Promise the Doctor

by Marjorie Norrell

  As though by magic the noise had ceased as she walked across the site, and when she knocked on the door she could clearly hear the voice which called ‘come in’, but she almost stood where she was, rooted to the spot by the sound of that voice. It was not the voice of Sam or of his son, but that of a girl, and when Joy pushed open the door she found herself confronted by a small, slight girl of about nineteen with brown hair cut with a fringe and hanging to her shoulders, something after the style of Sylvia’s.

  ‘Hello.’ The girl held out her hand, a slim, well-shaped hand with the long, spatulate-tipped fingers Joy would have expected. ‘I’m Cara Bainbridge. Michael told me all about you. Sorry about all the racket all over again, but when Dad came and found Michael had sent for different gear he was furious. That won’t stop the stuff arriving, though, but I think he’s hoping to make you give in before it comes. I wouldn’t’—she grinned suddenly—‘because you have something of your own ... something to hold on to, to fight for, and if I were you, I’d fight!’

  ‘That’s just what I intend to do,’ Joy said, liking the girl as much as she had liked the brother. Their mother, she thought abruptly, must have been a very sweet person. Sam, too, might have been more pleasant when his wife had been alive!’ You can give your father a message for me if you will,’ she added. ‘Tell him there’s some sort of law about noise abatement. I don’t know how it operates, but I’ll find out. I shall go to the police station tomorrow, when I come off duty. And if I have to prosecute in order to get a good sleep then I will. Will you tell him that?’

  ‘Good for you!’ Cara said unexpectedly. ‘Of course I’ll tell him, and I think he’ll back down. He likes to keep on the right side of the law in every way! He’s not a bad sort when you get to know him,’ she laughed lightly. ‘He just likes all his own way, and he usually gets it. It might do him a world of good to .find there’s someone he can’t order around and get away with it!’

  ‘Thanks.’ Joy found herself suddenly liking the girl more than she would have believed possible. ‘Why don’t you come round and meet my sister some time?’ she invited. ‘I think you two would have a great deal in common.’

  ‘I’d love to.’ Cara’s words were sincere. ‘Mike said you were a lovely person.’

  ‘Sometimes.’ Joy felt the betraying colour in her cheeks at the unexpected compliment. ‘I’m afraid your father wouldn’t agree!’

  ‘He’ll be all right, once he’s got what he wants in and around this precious village of his,’ Cara opined, ‘but take my advice ... Don’t let him beat you down!’

  ‘I won’t!’ Joy joined in her laughter. ‘See you at Fernbank some time, then,’ she called as she said goodbye.

  The noise from the building site continued all afternoon, but Joy could do nothing more about it. She would wait until the morning, she decided, then, if the noiseless equipment hadn’t arrived, or if Sam Bainbridge wasn’t prepared to meet her halfway, she would carry out her threat and go to the police station and see what help they could give.

  She was almost ready, to go on duty when there was a ring at the bell, and a moment or so later a flustered Jenny Wren came into the lounge where she was collecting up her things ready to leave and where she and Lana had sought refuge all afternoon.

  ‘There’s a young gentleman called, Miss Joy,’ she announced in an agitated fashion. ‘I’d have taken him in to your mother, but it was you he asked to see. It’s Mr. Michael Bainbridge.’

  CHAPTER XII

  As Joy hesitated, Lana appeared to suddenly awaken to the fact that someone, an attractive stranger whom she had heard about only that day, was at the door, asking permission to enter.

  ‘Ask him in, Joy,’ she urged from her couch. ‘I’d like to see something of this Bainbridge crowd for myself. You get out and about, and you’ve seen them all! I only hear what you tell me!’

  ‘But I’m going on duty in a few minutes,’ Joy protested. ‘Mrs. Wrenshaw can tell him to call some other time.’

  ‘I want to talk to him ... please!’ Lana urged. ‘You don’t know how fed up I’ve been all day, all that noise and Mother working, the twins out at this holiday job or whatever it is they’ve found for themselves, and you asleep...’

  Joy knew it would be useless to mention the Wrenshaws or Cousin Emma, since each of them had been busy in and about the house all day. A place this size, and all these people and furniture in it, took a deal of keeping up to, Jenny was fond of saying, and Emma, who was by no means as active as she used to be, had entirely agreed, helping wherever and however she could, which did not leave her much time to spend beside Lana’s couch as in the old days.

  ‘There’s the Wrenshaws and Emma here to keep an eye on the proprieties, if that’s what you’re worrying about,’ Lana went on. ‘And Mother isn’t very far away.’

  ‘I wasn’t worrying,’ Joy assured her truthfully.

  ‘Very well, then. But I can only stay a minute or so. You’ll have to entertain him yourself after that. And make certain he doesn’t stay too long and tire you out!’ She nodded to Jenny, who hurried away to return a moment or so later with a smiling, fresh-faced Michael in tow. Joy performed the introductions, seeing as she saw so often when people met Lana for the first time the struggle between admiration of her beauty and the pity for her condition taking place in Michael’s expression.

  ‘I had to come round and apologize.’ He spoke to Joy, but his glance went back almost at once to Lana, as though drawn there by a strong but invisible magnet. ‘Dad was furious, as Cara says she told you. But when she told him what you said about going to the police, he said he would see to it personally that the other hired equipment was there in the morning, so I don’t think you’ll have any further need to worry. I hope not, anyhow.’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ Joy said agreeably. ‘If you aren’t then I shall have no alternative but to go round to the police station and ask for help. And now’—she glanced at her watch—‘if you’ll excuse me I must be off. I’ll just fetch my bag and gloves from upstairs.’

  One or the other of them made some response, but in such a low tone that it was quite impossible to hear what was said. They were already talking together, with an animation on Lana’s lovely face which had not been there since the day her accident had happened, and Michael, it seemed, was hanging on to her every word.

  ‘Poor Quentin!’ Joy thought as she banged her drawers shut with quite unnecessary vigour. ‘It isn’t enough for this Michael to be a good-looking young man, and to have an attractive personality—and there’s no denying that he has just that—he also has to have the money, or the expectation of it, that Lana wants from the man she marries. I only hope Quentin isn’t going to be hurt.’

  It never occurred to think that she, Joy, was the most likely person to be hurt out of all of them. Her only thought was for the man to whom she had felt herself drawn even at their first moment of meeting. She was certain he was in love with Lana. Who could see her, get to know her, even a little, and not love her? she asked her image as she settled her hat on her head.

  ‘And Quentin has done so much for her already!’ she though as she ran downstairs and popped her head in to say goodbye to her sister. Neither Lana nor Michael seemed aware of h.er presence until she spoke a second time. When Lana looked up, it was with a new radiance in her face, a new light in her eyes. She smiled in a bemused fashion in her sister’s direction, fingering some coloured snapshots which lay on her knees.

  ‘Michael’s been showing me some photographs he took on his last holiday in Greece,’ she told her sister. ‘Do you think ... I’d like to go there, one day,’ she ended softly.

  ‘There’s no reason why you shouldn’t, if you really want to,’ Michael said before Joy had opportunity to speak. ‘This’—he gestured towards the rug which covered her from the waist downwards—‘is incidental ... if you really want to go, that is.’

  ‘It’s an impossible dream,’ said Lana, so low that Joy only just caught the words, but ther
e was no mistake about hearing Michael’s reply.

  ‘Nothing is impossible,’ he said firmly, ‘not if you want it enough, believe in the rightness of it enough. Try for it, work for it ... wish for it, pray for it, if you like, but you have to do your own bit towards whatever it is you’re after...’

  Joy did not stay to hear any more. She would be late on duty if the friend with whom she was to travel tonight had already gone, but the other nurse was waiting, and as they drove together up the hill to St Lucy’s, even as she chatted of this and that to her companion, Joy was wondering all the time about this new relationship which had entered so abruptly into their lives.

  ‘As if coming to Vanmouth wasn’t enough of an upheaval and change in itself,’ she thought as she went into the Sisters’ room and prepared to take over her ward for the night, ‘we have to become involved with this Bainbridge family, and somehow or other, much as I like the son and daughter, I’m afraid we haven’t heard the last of father Sam and all his ideas!’

  There was not time to think or worry further about Sam or his family and their concerns that night. There were two births during the small hours of the morning, and another mother-to-be was rushed in just before Joy came off duty, already in labour, and the birth would be premature. One way and another she was glad when it was time to return to Fernbank, time to go up to her own small room again and to sleep, secure in the knowledge that for her a night free of duty lay ahead.

  There were other things to think of, however, in the days which followed. Michael had been quite right when he had told them his father would attend personally to the delivery of the new and almost silent equipment, and for the household of Fernbank all seemed well again. Except, that was, from Joy’s point of view. Sam Bainbridge continued to send or, more often, to bring in more and more work for Aileen’s flying fingers to cope with. As she laughingly remarked to Joy one afternoon when the night duty weeks were approaching their ending, ‘He brought as much in for his firm, Trust or whatever they call themselves as I had from all my other clients put together.’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ Joy confessed. ‘I don’t like feeling we’re doing anything for that man.’

  ‘That’s not a very logical outlook, darling, and not in the least like yourself!’ Aileen chided. ‘He pays for what I do for him, and he’s always said how good the work is ... which is more than Mr. Fordyce ever said in all the years I worked for him! And really, apart from this “thing” he has about wanting Fernbank, he’s not such a bad sort of person when one gets to know him,’ she said gently. ‘I think he’s rather lonely.’

  ‘If he is it’s because he’s too bad-tempered and wants too much of his own way to ever keep a friend,’ Joy said briefly. ‘And’—her glance went to the enormous sheaf of gladioli Sam had brought round with him that morning, although he knew they had plenty of flowers in their own garden, and from there to his gift of grapes fresh from his own vine—‘I don’t like the way in which he’s trying to get round you to persuade me to do what he wants! I shall never break my word to Miss Barnes,’ she said fiercely. ‘I wish he could understand that.’

  ‘I think he does understand and admires you—secretly—for sticking to your guns, as he phrased it only the other day. He can’t give in, or at least I suppose he thinks he can’t give in, not with a reputation such as he has of always getting his own way in the end, now you’ve taken such a definite stand against him. But I don’t think he’s trying to “get round me” as you put it, because he knows—for I’ve told him—that in matters such as this, where the promise you made was such a personal matter—I abide by your decision.’

  ‘Then you’ll let him see we don’t need his work, or his money, won’t you, Mum?’ Joy asked, feeling suddenly sorry for Aileen, for the woman who had worked so hard for so long, without a man by her side, missing so many of the pleasures which would have been hers had the children’s father lived.

  ‘But I advertised for this work, Joy.’ Aileen sounded so woebegone and so miserable that Joy was instantly contrite. ‘I have absolutely no reason to refuse his business requests,’ she ended, half defensively, and impulsively Joy crossed to where Aileen was seated behind her desk and gave her a spontaneous hug.

  ‘I know you haven’t, darling,’ she said quickly, ‘and I’m sorry I tried to interfere. I won’t again,’ she promised rashly, ‘not unless you ask me to do so.’

  ‘I’m asking you to do so right now, Joy,’ Aileen surprised her by the statement. ‘I’d like your advice. Sam ... Mr. Bainbridge ... has asked me to have dinner with him at the Silver Dolphin,’ she named the largest and most expensive hotel in the town. ‘He says he would like to talk to me out of business hours. He’s booked seats at the theatre for the same night, too. There’s a London company coming down.’

  Joy hesitated a moment, wondering what this might portend, and suddenly she knew, as though it had all been revealed on a screen and set up for her to absorb the information, of all the lonely hours Aileen must have spent since their father died. When Joy was away during her training, and Lana engrossed in the fashion world which she had graced for so short a time, the twins too young for companionship, and Pete engrossed either in his studies or one or the other of the absorbing hobbies which he enjoyed to the full. Cousin Emma was a sweet person, amiable to live with, but in no sense a companion for a woman of Aileen’s quicksilver nature and alert, businesslike brain. It must be wonderful to meet a man of her own age or thereabouts, who could talk about the things she best remembered and had enjoyed, who too had known what it was like to lose his partner and face the world with children of his own to bring up single-handed. She smiled into Aileen’s anxious eyes.

  ‘If you want to go, darling,’ she advised, ‘then go. And I hope you enjoy yourself. But mind now’—she raised a mockingly warning finger and her eyes twinkled despite the severity of her words—‘you’re not to allow him to bully you into anything you don’t want to do or into going anywhere you don’t really want to go. You don’t have to be polite to him, remember,’ she stressed. ‘He’s neither your employer or the landlord!’

  ‘I know, darling,’ Aileen agreed, laughing with her, but there was a hint of tears behind the laughter and when she spoke again her voice trembled despite her efforts to control it, ‘but there’s something I like about him ... although I’m hanged if I know what it is.’

  ‘Must be something I haven’t spotted yet,’ Joy laughed again good-naturedly, ‘but I’ll back your character judgement any day of the week, so off you go, and enjoy yourself with my blessing. Seems we’ll have to get accustomed to a lot of new ideas now we’re living in Vanmouth. Did you know Cousin Emma has joined the Townswomen’s Guild?’

  But there were more ‘new ideas’ to which they had to grow accustomed as the days went by, Joy discovered. Quentin still paid his daily visit, although he now seemed to spend a great deal more time with the family in general, taking a hand in all manner of household activities which astonished Joy, from the discussion on the colour scheme being planned throughout the house to Wrenshaw’s idea of a goldfish pond in the garden. The twins consulted him on every point, and when Joy protested that his time was too valuable to be expended in this fashion, she was faced by two pairs of wide, innocent eyes and mouths which were guiltless of that mischievous quirk for which she instinctively looked when she suspected them of pulling her leg.

  ‘He told us to count him in as “one of us”, Joy, honestly,’ Rex said. ‘He says he likes being part of our family. It’s fun.’

  Fun it might be, Joy reflected as she lay back in a sun chair on the lawn thinking over all these matters on one of her free afternoons, but it was all extremely emotionally wearing.

  Lana was undoubtedly making progress. Whether this was due to the various vitamin tablets and potions with which Quentin had insisted he was ‘building up her lowered resistance ... her metabolism’s all to pot’, or whether it was that the prolonged visits of Amy Calvin and Hugh Tate were beginning to take effect
, or whether—here Joy’s thoughts sheered off at a tangent and became chaotic—it was because Michael Bainbridge never missed a day either, but that some part of it saw him comfortably installed at Fernbank, either out in the garden with Lana or in a chair pulled up beside her couch if she happened to be indoors, Joy could not have told. The fact remained that progress was undoubtedly being made, but so far Quentin had not broached the subject of the outpatients’ clinic to Joy or to anyone else in the family. He and Lana appeared to share a secret, and watching her sister, first with Quentin and then with Michael, Joy began to worry about which of them was the more likely to be hurt, and much as she liked Michael, k she hoped with all her heart that it was he and not Quentin who would be told his love was unwelcome.

  A shadow fell across the book which lay, opened but unread, on her lap. She looked up to see Michael looking down at her, his white shirt open at the throat, his eyes laughing as usual as he dropped on to the grass beside her chair.

  ‘Permission to bring another person into your little family circle, Sister?’ he asked, pulling at the grass. ‘I’ve just had a word with Lana, and she said not to bother your mother but to ask you.’

  ‘Who is it?’ Joy asked, sitting upright and closing her book. ‘Anyone we know?’

  ‘Not yet, but I hope you’ll get to know her and to like her,’ Michael said seriously. ‘Her name’s Beryl Lowe, and she’s the daughter of Dad’s partner. All his life—or at least since he and Bill Lowe went into partnership together—they’ve planned and hoped Beryl and I would marry. I like Beryl, she’s a nice girl, and I know she likes me, but there’s nothing more to what we feel for each other than just that, though neither of our fathers will see it that way. Beryl’s an only child, and she’s more than a little lonely. Her parents would wrap her in cotton wool, if they thought they could keep her with them, just as she is, for ever and ever. They know that’s impossible, so they think the next best thing is for me to take over where they’ve left off, but although we like each other that’s the last thing either Beryl or I want to happen, and she’s so starved for a little decent female company I’ve told her all about you and the family here, and...’