“Simply because I do not think you were free before,” Sara told her cruelly. “You are married. There seems little doubt about that, at least, but it may be that you were unhappily married and your subconscious finds this an excellent way out.”
“How could you believe such a thing!” Anna gasped.
“It may be the truth,” Sara pointed out mercilessly. “In any case, I should concentrate on that line of mental effort if I were you. It might get you somewhere.”
She opened the door, ushering Anna into a trim, business-like apartment with a desk set at an angle beside one of the windows, several easy chairs and a high couch spread with a blanket under a convenient wall light.
“You’ll find the office through there.” Sara indicated a second door. “It will probably feel cold to work in,” she warned. “I’ve told Noel several times that he would do better to leave his paper work to the girls downstairs who are capable of dealing with it, and I dare say he will waken up to the truth when you begin to have difficulty with the medical terms,” she prophesied as she swept out.
“She’s not going to make life pleasant for me,” Anna thought, “but if I can please Noel by the work I do I won’t care.”
Noel! Strange how easily the name had come to her lips, strange how inevitable it had seemed that they should be drawn together in that shadowy church on the windy hill! Could there have been someone named Noel in the past—a friend perhaps—a lover?
She found the filing he had mentioned and set to work. Everything was dovetailed to perfection, stored away for future reference—case histories, treatments, interviews, results, they were all there against the day when they might be needed again.
Working for him like this was to think of him constantly, to wonder about him and his career, but it was also to think about the man himself. How strong he was, and how patient! She would not have had the courage to come here to work for him if she had not been quite sure of his patience.
Towards five o’clock Dennis Tranby put his head round the door of the outer room while she was collecting the pencilled notes of a report from Noel’s desk. He looked surprised to see her, but he said approvingly enough:
“Quick work! Noel doesn’t believe in wasting time, of course. How have the first afternoon’s chores gone down?”
“I’ve enjoyed doing them,” Anna told him. She liked Dennis Tranby and he gave her confidence. “I only hope I have not made too many mistakes with the filing.”
“I always thought filing was child’s play until I tried it for a spell,” he confessed. “It has an absolutely hypnotic effect on me. I go on doing it in my sleep!”
“So long as you sleep.”
“Don’t you?”
“Not very well. But then, I had slept a lot during the afternoon.”
“Noel would rather you slept naturally than give you something to put you over, but if it gets too bad you must tell him. What did you do this morning?” he asked.
“Doctor Melford took me to church. There was a wedding in the little chapel on the edge of the moors.”
“I see.” He stood sorting through some papers. “I’ve just come back from a nasty case,” he informed her out of the blue. “An accident. Car overturned—glass flying everywhere and blood all over the place.”
She flinched as she listened and then she covered her face with her hands and gave a little shuddering moan.
“Oh—please, no!”
He swung round the end of the desk and came to her.
“I’m sorry, but that almost seemed to ring a bell, didn’t it?” He caught her elbow, propelling her towards a chair. “Sit down for a minute and try to think back,” he urged kindly. “Were you in a car, Anna, and was that car involved in a smash? Did you hit another car? Can’t you remember—travelling fast or something, travelling along a road and then—smash, and darkness all of a sudden? Was that something like what happened, Anna? You ought to know.”
“Yes,” she muttered from behind her hands, “I ought to know, but I can’t remember a car that crashed. I should have been hurt in that case, shouldn’t I?” she added logically.
“There is superficial bruising on your thigh and your left arm, and another bruise on your head. Can you remember nothing about it?”
“Nothing.”
There was such abject misery in her voice that he left it at that, and she turned towards the door as it opened and Noel Melford came in.
He looked from one to the other questioningly, and Anna passed him and went into the inner room.
“I wonder how she shaped out this afternoon by herself,” he said, sitting down at his desk and moving the letters that had come by the late post to one side. “I gave her a fairly comprehensive intelligence test before I went out and she seems to have coped with it all right.” He glanced down at the empty filing tray on the desk. “I had very little fear of her failing in that respect,” he added, “but it’s a routine check up and it is best gone through.”
“What happened in church this morning?” Dennis asked.
“She told you about that, did she?” Noel smiled. “Well, there was a certain amount of reaction during the actual ceremony and the service itself seemed to mean something to her, but on the whole it was an unhappy reaction.” He paused, examining the tips of his fingers with the utmost concentration for a moment. “One could deduce from it that she had been unhappily married,” he added slowly. “I’m quite convinced that she is not the type who would take her marriage vows lightly, hence the suggestion of being trapped inside the marriage bond. A subconscious suggestion that, by the way.”
“And five minutes ago, just before you came in just now, I had more or less got her reacting to the suggestion of an accident,” Tranby said. “Could it be that there was some sort of accident on the honeymoon journey resulting in the condition in which Ruth found her?”
“That could be a theory,” Noel agreed, “but why no car for miles around on the moor roads? We can’t rush at this too quickly, old man,” he cautioned. “It’s no ordinary case—or so I feel.”
His friend gave him a brief, searching scrutiny.
“What now?” he asked.
“I’m not quite sure. The ring is still a possibility, of course, though I’m not expecting a great deal from it.”
“What about drugs?”
“You know what I feel about sodium pentothal,” Noel said abruptly. “One doesn’t always get the best results that way, and nine times out of ten it leads nowhere. I fancy we’ll get the truth from Anna without using too many drugs—the truth as far as she remembers it.”
“And when we get that far, what then?”
“Hypnosis, perhaps. We’ll see how things go first, in the course of the next few days. I always believe in giving a patient plenty of time to react normally.”
“And in the meantime?”
“She stays on with Ruth, I think. I feel that she would not react over here in the hospital quite so well.”
Tranby grunted.
“You know best,” he agreed. “You mean to let her go on working here, though?”
“She isn’t exactly in the hospital up here,” Noel pointed out. “Her work will be isolated from the wards. It will also give me the opportunity of keeping an eye on her, and when she is with you you can do the same. You know what to look for.”
“I hope I shall find nothing more than that,” Tranby observed laconically as he turned away from the desk. “The Big White Chiefs word is absolute law, of course!”
Noel laughed.
“I hope I haven’t been too autocratic,” he said, “and apparently my word isn’t absolute law to you on occasion! I told you, I think, that little Mrs. Whittacker in Ward C was in no fit state to be left alone, but you apparently thought otherwise. She was found wandering about the grounds in her night attire at two o’clock this morning, determined to pick flowers.”
“Good lord! I’m sorry, Noel,” Tranby apologized swiftly. “I had no idea it was quite so bad as that,
and I understood she slept like a log once she was safely tucked up for the night.”
“The old lady’s afraid of life just now like a little child afraid of the dark, and she seeks reassurance in familiar places. I don’t think that’s the position with Anna, by the way,” he added, as if he could not quite let the other case out of his mind. “She wants life; she’s even eager to embrace it, but there’s this business of the unremembered past holding her back.” He paused, his brow furrowed in thought. “Anna! Anna what? It won’t be complete, Dennis, until I know the whole story. She’s helping all she can.”
Tranby took out his case and offered his friend a cigarette.
“I’d relax a bit, Noel, if I were you,” he advised. “You’ve been steadily overworking yourself these past few months, piling job on job, and here you have another tough nut to crack. Why not send the girl over here to the hospital and let Tim Wedderburn handle the whole thing when he gets back?”
“I’m hoping we’ll have it cleared up before Tim gets back,” Noel returned shortly. “Days—even hours—are precious time lost to anyone in Anna’s condition.”
“Yet,” Dennis pointed out, “when it’s all over and she gets her memory back she won’t remember any of this. That’s the way it goes, isn’t it?”
“Mostly.” Noel strode to the window and looked out. “A complete forgetfulness of all that happened in between,” he added from that distance.
Dennis Tranby could not see his face, but he imagined a certain flatness in his friend’s voice which was unusual. He did not challenge it, however, nor did he make any further reference to Anna’s future.
As he observed to Ruth later in the day; “Noel seems decidedly touchy about this case, but I always thought he liked something he could get his teeth into.”
“You don’t think Noel might be—attracted by her?” Ruth asked uneasily. “So soon, I mean. We know so little about her, really. I’d never forgive myself for bringing her home if that happened.”
“Trust a woman to think of something like that!” Dennis chided. “Good heavens, old girl, what makes you even think of such a thing at this stage? Noel is simply interested from a medical point of view, just as I am.”
“I hope so,” Ruth said. “But confess, Dennis, that there’s something about this Anna that turns your heart over, not just with pity, either. Something that makes you want to try and try till you can free her from her bondage—something so essentially Anna that I find it difficult to put a name to!”
“The Greeks may have had a word for it!” he suggested lightly.
“I don’t mean just sex attraction! It goes far deeper than that,” Ruth retorted. “She’s the sort of person one cares about, Denny, and you know it!”
“Yes,” he admitted, “I think I do, but you needn’t worry about Noel for all that. He’ll know what to do.”
“I hope so,” Ruth said. “Oh, I hope so!”
CHAPTER FOUR
WHEN ANNA LOOKED back on that first week under Noel Melford’s roof she could only marvel at the rapidity with which it had passed. Day followed day without any change in her condition, yet there was a normality about everything which made her almost forget that she herself was not normal. The wealth of friendship and understanding that surrounded her was more than any one person’s due, she told herself, and that it should be offered so unquestionably to a stranger made her more than ever convinced of the Melfords’ worth.
She would have gone to the ends of the earth to serve Ruth, and although her feeling for Noel was not so easily recognizable it was equally genuine.
Dennis Tranby came in for his own share of her gratitude, as he shared everything at the villa, and she was more than thankful that she had proved useful to him. The pile of statistics on his desk had dwindled as rapidly as that which had distressed Noel, and she had extracted him from a veritable maze of returns which he declared meant nothing to him.
The only person in her small, new world she could not like was Sara Enman, and Sara seemed determined to dog her footsteps everywhere she went. In the guise of a patronizing sort of friendship she took Anna about the town when Ruth was not available, introducing her to various social activities so that she might report to Noel on his patient’s reactions to rural interests.
“Take her to the Women’s Institute,” Noel had advised Ruth. “Take her anywhere and see that she mixes. I think she’s country bred, but one can never be quite sure, and even a casual contact at a women’s meeting might bear fruit.”
Ruth had agreed, but it had been Sara who had taken Anna to her first public function.
“It’s going to be rather awkward introducing her,” Sara had pointed out, “especially now that she’s not wearing that wedding ring of hers any more. I really wonder why she took it off. I wonder what reason she had.”
Noel, who had come in to snatch a hurried cup of tea, looked across the room at her with cold censure in his eyes.
“I removed Anna’s ring,” he said briefly. “I thought it might provide some evidence of her identity, so I sent it to London. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be helping much at present.”
Sara had flushed scarlet at his tone, but she rose to come and stand with one slim foot on the raised hearth, her arm resting along the low mantelshelf.
“Just what do you think about all this, Noel?” she asked in her most professional voice. “We’re all interested in this case, you must know that, but do you really think you are doing the right thing by keeping that girl here in an atmosphere which may be entirely false to her?”
He looked back at her steadily.
“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand you, Sara,” he said.
“It’s easy enough.” Her temper was only just held in check. “You and Ruth have taken her under your wing, you have been amazingly kind to her, out of pity, and any girl who had never known security before would be a fool to throw that away too quickly, even for the sake of remembering!”
“What makes you think that Anna has never known security?” he asked, willing to test her theory. “What makes you so sure?”
“Her eternal gratitude, I suppose! She is never done singing your praises and telling everyone all that Ruth has done for her.” Sara drew in a quick breath and said what she had meant to say in the beginning. “She may be making a complete fool of you, Noel.”
“Not necessarily.” His voice was ice-cold now with the cutting quality in it which she had heard once or twice before when someone had been guilty of a grave indiscretion and had brazened out their justification in his presence. “It could mean a return to security after a period of nervous upheaval. Perhaps you haven’t thought of it in that light, but the fact alone might lull the senses for a time, causing the subconscious to lie dormant and not make any effort at remembering. I’m quite sure you will agree with me, once you’ve thought of it.”
Sara bit her lip, aware of his professional approach to her at that moment as she might have been aware of death itself. She was the nurse, the competent, trained individual who should understand the case they were discussing—nothing more! And Sara was determined to be so very much more.
“If you’ll pardon my saying so,” she persisted, “I think you are going quite the wrong way about things in this. Matron and I are both of the opinion that she would be much better in the hospital under complete supervision all the time, but of course we have no real right to question your decisions.”
“No,” he agreed frostily. “I’m rather surprised at such an attitude from Matron, as a matter of fact, when she knows the circumstances, but it really doesn’t make me ready to change my mind in this instance. Anna will continue to stay here in the meantime, unless the police interfere.”
A small, inarticulate sound from the door drew their attention to Anna standing there ready to go out, her pale face giving no indication that she had heard what they were saying, and Noel rose abruptly to pour himself another cup of tea, drinking it as it came, as if the physical sensation of the scald
ing liquid in his throat would alleviate some inner strain which could not be so easily dealt with.
“Ready?” Sara inquired, surveying Anna from head to foot and adding as they went out together: “I suppose this will be another false trail leading us nowhere. Noel insists that we explore every avenue in order to help you,” she added, venting some of her pent-up anger on the object of the controversy. “It must be a great strain on him, your case lingering on like this when he expected to clear it up in an hour or two.”
“I wish there was something I could do about it,” Anna said unhappily. “But he refuses to let me go to the hospital as a patient, and I really believe he feels that I will react best if given my freedom.”
“You know, of course, that you are not free now, Sara returned cruelly. “You can’t be allowed out alone, you have to be watched everywhere you go in case of the necessary reaction. We’re all forced to act jailer in our turn.”
Anna flushed sensitively.
“I don’t think Miss Melford and Doctor Tranby think of it that way,” she said, disliking Sara more than ever.
“And what do you think Doctor Melford feels?” Sara demanded. “Since Ruth picked you up and brought you here he’s never been able to take a moment’s free time, never been able to give himself a respite from work. You are his constant problem, his personal problem, since Ruth made the initial mistake of bringing you here instead of taking you to the hospital for treatment. And—forgive me for pointing this out so bluntly—but you have been trading on that, you know. You know you have their pity.”
“Oh, no!” Anna looked horrified at the very thought, and then the spirit which had carried her through the ordeal of those first dreadful hours lifted its head again. “That isn’t true!” she flashed, angry at last. “I don’t want anybody’s pity, least of all Doctor Melford’s. It’s not because he is sorry for me that he has taken an interest in this case, and I know I’m just a case to him, nothing more!”
“So long as you understand that,” Sara said with a thin-lipped smile. “Noel will perhaps be able to do something for you.”
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