grinned up at her from her place on the floor. ‘Batesy dear, I haven’t got one…’

  Sister Bates frowned with mock severity. ‘You’ve got dozens—well, all the unattached housemen for a start. I’ve never met such a girl!’ But her blue eyes twinkled as she spoke. Araminta was so very pretty and nice with it; she never lacked for invitations although everyone knew that she never angled for them, they just dropped into her lap and she accepted them, whether they were rather grand seats at the theatre or a quick egg and chips at the little café round the corner, and not even her worst enemy—and she had none, anyway—could accuse her of going out of her way to encourage any of the men who asked her out, and she made no bones about putting them in their place if she found it necessary. Sister Bates thought of her as an old-fashioned girl, an opinion which might have annoyed Araminta if she had known about it. She had a great many friends and liked them all, men and women alike. That she got on well with men was a fact which didn’t interest her greatly; one day she would meet a man she would love and, she hoped, marry, but until then she was just a pleasant girl to take out and remarkably unspoilt.

  But for the next few evenings she stayed in her little flat, catching up on her letter writing, re-covering the cushions in the sitting room and painting the tiny kitchen. She made such a good job of this that she decided to paint the sitting room too, a task she began a few days later, for she had her two days off; ample time in which to finish the job. She came off duty full of enthusiasm for the idea, had a hurried meal, got into paint-smeared sweater and slacks, piled her bits and pieces of furniture into the centre of the room and started. She had just finished the door and was about to start on the wainscoting when someone banged the front door knocker and she put down her brush with a tut of impatience. It wasn’t late, barely seven o’clock, but already dark, and she had no idea who it might be—true, James Hickory had want
ed to take her to the cinema, but she had refused him firmly, and any of the other Sisters would have called through the letterbox. She got to her unwilling feet and opened the door, sliding the chain across as she did so. The dark giant who had rescued them from the beach was standing on the steps outside and she stood staring at him, round-eyed, for a few moments before exclaiming: ‘Well, I never—however did you know that I live here?’

  His eyes dropped to the chain and he smiled faintly. ‘Your aunt gave me your address.’

  ‘Aunt Martha? Why on earth should she do that?’

  ‘I asked her for it. I thought you might like to hear about Mary Rose.’

  ‘Oh, that’s why you came. Come in.’ Araminta slid back the chain and allowed him to enter. ‘I’m painting my sitting room, but do sit down for a minute—I’ll make some coffee.’ She led the way into the muddle. ‘There’s a chair if you don’t mind turning it right side up—I’ll go…’

  He filled the little room, she began to edge past him, conscious that she was glad to see him even though she didn’t like him at all, and then came to a halt when he said: ‘Is that the kitchen through there? Suppose I make the coffee and you can go on painting. May I take off my coat?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ She hoped she didn’t sound ungracious, but really, he had a nerve, though perhaps he only wanted to be kind. She took a quick look at his face and decided that he looked more like a robber baron than a do-gooder. She picked up the brush once more and got down on to her knees, feeling that she had rather lost her grip on the situation. ‘I don’t know your name,’ she called through the open door, and then as he showed himself in the open doorway, ‘Mind that paint, I’ve just done it.’