by Sheila Burns
Chapter Ten
It was a busy week-end, and she almost wished that she had not promised to sup with Sir Charles on the Sunday night. Saturday had brought a letter from Chris, which she had not anticipated, and she had read it over her tea.
Dearest Claire, and I mean this.
Both of us have had time to think about things, and come to some conclusion. I am not as bad a chap as you think me to be. The leopard cannot change his spots, and anyway Lucille has gone down with measles. That’s the worst of getting off with kids! Also we are short-staffed in the theatre.
I miss you horribly, and when are you coming back? I intend coming down to see you when you can give me a week-end when Charles Hague is not there. He would be in the way. We have got to meet and talk this out, dear, for I do care for you.
Plainly he had then been called away, and had returned in a new mood to finish his letter.
Slight interruption, with an accident case. They are always stupid at picking the right time for things! Please, darling, let me visit you? I write silly letters but truly I have much to say, and the broken heart hurts me. We’ve been silly, and at heart neither of us are silly people.
She wished that the very sight of his writing had not got the power to disturb her. She dressed for the supper party wondering what she could say to the letter, she needed time to digest it. Mrs. Hopkins had noticed that she was quiet and put the wrong meaning to it.
‘Don’t let the village chaps upset you, Sister. It’s having all them old nurses what did it.’
‘Oh, it doesn’t worry me too much,’ she lied valiantly.
‘Talk dies of itself,’ she said. ‘Men is always men, and they likes pretty faces.’
How true it was!
She had seen the men looking back after her when she drove past the fields where they were working. At St. Julian’s the students had been the only difficulty, and they were too well trained to be obvious. If they showed it, they would get the Warden after them, so they held back. Maybe it was absurd to take the whole thing to heart, but it worried her.
She had decided to answer Chris’s letter after supper when she got back from Stable House. She tied a light amethyst sash round the pale blue frock. She did not want Chris coming down to see how she was getting on, and it was just the sort of impetuous thing that he could do so easily. Yet she wanted news of him.
She had been out to a case, the woman had had three stillborn children already, and was in difficulties. In the end she had gone to hospital, and as she tied her sash she heard a man’s voice below her window.
‘Sister?’
They’re not coming into my very garden to molest me? she thought and went to the window. Outside was the woman’s husband with a day-old beard and haggard eyes.
‘It’s a girl, Sister, and okay.’
She felt a sudden thrill of exaltation, the real joy of the live babe, the sense of pride, for the woman had wanted a girl.
‘How good of you to come and tell me! I’m glad. Everything will be all right now, don’t worry.’
It was a slack evening, which was a good thing, for although she would not have admitted it for the world she was finding work on the district rather exhausting. Day and night she worked, and the car driving ‒ to which she was unaccustomed ‒ was an extra strain. She set forth, and being Sunday evening the men were out in their best suits, lounging at road corners. Approaching a group of about five of them standing by a gate, her wheel cap spun off and went rolling into the gutter. It would have to happen now! she thought, and was angry that the garage had not fixed it.
A young married man (his wife was pregnant, she knew) picked it up and brought it to her. He had an amused look in his eyes.
‘Lost this one, Sister?’
‘Thank you so much.’
‘I’ll fix it for you; you’re in your best dress and such a pretty one!’ She disliked his look, but he fixed the cap for her. She was annoyed that her colour came and went, and that the other young men were sniggering. In the end he came to the car door.
‘Thank you so much,’ she said.
He leant on the door. ‘You’re too pretty to be a midwife, Sister, and you know it.’
‘Today all nurses train at the same age, and we come younger to the job.’
He did not move. His folded arms rested on the ledge and she knew that the other men were laughing. This could be a ‘dare’, and that was an awful thought.
‘Please get out of my way, I have an appointment to keep,’ and she revved up. The vibration shook him, but he did not leave the window frame (she was now convinced that this was a dare), so she started the car moving, which knocked him backwards, with an oath. She knew the other men would laugh.
But the affair was far more disturbing than she would have wished, and she was inwardly scared by the thought of it. She went on and into the park with the single crumbling lodge left to it, and she was glad to be cut off from the village for a bit, for it was escape. Sir Charles was in the garden in his shirt sleeves, busily watering sweet pea plants, a job which he undertook whenever he got home. He saw her and waved.
‘Hello, Claire! How go things?’
She walked to him across the scrap of lawn and somehow she knew that it had to come. ‘Plain awful!’ she said, and told him of the wheel cap and the man who had replaced it for her. He listened quietly.
‘Come along into the garden room,’ he said.
They went into the wooden arbour which had long chairs in vivid chintzes, and picture windows. There was a tray of drinks on the centre table, and he poured out one for her.
‘Forget that damned man,’ he said. ‘This won’t last, I can promise you that. Anybody new and young who consents to come here, must attract them, for they work with the earth, and possibly those who work with it are more primitive in their emotions than men who work in offices. I’m angry with them, of course, but this will stop.’
‘I hope so. I half feel that if Mrs. Heath gets hold of it, she will say I had encouraged them.’
‘Nobody in their senses could say that. Ignore them. It’s not easy, but the only way.’
‘Not easy,’ she echoed, and smiled wanly.
‘After all, nothing in this hard world can be easy, but if you do that, sheer boredom will put them off it.’
Claire changed the subject, feeling worried on another point. ‘Today I met Vernon Heath.’
‘That was a treat for you!’ and he laughed. ‘Don’t forget that the poor man may be getting bored stiff with his mother and looking around for something new to do.’
‘I had thought of that.’
He laughed again in that gaily friendly way of his; he was, she felt, one of the friendliest men she had ever known. He talked of his own boyhood, the fuss and bother when girls pursued him, and he not one of those men. Then he changed the subject, and returned to Terence Anderson.
‘I went to see him,’ said Claire. ‘He is considerably better, though he still gets the bad headaches, of course, but he finds memory returning, and he is less despondent.’ She wondered if she should say anything about Mavis’s visits, then decided against it, but said casually, ‘Your niece is kind to him, and that must be a help in a lone world.’
‘I wonder. Mavis is one of the people I have never been really able to understand. Perhaps our own folk are always much more difficult than strangers. By the by, in hospital I ran into your friend Chris Long the other day. He wants to come down and pay us a visit. Seemed to be peeved that you had come here, and didn’t understand when I said that I felt it was the sort of experience you needed for later on in your career.’
‘And he wouldn’t accept that?’
‘No.’ Sir Charles poured himself out another sherry. ‘He’s in love with you, of course. Oh, I know he is flighty, lots of men are made that way and mean nothing by it, but their wives have to accept it. You took offence?’
He has found out more than I should have expected, she thought, and said aloud, ‘No, but I find it hard
.’
‘All right then. You have all the time in the world to think about it. You’re lucky, I haven’t so much time left. I have to hurry with life if I am to finish the work that I began. Youth has time to think and to choose, but age is pushed.’
‘You’re very understanding.’ She admired him for his kindness.
‘When you’re older, and a doctor, you have to understand, or give up,’ he said with a smile.
They heard Mavis coming to them from the house. Apparently she did not see them in the garden room, and she looked quite different, as though she was thinking of something outside her real self. It struck Claire that she had two vague personalities, one half opposing the other. Claire thought, She is disappointed with life, and recalled what her uncle had said about her wanting to marry, and hating being unwed. Suddenly Mavis saw them.
‘Hello,’ she said, and came to the garden room. ‘The supper is ready when you want it. I’ve been to see Terence Anderson in hospital. He was up and out in the garden and felt a lot better for this, I’m sure.’
‘Is he remembering more?’ Claire asked.
‘Yes, he talked about his studio in Chelsea, he paints landscapes, you know, and now wants to start on portraits. It thrilled me. He ‒ he wants to paint me.’
A hazy look had come into her eyes, almost joyful, at the same time slightly doubting. For a moment Claire knew that this was dangerous; she recognised it, and with fear. Terence could not want to paint Mavis, surely? And anyway whatever Mavis felt for him, he could not be attracted to her, someone so dead ordinary and so much older than he was.
Sir Charles never showed what he was thinking. He said, ‘He’s spoiling you, Mavis, and all because you have been so good to him. I’m sure he will stick to landscapes.’ She went very quiet. Maybe he realised that she had sensed his meaning, for he quickly finished his sherry and suggested supper. He commented on her cooking; this, he said, was always the best meal of the week, and they went into the house.
The meal was beautifully prepared, with chicken patties, whipped cream cheese with prawns and watercress, an egg custard, and strawberry shortcake. Mavis certainly did cook admirably, but she had gone remarkably quiet. It struck Claire that Sir Charles saw this, and did not like it. The little frown was there, something which Claire associated with tricky operations and which always went away the moment he felt he was safe. Maybe one learnt a surgeon’s reactions too well. Mavis spoke of the strawberry shortcake.
‘I made two of them, and took one to Terence in hospital. The food is a bit crude there, you know. By the way, he is coming out on Tuesday, and I should have thought it was too soon.’
‘It’s quick,’ said Sir Charles. ‘Maybe they want the bed and can do nothing else.’
‘He is worried about his work, he says, and wants to get back to it, but he only has a daily woman at his Chelsea studio, and with those headaches he ought not to be alone. I …’ she paused, then went on quickly, ‘I’ve asked him here for a few days. The spare room is empty and he would have peace and quiet; if he wanted to start the picture of me, this would be the opportunity.’
There was silence, and beyond the parkland an old sheep bleated for a lost lamb; out of the distance came the squeaky response. Claire looked at Sir Charles and saw that frown still there, and knew that he was worried. He said nothing, he was that kind of man, then after due thought he asked, ‘Do you think that was very wise of you?’
She hesitated. Claire could almost feel the storm working up within her. Then it seemed that her body went a little limp. ‘Yes, I do. I’m all alone here, and it’s so damned dull. Nobody thinks of me, nobody wants me. Day after day of it, and going on for ever. I want to help him.’
‘But this is a patient who needs professional, not amateur, nursing, I’d have said.’
It struck Claire that Mavis had forgotten that a third person was here. It seemed that only two persons were in her world, herself and her uncle. Her eyes were confused, they had the look of a sky before thunder, something that was brooding and sinister.
‘You refuse me permission, Uncle?’
He jumped at that. ‘Of course not! If you want him here and have asked him, then he must come, if he wishes it, but I admit that I think it early days after a shock of this kind. Those headaches still worry him.’
‘I can cure headaches. They’re nothing. I happen to like him because he is kind to me, and perhaps that is why you hate the whole idea.’
‘Don’t be absurd, Mavis. You know that I want your happiness, but you also know that this sort of crisis has happened before, and in the end you don’t find happiness this way. I should have thought that if the young man must leave hospital, he would be better off staying a week in the clinic, or something like that.’
Claire felt the tenseness and knew that she was feeling a stranger within the gates. She did not know what excuse to make. She saw the row coming and wanted to escape; murmuring something about it being very hot in the house, she went out into the garden. She slipped through the french windows to the far end of the garden with the thick herbaceous border now budding for June. There were lupins and marguerites, abundant irises, and beyond them a strip of vegetable garden beautifully laid out with lettuces, a radish bed, parsley in fernlike sprays, balsam, rosemary and thyme. Possibly Mavis used this as an outlet for her own pent-up emotions, and found it entertaining.
Claire thought with regret of the best strawberry shortcake that she had eaten for years, and wished she had had the chance of a second slice, but the row had to come, and she had had to escape it. After a while Sir Charles came to the window and called her back into the house. She saw at once that Mavis had gone. About the room was the inanimate dullness of an atmosphere after a scene; one could sense it.
He said, ‘I’m sorry, Claire, that this had to happen tonight. Anderson is coming here, of course, and we are launched into another commitment. This happens to Mavis. Violent new friendships, then catastrophe.’
‘How long has it been like this?’
‘Quite a time.’ He was now all doctor, speaking quietly about a diagnosis. ‘Mavis was an odd child, and she had her first bad mental breakdown when she was fourteen. They were not as clever then with this sort of condition as they are today, more’s the pity. It is difficult to know what to do. We have tried most things, but I, being old-fashioned, never think that psychiatry is quite the answer.’ He put a tired hand to his brow. ‘The answer would have been a nice quiet husband, poor chap, and children of her own. Then she would have been a different woman, but one can’t pull these prizes out of a hat, like a conjurer.’
‘So Mr. Anderson will come here?’
‘Yes, the peace will help him, the garden and her cooking, which is quite remarkable. By the by, do have some more of the shortcake. Eat it up!’ and he grinned. (So he had guessed all the time!) ‘Mavis will become too much for him, and it’ll happen when I’m away, I expect.’
‘I’ll do anything I can.’
‘If you could find an excuse to come round every day, maybe to see Anderson, nurse-on-duty sort of stuff? Then if anything went wrong you could warn me. I hate to ask it, but …’
‘I understand,’ she said, ‘and of course I’ll do it, only I am worried lest your niece should take against me.’
‘I doubt that, anyway at first. She knows that doctor’s orders are doctor’s orders, and surely that won’t upset her?’
Claire went on with the shortcake. She did not want Mavis to be suspicious that she was interfering, and only hoped that her guardianship of an awkward situation would help. Sir Charles changed the subject.
‘Chris Long seems to be keen on coming down here. Would you want that, or not?’
This seemed to be the right moment to confess, and she had to admit that she had really come down to Charnworth with the one idea of not seeing Chris for a little time. She wanted to establish her own reactions to the affair, to find out how she really felt. Perhaps she had been in the desperate need of wanting time t
o think.
‘I see that,’ he agreed, ‘and of course you are dead right. Then I shall not ask him down for a week-end. I gathered that was what he really wanted. And I shall not bring him down in my car, which was the other idea. He will think that I am just a stubborn old man, but let him think it and get on with it!’
Privately she was not sure that this would put him off, for Chris could be obstinate. She did not want him here, or did she? Could Chris be the answer to the village men? Or not?
As Mavis did not reappear, Claire did the clearing away and the washing up. Sir Charles explained that after an outburst, Mavis usually had a good cry, then a long sleep in which she recovered, and later even wondered what all the trouble had been. Claire finished the work, tidied everything, made an excuse of a duty visit, and left.
The evening had not been wholly satisfactory, perhaps because of herself, for now she was worried that Chris might come down, disrupt all her emotions, and change everything. She had told Sir Charles that tomorrow she would come and see how Mavis was. He had blessed her for her help, but she felt he had not been particularly encouraging. He was anxious over Mavis, over-anxious, she was sure.
Just as she had left Stable House, he had said one thing which she would always remember. ‘You are a very dear girl,’ he had told her.
Chapter Eleven
A message had been scrawled out and left beside the telephone for when she returned; Mrs. Hopkins had done it. The message called her to the case on Highwayman’s Hill. She quickly changed into uniform and was off again, with no time to think of the strange meal tonight, the outburst from Mavis, or Sir Charles’s warning about Chris, for it had been a warning. Nor did she think of the way Mavis had behaved, the different personality she had shown, her story about Terence Anderson and getting him to Stable House to convalesce.
