Seaside Hospital

by Pauline Ash

  “I have an idea,” Ellard said, laughing, and further enchanted Mary by taking them both to tea at a big hotel near the race course.

  When at last he drove them back to the hospital, Lisa felt a little lightheaded with anxiety as to what lay behind this latest move of his.

  Mary hopped out of the car first. It was no longer raining. The sun had come out and made the wet pavements one huge glare.

  Ellard held Lisa’s wrist as she was about to get out of the car and said softly to her, “Going to make another date with me, Lisa? Dinner and dance at the Gloucester?”

  “After last time?” Lisa said derisively. “You ought to know better than to ask me, Ellard!”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said, smiling mockingly. “Once in a while the best of us make mistakes. I did that night, and now I know you don’t care for my kisses, I won’t do that again. But that doesn’t mean you have to refuse to come out with me any more. Now, is it a date?”

  Conscious of Mary’s odd expression as she waited for her, Lisa said breathlessly, “I’ll let you know.”

  He laughed easily and let her go. “All right, I’ll be waiting for a telephone call from you. By the way, I did tell you I still had those letters of Jacky’s, didn’t I?”

  “What letters?” Lisa gasped, ashen-faced.

  “Oh, didn’t you know about them? She wasn’t very discreet about what she put on paper, actually. She wrote asking me not to go any further about the things she—er—appropriated, before she came to Barnwell Bay.”

  That summer, there was not a lot of time for worrying about private troubles in St. Mildred’s. Lisa, torn with anxiety about this new development, found herself caught up with a new casualty which brought her into daily contact with Randall Carson. Everyone was talking about it.

  “He’s furious about it,” Mary said at lunch next day. “You know how angry he gets about the waste of life on the roads. Bad enough with a straight street accident, but this one—well! The child’s only two. It seems he wandered from his parents and got lost, and in a panic he crossed the road right in front of a car.”

  “How did you find all this out, Mary?”

  “One of the nurses in Casualty just told me. She says Randall Carson’s hopping mad.”

  Lisa felt Randall Carson’s anger the minute he came on the ward, just after the child was brought up from the operating room. As she rushed about with her routine duties, keeping an eye on two new junior nurses at the same time, she found that her thoughts kept returning to the subject of Ellard and the letters. She wondered what she herself could do to frighten Jacky into giving up her thieving habits. It was all very well for Jacky to say she was only borrowing, when quite obviously it was stealing. Lisa doubted whether a threat to go to the police would have the desired effect. Jacky did not seem to realize that she could not go on stealing indefinitely and calling on Lisa to get her out of trouble. Now, not only Derek but Ellard too was making demands on Lisa, as a result of Jacky’s escapades. How would it all end?

  With a sigh she thrust these thoughts to the back of her head and set the juniors quietly to amusing the other children for the sake of the new little patient, who was still unconscious, in his corner bed surrounded with screens. He was a chubby little boy with a shock of carrot-red curls, and long silky-brown lashes fanned his freckled cheeks.

  “Christopher,” the notes said, and beneath was added a further note that his real name and address were unknown and his parents uncontacted.

  Sister Rudolph’s face, usually so smooth and tranquil, had a ripple of emotion go over it, Lisa noticed, when they went together behind the screens. Randall Carson’s face softened, too, Lisa saw, and once, while she stood behind him waiting, he turned sharply and looked at her, and she was aware that her eyes were misty.

  She went about her ward duties wondering whether he would think any more about that promised visit to his clinic, now that he was spending so much time by the bedside of little Christopher. She wanted to go to his clinic with him more than she had at first realized. That smile of his had set her pulses racing, but at the same time she was apprehensive about spending an afternoon with him because of his uncertain temper.

  Yet, in spite of everything, he had not forgotten, and he knew, too, without her reminding him, when her next free time came up on the board. And so the afternoon arrived.

  “We’ll drive along the coast road all the way,” he told her, when she was settled beside him in the well-remembered dark car, “and we’ll avoid Chertonbury town. It’s too nice a day to waste breathing gasoline fumes.”

  The clinic had once been a private house. “An old patient left quite a lot of money to equip the place,” Randall Carson explained, as Lisa walked by his side through the light and airy rooms with their fine new equipment and efficient-looking staff. “Lady Frenton is arranging another function to raise money for further equipment.”

  The mention of Lady Frenton sent a little cloud over the day. Lisa knew that Derek’s mother did not like her, and that was another thing worrying her.

  In the long room where the children were learning to walk again without aid, she found Randall Carson looking at her again with an odd, intent look.

  “You mustn’t care so much, you know,” he said, in a strange voice.

  “But you care, too, don’t you?” Lisa said, with a flash of insight that made him raise his eyebrows. Then he smiled that dazzling, exciting smile of his that people so seldom saw.

  “Yes I care a great deal, but I don’t let it upset me,” he told her. “Where would our young patients be if we got upset about them?”

  “But it’s so terrible!” Lisa said passionately. “That poor little boy—imagine how he felt when he was lost and then knocked down. So scared and alone!”

  “He probably didn’t know anything about it,” Randall Carson said, in a very calm voice. But he added grimly, “What I want to do is to find those neglectful parents.”

  He took her out to the terrace, where tea was brought to them by a smiling nurse who obviously adored him.

  “The police are trying to trace them, and the press are doing their best,” he went on, when they were alone again. “Would you help too?”

  “How can I help?” she asked, startled.

  “This child was staying in Barnwell Bay. A lot of people recognized him, yet no one will tell the police anything about him. But they might talk to a nurse.”

  Lisa was agonized. Of all things, she wanted to keep clear of anything connected with the police. Not only because of Jacky, but because of Ellard Lindon’s threats.

  “I’d love to help the little boy,” she said slowly, “but I’d hate any publicity.”

  “There wouldn’t be any publicity,” he assured her. “What’s your name, by the way?”

  “Lisa. Short for Lisabeta.”

  “Lisa,” he said, remembering the child with the duck. “Do you come from a big family, Lisa?”

  “No. No, I don’t,” she said, hoping he wouldn’t ask her any more questions, so that she wouldn’t have to mention her sister. “Where do your parents live? Locally?”

  “I ... haven’t any parents,” she said faintly.

  “Oh, an orphan. I suppose that explains your passionate interest in children,” he smiled. “Are you an only child?”

  She was saved answering that question by someone coming to speak to him, and when he joined her again, he seemed to have, forgotten about her family, and talked only of his hopes for the clinic.

  After taking Lisa all over the grounds, he drove her back. “The afternoon has gone so quickly,” she said, smiling. “Thank you very much. I did enjoy it.”

  “I’m sorry it couldn’t be a whole day, as I’d hoped, but I must get back to the hospital. Will you join me again some time?”

  As Lisa hesitated, he said, “Perhaps you’ve other friends you’d rather go to the Gloucester Hotel with?” and a trace of the old sharp tones were there.

  She flushed, remembering painfully tha
t evening when she had been at that fabulous new hotel with Ellard.

  “I’d like to go with you very much,” she said.

  His face cleared, and he smiled again.

  “Right, Lisa, your next free evening—and perhaps you could be a little less formal off duty?”

  The idea of being less formal with Randall Carson made Lisa really smile, and for a heady moment they were in complete accord.

  Sir Jules wasn’t happy about his wife’s jewelry.

  “I know we’ve got the clip back, Annabel,” he barked at her, “but the fact remains, this carelessness of yours has got to stop. How could you lose the thing in the grounds? Rattling good thing Derek had his eyes open for once!”

  “I didn’t lose it in the grounds,” Lady Frenton insisted angrily. After he was alone again, he made up his mind and sent for Derek. “Your mother says she didn’t wear the clip and couldn’t have dropped it in the grounds. Let’s have your story again, my boy.”

  “Oh, look, Dad, you’ve got the thing back safe and sound. Isn’t that enough?” Derek said, in exasperation.

  “No, it isn’t! I mean to get to the bottom of it. Now where exactly did you find it in the grounds?”

  “Well, if you must know,” Derek said reluctantly, “I didn’t, but someone else did and asked me to give it back. To clear the whole thing up quickly, I agreed. Now do let’s drop the subject, Dad.”

  It was the worst thing he could have said. Sir Jules was onto the affair like a dog on the scent of a rat.

  “Don’t talk to me like that!” he thundered. “I won’t let the subject rest until I absolutely get to the bottom of it! Now you tell me it wasn’t you who found it, but you told a lie at first. You said you did!”

  “Only because I was asked to do so,” Derek muttered.

  “By whom?” his father barked. “Who is this person who finds things and keeps in the background without even claiming the reward for finding and returning them? Mighty suspicious!”

  “Look, you asked me to get Lisa back, and I have.”

  Sir Jules’s expression broke, and he started to look surprised and pleased, when he realized that his son was sidetracking the issue. “What’s Lisa got to do with this theft?”

  “We don’t know that it was a theft, Dad. I’m trying to tell you—it was Lisa who found it, and asked me to return it on the quiet. Now do you see?”

  “Lisa did? Why should she want it kept quiet?”

  “Because she was already in hot water because one of the children from the hospital fell into Mother’s lily pond. You know what Mother’s like if someone touches the lilies or the fish,” Derek said, shrugging. “Carson was onto Lisa—he’s always picking on her, it seems—and made her go back to the hospital, so she said for heaven’s sake don’t let anyone know I forgot to turn in that thing when I found it.”

  “I see,” Sir Jules murmured, thinking. “Well, I’m glad you’ve had the sense to drop that dancer and go back to Lisa.”

  “For goodness’ sake, Dad, don’t let Lisa know I told you it was she who found the clip!” were Derek’s parting words, as his father allowed him to go.

  Sir Jules, however, had not finished with the subject. “I’ll see young Lisa about it,” he told his wife, “and I’ll get to the bottom of what happened to that clip of yours if it takes forever!”

  Sir Jules tackled Lisa about the clip, in the privacy of his study. “Now don’t be a silly girl,” he said, in a friendly tone. “Of course Derek told me about it, and of course you must have the Reward. I never heard such rubbish. You, of all people, should have it, my dear. I’m very glad my son has seen eye to eye with me at last!”

  “He promised he wouldn’t tell!” Lisa flared.

  “He does as I tell him,” Sir Jules chuckled, “because he doesn’t like being without money. When I said I wanted the truth, out it came. Now, my dear, where did you find it?”

  “Sir Jules, I’m not like your son—I don’t care about money, so don’t expect me to answer your question. I don’t want the reward. I returned the clip, and as far as I’m concerned, the matter’s at an end.”

  Sir Jules glared at her. He hated being opposed, but he liked Lisa very much. She was like him in some ways: proud, a girl who made up her mind and stuck to it, a girl who was afraid of neither hard work nor telling the truth. “I suppose that means you’re shielding someone else,” he said shrewdly.

  As she flushed to the roots of her hair, he nodded.

  “I didn’t say so, Sir Jules,” she protested, “and it isn’t fair to go on like this at me. But since we’re being so candid, let me tell you something. I didn’t want to come back to Derek, but as he promised to return the clip secretly for me, I couldn’t very well do otherwise. But he didn’t keep his word, and if he breaks it once, he’ll do it again, so I don’t feel bound to go out with him any more. I shall tell him so to his face, too!”

  “Little spitfire,” Sir Jules chuckled, with real affection in his voice. “So that’s how it happened. Oh well, I suppose I asked for it, threatening to cut off his money if he didn’t get you back.”

  “What? I didn’t know that,” Lisa exclaimed.

  Sir Jules frowned. “I shouldn’t have let that out,” he said ruefully. “Oh well, you know me—blunt and forthright. All the same, I wish you would stay with the boy. You’d be good for him, and I—well, I like you. You’re the girl I’d pick for my daughter-in-law, if I had my way.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lisa said unhappily. “I like you, too, Sir Jules, but I couldn’t go on like that, not the way I feel about Derek now.”

  “But I thought you were so keen on him at first!”

  “I was, at first,” Lisa agreed, avoiding his eyes.

  “What happened, lass?” he asked softly, and when Lisa did not reply, he said disconcertingly, “Left you for this dancer, I suppose, and now he sees the mistake he’s made, he wants to come back, eh? I can see by your face that it’s true. And you don’t feel inclined. I can understand that. You won’t be pushed the way you don’t want to go.”

  It wasn’t that. Lisa faced the truth and did not like it. If it had been only Derek, she might have taken him back. Once, he had meant everything to her. It was Randall Carson who had changed everything; Randall Carson, who picked on her but who had the grace to apologize; Randall Carson, who never did a mean or dishonest thing, and who gave generously of himself and never asked of other people what he would not be prepared to do himself. He was a man, and beside him, the frivolous, unreliable Derek did not shape up well.

  She shook her head despairingly.

  Sir Jules patted her hand. “I understand, my dear, but don’t be in a hurry. Make the lad dance to your tune for a change. It’ll do him good. Meantime,” he said, on a changed note, “what about the person you’re shielding? We haven’t forgotten that, you know. How about unloading on me, eh? You trust me, don’t you, Lisa, lass?” he urged, in a tone that tempted her to confide. “Well, why not tell me all about it?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Lisa stared at him, wide-eyed. What should she do? It was an overwhelming temptation to unload her troubles onto Derek’s father, but in the first place, he did not like Jacky and did not know that she was Lisa’s sister. She could scarcely expect sympathy or even help from him on that score alone.

  “You don’t understand,” she whispered.

  “Perhaps I understand more than you think, lass,” he said softly. “I had to work hard when I was young, and I was the sort of mug who carried the can for other people. If it’s your nature to help folks and to be loyal into the bargain, it’s never very easy, and it seems at the time that you get more kicks than ha’pence.”

  She flashed him a grateful look. “All right, then, I’ll admit I’m shielding someone, but don’t ask me to tell you who—you wouldn’t do that yourself, would you, if you were in my place?”

  “No, I’ll not say I’d let on, at that,” he said slowly. “But there’s this about it. Someone’s stolen something. O
h, aye, I know it was brought back—by you—but did you really find it, or did you take it off that party, or what? They ought to be punished, see? They can’t be allowed to get away with it. Then there’s the other aspect that I’ve got to warn you about: the police call it being an accessory, if you’re in on something, even if you did persuade the other party to give it up, you know what they’re up to, and they might do it again, and you’re shielding ’em. See what I mean?”

  Lisa leaned forward, a little pulse throbbing in her throat. “But you don’t understand. That’s the case with an ordinary thief. But supposing the person is—well, suffering from kleptomania?”

  Sir Jules frowned and looked really worried.

  “That’s not so good, either. You’re a nurse, you know the ins and outs of that! I’m only a layman, but I could tell you of a case or two I’ve read about in the papers—right hot onto ’em, the authorities are. Make’em go and get themselves seen to, psychiatrists and all that. Why, I even read in the papers of a kleptomania case that was put through a brain operation. It’s to help them, Lisa, don’t you see?”

  She clenched her hands. He looked kind but unmoved. He believed she was wrong, and even allowing for liking her as much as he did, he would force her, in the end, to divulge Jacky’s name. She could see that.

  And then the door opened, and Lady Frenton entered. “Sorry, Jules, but—oh, I thought you were engaged,” she said, looking at Lisa with no great liking.

  “Well, I am what you call engaged,” he said bluntly. “However, now you’re here, Annabel, what is it?”

  She went pink. She knew that her husband had always cherished a liking for Lisa Bryant, and part of her own toleration of Jacky was because Derek’s taking up with the dancer had meant that Lisa had been pushed out. Now the girl was back again, and closeted away in the study having private talks with her husband! “I’ll talk to you about it later, Jules,” she said.

  Lisa rose hurriedly to her feet. “Oh, please don’t let me disturb you, Lady Frenton. I was going, anyway. I’ve only got another hour. Thank you for your help, Sir Jules. I’ll think over what you said.”