Return To Tremarth

by Susan Barrie

  “Thank you,” he murmured, very, very gently, “you really are a ministering angel! ” “I’m not much of a cook, but – but I’ll do my best!” she promised, sinking down on to the side of the bed and automatically straightening the sheet that had already been straightened by Miss Brown.

  The latter walked over to the big window and started tugging apart one of the tightly- packed vases of flowers that had been placed there by Hannah.

  “I bought these in London,” the donor declared somewhat sharply, “and I don’t want them to fade too soon! If Richard is to have the pleasure of them I’m afraid they’ll have to be arranged rather more loosely than this! Do you think I could have another vase?” barely glancing over her shoulder at Charlotte. “And if you’ll tell me where the nearest bathroom is I’ll do them without making a mess of your carpet! ”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Charlotte replied quietly, going across to her and taking possession of the vase. “I expect Hannah was in a hurry when she crammed them in like this, and in any case there are far too many of them for a sick room. “If you don’t mind, a few of them could go downstairs -”

  “I’d prefer it if they remained where they are,” Claire returned in an inflexible voice. “Well… outside in the corridor, perhaps?” “Not unless Richard finds the scent too overpowering?”

  She glanced at Richard, and he looked slightly exhausted, as if rather more than the heady perfume of the flowers was overpowering him. Charlotte immediately experienced a sensation of guilt, and was annoyed with herself for entering into an argument about the flowers simply and solely because she hadn’t bought him any herself, and this fantastically attractive visitor of his had brought the contents of a florist’s shop all the way from London. She moved anxiously to the bedside and asked him whether he was feeling very tired.

  “Not a bit.” He smiled at her, however, in rather a bleak, wan way. “Why should I be when I do nothing but lie in bed? And I seem to be causing a certain amount of dissension -” “You’re not,” she assured him warmly, once more tucking in his sheet. “It’s just that people have different views on how many flowers – particularly hot-house ones!

  – should be allowed into a sick-room. Would you like me to draw the curtains together?” she enquired, as he blinked in the bright glare from off the sea that was filling his white-walled room. “It’s a bit trying – so much sun… ”

  “No, leave them.” But he slid down in the bed and turned his face wearily towards the opposite wall. “Do you mind if I go to sleep?”

  “No, of course not. And later on I’ll bring you some supper.”

  “I’ll be in to see you to-morrow morning, darling,” Claire Brown said softly to him, as she, too, returned to the bed and bent over it. “I’m staying at the local inn – where you were staying until you had your accident – and I’ve booked in for a week, at least. I’ll come up every day, and we’ll have some nice, quiet chats – that might help you to get back your memory! ”

  Tremarth looked up at her. He seemed to be trying to get her into perspective.

  “Chats?” he echoed. And then, accompanying the words with a groan: “I wish I was a little more clear about things – ”

  Hannah appeared in the open doorway.

  “I think the patient can do with a little peace and quiet,” she said. She frowned severely at the visitor, and she also seemed to frown at

  Charlotte. “If you don’t mind removing yourselves, you two?” she said. And then she pounced on the flowers, “And we’ll have these out for the night! ”

  Downstairs Charlotte telephoned for the village taxi for Claire, and while they waited for it the two girls wandered aimlessly up and down the terrace outside. Miss Brown condescended to observe that her employer had come to grief in a very delightful spot, and she seemed to think the view over the sea from the terrace was rather staggering. Her slim brows crinkled as she turned to look rather curiously at the other girl.

  “Is this the place Richard was thinking of buying?” she asked. “And are you the young woman who refused to part with it?”

  Charlotte answered coolly:

  “There was never any question of Mr. Tremarth buying Tremarth. “It’s not up for sale.” Claire Brown smiled in an amused way.

  “You don’t know Richard,” she said “The fact that it’s not up for sale would mean little or nothing to him. If he wants something he – well, he just suddenly possesses himself of it!”

  “I don’t think he is in the least likely to possess himself of Tremarth,” the other informed her coldly.

  Miss Brown climbed gracefully into the taxi when it arrived, and she reiterated her intention of visiting the invalid the following day. With a cool wave of her white-gloved hand she called:

  “I shall spend the day with Richard. I think it might do him good! ”

  CHAPTER VI

  HANNAH declined to allow Charlotte to visit the invalid’s room again that night, and as he seemed so much better, and even enjoyed a little of the specially cooked sole when it was prepared for him – after a sleep of nearly a couple of hours following the departure of his secretary – decided against sitting up with him that night, and simply set the alarm clock in her bedroom to awaken her every few hours.

  Charlotte felt a little annoyed because her offer to sit with Richard for a few hours during the night was firmly rejected by her friend, and when Hannah expressed the opinion that young women were not good for Tremarth in his present state very noticeably elevated her eyebrows.

  “Young women?” she echoed. “But you’re a young woman yourself, aren’t you?”

  Hannah replied loftily:

  “You forget that I’m a nurse. And,” she added, “I don’t happen to be particularly glamorous.”

  “I’m sure that Dr. Mackay thinks you’ve a kind of glamour all your own,” Charlotte could not refrain from submitting it as her opinion. “As a matter of fact, I think he thinks you’ve a good deal of glamour in that fetching cap and apron you’ve unearthed from your suitcase.” Hannah coloured rosily, and as a result acquired a very definite healthy glamour.

  “For all I know Dr. Mackay is a very much married man,” she said, revealing that there had been moments in the course of the past forty-eight hours when she had turned the matter over in her mind. “And in any case, he’s a very hard-headed Scotsman,” she added.

  Charlotte smiled, and returned to the task of setting a breakfast tray for Richard Tremarth. Hannah did not neglect to notice that she added a pale pink rose to the tray – a fresh pink bud that would have opened up nicely by the morning. And the container she selected for it was a delicate crystal vase that she had unearthed from a china cabinet in the drawing room, a cabinet which housed only a few extremely costly items of china and glassware.

  “You don’t think,” Hannah suggested, “that Mr. Tremarth already has far too many flowers in his room? Or will have when we off-load them all on to him again in the morning! ” Charlotte merely glanced at her but said nothing.

  Hannah smiled, and let Waterloo out at the French window as part of the final ritual before settling down for the night.

  Charlotte carried Richard’s breakfast tray to him while Hannah was still enjoying a leisurely bath in one of the far from up-to-date bathrooms at Tremarth, following an absolutely undisturbed night during which the patient had slept soundly and peacefully. He was looking so much better – and so very much more like the Richard Tremarth Charlotte had felt strangely antagonised by when he made himself known to her in the bar of the Three Sailors – that she could hardly believe he hadn’t also recovered his memory when she set the tray down on the bedside table, and prepared to swing the table across the bed.

  “It’s a wonderful morning,” she declared, giving him quite a radiant smile, “and you look as if you’ve had a good night. Have you?”

  “A perfect night. At least – ” he frowned a little as he attempted to recall it – “I must have slept like a log, for I don’t even remembe
r dreaming. And I’ve had some pretty lurid dreams lately.”

  “Have you?” She poured him a cup of tea, and held it out to him gently. “That must have been beastly. I hate lurid dreams.”

  He smiled at her quizzically.

  “To look at you one could only imagine you having the nicest dreams… cool and crisp, like that pink linen dress of yours. And by the way, it doesn’t fight with your hair, does it?”

  “Ought it to?”

  “Well, it is red hair, isn’t it?” He put his sleek dark head a little on one side and regarded her with undisguised interest. “And although I don’t know much about women’s clothes, and that sort of thing, I’ve always understood that redheads have to be careful when it comes to the choice of colours. After all, red has a habit of clashing with other colours.”

  She smiled at him demurely while she tucked a pillow in behind his shoulders.

  “I don’t have very much trouble choosing things to suit me,” she told him.

  He looked vaguely anxious, noticing for the first time the rose on the tray.

  “I haven’t offended you, have I?” he asked.

  “Calling you a redhead, I mean _” He lightly touched the stem of the rose, while his black brows bent together. “For some reason your hair fascinates me I’ve a kind of feeling it’s linked up, in a way, with my past – whatever that may have been like!”

  “Then you don’t remember anything clearly yet?” she asked, concern immediately entering her tone.

  He shook his head. The expression in his strange eyes worried her.

  “Not a thing! I wish I could, I – ”

  “Yes?”

  “You tell me I ought to know you, and yet I don’t. It’s – infuriating!”

  “I wouldn’t let it worry you,” she said, in the wonderfully soft, feminine voice she had adopted towards him since his accident – such a contrast to the voice she had used when she declined to sell him Tremarth. “It’s not of any great importance at the moment, and you will remember.”

  “Yes; but when?”

  “Dr. Mackay says the kind of amnesia you’re suffering from clears itself up quite suddenly.” She was disturbed because she couldn’t give him any more convincing answer than that.

  “And is this Dr. Mackay a good doctor? Is he a local doctor?”

  “Yes. Hannah thinks he’s quite remarkably good.”

  “Hannah?” Once again his brows crinkled painfully. “Oh, yes, the young woman who wears the nurse’s uniform but tells me she’s not properly qualified… But I’d say she’s extremely efficient all the same. I like Hannah,” he concluded in a more abstracted tone, as if it was not important, anyway.

  “And what about Miss Brown?” Charlotte asked. “She’s terribly attractive, and surely you must remember her?” This was deliberate probing on her part, and she waited a trifle breathlessly for the answer. But when it came it told her nothing.

  “Yes, she is attractive, isn’t she? She tells me she’s been my secretary for the past six months.”

  “But you can’t remember working with her?”

  “I can’t remember working with anyone… But you tell me I’ve an office in London. Have you been on to it?”

  “Yes. They confirm that Miss Brown worked for y ou… B ut she did not add that the capacity in which Claire Brown worked for Richard Tremarth had seemed a trifle vague over the telephone, and the extremely competent young woman who had dealt with the direct question made a little late on the afternoon of the day before had seemed unwilling to commit herself on the subject of the actual duties for which Miss Brown received a salary. Hannah, who had set afoot the enquiries, had done her utmost to elicit more information, but it seemed that, apart from the fact that Miss Brown was at present on holiday, no member of Tremarth’s office staff was willing to describe her usefulness in detail.

  If, indeed, she had any particular usefulness… which, from the tone of voice of the young woman on the telephone, seemed doubtful.

  “I’m sure you’re looking forward to seeing Miss Brown again this morning?” Charlotte suggested with a blank, unrevealing face, despite the fact that he appeared confused, as she watched him dealing somewhat unenthusiastically with his scrambled eggs. “She’s staying at the Three Sailors, you know.”

  “Is she?” But there was neither interest, nor a marked lack of it. He felt his unshaven chin. “Do you think I can deal with this this morning?”

  “Of course, if you feel like bothering. You’ve got an electric razor, haven’t you?”

  “If all my possessions have been removed from the Three Sailors, then I have.”

  Charlotte, who had been moving towards the window to draw back the curtains still further and admit some more of the bright morning sunshine, turned in some surprise.

  “Then you do remember that you stayed at the Three Sailors…! Can you also remember that you and I once had quite an important conversation there, and that it was concerned in the main with this house? In fact, if it hadn’t been for this house you would never have been at the Three Sailors! ”

  “Oh, really?” He looked at her with polite interest, but if she had thought to catch him out – and she decided almost immediately that the attempt was unworthy – she was doomed to disappointment. He explained in the same rather colourless voice that her friend Hannah had explained all about the local inn, and she had been careful to give him details of the length of time he stayed there and the quantity of his luggage that had been removed from the inn. “I must have been planning to make quite a prolonged stay there,” he mused thoughtfully.

  Later that morning the doctor arrived from the village, and after sitting with him for about twenty minutes and giving him a brief physical examination delivered himself of the opinion that the patient’s recovery would be aided by a little fresh air, and certainly by leaving his bed for a few hours.

  “I suggest that you sit in a chair in your room to-day, and perhaps to-morrow you’ll feel like walking downstairs and out into the garden. Miss Woodford is fortunate in having such an enchanting garden, and if you like watching the sea then you won’t get a better view of it then you will from her terrace,” he said in an encouraging way. “I wouldn’t mind being an invalid at Tremarth myself if it meant that I could sit and look at the sea.”

  But his eyes actually rested upon Hannah as he spoke, and for no other reason than that they were distinctly quizzical she flushed brilliantly.

  No sooner had the doctor departed than Tremarth announced his intention of leaving his bed, and getting shaved and dressed. He also said he was going downstairs and into the garden, and not waiting for the following day.

  Charlotte instantly looked alarmed and protested that he was not fit, and that the doctor’s advice should be followed to the letter; but her invalid merely requested her politely to leave the room, and suggested that perhaps Hannah would help him to dress. He was not exactly wobbly on his feet, but it would accelerate things if she lent him a hand.

  “But there’s no hurry – ” Charlotte protested.

  Richard Tremarth began to look slightly like a hunted man.

  “There is a good deal of hurry,” he asserted. “When Miss Brown arrives I have no intention whatsoever of entertaining her up here, and outside in the garden she, too, will get the benefit of the sea air.” He grinned sideways, almost boyishly, at Charlotte. “I don’t feel my own man lying in a bed with a girl like Miss Brown sitting feeding me grapes and offering to read extracts from the daily newsprint aloud to me,” he confessed. “Besides, it isn’t fair to her.”

  Charlotte couldn’t prevent herself from being awkward.

  “Why isn’t it?” she demanded. “Presumably the only reason she’s down here at all is because you’re unwell?”

  “Is it?” His white teeth flashed in his thin brown face as Hannah stood ready with his dressing-gown, having already placed his slippers within easy reach of the bed. “You don’t think I’m the fortunate one to be visited by anyone as dazzlingly at
tractive as Miss Brown, and that in order to show my appreciation I ought to make an effort, at least?” Charlotte looked openly taken aback, and Hannah smiled in an amused fashion which she endeavoured to make secret as she urged that he should take his time over getting out of bed, and asked whether he liked a really hot bath, or whether he preferred it merely tepid.

  “I think you’d better leave us now,” she said in an aside to Charlotte, and the latter made no further references to Miss Brown and went downstairs feeling very much as if she had been snubbed, or at any rate put in her rightful place.

  She went through to the kitchen to inspect the contents of the larder and plan the meals for the day, and it was while she and Mrs. Ricks, the daily help, were discussing the curious obstinacy of men when they were unwell, having already discussed the rival merits of junket and rice pudding as a sweet for lunch, that the local taxi made its appearance in the drive, and the enchanting Miss Claire Brown was decanted at the foot of the terrace steps.

  She was dressed all in blue this morning – a light, azure blue that lent her a slightly angelic appearance, and plainly had the local taxi-driver slightly bemused as he accepted a generous-sized tip for his services so far, and arranged to pick her up in the same somewhat decrepit taxi at about six o’clock that evening.

  “By which time our invalid will be feeling a little exhausted, I imagine,” she said as she turned to confront Charlotte, who had emerged from the house to greet her. “By the way, how is he?” she asked. “Much better, I hope?”

  “He seems better, and he says that he is very much better,” the mistress of Tremarth informed her a little stiffly – she was afraid there was a smudge of flour on her cheek, and she had most unfortunately forgotten to remove her apron. The taxi-man’s eyes, although they widened with a modest amount of appreciation at sight of her, didn’t glow in the slightly fanatical way that they did as they returned to his fare, all light blue and golden.