"How did you get here so soon?" Ronnie wondered.
"Phil rang me up at crack of dawn, and I came right away. I'd have come with him last night if I'd realised how things were with your father."
"I didn't know myself," Ronnie said miserably. "It was stupid of me—"
"No, it wasn't. Phil says it was a very good thing. If you'd known the end was so near it would have spoiled your last days together. You couldn't have kept the knowledge to yourself. That's why Phil didn't warn you—he wanted you to be happy together up to the last. But that's why he didn't go on his cruise, you know."
"It was very good of him." Ronnie said a little stiffly. Adela echoed the word 'Good?' in a way which showed surprise. To her it evidently seemed quite the natural thing to do.
Aunt Mary arrived and aroused the usual reaction of rebellion in Ronnie, even though subdued at the moment by her grief. Never had a brother and sister been more unlike than Mary and Toby Forbes.
"You can't possibly stay on here," she told her niece with her usual bluntness. "Quite apart from the rent being beyond you, it wouldn't be seemly at all. I know London morals are careless nowadays, but—"
"Really, Aunt Mary !" Ronnie cut in hotly, and her aunt, seeing the danger signal flaming in her niece's cheeks, retracted. "Well, it wouldn't do, anyway. Now what I suggest is that you go back to your work next week—your exam is in a month's time, isn't it? I'll stay down here until then and when that's safely over you'd better come back with me. The Infirmary at home will be more than ready to take you on if you've got your first part State."
No doubt Mary Forbes meant well, but Ronnie revolted at the idea. If she were to go on with her nursing anywhere it would be at St. Chad's—she was quite sure of that. But she knew her aunt's temperament well enough by now not to offer a direct refusal.
Philip, however, when he heard of the proposal, had no such scruples. There was no love lost between him and Aunt Mary, and in fact the hackles of each rose visibly at the sight of the other.
One evening Aunt Mary tackled him direct on the matter. "I don't know how things stand as regards the lease of this flat," she addressed him. "Nothing seems to have been on a very business-like footing. But as you know, I want Ronnie to come back with me as soon as her examinations are over."
Phil was standing with his back to the empty grate, hands in pockets, shoulders square and chin up in an attitude of typical masculine aggressiveness.
"There is no formal lease," he said quietly. "Ronnie is quite free to leave whenever she wants to, but I should strongly advise her not to go north with you."
"Look, Philip," Aunt Mary said frostily, "I had a great respect for your father, and I know that you are supposed to be one of the most promising young surgeons of your year, but that does not give you the right to advise my niece on her future plans. If it were not for the exams I would take her back at once. But as it is, it's better to wait until she has passed—"
"She won't," Phil said succinctly.
Mary Forbes bristled. In private she had often upbraided Ronnie for lack of concentration on her studies, but family pride was at stake now. "I beg your pardon," she said icily. "Are you suggesting that my niece has not the necessary qualities and abilities to pass her nursing exams?"
"Ronnie is the best natural nurse I've ever come across, but she's not good at passing exams. She might have stood a faint chance of getting through, but with all this happening I'm afraid she hasn't got an earthly."
"That may be your opinion, Philip—"
"It is my opinion, and I know what I'm talking about. Damn it, I've seen her papers, and I've been on the examining boards, and her written work isn't anywhere near the standard they want."
Ronnie began to feel as though she were not there at
all, for all the notice the other two took of her. Phil's words should have been a shock to her, but with a new clarity she realised that they confirmed what had been in her heart for some time.
For a moment Aunt Mary was at a loss. "What do you think she should do, then?" she muttered rather ungraciously.
"I have a suggestion to make, if I can speak to Ronnie alone for a few moments."
There was a silence following his words that was so pointed that at last even Mary Forbes had to take the hint. "Very well," she said, and disappeared from the room, disapproval in every line of her straight back.
When she had closed the door behind her the other two did not move for a little while. Phil stood his ground on the hearthrug, and Ronnie, still wearing the dark suit she had worn for the funeral, stood by the window staring out at the treetops in the Square. The sun was getting lower now, and it caught her hair so that to Phil it looked like a golden aureole.
Ronnie was the first to speak. She turned from the window with a sigh. So she was to lose St. Chad's as well, she thought to herself. She found Phil staring at her with a curious look in his eyes. "What do you think I should do, Phil?" she asked.
All his arrogance and self-confidence seemed to slip from him, and for a moment he begged the question. "In the first place, don't let yourself be bulldozed by your aunt," he said, and then went on, his eyes not meeting hers : "When the House reassembles in October Stanhope has promised a decision about the hospital scheme. If all goes well we can go right ahead, and it will mean a visit out there before the end of the year. I shall need your help. I know this is hardly the time— you'll want to think it over—but—but it seems that the best thing would be for you to marry me."
Now his eyes did meet hers, with their old penetrating gaze that seemed as though he could read her inmost thoughts.
Never in her wildest dreams or imaginings had this situation occurred to Ronnie. "Marry you?" she echoed.
He laughed a little, shortly, almost nervously. "Is it such a preposterous idea?" he asked.
"You mean—a sort of business arrangement?" Ronnie stammered.
His brows came down in the old familiar frown of quick anger, and he thrust fists into his pockets. But his voice was even as he replied : "On your own terms."
CHAPTER TEN
ADELA PORTHAVEN was delighted, but Mary Forbes was in high dudgeon, and in high dudgeon she departed. "You seem to have arranged things in your own way," was her frigid comment. No one quite knew whether it was marriage in general or marriage with Phil in particular of which she had such a poor opinion.
Nothing, however, could depress Adela. "It's just too lovely ! I couldn't have chosen better for Phil if I'd tried my hardest—and I didn't !" she assured them, knowing full well that she had a reputation for matchmaking amongst her young friends. "Now when is the wedding going to be?"
Phil answered, before Ronnie could speak. "As soon as we can—what notice do you have to give the registrar?"
"Phil !" Adela's tone was horrified. "You can't be married at a registrar's office ! It's not fair to Ronnie !"
"But I want it as quiet as possible too," Ronnie put in.
"That may be," Adela was firmness itself. "But you're not getting married and starting life together in that hole-and-corner way—"
"It's perfectly legal," Phil put in, but she brushed him aside.
"You'll be married in church like a couple of good Christians. I know, Ronnie—come back with me and we'll put the banns in at the village church. Then you can be married any time after they've been read three times. It's nearly as quick, and much nicer !"
Phil cocked an eyebrow at Ronnie, who answered : "All right—so long as it'll be quiet."
"It will be," Adela promised her. "Just me and Stupid, and of course the Vicar."
And so it was arranged. Ronnie, still walking in a dream, went back to Stoneacres and heard her banns called in the village church. She saw Phil for an hour or two once or twice a week when he managed to drive out from town. It seemed utterly unreal that she would be marrying him soon, and she could not think or plan beyond the ceremony at all.
Adela did all the arranging. "Now what about your honeymoon?" she tackled them.
"Really, Phil !" Adela reprimanded him. "I do think you ought to be able to do better than that. Why can't you?"
"Because I've got an important hysterectomy booked," he told her.
Adela grimaced. "I hope you realise what you're letting yourself in for, Ronnie. You'll get kidneys for breakfast and livers for, lunch, whatever else you've cooked ! What about Venice ?—I always fancied Venice myself. Romantic—the Bridge of Sighs, and all that," she sighed herself, ponderously.
"Yes, dear," her husband put in quietly. "But it isn't your honeymoon, you know."
"Oh no, so it isn't," Adela agreed in some surprise, and then added : "Well, it wouldn't have been any good for us, anyway. We couldn't have afforded it in those days ! Thank goodness for aeroplanes," she returned to Phil and Ronnie. "Distance is no object nowadays."
In the end they decided on Rome. At least, someone decided. All the arrangements went over Ronnie's head. She had a curious sense of being detached from it all.
She was marrying Phil—the thing she most wanted in the world—and yet somehow it was all unreal.
There was only one thing she was quite positive about, and that was that she wanted the wedding kept quiet. Adela tried to persuade her that at least some of her friends ought to be there. Even Phil did his best to get her to invite some of her old friends from the Protectorate, but she was adamant. In the end she had her way, and the only people present in the little Norman church on that sunny September morning when she and Phil were married were the Porthavens and Withers.
Much to the consternation of Adela, who was superstitious, Ronnie was married in a suit of her favourite green with a little hat to match, and with the gold of her hair and the gold of the sunshine streaming through the windows she made a very lovely bride.
In the vestry after the register was signed Phil kissed his wife. Just for a moment Ronnie's heart quickened. There was something different in that kiss from any of the others she had had from him during their brief engagement. This one was personal, and had something more than warmth in it.
But before she had time to analyse her own response Adela had seized her and was hugging her, laughing and dabbing at her eyes at the same time. "You're going to be terribly happy, my dears—I know you are !"
"Then for heaven's sake don't cry about it !" Phil told her.
They went back to Stoneacres for lunch just the family party with Withers in attendance. He would not have missed being there for anything in the world; but nothing would have made him sit down as one of the guests—he was far happier waiting on them, and Phil had arranged with Adela that he should be allowed to do this. Just before they left for London Airport, Phil driving
his own car, Adela got Ronnie aside for a quiet word.
"Phil had to tell us about Carolyn because of the banns," she said, her eyes serious and concerned. "We often wondered why it was that Phil didn't marry, as we thought, for so long. Carolyn wasn't a bad girl really —we knew her as a child. But she was selfish, and her dancing success went to her head. But one thing I do know—Phil never tells lies about things like that, and if he told you, as he did us, that he never lived with her you can believe him. He has saved everything for you, my dear."
But Ronnie sighed as she remembered Phil's face in the moonlight and something he had said about Carolyn having made him feel differently about girls. Perhaps he was only being kind ... but she wanted more from him than kindness.
On the way to London Airport Phil was in his best form, chatting amusingly about this and that. There was time to spare at the airport before their plane was due to leave, and Phil used it to telephone the news of their marriage to the hospital. He chose Marchant, the senior surgeon, as the most suitable person to spread the news discreetly. Even Marchant could not help registering surprise, however, as Ronnie could overhear.
"D'you want to talk to any of your girl friends?" Phil asked Ronnie. "They're not going to like it one little bit that you've kept them in the dark."
"No—I'll write to them." Ronnie did not feel up to coping with the reactions of the other nurses.
"What about Alan Pickering?"
"I'll write to him too," Ronnie said with a sigh. She was fond of Alan, and a little sorry for him.
They had not been in the air more than ten minutes when Ronnie was smitten with her usual air-sickness. She was an excellent traveller by any other means of transport, but had never been able to fly. This had been
a serious handicap when she had been a schoolgirl going out to join her parents for holidays as it had meant that only the long summer holidays were possible, but it had long ago been decided that this was preferable to the violent sickness that seized her in the air, leaving her weak and ill for days afterwards.
In the rather dazed state in which she had spent the weeks since Toby's death it had not occurred to her to raise any objection to flying, strange though it seemed. And when it did strike her, she could not bring herself to destroy all the arrangements—she hoped that she had grown out of her distressing air-sickness.
But now she heartily wished she had said something. It was a long nightmare of agony, and by the time they arrived at the luxurious hotel in Rome Ronnie felt more dead than alive.
Fortunately there was a very sympathetic hotel maid who spoke English and in no time at all she had Ronnie in bed and as comfortable as she could make her. "You will be better in the morning, madam, please," she smiled down at her. "The signor doctor will give madam the sleeping draught and in the morning the sun will shine and all will be well."
Ronnie did not feel as though she would ever be well again. Even in bed there seemed no rest, for the over-sprung mattress gave a sensation of motion which threatened to bring on another attack of vomiting.
She gave a little groan and opened her eyes when the bed suddenly went down as Phil sat on the side of it. He had a hypodermic in his hand, and without a word he swabbed off her arm and pushed the needle in.
"Why didn't you say you couldn't travel by air?" he asked curtly.
"I didn't think of it," she replied truthfully—though even in her own ears the truth sounded rather inadequate.
"There are such things as travel sickness pills," he went on.
"I know." Ronnie sighed feebly, too tired to explain that she had tried them in the past, to no effect.
He gave a final rub to her arm and let it drop. "You really needn't have gone to such extreme lengths to make your point," he said. "I had got the idea before. It's strictly business until you choose otherwise."
For a moment she could not think what on earth he was talking about, and then it dawned on her that he thought she had staged this deliberately. But the drug was beginning to work, and she was desperately drowsy —though she did notice that he looked hurt as well as annoyed. Her last waking thought was : "I'll put it all right tomorrow."
But it was not as easy as that. When the next day came Phil was breezy, mocking and cheerful, and Ronnie began to believe that she had imagined the incident.
Thanks to the strong sedative Phil had given her Ronnie had relaxed completely and had ten hours' sound sleep. When she awoke she felt amazingly recovered, and even hungry.
"We mustn't waste a minute," she told Phil, sipping tea in bed. "I'm fine now. If we manage to see one tenth of all we've been told to see I shall be surprised."
"I've been through to London while you were snoring," he told her, his eyes laughing. "I've extended my leave so that we can have a full week here and then make our way back overland to Calais."
"Oh, Phil, how lovely !" she cried. "But what about Mrs. Thingummy's hysterectomy?"
"She'll have to put up with old Marchant—after all, he was doing them when I was just beginning to walk !" She was glad they were to have more time—to get to know one another, she thought. But it did not work out
that way. In one sense they knew one another well— as they ha
d done right from the beginning, able to talk easily and exchange ideas. But sometimes she felt that the knowledge was all on one side. For whereas Phil seemed always able to read her thoughts—especially those she did not want him to—she seldom had an inkling of what he was thinking or feeling behind his facade of camaraderie. In those days the old mocking, teasing light was often back in his eyes.
They talked—contentedly—of everything under the sun. But never of the things that mattered to them personally, and Ronnie was certain now that she had not imagined that hurt look in his eyes the first night they had arrived in Rome. The hurt had gone deeper than she had imagined and would not easily be eradicated, and Ronnie could not find the words to explain to this new, invulnerable Phil.
It was not until they were on the Channel ferry, nearly home, that they mentioned the future.
"What am I doing when we get back?" Ronnie asked, leaning over the deck rail, for it was a glorious golden day and the sea was smooth and sparkling.
"Well, you can't go back to St. Chad's," he said with a humorous twist to his mouth. "That would put the cat among the pigeons."
"Don't you mean the pigeon among the cats?" she asked drily.
"Do you still want to go on nursing?" he asked.
Ronnie wrinkled her nose in thought. "I'm not sure now —you've almost convinced me that I haven't a vocation for it after all."
"I didn't say that," he corrected quickly. "I only said you hadn't an aptitude for passing exams."
"I wonder why—I mean, I didn't do as badly as all that at school."
"Well, your spelling's pretty bad," he commented with
a wicked look in his eye. "I bet you can't spell diarrhoea !"
"It's more important to know how to treat it," she replied with some asperity, and Phil laughed.
"Quite right. Well now, what about putting on your uniform and being my nurse on private patient days?"
"I could do that, I suppose," Ronnie said thoughtfully. She knew that his former nurse had left just before they went away. "But you'd have to promise not to bully me."
Nurse Ronnie's Vocation Page 15