Heartbreak Surgeon (1960s Medical Romance Book 2)

by Sheila Burns

  A new girl looked at Lorna from the mirror. This was the girl with a personality, a girl who could almost have been a slender young boy. ‘But I daren’t go down like this!’

  ‘Oh do! Please do! You look so lovely,’ and there was something about Henderson’s voice that was inspiring.

  Because Henderson spoke in that tone, Lorna went. She moved slowly down the long shallow staircase, and along the corridor to the library where she heard voices. Mrs. Liskeard was there like the old times, and uplifted by the achievement. Lionel sat beside her chattering. Enid was on the sofa. She sat looking strangely tired, as if she could not face another hour of this heat. All of them turned to look at Lorna as she came into the room, a trifle self-consciously, only too well aware of the new hair style and what it had done for her. It was Enid who spoke.

  ‘This is a miracle,’ she said and half rose. The colour seemed to fade from her face, and looking at Lorna she went slowly towards her, and clasped her arms by her sides. ‘Lorna, why did you never wear your hair this way before?’

  ‘It was Henderson’s idea, not mine. I thought it was rather severe.’

  ‘But it’s quite marvellous, and I must do you in bronze. Lionel, look, look at her now! She’s amazing!’

  Mrs. Liskeard smiled, as though flattered to think that her own maid could have managed this triumph. ‘Henderson has some quite good ideas of her own at times. She is maybe something of an artiste in her own way.’

  ‘I’ll say she is!’ Enid was enchanted. ‘Whatever will the men say when they come in? You were always attractive Lorna, but this is another category altogether. The new style has made you radiantly beautiful.’

  Lorna did not know what to say. She had had what her family would have called a pleasing appearance, though they had never forgiven her for the red hair, which was a new strain for them. The girl herself had not felt that she was anything but just comely. Suddenly now she was being greeted as a beauty, and looking across to her reflection in the huge mirror, gilt-rimmed on the far wall, she saw there someone whom she did not actually recognise. It was a young slender girl, with her head clear cut, and veiled in what looked to be a piece of orange silk.

  Timidly she admitted, ‘I was almost afraid to come down like this.’

  Mrs. Liskeard leant forward and patted her hands with her own tender ones. ‘Never be afraid when Henderson has had a go at you. She always knows what she is doing. Perhaps she has been my greatest and most faithful friend in life, and I have today infinite confidence in her.’

  It was then that they heard the sound of the men coming. The car had arrived nearly an hour back, and they had gone to their rooms, to a cold shower, and to change. Now, even as Enid still held Lorna’s arms against her side and stood staring with real rapture into her face, the door opened and they entered.

  Enid turned in triumph. ‘Here is something wonderful,’ she said, and her voice was so full of excitement that it revealed the full galaxy of what she was feeling.

  It was Michael who entered first. He wore a tussore dinner jacket, and looked cool, very dark, and a little tired. The heat had taken a toll out of everyone today, for it had been unbearably hot. Roger followed him. It seemed that his face had swollen more during the afternoon, and there was a definite pucker of pain in the frown lines which for the moment were marking his brow. He’s ill, thought Lorna, that cheek is hurting more, and instantly he saw her look at him. Surprise changed him. His eyes opened wide so that she saw the white rings which encircled them, the rings which had so alarmed her in another man in the dark who had rammed a gun muzzle against her ribs. A man who could have been Roger! Roger who could have been that man!

  It was Michael who spoke. ‘Lorna, what has happened to you?’

  ‘It’s only that Henderson did my hair for me in a new way. It rather worried me, I thought it was much too prim, and I ‒ perhaps I ought not to have let her do it.’

  ‘But thank heaven that you did let her. You look quite a different girl. You never told us that you had such a divinely shaped head, you bundled up your hair to hide it, and you must never never do that again.’

  All the time the man who had said nothing stood staring at them from the door, and he had white rings round his dark eyes. The silence became quite hideous. Lorna felt that everybody in the room must know what she was thinking, and in another moment she would scream from sheer terror. She was face to face with the dismay which had walked ghost-wise with her ever since that night in the car, when she had driven on, obeying orders, and well aware that any moment could be her last.

  Roger shut the door behind him, and walked into the room. He rather overdid his command of the situation. He came to Lorna and took her hand.

  ‘Good old Henderson! I hand it to her on a plate, for she has worked the miracle for you, and you look like Helen of Troy.’ Then tiredly, ‘I’ve had a bad headache this afternoon, and this cheek is hurting me a lot more than I thought it could. Perhaps I’ve picked up some germ or other, but it feels more swollen, and awfully hot.’

  Nobody said anything.

  It was Brown who broke the silence, stepping in across the terrace and saying that dinner was ready. Michael helped Mrs. Liskeard, and the Strongs gave up the pretence that they really must get home at all costs; they decided to stay on for the meal. It was something of a celebration, wasn’t it? Both Lorna and Michael had the feeling that maybe company would make it better for Mrs. Liskeard, and would help her.

  Michael whispered to Lorna, ‘You must get her to bed immediately after this, it’s no good overdoing it the first time.’

  ‘Of course, I’ll see after her.’

  Then hanging back and in a lower voice, ‘You look quite marvellous, and I adore you.’ Lorna pretended not to have heard that, for it seemed the easier way out.

  On the terrace the table was spread with a pale pink cloth, frilled with Cluny lace. It must have cost a fortune even in the years before the last world war, and Mrs. Liskeard confided in them that it was seldom used. Against it, crystal glasses and silver candlesticks glittered with a fairy-like beauty. A big crystal bowl of red roses was in the centre of the table, the floribunda rose called Paddy McGredy, with its deep colourful beauty. Luxury was here, and beyond the lovely table was the garden with the first shadows streaking across the lawns, and that certain mysterious cool darkness coming into the shrubberies. A cypress pointed to the sky, still quite sharply etched, and soon to fade in line, for beyond it the first stars were quivering.

  They took their places round the table.

  ‘I’m so tired,’ said Enid, as she sat down. ‘Just so tired.’

  Michael glanced across at her. ‘It’s the sudden heat that does it. The thermometer has shot up ten degrees today, and we suffer for it. Yesterday it was seventy-five, they say, and today in St. Ives it was eighty-five, which is something.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ and Enid sighed. ‘Maybe it is old age too, or the thrill of wild excitement over the new commission that has really got at me.’

  ‘Or maybe it is all of them,’ said Michael.

  He started talking about everything that he had seen down here in the last few hours. There was immense charm about Northumberland and Cornwall at the two extremes of England. ‘My favourites,’ he told them. Northumberland had the wall that the Romans had built, with the strange wildness of the country about one, and the feeling of immense power actually in the earth itself. Cornwall had the black-headed, blue-eyed men, the little harbours and quays almost French in appearance, the fishing boats coming and going, and an extraordinary changeableness about everywhere.

  He loved the fact that he could buy a picture almost wherever he went, and from the most unexpected shops and private houses and restaurants. Surely there were more artists to the square inch in this place than anywhere else in the world? And how all of them made a living was something that he would like to know.

  ‘Most of them don’t,’ explained Enid.

  She ate little, sitting there wi
th a glass of iced orange which appeared to be her favourite drink, her face haggard and her mouth drawn.

  ‘You feel ill?’ Lorna said to her suddenly, aware of the fact that she was suffering.

  ‘I feel funny.’

  Michael glanced at her, then muttered in a low voice, ‘Let’s get her indoors on the sofa for a moment,’ and between them he and Lorna took her inside. Michael called back to the others over his shoulder. ‘It’s nothing to worry about, just that the heat has affected her.’ In the terrace doorway he picked her up in his arms, this big gaunt woman, and Lorna realised that he must have immense strength, for apparently she did not seem even to be a load to him. He laid her on the sofa near the window. ‘Rest there for a while,’ he said, then, ‘What about some brandy?’

  ‘It’s just the heat,’ she whispered, and her mouth was as pale as her cheeks, and for a second she closed her eyes as if she did not quite know what she was doing.

  Lorna brought the brandy from the side, and Michael holding her head on his arms said to Enid, ‘Now drink this. Do what you’re told, and you’ll be better soon.’

  It seemed curious that Enid, the ever rebellious, obeyed him. ‘I’m quite all right.’

  ‘You’re not all right.’ He was running enquiring fingers over her wrist, and slipping back into being the doctor again, and Lorna followed his example and slipped back into being a nurse.

  He gave Enid the brandy and stood away; after a moment the first flush of colour came into her cheek and she changed. She stirred and half sat up. ‘How awfully silly of me that was! I suppose I’ve got overexcited about that commission, and it’s just gone to my head. That and the heat. Just silly!’ and she put her hand to her head.

  Michael was watching her closely, making a study of her, it almost seemed. He said, ‘Have you seen your doctor recently?’

  ‘No, why should I? Lionel will employ Maudie and everybody knows what he is, so I do without.’

  ‘You ought to see someone.’

  Her eyes suddenly settled on his face, questioning him. ‘I haven’t got something awful the matter, have I? I mean this is as you said ‒ just the hot weather?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’d have said that it was most certainly nothing awful, unless you hate children.’

  She sat there her legs sprawled out before her just as he had laid her gently a few moments back; she turned to him, not understanding the inference, her eyes surprised. ‘If I don’t like children? What do you mean?’

  ‘I think you could be having a child.’ He got up; he brushed down the knees of his trousers with an over-elaborate gesture, and stood there waiting for the row to break. He rather suspected Enid as being capable of making a scene; she was the sort who could burst into a flaming bad temper, and hand it generously over to others, he felt sure, and very likely she did not like children or she would have had them before.

  The amazing thing happened.

  She buried her face in her two hands and she sobbed desperately. She sobbed as though the whole of her world had collapsed around her, so they thought. Lorna touched her.

  ‘But you wanted a baby?’

  ‘I know.’ Enid lifted her face with the cheeks glazed by tears. ‘I’m crying because I am so glad! I’m crying because I feel like Sarah who in her old age brought forth a son. I am crying because this is the most wonderful hour of my whole life, it is my hour!’

  The two clung together, and Michael watched them. He had been in many strange situations in his life, but somehow he thought that he had never seen one so strange as this. A woman sobbing out her heart for joy that, at forty-three she was going to have her first child. The woman who believed that the golden gates of life had opened upon the superb future for her. Heavens, I do hope that I have not blundered and dropped the major brick! he thought, but aloud all he said was, ‘Now try to pull yourself together, do!’

  After a while they returned to the table.

  There were strawberries and cream going the rounds. The night had now deepened to a richer shade of duskiness, and the garden seemed to have receded, sliding gently away from them into purple and indigo. The stars were no longer young and frail, but brilliants in topaz dropped from the diadem of some great queen.

  Roger looked very limp, Lorna thought, and she did not know why she kept looking at him. She got the idea that one of his dark moods was rapidly descending on him; possibly it had come because he could not bear pain easily, that happened to a lot of people, and the cheek hurt him much. Also the shock of the accident could have been delayed, and now was here with him, she had realised already that he had been considerably shaken by the accident and had suffered more than he had said. Mrs. Liskeard now showed no sign of tiredness, but Lorna knew that Michael had an eye on her.

  He said, ‘Now it is time you went to bed. This is not meant to make you worse, it is only the first time up, and you have to take it slowly.’

  ‘But I am enjoying myself so much.’

  ‘Tomorrow is another day.’

  It took some persuasion to get her to go up to bed, and Lorna went with her. At the head of the stairs the faithful Henderson was waiting to take the patient off Lorna’s hands, and she came down again, and went out on to the terrace.

  Brown had cleared away everything with great ability, and another small table with drinks on it was on the side. As Lorna came Lionel had risen to go.

  ‘We’ve got to get back,’ he said, ‘with Enid trying to throw a faint the way she did, it’s time we went early to bed.’

  About Enid there was the look of someone completely changed, and she was almost beautiful in the silent radiance of the night. Roger, on the other hand, looked drawn and ill.

  ‘I’ve just got the most frightful headache,’ he confessed.

  ‘Why not go to bed?’ Michael suggested. ‘We did too much this afternoon in the blazing sun, and you had no hat on half the time. It’s probably a touch of the sun. Englishmen are always so risky with it.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Do go to bed,’ Lorna said, for she was worried about him. He went reluctantly, so that Michael and Lorna together were the ones who saw Lionel and Enid off. They went hand in hand to the tired old car that Lionel drove; they were two people who were still in love, both Michael and Lorna knew that, and as yet Lionel was unaware of the secret that Enid carried with her. Only the other day she had said that the honour of the new commission was something she could compare only with what she would have felt if she had been going to have a baby. Now she had two great honours, and was the luckiest person in all the world, and most definitely the happiest.

  They drove away.

  ‘They’ll have something to talk about!’ said Michael, and he chuckled.

  ‘It might be a tragedy if you had made a mistake.’

  They walked indoors again, across the terrace and into the house and the library with the moonlit terrace beyond the windows.

  ‘Do you know, there is something about which I am nearly always right? It’s the look in a woman’s eyes, the look of promise fulfilled, of hidden joy and of a tremendous hope.’

  ‘Even if the woman doesn’t want a baby?’

  ‘Enid Strong wants a baby badly. She is not in that category at all, for until tonight she has always been a woman deprived. Remember that!’

  Somewhere in the servants’ quarter a gramophone was playing Brahms. Brown, it seemed, had a passion for delightful music, it was his one extravagance, Mrs. Liskeard had told Lorna about it. The sound was of course just the right accompaniment for the moment. Michael turned gently to her.

  ‘My darling!’ he said emotionally.

  Lorna knew that she should stop the love scene immediately. She ought to remember Frances Ford, and how wounded she had been, how deeply unhappy, but somehow now, all that slipped from her. She knew that she was trembling as his arms slipped around her; trembling on this hot night when the world was so warm, and yet she had no power left save to shiver lightly.

  Quietly she said, ‘Plea
se, Michael …’

  ‘Have you never heard of two people being born one for the other?’

  ‘But there is an entire world between us.’

  ‘Worlds were meant to be crossed.’

  ‘Not always.’

  ‘Always,’ he said and pressed her to him. His face was darker in the light that had changed, his voice seemed to have the power to throb like a heart. ‘The world loves, it knows that this is the greatest emotion of them all. And that is how I feel for you.’

  He kissed her tenderly, and when she could she broke from him. She moved away towards the library door. ‘Realise that all that sort of thing is over, Michael. It does not matter any more. Once you made me bitterly unhappy, and I’m not risking that again. You must go away, right away, and for ever.’

  Perhaps the change in her hair to this severe style had given her power; perhaps there was more of the boy in her in this hour, than of the girl, and it gave her a new self-control.

  ‘But my darling …?’

  ‘No, Michael, and what is more, it is no for ever.’

  She opened the door with a quick movement of her hand, and ran up the stairs, hardly aware that she had accomplished it all so quickly, so fast did she travel.

  She went into her own room and shut the door behind her, switching on the light. Her world became real again. I was a fool, she thought. She stood there and in the mirror before her was the reflection of a girl with a boyish head of hair in auburn.

  That was when she heard a deep, long groan.

  Chapter Eleven

  Lorna came out of her room and went quickly down the corridor, her nerves on edge. The sound guided her, and at the far end was Roger’s room, a big, man’s room, and she knew instantly that the groan had come from there. He’s ill, she thought, surprised at the panic it gave her.

  She tapped on the door. ‘Is there anything the matter?’ she asked uneasily.

  There was a slight hesitation, a moment when the silence seemed to be almost alive, and then his voice. It was a little blurred, the difference in it was compelling. ‘Nothing.’