Nurse Saxon's Patient

by Marjorie Norrell

  They chatted for a few moments longer, but the conversation didn’t amount to anything, and when Julie replaced the receiver she felt suddenly deflated and utterly miserable. She had built so much, almost without realizing it, on what might happen when Garth did recover his memory, that to find they were all still in the same position now that the miracle had actually happened was too much of an anti-climax.

  But we’re not, not really, she chided herself. At least I know it’s me he loves now. I could only hope before...

  But there was small consolation in the knowledge, and when she went to bed that night she wished ardently that she had, after all, asked Matron to take her off Garth’s case whether she went back to St. Luke’s or accompanied Roger to Mexico. Mrs. Andy, saying goodnight to the girl who had grown to mean so much to her, looked anxiously at the dark circles beneath the blue eyes. With all her well-meaning heart she longed to take Garth on one side and point out to him that this state of affairs was ridiculous, and that three people were miserable because he could not bring himself to say to Tansy, ‘I know we’re both pretending, that for reasons of your own you pretended our engagement had never been broken, and because I couldn’t remember I accepted that ... but this can’t go on.’

  No, thought Mrs. Andy, suddenly furious with him, he has to make a big thing of it. He has to give her the right to jilt him ... all over again. And how does he know she will? she asked herself fiercely.

  There was nothing she could do about it, or was there? She said goodnight to the others absent-mindedly and went slowly and thoughtfully to her own room. If events did not go the way she thought they ought to go, then Lavinia Crossman was in the habit of giving them a push in the right direction. It was only a question as to which really was the right direction this time.

  The next day dawned hot and sultry, with more than a hint of thunder in the air. Dressing, Julie felt the weather matched her mood, and when she went in to Garth and he turned to her suddenly, fiercely, placing his arm about her shoulders and startling her by suddenly kissing her as though he could never let her go, she felt something of her own tension must have overflowed to him.

  ‘When this plaster’s off,’ Garth said half angrily, ‘I want you to drive me in to Hyncaster, darling. I can’t go on like this, seeing you, having you around and not having the right to touch you, hold you, kiss you ... put a ring on your finger. I want to see Tansy. I want to tell her I know we don’t belong together and to ask her for my release. Until then’—he let his arm drop from her shoulders and smiled ruefully—‘forgive me. I know that wasn’t the right thing to do, I know I’ve made you feel worse instead of better, but I had to do it.’

  ‘I wanted you to kiss me,’ Julie said, clearly and simply. ‘I’ve wanted you to do exactly that for ages ... but you are right, you really ought to have broken with Tansy first.’

  ‘I’ll phone her directly breakfast is over,’ Garth decided. ‘I don’t care whether she’s up or not. I must see her, get this over and done with.’

  But by the time he had retired to the privacy of the study to make his call to Tansy, Ian had arrived, and Julie had to stay and talk with him alone.

  ‘What is all this?’ Ian demanded, settling himself with the coffee Mrs. Andy had instructed Edna to bring for him, and lighting cigarettes for them both. ‘When I heard Garth’s memory was restored I took it for granted all would be plain sailing for you both from now onwards.’

  ‘It isn’t so simple as that, Ian.’ Julie knew he would understand, and once again she was grateful for his appreciation of the difficulties of others, for his understanding of the human heart. ‘You would behave in exactly the same way,’ she told him. ‘You wouldn’t ... jilt a girl, even though you knew all this had happened. You’d want to do the decent thing and give her the opportunity of jilting you, all over again.’

  ‘And if she doesn’t?’ Ian asked, stirring his coffee thoughtfully. ‘What if she decides on a breach of promise action? Where do you go from there?’

  ‘We can fight it.’ Mrs. Andy had entered the room unnoticed by either of them, in time to catch Ian’s last words. ‘I don’t think she will.’ She sat down, looking from one to the other. ‘I think, somehow, that Tansy is sorry she ever tried to carry out this pretending engagement and might even welcome a chance to break things off. I’ve no reason for saying this,’ she confessed. ‘ It’s just that ... well, she sees now, as she saw with Roger this weekend, that there are other interesting men in the world, men with whom she might yet come into contact, and I don’t mean any harm, Ian, when I say that her conduct, during Garth’s period of inactivity, has been hardly that of a heartbroken and devoted fiancée . She has been here each weekend, that’s true, but ... I don’t know how to put it ... something in her attitude was more of a personal anxiety than an anxiety on Garth’s behalf. That puzzled me, until I knew what had happened before the accident, then I knew her anxiety was fear that Garth’s memory would suddenly return and prove her story false, anxiety as to what he would say if and when he discovered that what she had told us all amounts to a lie, a lie which he has, until now, accepted. Everything depends now on Garth.’

  Abruptly she swung round and faced Julie, flying the girl with a penetrating but kindly glance.

  ‘Just one thing, dear,’ she said in a kindly tone. ‘Garth told me that it’s you whom he loves, he told me that when he explained how his memory had returned. I’m delighted.’ She leaned forward and placed her hand on Julie’s knee. ‘It’s what I’ve hoped and prayed for. But...’ the shrewd glance held Julie’s own compellingly, ‘do you love him?’ she asked quietly.

  Julie’s dark blue eyes looked steadily into Lavinia Crossman’s. She would not have lied to the old lady under any circumstances, but about this matter she certainly could not prevaricate.

  ‘ I do,’ she said quietly and sincerely, ‘with all my heart. But—’ Suddenly she felt she could not stand any more of this emotional tension, of being near to Garth and yet unable to claim him as her own, of pretending to everyone she was just the nurse, caring for his physical well-being, when all her womanly nature longed to express her love for him. ‘I can’t stay here,’ she said in a little rush. ‘With your permission,’ she gave Mrs. Andy an appealing glance, ‘I’m going to ring Matron and ask for someone else to finish this case. There’s little enough to do now, and when it’s all over, when Garth has broken with Tansy, we’ll start all over again ... not as nurse and patient, but as we should.’

  ‘I think you’re right, my dear,’ Lavinia nodded wisely. ‘Run along and see if Garth has finished telephoning Tansy, and then use the phone in the study. I agree with you,’ she gave Ian a warning glance as he was about to speak, ‘it’s high time this whole thing was brought to a conclusion.’

  ‘Why on earth did you let her run away like that?’ Ian demanded as the door closed behind Julie. ‘I know you always have a good sound reason for whatever action you take, but this seems the limit! Before you know where you are she’ll have handed in her notice and be on her way back to Mexico with Roger when he leaves, some time during next week.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Mrs. Andy smiled comfortably. ‘She won’t want to lose sight of Garth for any length of time, and we know now that she loves him—’

  ‘I knew a long time ago,’ Ian murmured, but Mrs. Andy chose to ignore the observation.

  ‘There is another point.’ She rose to her feet as she spoke. ‘You haven’t been here for a few weeks, certainly not since Roger arrived. I’m no heart-to-heart corner columnist, but anyone with far less intelligence than myself can see that Tansy and Roger are mad for each other, just as Garth and Julie are. Roger, I think, has made up his mind, but he won’t speak to Tansy while she wears Garth’s ring on her finger. Tansy won’t take it off, although I’m as certain as one can be of anything that she is already more than halfway seriously in love with Roger, so we’re back where we started, with everything depending on Garth. It’s no use my talking to him just now. He’
s made up his mind he must tell Tansy the truth, that his memory has returned in full, and leave it to her to make the gesture of breaking things off again, It’s all a great deal of nonsense,’ she said briskly, ‘but people in love aren’t rational, so we must bear with them and help them to straighten things out so that they can all live happily ever after...’

  ‘And that leaves me the odd man out.’ Ian spoke jestingly, but he and Mrs. Andy had been friends for too long for her to be deceived.

  ‘I know,’ she said in a curiously gentle tone, ‘but you must be honest with yourself as well, Ian. You must admit that your work, your patients, will always come first with you, whether you married Julie or anyone else she would come a second best, and I don’t think that’s really good enough, not for Julie. You just wait and see,’ she counselled. ‘Some day you’ll meet a woman, probably a surgeon like yourself, who will be as dedicated to her work as you are to yours, and between you hundreds of people will be given new life, new happiness, and you will find your own happiness in that way. Julie is a lovely and lovable person, but she’s too vulnerable for you, Ian, much as both she and I admire you. No, my dear,’ she smiled up at him, ‘give her your blessing and wish her well. Help me see her through this sticky patch and on the way to the kind of love and happiness she deserves, and I’m sure you will find I’m right, and that one day you’ll remember our little talk and be glad things turned out the way they have done ... or are doing.’

  ‘You may be right,’ Ian admitted. ‘You usually are. I do know a very dedicated female surgeon, as it happens,’ the lopsided smile flashed out, ‘but the only way she’d look at me is if I were stretched out on the operating table and she was viewing me as a potential case. I’ll have to try and arrange it...’

  ‘Don’t!’ Mrs. Andy held up a protesting hand as she prepared to leave him. ‘It’s an old saying but a very true one, there’s many a true word spoken in jest, and I’d hate to see anything happen to you, Ian. You’re needed too badly at St. Luke’s.’

  ‘It’s good to be needed anywhere’—he joined in her laughter—‘and I promise I won’t take any risks, just to please you. And now,’ he continued briskly, ‘if Garth doesn’t appear very soon I’ll have to return without taking that plaster off, and I do want to see how the right hand is, but I’ve a busy day ahead of me ...’

  ‘I’ll send him in to you,’ Mrs. Andy promised, ‘and I know you can manage alone. Let Julie get her telephoning finished while I go and talk with Roger. It’s high time we had a little action around here.’

  She went out, closing the door behind her. Garth was in the hall, smoking and frowning at nothing in particular.

  ‘Mr. Greensmith is waiting for you,’ his aunt reproved him. ‘He is a very busy man, and normally he doesn’t come out to patients in this way. It isn’t polite to keep him waiting, dear.’

  ‘Sorry.’ With an effort Garth brought his thoughts back from wherever they had been and smiled at her. ‘Actually I haven’t been here many minutes,’ he said apologetically. ‘I’ve been chasing Tansy. She wasn’t at home, she wasn’t at the club where they do their practice, she wasn’t at the address they gave me there. I finally got someone who said she would be in to his office later, I think he was some sort of agent, and he promised to ask her to telephone me later today. Julie came in then,’ he added quickly. ‘She said she had to ring Matron. There isn’t anything wrong, is there, Aunt Lavinia?’

  “Routine matters, duty rosters or something.’ Mrs. Andy improvised as well as she could on the spur of the moment. ‘Now, please do go in to Ian, he’ll be fuming!’

  With a smile Garth left her and went in to Ian, but Mrs. Andy, her brow creased in thought, continued her progress through the big house in search of her other guest. She found him in the library, where she had told him he could browse as much as ever he wanted to do while he was with them. He was perched on the steps used for reaching the books on the higher shelves and was reading, engrossed in his book, as she entered.

  ‘Hello, there!’ she began, closing the door and crossing to a deep leather armchair near to his steps. ‘I hope I’m not interrupting anything important?’

  ‘I was just reading up about the Mayas,’ Roger told her, replacing the book on the top shelf and making a mental note of its author and title. ‘Anything I can do for you?’ he asked in a helpful tone.

  ‘There certainly is.’ Mrs. Andy wasted no words in beating about the bush. She was a fair judge of character and she had already made up her mind the best way to tackle Roger was to be direct and to the point. ‘ You can tell me,’ she said firmly, ‘just what there is—or you hope there will be—between yourself and Tansy Maitland, Roger.’

  Roger’s sun-bronzed face flushed to the roots of his hair, but his glance was steady and direct as it held her own.

  ‘Nothing, so far,’ he said quietly, ‘but I hope there will be, once this phoney engagement of hers and Garth’s is brought to an end.’

  ‘So you know about it, too, do you?’ Mrs. Andy probed, but Roger looked surprised.

  ‘Of course,’ he said simply. ‘The day I arrived was the day Garth had recovered his memory, and the day he had realized that he didn’t love Tansy at all, that it had all been over before the accident and then he had only been in love with love, but he’d accepted the doctor’s word that Tansy was his fiancée.’

  ‘Which Tansy asked him to say and didn’t deny,’ Mrs. Andy put in steadily.

  ‘I know.’ Roger grinned for a moment, and suddenly Mrs. Andy’s heart warmed to this bronzed giant of a man who, with all his strength—both of body and, as he had shown, of purpose—could evidently understand and forgive weakness in others. ‘She was afraid, you see,’ he said soberly. ‘I don’t think she realizes it herself, even now, but she was afraid of being alone, of being insecure. She wanted to cling on to Garth because he represented the security she had never known and could never hope to know unless she found someone like him. I don’t know whether she has told you,’ he continued, ‘but her parents were in show business. They broke up their marriage during the war years, when Tansy’s mother took a job abroad, with E.N.S.A., I believe, and her husband couldn’t go. She doesn’t remember any settled home life, they always moved from place to place—they never had a long run anywhere. I suppose they weren’t big enough for that ... it made her feel she wanted ... not exactly roots, but something like that...’

  ‘Emotional roots.’ Mrs. Andy nodded. ‘I guessed as much,’ she said simply. ‘Poor child, for all her gaiety. Her attitude is quite understandable, but,’ she eyed Roger sternly, ‘it would never work out, you know— Tansy and Garth, I mean.’

  ‘Of course it wouldn’t.’ Roger did not deny it. ‘That’s one thing I wanted to talk to you about,’ he admitted. ‘I don’t feel I should stay here, facing Garth every day, while Tansy is wearing his ring. You see,’ he added with a simple directness which appealed to her at once, ‘I love Tansy. I know it sounds foolish. We’ve only just met, and she’s not the first girl whose looks and ways I’ve found attractive, but she is the first, the only one, with whom I know I could be happy to the end of my days, and however silly it may sound I know that it’s true and that, if she stops to think about it, she’ll realize it as well.’

  ‘I’m sure she will.’ Mrs. Andy was smiling. ‘I’ll tell you a secret,’ she said quietly. ‘I met Andrew at a Hunt Ball. Two days later he came to ask my father for permission to court me ... that’s a word one doesn’t use nowadays, but I know what you mean. We have been married now for forty-eight years,’ her glance was soft and tender, full of memories, ‘and we’ve never regretted it, either of us. We knew, you see, and it was just as swift a love affair, a falling in love, if you prefer the phrase, as yours with Tansy.’

  ‘Then you don’t think I’m crazy?’ Roger demanded. ‘Tansy may feel the same way.’

  ‘I’m sure you are admirably suited to each other,’ Mrs. Andy said soberly, ‘and I know you can do for her what Garth could never do. You
can help her with her career, you can take an intelligent interest in her work, an interest which will not be assumed, and as you are both, fundamentally, the same type of person, I’m sure you will be very happy together. There is just one point,’ she rose from the chair as she spoke, ‘I don’t think you should leave here, not just now. Let Garth and Julie settle this thing between them, let them be clear of each other, but you must prevent Julie from running away all the time. No one can ever run away from the things that matter. They stay with one, in the mind and in the heart. She has been talking to Matron over the telephone for a very long time. If I’m any judge she is asking for leave—maybe to come back to Mexico with you, and you would do far better to take Tansy—or maybe she’s just trying to get away from here, but she ought not to do it, Roger. Julie has been under a great strain. This knowledge of her love for Garth is no new thing to her, she knew she loved him when they came here, and she has been holding her emotions in check all this time. Sooner or later something will snap. I don’t want us not to be able to find her when that time comes.’

  ‘I’ll talk to her,’ Roger promised, ‘but I shall have to talk to Garth first. Nobody can do anything until he has told Tansy he has recovered his memory and gives her the opportunity of handing him back her ring all over again. Unless,’ he suggested brightly, ‘it would be better for me to go and see Tansy, tell her how I feel, but,’ the dull colour crept into his cheeks again, ‘I don’t like that idea,’ he confessed. ‘Not while she is still wearing Garth’s ring.’

  ‘You’re right, of course,’ Mrs. Andy twinkled at him, ‘but I can’t help feeling that a great deal of time and a vast amount of genuine emotion are being wasted while you’re all so set upon doing the correct thing! I’d like to have you all four in a row, you and Tansy, Garth and Julie, and sort out your tangles as one sorts out a hand of cards!’

  ‘It will work out.’ Roger rose too. ‘I know it will. Tansy will give Garth her ring back, once she realizes he knows the truth and once she realizes how I feel about her, and in less time than you expect there’ll be bells for a double wedding.’