by Sheila Burns
‘A word with you, Dr. Morde?’ and then Michael went to say goodbye to the patient. He promised to return again next week; he did not want her to be distressed for he was convinced that she would be well again. He walked to the door and he and Dr. Morde went out into the corridor together. Lorna was convinced that before very long Roger would have got them both to the sideboard in his own little study.
‘What a nice man he is! I am sure that he will do me some good,’ said Mrs. Liskeard.
‘I know he will, and that was why I was so very anxious that you should see him.’
‘I’m glad he came. I always know when I meet a friend whom I can trust.’
‘Yes.’ Lorna’s voice was a little hushed. ‘Of course you can trust Michael Bland.’
The tablets that he had ordered for her did a great deal of good; her pulse steadied, she was calmer, less inclined to excite herself, less ready to work herself up. She was better by that late afternoon, and asked for the curtains to be drawn back when Henderson brought her tea, and the sunshine came flooding into the room once more.
All day Lorna stayed with her, even though Mrs. Liskeard had kept begging her to go out and have some relaxation in the garden, but Lorna was nervous until she saw how the tablets worked. One never knew with these medicines; there could always be the one patient whom they disturbed, and she did not want that. Then after tea the sun dropped a little and there came one of those long dragged out summer evenings which Mrs. Liskeard said were one of the happiest times on the Cornish peninsula.
She said, ‘I wish Roger would take you out for a drive. You’ve done far too much, day and night work at the same time, and it is wrong. Roger would take you out to get some fresh air. You are too young and pretty to waste your time like this with an old sick woman.’
‘I came here to “waste” my time like this, as you put it, and to me you are not an old woman, you know.’
Mrs. Liskeard smiled. ‘You’re a very charming girl, my dear, but I want you to go out.’
‘I’m quite happy.’
She shook her head. ‘No, I want Roger to take you. There is a charming little restaurant in St. Ives, lots of the artists go there, and it is called The Lucky Find. It would be a change for you to sup there, and I want you to see it. I’ll be all right as your doctor said, and anyway I’ve got Henderson. She’s been with me through a lot of troubles.’
Lorna tried to slip out of it, but knew she was on a hopeless quest. There was no real reason for refusing, she could not possibly admit that at times Roger was a worry to her, for he was a very kind person, and she had nothing she could possibly grumble about with him. In the end she had to agree.
‘You don’t have to dress up for it,’ Mrs. Liskeard said, ‘it is a very ordinary place, artists wander in in their smocks, and the models just as they are. Someone once said a girl went there in the altogether, so to speak, and nobody batted an eyelid. It’s probably true. I think you’ll love it,’ and then later when Roger came for her, ‘Be nice to her, darling boy.’
‘Of course, Auntie,’ then quickly he added, ‘I like her. Yep, of course I’ll be nice to her.’
Chapter Six
Lorna had changed into the little pinky frock in a vague shade of tangerine, with a copper-coloured sash. It was an adventurous dress for a redhead, something she had never attempted before, and which suddenly she knew was very rewarding to her. It was a plain dress with little trimming on it, adorable and charming, with the copper-coloured sash in a ring velvet which clung to her. She had no hat.
They drove across the moorland with the ruined tin mines, and here and there little clusters of cottages, or a lone farm with a gate to it, and a long straggling cart track to the front door. Some of the Cornish men, and women too, must be unutterably lonely, she thought.
They dropped down into St. Ives, almost as though they fell down the side of a mountain. It was a little town of cobbled streets, of steps falling in passageways between stone houses. A land of alleyways, and back yards, of different beaches, and always the screech of the seagulls.
The restaurant was not far from the Copper Kettle, and also on the sea front. They entered it through a low door with red geraniums flashing in an extravagant window box above it. The room had something of the flavour of a cellar, a long thin room, where once nets had hung to dry, and cats had kept watch for mice, for a single mouse could create hundreds of pounds’ worth of damage to the nets.
‘But of course,’ said Roger, ‘and that’s where there comes the old rhyme ‒
Each wife had seven cats,
Each cat had seven kits …
There are more cats to the square inch in St. Ives than anywhere else in the world, for they have a job to do here.’
There were so many pictures on the walls that Lorna could hardly believe that they were possible. Traditional, and some moderns too; maritime pictures of the surrounding coast, lovely landscapes, and portraits also.
‘Pictures are the life blood of St. Ives,’ Roger said, ‘it is crowded out with starving artists who sell them this way. Every shop shows a few of them, and every restaurant has them on its walls. Most of the pictures do the rounds this way. But I warn you, never stand looking at any of them for too long, or a waiter will come along and want to know if you wish to buy it.’
‘That would not be me,’ she admitted a little sadly, ‘I am one of the silly people who do not like modern paintings; I love Constables, but then I adore Essex.’
‘I have a mania for Essex myself; we have a lot in common, haven’t we?’ Roger sat down at a scrubbed table, with a red candle alight and guttering in a black wine bottle as a holder. It had ‘shrouds’ dripping down it in pure tallow. But the wind stirred all the flames unkindly, for the place was far from draught-proof. He said, ‘I adore Alfred Munnings’ paintings. I don’t care much about horses as horses, but he makes one love them.’
‘Yes, they are always wonderful.’ Lorna was glancing at a view of Penarth in rather strong bold colours. ‘Those are the beautiful restful pictures which always hold you. Today’s are not the same.’
They sat waiting for the waiter to come to them. There was a small crowd of people, obviously artists in the main, and there was the time to wait till the others were served. The light given from the red candles was at present frail, for the daylight was too strong. But that would dim, and in the contrasting amethyst glow of evening the candleflame would become more insistent. Like tiny torches, she thought, in some outlandish procession into a new world.
It was quite pleasant to be sitting here with Roger. Instinctively she knew that he was trying to be nice to her, and sitting opposite to him she had the time to study his face. Now she could not imagine why she had ever thought that he was the other man.
‘Supposing you tell me a little about yourself whilst we wait?’ she asked him.
Roger folded his arms and laid them on the bare table, and leaning on them he smiled at her. There were no white rings round his eyes now; they came, she discovered, only when he was afraid or over-excited, or disturbed about something that had happened. He was a strange creature of moods, the aftermath of his illness, so his aunt once told her when she had agreed that ‘one never knows what Roger will do next’. He had completely recovered, she had told Lorna, it had not been at all a difficult case, and he had been good, though impatient, over his treatment, even that quite horrible electric treatment on which the doctor had insisted. She was startled when he told her about this, but he went on quietly.
‘I suppose that I was just a spoilt child. My people spoilt me ‒ Marmee most of all. I always called my mother Marmee because the description in Little Women was so awfully suitable for her. She was the sweetest and loveliest creature, and always so kind. I think that from the very first I was jealous of my father for having married her even though she died when I was so young, because I should have liked to marry her myself.’
‘You loved her, you see.’
His eyes avoided hers across the
table. She could see the way he jerked them away and lowered the lids so that they would act as curtains to anything that perhaps he might reveal. ‘She threw herself out of a top window when I was five years old. I saw her go. I was actually with her at the time. I ‒ I’m not able to talk about it much, because I remember it far too clearly. We were playing.’ His eyes half closed, he was in a reverie, she thought, and because she believed that it would help him to talk, she said nothing, and he went on. ‘She said, “Darling, I’m so happy. I’m going right away now, whilst I am so happy. Before I find my body ageing and beginning to tire. Before the hard things happen and everything becomes too difficult”.’ He paused again, a long pause with only the restaurant sounds about them, and himself far away. Then he went on. ‘She kissed me, and she was laughing still. I saw her go to the window. I did not know what it was she was going to do, she seemed so happy, and anyway I knew nothing of death. Then suddenly she had gone. I heard someone scream in the street below, a lot of noises, and I ‒ I was frightened to look.’
Lorna quickly interrupted him. ‘Don’t talk about it. Don’t think of it, but let it go. It is over and done with, and she would have known nothing about it, nor would she have felt any pain. Please try to forget it.’
He was silent for a time, and during that time there was the sound of the waiters bringing the food to other people, the chink of cutlery against table china, and the faint buzz of talk, like a wave on the beach, coming and going all the time.
He said, ‘Sometimes I feel she is near me and talking to me, and that is nice. But then it was terrible. It broke my father’s heart, of course, and he went right off into the blue. I was turned out. Oh, the people were kind to me, very kind indeed, but they were stupid people, on a farm, and I do not like farm life. Then I went to school, and in a way I enjoyed that because I learnt science and that fascinated me. When my father died, I was sixteen, and my uncle and aunt were very good to me and took me under their wing. My father stopped them doing that before, because he never got on with my aunt.’
‘I should have thought that anyone would get on with your aunt, she is one of the sweetest women I have ever met.’
‘Yes, I know, and you are so right. They saw me into Cambridge, and I went in for science. I suppose this sounds dreadful, but I like H bombs. I like power. I was so devoted to it all that I made sure I should do well, and then I fluffed the finals. I fluffed them very very badly.’
‘And then?’
‘I don’t remember an awful lot about it, save that it was entirely unexpected, something that I had not thought could possibly happen. Only it did happen. I don’t remember any more. I just woke up in the home. I had electric shock, I loathed that. It was the most terrifying thing of my whole life.’
Gently Lorna said, ‘Don’t talk about it if it worries you so much.’
‘It does usually, but you’re different. You are very easy to talk to. I loathed being in that home, I hated the treatment ‒ insulin, electric shock, and people always telling me that I was going to be all right, and deep down inside myself knowing that I wasn’t.’
‘But that’s ridiculous. You are all right.’ Lorna squashed a cigarette stub into a black glass ashtray with a gold inlay to it, on which a sea horse pranced. It looked as if one of the too bright eyes winked at her.
‘Possibly it was ridiculous, but one is always ashamed of losing one’s nerve. One is ashamed of having failed, and the treatment was so uncongenial and horrid, and it seemed to be utterly wrong.’
‘But why? It is the modern approach. We all know that it helps and therefore is worth it. You’re all right now.’
‘I have moods.’
‘Well, who doesn’t?’ she asked him.
‘I shake them off myself, I never let myself do anything stupid; I pull myself up with a jerk, and then it’s all right. The waiter at last!’ He looked up and grinned into the face of a young man dressed as a fisherman. He seemed to fit into this strange background of pictures, more pictures and still more pictures, and the far windows looking out on to the beach, with the breakers coming in and pounding on the sands.
‘The barbecue chicken is quite good here,’ Roger said.
‘That would be lovely.’
‘Be as quick as you can,’ he told the waiter, ‘we have been here quite a time. You’re busy tonight.’
The waiter grinned. ‘Yes, we are very busy tonight, sir. There has been a string of charabancs visiting St. Ives today and lots of pictures have been sold, so that everyone is in the money.’ He laughed and went away with the order.
‘And you?’ said Roger, when the young man had gone out of earshot. ‘Tell me about yourself?’
Lorna’s had been what she thought was a very ordinary life. There had been no huge crises as there had been in his, no terrible memory to carry with her throughout her life and always to be scared about.
Hers had been the usual village life, brought up in a village in Hertfordshire, day school first, boarding school next, going away to Wales, which she had adored, girl chums and then boy chums. A happy life, running along easily and without any worries. She had done moderately well at school, nothing sensational, just what the usual girl acquires, and her headmistress had very much wanted her to sit for higher examinations, but she had left at seventeen to start training as a nurse.
‘You always wanted to go in for nursing?’
‘From the time I was quite a little girl and used to bind up my dolls’ broken arms. I always wanted it.’
‘Isn’t seventeen rather young for training?’ he asked, his eyes watching her closely.
‘No, it is easier if you begin then. I trained at a provincial hospital for two years, and doing this took a whole year off the subsequent three in a London training hospital. That made it much easier.’
‘And you liked it?’
Lorna glowed as she talked of the hospital in the provinces, and she had worked on orthopaedics there. Everyone had been very kind to her, and she liked it; then when she came to London it was to find the food poorer and the rules more grinding. The matron was a hard one, she laid down the law and saw that the girls abided by it. The matron in the provinces had been amiably friendly, and as long as the work was done had not bothered herself too much.
She did not know why she told Roger so much, but somehow he got it out of her. She was always anxious about him, unsure of him and dubious, but he did manage to wheedle the story of her life out of her.
‘And all nurses marry handsome doctors?’ he asked. ‘That was a fairly handsome young man you suggested to come down to my aunt.’
‘Yes, I suppose he is handsome,’ and she hoped that her answer had been guarded. Whatever happened this man must not suspect that what she had once felt for Michael was not dead. She imagined that Roger would be fairly good at jumping to the right conclusions, he watched her closely enough for that. Quickly she diverted the subject from herself, for those eyes were compelling and gave the impression that he could read right through her.
‘Bland was a clever doctor and he got Maudie scared enough. Maudie isn’t clever, I know, he has been here far too long and is clearly too fond of the bottle, but your gentleman friend knew his onions and I am glad that he is coming down again.’
‘So am I.’
He gave her a quick glance, thrumming the table with his fingers, and for the first time he called her by her Christian name, which sounded unusually strange on his lips.
‘Lorna, my aunt isn’t going to die, is she?’
‘No, why should she? She is recovering beautifully with these tablets, otherwise I should not be here now.’
‘No, I think you wouldn’t. I do think that,’ and he paused. ‘You must not let her die.’
She did not know why she said it, perhaps she was prompted by some unknown source, but it slipped out before she had actually meant to say it. ‘You would stand to gain a great deal if she died, you know.’
He looked at her. He was startled, she knew, (she was muc
h surprised at herself), and for a single moment he stared at her, and she did not know if there was a deadly fear in those eyes, or a challenge, or the sudden question, why-do-you-say-that? He was half afraid. Almost doubting.
He said, ‘You’re wrong. Money isn’t everything. I happen to adore my aunt. I love her more than anything else in this world and anyone else there is ever likely to be in my life. I love her so much that sometimes I am afraid that I shall die when she does, simply because I could not live without her. Or I might kill her so that she would suffer no more, for she has suffered a lot and I should hate to think that there was still more pain in store for her. I love her so much, so very much.’
There was a curious contradiction of dogged obstinacy and self-confession in the way he said these things, something that Lorna could not fully understand.
The waiter came with the lobster lying on big leaves of fresh lettuce. He followed it quickly with barbecued chicken, and then raspberries and cream. Already Lorna had learnt that there is something about the way the Cornish serve their fruit and cream, which is entirely different from anywhere else in all England. Over the raspberries Roger spoke again.
‘You believe in this man Bland, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I do. That was why I wanted him for your aunt.’
‘And you like him a lot?’
‘I like him,’ she admitted and was ashamed that a sudden flush should rise and dye her cheeks. Redheads flush too easily, and frequently people put the wrong explanation to it.
‘In love with him?’ Roger asked.
If he had not enquired so gently she would have felt that he was over-stepping his rights, but somehow tonight she could not be angry with him. ‘I don’t think so,’ she lied.