Nurse Greve

by Jane Arbor

  “Oh, Rex!” For a moment she leaned against him for comfort, then thrust him away. “Rex, something has happened. I’ve just found that lonely Captain Furse I’ve told you of, unconscious in his flat.”

  “What do you mean, unconscious? What is wrong with him?”

  “I don’t know, but it looks like an overdose of a sleeping draught.”

  Rex whistled. “You mean—suicide?”

  “No!” Tessa’s resistance to the thought made her tone sharp. “He wouldn’t have done that. I know he wouldn’t. Why, only this morning he had news of a daughter he hadn’t seen for years. She is coming from abroad to take him back with her.”

  Rex did not look convinced. “Could be—if he’s as self-contained as you’ve described him—that he couldn’t take the idea of the change. But I ought to have a look at him. What are we waiting for?”

  “For Dr. Callender.” As she saw Rex frown she added quickly: “He is the Captain’s doctor and he’ll be here at any minute. I must go down, but wait here, won’t you? You may be needed.” She stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek lightly, then ran down to find Neil Callender already at the door of the other flat.

  She saw him glance curiously at her evening dress. As they entered he queried: “You weren’t on a duty visit I gather?”

  “Oh, no. I was going to a dance at St. Faith’s and I’d come to show him my dress.”

  “He was expecting you?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  She stood by while he examined the unconscious man on the bed. As he straightened and met her eyes she ventured: “What is it, Doctor? What has he taken?”

  He mentioned a probability, added an alternative. Then: “At a rough diagnosis I’d say he’d come through—that he didn’t take—enough. But the question remains—where did he get it? And where is it? They don’t usually tidy up so thoroughly.”

  He must have seen her flinch at a choice of words which, though less stark than Rex’s “Suicide,” had been equally harsh of meaning. His glance was compassionate as he said gently: “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed that without proof. He is a friend of yours, you say? You can’t bear to think it of him—”

  “I can’t think it!” she burst out. “He was happy this morning. He had had news of his daughter which at first was a shock. But it was a happy shock, you understand. I left him looking forward to seeing her tomorrow after years of separation. And later I saw him again—” But her hand flew apprehensively to her cheek at that memory. “What’s the matter? You saw him again? Where?”

  “I’ve just remembered. He was—coming out of the chemist’s shop on the Parade.”

  “The chemist’s on? That’s Nupple. A private man. Lives over the shop, doesn’t he? We can get him. Is there a telephone?” The clipped statements and questions rapped out, and Tessa heard herself answering as urgently: “Not here. The porter’s desk. Or my flat is nearer. Mr. Girling is there and will let you in.”

  On his way out he flung over his shoulder: “While I’m gone, look for it. There must be at least a container somewhere. We’ve got to know, and Nupple may not be able to help.”

  When he returned a few minutes later she silently handed him a chemist’s pillbox. He snatched it and, flinging a trail of the tablets it contained on to the table, began counting them. “Nupple’s label, all right. Where did you find it?” “Neatly put away in his toilet cupboard, next to his shaving tackle. Is it? And—did he get it from Nupple?”

  “Yes. That is, Nupple is ready to swear he dispensed vitamin pills to my prescription.”

  “Then Captain Furse didn’t? Oh, thank God!” breathed Tessa. “But what a terrible mistake for Nupple to have made!”

  “I don’t think he made it.”

  “But these aren’t vitamin pills, are they?”

  “No, and our friend has taken enough to cause a good deal of discomfort when he comes to, but, as I thought, not enough for danger. Nupple isn’t to blame either, and his observation is pretty acute. He could remember handing over the two prescriptions in quick succession. Then, he says, both customers paused to make other purchases at the counter. It’s easy to deduce what happened then.”

  “They each laid down their packets and took away the wrong ones when they left? Oh, I’m so glad—so very glad!”

  A tense line about Neil Callender’s jaw softened. “There’s still a customer of Nupple’s who is going to wonder why his sleeping-draught doesn’t work tonight!” he smiled. “Nupple is trying to contact him now. Meanwhile, we have our own trouble.”

  He returned to the bed, took Captain Furse’s pulse once more, nodded as if moderately satisfied, then looked up at Tessa.

  “He can be left to come round naturally, but as he hasn’t anyone living here with him we’d better get him moved.”

  “To hospital? Oh, I’d hoped not!” exclaimed Tessa in distress. “I did tell you, didn’t I—his daughter is arriving from abroad tomorrow, and I feel he’d hate her to find him there. That is, if it isn’t absolutely necessary?”

  “It isn’t. But he can’t be left alone.”

  “He needn’t be. I’ll stay with him.”

  Neil Callender’s eyes travelled over her from the shining chestnut hair to the threaded straps of her pale green evening sandals. He said: “But you are not on duty, and your escort, who came down with me from your flat, wasn’t disposed, I thought, to be too indulgent over the delay already.”

  “But he’ll understand! And there’ll be other dances for us—heaps of other things we can share!”

  “Perhaps. But if you want to put the suggestion to him he is waiting in the hall now.”

  When Tessa hurried out, leaving the door ajar, she found that Rex had brought her cloak and evening bag down with him, but as he made to swing the cloak over her shoulders she warded off his hands.

  “No, Rex,” she said urgently. “I’m not coming. I can’t.”

  “Not coming? Why, the old chap isn’t in danger, is he? Why can’t Callender pop him into a ward for the night?” Rex frowned.

  “There are reasons. I don’t want him to have to go to hospital. But I’ll explain another time. Just go without me tonight, Rex, there’s a dear!”

  “Go without you? Look here, Tessa, what’s the odd idea? Standing me up at this hour without a partner for the Rugger Dance, and I suppose you’ve forgotten that I’m off home first thing tomorrow and that we shan’t see each other for three weeks or so? Why, hang it all, you’re not even on duty! Callender has no right!”

  He broke off as the door behind Tessa opened wide and Neil Callender stood on the threshold. He said shortly: “I agree. I have no right whatsoever to expect Nurse Greve to stay with this patient. The nurse who is on duty must take over.”

  Tessa faced about. She felt her lips working nervously as she said: “Please, Dr. Callender! And Nurse Hatfield isn’t available. She is on call to a maternity case for Dr. Henry, I happen to know.”

  Rex began truculently: “Well, what’s wrong with St. Faith’s?” But across that Neil Callender cut icily: “I have no intention of bargaining for your services, Nurse. You will please consider that you have no further obligations in this case at all after you have remained long enough to enable me to telephone for an emergency bed.”

  But as he made to pass them both Tessa stepped in his way. As she did so she had the odd impression that Rex was no longer there. This was an issue between herself and Neil Callender and it was a victory she meant to gain.

  Very quietly she said: “If you’ve decided that it would be best to put Captain Furse into hospital, I know I can’t interfere. But if you are only doing it because he can’t be left alone, then I can insist on staying, if not as a nurse, as a friend.”

  For a long moment there was silence while she felt that the man before her was taking the measure of her defiance. Then he turned on his heel and went back into the bedroom, leaving the door open behind him.

  She heard him ask evenly: “How long will it take you to change?” But a
fterwards she realised that she had not even noticed Rex go until the outer door of the flat had slammed.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Ten days later the flat below Tessa’s was empty and Captain Furse and his canary were already on their way to their new life. For Tessa herself other cases, other urgencies pressed in, and she supposed that in time her vigil of that night would recede in her memory and become just another thread in the pattern of work she had chosen and loved.

  And yet there had been a difference. Captain Furse had not been merely a “case.” Her sharp agony of anxiety had been for a friend, and her resolve to see him through his particular shadowed valley had made nonsense of any question of conflict between pleasure and duty while he needed help.

  Towards dawn that night the old man had come to sufficiently to take the strong black coffee she had ready for him, and though he was still heavy and bemused, his later sleep had been a natural one. Neil Callender had returned very early to look at his patient, to say that he would arrange for Nurse Hatfield to take on Tessa’s work for the day, and that he had already checked train connections with the time of the ship’s docking at Liverpool. Captain Furse’s daughter would be contacted by loud-speaker at Northtrenton Central Station, and it might be a good thing for Tessa to be there to explain matters to her.

  “Would that satisfy you by putting you in on the happy ending?” Neil had asked when outlining this plan. And Tessa, agreeing that it would, had prayed that for Captain Furse it might prove only the end of a happy beginning.

  Her own days continued to fill up with work and leisure. From his home in Banbury Rex wrote, making no reference at all to the scene on which they had parted. He said he was alternately being “hoggishly lazy” and playing furious golf. That the Rugger Dance had been “an impossible show” without her. That they might be out of touch during the^ last four or five days of his leave, as he was going motoring with a friend and “might land up anywhere.” That even the prospect of coming back to work “had something” for him as it would mean seeing her again.

  It was one of his more airy letters, very sure of its welcome, coolly assuming its sureness of her. Reading it with vague dissatisfaction, Tessa wondered whether every girl hungered for just the little more than some letters said, or whether it was only Rex who now and then could make an invisible barrier of the very ease and fluency with which he wrote.

  With several days of his leave still to go, she was glad when Hilary Pugh rang up to ask her if she would join a party from St. Faith’s going over to Stratford-on-Avon for the Shakespeare’s Birthday performance of The Merchant of Venice at the Memorial Theatre.

  “Don’t dress up. It’ll only be all girls together, a communal bus and circle seats,” Hilary warned when Tessa had said she would love to go. But Tessa made a mental reservation that at least she needed new gloves, and decided to use the morning of her day off to go into the city centre to buy them.

  Afterwards she went for coffee to the store’s restaurant. She chose a window table and, absorbed by her view of the crowded street below, heard no one approach until she was greeted by name.

  “ ’Alio, Tessa,” twittered the voice of Camille Lejour. “Do you know, you’ve got quite the best place in the room? May I share with you, or aren’t you—alone?”

  The arch question almost accused Tessa of keeping a guilty assignation, but Tessa said calmly: “Quite alone,” and cleared the chair opposite of her parcels and handbag.

  “Then may I really?”

  “Do.” For all she had nothing against Camille, except that mischievous kidnapping of Rex and his car, and a day’s outing with him about which he had been voluntarily frank, Tessa was only too well aware that her own smile of greeting had been cool. She was also acutely conscious that in her sturdy suit and brogues her appearance compared unfavourably with Camille’s petite and Spring-like figure in shantung-lined, powder-blue tweed. Meanwhile Camille was dripping a series of small parcels on to the table and offering a cigarette from her exquisitely chased gold case.

  “Tell what you have been buying,” she urged childishly.

  “Only gloves, a nailbrush and some notepaper. What have you?”

  “Oh—just a nonsense or two I couldn’t resist. I simply have to spend money, don’t you? Really I’m waiting tor Maman. I left her in the shoe department with literally the shop spread about her on the floor while she chooses evening shoes to go with her dress tonight. We’re taking a party over to Stratford-on-Avon for the Birthday Festival—What is the matter?”

  “Nothing.” Tessa stubbed ash from her cigarette. Since the Festival attracted visitors from all over the globe, there was no coincidence about both a “communal bus” from St. Faith’s and an exclusive party from Usherwood converging upon the Memorial Theatre on the Birthday night. But she was reluctant to invite disparaging comparisons in Camille’s mind, and knew she had been wise when, in answer to her quiet: “You’ll love Stratford. And the Theatre by night is quite magical—”

  Camille said airily: “So—? But it is being seen there that really matters, isn’t it? And with the right people, of course.” In Camille’s eyes the “right people” might not include those who had dashed from a ward with half an hour for bathing, changing and snatching a meal, and who would be on duty again at seven in the morning with an eight-hour day before them...

  Camille was saying: “Do you know, we haven’t talked together, you and I, since the night of Maman’s little fete? I suppose you were quite, quite furious with Rex Girling for leaving you to get home by yourself?”

  Tessa’s eyes met the impish black ones levelly. “Oughtn’t I rather to have been furious with you?”

  “With me?” Camille bridled innocently.

  “Well, weren’t you the cause of his being late to take me?”

  “I? Oh—the cause, yes. But you don’t believe that our going for the drive was my idea?”

  “Rex told me so, and I believed him. He said he challenged you to get the car out for him, and when you had done it you just—drove away.”

  “The wretch!” Camille’s little smile belied her tone of annoyance. “What really happened was that when I had put the car on to the open drive, he said that, if I wished, I could drive it until the petrol gave out. Of course I did nothing of the sort, for I knew he had to take you back to the city.”

  “That was thoughtful of you,” said Tessa, snatching at irony as her only weapon to hand. (So far, it was only Rex’s word against Camille’s. And what was Camille’s worth?)

  She was to learn. Camille went on: “I did drive for a time. And when I stopped and said we should go back, of course he would not—until I had allowed him to kiss me. But perhaps he did not tell you that?”

  “I knew he had kissed you. But why ‘of course’?”

  Camille’s shrug was very French. “Because men always wish to kiss one when one is tête-à-tête with them. Don’t you find it so?”

  “And you always permit it?”

  “Oh, no. But I enjoy knowing they want to. And your Rex asked so humbly that I should have been a monster to refuse such a little thing. Not that I should have let him,” added Camille virtuously, “if you had not hinted that you understood the need to experiment and that, besides him, you had—as I think you say—other strings to your bow. You do remember that I asked you what he was to you?”

  Tessa remembered. Also her own reply which, intended to be merely evasive of Camille’s curiosity, had turned full circle upon herself. Or was that self-deception? In their impulse of attraction to each other, would either Camille or Rex have respected any rights of hers, however definite they were?

  She said quietly: “Well, Rex did explain—if rather differently. And if it is any satisfaction to you, I wasn’t—furious.”

  Camille looked slightly taken aback. After a moment she said defensively: “You must not think that at the time I cared one way or the other. I was only letting you know that it was he who pursued me, not vice-versa. Also I should warn you”�
��the secret smile was warming her confidence now—“that you cannot hope to keep so attractive a man on too tight a rein. If you do, he will deceive you. As, on this occasion, your Rex did—at my expense.”

  If she were speaking the truth, what reply was there to that? Tessa made none, and Camille continued smoothly: “Now I shall take my revenge upon him by revealing to you that it was only by bad chance for us that you learned he had taken me to Cheltenham to the Races.”

  Tessa flashed: “I knew he had taken you. He told me without my asking!”

  Camille waved imaginary cigarette smoke from before her face. “Ah—but only after I had warned him that he had better confess or be found out. He did not tell you beforehand, did he? But after I reached home, I learned that Maman knew of it from Challis and so I rung him up to advise him to disarm your accusation before you made it.”

  Tessa drew a breath that seemed to last for ever. She had to moisten her lips before she said: “He told me that he asked you in order to make up a four with another man and girl. Wasn’t that true—either?” She knew that with the question she had destroyed her facade of poise and had given herself into Camille’s merciless hands. But she had to know!

  “Not true at all,” Camille said almost pityingly. “Just he and I. No one else.”

  “I see. And apart from scoring off Rex, what do you hope to gain by telling me this?”

  “‘Scoring off’?” Camille’s brows knitted in perplexity over the idiom, but Tessa felt she only wanted to gain time. She added: “I have told you because I don’t care to do things by deceit. I know that Rex Girling is very much attracted by me, and I don’t want to feel guilty about this. You see, I find him charming too, and to compete with you for his attentions might not be at all fair to you. At least, I have told myself, you should know all about it!”