by Sheila Burns
‘I thought you were ill.’
‘I’m not.’
No more. Lorna waited, wondering what was the right thing to do, wondering if she should go in, yet respecting Roger’s privacy. It was his room; he said he was all right, and she must abide by it. Then she remembered that people who were actually dying often said they were all right. She said again, ‘Roger? I’m worried for you.’
He groaned, and that determined her; she wrenched the handle of the door, turned it and went inside.
The room was dimly lit, he always had a curious dislike of sharp lighting, which was unusual in a grown man. He had been sprawling on the bed, fully dressed, now he sat up, his elbows on his bent knees, his knees sunk into his open hands.
‘Roger, whatever is the matter?’
He had been crying like a girl, she recognised that at once, yet he said, ‘It’s nothing, nothing at all. I get these attacks. It is just one of my moods, and they did warn me that I would get them when they discharged me from hospital. It’s nothing, nothing at all, just one of those things.’
Lorna was all nurse and anxious to help. She shut the door and went inside. The windows were open, but the night was so still that it seemed there was no air at all. He looked at her as she opened them further.
‘I’m all right, I tell you, I’m perfectly all right. See?’
‘That’s the last thing you are; isn’t there something you can take for this? Something to make you feel better?’
‘They have given me tablets, but they don’t do a thing! I’m afraid for you, Lorna. I don’t want you here ‒ I’m not myself ‒ I could do anything …’
‘I know you do odd things, but I’ll get you better. What about some strong black coffee?’
‘I’ve drunk buckets full of it.’ He was a rather pathetic creature at this moment, plaintively weak. ‘I want help, Lorna, but that seems to be the last thing I can hope to get. I live in a twilight world of my own, I long for someone to help me, and have begun to believe that can never happen.’
‘But it can. There are lots of good doctors who could help you. It’s only a condition, and it passes.’
‘I’m going to no more of those striped-pant chaps in Harley Street. Maudie is enough for me.’
‘You realise how little he knows? He wouldn’t be here if he were brilliant, and you need brilliance, Roger. I’ll make some enquiries for you.’
‘It won’t work.’
‘If you see the right man, it will work. You need something to take when you feel the depression beginning.’
He paused. ‘You’re a nice girl. You’re the nicest girl I’ve ever known, and if you could, you’d help me, bless your heart.’
She brought her courage to the sticking point, and sat down on the bed beside him. ‘Roger, do you hold up cars at night? Go adventurous, and ride with danger?’
He stared at her open-mouthed. ‘What do you mean?’
‘With a gun?’
‘I’m scared stiff of guns, I hate the things.’ She did not know whether to believe him or not, and he saw it, for he clutched at her arm. ‘That is the worst of it, you don’t believe a word I say, and at this hour I need your faith in me. I ‒ I half believe that I love you. I feel you are my last chance, my last hope, my last …’
He began to cry. She mixed him a sedative and slipped it into a cup of tea she made him, knowing that sleep might be his answer. She stayed until he began to doze, holding her hand, and muttering as he drifted off, and she wondering if like this she might hear something which would give her a clue to more. But she heard nothing.
When she went to bed that night, Lorna could not sleep. She seemed to wander through a stage of desperate uncertainty. She still doubted if Roger had been the man, so many of these affairs happened nowadays, and even if the evidence did mount up against him she was not sure. Tomorrow she would throw all her cards on the table, and ask Michael, yet when morning came she did not ask him. Mrs. Liskeard’s bell rang at dawn, and Lorna went to her room. The patient had had another attack.
For some time Lorna and Michael worked on Mrs. Liskeard. Lorna had gone for him immediately, waking him, and he had come to the door, a man with rumpled hair in pale blue silk pyjamas, monogrammed on the pocket. Even in that horrible moment she took in a vivid photo snap of him as he stood there.
‘She’s had another? Right, I’ll come.’ He turned back into his room, then caught her up as she went along the corridor. He had slipped on a crimson silk dressing-gown, and had run his fingers through the tousled hair. ‘What happened? She must have felt ill last night then, though she did not show it.’
‘She rang for me and when I got there she was unconscious.’
Michael went ahead of her into the room and to the bed. Instantly he was the great doctor. He ran light fingers over her, got Lorna to bring his bag and told her to fill a syringe. It was, she knew, a very strong injection, given only in emergencies, and she gave it to him. Far across the park, the first faint amber of the dawn was starting, and she could hear the cheep of waking birds. In another few minutes the full dawn choir of them would be in song. They waited beside Mrs. Liskeard, her pulse so low, and her face so tallowish, that from anything that she disclosed she might have been dead already. Then, when the birdsong came, the colour changed a little. Again Michael said nothing, and his finger never faltered on her pulse.
‘Better?’ Lorna asked.
‘Yes, we must give her time. That heart is strong, in spite of the antics it gets up to.’
They waited and later, when Mrs. Liskeard was out of immediate danger, Lorna put on the electric kettle and made some tea. She knew where Henderson kept the things, and the box of biscuits. She ran a comb through her hair, and powdered her nose, for the dawn was a cruel light to some, and she was half afraid of it. When she went back into the bedroom Michael was sitting in the bay window, and she took him the tea there. They spoke in whispers.
‘Roger was ill at the start to the night, and I went to him.’
‘What was his trouble?’
‘Jekyll and Hyde. Didn’t you know?’
He said, ‘Often a doctor knows more than he dares reveal, and what you told me that other time put me on my guard. Are you quite sure that you are safe with him?’
‘Safe or not, how could I leave Mrs. Liskeard? She needs me, and whilst she needs me, I am here.’
‘But if Roger is going the way you feel, and if in the past something happened, and he was the man on that drive, is it safe?’
‘I’ll risk it.’
‘Will you? When I leave here, you are coming with me, and I don’t care what you say about it, you are coming. I’m going to marry you, my Lorna, because you need protection. That affair did more to you than you know, and you need me.’
She could not speak, because a pulse throbbed vigorously in her throat. For a single moment she turned dizzy and span through an unknown world, a dawn to delight was perhaps the way she would have put it! A light moan from the bed brought her back to reality. Instantly Michael rose and went to Mrs. Liskeard.
‘I’m here,’ he said.
But it was Lorna whom she recognised. The girl went to lift a pillow slightly, not sure if the patient knew or not. ‘I’m with you, Mrs. Liskeard, I’m here. Press my hand if you can understand what I am saying.’
A finger tightened on hers, and she knew that Mrs. Liskeard was semi-conscious. She stayed on after Michael had returned to his room. She brought her own clothes in here and dressed here, putting on uniform, she did not quite know why, save that she had a wretched foreboding that something was about to happen. It was a premonition that she stood on the fringe of adventure.
Because of etiquette Michael insisted on Maudie being rung up and told. Maudie immediately arrived in his car, his eyes gummed-up with sleep, his face twitching uneasily, as happened when he found difficulty in pulling himself together. He agreed with everything that had been done; said that it had been a good thing that Mr. Bland was here, else it would ha
ve come his way, and he was allergic to being called out at night. He asked after Roger. Nobody had seen Roger. For the first time it occurred to Lorna that this had been rather extraordinary, for where could he have got to, and what had he been doing?
‘He wasn’t too well last night, doctor,’ she said, ‘I gave him a sedative, and perhaps he has slept late.’
‘I’d better trot along and see,’ said Maudie, his lips dry and apprehensive that he might miss the usual refreshment; if he did, that would be the end of it!
Roger had risen.
He had felt so awful that he had taken no breakfast, just a stiff peg, and a very stiff peg it had been. Now he was at least more normal, and he saw Maudie coming along the corridor, instantly to realise exactly what Maudie wanted.
‘Sad your aunt has had another turn,’ said Maudie coming into the room.
‘But has she?’
‘You must know. The nurse rang me.’
‘Nobody rang me,’ said Roger. ‘What the hell?’ and he left Maudie to his ‘usual’ and ran along the corridor to the door of Mrs. Liskeard’s bedroom, his eyes dark with worry. ‘She’s ill? Nobody told me a thing.’
It was Lorna who put a hand on his shoulder. ‘She is recovering wonderfully. I thought Brown had told you, Henderson said he had. It wasn’t a really bad turn, bad enough, but nothing like last time, and she is getting over it well. No need for worry, she’ll be all right.’
‘You’re quite sure?’
‘Quite sure, Roger.’
‘I want to see her, please?’
‘You mustn’t speak to her, for we want her to sleep. Just peep round the corner of the door and do no more.’
He peeped and came back looking worried. ‘She looks awful to me, such a bad colour.’
‘You should have seen her three hours ago! Leave this to Mr. Bland and to me, she’s all right.’
He lingered with his eyes sad, his voice a little tremulous. ‘How good you are! How very very good you are!’ and there was honest appreciation in his voice. This was the sad something he possessed that made her care for him, and want so much to help him. Roger was in serious trouble, Lorna knew it, and she wished that she could do more. She turned to him now in this moment.
‘If I get the right man to see you, Roger, you will take advantage of it and go to him?’ she asked.
‘I’m seeing nobody. I’m right as rain this morning, absolutely myself, and don’t give any rot I talked another thought.’ Then quickly, ‘I left Maudie with the decanter, if any of it is to be left, I shall have to hurry.’
He turned sharply and hurried away down the corridor.
Chapter Twelve
Mrs. Liskeard had amazing recuperative powers. Two days later, when Lorna would have expected her to be still under the weather, she had become surprisingly restored. Yet Michael was not happy about her, and extended his visit because of it.
‘Another week might help, and I should enjoy it.’ He looked across at Lorna. ‘I have a hunch ‒ I don’t know why ‒ that something might happen.’
‘You don’t think she’s going to die?’
‘No, I don’t think that, but I do get hunches. I always get one as I go into an operating theatre; I sort of know if it’ll be good or bad, I just know.’
‘You’re a strange personality.’
He looked at her across a breakfast table with a soft blue cloth with wild flowers on it, silver coffee pots, and gaily delightful cups and saucers. ‘Maybe all of us are strange personalities, and few of us know ourselves. I just feel that something will happen. There’s thunder hanging about; they’ve had nasty storms in the north and it’s travelling this way. Thunder always does this to me.’
It did much the same thing for Henderson, who looked like a faded dishcloth. Brown laughed at her about it. The Strongs had gone up to London the day before, she to see a first-class obstetrician; Michael had recommended a man who on his suggestion made an immediate appointment. Before starting back Enid sent an enchanted telegram to Lorna; the news was correct, and they were coming home to heaven! There is such a thing as the unbelievable in this hard world of ours, the unbelievable of the miracle and here in the world for us to accept.
In many ways Lorna was grateful that Michael was staying on a little longer; she was nervous for her patient, not that outwardly there was anything to be nervous about, save that faint uneasiness, which perhaps had been inspired by his hunch. She wanted him, too, for himself. Every time that she saw him, she knew that she was more and more attracted, and that she could not stem the tide within her. His good looks, his charm, and yet alongside it all her terror of being hurt again, and all the time a ghost walked with her through her dreams, and the ghost carried the name of Frances Ford.
Roger was better.
‘That fellow ought to have proper treatment,’ Michael told her that evening, when they took their cocktails to the stone parapet around the pool, and sat there drinking them in the cool. ‘If our men got at him now, it might steady him up, I wish you could persuade him.’
‘They always hate treatment. I think I should myself.’
‘But that is the only answer. When I go home next Tuesday I shall hate leaving you with him.’ He looked at her. He sat astride the parapet, she sat to one side with her legs swinging, and a huge pot of scarlet geraniums beside her. ‘You couldn’t come back to London with me, darling?’
‘How can I, Michael?’
‘You do nurse grievances, don’t you? You blame me for something that my father did, and it is so unkind. I’d give you my life, and if you knew how some of the girls would grab at that chance, you’d be surprised. Half the world loves a surgeon, if you ask me.’
‘Especially when it is the Heartbreak Surgeon!’
He looked at her, startled. ‘How did you get hold of that silly name?’
‘I just came by it,’ she said, and smiled.
‘Give me a chance, sweetheart, I am due home so soon, give me the opportunity to prove something better.’
‘I can’t come back to London with you,’ and she would never know the resolution it commanded of her to say it. She wanted him so desperately, yet under it all, loving him as she did, she did not trust him. Perhaps like so many other men with heartbreak, he could not stop himself from being attractive. Perhaps some of it was her fault in caring so much, and now she was afraid to trust her emotions. She had lost confidence.
‘One day I’ll make you,’ he said. ‘I’ll lift you up in my arms and carry you away with me, and then what do you think you’ll do?’
‘I think there’s very little risk of it,’ she said.
Then she slid off the stone parapet, and walked across the lawn towards the house. It was time to see how Mrs. Liskeard was getting on and to give Roger the special tablets for his bad headache; she ran into him in the corridor.
‘I was bringing your tablets.’
‘Don’t worry about me. Chaps like I am get headaches, and bad moods, and come round again. We manage to live through them every time.’
‘Mr. Bland says that if you had a little treatment you’d be quite a different man, Michael knows.’
‘I daresay he does know.’ For a single second she saw the white rings round those dark eyes and sensed the apprehension and the sick doubt. She knew that he was dismayed, and imagined the sudden quickening of his pulse and with it suspicion.
‘Don’t be silly, Roger. So much can be done in this modern world, and it need not be too unpleasant.’
‘That’s what you think!’ He turned from her and went along the corridor to his room; she heard him shoot the key in the lock and knew that she had offended him. On edge, he could not bear criticism or advice; he shunned help even when it was offered to him. He was a man in the dark, seeking the way to the light, and yet refusing to read the signposts. Refusing to help himself.
‘Whatever will happen to him in the end?’ she asked herself.
The night before Michael was due to return to London, they all dined on
the terrace. The heat had been humid, with the distant rumbling of thunder, and the sense of it in the dull headache which Lorna had. They dined very early to suit Mrs. Liskeard coming down for the first time, and Michael insisted that it must be a quick meal, and that she must go back to bed immediately, for her migraine was threatening her.
The evening broke up quite suddenly, for they were eating iced gateaux when the telephone rang to tell them that Enid and Lionel had come down from London, far sooner than anyone had expected them. They had been due on the morrow.
‘Oh dear,’ said Mrs. Liskeard, ‘and I wanted special flowers to be there for them. The gardener cut me a big bunch this evening when the air cooled, and nobody took them across, for they were supposed to go first thing in the morning. What do I do?’
‘I’ll take them for you,’ said Roger. ‘The moment the coffee comes, I’ll run over with them. That ought to be all right; better late than never anyway.’
‘But isn’t your head bad? You said it was, earlier this evening?’
‘The air always does it good.’
Michael said, ‘I’d have done it, or come with you, but I’m leaving in the morning, and haven’t packed a thing.’
‘Can’t Brown pack for you?’
He grinned. ‘It’s a funny thing but I have always had a hunch about doing my own packing. I hate other people handling my things, and there you are! No, tonight I have got to go through notes of work ahead, pack the goods, and get everything scheduled. That’s important.’
He is still angry because I have refused him, thought Lorna, and also because I won’t go back to town with him.
‘Lorna dear …?’ Mrs. Liskeard spoke endearingly, and instantly the girl felt galvanised, for she knew what Mrs. Liskeard was going to suggest. ‘Lorna, do go with Roger and take the flowers for me? Take them to Enid with my love, I want her to have them, and especially tonight when she comes home. They are white flowers, the sort you would send to a bride, or a young mother, or to a child. They are for her and for her child.’