Air Ambulance

by Jean S. MacLeod

  He left them alone with an abruptness which reminded Alison of their first meeting, and she found herself walking uncertainly towards the large double bed in the centre of the sunlit room. It scarcely seemed possible that the man lying there could be Ronald Gowrie, her gay companion of so short a time ago, the cynic who had jeered at love and laughed at fear, the man who had looked into the future without interest and scoffed at the past, the bitter, devil-may-care pilot who had declared that there was no trust left in life.

  He lay quite still, swathed in bandages, with very little of his face visible except the eyes, and these eyes said that his spirit had faltered. He wanted something to hold on to. In his weakness he had stretched out his hand and found nothing, and now that hand was outstretched again.

  “You’ve taken a long time coming,” he accused. “Blair promised you would be here in half an hour.”

  “I thought you might be asleep,” she explained, reaching the bed and letting him clasp her hand. It made her want to weep when he could only press her fingers lightly, and she could not help thinking of the sure, steady hands she had watched at the plane’s controls. “I didn’t want to disturb you before it was time for tea.”

  “You’ve been hurt,” he said, indicating her bandaged arm. “I did that to you.”

  “No don’t blame yourself! That’s the worst sort of thing anyone could do after an accident,” she found herself saying. “It was an accident. No blame can be attached to you.”

  “It was a chance in a million,” he said. “The rubber de-icers going off like that. It was a freak accident. Nobody could have kept the plane up.”

  “Don’t talk about it,” she urged. “You hadn’t time to do anything else. No one could have more than you did in the circumstances.”

  “The patients got away all right,” he muttered as if he had forgotten her. “They sent out another plane. Scottish Centre picked up our message and sent it through to the airport.”

  “Within half an hour,” she told him with pride. “Everybody was standing by.”

  “Yes,” he nodded. “Everybody standing by...” His mind seemed to have slipped back to the companionships he had known in the past three years, to the teamwork and the grumbles and the ready sacrifices, and he smiled. “Poor old Gussie! It was his night out with that blonde he met at the hospital dance too! He must have been livid.”

  “Who was she?” Alison asked, biting a lip that had suddenly begun to tremble. “The blonde?”

  “Can’t remember her name,” he muttered. “Christine Something-or-other. It doesn’t matter.” He watched the door open, someone coming in with their tea tray. “This is Mrs. Pollock,” he said without moving his head. “She looks after everybody. Polly! I want you to meet the girl I’m going to marry.” He wasn’t quite delirious, Alison realized. It was just the old Ronald rearing his scarred but unbowed head again for her benefit, yet she could not help wondering how often he had reiterated that personal little joke in the past forty-eight hours.

  When she looked up at Isobel Pollock the older woman was smiling, although she shook her head at her patient as she laid down the tray.

  “You’re an awful handful, Captain Gowrie!” she told him. “And a bad patient. I wonder, now that Nurse Lang is here, if we will get any sense into your head? You weren’t to move that arm, you know.”

  “Nurse Lang understands me,” Ronald declared as Alison put his hand firmly back beneath the bedclothes. “Besides, how am I supposed to eat?”

  “I expect we’ll have to feed you—like a bairn!” Isobel Pollock’s tone was brisk to mask the tears that came very near her eyes. “I’ll leave it to Nurse Lang this time,” she added with a smile in Alison’s direction. “She ought to know how to handle you.”

  Ronald slewed his eyes round to gaze at Alison, treating her to the old, derisive grin that was beginning to mock at life again, although it was still weak.

  “Was that tact or just sheer overwork?” he wondered. “She’s haunted this room at the expense of everyone else ever since I came here.”

  “She has probably saved your life,” Alison reminded him. “You need a firm hand, or probably you might imagine that you can be out of bed and running around—preferably after Mrs. Pollock!”

  “Good heavens!” he said. “I never thought of that. How old do you think Polly is?” he asked as she poured the tea.

  “I wouldn’t know.” Alison’s hand was not quite steady as she helped him to guide the cup to his lips. “About thirty, would you say?”

  “Thirty-five, if she’s a day!”

  The effort at badinage seemed to exhaust him. He lay back among the pillows Isobel Pollock had arranged for him, closing his eyes against the light.

  “Shall I draw the curtains for you?” Alison asked. “The sun’s very bright outside.”

  “Heavens! how I wish I could feel it instead of just looking at it!” he exclaimed. “Things can change in a day. Yesterday it was winter, and today it’s spring. I can’t just go on lying here,” he fretted, “doing nothing.”

  “You’ll have to lie here till you’ve better,” she told him firmly.

  “And when will that be?” he demanded angrily. “Don’t pretend,” he warned when she hesitated. “I know I’ve been badly knocked about, but I’m not throwing in the towel—not yet! Life’s going to hear quite a lot from Ronald Gowrie before he says amen for the last time!” he insisted.

  “Of course,” she said, trying to sound convincing. “Look how you can still shout and make a fuss!”

  He looked ashamed.

  “Did you think I’d cashed in my chips?” he demanded after a while.

  “I hadn’t time to think,” she countered. “Everything happened so quickly.”

  There was another pause before he said:

  “This fellow Blair. If it hadn’t been for him I wouldn’t have had a chance. He and that other chap, Sir James Something-or-other, saved my reason. For what it was worth,” he added, watching her closely. “Or maybe you just think they saved my life.”

  “You don’t know what your life is worth,” Alison said. “Nobody does. If you ask me, you’ve had a good life, taking it all round.”

  “And forgetting Margot?”

  The name stabbed at her, taking her unaware.

  “She’s here, isn’t she?” he demanded. “They forgot to tell Polly to bluff about that. ‘Mrs. Blair at Monkdyke’,” he mocked. “People feel sorry for Margot. Why?”

  She held the drinking cup to his lips again.

  “She has had a very serious accident,” she told him, realizing that only the truth would suffice now. “When her husband was killed she was expecting a baby—Andrew. He wasn’t Fergus Blair’s son after all.”

  He turned his head away.

  “Save me the details,” he said. And then: “Why does she stay here? Margot of all people! Of course,” he muttered when Alison did not answer him immediately, “the boy is now Blair of Heimra, and that will matter to Margot. Yes, it will matter a lot!”

  Alison put the cup back on the tray, turning away from the bed towards the window as she said:

  “That isn’t all. She was hurt in the accident, and I don’t think she feels like facing the outside world again—the gay world she knew.”

  “Don’t let her bluff you,” he warned harshly. “Margot isn’t facing the outside world, as you put it, because she’s comfortable enough here. She revelled in being Mrs. Blair of Heimra and she’s not going to let the title go easily. Not if I know her. It’s my guess,” he added dryly, “that she has her brother-in-law all lined up as husband number two. It’s the sort of thing Margot would think about. The very last thing she would want would be another woman on Heimra Beag!”

  “Ronald,” Alison said in a stifled undertone, “she’s crippled. Ever since Andrew’s birth she hasn’t been able to walk.”

  She could not look round at him, but after a little while she heard him draw in a deep, unsteady breath.

  “So that’s wha
t happened,” he said after what seemed like an eternity. “That’s why nobody was really welcome on Heimra Beag. She was the loveliest thing that ever breathed,” he went on slowly, “and dancing was life itself to her. She wouldn’t be able to bear the thought of anyone seeing her tied to a chair for the rest of her life.” He let his words sink into a lengthy silence. “That rather rules out Blair,” he mused at last. “He wouldn’t marry her under the circumstances.”

  Perhaps not, Alison thought, but he would be tied to Margot just the same. He still held himself in part responsible for the accident which had robbed his brother of his life, and which had started all Margot’s unhappiness, and he had committed himself to looking after he and Andrew for the rest of his life.

  If he had fallen in love with Margot in the meantime, his tragedy would be twofold.

  “It’s all terribly complicated,” she heard herself saying to the man in the bed. “And I don’t suppose we’re helping a great deal, being here.”

  He moved his head to look at her as she came back across the floor.

  “What makes you think that?” he asked suspiciously. “Blair has practically forbidden me to think of leaving Garrisdale till he has made a whole man of me, and he won’t let you go easily either.”

  Alison felt the colour rising in her cheeks and could not quite meet his questioning eyes.

  “I suppose he meant that I could be some sort of help with the children during my convalescence if I decided to stay,” she suggested.

  “And you must stay,” he told her. “What am I going to do without someone sane and bright to talk to while I have to lie here?”

  “You’ll have Mrs. Pollock,” she teased, trying to force a lightness into her tone that she was far from feeling.

  “Polly’s all right,” he agreed, “but I really need you. You’re necessary to me, Alison, for some reason or another.”

  “Mrs. Pollock would make an excellent nurse,” she told him firmly, because she had no idea how long he would have to lie here like this, flat on his back, and she certainly could not stay on Heimra indefinitely. “She wouldn’t allow you to talk your head off, for one thing, and refuse to have your tea. There’s a whole cup of it left.”

  “Och! have you tasted the stuff?” he protested, motioning the drinking cup away. “It’s beef tea!”

  “Good for your digestion, and good for putting stamina back into you!” Alison recited in her best professional manner. “Vitamins A, B, C and D and so on. In fact, the lot!”

  “All the medical jargon in the world won’t make me like it any better,” he warned. “Now, if they would analyse a good honest pint of beer—”

  “You’re on the road to recovery!” she told him, smiling determinedly. “I can’t think what’s going to happen when you get on your feet in a week or two.”

  “Neither can I,” he said as lightly, but underneath the banter she detected a vague and growing uneasiness.

  “You’ll come again?” he asked as she moved towards the door. “You won’t really desert me and rush back to Glasgow before I’m on my feet again?”

  “I’ll come as often as I’m allowed to,” she promised, answering only the first half of his question.

  Going slowly down the stairs, she met Isobel Pollock coming up. “I’m sorry I had to run away,” Isobel said with her warm smile, “but the children can be somewhat of a handful at this time of day. The little ones are getting tired and ready for bed, and the older ones have done all the work they want to do for one day and feel that they have a lot of surplus energy to let loose. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you,” she added frankly. “You were the one person Captain Gowrie spoke about for the first twenty-four hours after the accident. He seemed to cling to the thought of you in his delirium.”

  Alison flushed, but she could not resent such a frank statement from anyone like Isobel Pollock. Garrisdale’s house-mother was completely without guile, utterly straightforward in all her dealings, she supposed.

  “He’s been very ill,” she said, looking into the steady brown eyes beneath the cloud of fine auburn hair. “But Mr. Blair will pull him through.”

  “He’s the man to do it,” Isobel declared stoutly. “I’ve never seen anyone take such pains with his work. I heard him say to the specialist that, if it was the last thing he ever did, he would put Captain Gowrie on his feet again.”

  “Yes,” she said, “I can imagine him being like that. Even though Captain Gowrie can mean nothing to him but another case.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Isobel said with an odd little smile. “For one thing, Captain Gowrie is an Islander.”

  “That may count,” she agreed. “Although Ronald has been away from the Islands for a long time.”

  “Far too long!” Isobel commented. “You’ll be staying, too,” she added. “At least till you are out of that terrible strait-jacket affair!”

  “It’s not really uncomfortable,” Alison said. “Just bulky, and I could quite easily travel in it. Especially in the ambulance plane. I won’t be a great deal of use at the hospital, though, for some time. I suppose I shall be on sick leave now for a week or two.” Isobel nodded.

  “If it irks you not to be doing something,” she suggested as she passed on up the stairs, “why not ask if you can help with the children? I’m quite willing to admit that my hands are more than full!”

  How eagerly Alison’s heart responded to the suggestion as she went on down the remaining stairs to the hall. And how wonderful it would have been, she thought, if Fergus Blair had really had room for her in his life.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE following day she went to see Margot Blair again.

  She went this time in response to a message from Monkdyke—a summons, she supposed it was.

  “Mistress Blair has sent word that you are to go and take tea with her,” Kirsty had announced in some surprise at the breakfast table. “Colin Munro delivered the message when he came with the milk,” she had added. “He goes to Monkdyke first.”

  Alison’s surprise had been as great as the dark little Highlandwoman’s, but she had made no comment, and shortly after three o’clock she set out for the house behind its screening clump of firs.

  The terrace was deserted, although the sun shone on it as brightly as it had done the previous afternoon when she had been caught trespassing with Andrew. The gaudy golf umbrella was still there, but it was closed and stood rather dejectedly in a corner beside the round wrought-iron table where Margot’s magazines had been spread out.

  It was many minutes after she had knocked on the yellow door that it was opened to her by an old woman who appeared to eye her with the utmost suspicion.

  “The mistress is waiting for you,” she announced in an aggressive undertone. “It’s one o’ her bad days,” she announced, as if for Alison’s enlightenment.

  “Oh! I’m sorry.” Alison hesitated in the big, square hall that was as cold as ice. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have come?”

  “Ye were sent for,” was the uncompromising reply. “She must have wanted to see ye.”

  “Then I’ll go in straight away,” Alison said. “If you will show me to the drawing room.”

  “You’d better get the cold air off you first," she advised. “She can’t stand an east wind. I think it’s nonsense mysel’,” she added bluntly, “but there ye are! It doesn’t do a body any good to cross her when she’s like this.”

  Alison did not want to stand there discussing her hostess with the women, who was probably a housekeeper. Her accent suggested a lowland origin and her aggressiveness a sense of inferiority which rankled all the time. Why she had come to this remote outpost to bury herself in the Highlands, and on an island at that, would probably be difficult to discover, unless—unless she had come here originally with Margot Blair.

  In spite of her grumblings she gave the impression of a watchdog or a grisly old dragon protecting something which she believed to be her own.

  “She’s up the stairs,” she intim
ated as she took Alison’s cloak, “but you’d better not go up to her till you’re thawed.” She opened a door on the left-hand side of the hall, which obviously led to the drawing room. “I’ll go up and let her know you’re here.”

  Alison waited in the hall, almost as if she were ready for flight, but when the woman came downstairs again she turned to her with a smile.

  “It’s really a lovely day outside,” she remarked. “The wind is cold, of course, but the whole island smells of spring.”

  The old retainer looked at her as if her remark was entirely superfluous in the circumstances.

  “Mrs. Blair never comes down on a day like this,” she said. “She keeps to her room.”

  She followed her slow-footed guide up the richly-carpeted stairs and along a passage to where it opened out to accommodate three doors, one of which was set in the end wall. All were securely closed against intrusion, but the woman rapped sharply against the panel of the end one, announcing as she opened it:

  “Your visitor, Mrs. Blair!”

  Alison walked into a room which might have been dreamed up in a film studio. It was a large room, dominated by an elaborate bed, and the decor was pink and luxurious.

  Immediately she felt that it didn’t belong on the island. Ruched satin and looped nylon draperies and a hundred and one foolish little knick-knacks seemed to have no real place on Heimra, and somehow Margot herself looked curiously inadequate and pitiable lying there between the rose-pink sheets with her fair head resting against a pile of nylon-covered pillows.

  “Come and sit beside me,” she commanded. “I’m having one of my bad days.”

  “I ought not to have come.”