My Surgeon Neighbour

by Jane Arbor

  This time, too, that lady paid no lip-service to preliminaries but came straight to her point by demanding of Sarah, “May I ask, Miss Sanstead, what you mean by alienating a member of my staff—I’m speaking of Alice Cosford, of course—and enticing her out of my employ into yours?”

  Taken aback, Sarah flushed hotly. “Mrs. Beacon, I’ve done nothing of the sort!” she declared.

  “Then you deny you propose to take her on as your assistant here when you open your Home to patients?”

  “I’m considering doing so, yes.”

  “But surely you understand the common etiquette between one employer and another; that this sort of thing simply isn’t done?”

  Sarah gathered her forces. “I don’t know,” she said more evenly, “what you mean by ‘this sort of thing’ I did nothing at all to induce Mrs. Cosford to come to me. She approached me after understanding that she had had her notice from you.”

  “She was given the choice of staying on!”

  “But surely at a price she felt she couldn’t pay, in duty to her little girl?”

  Mrs. Beacon shrugged slightly. “That was for her to arrange. And I hope you don’t suggest it was my duty to take the child in?”

  “Not at all. It wasn’t to be expected of you,” said Sarah, hoping the barb she intended had gone home. “But having given Mrs. Cosford your ultimatum, you can hardly blame her for choosing to leave you and go elsewhere.”

  “Ah, ‘elsewhere’ perhaps. But I’d have thought I needn’t expect that my very next-door neighbour would encourage her into her employ even before she had left mine.”

  “If I may say so,” retorted Sarah cuttingly, “you sound as if Mrs. Cosford were defecting with your top secrets to a rival firm. Whereas the simple facts are that, having accepted her notice from you, she applied to me for a job—and that, I might add, on Mr. Mansbury’s advice to her to do so.”

  Mrs. Beacon’s jaw dropped. “On—Oliver’s? My cousin advised her to come to you?”

  “So Mrs. Cosford tells me. And no doubt because he knew and had already told me that sooner or later I must enlist the kind of partly skilled nursing help that she can offer me. I think,” Sarah concluded, “it should prove quite a happy arrangement all round.”

  “I hope you may find it so. But in the circumstances I daresay you won’t expect a reference from me for Mrs. Cosford?”

  “I’d hoped you might give her one, but I can apply to her first employers instead.”

  “They went abroad.”

  “But they didn’t take off by moon rocket. I daresay they can be reached,” said Sarah equably.

  That ended the interview. But as with their earlier passage-at-arms, the aftermath for Sarah was a rank distaste for her empty victory.

  She particularly regretted having dragged in Oliver Mansbury’s name as a boost for her arguments. She should have fought with more independent hands than that! And supposing he had advised Mrs. Cosford in confidence, what would he think of her for betraying it? She found herself wishing she could justify herself to him. For strangely, what he thought of her had begun to matter quite a lot.

  CHAPTER THREE

  BY throwing herself wholly into her final preparations for her small patients Sarah hoped to thrust the friction with Greystones to the back of her mind. But working alongside Martha it was none too easy to ignore the existence of the enemy. For Martha’s interest in ‘next door’ was lively and occasionally ghoulish; she seemed to miss nothing of the traffic of cars and ambulances to and from its doors and her gossip kept Sarah abreast of its private life too.

  It was on their last morning alone, over the task of allotting bed-linen to six small cots, that Martha said cryptically,

  “Ask me, she doesn’t mean to go this time until she’s got him hooked.”

  Sarah’s head jerked up. “ ‘She’? Who? How many is that we’ve done now, Martha?”

  “Four, without the counterpanes. They’re still airing. Why, that Miss Grey, of course. That fashion-plate. Not one of the patients. Just staying there with them, you know.”

  “Oh—yes.” Sarah’s interest was not as absent as her tone implied.

  “Yes, well, looks to me as if it’s starting up all over again. Between her and Mr. Mansbury, I mean. She’s been down here before, and thick as thieves they were then. Swimming, dancing, riding—nothing they didn’t do together. Engaged, so everyone thought. But it didn’t come to anything. Quarrelled, likely. But now she’s back; probably decided he’s as good a fish as any other. Better than some, for he’s famous. Been on the Telly before now, did you know? Not that she’s any need to look to him for money, for by all accounts she has plenty of her own.”

  Sarah was making a business of her counting—mattress-cover, under-blanket, bottom sheet, pillowcase. Aloud she said carefully, “All that is mostly guesswork though, isn’t it? I was with Mr. Mansbury on the day when Miss Grey arrived, and all I understood was that she had been ill and had been invited for a long rest.”

  Martha sniffed. “Ill, that one? Tell me!”

  “Convalescent now,” Sarah corrected.

  “Poorly. On the mend. Sickening for something else. It’s all one to them that can put it over they need a man to dance attendance on them,” was Martha’s acid comment before changing the subject to ask if Sarah had been a witness of that morning’s highlight, the departure from Greystones of a glamorous film-star, bouquet laden (‘like a hearse’ in Martha’s phrase) and bowed out by Mrs. Beacon in person and her assembled nursing staff.

  Sarah said she hadn’t and escaped with her remaining quota of bed linen, though not entirely from the backwash of Martha’s gossip.

  So Jurice Grey and Oliver Mansbury were on those terms, were they? On the brink of an engagement which ultimately would alter the existing pattern at Greystones. Sarah would have liked to think her recoil was from the prospect of Jurice Grey’s arrogance allied to Kate Beacon’s hostility towards herself. But secretly she knew it went deeper than that.

  Meanwhile Mrs. Beacon had told Alice Cosford that she could take her salary in lieu of notice, so that she and little Jean, a small person with a piquant, pansy shaped face and an old world dignity, were already installed. Sarah’s late Matron was sending her four children straight from hospital; Dr. Carrage had introduced a fifth, and a sixth was coming in response to Sarah’s own advertisements in the Personal columns. Monckton’s first complement of beds was filled from its opening day, and enquiries for later vacancies were coming in by every post. Sarah felt she had good cause to be pleased with her beginnings.

  At first there was shyness, appetites to be coaxed and some desolate, homesick tears. But a week later the ‘family’ had merged and fused into a whole, and a fortnight later, when some departures broke it up, there were to be more tears, of the April shower variety, over the parting.

  For all her brusquerie, Martha was in her element with the children. Her kitchen was open to them for experiments in pastry and toffee making; she taught clumsy fingers to knit and could always produce anything from glue to flannel for seed-sowing in pans on wet days. Alice Cosford was proving the proverbial ‘treasure’ of willing help, answering every request of Sarah’s with a bright, ‘Of course. I’ll see to it.’ And Sarah, savouring authority and responsibility to the full, daily lifted thoughts of gratitude to Great Aunt Lydia who had made it all possible.

  In that first batch of patients there were no all day bed patients. They all rested after lunch, but spent the mornings in free or organized play, or doing with Sarah the remedial exercises which had been ordered for them. On fine mornings they played in Monckton’s small garden, but either Sarah or Alice were always on overseeing duty, and Sarah, alert to Mrs. Beacon’s warning about any “nuisance”, believed none was being caused until the evening when a note was brought over by hand from Greystones.

  “How formal can you get?” was her first thought on opening it. For it was in the stilted third person and ran:

  “The Matron of Greys
tones Nursing Home presents her compliments to Miss Sanstead and requests that the noise occasioned at certain times by Miss Sanstead’s charges shall be kept under better control than at present, since it gives considerable annoyance to the patients of Greystones.”

  Sarah bit her lip in chagrin. This was cold war with a vengeance. If she had reason for complaint, why hadn’t Mrs. Beacon come to make it in person, as she had done on those earlier occasions? On that level they could have argued the matter and if Mrs. Beacon had a case, as Sarah allowed was possible, she would have tried to meet it within reason. But this! How on earth to reply to it except in the same stony terms? On the impulse of her dismay she resolved not to try but to visit the enemy in person.

  Next door she was shown into an austerely furnished room by a nervous maid who asked for her name twice before murmuring vaguely that she would “go and see”. While she waited Sarah looked about her at the glass enclosed shelves of reference books, at the medical paraphernalia on a side table, at the functional leather chairs, at the leather-topped desk, masculine and ordered, and wondered whether she had been put in a sanctum of Oliver Mansbury’s by mistake. She knew from Alice that it was at this end of the house that he had his quarters, and was left in no doubt when her eye caught the framed photograph which stood on a corner of the desk.

  It was not a studio portrait but probably an enlarged snapshot in colour of Jurice Grey in a bikini, her feet scuffed beneath a pile of beach sand while, supported on her outspread hands, she laughed up at Oliver Mansbury standing behind her, his hands caressingly on her shoulders, laughing down at her in his turn. The sky was blue, the sands a white glare, the whole picture unposed, relaxed, “holiday”, with a message of happy intimacy which was easy to read.

  So that was how well they knew each other ... Sarah looked away and sat back in her chair at the moment at which the door opened and Oliver Mansbury came in.

  “Oh—” He looked his surprise at sight of her. “You wanted to see me? I’m sorry, I wasn’t told.”

  Sarah shook her head. “No. I’m waiting to see Mrs. Beacon, I’m none too sure that I made that clear to her parlourmaid who answered the door.”

  Oliver Mansbury smiled. “Ah, Marylyn. She’s new and pretty raw and hasn’t a clue yet on callers. But if you don’t mind waiting a little longer, I’ll find my cousin and bring her to you.”

  He broke off sharply as, with a perfunctory knock, Jurice Grey looked round the door and came in without a hint in her manner that she mightn’t be welcome in his room when he was engaged with someone else.

  If he saw patients there, did she casually stroll in on him even then, Sarah wondered, as the other girl sauntered to the desk, took a cigarette from the box there and held it out to the flame of his proffered lighter. Ignoring Sarah except for a flicked glance, she complained. “I’m simply thirsting for a drink before dinner, Oliver. Are you going to be long?”

  He shook his head. “No, I’m free. But just a minute, Jurice. Keep Miss Sanstead company while I find Kate for her, will you?”

  Jurice shrugged and the two girls made desultory small talk until he returned with Mrs. Beacon. Then he left the door open, waiting for Jurice to join him, but closed it slowly and stood listening as his cousin addressed Sarah.

  “I suppose,” said Mrs. Beacon, “you have come in answer to my letter complaining of the nuisance your patients are creating for mine, Miss Sanstead?”

  Sarah inclined her head. “Yes. I thought it would be better if we talked over a grievance which I’m sorry you feel you have, but which I’m afraid I don’t quite understand.”

  Mrs. Beacon’s finely chiselled chin went up. “Really? Didn’t I make it clear that I don’t intend to brook the amount of childish racket and canned music that reaches us here from your premises during several hours of each day? You simply must keep your children in better control, Miss Sanstead, or I shall have to consider getting redress from other quarters.”

  Sarah protested, “But I should doubt whether any impartial judge would agree that from here you could hear enough of my children’s activities to constitute a ‘nuisance’. As for the music, that’s from my record player, accompanying the remedial exercises some of them have to do. I shouldn’t have to ask you to appreciate the need for those, surely? Besides Monckton is well enough built to be pretty nearly soundproof, I think. It’s only on fine mornings that the children have their play in the garden, and I can’t believe that you would want to grudge convalescents all the sun they can get?”

  “Of course I don’t,” the other woman conceded. “But you shouldn’t forget that there are not only convalescents but some sick and very sick patients on this side of the wall too.”

  “Nor do I,” Sarah agreed quickly. “I’d hate to think they were being upset or annoyed by my patients’ noise. That’s why I didn’t answer your letter in the spirit in which I’m afraid it was written, but came to see you instead, hoping we could talk it—”

  She broke off as, with a swift movement Oliver Mansbury stepped between them and turned to her with the air of counsel questioning a witness.

  “Tell me, when are your patients creating all this alleged noise in your garden?” he wanted to know.

  “Just on the few fine days we’ve had since I opened the Home. Sometimes after tea too, before the younger ones go to bed. But at the moment there are only six of them all told, seven, with Dr. Carrage’s little Tony who sometimes joins them.”

  “I see.” Her questioner nodded and turned to his cousin. “Then isn’t the whole thing a storm in a teacup? Surely not worth any bad blood on anyone’s part? Who is supposed to be being disturbed, anyway? Who has complained?”

  But before Mrs. Beacon could reply Jurice Grey minced to his side with an exaggerated swing of her hips. Mock contrite, her lips down-drawn, “Oh dear, oh dear, ‘I fear I cannot tell a lie’ ” she quoted. “I’ll ’fess all—I called Kate’s attention to all that screaming clatter yesterday morning and again today—”

  “On whose behalf?”

  “On whose behalf? What do you mean?”

  “I mean, who among Kate’s patients had complained of the noise from next door?”

  “Who? Why no one in particular. But I’m not deaf. I’ve got ears and I know that I’d have something extremely telling to say on the matter if I were a patient here,” Jurice retorted.

  “But you’re not a patient, and the people who are have tongues in their heads to speak for themselves if they’re worried inordinately by six babes at play, even if much can be heard of them, which I doubt.” He turned back to Mrs. Beacon. “Kate, you’re not serious about this?”

  Her cold eyes met his. “I am indeed, though I admit I’d have taken a different tone in warning Miss Sanstead if she had shown herself in the least co-operative over any other of the approaches we’ve made to her.”

  “Such as?” he invited.

  “Well, there was the original matter of the premises. Then of her taking Alice Cosford from me—”

  “You had as good as dismissed Alice, and I suggested she might find a suitable job with Miss Sanstead.”

  “Which, I may say,” returned his cousin, “I didn’t regard as particularly loyal of you. No, I realize well enough that Miss Sanstead must have her problems. But I have mine too, and when hers and mine clash now or in the future, I shall speak.”

  “Well, if you’ve better cause in the future, I hope you’ll do it on your own initiative or on mine; not, with all respect to Jurice, on hers.” He turned again to Sarah. “I’m sorry, and I know my cousin is too, that we’ve had to trouble you about this. But I suppose neighbourliness has to have a few teething difficulties, hasn’t it? And if any of our patients do say they’re disturbed, I’m sure you’ll meet us half way, won’t you?”

  “Of course,” agreed Sarah warmly, her gratitude for his sympathetic intervention ready to go more than half way. But as she rose to go, the parting glance of Mrs. Beacon’s set, carved features and the veiled arrogance of Jurice G
rey’s froze her natural impulse to generosity.

  They had leagued against her; they would see generosity on her part as weakness and a victory for themselves, she knew. Her murmured good-nights to them both were barely acknowledged, and it was Mr. Mansbury who showed her out.

  At the front door he paused. “By the way, I hear you’ve appointed Dr. Carrage as your M.O. and if I may say so, you couldn’t have done better. He’s a good man, I believe; the junior in his team, but better qualified than his seniors. And did you say just now that his youngster joins yours for play sometimes?”

  “Yes. Dr. Carrage thinks his boy Tony is too much of a bookworm for his age, so he rather jumped at the idea when I suggested it would be a way of encouraging Tony to mix more with other children.”

  Oliver Mansbury agreed, “Good notion. I asked because I’ve something of a problem child of my own.”

  “A—?Sarah flushed and recovered herself as he laughed.

  “No, not really my own. I’m no bachelor father,” he assured her. “This young man is my nephew. Name of Trevor, Trevor Boothe. His parents are Regular Army, in Cyprus at the moment, with a two-year posting to West Germany looming. So young Trevor is being offloaded here for the time being. He’s due tomorrow in fact. He’ll go to school locally and he’s due for prep, school twelve months hence. Meanwhile it won’t be much of a life for him here among a lot of adults, preoccupied either with work or their ailments, and it occurs to me that if you would let him share some of your children’s play hours on the same terms as you are taking Carrage junior off his father’s hands, that would be fine.”

  “Terms?” Sarah’s echo was blank. “But there aren’t any terms. I mean I’m taking Tony Carrage whenever he cares to turn up for—”. Somehow the appropriate word ‘nothing’ escaped her and “for love” she finished instead.

  “I see.” Oliver Mansbury’s eyelids flicked down once, then up. “But if you were willing to take my nephew we’d certainly have to come to some financial arrangement. In fact. I’d insist.”