It had been a most wearing day all through the store. People who normally did their shopping on Friday now found time to pop back and forth as though, to quote Mr. Miles of Grocery, the place was going to shut down for a week and they have to get a stock of rations in hand!
By the time the store had closed for the night Hilary’s mind was almost made up. There was only one proviso she had issued to herself. If Mark came up to the flat as he had done when she first came to Vale’s to work, then she would stay. Even if he only came as far as the door and looked in to see if everything was all right... and didn’t stay for a cup of tea and a chat.
But he didn’t come. Hilary lingered by the first-aid center door as long as she dared. Simon didn’t come up regularly, either, unless to talk about Iris, wanting to know if she liked this or that in the way of personal gifts, or as a honeymoon idea ... or anything and everything. Hilary decided wildly that he could well ask for himself when her sister came home again the following week.
She opened the door of the small “home” with a sad heart. When she had first come to Vale’s this had seemed like her own special corner of the world, right from the moment Mark Dawson had set his foot inside and shown her all the intimate little corners of his own private dwelling.
Now, switching on the light and glancing around the room, she decided it was nothing but a mockery of a home, a refuge. The very books and the pretty vase Mrs. Dawson had sent seemed to taunt her, and with a gesture of sheer determination to have done with this half life as quickly as possible she drew her writing pad toward her and wrote the letter to Matron.
When the letter was written, placed in the envelope and stamped, she put it in her handbag. Perhaps she would go for a walk later and drop it in the box at the corner of the street. If she didn’t, then it would have to go over the weekend, but for some reason she wanted to mail it as soon as possible. There would be something decisive if not irrevocable about it then!
The clamor of the alarm bell arrested her attention as she was putting on her coat. There was no one about in the store, and she raced out to Sam’s small office to find the watchman writhing in agony, Jake mounted in guard over his master, a worried look on his doggy face.
“Good boy,” Hilary patted him quickly, then turned her attention to his master. Jake, plainly relieved that someone was taking charge, stood back as she felt with cautious exploratory fingers where Sam indicated the pain was situated.
“Appendix, I think,” she said crisply. “Lie still, Sam, in your chair. That’s right. I’ll call for an ambulance.”
When all the excitement was ended, the ambulance had been and gone, Simon informed and Mark notified—by Simon—to alert the relief watchman, Hilary had forgotten all about her letter.
Mark, she thought sadly, had come to the store with the relief watchman, then driven away again with no further word than, “Good thing you were here, nurse,” about her part in the affair.
It didn’t matter, she told herself dully, as she undressed and went to bed. She’d mail the letter over the weekend, once this busy Friendly Association affair was over and done with!
By the time the fashion parade was due to begin, the store was emptied of all its usual customers, and only those who had already purchased tickets or were prepared to pay the entrance fee at the door were allowed inside.
Refreshments were being served continuously in the restaurant, and one table especially had been set aside for the exclusive use of Laura Vale and her party.
Hilary did not anticipate that anyone would require her services that afternoon, but she knew a number of people who were not normally to be seen in the store would take this opportunity to see this latest idea of Laura’s and made sure everything in the first-aid center was shining and neat.
From time to time a member of the staff came to tell her what was going on. From the first-aid center it was impossible to see much of the fashion parade, but the spatter of applause as one gown after another was shown reached her.
“Have you heard, nurse?” The slight figure of Carol Wray, the girl from Glassware who had cut her finger on Hilary’s first day, appeared abruptly in the doorway. “I was just passing Mrs. Vale’s table and she called me back. Guess what? She’s asked me to go to Miss Everett and ask her to join her—at her table, if you please—for a few minutes, and to take her refreshments there! Aida’s gone off to do just that, preening like a peacock! What does it mean, do you suppose? What else can she be now, after head buyer in her own line?”
Hilary knew so little about the actual workings of the store that she could not possibly imagine what it could mean. She knew nothing of Nita’s visit to Laura, but as Carol didn’t, either, that made absolutely no difference to their conversation.
“I don’t know,” she admitted frankly. “I can only think a directorship is about the only possible step up, and I don’t know enough about business to even guess if that’s a practical suggestion.”
“If it’s something good—good for our Aida, that is—the whole of Hortown will know soon enough,” Carol said sharply. “And if it isn’t, then we can all look out, until she’s got over it, whatever it is! I’m dying to find out.” She turned to go, then added over her shoulder, “If I hear anything I’ll come and let you know, nurse.” Whatever it was, Hilary supposed Aida was thrilled. At least it would give her a feeling of importance.
Hilary had guessed Aida’s reaction correctly. The buyer was preening herself as she walked with her own peculiar gliding steps to where Laura, Simon beside her, sat at her table. Kate Lusty was there as well, busily engaged in writing some notes, and when she saw Aida approaching, Laura made a small signal in the direction of her grandson and her secretary-cum-housekeeper, and the two of them left almost immediately.
“You wanted to see me, Mrs. Vale?” Aida asked, standing casually beside Laura.
“For a moment, yes,” she said. “Sit down, won’t you, Miss Everett, here.” She indicated the chair beside her own and moved the coffee percolator more firmly to the center of the table. Simon, she thought inconsequentially, would always want his coffee freshly perked, whether Iris herself preferred tea or not! She must remember to include another electric percolator on her list of “bits and pieces” she intended to present to the happy pair when the time arrived.
She didn’t speak for a moment. Laura was adept at allowing tension to build up when and where she felt it might be of benefit. After a few moments Aida, as she had expected, began to fidget, a fact that gave Laura a certain amount of grim satisfaction. Yet she neither spoke nor moved, merely surveyed the younger woman with that disconcerting gaze of hers until Aida could bear it no longer.
“Is it something to do with the store, Mrs. Vale?” she asked nervously. “Because if it isn’t...”
“It is, in a manner of speaking,” Laura said with dangerous quietness. “Or rather with people in the store. I’d like to know, Miss Everett, just what authority you have to note the dates and times of my grandson’s visits to his fiancée? I’m sure she will be most interested to hear your explanation when she comes home, especially as no announcement has been made as yet, and so few people know their secret! Certainly Mr. Vale won’t like the news being carried to Mr. Dawson in this way! He—they’d—planned on a small party, when Iris had finished at college.”
“Iris? College?” Aida’s bewilderment was reflected in her face, but true to her nature to the end, she made a gallant effort, so that, angry though she was, Laura Vale had to at least admire her spirit.
“I think there has been some misunderstanding, Mrs. Vale,” she began smoothly. “I ... I’ve certainly seen Simon’s car outside ... is it number four, St. John’s Road? But I never connected it...”
Outright lying was something Laura Vale could never forgive. She always felt truth was the most important thing both in her private and her business life, and while she knew she might well have forgiven the little white lie committed socially or to save someone’s feelings from being hurt, she
would never forgive the deliberate untruth, especially when it had been told primarily to save someone’s own skin.
“Then how do you explain your story to Mr. Dawson, that my grandson was visiting Nurse Bell every evening during her sister’s visit home?” she asked outright. “Of what possible interest could that information be to the manager of the store? Unless,” she said quietly, “Mr. Dawson has some interest where Nurse Bell is concerned. Could that be the explanation, Aida?”
“That’s it.” Aida did not see a trap, she only saw an excuse to remove the blame form herself. “Mr. Dawson’s been interested in Nurse Bell ever since she came,” she said quickly, not particularly choosing her words in the heat of the moment. “It isn’t good for a man in his position to have his mind on anything likely to worry him, to make him neglect his work. I thought he ought to be warned. I thought it was Hilary that Simon went to see...”
“And you thought,” Laura said mercilessly, “that Simon wasn’t normally interested in women,” she said coolly, and Aida nodded.
“Mark’s different,” she began, but Laura had heard enough.
“And you hoped that ‘difference’ meant he was interested in yourself, didn’t you, Aida?” she said briefly. “You’d made your mind up about that long before Hilary came to Vale’s! Mark, perhaps emulating Simon, didn’t bother much with women either, not until Hilary came along. And then you thought it was time to interfere. She used his flat. Her friend was his sister. She visited his home; he was concerned for her safety and well-being, and that was more than you could bear, wasn’t it, my dear? You simply had to do something about it, no matter how despicable! How very typical of you!” she commented grimly.
Aida was furious. Her nostrils wore a pinched look and there was a white line of anger around her thin mouth. She sprang to her feet, pushing aside the small, ornamental chair on which she had been sitting.
“Mark Dawson liked me,” she said furiously. “I know no one else believed he did, but he knows how good I am at my work, and he knows I’d do anything to help him. With me beside him he could make another store in this or any other town, just as successful as Vale’s, and a good deal more modern and enterprising! Vale’s is all right, but it could do with a number of modern touches I don’t suppose it’ll ever get while your grandson’s ruled by someone two generations older than himself...”
Laura was angry now. She felt she had kept her temper amazingly well with this girl whose one desire had been to wreck the happiness of so many people.
“Control yourself, Aida,” she said quietly. “It takes more than a little knowledge of buying and an amount of capital—no matter what you have—to build up and to maintain a place like Vale’s. There are a thousand other matters to be considered. I’m still waiting for an explanation—or have I had one? Did you deliberately start this rumor in order to divert Mark Dawson’s regard for Nurse Bell to yourself? I’m waiting, Miss Aida Everett! I must hear it from your own lips!”
“What if I did?” Aida was both angry, defiant and strangely afraid now. She wasn’t sure why she was afraid of someone as old as Mrs. Vale.
As she saw Laura wasn’t intending to reply—perhaps because there was nothing she could say, thought Aida triumphantly—she tossed her head, becoming more brave.
“I haven’t pushed matters because Mark Dawson’s a shy man,” she began briefly, “but I know I can make him love me! He’s my type of man, and that little nurse isn’t enough for a man like him! He needs someone to help him get ahead, to help him fight in this competitive, cutthroat world. He hasn’t got a wealthy grandmother to back him! He hasn’t got a place with a name already well known in the business world, and without any effort on his part, all laid on for him, as it were.”
Laura waited in silence. To her intense surprise she found she was actually sorry for the angry woman. Surprisingly, her thoughts went to the sort of childhood Aida must have had. Laura’s thoughts often surprised her in moments of stress. She always found herself searching for possible explanations of people’s extraordinary conduct, and almost always she found some reason for them to behave as they did. Once she had found what she considered a valid reason, she always changed from the attacker to the stalwart supporter, but Aida was not to know that!
Aida, Laura remembered gossip from the days when the family had come to Hortown, had been the child of a broken marriage. More than that, there had been some very ugly story connected with that marriage of her parents, a story that had made unpleasant and sensational reading in the more lurid of the Sunday newspapers. No wonder the child had grown into such a woman, governed by her own passions, her own extravagances and desires! Perhaps, thought Laura with compassion, the child now a woman was more to be pitied than to be blamed for the mess she had made of her own life and the disturbances she had created in the lives of others.
“It hasn’t always been easy for Simon, you know,” she began gently, but Aida was too carried away now to have any form of self-control left to her. She pushed the table with her free hand, and gesticulated wildly, her voice suddenly rising to a shrill, almost hysterical note.
“It isn’t fair!” she shrieked. “People like you have all the advantages...”
She didn’t say anything more. The next sound that rent the suddenly hushed atmosphere of the restaurant was a scream as the near-boiling coffee from the overturned percolator streamed from the table over Aida’s legs.
Laura rose quickly for someone of her age and size. With a decisive gesture she pushed the girl away from the table and snatched up a table napkin.
“Mop yourself up a little, Aida,” she ordered, “and sit down!” adding to the two waitresses who appeared as though by magic: “There’s been a slight accident. Miss Everett unfortunately knocked over the percolator and scalded her leg.”
One of the girls ran off immediately for Hilary. There had been absolutely no necessity for Laura to request that she did, it was done automatically, as so many minor matters were brought to the nurse at Vale’s these days.
“I don’t want her here!” Aida stormed between tears of pain and tears of rage. “She’ll laugh at me. They all do, behind my back! I know, even though I don’t say anything. They’re all so smug...”
“Pull yourself together,” Laura advised with deliberate sharpness in her tone. “Don’t judge everyone by your own standards, Aida, such as they are! Nurse Hilary is primarily concerned with the well-being of everyone here. Her main concern will be to attend to your scald, not your emotions.”
By the time Hilary arrived, a matter of seconds later, Aida’s hysteria had shrunk to a series of gulped sobs, but the nurse took one look at her and knew at once she was still in some state of shock.
“Come to the first-aid center, Miss Everett, please,” she suggested in her most soothing tones. “I have some special lotion that will take the pain from your leg almost at once.”
For a second or so it looked as though Aida would refuse, then abruptly she rose, almost losing her balance, her face whitening again.
To Hilary the signs were plain. Aida was one of those people to whom the mere idea of pain was terrifying in the extreme. Undoubtedly, she realized, the shock of the scalding coffee was only part of the trouble. The emotional shock must have been far worse, whatever its cause.
“Come along, please,” she urged gently. “We’ll soon have you right again.”
Laura sat back and watched them go, Aida almost leaning on the less substantial form of the nurse. Kate, watching from a distance, came forward as Laura beckoned imperatively, notebook in hand.
“Making the most of it, poor thing,” Laura said compassionately. “It’s a sorry state of affairs when a woman like Aida has to rely on a scene such as this for the attention she craves! She could be so very capable, if only she weren’t so ... mentally warped, is the only term I can think of. About that branch we intend to open in Moreby,” she said more briskly. “I wonder if she’d be able to ... build it up, if we placed her in charge?” They set
tled together to discuss details, but before they had done more than consult the column of figures in Kate’s neat notebook, Simon was back to stand beside them.
“What was all that about, Gran?” he queried. “Mark and I were chatting about...”
Kate looked at Mrs. Vale, but this time, it seemed, she was not to leave the discussion, for Laura gestured her to remain.
“Ask Mark to join us for a moment, will you, Simon, please?” she said firmly. “I think it’s high time more than the business angle of Vale’s came up for discussion!” When Simon, obviously puzzled, had left them, Laura turned to Kate, making a small almost helpless gesture.
“I can cope with most things,” she said, “but downright deceit defeats me utterly. I must tell Mark and Simon what has happened, but I don’t want them see things in the wrong light! If they, as I do, begin to feel sorry for Aida...”
“Mark won’t, Mrs. Vale,” Kate said with conviction. “He knows what she’s like. If you said Hilary was about to ask Matron if she might return to her normal work at the hospital because she no longer felt ... happy here...”
“Is she planning to return?” Laura questioned quickly. “I didn’t know about this.”
“I don’t know either!” Kate admitted, “but when I was talking to Carruthers just now he said he hoped Nurse changed her mind about leaving us before the year was ended! I didn’t question him.”
“Very sensible,” Laura smiled. “Perhaps it’s something Hilary’s said in an off moment, or perhaps she really means it; but whatever it is, I’d like her to stay. And not simply because Simon’s found her sister’s his ideal, either!”
They exchanged smiles. They had worked together for so long now that at times no words were necessary to express what each of them thought.
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