by Jane Arbor
Tessa blushed deliciously. “There is a reason, I hope. But—”
“How did I guess?” mocked Hilary. “All right, tell me in your own good season. Meanwhile, what time do you want me on the night?”
That week, work on the district increased still more, and on the day of her dinner party Tessa foresaw by late afternoon that she would not be fee to get back to the flat in time to change out of uniform and put the last touches to the meal before her guests were due.
Thank goodness for Hilary! She rang Hilary at St. Faith’s and explained her plight. After outlining her case in the technicalities they both understood she added: “So you see, four-hourly injections at those intervals means the last at seven o’clock. There’s no one in the patient’s house capable of giving it, so I must hang on until it is due. This place is—of course!—at the farthest possible point of the district, so I can’t hope to get back before you and the other two should arrive.”
“I see. I’m to take a frilly apron and my best parlourmaid manner. Is that it?”
“Not only that. There’s the dinner. I’d planned salmon trout and green peas—hot,” mourned Tessa. “Quick, you see, and no trouble, but someone must be there to put them on to cook.”
To that Hilary returned crisply: “Item, one parlourmaid’s apron. One cook’s ditto. How do I effect an entrance into your flat?”
“I’ll ring the porter and tell him to let you in with his pass-key. You’re a lamb and I knew I could rely on you. I’ll get back at soon as I can.” Greatly relieved, Tessa rang off.
But when she returned that evening, though Rex’s car was parked at the kerb, Hilary met her in the tiny hall to announce that Camille had not come with him.
“Camille hasn’t come!” echoed Tessa blankly. “But she promised me she would! If she hadn’t, I—”
Hilary closed the living-room door. “Rex says she excused herself on the plea of a headache and said she hoped you would understand.”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” said Tessa shortly.
Hilary agreed: “I don’t blame you. If she didn’t expect me to be here, she’d know that to back out herself at the last minute would throw you and Rex together with a vengeance. Of course she might have argued that you’d get together better on her plan if she weren’t around. Or—this is nasty but possible—she could have had an idea of trapping you in some way, even if she could only use the fact that you had spent this evening alone together in your flat as a rod for his back later.”
Tessa said: “After the other night, I’d hate to think that of her. The scheme was fantastic, but I believed she was sincere. Oh, dear—how it cuts the ground from under your feet when you’re made to look silly merely because you’ve trusted somebody! However, you’re here, Hilary, and in consequence I must say I never felt less ‘trapped’ in my life. Do you realise this is the second time today I’ve had to thank my stars for you?”
Hilary looked pleased but rueful. “Well, as a foiler of plots I may be without equal. But as a cook I’m afraid I’m not so hot. How do you make a mayonnaise sauce without achieving a curdled mess?”
“You could do it in a double saucepan. But just let me have a word with Rex and time to change, and I’ll be there.”
“No, I’ll have another shot if you can run to another egg.” And Hilary returned to the kitchen, leaving Tessa to hang up her hat and uniform coat.
As Rex levered himself from an arm-chair to greet her she noticed that he seemed to carry no such marks of strain as Camille had done. He was as handsome and urbane as ever, but, going towards him, touching his hand, she felt no stirring or curiosity about him for her own sake—only for Camille’s.
She said easily: “Hullo, Rex. Sorry I’m late.”
“As always, you’re well worth waiting for.” His glance appraised her in the old way and his handclasp tightened on hers.
She withdrew her hand coolly and without haste. “I’m sorry Camille didn’t feel well enough to come,” she told him.
“She was too. But she’s been a bit under the weather lately. Off her food, vague headaches—that sort of thing.”
On the point of agreeing that Camille had not looked herself, Tessa remembered that Rex was not supposed to know they had met. And when he changed the subject she thought, he is covering up for her. Probably they had had another quarrel before they set out and Camille had refused to accompany him. Tessa found she infinitely preferred to believe that than that Camille had never intended to come.
Presently Tessa excused herself in order to change. In her bedroom she glanced, as always, at the silver-framed calendar beside her mirror, counting the days to Neil’s return. Ten more still to go! How was he likely to let her know he was back? Would he telephone? Or would he just come to her? “Such first things as we have to say should be said face to face—”
Her thoughts of him were cut sharply across by the ringing of the telephone in the living-room. Still in her slip, she reached quickly for her dressing-gown as she heard the kitchen door open and Hilary call through to Rex: “Look, I’m stirring sauce madly. Answer that thing for Tessa, will you? If it’s a call to a case, say she’s off. Or no—if it is that, you’d better tell her, I suppose. Anyway, see—”
Tessa waited. She heard Rex speaking, heard him, as if in answer to a question, giving his name. Then she thought he said, “Well, if you don’t want her for a case, I’m afraid she’s engaged,” before she heard the characteristic “ping” of the receiver being replaced.
Hurriedly she pulled her dress over her head and was still clasping its belt as she went through to the living-room.
“Who was that, Rex?” she asked. “Considering it’s my phone, weren’t you a bit non-committal, not to mention abrupt?”
He smiled at her placatingly. “Hilary said not to bother you if it wasn’t a case. And it wasn’t.”
“But who was it? You didn’t explain why I wasn’t answering, and probably I ought to ring back.”
Rex said: “Sorry, and all that. But as soon as I told him you were engaged, he hung up on me. It was your friend Callender, as a matter of fact.”
CHAPTER NINE
“Dr. Callender! Neil?” Momentarily the room seemed to spin. But as Tessa’s hand went out to take up the receiver, she saw Rex’s eye speculatively upon her and realised that she could not possibly share with him her moment of delight at hearing Neil’s voice once more. And though she wondered at Neil’s having rung off so abruptly, she supposed that he must have called in a hurry from some point on his return journey, or even, finding she was not alone, had felt the same kind of diffidence about speaking to her.
Rex was saying: “What’s the matter? It didn’t sound particularly urgent, but I shall get him again for you?”
Tessa made a business of adjusting her belt. “I’ve just realised I don’t know where he would have rung from,” she said.
“But from his surgery—surely?” Rex’s lifted brows and tiny pause implied his interest in any different information. But she disappointed him with: “Probably, though not necessarily, as he’s been to a congress in Holland and wasn’t supposed to be back in harness yet.”
“Well, if he wasn’t back on the job, why should he be ringing you?” Rex persisted.
“I don’t know. Since he rang off, does it matter? If he wants me, he’ll ring again.” As Tessa excused herself to go to Hilary in the kitchen it was sweet to know that it didn’t matter, that this time her sureness that Neil would ring again or come to her was almost comparable to her certainty of tomorrow’s sunrise. And even if he did not, this time no pride of hers need keep her from seeking him. In any case, she hoped he would not ring again until she was alone.
Over a delicious dinner—for which she disclaimed any of the honour due to Hilary—she had to wrench her thoughts from Neil to face the coming talk with Rex. Hilary would take away their coffee-cups and absent herself tactfully, and then Rex must be tackled in fulfillment of the promise to Camille. But what on earth was she to say
to him? And what result did she hope to get?
It made it easier, on the whole, when Rex himself gave her a lead. As soon as they were alone and when he had lighted her cigarette, he asked—bluntly for him: “This dinner party for Camille and me, Tessa—was it entirely without ulterior motive on your part—or on hers?”
Tessa said, gaining time: “I don’t quite understand. Why do you ask?”
He passed his hand over his smooth hair in a weary little gesture which belied his earlier jauntiness. “Only because I suspect Camille may have talked to you beforehand about us. Has she, by the way? Or oughtn’t I expect to be told?”
“‘About us?’ You mean, about Camille and you, don’t you?” But as she echoed his phrase she dreaded hearing his reply, lest it revealed that Camille, after all, had been right and that their marriage was headed for disaster through a face-about by Rex towards herself.
To her utter relief, however, he disarmed her with a blank: “But of course about Camille and me. Who else?”
“Of course,” she agreed quickly. And because it seemed you must have fallen to some persuasion from Camille, yes.”
“I knew you had. When I suggested a meeting you curled into your shell at once, so I guessed that this time you must have fallen to some persuasion from Camille. What did she tell you, by the way?”
Tessa raised candid eyes to his. “She hardly needed to say anything. Her looks said almost enough. She is afraid, Rex—very much afraid for her marriage.”
“Well, she’s not more afraid than I am. But why?” He sat forward and thumped a fist into his palm. “That’s what I want to know—why? Look, Tessa, I don’t think I show it, but I’m getting pretty near desperation, and this doesn’t seem the time to respect confidences that might keep us off the rocks. What did Camille tell you, and why did she come to you?”
Tessa said steadily: “She thinks that you’ve found you made a mistake in marrying her because you’re still in love with me.”
“She doesn’t?” Rex’s deep-drawn breath and incredulous stare were comment enough. He added awkwardly: “Oh, help Sorry, I didn’t mean that. But—”
“That’s all right. I only wish Camille could have heard you. But she does believe it and thinks your constant quarrels stem from it. And she came to me as a last resort, to ask me to see you and to show you in effect, if not in so many words, that you were wasting your time. That way, she hoped you might turn back to her.”
“But I love her! As much now as when I married her, and then it was with all I had!”
“I’m glad, Rex. I badly wanted to hear you say that.”
“Yes, well—coming from me to you, it sounds pretty odd, I daresay. Nice of you not to mind, when I must have told you from time to time that I loved you, eh?”
“From time to time,” confirmed Tessa, her lips curving into a smile.
“And I believed it. But I’ve got to admit now that it never came near to the feeling I have for Camille. That dawned like a—sort of sun one morning. Or was it one night—the night you begged me not to marry her until I was sure, but then to go ahead? Anyway, I knew then that nothing behind me had been love; that nothing in front mattered, except marrying her. I suppose,” he pondered, “that she appealed to every scrap of protective instinct I possess, and you never did to the same degree, because you’d got so much character and courage of your own. A bit downright with flighty Rex on occasion, weren’t you, Tessa dear?”
“Was I?” she laughed. “But why, if you can talk like this to me, haven’t you convinced Camille of it beyond all danger of her thinking otherwise? She says that when she has taunted you with my name during quarrels, you haven’t denied it even then.”
“I hadn’t an idea she could be serious! I thought it was just something to say. You know the way a woman needs to throw everything bar the kitchen stove when she’s mad.”
“Oh, Rex! Used I to ‘throw everything’ too?”
“No, you never did, bless you.”
“I’m glad.” Tessa added thoughtfully: “You know, I’m wondering whether that is something that Camille mightn’t understand and could manage to misconstrue—‘Bless you’ and ‘Tessa dear’ and ‘You are always worth waiting for’—empty compliments that don’t mean a thing and don’t need to any more, so far as we’re concerned. But you see, if you make a habit of it with other girls, Camille may—”
Rex protested in bewilderment: “But hang it! When I’ve stopped paying compliments to pretty girls, I shall have lost the knack of ’em for Camille! And I love her as well!”
“Then tell her so—often,” urged Tessa seriously.
“I do. I have done. But it’s not the sort of thing you say in the middle of a quarrel. And lately we haven’t always ‘made up’.”
“Did you quarrel tonight, and that’s why she didn’t come?”
“No. She really had a headache, I think, and looked rotten. And as for the quarrels, I’m afraid I know the cause only too well.”
Tessa said quietly: “I can guess. It’s Lady Catterick, isn’t it?”
“Yes. She thinks I’m the fortune-hunter I admit I meant to be, and she has never forgiven me for marrying Camille without her consent. When I’m in hospital there are hours and hours when she has Camille at the mercy of her tongue, and I don’t flatter myself I come out with a shred of decency to my name. But what can I do? Usherwood is Camille’s home—”
“It’s not,” declared Tessa, surprised by her own emphasis. “Not any more. Camille’s home is where you are. And if you aren’t at Usherwood, she needn’t be.”
As on the night when she had begged him to marry Camille, Rex looked at her as if she had offered him a foreign but intriguing idea. He said doubtfully: “There’s my appointment at St. Faith’s—”
But Tessa urged: “There are other hospitals. Even other countries. And Camille loves you enough, Rex, for ‘whither thou goest’ and the rest. I’m convinced of that.”
Rex said slowly: “You were right before. You could be again.” With a confident nod he rose as if he needed action. But as he began: “Do you know, I’ve an idea Camille and I are already on our way?” the telephone shrilled.
Watching Tessa, he gestured towards it. “There’s your call, my pet. The one you’ve been on tenterhooks about, ever since your good Neil rang before!”
“Yes. I mean, no.” Tessa blushed when he laughed. But to her surprise he reached the telephone before her. With a hand on the receiver he asked: “Had I better take this?”
“No, why?”
“Nothing.” He stood back. “I just thought I ought to explain myself to Callender, in view of the way I dealt with his last call. I mean, he could be hopping mad to find another chap in his girl’s flat at night, answering her telephone and saying she was ‘engaged.’ And as he knew all about you and me before, he might think the worst. But we can sort that out later. Go ahead now, or the thing will ring off if one of us doesn’t answer it.”
In the split second which passed before Tessa put the receiver to her ear she felt as if she were drowning. The thought flashed, Rex can’t possibly know what he has said! But when a voice that was not Neil’s came over the wire and she knew with infinite relief that she had not to make her difficult explanation completely unprepared.
The voice—she believed it was Sir Bartram’s—was asking for Rex. She said: “Yes, he’s here,” and handed over the receiver.
Almost at once the tumult of her own thoughts had to be subordinated to the realisation that Rex was hearing bad news. He answered his father-in-law in curt monosyllables, began a question: “Is she?” listened to the answers then turned about, his face set.
He said: “It’s Camille. An acute appendix. They’ll have to operate tonight—”
Tessa breathed: “Oh, Rex—her headache!”
Full of self-reproach, he muttered: “More than that. Those vague pains, that nausea—what a blind fool I’ve been, not to see how they were adding up!” He managed a rueful smile for Tessa. “Look,
my dear, I shall have to go at once.”
“Yes, of course.”
Hilary had joined them by now, and both girls went down to his car with him. He was going straight to St. Faith’s, he said, as Sir Bartram had told him Camille was to be in the operating theatre within an hour. Before he left he laid a hand over Tessa’s. “Thanks for everything,” he said, then added meaningly: “If anything at all depends on me, it’s going to be all right.”
As they returned to the flat Hilary asked: “Do I gather from that that Camille was mistaken after all?”
“Completely. Rex’s reaction was so unflattering to me that it was entirely convincing. He really loves her to distraction, as I daresay you saw now for yourself.”
Hilary nodded. “Yes. I was thinking that for the only time I could remember I was witnessing Rex Girling in the grip of an emotion he really felt. I’d judge that loving Camille and suffering for the experience could make a man of him yet. But if you are not the cause, what has gone wrong between them?”
“It’s Lady Catterick, I think, Rex knew it. I suspected it. I gather she has done her best to poison Camille’s mind against him ever since they married.”
“So what now for them?”
“Rex already has a half-formed plan to leave Usherwood and probably St. Faith’s. I believe he might even take an appointment abroad when—if—”
As Tessa’s voice trailed away Hilary said sensibly: “We’re nurses, Tessa. It’s our job to work against ‘ifs,’ not brood about them. You mustn’t worry too much about Camille.”
Tessa murmured: “I can’t help remembering that I suspected her of faking illness for her own ends. But I’m glad—terribly glad—that she was sincere with me after all and that we parted friends at least.”
