Gemmie attacked the furniture with an apron as a duster; Catriona straightened loose-covers and cushions; I stood around like a zombie.
Sandra sniffed. ‘Anyone seeing you two now would think Charlie’s gone on Alix. Of course, it’s obvious why all this crawling, though I must say it makes me sick!’
‘Who’s crawling, then?’ Gemmie was using her apron on the empty hearth. ‘This room’s not had a lick and a promise since Sunday. I’d not let ruddy cat’s grandmother in without giving it the once over.’ She threw me that day’s paper. ‘Shove it safe, as I’ve not yet seen it.’ Sandra rounded on Catriona. ‘Haven’t you told Gem that item I’d from a patient about Charlie’s mother?’
Catriona looked down her nose. ‘No.’
‘Whyever not?’ Catriona did not bother to reply. ‘Covering up for Alix, obviously! Alix knows, even if she’s never told us. Why pass on the big attraction, eh, Alix? Get this, Gem!’ She went on to endow Charles more generously than Pete and name his mother incorrectly as Mrs Linsey. ‘If you want my opinion as to why he’s decided to come slumming ‒’
‘When we want your opinion, Sandra, we’ll ask for it!’ Catriona gestured magnificently at the open door. ‘Close that door and the kitchen door after you, please!’
Gemmie dipped a corner of her apron into the flowers’ water to rub out an ink stain on the mantelpiece. She looked round as Sandra slammed the door. ‘She right about Charlie?’
Catriona and I exchanged glances. I said, ‘Roughly, from what someone told me and asked me to keep quiet.’
‘Oh, aye? That’s all right for him then, isn’t it? Not that I’d fancy it myself.’
Catriona slapped a cushion. ‘Why not, Gem?’
‘For starters, as my Wilf’d not be wedding me four weeks Saturday if I’d that lot stashed away. Nor me him, t’other way round. Wouldn’t work in a month of Sundays. Getting wed’s a hell of a gamble, but Wilf and me’ll at least start level. Cinderella’s grandkids’ stuff, but I don’t fancy saying ta-very-much until death us do part. Nor having hubby thinking, she’s wed me for my lot ‒ and stands to reason he must unless he weds a lass with her own lot, and I reckon ninety-nine point nine he’ll be dead right. Hey, Alix!’ She chucked me a comb. ‘Stop brooding like a nervous rice-pudding and fix your hair. Bad enough having you looking like a refugee from one of Bassy’s sit-ins in that clobber, but you don’t have to make like you’ve been mixing it in Grosvenor Square.’
‘Here.’ Catriona had fielded the comb. She took the paper I was still clutching in exchange, glanced at the date, then opened it to show me a picture on the front page. ‘Seen this?’
‘This’ was a small wedding photograph beneath the caption, ‘Edinburgh man marries financier’s daughter in London.’ Josephine Astley made a very pretty bride, and her husband had a nice face.
‘Daft ha’porth!’ Gemmie whisked away the paper and stuck it among a pile of nursing magazines on the bookshelf. ‘This is no time for a quiet bloody read. That’s more like it.’ She could now afford to look worried. ‘Why’s he coming? His eye? Our Sandra?’
I shrugged. ‘She doesn’t mean to make trouble. I know that sounds right odd, but she doesn’t.’
Catriona said, ‘If that’s so I should hate to be around when she puts her mind to the job.’ She smoothed her hair. ‘Particularly after hearing her at lunch today.’
I had been late for lunch. ‘I missed her.’
‘Just as well,’ said Gemmie. ‘She and I’d a set-to after you’d gone to ring your auntie, Catriona. She kept trying to tell me summat, but as I kept shouting her down, didn’t get a chance. I get that now, but not that it’s any of that that’s really bugging her. You know her trouble, don’t you?’
I nodded. ‘I’m quite sorry for her.’
Catriona said coldly, ‘Then you are much more charitable than I am, Gem.’
‘Not her fault she’s in a right state at being a virgin at twenty-five. Gets some that way, and they all talk like every lad that looks at ’em can’t wait to lay ’em. I’ve told her straight, doesn’t have to mean she’s sick, but I’ve not got through.’
Catriona gasped. ‘All just blether?’
I said, ‘Sure. Sticks out a mile. I just wish ‒ do you think Charlie could’ve heard? If he has, what’s the point of coming here? What can he do about it?’
They could not answer as the door-bell was ringing. ‘I’ll let him in,’ said Catriona. ‘You keep Sandra under control in the kitchen, Gem. If necessary, use violence, and if she’s too much for you don’t worry. I’ll handle her. In the sixth, at my school we could do fencing or judo. I did judo.’
Gemmie and I gasped, ‘You never told us!’
‘The occasion never arose.’ Catriona propelled Gemmie into the hall. I heard her opening the front door. ‘Dr Linsey? Good evening. Come in, please.’ She ushered him into the sitting-room with her most social smile, then removed herself and closed the door.
Chapter Twelve
I barely recognized Charles.
He could have stepped out of an advertisement in one of the classier colour supplements. He was wearing a darkish light-weight suit with an into-the-seventies’ cut, a white silk shirt I coveted, a French-blue tie that matched his socks, and dark glasses. The strapping on his forehead added the right gimmicky touch, and even his short hair fitted. ‘Only the man who dares to be different should use DEADLY so-and-so.’
We exchanged stilted formalities. He apologized for disturbing the girls as well as myself. I said they were revising in the kitchen. ‘Our exams are looming.’
‘So Miss Bruce mentioned when I met her as I was leaving the hospital this morning.’
‘This morning?’ I wished I could see his eyes. ‘They kept you in overnight?’
‘More for general convenience than necessity. They’d several empty beds. The registrar wanted his chief to look at me, and he was away last night but expected in early this morning. He’d a list at nine-thirty and fitted me in before he started in the theatre. I was home by ten.’
‘Good.’ I would have liked the specialist’s verdict. I waited, but, as he did not volunteer it asked about antibiotics.
‘They’ve put me on the usual course, and I’d four stitches in my forehead. Away with these damned things!’ He pushed the glasses up on the top of his head. ‘They told me to wear them for a day or two to keep out dirt and draughts, but I think I’d prefer both to perpetual shadow.’
I agreed, but did not say so. This was being even more difficult than I had expected. I wished I had had the moral courage to say no, then realized I couldn’t have said that now I had had him, if only very briefly, as a patient. The nurse-patient relationship is a very odd thing, and perhaps the oddest thing about it is its strength.
I tried to prompt him. ‘What’s the specialist’s name?’
He told me and fell silent.
I folded my hands in my lap and went on waiting.
‘May I stand? I think better on my feet.’
‘Do.’
He stood with his back to the hearth, his hands in his pockets and the glasses perched on his head. He sought and apparently found inspiration from the carpet. ‘I very much want to talk to you, but I don’t see that we can talk anything but shop until we’ve got, if not out of the way, into the open the one subject we’d both prefer to avoid.’ He glanced up. ‘May I go on?’
His left eye, in sympathy, was nearly as inflamed as the right. ‘Sure,’ I said mechanically.
‘Now, listen,’ he said, ‘to this first. I realize I’ve a psychological advantage as an ex-patient, but there’s a limit to how far I’m prepared to use it. You don’t have to hear me out.’
I gave him my full attention. ‘Sorry. Go on.’
‘Thank you.’ He breathed deeply. ‘I’ve thought on this a great deal. I think what actually happened with such lamentable consequences was simply a total breakdown in communication between us. I must add that’s no excuse for my behaviour ‒ merely an explanation
. Do you agree at all?’
‘Yes. Completely.’
‘You’re very generous. I take it we’re now in communication?’
I spelt it out without saying how I knew. He didn’t like it, nor did he correct me. I said, ‘I heard afterwards.’
He removed his glasses and fiddled with them. ‘I’m in a dilemma. This is one of those occasions when any apology can seem to add insult to insult. Yet to leave it unspoken ‒ what do I do?’
I wished he would stop being so understanding. It was making me nervous. ‘I’d much rather you let it drop and talked about something else.’
‘If you wish. Have you the same vision in both eyes?’
I blinked at the speed of that switch. ‘Yes. I’m such a norm the students used me as a control during slack moments in Cas. Eyes. Why?’
‘I’m the reverse. One very good and one lazy eye. In the glasses I use for close work the right lens is plain glass. My left eye’s not too bad on long sight, but even with a very strong lens blurs anything close to.’
I had to look at the floor. ‘I see.’
‘Could’ve been a problem,’ he said mildly. ‘Which reminds me ‒ I’ve a message for you from the eye pundit.’
I looked up swiftly. ‘What?’
‘He asked me to say to you, “Precisely what I would have expected from one of Sir Jefferson’s young ladies”.’
I had not been so pleased by a professional compliment since Mrs Hunter suggested I did a general training. ‘How very sweet of him! Thanks for telling me.’
‘He said a wee bit more.’ He came a little closer and stood facing me. ‘Again, I quote: “From the position of that scratch there’s no doubt in my mind that even had you been driven to us immediately or gone up to your flat via lift or stairs the inevitable minor jolting plus gravity would have caused that sliver to slip in too deep for any of us here to do more than greatly regret our own helplessness. In short” ‒ I’m still quoting ‒ “you owe the sight of that eye to the providential arrival, cool head, and steady hand of that English lassie.” But this you knew yesterday.’
My temporal pulses were thundering. ‘I couldn’t be sure. It was just obvious it had to come out.’
‘So you took it out, and in consequence saved my eye and my job. Without the right, I’d have to give up pathology. No matter how powerful the microscope, my left eye stays out of focus.’ He had tensed up. ‘Naturally I’m aware being forced to change jobs would present me with none of the usual and formidable financial and domestic problems. I’m aware that no man with my undeserved advantages has any right to complain when life appears to treat him with a little less than her usual generosity. I’m aware that if I had to switch off my microscope other doors would open, in or out of medicine.’ His brief smile was both derisive and self-derisive. ‘I just happen to like my work. If I had to give it up I’d miss it ‒ quite considerably.’ His expression now had much in common with Messrs Richards and Cameron with that new baby. ‘These last twenty-four hours have illustrated that rather clearly. You’ll understand from this how grateful I am to you. I wish there was some way of thanking ‒’
‘I was only doing my job. I don’t need thanks for that. I’ll tell you something.’ I hurried on as he was about to interrupt. ‘Our Sister P.T.S. said long ago in her final lecture to my set, “Never expect a pat on the back for doing your jobs properly, Nurses. May God have mercy on you if you don’t, as neither this hospital nor the great British public will show you any!” ’
‘That may well be, but it doesn’t alter the fact that I owe you a debt I can’t repay.’ I was shaking my head. ‘I can? Right! You’ve worked with one of the world’s great eye men. You’ll know roughly what Sir Jefferson charges his private patients. What’d it cost me to get him to repair my eye after all vision had gone? Give me a figure?’
‘You know I can’t.’
‘Precisely.’ He was smiling. ‘Sorry, Alix, this one’s to me ‒ oh, I hope you don’t object?’
This was like a see-saw. Being up, I smiled. ‘I prefer it.’
‘Good. I can’t say I’m keen on first names at first meetings, though naturally one gets accustomed to that. But as it’s three months since our first meeting we could scarcely be accused of shedding formality with undue haste. By the by, I’m Charles.’
‘I know. Like you said ‒ three months.’
He nodded as if I had reminded him of an important point and gave the carpet another thorough inspection. ‘I’m glad our relationship has progressed to this stage,’ he said without looking up, ‘as I now want to move on to that more personal matter. It’s one I’ve been turning over in my mind for several days, and, having had so much time for thought today, by this evening I decided I must talk it over with you.’ He looked at me now, and his face had gone rigid. ‘I do realize you may find my timing as misplaced as my conceit in raising this particular matter at this particular moment. If you’ll forgive the obvious it seems the right moment to me.’
My end of the see-saw came down with an ugly jolt. Sandra, and others? I sat upright. ‘What’s the problem?’
‘I’d like to get married. Would you care to marry me?’
I sat back as carefully and stiffly as he had in his study chair yesterday evening. ‘Why me?’
His eyes suddenly looked much redder and the bit of strapping much more noticeable. ‘For the obvious reason that I believe you’ll make me a good wife.’
I glanced at the pile of magazines, then back at his set face. He wouldn’t be the first or last man who had decided to marry the nearest vaguely suitable girl within twenty-four hours of his ex-girlfriend’s wedding. Had I been a man the day after John’s I might have been fool enough to do the same. Nor was it always foolish. I had known two separate occasions when it had worked out very well. And he was no fool, though on this occasion his judgment could not have been helped by the physical and mental shock of his eye injury.
Yet the ‘why me?’ did add up. I was Josephine’s physical type, unattached, and living only one floor down and instantly available, which was probably more important than he realized. Pre-breakdown, we had seemed to get along rather well, and whatever guilt he felt about the breakdown had been enlarged out of all proportion by that sliver still in my match-box. He could settle up a lot by marrying me, and if it did not work divorce was something else that wouldn’t present him with a financial problem. If I played along he would undoubtedly make me a very generous settlement. Even if I didn’t he would make it fair because of his right eye. He was being fair now. No pretence about love on either side. ‘A marriage has been arranged.’ The French did it all the time. Some people thought the French approach to marriage the most civilized in the world. Some people might be right ‒ only I wasn’t French. And irrationally or otherwise, I was angrier than I had ever been with him. My previous fury had been red-hot. Now it was white. I had to remind myself his eyes were hurting and he patently had a crashing headache before I risked saying a word. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘to take so long.’
‘You’re very sensible. Marriage is a serious business.’
As he would have said, ‘Precisely’. I got out of my chair. ‘Thanks for asking me, and I’m sorry, but I’m afraid it’s not for me. And just to prevent any more communications breakdowns, nor’s the alternative.’
He said coolly, ‘The alternative never entered my mind. For clarity’s sake, I’ll enlarge on that. I don’t want you as a mistress. I want you for my wife.’
That figured too. ‘I’m sorry. No.’
‘I’m sorry too, though if you’d care to think it over ‒’
‘No, thanks.’
‘Your mind’s made up?’ He answered himself. ‘I’m being inexcusably obtuse! Naturally there’s some other man in your life.’
I was trying to keep my temper, but that well-worn bit of masculine reasoning was no help. ‘Why do men automatically assume another man can be the only possible reason for a girl not wanting to marry them? Why can’t a gir
l just not want to get married yet? I don’t. I enjoy my job and life very much, and am in no hurry to change either. Maybe I’ll think differently at thirty-three, but at twenty-three what’s the rush?’ The smile that produced in his eyes was even less help. ‘I should’ve said “think differently about marriage in general”, as that’s what I meant. I’m afraid I’d still give the same answer to any man who offered me marriage as a straight business deal. No, please let me finish!’ I held up a hand as he opened his mouth. ‘I’d rather we had this one out in the open too. One can dress it up, but that’s what it is basically. We may’ve met three months ago, but we don’t know each other at all, and we both know it. We only got to first names five seconds before you asked me to share your name, bed, board, and far from trivial worldly goods. Marry you and I live, if not happily, well-heeled ever after. Marry me and you get a chance to work off that imaginary debt that’s weighing you down ‒ plus me. Looked at academically, it’s a deal heavily in my favour, and I do appreciate you meant it as a compliment. Only I don’t feel complimented. I feel ‒ well, it’s hard to say as this is something I’ve never felt before. Then never before has any man in cold, or come to that hot, blood ‒ tried to buy me.’
‘No question of that! This you must believe!’
‘Must I?’ I looked very deliberately at his right eye. ‘That’s much more sore than this time last night, though one would expect that. Will you do something for me, Charles?’
‘If I can, of course.’
‘You can. Just tell me, honestly, if you hadn’t all your worldly goods, would you have asked me to marry you tonight?’
His face tightened, but he met my eyes. ‘No.’
I wasn’t surprised, but I had to look away. I felt even sicker than last night, and mostly sick with myself. I sat on the nearest chair-arm and examined my hands as if I were Catriona. The room was very quiet, but not peaceful.
Edinburgh Excursion Page 15
