The New Sister Theatre

by Lucilla Andrews

  I stayed some little time staring into the mirror and thinking over that last thought. I could guess why it had only just occurred to me and not hit me at once that first morning in Gibraltar when I discovered my hunch was right. My subconscious had sat on it, because it did expose a weak streak in Joe that I had never suspected and was still only too anxious to avoid admitting. I could not put that off any longer. A lay person might just possibly have thought he had every right to get engaged at this juncture. No one with any real experience of illness would agree. Frances might have insisted on their being engaged, but he should have refused to tie her down until after his second operation. If a husband or wife was crippled after marriage that was one thing; marrying a man who might well be crippled was another. The only people who could possibly imagine there was any romance in such an arrangement were those who knew nothing about the physically disabled. There was no doubt Frances must love him, but it was not fair to her, or any girl or man, to be put in the position that he had now put her. I still loved him, was desperately sorry for him, and had seen for myself the courage with which he was facing his illness. But I knew too much to be able to excuse what he had done to Frances Durant. How could she have said no? How could any girl? And how he had changed! I was surprised and saddened. I should not have been either. I knew illness too closely not to be aware it brought out the worst as well as the best in human nature.

  Lady Stanger knocked on the door. ‘A visitor for you, my dear. Dr Delaney ‒ oh, bother! The telephone! Go on down to the sitting-room ‒ remember the way? I’ll take this call in our bedroom.’

  My postcard had told Mark I was coming up for the weekend. I had given him no other address as I had not wanted him to contact me until I had that breathing space. It was kind and ingenious of him to call here and so promptly, but I wished he had waited.

  At the sitting-room door I braced myself for the inevitable agonizing reappraisal, then went in quickly. ‘Mark, this is very nice of you ‒’ and my voice stopped abruptly.

  Frances Durant was standing by the open fire. She turned apologetically. ‘You expected Mark? Didn’t Lady Stanger ‒?’ and she broke off, then answered herself. ‘Of course! She’s met me in Martha’s as well as at Dr Homer’s party last Tuesday. She called me Dr instead of Mrs?’

  I gripped the back of the nearest chair. ‘She should have said Mrs Delaney?’

  ‘Shall we sit down?’ And when we were sitting, ‘Yes. I didn’t mean to tell you quite so abruptly, but perhaps it’s the best way. I’m Mark’s wife.’

  I was first too astounded for speech, and then too angry. Joe might have been weak, but Mark ‒ and she ‒ had been downright wicked. An acute emotional shock is just about the worst thing anyone can have before a serious operation. Why, and how, they had found themselves in the position to administer that shock to him did not at that moment concern me. I could only think of Joe’s angle.

  She said, ‘I can see this has upset you. I’m sorry. May I explain?’

  My voice returned. ‘You can try.’

  ‘You’re very angry. I hoped …’ She paused nervously. ‘Or rather, I thought …’ Again she broke off. I let her flounder. I was in no mood for helping hands. She said at last, ‘You must feel, with good reason, that Mark has treated you ‒ well ‒ badly.’

  ‘Me?’ I demanded. ‘You think I care that Mark’s married you? For myself? I wouldn’t give a damn if he married a whole harem. But I give several for what his marrying you is going to do to Joe. Or had you forgotten him?’

  ‘Joe? Joe de Winter? He’s why you are so furious?’ She began to laugh. ‘For dear old Joe?’

  I had never hit anyone in my life. I came very close to it just then. ‘Yes. For dear old Joe. He’s due for an op shortly. Or had you forgotten that little detail too?’

  She controlled herself. ‘I’m so sorry. No. I haven’t forgotten Joe or his op. Those are two of the reasons why I’m here. I’ve been wanting to talk to you for some time, but the position was somewhat tricky.’

  ‘That I believe.’

  Her huge green eyes were very intelligent as well as very attractive. The way she was studying me reminded me of her specific branch of medicine. I could have been something rather dangerous under a microscope. ‘It was the ethical set-up that mainly tied my hands. I did some tests on Joe before Basil Buckwell decided to operate. That made him my patient. He talked about you ‒ in confidence. But even without the professional angle, I would have had to keep quiet as he asked, since he had been so very good at keeping quiet about Mark and myself.’

  ‘He knew ‒? For God’s sake, how long?’

  ‘Nine months, one week.’

  ‘Nine?’ I echoed incredulously.

  ‘That’s right. Joe, my boss, and the Inland Revenue boys were the only people we told. My boss is a pet. He didn’t even tell his wife, as she’s got a cousin at Barny’s.’

  I was too staggered to do more than clutch at inessentials. ‘That’s why Mark was always crossing the river!’

  She flushed. ‘You must think him an awful heel. If it’s any consolation, he feels one.’

  I waved that aside. ‘Where did you meet?’

  ‘At the Smithe-Grey’s. We married four weeks later. We were quite crazy, because as you’ll know Mark can’t afford a wife financially or professionally. But as I already earn more than he does, we decided to take a chance and keep it quiet.’

  ‘I see.’ I did. It was the kind of impulsive thing Mark would do, despite Dr Homer’s views on married residents. And then he, Mark, would have been not unamused by the need for secrecy. It must have appealed to the infantile streak in his nature to have taken Homer for a ride all this while. And yet at the same time, when Mark’s responsible side was uppermost, it must often have made him acutely anxious. I could see his wife’s angle easily. He was a very fascinating man. It was only then I fully appreciated why she was so on edge about me.

  I said, ‘I won’t pretend he didn’t seem to be making a play for me whenever we had an audience. He never continued the act when we were alone. You’ve never had to worry about him and me.’

  ‘My dear girl, he’s my husband. Of course I worried,’ she retorted bluntly.

  ‘Then why,’ I asked equally bluntly, ‘did you allow him to date me?’

  ‘He said he had to back up Joe’s story. And you were in a tough spot, his very old friend, and needed a shoulder. Don’t blame me for that little lark. I didn’t like it at all.’ She smiled wryly. ‘Show me the wife who would. I just had to go along with it partly because I like Joe, partly because he and Mark are such old pals and I didn’t want to be the kind of wife who goes about trying to bust up her husband’s friendship with his old pals. If you have to blame anyone blame those two men. This was all their idea. And you actually gave it to Joe in the first place.’

  ‘Me? How?’

  ‘Don’t ask me how you knew of my existence! But didn’t you once ask Joe if he was going to marry me?’

  I remembered that evening in his room, and nodded weakly. ‘That made him realize the one thing that would stop you asking awkward questions would be to have you believe there was another woman involved. I gather he was right?’

  ‘Yes.’ I went on to tell her about Sandra’s various references to her name.

  ‘Sandra Brown. I should have guessed. Mark detests her, and even back at school she had the makings of a queen-bitch. Mark was always scared of her guessing about us. She’d have got the news to old Homer like a bat out of hell.’

  ‘Faster.’ A slow wave of wonder, happiness, and sadness began to flood over me. ‘Joe used you as a red herring. To get away from me before I discovered about his back?’ I smiled for the first time since I walked into the sitting-room. ‘No wonder he looked so odd when I told him Mark had told me you two were officially engaged.’

  She knew all about that. ‘Mark had a letter last week giving him hell for adding that touch. Joe said it was enough to make you suspect the whole thing, it was so phone
y. He wrote, and I quote, “only a self-centred moron would start handing out engagement rings in his present set-up.” I was furious with Mark. We had a flaming row. We’ll have another after tonight, as he doesn’t know I’m here. But I can see no sense in letting the nonsense continue. Thanks to Robert Stanger there can’t be much left for you to know about Joe’s condition ‒ which knocks out one of his reasons for wanting you kept in the dark. The other two’ ‒ she ticked them off on her fingers ‒ ‘have worked out the way he planned it. You are now no longer tied to him in any way. You haven’t messed up your Barny’s career by turning down promotion to be free to sit by his bedside and hold his hand.’

  I took a long breath. ‘So that was why?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There were some drinks and glasses on a cabinet against a wall. I was too dazed with a sheer, blinding joy to worry about the future, much less if Lady Stanger would object to my helping ourselves. I poured two sherries.

  ‘Thanks.’ She raised her glass to me. ‘We can both use this.’

  A minute or so later she said, ‘I rang Basil Buckwell to-day. Those ethics kept niggling. So I asked if I could hand Joe over to my boss. I knew it would be all right with Hugo. I used some idiotic excuse to Basil about finding it hard to treat a friend. As one of the big advantages of being a woman is that all men are perfectly prepared to accept one is an emotional idiot, Basil took it without a question. Handing over doesn’t actually put me in the clear, but I’m not worrying about that. I want you to get this straight, and then I want me to be Mrs Delaney officially. That’s why I gave that name to Lady Stanger. I’ll tell Mark it was a dip, and as I’ve seen you it’s time he faced old Homer with the truth. I made him take me to Homer’s party the other evening ‒ minus wedding-ring ‒ so that the old man could look me over. We had a splendid tête-à-tête about bugs. I don’t know if he liked me or not, but I saw he did Mark.’

  ‘He does. Mark’s work has been very good recently.’

  ‘That’s fine. It’ll strengthen our hand. All this cloak-and-dagger stuff was amusing for a while, but now it’s getting a hideous strain.’ She smiled. ‘This may amuse you ‒ I’ve been calling on Mark in Barny’s while you’ve been away. The grapevine has got busy, and your theatre nurses do not approve. Mark says the temperature drops to sub-zero whenever he sees any of them now.’

  ‘They’re nice girls.’ That explained why Dolly Bachelor had been so anxious to avoid me the evening I returned from Spain. ‘But they are apt to judge people by their face values. They weren’t all that wrong about Joe. They were all convinced he resigned’ ‒ my voice shook ‒ ‘because he was behaving like a little gentleman for my sake.’

  She said gently, ‘There was nothing else he could do. Not being the man he is. I’ll admit I did think you had a right to know exactly why he wanted to break off your engagement, but now I am coming round to thinking he did the right thing. Having that diagnosis confirmed was bad enough without having you officially involved and unable to uninvolve yourself.’

  ‘Not unable. Unwilling.’

  She said, ‘I do believe you, but try switching the situation as it was between you two. No matter how much Joe loved you, would you have wanted to risk there coming a day when he would try not to think of you as a helpless burden, and yet find himself thinking it? And you’re a woman. Think of the blow that would be to a man’s self-respect. When he asked you to marry him he was able to offer you what he thought was most likely a glowing future. Suddenly it looked as if it was all gone. Whether it is or not is still very much an open question. But the fact that you have already had to get on without him has shown you that you can. It may have been hell, but from what I’ve heard from Mark and the men around Barny’s you are making a great success of that hell. That means your job must fascinate you, and that whatever happens to your private life your professional life should be assured. If Joe’s actions hadn’t forced your hand you might never have discovered you could be such a high-powered theatre sister.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have discovered it. I expect I would have gone on nursing, but not in a theatre. It would have reminded me of too much I wanted to forget. As I had to stay …’ I paused. ‘Yes. If I still can’t have Joe I know now where I belong and what I want to do with my life. You’re right. He’s shown me that.’

  ‘And at the time you had no suspicions?’

  I told her the truth, then asked about those telephone inquiries.

  ‘Those admitting clerks probably saw him coming in with me for those early tests. Once he was admitted to our Private Floor, he used his mother’s name, Marden. He told Basil he wanted privacy. He’s not the first patient to ask that. The hospital had no grounds for objecting. He’s single, no parents living, no family in this country. He gave Robert Stanger as next-of-kin.’ She smiled again. ‘A crafty man, Robert Stanger. I wonder what he would have thought up if you hadn’t happened to be due for a holiday when he wanted to take you to Spain. Of course, he’ll swear blind he only took you along because you were efficient. He wasn’t hamstrung by ethics, but, like the very few people who knew the truth, knew Joe’s anxiety to have it kept dark. A very, very crafty and clever man, that.’

  ‘And kind. He’s always had a soft spot for Joe.’

  ‘And not only Joe, I gather. Has he told you yet that Joe’s due back in Martha’s next Wednesday? He knows, because Basil told me this morning he had told him. Joe should have had the letter and cable recalling him by now. He’ll probably fly back that day. I suppose,’ she added slowly, ‘you couldn’t pay him another flying visit? If you are short of cash I’ll gladly lend you the fare. The least I can do ‒ as one “other woman” to another. He’ll probably be very annoyed with you and furious with me, but what the hell! Being annoyed’ll take his mind off the future. And I doubt he’ll stay annoyed.’

  ‘You think I should go back to Spain?’ I demanded. ‘Now?’

  ‘If you can’t get away to-night, to-morrow. I’m sure the Stangers won’t object. Why not? Don’t you want to see him?’

  ‘Of course, I do. But …’ I hesitated without knowing why, since there was nothing I wanted more than to be with him. ‘Joe likes to make his own moves.’

  ‘But the whole point is, he can’t. Now, can he?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No. It has to be me.’ I stood up none too steadily. ‘I must ask Lady Stanger if I can borrow her husband’s secretary. I’ve no idea how much it’s going to cost, so I may want to borrow some money. As one “other woman” to another, Mrs Delaney’ ‒ I smiled at her ‒ ‘thank you very much for everything. Do help yourself to another sherry. You deserve it.’

  Chapter Eleven

  LA SEÑORITA INGLESA

  Sir Robert said any understanding of the female mind was beyond the powers of a simple surgeon, but he was gratified his secretary had been able to render me all the necessary assistance.

  Miss Armstrong had produced a seat for me on a London-Gibraltar flight next morning. I did not sleep much that night. The snow had stopped; I kept watching for it to start again. I was convinced every airport in the country would be closed before I got away.

  When Lady Stanger came to call me I was up and dressed. She now knew nearly as much about my affairs as I did myself. She asked me to spend my next free week-end with them. ‘There’s nothing like a Barny’s training for teaching a woman perseverance. No, my dear! Don’t thank me! I don’t know whether it’s a sign of getting old, or just plain immaturity, but I love a romance!’

  Frances rang before I left. She had not yet had her flaming row with Mark, as she had decided not to tell him she had called on me until that night. ‘He would be bound to feel himself forced to send off warning cables under the O.P.A. It’ll be far better if you catch Joe off his guard. How do you feel?’

  ‘Queasy. Robbie’s loaded me with travel pills.’

  She laughed. ‘There’s one thing bothering me. Where are you going to stay? With the two men?’

  ‘No. Robbie said that wouldn�
�t do at all. You know I told you he met that Spanish doctor? Well, his wife was at school in England. Robbie did one of his human dynamo acts late last night, got a call through to them, and asked if the Señora would be kind enough to entertain a young female friend of his wife’s as a week-end guest. She’s never even met me, but she said yes.’

  She said she was glad to hear I was going to be properly chaperoned. ‘Will she let you talk to Joe alone?’

  ‘God knows. I don’t know anything.’

  ‘You’ll be all right. Oh, hell! I’ve just thought of another snag: will this female or her husband tip Joe off?’

  ‘Don’t know that either. They live some way from the Eastons.’

  ‘Just another chance you’ll have to take. You’ll be all right,’ she repeated, ‘and what if you do come back with a pair of black eyes? I’ll lend you the raw steak I shall certainly need after my ever-loving hears what his wife has done!’

  The car Miss Armstrong had ordered by cable was waiting when I reached Gibraltar at one o’clock local time. It was newer and better-sprung than Miguel’s taxi. The driver was a Mr MacDonald. He was a stocky, middle-aged Gibraltarian with a strong North American accent superimposed on an Andalusian lisp. He told me he was bilingual and frequently forgot whether he was using English or Spanish. As a young man he had worked some years as a cab-driver in New York. He was very interested to hear my father was there, and while we waited at the first frontier asked me to visit him. ‘New York City is the greatest, Señorita.’

  ‘Yet you came back?’

  He shrugged. ‘I’m a Rock Scorpion, Señorita. Born on the Rock. I’ve got all my folks here. New York City was a great spot, but I got real lonesome for my folks. I guess a guy needs to be where he belongs.’

  Two of the guards at the Spanish frontier recognized me from my last visit, obviously took my return as a personal compliment to themselves, and greeted me with wide smiles, bows, and cries of, ‘Ah, ha! La señorita inglesa!’ plus a great deal more which I did not understand, but which had my driver looking somewhat self-satisfied. Then one of their questions made him turn to me. ‘They want to know if the sick lady and her baby are better?’