Nurse Greve

by Jane Arbor

  “Not when you have had even a scrap of cosmopolitan experience. And on the Riviera with Maman I had more than that. Compared with Italian men or Spaniards—But who was that attractive man you came in with? Is he your beau?”

  The abrupt question had taken Tessa off guard. Her instinct rose against denying her close interest in Rex. But on the other hand she was reluctant to make the claim which had never been defined. So she had hedged with the light reply: “M’m. One of them,” and did not care greatly if Camille had read it as a gentle snub.

  But Camille’s eyes had widened to regard her with new respect.

  “You mean you are keeping him guessing? And one or two others besides? Oh—that’s what I adore to do myself! We must-—how do you say it in English—compare notes one day! You could even, perhaps, give me some hints. Because really you are very pretty—in an English way, of course.” And as her ingenuous gaze met Tessa’s reflected eyes, only the secrecy of that little, withdrawn smile had made the compliment appear slightly grudging.

  A group of other guests had surged in then, separating them. And Tessa, going to find Rex and to tell him jokingly that, being English, he would find making Camille’s acquaintance rather uphill work, had had no intuitive warning that that brief exchange with the French girl might later recoil with the vigour of a released spring.

  She stood alone, toying with the stem of her wineglass until presently Sir Bartram came across to her.

  To her intense gratification he remembered her well and could even put an approximate date to the period she had spent as theatre nurse in his operating theatre during her last training year at St. Faith’s.

  “But you decided for District nursing against ward work in the end?” he inquired with kindly interest.

  Confirming that, Tessa told him that she had thought district work would offer different and perhaps more broadening scope, and they chatted of medical matters until other guests joined their host and Tessa found herself upon the fringe of a group, mainly male and discussing matters outside her experience.

  She looked about for Rex and saw him now, still in Camille’s circle. Her hand lay in his, palm upward, and his forefinger was tracing a line there, as if he might be telling her fortune aloud to the others. They were all laughing a great deal, and Tessa, though she was surprised at the intimacy Rex had achieved so quickly, decided to join them.

  But something—some intuition that Rex preferred to expand his undoubted charm alone—held her back. Besides, before now he had been eloquent on the subject of girls who sought to tie possessive labels to their men, and not for worlds would she appear to need to claim him from Camille.

  She remained where she was, and suddenly she was listening more closely to the talk going on at her side. To the scholarly looking man who stood between them Sir Bartram was saying: “Yes. The fellow has the makings of one of the best men in general surgery today. But after he had done some remarkable work for me at the Brevitt Clinic when I was connected with it, he wouldn’t let me advise him to specialise. He said he wanted to put in some years in general practice rather than accept a permanent surgical appointment at that date. And as I couldn’t regard the decision as ill-advised, I had to regard it as a victory when recently, I was able to persuade him to pursue his experience here in Northtrenton, where I can keep him in touch.”

  “When did he qualify?”

  “Oh, some years ago. He’s in his mid-thirties now. He’ll specialise one day, without a doubt. But he’ll decide his own ripe time. There’s a lot of character there. Too much so for any enemies he may make along the way.”

  “What did you say his name is?”

  “Callender. Neil Callender. The brilliant product you’ll often get from mixed stock. English father. Norwegian mother—and his whole outward appearance an inheritance from her—”

  The Viking look! thought Tessa. So it was his mother who had bequeathed height, tawny colouring and those steady blue eyes to Neil Callender ... She found herself being included in the conversation when Sir Bartram addressed her directly: “But of course you, for one, will know Dr. Callender, won’t you, Nurse Greve? Or ought I now to call you God-daughter-by-marriage, which you are?”

  “Plain ‘Tessa’ would be shorter, Sir Bartram,” she smiled, adding: “Yes, Dr. Callender’s practice is in The Chase, which is my District. And I’ve already worked with some of his cases.”

  “You have? Then you won’t need my introduction.” Sir Bartram turned back to his friend. “But you’d like a word with him? Yes, over there now—” And with a bow to excuse himself to Tessa, he drew the other man across the room to where Neil Callender, head and shoulders above his neighbours, stood alone.

  She realised that it was no coincidence that he and their host should know each other well. For medicine, like the Army or the Civil Service, brought men into partnership, summarily flung them apart and as readily threw them together again. But she thought he might be surprised by her own connection here. As she saw Sir Bartram nodding in her direction she realised that he was making her explanations for her. And a few minutes later Neil Callender came over to her.

  He indicated her empty glass. “What may I get for you?” he asked.

  She told him and with mixed emotions waited while he went to intercept two sherries from a passing tray. In a personal sense they had not met since the day, some weeks back, when she had driven him into the city, and after which her pride had smarted for a long time under the knowledge that he had guessed at and despised her need to protect Rex.

  His hint that he had not understood her motives implied that he had wanted to criticise them, and all the way home she had rehearsed the withering retorts she had not been quick-witted enough to make. But a day or two later they had met on a case; their approach to each other had been wholly professional and since then time had changed her briefly roused hostility to the diffidence which she was feeling now. When he returned to her she sought a subject of common interest by asking him if Dr. Wake was also at the party.

  “No,” he said. “I think her acquaintanceship with our host is only professional. Tonight, too, she is taking the district’s rota surgery duty, and she also had a case she particularly wanted to stand by.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Tessa, and was silent. For she knew the case to be one of puerperal fever, now blessedly rare but still to be dreaded. The young mother had been too ill even for a move to hospital. Its skill and modern drugs had had to be brought to her, and Tessa knew how much of Judith’s leisure had been spent at the bedside, watching the patient’s progress.

  Upon the impulse of the knowledge she added after a moment: “I suppose you’d think it unprofessional—or unnecessary—if I said how much I admire Dr. Wake? As a doctor, I mean—” The afterthought was prompted by her fear that Neil Callender should think she was presuming to approve his close friendship with Judith Wake.

  He was studying the wine in his glass. Then: “Unprofessional, perhaps. Unnecessary? No, an honest tribute of praise is never that, and I’m gratified by appreciation of Judith Wake from any quarter. In fact, as I’m in a minority in acclaiming the merits of women in medicine, probably my views are influenced by my admiration for Judith in particular. But if you admire her too you’d hardly hold that against me?”

  “No, indeed. I’ve told you—she is all I think a doctor should be. You have known her a very long time, I think you said?”

  “Since long before she married. And her husband, though older than either of us, was one of my best friends. You knew she was widowed?”

  “Nurse Hatfield told me. Also that she came back into practice only after her husband died.”

  Neil Callender frowned. “Yes—and nearly killed herself from overwork in the process. Six months or so ago I had to almost forcibly to carry her off to Majorca for a rest. I threatened her then that I’d go into professional partnership with her in order to keep an eye on her, and when the chance offered, I did.”

  That they took holidays together see
med to confirm Rita Hatfield’s suggestion that it might be only a question of time before they married. But as she couldn’t presume so, Tessa replied with a non-committal: “I’m glad of that, for her sake,” adding more impulsively: “I do envy you all the interests you must have in common with Dr. Wake. You—think a great deal of her, don’t you?”

  There was a tiny pause. Then: “An understatement,” he murmured. “I care a great deal for her. And differently from the way I’ve cared for any other woman. But that’s another story.”

  Differently. For Tessa the choice of the word was deep with unspoken meaning. A man, she thought, spoke of caring “differently” for only the one woman who was his all-in-all. But if Neil Callender had been upon the brink of a fuller confidence, evidently he had regretted it at once. After that sudden check he turned aside to stub out his cigarette and his next remark was rather studiedly a piece of Smalltalk.

  Tessa answered him as lightly. But she was thinking that though she had told him she had envied him his relationship with Judith Wake, suddenly, inexplicably, she envied Judith more.

  Presently they were separated by a surge of movement towards another room for dancing. Dr. Callender said he thought he would join a bridge four and Rex appeared from somewhere to claim Tessa, guiding her with accustomed expertise on to the crowded floor.

  They had partnered each other for so long that her steps responded to his lightest signal almost before it was made. Dancing with him, she was always happy. For on a dance floor they were one entity, not two people at all, and when the music slowed to its inevitable stop she always slipped from his arms with regret.

  Tonight as a thought struck her she challenged laughingly: “Rex, how on earth did you guess who had been responsible for the interior decoration of the house? By knowing, you had Godmother ready to eat out of your hand!”

  He glanced down at her with assumed lofty indulgence. “That,” he said, “was the object of the exercise!”

  “But how did you know? I hadn’t so much as a clue myself.”

  “An admission that you don’t read the glossier weeklies, darling.”

  “Well, do you?”

  He grinned. “A benevolent House Committee at St. Faith’s issues slightly out-of-date copies to the various staff common-rooms, don’t you remember? And as a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles that may prove useful I didn’t scorn to learn from them that ‘Chez Philippe’ is ‘the’ only name in interior decorating today. Hence my plunge.”

  “It was still an awfully wild shot,” laughed Tessa.

  “You miss the full beauty of it. If I’d been wrong Lady Catterick would still have been flattered. Since I was right she was enchanted by my observation and respectful of me as a connoisseur. Mission—to speak—complete. Didn’t I tell you all I wanted was an introduction? That I’d see to the rest myself?” chuckled Rex.

  Glancing up at him Tessa recognised from the brightness of his eyes that he was well pleased with himself. For her own part she did not know whether she was disarmed by his frankness or shocked by the admitted calculation of his move. She was still debating the point when she realised that Camille Lejour was dancing very near them.

  In the crowd neither couple was able immediately to move on, and as the others “trod ground” and swayed to the rhythm Camille formed her lips into a provocative kissing-mouth in Rex’s direction. He made a face back at her, then from Camille for Tessa there was another of those withdrawn, lazy smiles, and each pair danced on.

  Tessa said lightly: “Having successfully ensnared Lady Catterick, so far as I can see you haven’t been an entire failure with Camille!”

  To her dismay Rex looked affronted. “Don’t be petty, darling. The lesser manifestations of jealousy don’t become you,” he rapped out.

  “I’m not jealous!” disclaimed Tessa hotly.

  Rex said: “No need either, though she’s an attractive child. Incidentally, thanks for forewarning me that Mademoiselle has a phobia against Englishmen.”

  “Forewarning you?”

  “Yes. It enabled me to have a French ancestry ready to be produced.”

  Tessa leaned back against his arm in order to get his face into full focus. “But you aren’t! You haven’t!”

  He drew her close again. “Of course I haven’t. But for the purpose in view, ‘Girling’ became quite a convincing derivation from ‘Guerlain,’ and some respected English forebears appeared as a whole tumbril full of French aristos destined for the guillotine, which by a miracle they contrived to escape.”

  “Rex, you didn’t tell Camille that?” Now Tessa knew she was shocked.

  “Of course I did. It brightened her interest and sympathy at once, and it was a harmless enough tarradiddle, goodness knows.”

  “It wasn’t harmless—you deliberately used it. And it wasn’t a tarradiddle. It was an unnecessary and quite gratuitous lie. In her indignation Tessa halted so abruptly that Rex nearly tripped over her feet. A passing couple glanced at them curiously, and Rex said easily: “My pet, you don’t mince your words, do you? Meanwhile, you’re holding up the traffic. Do we finish this one or don’t we? Just say—”

  She was reluctant to make a scene, so she allowed him to put his arm around her again. But she moved stiffly within its circle and the spellbinding pleasure of dancing with him was broken.

  Narrow. Hidebound. Prudish. What other belittling epithets were there for her attitude? She realised that Rex saw the distasteful ruse as just another successful move, and it might have been more tactful to point out that it wasn’t even practical politics—that if he came to know the Cattericks better, the deception was sure to catch up on him one day.

  But that would have been to seek peace with him at any price, and though she had often done it before she had never sacrificed to it so deeply rooted a principle as that you didn’t lie for gain, nor even for prestige. Miserably, knowing that she must make a stand this time, she sought the arguments which would convince him that her anger had been justified. But at the end of the dance he frustrated her by bowing and leaving her without a word.

  Another partner claimed her at once, and after that another. Later, at the buffet, she was drawn into a group which included Rex and Camille and others of the few younger people. But though their strained relations did not emerge in the general conversation, Rex did not ask her to dance again. As the evening wore on her feelings against him hardened and the journey home with him loomed as a stormy ordeal that must be faced.

  However, even this was to be postponed. She would have been ready to go long before the guests began to thin out, but she would not ask Rex to take her while he still appeared to be enjoying himself. And when the general exodus had really emptied the guest-rooms, he was nowhere to be seen. Neither, as Lady Catterick pointed out when she explained her plight, was Camille.

  But Lady Catterick made light of Tessa’s concern lest, in being forced to wait for Rex to reappear, she should be outstaying her welcome. And not until Sir Bartram’s man returned to report that no car of the description Tessa had given now remained in the courtyard, and a maid said that Camille had not retired to her room, did it emerge that Rex and Camille might be absent together.

  “How tiresome of Camille!” fretted Lady Catterick. “I know she is crazy about motoring at night, and it isn’t the first time she has been indiscreet enough to persuade a young man to take her for a drive as late as this. But it was particularly naughty of her to choose your escort, Tessa. So very annoying for you, dear. And I find it harder to understand since that rugged, outdoor sort of man has never been her type. But you must try to be a little blind. After all, Camille is rather prettily ingénue, and all kinds of men are apt to go slightly foolish about her. Somehow she manages to bowl them completely over. You must have a cigarette, my dear, while you are waiting.”

  Reluctant to visualise Rex being bowled over by Camille and puzzled to hear his urbanity described as either rugged or outdoor, Tessa accepted the cigarette. But when Lady Catterick contin
ued dreamily: “Now your own type—yes. So downright-looking, so masculine. You know, I always want to compare huge, sandy men like your Mr. Girling to marmalade cats, because they are so aggressively male too—” she looked at the older woman in astonishment.

  “Godmother, we—we’re not talking about the same man! Mr. Girling isn’t rugged or sandy. He’s tall, but he is slim and dark. Don’t you remember? He recognised who had done the decor of your rooms, and early in the evening you took him over to introduce him to Monsieur Philippe.”

  She saw recollection dawn pleasurably in Lady Catterick’s vague eyes. “Oh, that one? You must forgive me, dear. So many new names and faces But if that charming boy is our runaway, who is the big man I mistook for him? The one with whom you were fathoms deep in talk later, and whom you left to stand about by himself while you were dancing?”

  “That was Dr. Callender. He practices in my district, and he’s one of Sir Bartram’s friends whom you can’t have yet met. But when I went to dance he was going to play bridge,” said Tessa a little shortly. She was tired, she was excusably irritated with Rex, and to have to explain away her brief encounter with Neil Callender was the last straw.

  But Lady Catterick persisted: “Then he must have changed his mind. For I saw him watching the dancers avidly, as if in search of someone. I thought it must be you, and I said to myself ‘What a little coquette, not to give him even one dance’—”

  She broke off suddenly to glance beyond Tessa. “Ah, Bartram, there you are! Look, Tessa is still with us. She can’t get home, because the young man she came with has been carried off somewhere by my naughty Camille. And what do you think! I got matters so mixed up that I’ve been trying for minutes to thrust upon her another young man, who, it appears, is just a doctor she happens to work with. Merely an acquaintance of yours, and of no interest to her whatever Oh, dear, now what have I said?”