by Sheila Burns
‘Next week,’ she said.
That surprised him!
‘Good heavens! I should have asked him here, save that I am learning my lesson that good-looking men are not wild successes as our guests. He’ll hate the Woodman.’
‘He chose it himself.’
Terence came out of the house, and joined them. She gathered that Mavis had not felt very well and had gone to bed, it was quite possible that she resented the thought of meeting Claire, but there was little that she could do. She had left the cold meal on the sideboard for them, an ideal hot weather supper, cold salmon trout, iced soup, eggs in aspic, and strawberries and cream. There was no doubt that Mavis knew everything that there was to know about food. They lingered over it, talking, mostly of St. Julian’s, then of Terence’s exhibition soon coming on in London, and he wanted to get back for it. The future of a great doctor, the future of a great artist in comparison, and an interesting subject.
Afterwards they had coffee in the garden room, and she was sorry to go home early. There had been a peacefulness about the place, giving the idea that she had time to think, time to be sensible, time to find her real self. She admired the gentle amiable quality which Terence had, something which Sir Charles said was part of the artistic make-up, for he had noticed it before. Terence came to see her off.
He said, ‘If I have to go in a hurry, for I realise this could happen if Mavis blew-up on me, do come one day and see me in London? I’d like to send you tickets for the exhibition, if I might?’
‘I’d love that. Pavement exhibitions have been the nearest approach I have yet made.’
‘You could have tea one day in the studio.’
With almost childish delight she admitted, ‘I have never been into a studio yet. I would love to see one.’
‘Right! You shall come.’
‘Maybe Mavis will be better after this?’
‘I doubt it, she is the sort who does not get better, I feel. She is disappointed in me, and shows it. Perhaps disappointment is the biggest burden life can give us. When I go she will get over it, so that I rather feel I ought to go soon, and give her a chance. Both of them have been so good to me.’
His eyes were tender. He was entirely different from Chris with this gentleness of his, a feeling Chris never used in his private life, and which was the foundation stone of Terence’s personality.
‘You’re a very kind person,’ she said.
He put out a hand. ‘You won’t forget me, will you? I don’t want to go right out of your life. Promise me that we shall meet again? Exhibition. Studio. Somewhere. I’d hate to think that it ended here.’
‘I promise you that it shan’t end here.’
‘Darling!’ and he said it in a low voice, almost as if it were the word of which he was afraid. She pretended not to hear it (it could lead to such complications if she did hear it), but she knew that it was the magic key which could open a new door for her. She drove away knowing that Terence had the power to make her happy; he was not stimulating and exciting as was Chris, but afterwards that vivid emotion left a girl with a sense of reproach, almost dismay. She parked the car, and walked into her own cottage with the feeling that as the stars came out they lit a changed world for her, a romantic world which was quite unreal.
As she entered, the telephone rang.
Not another baby! she gasped, or that drunken father in a rage, or the hospital to say they lost the child. Tonight had taken something different out of her, and in its own way had exalted her. She did not want to have anything happen now.
She picked up the receiver. ‘Sister speaking.’
‘Sister?’ It was Chris, he might try to cheat her, but she would know his voice anywhere. ‘Don’t be casual with me, dearest one. I had to ring you up. I was hungry for my goodnight kiss.’
It did not touch her, the curious thing was that it almost angered her. ‘It’s late and I’m dead tired,’ she reminded him.
‘More jobs?’
‘Yes, and supper at Sir Charles’s cottage. I think Terence is returning to Chelsea for his exhibition.’
‘Well, that’ll get rid of him, thank the Lord! If you ask me, he has been the spanner in the works recently.’
She rang off without a word. She was quite surprised at herself that she could do this, and when the bell rang again she did not answer it. She had changed enormously today, and could not quite understand herself. Then quietly she looked out at the starshine and the sweet night with the smell of roses, and the enchantment of the distant nightingale.
The countryside and the garden of England are quite wonderful, she told herself, and knew that she never wished to return to London, the noise and clatter, the fetid heat at evening, and the night which was still full of noisiness and trouble.
I am so happy here, she thought suddenly, and with this nothing else mattered.
Chapter Fourteen
Claire ran into Sir Charles early next morning in the village street. She had been ‘doing Grannie Evans’s bad legs’ and saw him coming out of the small general shop with parcels in a basket. She went across to him.
She said, ‘I think Mrs. Heath may get in touch with you about me, today. I don’t feel I warned you sufficiently last night, and I don’t want to make trouble.’
‘I shouldn’t worry. You took the row into her part of the world, and like all people of her type, she is rather done when people bring the trouble straight to her. During the week I’ll make a point of seeing her, there is nothing that she can do, of course, and when she thinks about it, she’ll arrive at that conclusion.’
‘You’re very kind.’
‘Maybe I have always been the advocate for fair play,’ he told her.
A little boy came rushing across the road calling ‘Sister’; his mum was ill, and his dad had seen her there, and wanted her to come in at once. In a single instant she was back on duty again, and away.
For two days the work held her, and she saw nothing of Stable House. Then one morning when she had rushed back for a sandwich lunch, for time was against her, Terence visited her. He came at the moment when she had had an argument with Chris on the telephone, trying to put him off the Woodman, and he certain that Terence was at the back of this. Maybe she was too readily communicative, but Terence was a man one could trust. He evoked confidences. His gentleness had a miracle way of coping with them.
‘Something gone wrong?’ he asked.
She sat down to ham paste sandwiches, which alone revealed that Mrs. Hopkins had run out of good ideas, and this was not the moment for it. ‘I suppose I have muddled everything outrageously,’ she admitted. ‘I always laughed at other girls who did this, but, my goodness, when it comes to yourself, it is only too easy! Chris is difficult, highly attractive and excitable, every girl loves him, which maybe is not the best recipe for happy marriage.’
‘You’ve got something there!’ and he laughed. ‘But why worry? Time is on your side. Wait for it.’
Wise counsel and good counsel, she knew. ‘I came down here for time to make up my own mind, then he followed me. I wish he hadn’t.’
‘At the same time you can hardly blame him.’
‘Then there is Mrs. Heath, and these men. I don’t feel that Mavis likes me. What do I do?’
He came across the room and stood there holding both her hands in his, and looking calmly into her eyes. He was kind, he was genuine, he was entirely secure, and she felt it. ‘You wait, you know. You take old time and make him stand still for you. No quick decisions. No difficulties and agonies of apprehension. Go straight on with the job, and let life catch up with you. Take no short cuts.’ He laughed lightly. ‘Maybe that is the true answer to all this. No short cuts.’
‘You ‒ you’re awfully comforting.’
‘I’m the father confessor, perhaps. I want to help because I am so fond of you. Don’t forget this, I do want to do everything that I can for you, and for ever, if you wish it.’
She would never know how long that moment lasted
, when they looked into each other’s eyes, and the whole world stood still. Perhaps she had misjudged emotional romance, and was laying her hand on a romance which was quieter, and far stronger. Certainly more enduring.
‘I don’t know what to say.’
He released her hands kindly. ‘Then just finish up the sandwiches, and stand back for the next telephone call.’
‘You’re going away?’
‘Yes, but I’ll come back.’
‘Are you quite sure?’
‘I’m positive.’
He means it, she thought, he would never let me down, and now I wait for time. It was good advice.
When he had gone Claire felt that this brief scene was something that she would remember for all her life. His quiet made that so sure, until she had met him she had never realised the superbness of quality which lay behind serenity.
Watching him go, for his own sake she was glad, for he ought to break with Mavis. Although Stable House could do much for him and there was no doctor in all the world so good as Sir Charles, he ought to get away. How slender he looked as he took those long loping strides out to the car, and got into it without hurrying! He did not rush away, he went casually, because he did not race with time, he accepted it.
She turned from the window with the honeysuckles in a bower around the framework. How sweet they smelt. Terence had comforted her. Perhaps he was right in saying give Mrs. Heath time and she would come round. That had been Sir Charles’s advice, too. Perhaps she was now armed against worry and strong in the belief that she had done the right thing.
The telephone rang again.
‘Sister speaking,’ she said.
That was the beginning of a week of accidents. It always seemed to her that these things ran in phases. It never rained but it poured, and this was a really wet week!
Old Grannie Jenkins had a stroke on the edge of her well. You would have thought that wells had gone by the board, but not for Grannie Jenkins. She had always had a well, she said, and by that well she was sticking! She fell down it and got wedged. Claire went along to the old forge where she lived, with a passion flower twined about the rustic porch. The old forge was reminiscent of burning, that smell seemed to linger for ever about it. She waited till they got the poor old lady up, thank goodness she had stayed unconscious, for that was the best possible thing for her.
Claire said that they must get her to hospital, for there she could be properly seen after. She lay unconscious on her bed. The hospital, however, was full, it was a week of accidents, they complained. This meant that old Anna James must sit up with Grannie for the night, because she might come to and be frightened.
Anna had once been the village nurse in a somewhat vague way of her own, for she had no medical training, but was the kindly trustworthy sort, who could be relied on not to let a patient fall out of bed, which was something.
Claire had got this dealt with and finally arranged and was coming down the lane, when a horse bolted and threw the young man who had been riding it. He had apparently been taken entirely by surprise. His head was injured, bleeding badly, and Claire insisted that Dr. Holding must come immediately, for somehow she had never trusted head injuries since a patient had died of a fractured skull at St. Julian’s, and nobody had seen it coming.
Then the young woman at No. 61 had twins all in a hurry, and before Claire finished with this she was called to a case on the far side of Charnworth. Again she sent for Dr. Holding. This is not his day, nor mine, she thought.
It was one of those emotional cases which always disturbed Claire badly. The woman had had three children, two malformed, the other stillborn, and she was bringing a fourth into the word at seven months! She wept that she wanted no mistakes this time, and was unconscious when the babe was born, malformed as the others had been, but weakening. Claire looked at Leslie Holding in horror.
‘What do we do?’
‘She’s very weak. She won’t live, thank God.’
The babe was badly malformed, poor little thing, and at all costs the woman must never see it. The moment she came round, she asked, ‘The baby’s okay?’
‘Don’t worry!’ Claire admired the way Dr. Holding took this. ‘You just rest. It’s a girl.’
For the moment nothing mattered save to soothe this woman, and she dozed off. The babe lay deadly silent on a chair, and the doctor turned to Claire.
‘I’ll take it away with me, she mustn’t know. Say anything.’
‘You give me some jobs, I must say.’
‘That’s the doctor’s career, yours too!’
She stayed with the woman until she woke, with no trace in the tidy room of the ordeal through which she had passed. Claire told her that the baby had gone to hospital and she must wait. Doctor would tell her everything when he came back this evening. An hour later she herself had got home.
Today had tired her out, never had she felt more weary, or more worried about her work. She felt that today they had not done the right thing, yet what else could they do? As she opened her own door, thankful to be back, she saw that a man’s visiting card lay there. It must have been thrust under the door by someone who could not make himself heard.
It read: Mr. Christopher Long.
I simply must have a rest, she told herself, and in a daze. A cold meal awaited her, and the pad beside the telephone was mercifully clear. She ate what she could and then lay down, sleeping that exhausted but comforting sleep which comes when one is dead out.
It happened to be one of those days when her luck was not in. She had had the most fatiguing time, but the worst was over, and now she slept through till teatime. The noise of Chris’s car outside the cottage roused her, and by the time she was fully awake he had come up the path and was waiting for her on the step.
‘Dearest one, I am here!’
She laid a warning finger to her lips, for Mrs. Hopkins had a nose for these things, and her heart had started madly beating. He made her feel infinitely glad to see him. Like climbing a long hill and then when one got to the top looking on the world lying around, with a sense of exultation.
It was crazy to be so happy, for all the time deep down in her heart she was well aware of the fact that this was the dangerous lover. Too attractive. Too unsteady.
‘I’ve had the most ghastly day,’ she said, ‘everything happened; a bad stroke, an accident, twins, and a poor unfortunate baby, and I did not expect you till tomorrow. Haven’t you warmed the bell a little?’
‘I couldn’t stand London a moment longer. I was sick to see you,’ and he walked in.
‘Well, I’ve had the lot!’ She led the way into the sitting-room, with the tea laid, and the moment she had finished that she must set out on the ‘regulars’ again. Tea was comforting, a Victorian-Edwardian meal which certainly was composing. Good sandwiches and little cakes, and Mrs. Hopkins made them well, hating the bought variety.
But Chris rushed it. ‘You know I’ve come down here to talk you into marrying me? This time I won’t take no for an answer.’
‘I guessed it.’ Perhaps now the ghost of Lucille had slipped a long way off, and the glowing sense of enchantment was back. ‘Let’s postpone that talk for now.’
‘I refuse to postpone it too long.’ He was laughing now, the man who made a joke of trouble and could light life with a radiance of his own. ‘I want to marry you, Claire, because I’m desperately in love with you. Listen to reason. I’ve been a damned fool, let that go! It makes no difference to the end of the story, which is that they lived happily ever after.’
He kissed her, not hurrying it, and she felt giddy, elated, very happy and glad. ‘This ‒ this doesn’t go with the uniform,’ she said at last.
‘It’s gone with the uniform ever since Florence Nightingale was fussy about the way she put her cap on,’ and he kissed her again.
It’s madness, she thought, and then the telephone, no respecter of persons, rang. Instantly she went to it.
‘Sister speaking.’
One
came out of the dream delirium into uniform again, the man who mattered so much slipped into the background, and everyday became real. It was Sir Charles on the other end.
‘That you, Claire? Could you come round and have supper with us tonight? About eight o’clock?’
‘I don’t know that I can. Mr. Long has suddenly turned up ‒’
‘Bring him with you. We’ll do him better than the Woodman anyway, and I’d like to see him.’
‘I’ll ask him if you wait a moment,’ and she laid her hand across the receiver. ‘It’s Sir Charles, and he has asked us both to sup with him tonight.’
‘Has he now! I wanted you to come out with me. I wanted a meal alone with you, for I have lots to say. We have got to have a talk, we have got …’
Lovely, but dangerous, she thought, maybe too dangerous, and she shook her head. ‘This is the royal command.’
‘Not to me! We’re away from St. Julian’s now. Let him stew in his own juice.’
It agitated her that Chris could speak of Sir Charles like this, and she took away her hand from the receiver. ‘We’d love to come,’ she said, and saw Chris shaking his fist at her across the room. Then she hung up.
‘I knew you’d do that,’ he said sulkily.
‘Sir Charles is such a darling, one of those men who is always there to help. His niece worries me dreadfully, and he needs assistance with her, that is probably his trouble now. We have got the inside of a week before us, plenty of time to talk, plenty of time to have this out.’
‘I want us to have the rest of our lives to talk, if it comes to that.’
‘I’ve got to make up my mind,’ and for a moment she was back with the ghost of Lucille. It was idiotic to keep harping on it, but all her life she had been that kind of person, and to escape from one’s own personality is never easy.
The telephone rang again. It was the old lady who had had the stroke; her condition had worsened, and the old nurse, Anna, wanted help.
