Nurse for the Doctor

by Averil Ives

  “Make sure that the chauffeur has the car door open, Nurse,” Matron said to her briskly, just before they gravitated to the top of the nursing home steps. “And see that there are plenty of rugs and hot water bottles. It’s warm for a September day, but Dr. Duveen will probably find it cold driving.”

  But the chauffeur already had the door of the magnificent cream-colored car wide open, and he was looking eagerly—like a dog that has been longing for a sight of its master—up at the tall figure on the top of the steps. His training kept him standing like a statue beside the door, and it was Josie who tucked the rugs round the patient when he was lying back exhaustedly against the superbly sprung seat.

  “Please sit in front, Nurse Winter,” Mrs. Duveen requested, “and I’ll keep my son company here in the back of the car.”

  She took his hand and held it, as if he was a child, and Josie understood how she was feeling; but she also understood that the process of keeping her relegated to the background had begun. Unless she discovered a keener power of asserting herself than she had ever suspected, she might just as well have been left behind at Chessington House where a little group of nurses remained standing on the steps and watching their departure until there was no longer anything to see.

  It was, as Matron had remarked, a warm September day—a beautifully warm and mellow day of departing summer. Josie felt the soft air coming in at the windows, and as she sat back and let it fan her cheeks her pulses began to stir a little in a pleasurable kind of way. She was a country girl, brought up in a tiny Yorkshire village, and she had never really taken kindly to London, although nursing was the only career she would ever have chosen for herself. Sometimes she wished that her parents still lived in that tiny village tucked away on the edge of the moors—fold after fold of glowing purple in the autumn—instead of moving in closer to London, where she could see them sometimes at week-ends.

  The big cream car ate up the miles swiftly, and yet so smoothly that there was absolutely no sensation of discomfort, or even of noticeable movement. The suburbs were reached and left behind before Josie properly realized it.

  Then the green fields came at them, and the leafy lanes where the berries were already turning to scarlet and the blackberries were swelling and taking on a pansy-purple shade. The Duveen home was deep in the heart of Hertfordshire, and to get to it they ran through peaceful villages where the inn signs winked in the sunshine, and the village greens were like a display of emerald velvet. Ducks quacked on village ponds, and mellow roofs stood out against the pale September sky. Woods crowded down to the edge of the narrow byways, where they were swallowed up by a rich and fertile wilderness that was already splashed with the colors of autumn.

  Josie could hear her patient and his mother talking quietly in the back of the car, and once Mrs. Duveen suggested that they should stop for lunch at an hotel and give him a chance to rest, but her son rejected this suggestion.

  “I’ve rested more than I ever expected to rest in the whole of my lifetime during the past six weeks,” he said, “and I’m feeling perfectly fresh. Let’s wait for lunch until we get to King’s Folly, and not disappoint Mrs. Benedict. Unless she’s altered greatly since I saw her last she’s prepared something special for today.”

  “Well, as a matter of fact, darling, I know she has,” his mother admitted. “One of her special cheese soufflés, and a duck that should melt in the mouth. And for dinner tonight there’s some salmon that certainly wasn’t caught in a local river.”

  “Good old Benedict!” Michael remarked complacently, and the complacence told Josie that it was no more than he expected that a member of his household should endeavour to excel herself as a means of celebrating his return home. He was accustomed to people exerting themselves in order to please him, and such a thing as his return home after an accident could provide no more legitimate excuse.

  He asked after various other people who apparently formed part of his daily background when he was in the country, and was assured that they were all eagerly awaiting his return. All the inmates of King’s Folly, and others who lived near it, had been looking forward to today almost as keenly as Mrs. Duveen herself had done.

  “Of course I can’t tell you how terribly much I’ve been longing for today,” the lovely, tiny Irishwoman who looked too fragile to have borne a son—particularly one who was now six feet—confided in a rather pathetic voice, and Michael patted her hand and looked down at her affectionately.

  But when Josie ventured to turn her head and look back at him he was lying with his black head resting against the pale beige upholstery, looking very white and obviously at the end of his tether.

  “Bed, I think,” Josie said firmly, as they turned in between a pair of wrought-iron gates, and swept up a beautifully tended drive, “as soon as we’ve got you out of the car. You look as if you’ve had quite enough, Dr. Duveen.”

  “What!” His blue eyes tried to mock her, although he was too languid to move his head. “And disappoint poor Benedict! ... Haven’t you heard us discussing the duck she’s prepared? And she’s bound to want to serve it in state in the dining room, with the portraits of my ancestors looking down on us.”

  “Never mind about your ancestors,” Josie heard herself reply, in an amazingly firm voice. “They can wait to welcome you back, but your bed must not be allowed to wait.”

  “But, surely this is all rather ridiculous and unnecessary?” Mrs. Duveen protested, when she had scrambled out on to the drive with the assistance of the chauffeur, whose name was Fordyce, and Josie was leading her son away into the house. “A glass of sherry in the library, where there’s bound to be a fire ... And perhaps a little rest before lunch is served. But I really don’t think Michael needs to be put to bed at once...”

  Josie ignored the rising note in her voice, and was glad when the housekeeper made her appearance in a black dress, with a bunch of keys actually jingling at her waist, and promptly took hold of her master’s other arm and helped him towards the magnificent carved staircase. They took the stairs very, very slowly. Fortunately the treads were very shallow, and the staircase bent like an uncurling fan as they made their way upwards, so that the ascent was not as exhausting as it might otherwise have been for the invalid. He said nothing, neither protesting nor approving the decision to whisk him straight away upstairs, until his room was reached, and he stood leaning very heavily on Josie while his eyes—glowing suddenly as if a vivid blue flame had come to life behind them—went roving in all directions.

  It was a pleasant and, Josie thought, welcoming room that he had chosen for himself a long time ago. There was a huge four-poster bed with brocade curtains, standing in the middle of a sea of burgundy-colored carpet that looked rich and warm and lush, and the walls were panelled with the kind of wood one came upon only in unspoilt gems of houses such as this.

  “It’s good to be back!” the man said simply, and then he looked down at Josie and smiled at her twistedly. “And it’ll be good to be between those sheets,” he admitted. “You know your stuff, Nurse Winter.”

  Between them she and the housekeeper got him into bed, and although he protested that he was very well able to manage himself, his protests were ignored by both of them. The housekeeper fussed over him and called him “Master Michael”, as if he were a schoolboy sent home from the sanatorium at school after developing something catching. He called her Bennie and told her that unless he had a double helping of the cheese soufflé he wouldn’t forgive her this high-handedness. She promised him a tray that would delight his heart, and over his recumbent body eyed the slender uniformed figure of the unusually young-looking nurse with unconcealed approval. She hadn’t expected anyone so young, or anyone who already gave the impression that she would be anything but difficult to work with, and she was greatly relieved.

  But outside the door she confessed: “He gave me quite a turn when I saw him, but his color came back once we got him into bed. I’ll see about his lunch, and perhaps a glass of sherry as we
ll.” She hesitated. “Mrs. Duveen will be disappointed because she was looking forward to a kind of celebration lunch, but you’ll have to be firm with her, Nurse. She’s not really used to sickness.”

  “No, I’d already gathered that,” Josie admitted.

  “After all, you’re the nurse—he’s in your charge. She’ll try and persuade him to do too much at first, and you’ll have to prevent it.”

  “That’s what I’m here for,” Josie answered, but as she went downstairs to confront Mrs. Duveen in the library she wasn’t quite as confident as she sounded.

  Mrs. Duveen had poured herself a drink and was lying back in a deep leather chair by the fireplace. The fireplace was huge and baronial and, logs blazed away cheerfully on the stone hearth. Mrs. Duveen absurdly small but dainty feet in hand-made snake-skin shoes with slightly perilous heels were extended towards the warmth, and the powder-blue suit she was wearing made her eyes look powder-blue also, while her silvery-pale, exquisitely coiffured hair had been treated to a light blue rinse that emphasized the prevailing color scheme.

  “Sit down, Nurse,” she said, in rather a thin, petulant voice, “and help yourself to a drink if you’d like one.” She obviously made an effort to appear pleasant and forget the annoyance she was feeling. “Is Michael comfortable?”

  “Quite comfortable, Mrs. Duveen. After a rest this afternoon he’ll probably be quite bright this evening.”

  “Then he’ll be able to come downstairs to dinner?”

  “I wouldn’t advise it.”

  The wealthy Irish widow crushed out the end of the cigarette she was smoking in an ash tray at her elbow, and then selected another from an expensive shagreen case. She didn’t offer the case to Josie.

  “How soon do you think he’ll start getting back to normal?”

  “You mean how soon will he be fit?”

  “Fit enough to travel—to get away from here.” She pretended she didn’t hear the sound of the luncheon gong that was booming through the house, and looked as if her main desire then was to settle down and extract information. But Josie’s half unconscious glance of admiration about the splendidly proportioned room had been caught and held by a photograph on the enormous roll-topped desk in the window, and for a few seconds the appreciation it aroused was plainly pictured on her face. She was certain that never in her life had she gazed at anyone as lovely as the girl in the beaten silver frame—a girl with a smile so warm and enticing that it could not have left unaffected her bitterest enemy, and eyes put in, as the Irish themselves phrase it, with a “sooty” finger.

  Mrs. Duveen followed the direction of her glance, and her lips tightened. She recognized the effect the photograph was having, and remarked dryly: “That is a studio portrait of the young woman my son hoped he was going to marry.”

  “Oh!” Josie exclaimed, and recalled that only that morning she had been wondering whether there was any truth in Rachel Richardson’s story of an unhappy love affair that had been the cause of Dr. Duveen’s accident.

  “Hoped he was going to marry, I said,” Mrs. Duveen repeated, “because it’s all over now. It ended in a blaze of sunshine, somewhere down on the edge of the Mediterranean, while I was staying with friends in Ireland and wondering how soon we would be starting wedding preparations.”

  “Oh!” Josie articulated again, and this time the word sounded as if it was wrung out of her, and was simply weighted down with sympathy—the first real sympathy she had felt for Mrs. Duveen. “What—what a disappointment that must have been for you,” she heard herself saying inadequately.

  “It was,” the older woman admitted, “but it was something worse than a disappointment for Michael. As a result of it he ended up in a nursing home—and I thought I was going to lose him,” she finished, with a sudden look of anguish on her face.

  Josie sat with her hands clasped in her lap, bereft of words before that naked display of feeling, behind which, she was convinced, there lay an almost unnatural bitterness and resentment. Mrs. Duveen’s mascara threatened to run as the tears coursed their way down her cheeks, and her bright blue eye-shadow looked absurd, as her age, and the strain of the past few weeks showed up with sudden vicious clarity. But she made a tremendous effort and conquered her passing weakness.

  “However—all that is over now. All those dreadful days and nights when his life hung in the balance. And now that they are over I want to get him away—away before he has a chance to start serious brooding! It is always the readjustment period that follows on a broken engagement that is the most difficult to survive, especially when there is physical weakness as well, and Michael must be helped to get over it as quickly as possible. A friend of mine—the son of a very close girlhood friend—has invited us to stay with him in Spain, and not only would we escape the winter—or, at any rate, a part of it—but the Marquis de Palheiro is charming, and his sister is even more charming. She is a well known Spanish novelist...”

  As Josie looked, for some reason that she herself didn’t completely understand, a little surprised, Mrs. Duveen said rather crisply: “There are novelists and novelists, my dear. Maria Cortes—which is of course a pseudonym—is brilliant but delightful, and she is also young. The marquis has a villa on the Costa Brava, and we are invited to stay there for as long as we care to do so. You can’t think how thankful I am that we have received such an invitation at this time...”

  “It does seem as if it might—as if it might have very beneficial results,” Josie heard herself murmuring.

  “It couldn’t fail to have beneficial results,” Mrs. Duveen stated quite definitely. “And that’s why I want to know how soon you think my son will be fit to travel.”

  “But surely that is a question for Dr. Arbuthnot to decide?”

  “Dr. Arbuthnot is a fussy old man, and he said rest for a few weeks in the country. Well, Michael can rest for a week or so ... And then I would like us to get away. You will come with us, of course. It was because I had this trip in mind that I insisted on a nurse who would not look too much like a uniformed attendant, and you struck me as being more the type who could act as a kind of companion to myself—as well as being on hand when, and if, Michael needs you. But I want him to forget this horrible episode of illness and disappointment as quickly as possible.

  It was plain that she was obsessed with her plan to give Michael a new outlook on life, and to blot out the unhappiness in his past as quickly and effectually as she could. But as Josie made her way back to her patient at last, she wondered why the name of Maria Cortes had been so deliberately introduced.

  “There are novelists and novelists ... brilliant but delightful, and she is also young...”

  Surely, Josie thought, with a frown between her brows, not even the doting mother of an only son would be so foolish as to try and interest him in another woman when he hadn’t yet recovered from the effects of wantonly risking his life because one he badly wanted to marry had turned him down.

  And when she entered his room and found him lying with a look of deep, quiet contentment in his eyes she found it difficult to believe that he had wantonly risked his life; that the past was something that had got to be blotted out for him.

  “You fit in here, Nurse,” he told her, watching her cross the carpeted space to his bed. “That green uniform makes you look like a dryad—or it would if you didn’t cover it up with an apron. Must you wear the complete outfit?” he demanded rather querulously, as she possessed herself of his wrist and checked the steady beat of his pulse with her cool fingers.

  She looked down on him in the way she had been trained to look at patients when they had to be humored.

  “Would it make very much difference to you if I didn’t?”

  “I’d like it—my mother would like it, too! It might rob you of a little of your authority, but I’d feel less as if I was still at Chessington House. It’s the psychological approach when a patient has reached the convalescent stage that is so important you mustn’t forget, Nurse.”

  S
he smiled, a dimple appearing at one corner of her mouth; and while she produced a thermometer and prevented him from making further utterances he lay regarding that dimple with a sleepy look in his eyes. The sleepy look was still there, but the dimple had vanished by the time she had reassured herself that his temperature was normal and as she straightened his top sheet and turned his pillows for him she suggested: “I’ll draw the curtains, and then you might like to have a little nap before tea.”

  But he reached out and caught her by her arm and prevented her from moving toward the wide window with its silken hangings flowing from a pelmet of the same rich color.

  “Don’t be in such a rush. Nurse. I want to know whether my mother has told you about this Spanish idea of hers.”

  Josie admitted that she had.

  “Have you ever been to Spain?” he asked.

  “No, never.”

  “Then you’ll enjoy the Costa Brava—and you couldn’t possibly wear a uniform on the Costa Brava!” He was fighting against waves of sleep, and his long eyelashes were drooping downwards, but he still had something to say. “I used to think you were rather a mouse-like person, Nurse Winter—although there’s nothing in the least wintry about you—but now I’m not so sure. You’ve got brown eyes and fair hair, and that’s an uncommon combination in this country. You’re a brown-eyed, fair-haired mouse.”

  And then he was asleep.

  CHAPTER III

  FOR the next two weeks Josie found it less difficult to assert her authority in the Duveen household than she would have believed possible when she left London.

  Her patient improved markedly, and was reasonably amenable to having his waking hours supervised and his hours of sleep insisted upon, even though they frequently encroached on a period of the daytime when he would prefer to be awake. As a doctor he probably recognized that it would be absurd to be unco-operative and delay his own return to health; but as a man in his early thirties, with all sorts of things that he would almost certainly have preferred to do rather than lie in a long chair with an adjustable footrest and a cushion stuffed in at the right angle behind his sleek dark head, he was, Josie considered, remarkably patient. And in spite of his mother’s fears of serious brooding, he spent many hours in the library browsing over the contents of its shelves with the lovely young woman in the beaten silver frame sitting almost at his elbow on the roll-topped desk.