The Other Linding Girl

by Mary Burchell

  In any case, she found herself very much at home with him, and had hardly finished her brief but lively account of the family, when the door opened and into the room came a small girl, with straight dark hair, bright, intelligent black eyes and an amusingly tip-tilted nose.

  She was what the Americans mean by “cute”, but not at all pretty, and she said, with great composure,

  “Hello. You’re my cousin Rachel, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. And you must be Paula,” replied Rachel, suddenly remembering the name scrawled at the bottom of one of the

  unfortunately chosen Christmas cards.

  She smiled and held out her hand. And when the child came across to her, Rachel—who came of a comfortably demonstrative family—put an arm round her and kissed her, which seemed to surprise Paula somewhat.

  However, the advance evidently met with approval, because she said at once, “Can I take Rachel to her room?” It is possible that Sir Everard—who was also enjoying the new toy—might have refused. But at that moment the telephone rang and, picking up the receiver, he said impatiently, ‘Yes, yes—run along, both of you.” And Rachel had the distinct impression that both she and Paula ceased to exist.

  However, she was used to a household where the demands of the telephone took precedence over almost everything else, and she got up immediately and accompanied her little cousin out of the room and upstairs to the next floor where, it seemed, a very pleasant bed- sitting-room had been put at her disposal.

  “Do you like it?” Paula watched the older girl closely as she looked round.

  “Very much indeed,” Rachel assured her sincerely. “Would you like to help me unpack?”

  “Yes, please.” Paula spoke with alacrity. “And tell me about my other cousins.”

  So Rachel obligingly described Elizabeth and Hazel, and something of their life in Loriville.

  “It must be fun to have sisters.” Paula heaved an involuntary sigh. “It’s dull being only one. But Mummy says she won’t have any more. I’ve asked her several times.”

  “Have you?” Rachel smiled, but left that subject tactfully undeveloped. “How about any other cousins? Has your Uncle Nigel a family?”

  “Oh, no!” Paula seemed rather amused at that idea. “He isn’t married. He says marriage is for the very good or the very courageous, and he’s neither.”

  “I see.”

  “He’s taking you out to a party tonight,” Paula volunteered unexpectedly.

  “Really?” Rachel looked surprised. “I don’t know anything about this.”

  “No, Mummy arranged it. Daddy’s taking her, and Uncle Nigel is taking you,” the little girl explained. ‘You can wear that pretty dress.” And she approvingly indicated the one full evening dress which, at the last minute, Rachel had decided to include in her luggage.

  “Then it’s quite a grand affair?” Rachel still very much doubted if she were to be plunged immediately in such social activities.

  "It’s a ball for one of the big medical charities,” Paula explained knowledgeably. “Daddy won’t usually go to anything like that unless it’s for charity. He doesn’t like these things as much as Mummy does. Are you ready to come down now? I expect we’ll be having dinner early, if you’re all going out.”

  “Then I won’t change until later—if I really am going to a full-dress party,” said Rachel, sounding as sceptical as she felt.

  However, almost as soon as they stopped outside her room, Paula cried,

  “There’s Uncle Nigel! He’ll tell you all about it.”

  And, darting away from Rachel’s side, she flung herself with affectionate abandon upon a man who had just reached the top of the stairs.

  “Rachel’s here, Uncle Nigel! And she doesn’t quite believe she’s going to the ball. But she is, isn’t she?”

  “As surely as Cinderella did,” was the reassuring reply. And, as he turned to her, Rachel found herself smiling into a pair of bright, provocative dark eyes, not unlike Paula’s own.

  She was never able to decide—either then or afterwards —what it was about Nigel Seton which made one smile so easily in his company. At that first meeting—and in view of what he had said on the telephone—she supposed it was because he took life so lightly and carelessly. It was not until much later that she noticed the odd variance between the mocking gaiety of those eyes and the firm line of the mouth and jaw.

  What she did notice on that first occasion was that the hand which took hers was strong and purposeful. “Hello,” he said, “so you made the date all right. And now you can come to the ball. I hope you like the idea.”

  “I think it’s wonderful,” she told him sincerely. “But I had no notion that substitute secretaries came in for so much excitement.”

  ‘They don’t. It’s being Sir Everard's niece that does it,” he assured her. “Have you seen Hester yet?”

  “No.”

  “Then come down and meet her. She’s in the drawingroom— with Everard and Oliver Mayforth.”

  Rachel, looked enquiring, and it was Paula who explained,

  “Mr. Mayforth is assistant surgeon at Daddy’s Nursing Home.”

  “And ‘Daddy’s Nursing Home’ is merely the characteristically possessive way this family has of referring to anything relating to it in the smallest degree,” Nigel Seton amplified a trifle drily. “Daddy doesn’t actually own the place. He’s principal surgeon. The chief miracle- worker in the eyes of the patients, and pretty well deputising for God in Matron’s view.”

  “I see,” said Rachel—tactfully non-committal. And then they all went down to the drawing-room, where her uncle was deep in conversation with a dark, good-looking man in perhaps his middle thirties, and her aunt—as young and beautiful and soignee as Rachel had been led to expect—was reading a letter by the window.

  Rachel saw immediately what her father had meant about the inadvisability of addressing her as “Aunt”. But Hester Linding greeted her quite pleasantly—and then Sir Everard noticed Rachel again and said,

  “Come and meet Mr. Mayforth, Rachel. He is assistant surgeon at My Nursing Home—” Sir Everard not only laid claim to the home, but gave it capital letters. “You’ll be working for him too. Mayforth, this is my niece, Rachel Linding, who is going to get us out of the muddle that idiotic Freney girl created.”

  “Is that so?” said Oliver Mayforth quite courteously.

  But he looked as though he reserved judgment about the newcomer until she should have given genuine proof of undoing some of the mistakes of her erring predecessor.

  Possibly, thought Rachel amusedly, Miss Freney had also had her problems. At least the assistant surgeon believed in wasting no time, it seemed, for he said immediately,

  “May I have Miss Linding tomorrow morning, sir? I’ve a stack of letters that need answering, and one or two things to put right.”

  “Well—” Sir Everard seemed reluctant to part so promptly with the treasure he evidently felt he had acquired.

  “You’ll be operating from eight-thirty,” Mr. Mayforth

  reminded him, respectfully but firmly.

  “Yes—yes, that’s true. All right, then. That means you’ll go over to the Nursing Home tomorrow, Rachel. But I’d like you back here for the afternoon. What time is dinner, Hester? If I’m making an early start tomorrow—”

  “Almost immediately” his wife replied calmly. "It’s ordered for seven sharp, as we are going out.”

  “Going out?” repeated Sir Everard, in tones of mellow indignation. “I’m not going out tonight.”

  “Of course you are, Everard.” Hester Linding was tranquil but adamant, and she passed over her husband’s protest like a steamroller—though a very decorative one, of course. “It’s the Spastics’ Ball at the Gloria. We’ve had the tickets for the last six weeks, and I’m wearing my new Florian dress.”

  “I’m sorry about that.” Her husband frowned impatiently. “But you know I never go out late if I’m operating early. Nigel must take you.”


  “Nigel is taking Rachel.”

  “Oh, but that isn’t necessary,” Rachel broke in quickly. “I wasn’t expecting to go. I don’t mind at all—”

  “Nonsense.” Her aunt gave her an oddly quelling glance. “Everything can be arranged, if we’re sensible about it.”

  “If by that you mean that I should put a social engagement before a professional one, everything cannot be arranged,” Sir Everard stated curtly. “There’s no question of my going out tonight, Hester, and that’s final. For God’s sake, don’t you yet know what it means to be married to a profession? If you have to go, Nigel must take you—and the pair of you can be as irresponsible as you like together. Nigel’s better suited to that than I am.”

  And Sir Everard gave his brother-in-law a glance of undisguised disapproval which Nigel Seton, Rachel noticed, withstood with admirable calm.

  It was at this point that interruption came from a totally unexpected quarter.

  “If Lady Linding will allow me to escort her,” said Oliver Mayforth, “I shall be happy to do so.”

  “But, Oliver—” Hester looked unexpectedly taken aback— “you realise, don’t you, that—that almost everyone we know will be there?”

  “I’m sure they will.” The assistant surgeon looked rather grim. "But I hope you will let me take you, all the same.”

  “Well, that settles things splendidly,” declared Sir Everard quickly, before anyone could query an arrangement which suited him so excellently. “And now perhaps we can have dinner.”

  So they all went in to dinner, which was—in spite of the fact that Hester hurried things rather—a much more elaborate affair than Rachel was used to at home. All the same, she more than once spared a nostalgic thought for the dear, shabby dining-room in Loriville, where the family were probably just sitting down to their evening meal.

  As soon as dinner was over, her aunt said briskly, “Come on, Rachel, you and I had better get dressed. Will you come back for me, Oliver? I don’t expect Nigel will take the Rolls. He’s funny about driving Everard’s car.” She spoke exactly as though neither her brother nor her husband was present, Rachel noticed. “And there isn’t room for two evening dresses in that little runabout of his. ”

  Then she swept her niece out of the room and upstairs, enquiring rather impatiently on the way how long it took her to dress.

  “Not long,” Rachel promised, with a smile, and her young aunt left her, to attend to what evidently promised to be more elaborate preparations on her part. True to her undertaking, Rachel was downstairs again in good time, wearing the simple but very well-cut white evening dress which she had bought because Elizabeth had insisted (with all the authority of an affectionate elder sister) that it “did things for her.” Unquestionably it flattered her already admirable figure, and added subtle, warm overtones to the colouring of her smooth skin. And it made her uncle exclaim;

  “My dear, you look charming! You make me quite sorry I’m not coming too,” he added gallantly.

  “I’m also sorry.” Rachel smiled at him. “But of course there’s no question of your being out late if you start operating early tomorrow.”

  “No, no—Hester finds it so difficult to accept these things ” Sir Everard rubbed a hand over his forehead in a worried way, and Rachel felt genuinely sorry for him.

  “Being brought up in a doctor’s household makes it easier for me to understand,” she explained soothingly. “It’s difficult, I expect, if one hasn’t had that background.”

  “True, true. Hester’s background wasn’t a very good preparation for this sort of dedicated life, I’m afraid.” He used the word “dedicated” with such simple sincerity that Rachel saw him for a moment stripped of his little foibles and poses, and realised why he was a great doctor.

  “She doesn’t come of medical people?” Rachel asked gently.

  “No, no. Her people were literary.” Sir Everard said this as though it constituted a disease, though a minor one. “Almost ‘arty’, one might say,” he added, in an unexpected burst of family candour. “The father was a clever man, but quite impractical, and the mother had lots of degrees but no sense.”

  “Rather a bohemian sort of life, do you mean?” Rachel suggested politely, though she was faintly embarrassed at the personal turn the conversation had taken.

  “You know, it was almost that,” agreed Sir Everard, as though shocked at finding the word applied to anything remotely connected with him. “Hester was clever and pretty enough to break away and find her own level. But it was a bad preparation for life in her brother’s case. Very bad,” he repeated, and frowned, as Nigel Seton’s gay voice was heard calling something to his sister upstairs.

  Rachel, a little at a loss to know how to reply tactfully to this, was silent. And, a few moments later, Nigel Seton came running downstairs and into the room. She naturally looked at him with fresh interest, in view of her uncle’s recent strictures. But, though he looked quite extraordinarily handsome in his evening clothes, it was difficult to fit him exactly into the role of irresponsible playboy.

  It was not, Rachel reflected further, altogether easy to fit him into any role. In some odd way, he defied any sort of real definition. With most people one. could make some sort of guess. Stockbroker, actor, bank manager, doctor, artist. But not with Nigel Seton. And, with a

  slight sense of shock, Rachel came back to the odd thing he had said on the telephone—“I live by my wits.”

  No wonder her dignified and conventional uncle found him a thorn in the flesh!

  Sir Everard, however, made a visible effort to be genial, as he said,

  “Well, Nigel, you’re provided with a very attractive partner this evening, I must say. Rachel could hardly look prettier, could she?” And he looked as though he were in some way responsible for his satisfactory niece’ s appearance.

  “She could not,” agreed Nigel Seton gravely. “But don’t embarrass her.”

  “Embarrass her? No girl is embarrassed by the underlining of her good points,” declared Sir Everard. “And I think Rachel’s ego can do with a little boosting. She informed me, on arrival, that she is the ordinary one of the family.”

  “Very modest of her,” commented Nigel Seton in a rather equivocal manner. And then Oliver Mayforth returned and, a few minutes later, Hester made her appearance, looking radiantly lovely in her new Florian gown.

  Even if he had no wish to accompany her to the ball, it was obvious that Sir Everard took the greatest pride and pleasure in his young wife’s appearance. He said, “My dear, you look wonderful!” and warmly kissed the very cool cheek which she presented to him.

  “There’s always one who kisses and one who turns the cheek ” thought Rachel. “I’m somehow sorry for Uncle Everard.”

  But Uncle Everard looked quite content as he waved them on their way. Which, in a strange way, did not reduce Rachel’s queer compassion for him.

  Nigel's car proved to be a battered affair In comparison with Oliver Mayforth’s. But it was comfortable enough, once one was inside. And, while he waited for the others to move out ahead of them, he turned to Rachel with an amused glance and said, “So-you’re the ordinary member of the family? Your brothers and sisters must be quite something.”

  “Two sisters,” she specified gravely. “The elder one really a beauty and the younger one immensely gay and lively. I come in the middle.”

  “Was that what decided you to leave home?” he enquired, as he started the car, and Rachel blinked slightly at such unexpected acumen.

  “Not entirely.” She indulged in no indignant and hollow denials. “I’m greatly attached to both of them, but I was beginning to feel a little tired of being described as ‘the other Linding girl— what’s her name?’”

  He laughed.

  “I don’t believe that?”

  “You don’t believe I was getting tired of it?”

  “No, I don’t believe that’s what happened. You’re not the other anything. You’re completely—and intriguingly—your
self.” Rachel tried not to look as gratified as she felt.

  “That’s a very nice speech,” she said lightly. “But—” remembering suddenly what her uncle had said—“I think perhaps you’ve made it to other girls before me.”

  “No,” was the cool reply. “It hasn’t applied to other girls before you.”

  “O-oh,” said Rachel, and was silent.

  “What makes you think I might have?” he enquired curiously. “Well—” Rachel was slightly nonplussed, for it was difficult to answer that without implicating her uncle. “I had the idea—I mean—”

  “Yes?”

  “You did imply, on the telephone, that you were a—a rather lightweight sort of person.” She recalled that with some relief. “You said you—lived by your wits.”

  Rachel was not aware that her voice dropped to a gravely critical note on that last phrase. She was only aware that she had made him laugh heartily—and that it was both a mocking and an oddly attractive laugh.

  “Well, I do,” he agreed.

  “But what do you mean by that? It’s nothing to laugh about. It’s rather—rather deplorable. Haven’t you got a regular job or profession?”

  “Not really—no.”

  He seemed so casual about it that Rachel found herself wondering indignantly if he more or less lived on Uncle Everard.

  “Then what,” she enquired rather austerely, “do you do for a living?”

  “Oh, I dabble a bit in chemistry—write occasional articles for the less popular journals, when I feel I have a good subject—odd things here and there, you know.”

  “But nothing regular?”

  “Nothing regular,” he agreed.

  Rachel thought it sounded dreadful. For all her father’s understanding and indulgence, neither she nor her sisters had ever been allowed to suppose that the world owed them an easy living.

  They had all been brought up to realise that they must put as much into life as they took out of it—or, quite simply, feel ashamed. This casual catch-as-catch-can sort of existence seemed little less than immoral to her.