The Silent Valley

by Jean S. MacLeod

  That he should ever come back into her life had seemed impossible, that he should return to Norchester had been equally remote, but now he was here, not only in Norchester but at Conyers, waiting to operate on her first day in the theatre!

  She went to her room, changing the soiled coat and transferring watch, scissors, and pen to the pocket of the new one with automatic precision, feeling for the chain of safety pins at her belt in the way of routine. At Conyers they wore white coat-overalls over their ordinary clothes, with starched white coifs and neat, low-heeled white shoes.

  Trim and neat and desperately efficient, she thought as she faced her pale reflection in the long mirror behind the bedroom door. Who would guess that your heart is choking you because you don't know how to face a man after four years of parting, because you feel that you'll never have the courage to bear it if you see forgetfulness in his indifferent glance!

  'If I should meet thee

  After long years,

  How should I greet thee?

  With silence and tears!

  Words read long ago, garnered in the past to rise out of that past and strike deeply now! How should I greet thee? In silence; and the tears would be silent, too, dropping like gall in the secret places of the heart.

  Sister Oakroyd was in the theatre when she reached it.

  'I expect you're nervous,' she said, 'but don't worry too much. All you'll have to do at first is to see to the doctors' gowns and adjust their masks once they've scrubbed up. After that, it will just be a matter of standing by, watching and collecting used swabs. Pick up as much useful information as you can and try not to worry about the less glamorous bits. After the first incision, you should be all right.'

  She moved across the theatre, checking the instruments for the steriliser, counting swabs, cool, practical but withal, infinitely human. Stella Oakroyd was over forty, solid and dependable, and married to her profession now that it appeared that love had passed her by. She exuded confidence and drew to herself the respect and affection of her juniors as sunlight draws up dew. If there was anything she wanted to know, Jane was aware that she had only to ask Stella Oakroyd and the matter would be made abundantly clear. Stella would give her confidence to meet the occasion, but where was she to find the confidence to face Stuart Hemmingway for the first time in four long years?

  She was wheeling the oxygen cylinders to the head of the table when the anaesthetist put his head round the door.

  'Hullo, Jane! So you're in here this morning? We've made a nurse of you at last, eh?'

  'Not yet!' She tried to smile naturally. 'There's still today!'

  'I've just met Hemmingway.' He was speaking more to Stella than to Jane now, but her hands clenched tightly by her sides as she listened. 'He's a remote sort of chap. Clever as the dickens, I believe, but almost inhuman in his approach. I suppose all this idolisation that's been dished out in the local Press about his cures has gone to his head a bit, though you wouldn't guess it to look at him. In fact,' he added as he passed through into the ante-room to scrub up, 'you wouldn't be able to guess anything about Hemmingway at all. He's about as coldly enigmatical as they come 1'

  The patient was wheeled in, and Jane heard Stella and the anaesthetist talking to her. She was a thin, pale woman with enormous eyes.

  Sudden panic clutched at Jane's heart and she experienced a terrible cowardly desire to run from the scene. I can't bear it, she thought. I'm not a good nurse. Something will happen and I'll disgrace myself. People's lives ought not to be trusted to anyone like me who can't even keep a check on their own emotions!

  She felt Stella Oakroyd's hand on her arm.

  'You'll be all right. Don't get in a panic. Just watch, and remember that the woman out there wouldn't have a chance if it wasn't for the surgeon's healing knife.'

  Fear abated then, sinking to a dull awareness of her own inefficiency. How little she really knew!

  She turned, adjusting her mask, picking up the others from the steriliser. Behind her the door opened. She felt paralysed, unable to turn. Stuart was standing there—the surgeon, ready to operate.

  She knew then that this was the only important factor Jane Calvert could, and must, be submerged in Sister Calvert, the nurse.

  Willing her heartbeats to cease their wild hammering, she turned to face Stuart. He was standing just inside the double white doors and immediately she recognised the change in him. The boy she had known had gone and in his place stood a mature man, sure of his success in the world and in absolute control of every emotion. The dark hair springing from the wide, high forehead, was still parted in the same way, but now it was sleeked back to control its natural tendency to unruliness, and the brow seemed heavier, somehow, shadowing the deep-set, penetrating eyes.

  Her heart gave one sickening twist and lay still. Matron came forward and introduced Stella Oakroyd, but she did not think it necessary to present Jane.

  'Dear God,' Jane prayed voicelessly, 'don't let me faint or do anything foolish like that. He mustn't know. He must never know. He must never know!'

  Stuart crossed to the basins and she forced herself to the necessary activity, following with his rubber gloves and waiting while he put them on. Her breath came quickly under the folds of her mask, beating hotly back against her face, and when Matron switched on the great shadowless lamp she felt as if the added light must penetrate through any disguise.

  Stuart turned expectantly and she held out his gown for him, fastening the tapes securely behind his broad shoulders, marvelling that her hands should remain steady and sure at her task.

  She held out the mask, waiting for him to turn round again, waiting for recognition to leap between them. He bent his dark head and she saw the familiar, angular line of his jaw, the long, straight nose with its arrogantly flaring nostrils, and the firm mouth with a new hardness about the fold of the lips. Her fingers were trembling, but she slipped the mask into place, remembering for one blinding moment the feel of his arms about her, the touch of those cynical lips against her own.

  He straightened, looking fully at her for the first time, their eyes, the only visible part of their faces, holding for a second before he turned away to the table where his patient was waiting.

  Jane stood rooted to the spot in powerless inefficiency while her errant heartbeats seemed to grow loud in the stillness. Had he recognised her in that brief second and passed her by? She felt Stella Oakroyd's hand beneath her elbow, guiding her to the far side of the table, and then, miraculously, her wild heartbeats were stilled. She had forgotten Stuart, forgotten the past. The miracle of life and death was being enacted before her wondering eyes.

  'Scalpel, please.'

  The quiet voice and steady, purposeful hands moved across the table, Stuart's hands with merciful healing behind them. 'A good nurse's whole life is bound up with her duty.' Matron's words echoed in her ears as she watched Stella Oakroyd's instant response to Stuart's every request, and suddenly she knew that she had it in her to grow like that, absorbed in this great work of healing. To the exclusion of all else? The demand came from nowhere and she could not answer it, did not try to answer it as her busy hands separated swabs and handed towels. The moment was enough. She could see the beads of perspiration gather on Stuart's forehead from the heat of the overhead lamp and once or twice he glanced towards the head of the table where the anaesthetist sat beside his apparatus, but for the most part his head was bent, the broad shoulders, confident and powerful, stooped to his task.

  When he straightened, at last, she saw the gleam of admiration in Matron's eyes, the little unconscious smile of approval curving the thin lips. Gently, the patient was wheeled away. Matron went with the trolley to the anteroom, motioning Jane to follow.

  Jane watched Stuart Hemmingway, drained, suddenly of all emotion. He did not speak, nor did he look her way again, although she had taken off her own mask as he reached the door. Before her long day was finished, she was physically and mentally exhausted, yet beneath the aching fatigue lay
a curious elation. To work like this—to work with him—that might prove fulfilment of a kind!

  She saw the years stretching ahead—the Home, Matron, Tom Sark with his laughing eyes and ready quips, and Stuart there and the work they would do together. It was work they both loved, but always there would be the barrier of Stuart's disillusionment standing between them.

  It was late when' she left the Home. Stuart had not operated again that day, but Rory McNichol had rushed in with an acute at ten minutes to five. Although it took less than half an hour to rid his patient of an appendix which had troubled her for years, it was well after six before Jane switched off the final light and closed the theatre door.

  Going downstairs Jane thought about Della Cortonwell for the first time. The more luxurious, and therefore more expensive rooms, were on the ground floor and the heavy oak door of number seven was ajar. A radio played softly and the fragrance of exotic flowers drifted out to Jane as she passed. She knew an instant's blind jealousy as she thought of the other girl, pampered, beautiful perhaps, surrounded by everything that money could buy and ready to take Stuart's affection as a matter of course. He had probably been to see Della, bringing the flowers and standing in the room beside the high hospital bed looking down at his patient with the cynical twist gone from his lips, erased by a tolerant half smile. Or had the suave, attentive consultant gone down before the man and Della's colour been heightened by a lover's kiss?

  She tore her thoughts away from such a scene, changing her soiled wrapper for her tweed coat and running a comb through the thick, dark waves of her auburn hair.

  How pale she looked! Theatre work had its own peculiar reactions and her first day had been a heavy one, although she would not have missed it for worlds.

  The nurses used a back entrance which joined the drive near the main gates and as she reached them a car came swiftly up behind her, a long, rakish, yellow car with a single occupant. It drew up before the archway leading to the busy thoroughfare beyond, but Jane had reached the gates before it pulled away. It was then that she realised that the driver had been waiting for her, and her heart beat suddenly with a nervous insistence. The turn of a head, dark brows under a soft felt hat, the unmistakable set of a lean jaw, all these were proof enough of Stuart, but her tingling nerves had been aware of his presence even as the car had passed her back there on the drive. She wanted to run. She did not want to meet him like this, so desperately unprepared and tired after a long, exacting day!

  He leaned over, opening the off-side door for her to get in, and she saw those fine hands she had watched earlier in the day grasp the wheel again with a tightened grip.

  'I thought I couldn't have been mistaken,' he said. 'Hop in, and I'll give you a lift home.'

  Cool, suave, impersonal, it was not the voice she remembered. Stuart had changed so much in so short a time.

  'Thank you.' She tried to keep her own voice quite steady. 'I wondered if you recognised me this morning in the theatre.'

  She had not meant to say that, but she accepted the fact that she had uttered the most dominant thought in her mind in a moment of stress and could not retract it now. Stuart started the car before he answered her.

  'It was easy enough,' he said. 'Eyes don't change a great deal, even after four eventful years.'

  She had not expected him to refer so directly to the past, not as he had done, without the slightest vestige of emotion, and the coldness she had experienced all day took final possession of her heart. What was there to say to him?

  'They've been eventful years for you. Everyone is talking about your success, Stuart. You have done so very well.'

  He steered the car in among the tea-time traffic.

  'And you?' he asked. 'When did you leave the hospital?'

  'Three years ago.'

  'I thought you would have stayed there. Do you find it—more profitable at Conyers?'

  If she were to tell him the truth she would have to confess that she had left the City General because of its memories, because she had been unable to go on working there when he had gone. It had been the scene of their love affair, that short, brief passion of a distant day.

  'When we moved out to Heppleton, Conyers was nearer for me. There were other reasons, but that was the chief one.'

  'And you're happy at Conyers?'

  He asked the question formally, as if it were expected of him, and a small spark of anger kindled in her eyes.

  'Perfectly happy,' she answered defensively. 'I'm doing the sort of work I love.'

  'We both seem to be lucky in that respect.' He kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead, but Jane had the impression that he saw each small, nervous movement of her hands and the tensed way she continued to sit upright in the seat beside him. 'Matron told me that this morning was your first day in the theatre. You stood up to it very well.'

  They were on safer ground here and she admitted to nervousness,

  'At first I was quite certain I should disgrace myself. I felt that I wouldn't know one instrument from another, and then I was relieved to discover that I didn't have to pass you anything ‑'

  Had that sounded like an admission of some other type of nervousness, the strain of their meeting, confession of her continuing love? She stole a look at his face, but the dark profile told her nothing. All emotion remained submerged beneath the conventional, professional mask which Stuart knew so well how to wear to advantage.

  'It will all come naturally enough in time,' he said. 'I felt much the same when I first started to operate on my own. There was that desperate moment when the mind becomes a blank, when nothing registers, and then it is forgotten. The interest of the job is all that matters. You have Matron's confidence, and that means quite a lot.'

  Had he asked Agnes Lawdon about her, discussing her future if not the past? Jane could not think so. He seemed to have buried himself behind that calm professional mask, the eminent surgeon to the exclusion of all else. Was this what four years had made of him, four years when bitterness had eaten deep and disillusionment had left its scar?

  'Will you be at Conyers permanently?' she asked as they neared Heppleton, with its rows of neat cottages and the tall maypole on its village green. 'Do you mean to settle in Norchester?'

  'Settling has rather a stagnant sound. I still feel that I have a great deal to learn. No,' he concluded without taking his eyes from the way ahead even for an instant, 'I don't suppose I shall be much longer than a few months at Conyers. Then I hope to go abroad again.'

  She felt the coldness in him, accentuating the furtherance of his career before everything else, as if that could be all that concerned him now, but surely rumour said otherwise? There was Della Cortonwell.

  An ugly thought, pregnant and sharp with jealousy, suggested that Della would further that career, too—Della, who was Sir Gervaise Cortonwell's only child. 'A doctor, if he is wise as well as ambitious, marries in the right quarter, even in these days!' Was she always to be haunted by Matron's cynical reflection? In the right quarter! The Cortonwells were undoubtedly the right quarter for Stuart, and she was convinced that he knew it.

  Pride, fierce and stinging, gripped her by the throat, forcing back the hurt she felt.

  'I dare say you will settle out there, Stuart,' she said. 'You were always most interested in clinical work.'

  Whatever she said, apparently, brought them back to the past.

  'First love—last love!' He smiled cynically. 'I've been true to that, after my fashion. But what of you? Have the past few years treated you kindly enough?'

  She had been unprepared for the intimacy of such a question, but pride kept her head high and her eyes clear.

  'I've had my work,' she said. 'That in itself was interesting.'

  'And it brought you fulfilment?' There was a faintly derisive note in his voice. 'It gave you complete satisfaction?'

  'Yes,' she told him with spirit, 'it must have done. I have no regrets.'

  She thought of Hazel and Linda Jane and knew that what
she said was true, if only in part, but somehow her voice hadn't been quite convincing enough. It had shaken a little and she had lowered her gaze to her gloved hands clasped over the worn leather handbag in her lap. As he slowed the car at Heppleton's only pedestrian crossing, Stuart turned his head to look at her. He was the old Stuart again, kindly, thoughtful, the lines about his mouth erased, but almost before the change in his expression had registered on her tired brain the mask was down again and he was the rising young consultant, attentive, interested, but remote.

  'We go round here,' Jane said as they moved on, 'but you needn't turn the car off the main road. If you pull up I'll get down at the end of the lane.'

  She saw him look about him, at the row of shabby houses and the children playing noisily on the pavement, arguing over turns on a battered tricycle.

  'Don't bother to come any farther,' she repeated, and her voice was hard.

  'What about your mother, Jane?' he asked.

  'She died—three years ago. Not long after I went to Conyers.'

  'And your sister? She was married, wasn't she? I don't think I ever met her.'

  'She's widowed now.' Jane's face had lost most of its colour. 'We live together.' She got out of the car and bent to the open window. 'Thanks for bringing me this far.'

  She turned away. The bonnet looked ridiculously long and shining, out of place in their plebeian neighbourhood, part of the background Stuart had deliberately built up for himself in those four years since their parting. It shut him away from her as effectively as the shining plate glass of the windscreen closed him in now.

  He leaned over the wheel to say evenly:

  'Au revoir, Jane. In the nature of things, we're bound to meet again.'

  She turned swiftly away, almost running the short distance between the end of the land and the gate which Hazel had barred to keep Linda Jane in the garden. Her throat parched, every nerve in her body taut, she thrust her key into the lock. Hazel was in the hall, carrying Linda Jane up to bed.