by Sue Peters
'Nan?' He spoke hesitantly. Like someone returning from a long journey, Nan thought wonderingly, and unsure if he recognised the person he was greeting. But his fingers relaxed from round his wine glass, and to her relief he put it down on the cloth unscathed. The small movement seemed to break the spell. He gave a long sigh, and sat back in his chair, and said something very strange.
'It might have been for the best. You never really know the reason for these things.'
'For the best? To lose an unborn child?' Her sense of shock was drowned in an almost overwhelming compassion.
'Edwina didn't like children.' He spoke wearily. 'I thought she might feel differently with one of our own. Might even want to settle down, and forget the social round that we seemed to have become entangled in.' The distaste in his expression was obvious, and Nan's sense of shock came uppermost in the sudden revelation. Keir's marriage to Edwina hadn't worked. That, as much as his environment, was the tinsel that had begun to tarnish. She had wondered, when Rose gave him his wife's photograph in its damaged frame that morning at breakfast time, and he had passed it to Mary to see, why he had not glanced down at the pictured face himself. And it would explain, too, why he had kept it in his dressing table drawer instead of displaying it on top, as would have been more normal. Rose had commented on that.
'Edwina resented the child. She said it would spoil her figure. She used to be a model before we married.' That would account for the impression of perfect grooming, the studied pose of the woman in the picture. 'I often wonder if .. .' He paused, as if he found it painful to continue.
'If what, Keir?' she pressed him gently. Carry on talking! her look beseeched him. Pour it all out, and give yourself some peace. He looked haunted, and talking about them might help him to lay his ghosts, for now she knew there were two instead of the one she had previously supposed. Edwina, and their child.
'If Edwina crashed the car on purpose,' he answered her bleakly. 'She'd been drinking, you see. She'd been to one of her endless parties. I was at the hospital, and it wasn't unusual for her to go out on her own, and I'd join her later if I could. That day I couldn't. There was a complicated operation, and it took longer than I expected. I was exhausted afterwards. You know how it is?' He took her understanding for granted. Nan nodded. She knew, very well. 'So I went straight home. I should have gone with her, I knew she was drinking more than she should, but that _wasn't unusual either, among Edwina's set.' His lips twisted. He had said 'Edwina's set', Nan noticed, not 'our set', as would have been more natural with a husband and wife. Whatever had attracted Keir to Edwina in the first place, he must have had his illusions pretty badly shattered soon afterwards, she guessed shrewdly.
'She wanted me to give her an abortion—kill our own child.' The horror in his eyes was a living revulsion, and he went on painfully, 'I refused, of course.' His voice steadied again, and Nan marvelled at his self-control. 'She was furious with me. She said if I didn't do it, she'd make me pay. And I have paid—dearly,' he finished simply.
He was still paying, Nan guessed, because he had never ceased to blame himself. Not, she sensed, for Edwina's death so much as for the death of the child. But what a thing to ask her husband to do! She must have known it would go against all his instincts and principles. Somewhere under her own compassion, Nan knew that only another marriage would rescue the happiness of the man on the other side of the table from her. Make him forget... A marriage, with a woman who would give him warmth and love—and children. A home, with all that—at its best—the sacred word could mean. Was Marcia the right one to give it to him? By some strange quirk of fate, or maybe something in his own make-up, Keir was attracted again by the same kind of woman. It wasn't just the brassy hair. The same hardness was reflected in Marcia's face that the photographer had caught so unerringly in Edwina's expression, denoting a lack of warmth, a selfishness, that would never make a real home for anyone. Nan shivered as they stepped outside the warm confines of the hotel dining room in search of the Land-Rover.
'Are you cold? Would you like the hood over us?' Keir asked her considerately.
'No, I'd rather be out in the open,' she refused quickly. 'The light nights are lovely, but one of the things I miss most in the summer are the stars.' She tipped her head back appreciatively. 'It's worth feeling a bit cold for, just to see them again.' A slight bite in the air, forerunner of the frosts that touched the hollows early in the high wold country, lent a polish to the stars overhead that turned the velvety darkness into a dome of twinkling light. A glittering ceiling, that her eyes loved, while her heart mourned the unrelieved darkness of her own personal sky.
CHAPTER TEN
'It was a lovely service.' Mary Gray drew on her gloves, and paused' on the path outside the church to watch the choir assemble into two far from straight lines, in preparation for their walk to the hospital.
'I wonder how many will be tempted to try their offerings half way up the hill,' Keir smiled. The singers had forsaken their hymnbooks in favour of part of the festival offerings of flowers and fruit, except for the one bearing the cross at the head of the procession.
'It all goes to the hospital anyway,' Nan told him, 'it's just a nice gesture for the children to take something with them when they go to sing. You know how the little ones love giving.' She had been one of the procession herself for many years, and remembered the joy of bearing her own particular gift. 'Doesn't Timmy look angelic? Someone must have found a surplice to fit him, from somewhere. I thought he'd be too small.'
'He is, but the vicar's wife said they'd tucked it up with a pin to save him from tripping over,' her aunt laughed. 'He's due to join the choir anyway when he's seven, so she'll probably run it round on her machine and let him stay in it now he's started.'
'Helen won't know him,' Oliver Gray prophesied with a chuckle, and Keir looked round at his partner as he leaned against the wall of the church porch. 'We're not ready to go yet, unless you're in a hurry,' Oliver Gray interpreted his silent question. 'We always stay and watch the choir from here, you can see them practically as far as the hospital. They sing all the way, it sounds lovely on a still day.'
'Do they always do this?' Keir's voice was low, and deeply stirred, as together he and Nan stood and watched the black and white procession wind its way up the opposite hillside, taking the open way across the fields instead of through the deep, hedgerow-bound lanes, so that their presence should be the more clearly seen as well as heard, their voices wafting back on the slight breeze, clear and high in joyous carolling, to the watching congregation standing in the warm sunshine of the churchyard.
'It's custom,' Nan told him simply. 'It happens at Christmas time; and Easter too—all the festivals, in fact, and often on fine Sundays in between times as well. The patients in the hospital are our people,' she reminded him gently. 'Just because they're ill, it's a shame to keep them out in the cold, away from the village activities. And the singing sounds lovely on a frosty day, it seems to ring clearer when the air's cold.'
'It's all so—so—sane.' Keir's voice was husky. His eyes roamed over the old, time-weathered pile of stones under which they stood; across the quiet gardens and equally old buildings of the Manor just below them; across the friendly knots of people who had packed the small building for the service, and now stood chatting amiably before breaking up and going their respective ways for another week of living and labour before they met again the following Sunday, drawn, as their forebears had been before them, to the very heart of their village life.
'It's too quiet for some tastes,' Nan strolled along beside him towards Oliver's car. 'But it satisfies me.' She had not seen the Lisle family there, which seemed a pity. Living in the Manor was not enough, they needed to join in the life of the community if they were ever to be accepted locally. It would be important to Keir particularly that Marcia should become involved in the life of the village. So far, beyond sketchy attendances at the tennis club, she had shown little inclination to do anything of the kind, and her p
arents' efforts to bring the local people to them had been a signal failure.
Nan was still thinking of the Lisles, Marcia in particular, while she was doing the baking for Helen two days later. She could not get the family out of her mind, and wished heartily that her cooking was of the more exotic variety that would make her concentrate all her mental efforts on what she was doing. Baking was automatic.
'I want it to be specially nice,' she told Rose. 'I'll make a couple of cut-and-come-again cakes while I'm at it, and seal them in tins, with all that fruit in they'll keep a while, and give you a head start until you're familiar with the Marriotts' kitchen. Shut the door behind you, Timmy,' she added, raising her voice as the child trotted by. 'The wasps are a perfect pest this morning.'
'It's the hot fruit that's drawing them,' Rose sniffed appreciatively. 'Those pies smell good already.'
'I've put four in,' Nan told her. 'Two for us, and two you can take with you to the vet's.' The big oven at Minster House had swallowed them all easily, and not for the first time Nan blessed its Spacious capacity.
'Doctor Gray and Doctor Raven won't be in to lunch or dinner tomorrow, miss,' Rose reminded her. 'If you remember, that Minister man's coming to the hospital, and the Lisles have invited them to dinner in the evening, and all the Planning Committee as well, so I've heard. Talk about bribery !' she snorted.
'Bother! I'd forgotten it was tomorrow.' Nan looked at her in dismay. 'It's the day Helen's being discharged, and I'd promised to pick her up and take her home. I wanted Uncle Oliver's car, the Land-Rover's not very convenient for someone with a leg in plaster,' she continued worriedly.
'That's easily solved.' Oliver Gray was disposed to be accommodating the next morning. 'You take the saloon, and Keir and I will go to the hospital in the Land-Rover. You know where my parking place is, by the front entrance. Bring the saloon on when you've dropped Helen at homeland swap over,' he suggested. 'You can have the Land-Rover for the rest of the day, then.'
'I'll do that,' Nan accepted with relief. 'I didn't want to let Helen down.' She blessed the roomy boot of the saloon the next morning as she loaded Timmy's belongings plus the baking, and included a cold chicken which she had cooked as an afterthought the previous day. 'It'll do nicely with some salad, and it'll get you over the first day,' she told Rose. 'With the rest of the groceries and meat we took yesterday, you won't need to bother with shopping for a while.'
'From the look of what you've got there, they'll have enough to withstand a siege,' Keir grinned, regarding the packed car boot with open amusement. 'Where are you going to put him?' His smile broadened, and he jerked his head in the direction of the child, who walked carefully down the front steps balancing his cage in his arms.
'The hamster!' Nan's eyes widened. 'I'd forgotten we'd have to take him.' She shivered. 'Perhaps you can take him tomorrow?' she begged, openly reluctant.
'But I want him now!' Timmy's dismay equalled her own, and Rose took pity on his wail.
'I'll sit in the back of the car, with the cage on my knee, and Sauce can come in the back too, out of the way,' she took charge firmly. 'You can sit in the front, if you're good.' She relinquished the coveted seat to the boy, who promptly forsook his burden into her arms and claimed his privilege.
'Bravo, Rose!' Keir murmured with a taunting look at Nan, and she made a face at him, loathing herself for her own cowardice, and more for the fact that she had showed it in front of him. He would probably laugh over it, with Marcia . . .
'I hope the meeting goes the way it should.' She turned with relief to her uncle, not looking at Keir. She still did not know how he would vote, what points of view he intended to put forward at the meeting with the Minister that morning. So far he had been carefully non-committal, refusing to discuss the matter with her. His silence roused her anger, he acted as if it were none of her business, whereas it was the business of the whole of the community, not just the medical staff of the hospital, and the members of the Planning Committee. She had no doubt he would discuss it with Marcia. The girl herself would see to that, she thought grimly.
'It'll be late afternoon before we know one way or the other,' Oliver Gray answered. As she watched him, Nan's heart misgave her. He looked strained—and old. How could Keir join him, and then even contemplate voting against him? she wondered unhappily. His life's work was bound up in the hospital, and she dreaded the consequences to him if he had to sit and see it shattered in a few moments by people whose only consideration was finance.
'The next time anything goes wrong you may have to travel into Hopminster to have it put right,' she told Helen gloomily when she picked her up later. 'I've taken Rose and Timmy home, they're already waiting for you,' she tried to cheer up so as not to spoil Helen's day.
'Let me know what happens.' Her friend's parting shot from the couch in her own living room stayed with her as she drove slowly back to the hospital to exchange her uncle's car for the Land-Rover. What would happen? The day seemed to stretch endlessly before her, so how much worse must her uncle feel? she wondered.
'Here's the keys to Uncle Oliver's car.' She gave them to the porter in the main hall of the hospital. 'He said he'd come to you for them when he's ready to use it,' she completed the arranged ritual.
'I wonder whether I'll be having his car keys for him this time next year?' The porter's gloom equalled her own, and Nan's heart sank. The long-drawn-out argument over the hospital was bound to affect the morale of the staff. The man beside her came from the village. Nan knew him well. He had been badly disabled during the war, and light work within a short distance of his home was important to him. The closure of the hospital would mean his travelling into Hopminster daily to another job, a daunting enough prospect with sound limbs, and an almost impossible task for her companion.
'Cheer up,' she bade him with an optimism she herself was far from feeling. 'We've survived worse crises than this in the past, and come through.'
'Ah, but this time it's different, miss.' If anything his depression deepened. 'Times past it was us fighting to get things for our own hospital. Equipment, and building improvements, and so on. And we all joined in together and managed it, somehow. This time it's them agin us,' he quoted the timeless human conflict. 'Them financial fellers only thinks of money,' he complained bitterly. 'They never thinks of anything in terms of folk.' He stiffened to attention suddenly. 'That's them coming, now.' He turned as the door into the main hall opened, and a buzz of talk came through. Someone laughed. Nan recognised the over-hearty tones of Lisle senior, and wondered what he had got to laugh about. If he found the company of the Government Minister amusing, it was probably because things were going the way he wanted them to.
'Best stop where you are for a minute, miss, until they've gone.' The porter viewed the party of men coming towards them with a lugubrious expression. Nan watched them with interest, searching their faces to see if she could find any clue as to their feelings, and the possible outcome of their meeting. Uncle Oliver said they were taking the Minister on a tour of the hospital first, and she knew he was due to view Ma's cottage, at least from the outside, on his way from the station that morning. She recognised all the members of the party except one, so he must be the Minister. And even he was not a complete stranger, she realised suddenly. The tall, slightly stooping figure with the white hair was puzzlingly familiar. She tried to place him.
it's Sister Durrant, isn't it?' To Nan's confusion the Government man met her eye and smiled, and came towards her away from the party, with his hand outstretched. This is a pleasure—I didn't expect to meet you here.'
'How's the shoulder?' The soft Scots voice, and the twinkling, bright blue eyes, brought back instant memory. John McFee, whose broken shoulder she had helped along its way to recovery in the surgical ward at Bartholomews. Another victim of a car accident.
'Fancy you remembering me!' he exclaimed with delight. 'You must have hundreds of patients through your hands, and yet you knew me,' he said in a pleased voice. 'Aren't you a
t Bartholomews any longer?'
'Oh, I still work there,' she smiled back, completely at her ease now she remembered who he was. She had liked him immensely when he had been in her care, and her second impression of the man did not alter her opinion. 'I'm on leave at the moment, Minster's my home village,' she explained with a smile.
'I didn't know you knew my niece.' Oliver Gray strolled over with one or two other members of the Committee. Nan saw that those who remained behind were the ones who wanted the hospital to go, and she hoped fervently that the unexpected meeting would in no way embarrass her uncle.
'This gets more and more of a coincidence,' the Minister exclaimed. 'I little thought when I set out from London this morning that my visit would be such a pleasure.'
'I didn't know it was you who was coming,' Nan assured him. 'We've only referred to you as the Minister, up to now. And here you are, a human being after all,' she teased, feeling safe as she remembered his sense of fun. She was not mistaken, and his eyes twinkled.
'Were you waiting to join the procession?' he enquired hopefully. 'We'd only just started on our rounds of the hospital.'
'I wasn't included,' she twinkled back, with a glance at her uncle for guidance. The opposing members of the Committee would not easily forgive her for stealing their thunder, she thought uneasily, though it was obvious that those on her uncle's side were delighted at the unexpected turn of events.
'Oh, but you must come along—I can't forgo the opportunity to talk to you again,' John McFee exclaimed. 'That is, if you can spare the time?' His innate courtesy hadn't altered, either, she thought, liking him still more.