‘I’m not going back on my promise,’ Joy said firmly, ‘and’—her face softened as she saw how much better Lana was looking these days—‘you don’t really mean that, you know, darling. You wouldn’t like me to betray the trust old Miss Barnes put in me, would you? I just couldn’t, and you wouldn’t really like me to.’
‘I suppose not.’ Lana smiled in return, holding out her arms and suddenly enveloping the willing Joy within them, a Joy who felt a surge of delight sweep over her as she realized how much stronger was Lana’s grip these days. ‘It just wouldn’t be you,’ Lana finished softly, ‘and when all’s said and done, I think you’re the most wonderful sister in the world!’
‘Go along with you,’ Joy said, laughing, but she was pleased all the same. Appreciation from the lovely Lana had been a rare thing for some time past, now, it seemed, with a regaining of a little strength, something of her old generous and happy spirit seemed to be returning too.
It did indeed appear that any further trouble from Sam Bainbridge had been shelved, at least for the time being. There were signs of activity from the other side of the high hedge, and Lana, who spent so much of her time lying put in the garden, reported a high wooden fence being erected just on the other side of their trees. There were varying noises of lorries unloading, of hammering and loud voices of men hard at work, then suddenly one morning, a new sound greeted their ears just as Joy returned from St Lucy’s.
‘What is it?’ Emma demanded of Joy as soon as she entered the house. ‘It started at half past seven and it hasn’t stopped since.’
‘It’s a pneumatic drill,’ Rex said knowledgeably.
More than one. They’ve started on that part of the road which runs right down to the shore, right across what we used to think of as the waste land.’
‘There’s more than one,’ Sylvia added. ‘I watched them unload. You can see right across from the attic windows.’
Joy tightened her lips. If this was Sam Bainbridge’s way of trying to annoy them she was going to do her best to defeat him. She wasn’t sure as yet what she could do, if anything, but surely there was no real necessity to suffer this kind of thing after a night on duty on the wards?
Turn the problem over in her mind as often as she might she was still no nearer an answer as, later than usual, she went up to her room and prepared to try and get some rest, but outside, despite the windows being closed and the air in the room growing more and more stuffy as the morning wore on, the noise continued, until at last she got up, pulled on her dressing gown and slippers and went out into the garden to see whether or not the annoyance was affecting Lana as well.
CHAPTER XI
‘It is rather much,’ Lana said in reply to Joy’s enquiry about the effects of the noise from the adjacent plot which, if anything, seemed to have increased in volume during the past half hour. ‘I suppose they have to use these things when they’re taking up roads and so on, but I rather fancy that’s not quite what they are doing.’
‘Well, whatever it is it’s a dreadful, nerve-racking row,’ Joy said emphatically. ‘Just what do you think they’re doing, if they aren’t ripping up the road?’
‘Breaking up that rocky stuff they want to have level to build their chalets or whatever they call their little summer-time houses on,’ Lana said briefly. ‘Emma climbed on that kitchen step-stool yesterday and had a look. She was very satisfied they would have great difficulty in getting their drains and foundations and things in, but it doesn’t seem they’re going to have much difficulty after all. We are, if this goes on!’
‘How right you are!’ Joy gave a sharp sigh for her own fast vanishing rest period. She was back on duty tonight, but, thank goodness, tomorrow was one of her two nights off. Tomorrow, she vowed, she would certainly make up for what she missed today ... but in the meantime she had to consider that she had still two further weeks of night duty to face.
‘Wonder how Mum’s making out,’ she managed above the noise. ‘Maybe it doesn’t sound so loudly in her office. I’ll go and see.’ But when she went in to Aileen she was greeted, most unusually, by a frown and a sharp request to ‘hurry and close the door, dear, please. It helps to deaden the sound.’
Aileen looked pale and headachey, and the temperature of the room told its own story. Until this morning she had been working with the windows wide open to the sounds and scents of summer. Now the windows, as well as the door, were tightly closed and although Aileen seldom smoked Joy could detect the smell of stale tobacco in the air.
‘Poor darling,’ she thought sympathetically. ‘She must have been in quite a state to resort to smoking! And Cousin Emma, rheumatic twinges and the lot, climbing on to a stool to try and see just what was going on!’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ Aileen smiled suddenly. ‘I had a bright idea and put cotton wool in my ears. It’s helped a lot, but it makes it difficult to hear the phone, and I have to take it out when I’m talking to anyone, and for some reason or other lots of people seem to have chosen this morning to ring up. Must be that small advert I put in the local paper. Anyhow, it’s all good for business, the telephone calls, I mean. And this noise can’t go on for much longer. They’re bound to get to a quieter phase of work before long.’
‘I read somewhere, or saw it on some news programme on the television or something’—Joy wrinkled her brow as she strove to recall just what she had seen and where, but the thought eluded her—‘that there had been some sort of machines or compressors developed which didn’t make any noise at all. They’ve even been used in roads adjoining hospitals. Surely, if Mr. Bainbridge and his friends have as much money as he said they have, then they can afford some of the very latest equipment?’
‘Maybe they can, maybe they don’t even know about it, but that’s hardly likely,’ Aileen observed. ‘I should think he just hopes we’ll object enough to want to move out!’
‘Then he’s in for a great surprise,’ Joy announced with renewed determination as, abruptly, the sound increased again in volume and Emma tapped on the door to report that a lorry had just delivered a third machine, which had been put into immediate operation. Sylvia had seen it taken off the lorry from her vantage point at the attic window.
‘That settles it.’ Joy pulled the cord of her gown about her as though, Aileen thought whimsically, she were girding on armour I ‘I’m going round there ... at once! One machine would be quite adequate for what they have to do, even if it would take them longer to do it! They couldn’t have their precious holiday village completed, advertised and booked up for this season, anyhow, so I don’t see that there’s any necessity for all this racket!’
‘Joy!’ Aileen protested, but without much real hope of achieving anything. She knew her daughter in this mood. ‘I don’t think it will do very much good! There will only be workmen there, and they’ll be acting under orders. It isn’t fair to blame them for whatever instructions Mr. Bainbridge or one of his co-members of the Trust has told them is to be done.’
‘There’s bound to be someone in charge,’ Joy said insistently, ‘a Clerk of Works, a foreman or someone. He’s the one I hope to see now. I’ll deal with Mr. Bainbridge later, wherever he lives or is to be found.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t...’ Aileen began, but Joy laid a gentle hand on her mother’s shoulder.
‘Don’t worry so much, darling,’ she advised. ‘I hear Mr. B. is quite a nice chap, if everything’s going his way! Well, it’s high time he accepted the fact that there are other people in this world as well as Samuel Bainbridge, and that they don’t all happen to be dependent upon him for their bread and butter! I shan’t quarrel with him—even if he’s there—unless he opens hostilities in my direction first. But I have to think of my rest, your work, Lana’s health—this noise must be getting on her nerves, lying out there in the garden and so close to it all. And I really can’t have Emma or Jenny Wren climbing up and down to find out what it’s all about! One or the other of them might fall and break a limb! Then we’ll have a sec
ond helpless person in the family!’
She did not wait for any further protests Aileen might have to offer. Instead she’ dropped a light kiss on top of her mother’s head, then left the room, running up to dress as speedily as she could.
It did not take many minutes to change, apply a light touch of make-up, and prepare to do battle, as she phrased it to herself. She had put on a shift dress of deep blue crease-resistant linen, brushed her hair until it gleamed and danced about her head, touched her generous mouth with lipstick and decided she was ready.
‘Let’s hope he’s an understanding sort of foreman or boss or whatever he’s called!’ she whispered to her image, then she ran lightly downstairs and out through the front door, going the short distance to the rough track the lorries had already made over the waste land next door.
She stood for a moment, startled by what she saw. There were high piles of timber, what appeared to be masses of bricks, plastic and glass sheeting, ladders, wheelbarrows, spades and shovels, a huge concrete mixer and all the general paraphernalia of a building site. Over in the far corner, not very far from the Fernbank hedge, was one of several newly erected wooden huts, but this one bore a sign on a board near the door: Clerk of Works.
Close to where Joy stood, slightly bewildered by all the activity around her, a man shut off the pneumatic drill he was working and grinned at her.
‘Looking for someone, miss?’ he asked her. ‘Maybe I can help you?’
‘I want to see whoever is in charge here, please,’ Joy said, summoning back her courage now it had actually come to the point. To be strictly truthful, she had not been too sure of this idea of hers, the bearding of the lion in his own den, as it were, even when she had told her mother so emphatically that that was where she was going, but the man to whom she had spoken seemed sympathetic enough. Still grinning all over his weather-tanned face, he pointed one finger at the lettered board.
‘I expect it’s Mr. Michael you want to see really,’ he said, ‘he’s in there. But I’d hurry up if I were you, miss. Mr. Sam’ll be back any time, and he isn’t one to have social calls on the site!’
‘This isn’t exactly a social call,’ Joy told him, wondering who on earth ‘Mr. Michael’ might be. Probably one or another of his co-members of the Trust, she decided, and, picking her way over the littered ground, she went to the door of the small hut and knocked as loudly as she dared.
‘Come in!’ The shout from inside was barely audible, and after a moment of further hesitation she turned the knob and opened the door. A young man was sitting on a high stool at a shelf under the window, which apparently served him as a desk with the light coming in above it. He turned as she entered, an exclamation which had sprung to his lips dying unspoken. When he saw who his visitor was he took off the horn-rimmed glasses he was wearing, revealing a pair of startlingly clear grey eyes, and advanced the pace or so permitted by the small space to stand before her.
‘What a pleasant surprise!’ he astonished Joy by his first words. ‘I’m very sorry,’ he went on apologetically, ‘but this site won’t be completed and open before next season, and that’s only if things get a move on now, before the autumn starts ... that is’—he broke off and gave her the benefit of a charming smile—‘I’m assuming that you’ve called to enquire about booking one of our chalets or accommodation of some description?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ Joy said crisply, and since she could not address him as ‘Mr. Michael’ without knowing at least who he was, and since she had no idea what his full name might be or what he was doing there at all, she looked up enquiringly. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know your name,’ she apologized, ‘but I’m from Fernbank’—she jerked her head in the direction of the fence and hedge—‘next door. I really came to ask if it’s necessary to make quite such a noise in the pursuit of whatever it is you’re trying to do. One of your many machines would be more than enough to keep me awake—I’m on night duty for this week and a further two weeks—at St Lucy’s Hospital. In addition I have a sister who is somewhat incapacitated, and whose only pleasure is to lie out there, in the garden, a pleasure completely destroyed, I might add, since your men got to work this morning.’
‘It is rather too much, I agree,’ he smiled unexpectedly. ‘I don’t suppose my father gave it a thought when he left his instructions with the foreman. By the way, I’m Michael Bainbridge, and this is my first job as a civil engineer,’ he ended. ‘I’ll see what can be done.’
‘I’m Joy Benyon.’ They shook hands solemnly. ‘I have met your father,’ she added, not knowing how much Sam Bainbridge might or might not have said about herself and her refusal to sell to him. Michael laughed. He had, she discovered, a rather pleasant laugh, but he seemed somehow as though that particular exercise was one in which he did not indulge very often.
‘You’ll be Sister Joy Benyon, then,’ Michael smiled as she nodded. ‘I’ve heard about you,’ was his only comment, but he took her by the elbow and began to escort her from the site. ‘My father has one of those new drills,’ he explained, ‘only just out in this country, and it’s practically noiseless. I know, because it’s just been used in the vicinity of a hospital we’ve been building up in the North. I’ll see what can be done about getting it or one like it down here by tomorrow. The Plant Equipment Hire people may have one they can let us have. In the meantime’—again the charming smile—‘there’s lots of digging and so forth these chaps can be getting along with.’
‘Thank you,’ Joy said gratefully, annoyed because she felt somehow a little deflated by the fact that there had been such a sudden and generous acceptance of her complaint. ‘I’ll be getting back, then.’
‘You catch up on your rest if you can, Sister,’ Michael advised. ‘People who do your sort of work need their rest when they’re due for it!’
They parted with cordial exchanges on both sides, and Joy went back into the kitchen to explain the sudden cessation of noise which had disappeared as though by magic.
‘Mr. Michael’s not long been qualified,’ Jenny Wrenshaw said from where she was washing salad ready for lunch. ‘He’s a civil engineer or something. Anyhow, he’s got a degree to his name, which is more than his dad’ll ever get, for all his cleverness!’
‘It takes all sorts to make a world,’ Joy smiled, ‘and I’m only too thankful Mr. Michael didn’t exactly take after his father! He was most kind and considerate.’
‘They both are,’ Jenny affirmed, ‘both him and his sister. But Sam’s made them do what he decided, ever since their mother died. I always thought young Miss Cara would follow her mother’s footsteps. She was a lovely woman, and clever too. She used to do what she called “create hats”, and some lovely things she made in her time, that I will say.’
‘And what does—Cara, did you say? What does she do?’ Joy asked curiously.
‘Nothing.’ Jenny’s jaw set. ‘Miss Muriel used to talk to her sometimes, when they met in the library. Miss Cara wanted to go to London, something in advertising, I think it was. But her dad said there was no need for her ever to worry about earning a living, and that she’d better concentrate on finding herself a man ... but Miss Cara never seemed to bother with boys. She was always trying to help people instead. Did some work for Oxfam, some for some youth organization or other and went abroad for a bit, and came back full of all sorts of plans and schemes about devoting the rest of her life to people less fortunate than herself, but her father soon put a stop to that!’
‘How?’ Joy was interested in spite of herself. She was wondering just what it must be like to have a father such as Sam Bainbridge and lack any means of opposing him, since he appeared to control the lives of his family and in some ways—maybe only where this Cara was concerned—seen to it there were no qualifications which would enable her to leave home and to lead a life of her own.
‘She’d been to what he called a “finishing school” and all that sort of thing,’ Jenny said with some scorn, ‘but that would only have helped her if he’d set
her up in a hat shop of her own, as she wanted him to do, and he wouldn’t. No’—she tossed the washed salad in a bowl as she spoke—‘he sent off Ella Wilkinson, who’d been his housekeeper for some years. Gave her a small cottage and a pension, just enough to keep body and soul together, and packed her off. He lets Cara go up to see her every now and then for what he calls a holiday, but it’s really so that she can keep an eye on Ella and make certain she’s not augmenting her income in any way, letting a room or growing something to sell or anything of that sort. Ever since then Miss Cara’s lived at home and kept house for her father, poor kid.’
‘I wouldn’t,’ Joy announced decisively. ‘I’d do something! Anyhow, that’s not our worry, thank goodness. I feel we’ve coped with our present problem, at any rate for a time, thanks be!’
It certainly seemed that way. The noise of the drills and the bumper had ceased since her visit, and although there were sounds of activity from the other side of the fence, they were not unduly loud or in any way unbearable. Joy went to see first her mother and then Lana, and was congratulated by both on the success of her visit, then she went back to her room and undressed again, slipping back into bed and was soon sound asleep.
She was wakened from her slumbers by the renewed sounds of the drills and mixer going at full strength again in the plot next door. It was impossible to get off to sleep a second time, and after a while she got up. bathed and dressed and went out to Lana, who said wearily that her head was aching and that Joy’s visit hadn’t really done much good after all.
‘This will be because Sam’s come back,’ Joy decided. ‘He’s the one I’ll have to tackle, and I will. Just let me get a strong, hot cuppa to bolster my courage, and I’ll go round and tell him exactly what I think of him.’
She was as good as her word, but this time she made an effort to look as businesslike and as efficient as possible. There was no hesitation in her step this time as she picked her way carefully across to the door of the little hut, watched, she knew, by the eyes of more than one of the workmen.
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