Nurse in Waiting

by Jane Arbor

  At about noon Dr. Beltane arrived. He drove a battered-looking car up the drive and walked without ceremony into the house and into his patient’s room.

  Joanna’s first impression of him was one of roundness—a sort of Picwickian roundness of face and body and legs. His bedside manner was of a hearty variety, and she thought that Roger Carnehill did not respond very graciously to it. But she herself liked him and felt reassured that she would be able to work under his authority.

  He examined and questioned Roger and said at last:

  “Well, I saw your surgeon the other day, and we shall be trying the light treatment again soon.”

  “That means Dublin again, I suppose?” asked Roger wearily. “It didn’t do any good last time.”

  “Well, last time isn’t this time,” retorted Dr. Beltane rather obviously. “Why approach it in that spirit? You try a bit of co-operation for a change, Roger me lad. You’d be surprised at the good it’d do you. You surely don’t want Nurse Merivale here to go back to England, saying that we have no surgery that’s worth the blade of a scalpel in Eire? You’d not put us to that shame!”

  Roger shrugged indifferently. He watched the doctor pack his instruments and then asked: “How’s the car?”

  Dr. Beltane gave a start of feigned surprise. “Well, now isn’t it the odd thing that you should ask! It went fine after your Michael passed his hand over it, the last time I was out. But it’s not running so well now—”

  Roger regarded the ceiling.

  “You mean—you might bring yourself to stay to lunch while Michael had another look at it?”

  Dr. Beltane beamed rosily. “That’d be putting Mrs. Carnehill to too much trouble—” he began.

  But Roger interposed:

  “You old wretch, you know you hoped to be asked! Besides, Mother is in Dublin. You’ll lunch with Shuan and—Joanna.”

  The doctor glanced quickly in Joanna’s direction as he beckoned to her to leave the room with him.

  Outside he said conversationally: “Michael is a stable lad here—with his heart in mechanics, though his job is with horses. He understands my car far better than my own man does. Now, Nurse, I’d like a word with you.”

  “Yes, Doctor.” Joanna hesitated. “Perhaps I ought to explain about Mr. Carnehill’s using my Christian name. If you don’t approve—”

  “Ah, think nothing of it. The lad won’t respond to starchiness. There’s no reason why he should, in his own home. You’ve got to get his confidence—that’s main thing. I’ll leave you free to use your own methods. We’ve got to cut across this barrier of apathy that he is setting up increasingly as we don’t see much progress in the lifting of this partial paralysis of his lower spine. We’ll get at it yet. But he won’t believe that. He needs a bit of jollying out of the moods—the self-pity—that he gets into.”

  Joanna smiled demurely. “Do you recommend that I try ‘jollying’?”

  “Well, you saw me, Nurse. A bit of healthy ridicule will do no harm. Part of his trouble is that he is fairly cluttered by devotion—”

  “You mean Mrs. Carnehill and—Miss Ferrall?”

  “His mother and Shuan—yes. It was high time we infused some fresh blood into the nursing of him. Hence—you. I look to you, Nurse, to act as a sort of buffer state for him.”

  Joanna glanced down at her hands. “That won’t be easy,” she said.

  Dr. Beltane gave her a shrewd look. “You mean that you’ve already had some difficulty? It’s a personal issue, I know. Maybe you feel you oughtn’t to have to concern yourself with that sort of thing?”

  “It isn’t that,” said Joanna quickly. “In private nursing there are bound to be personal issues of one kind or another. This one is that Mrs. Carnehill’s ward is peculiarly sensitive about my being here. She feels that I’m trying to assert an authority which I haven’t got—except through you, Doctor.”

  His round face crinkled reassuringly. “She was bound to feel like that, the poor gossoon. She’ll get over it in time. And, anyway, she should not be troubling her pretty head about a sickroom and a patient who’ll get well in the end without her. So I leave that with you, Nurse. I know you’ll be as tactful as you can about it?”

  Easier said than done! thought Joanna wryly. But Dr. Beltane went on: “About his mother—that’s more difficult, I admit. Frankly, I don’t understand her treatment of the boy lately. He lies there, pining for news of the estate—how it is going and so forth, market prices and all that—and she pursues a policy of keeping everything from him—‘in case he worries’!”

  “That’s not very wise, surely?” suggested Joanna.

  “So I tell her. But the good woman is as obstinate as—as a Carnehill. And that’s saying something, for of course she wasn’t born one. She shuts up like an oyster and says she won’t take things to him until he’s better—much better. She won’t accept my word that she is slowly starving him of something which was once his whole life’s interest. Perhaps you could watch your chance, Nurse, and say a word about that too?”

  “I’ll try,” promised Joanna, though a trifle doubtfully. She wondered whether the doctor knew about that other source of annoyance to Roger—Mrs. Carnehill’s work. But she supposed he did, since he seemed to know the family very well.

  Meanwhile she was glad that she would have his company at luncheon—she hadn’t been looking forward to a meal alone with Shuan!

  When she went in to Roger in the afternoon he said abruptly:

  “McKiley is coming to dinner. If Mother isn’t back, will you see that he comes to me afterwards?”

  There was an imperious arrogance in his tone which made Joanna wonder whether the Carnehills, like many another Irish family, traced its descent from kings.

  After a pause Roger went on: “You’ve met McKiley. What do you think of him?”

  Joanna looked her surprise. “Why—I hardly know. He was very kind—”

  “M’m. Gallantry becomes him. But surely—your first real contact in this country, and no first impressions?” Again the blue eyes were veiled with amusement.

  Joanna smiled. “Well—nothing particularly lasting, I think. He invited me to go and see the Dower House one day, I remember.”

  “That should be both amusing—and instructive! Didn’t he issue a more specific invitation than ‘one day’?”

  “No,” Joanna’s eyes twinkled. “He suggested that I should go when I felt in need of “light relief’ from my work here”

  Roger frowned. “Damned impertinence! Why didn’t you snub him?”

  An imp of mischief entered Joanna. “Perhaps,” she said carefully, “because I didn’t know then how much in need of ‘light relief’ I might be. Safety first!”

  “Well, do you know now?” He sounded offended, and she realized that her joke had not been too well taken. She said quickly: “I’m sorry. I oughtn’t to have said that. It sounded—”

  “—Coy and unexpectedly cheap, I thought! But I suppose you’re right. You’ve got to keep something in reserve for yourself, to prevent people like us from thinking that we’ve hired more of you than your services. I daresay you’ve even got a private life of your own, over there in England?”

  “I daresay.” Joanna’s tone was dry. “Most people have, haven’t they?” What an incalculable person he was! In as many sentences he had swept from offence to rebuke and now to mild impertinences of his own.

  “Er—family—and all that?”

  “My people are dead.”

  “Habitat?”

  “London.”

  “Hobbies? Recreations?”

  Joanna laughed. “Oh—the usual feminine variety. Not very interesting ones.”

  “Evidently you’ve been taught not to confide in strangers! How long must you know me before it will be proper to mention what an orphan nurse in London does with her spare time?”

  Joanna picked up his tea-tray and prepared to leave the room.

  “I’d willingly tell you now, if I thought you’d be inte
rested. But you wouldn’t be,” she remarked.

  “No, perhaps not.” He stretched his arms rather wearily above his head and appeared, in a way that way characteristic of him, to have lost all interest in conversation. He said suddenly:

  “By the way, the dogs haven’t been in here since morning. Does that represent a moral victory for you—or a gathering of the storm?”

  Joanna paused by the door. “Neither, I hope,” she said quietly. “I don’t want to quarrel with Shuan. Please don’t make me think it’s inevitable!”

  He laughed. “My dear Joanna—as if you or I have any say in the inevitability of that!”

  By some incalculable caprice of the kitchen, dinner was served early that evening, and between seeing to Roger’s own meal and appearing in the dining-room Joanna had no time to change out of uniform.

  Justin McKiley took her hand, and after the same kind of sweeping appraising glance as he had given her at Tulleen station, smiled as if there were some secret alliance between them. René Menden, the young Belgian, slim, upright and with darkly polished hair, bowed stiffly and said:

  “I have not been invited to dinner, but Mr. McKiley has said that I am ever welcome, he is sure. Correct my verbs, please?”

  He spoke to Joanna, but his glance was for Shuan, who repeated mechanically: “I wasn’t invited, but Mr. McKiley said I should always be welcome.”

  René smiled gratefully at her. “Ah, yes. The past indefinite tense, rather than the past definite! I have forgotten.”

  “I forgot,” corrected Shuan again, this time sounding bored.

  At dinner Joanna watched them interestedly. It was plain that Mrs. Carnehill was right and that René had no eyes for anyone but Shuan. She snubbed him or ignored him or corrected his English with a bored, patient disinterest which, in his place, Joanna felt she would have resented. She was glad when, at the end of the meal, he persuaded her to take him to find a book he was going to borrow.

  Joanna said to Justin McKiley: “Mr. Carnehill told me to ask you to go and see him after dinner.”

  He stirred his coffee and did not move. “Ah, time enough,” he said indifferently.

  Joanna stood up. “Then I’d better go back to him.”

  “What’s the hurry? I’m going to see him in a minute. Take your coffee with me at least?”

  Reluctantly Joanna sat down again. She could hardly do otherwise, though she felt that by doing so she was helping him to prolong that elusive ‘minute’.

  He said abruptly: “The Americans have a word for it, I believe.”

  Joanna looked her bewilderment

  “ ‘Rooting,’ I think they call it. At dinner you were rooting hard for young René digging your nails into your palms with anxiety for him! You are just like Mrs. Carnehill—ready to spread your wings over him to save him from Shuan’s brutality!”

  “I thought she was almost rude to him, once or twice,” replied Joanna rather coolly.

  “Well, you’ll agree that the young fool asks for it. Let him fight his own battles. In any case, surely you’re too young and—too lovely, if that isn’t forward of me!—to adopt this mothering attitude! Or does it”—again his glance appraised her—“come with the uniform, so to speak?”

  “I don’t think I know what you mean?”

  “Don’t you?” His smile flashed at her. “Come now, d’you mean to tell me that you’ve never been tempted to play a part which you felt was becoming to your uniform?”

  “I don’t think so. I—”

  “Nor sheltered behind it? Retired into the cold impersonality of it, in order to get yourself out of a difficult situation? Nor, conversely, used the damned attractiveness of it for your own ends?”

  Joanna said evenly: “If I did any of those things, wouldn’t that make me a very artificial person?”

  His eyes mocked her. “No. Merely—a woman! And a woman must make her own armor—as she must make her own weapons. I’ve always supposed that a pretty nurse could use her uniform as either—on occasion.”

  “Indeed? Well, it’s a point of view that’s as interesting as it’s highly imaginative!” retorted Joanna.

  “Not so imaginative! For instance, you are using your own against me now, just as you snubbed me yesterday with your professional ‘I usually enjoy my cases’!”

  “Really? And am I employing my armor—or my weapons?”

  “Oh, your armor! No doubt you’ll be keeping your weapons for bigger game—the Harley Street specialist, the highly eligible patient—”

  Joanna rose abruptly. This foolish conversation had gone far enough. “Hadn’t you better go to Mr. Carnehill now?” she inquired coolly.

  He had risen too. “I suppose so,” he said as they moved towards the door together. For an instant he laid a hand lightly upon her arm.

  “You’ll remember our pact? That you will come to the Dower House when things get too much for you here?”

  “Why should they ever do that?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe they won’t. In that case, I should regard your visit merely as a formal call. But—I think you will come.”

  To her chagrin, Joanna found no adequate reply to the cool effrontery of this assumption. As she hesitated, the door opened and Mrs. Carnehill came in.

  “Ah, there you are, Justin,” she said. “I’m sorry. I was kept later than I expected in the city. You’ve had your dinner? Have you seen Roger?”

  “On my way now. Miss Merivale and I have been keeping each other company over our coffee.”

  “Well, do go to Roger. He was rather insistent. But”—she took off her gloves and nervously dragged them into a rag of tautness between her hands—“don’t quote more figures at him than you can help. He worries so—”

  Justin spread his hands in a gesture which seemed to reassure her. “I can’t quote figures. I haven’t any with me. Just an overall picture of how things are going—that’s all he wants?”

  “I—think so.” She watched him nervously as he left the room. Then she turned to Joanna. “They don’t care for each other, those two. But you liked Justin—didn’t you?”

  It was a question which Joanna had already asked herself. But so far she had not found the answer.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  During the next few days Joanna was to realize that, until then, she had seen nothing which could be described as one of Roger’s “black moods.” But of the depth of depression into which he was plunged after his interview with Justin there could be no doubt.

  He would not read, took no interest in food and accepted services done for him with an ungraciousness which tried her patience to the utmost.

  More than once she wanted to bring Dr. Beltane out to him again, but Mrs. Carnehill, harassed as she was, did not seem to think it a good idea.

  “Beltie is a good sort, but only seems to irritate Roger when he’s like this. And I think even Beltie knows it, for he says we needn’t call him unless Roger is physically worse.”

  Joanna, remembering the doctor’s suggestion that she should say a word to Mrs. Carnehill, said: “No, he’s in no pain and, so far as I can gather, is sleeping fairly well. But—do you think his mind is occupied enough?”

  Roger’s mother looked vaguely disturbed. “I don’t know. He reads and—normally—he doesn’t complain of being bored—”

  “But wouldn’t you say that these moods which beset him every so often are the very accumulation of boredom? He stands it as long as he can and then gives way to—this sort of thing.”

  Mrs. Carnehill looked at her doubtfully. “D’you think so now? But why would he be bored? Haven’t we all got our brains fairly wracked out, thinking of diversions for him? And nearly always he has someone with him!”

  Joanna felt she began to understand what the doctor had meant when he said Roger was being ‘smothered’ by devotion. She said carefully: “I didn’t mean amusements or company, so much as exercise for his mind. Wouldn’t it be possible for him to take some share in the running of the estate? I understand he
used to do it all, with Mr. McKiley’s help. Mustn’t he feel completely at a loss, without some responsibility for it?”

  It was as if a curtain had been drawn guardedly across her companion’s face. She spoke more shortly than she had yet done to Joanna. “He’s not fit for it. I told you—he and Justin don’t care for each other. And Roger won’t understand that Justin’s methods are different. There’s no point in setting them at loggerheads. While Roger is ill we can’t do without Justin.

  “But seeing Justin always makes him like this. That’s why I try to keep them apart as much as possible. It only proves my point—that having to concern himself with the estate only worries him.”

  Joanna gave it up. But she could not agree with her employer. She felt sure that Roger’s irritation arose from atrophy of the powers he had had before his illness, perhaps even from a jealously of the virile Mr. McKinley. Lying there helplessly, he felt himself to be less than the man he had once been. And until he lost that idea Joanna felt sure they would so no improvement in him.

  She was wondering how she could help him when he suddenly broached the subject himself.

  “I wish you’d get home figures out of somebody,” he growled. “I’ve struggled long enough against this conspiracy of silence Mother has set up. Ask René Menden—he ought to have some idea by now of what goes on.”

  “But—”

  He looked at her with a kind of cold contempt.

  “So you’re a party to it too? Or else you’re going to say primly ‘How can I go behind Mr. McKiley’s back?’ All right. Don’t bother.”

  “I wasn’t going to say anything of the sort,” retorted Joanna. “I was merely going to point out that I’ve met your student only once, that I don’t know where to find him during his working-day and that I’ve no idea what you want to know.”