Nurse in Waiting

by Jane Arbor

  And when he reached the stage of being able to sit in a wheel-chair by the window before being ‘settled down’ for the night, he began to tell her about his own boyhood, of his hated schooldays in the North—“among the Orangemen”—as he called them; of his passionate homesickness for Carrieghmere through eight months of the year, and the wild delight of possessing and being possessed by it during the other four.

  “When my father died,” he said one night, “I vowed I’d give the rest of my life to Carrieghmere and all it stood for. But since all this happened I’ve had to let go—or, rather, have it wrested from me. The running of it has virtually gone to McKiley, and now Mother has fogged the issue with this fool idea of journalism. A Carnehill—a journalist!”

  Joanna thought it best to change the subject. “You’ll take the reins again soon. The estate will be yours once more.”

  “Yes.” He added thoughtfully: “It’ll have been more than two years. I wonder whether the reins one goes to take up are at all the same as one believed one lay down? Whether I shall find that Carrieghmere has marched ahead without me? You know—I’m going to be half-afraid of that?”

  “Nothing can have changed much in two years,” Joanna assured him. “And nearly all invalids have that fear at some time or another—that they’re not going to like taking up their responsibilities again.”

  He glanced at her obliquely. “Of course. I forgot. Even my personal reactions aren’t my own. They simply occupy a line or two in that ‘official’ casebook which you claim you don’t keep!”

  The kitchen of Carrieghmere was a pleasant place. It was frequently warmer than the rest of the house, for one thing. Mrs. Carnehill would often be there, experimenting with recipes, and the more recherché scents of her cookery would mingle with the homely smell of cabbage and boiling bacon from which the kitchen places of Irish houses never quite escape. Joanna often thought wryly that when she was gone from here this is what she would take most pungently with her—the remembered scent of Carrieghmere which was partly of its own homeliness and partly of the aroma of burning peat and earthier smells still which is the very essence and breath of Irish air.

  This evening Mrs. Carnehill was not there. But Shuan was, and so were Michael and René Menden.

  Shuan was moodily digging grease from a crack in the table with the point of a knife. Michael sat saddle-wise across a chair, his arms folded upon the back of it. René stood, very upright, at Shuan’s side, looking down at her bent head.

  Michael was saying: “Sure, an’ he can’t be doin’ it to ye, Miss Shuan. Wasn’t I tollin’ himself so, this very day?”

  Shuan flung down the knife and looked up, pushing her fingers into the hair at each side of her face in a way that was very much her own.

  “That’s what I don’t know,” she said. “He didn’t consult me—he told me!”

  René said: “I think he cannot have the power—”

  And Joanna put in gently: “What’s the matter? May I know?”

  They reacted characteristically. René bowed in her direction, Shuan took up the knife and went on with her excavations and Michael touched a cap which wasn’t there.

  “ ‘Tis the terrible trouble Miss Shuan is in—” he began. But Shuan put in:

  “It’s not ‘terrible trouble’. It’s just—awkward.”

  And—Joanna thought, “It’s always the same with her. Except for that night of Roger’s crisis when she couldn’t do anything but turn to me for help, it’s as if she is impelled to tone down everything she feels because she can’t bear to accept sympathy from me.”

  Michael accepted the check in good part. “ ‘Tis Mr. McKiley. He has told Miss Shuan that he has had a good offer for the mare she had set her heart on training for the Horse Show.”

  For the moment, thinking absently in terms of a local fete, Joanna asked innocently: “Which Horse Show?”

  She might have committed high treason. Even René looked pityingly at her and Shuan replied scornfully:

  “The Dublin Horse Show, of course. In August.”

  “But whose mare is it?” asked Joanna bewilderedly.

  “She’s ours. We bred her here. And she’s got a first-rate chance, no matter whether Michael or I rode her.”

  “Then surely Mr. McKiley—?”

  “He says he’s got a duty to the place. That an excellent offer isn’t to be turned down for the sake of what he calls the ‘off-chance’ of her taking a prize at the Show. I can’t make him see that the honor alone—”

  “But it can’t be a question for Mr. McKiley to decide,” protested Joanna. “If the mare is Carrieghmere property a decision like that must rest with Mr. Carnehill.” She turned to René. “Oughtn’t you or Mrs. Carnehill to speak to him about it? Or—or would you like me to?”

  She had been looking at René, and nothing had prepared her for Shuan’s passionate denial. The girl’s face flamed as she exclaimed: “You’ll do nothing of the kind! I’ll not have Roger’s help asked for the sake of any horse, mare or foal on the place! Nor for my sake! I’ll fight this out with Justin myself. If he insists on selling Deirdre I’ll have to make-do with one of the second-raters. But I’ll not have anyone whining to Roger for me on account of any horseflesh in Ireland!”

  Joanna was so taken aback that her tone was rather cold as she replied: “You seem to forget that Mr. McKiley appears to be proposing to sell Mr. Carnehill’s property without his consent, and that your feelings don’t matter, except to you, one way or the other.”

  “But he couldn’t do it if he hadn’t Roger’s consent. If not about Deirdre in particular, obviously he knows he has the right to judge for himself about buying or selling for the estate. Otherwise he wouldn’t dare to do it. But I’ll not have Roger appealed to!”

  Joanna said nothing, feeling that about Justin’s authority to act upon his own judgment she was probably right. After all, Roger had known about the wholesale felling of the timber in the park when she had thought he might be ignorant of it. So probably there was some tacit agreement between his employers and himself, and Roger only resented his use of his authority when he believed himself slighted in not being consulted about details.

  René said gently: “I myself will speak to Mr. McKiley—”

  And though Shuan replied moodily:

  “There’s nothing you can do, René,” the glance she gave him was newly kind and friendly, and Joanna saw the young man flush with pleasure.

  “And which of the others would ye put into training if Deirdre goes, Miss Shuan?” Michael was asking.

  “I don’t know. Tansie or Lady of Belmont, I suppose. What do you think?”

  Michael levered himself from the chair. “Could ye spare a scattered minute now, the way we’d be lookin’ at the both of them in their boxes?”

  Shuan rose. But before she left the kitchen with the stable-lad she said to René: “Are you coming too?”

  He nodded eagerly. But when the other two had gone he lingered a moment with Joanna. He said: “She is—brusque, little Shuan. But by it she means nothing. In reality she has—has got?—no, I do not understand the English ‘got’—she has the heart of gold!”

  Joanna nodded and smiled. With a sort of warm glow at her own heart she was thinking: “I’m glad René can love Shuan like that—seeing her faults, accepting them and yet loving her all the same. Because, even if she gives him nothing in return he’ll suffer, but ultimately he’ll not lose anything. Giving everything of yourself in love must do something for you—it can’t all be wasted in loss and frustration and pain...”

  But the glow faded as she remembered that Shuan had no thought for René because all her own were with Roger. And Roger Carnehill, if Mrs. Kimstone were to be believed, had no intentions towards Shuan other than those of the mariage de convenance—the cold-blooded, pre-arranged affair into which he might go, with his eyes open certainly, but for other reasons than love. Perhaps because he felt that an alliance with Shuan, who knew and loved the estate as he did, wo
uld be a good thing for Carrieghmere. Perhaps because he knew his mother wished it.

  That was why he had been so resentful of Mrs. Kimstone’s curiosity. You did not, thought Joanna, mind the pryings of busybodies when secretly you knew they were far from the truth. Only when they came too “warmly” near your own privacies of thought did you want to shy away from their probing fingers...

  But she knew that she hated the idea of Roger’s meaning to—to use Shuan’s wholehearted devotion like that. She thought incredulously: “But he can’t! For he’s not like that. He is odd and—indirect and sometimes intolerant. But he is real—with a sort of essential honesty which surely wouldn’t let him? He mustn’t marry Shuan unless he loves her as she loves him...”

  And Joanna did not know why that last thought of all was like an iron clamp closing slowly and inexorably about her own heart.

  When she went back to Roger’s room she was sorely tempted to break Shuan’s confidence and tell him about the proposed sale of the mare, Deirdre. But she found it difficult not to believe that at least in a general way the whole thing had his consent. And the girl had been so passionate in her determination not to appeal to him that Joanna said nothing. If he did not know of it already, sooner or later he would hear of it from Mrs. Carnehill or McKiley. And it was really no business of hers.

  A few days later she heard from René that the sale had gone through.

  “Shuan hasn’t said anything about it,” she told him, making a mental reservation of: “She wouldn’t—to me!”

  “What does she feel about it, do you think?”

  He hesitated. “She is brave. She says little. But I think she has begun to—hate Justin McKiley.”

  Joanna thought it best not to discuss this side of the matter with René. Perhaps, as Dale had suggested, she had already become too deeply involved in the “personalities” of Carrieghmere. One day she must leave it all behind her. When Roger really began to move about and to take up the threads again, that day would not be far off. And for her own sake she could not allow Carrieghmere and the people in it to lay too great a hold upon her life.

  So she said only: “I dare say she has begun to train one of the other mares she mentioned?”

  “Yes. The Lady of Belmont. She has asked me to help with the training.” He sighed. “She would not allow it, but I cannot believe that Mr. Carnehill would have permitted the mare Deirdre to be sold if he had known—”

  Joanna sighed too. “Well, there it is, René. Shuan had evidently made up her mind about it and it’s too late now. You can help her best now by encouraging her with Lady of Belmont—making her accept Mr. McKiley’s challenge by determining to win!”

  René smiled faintly. “Shuan knows more about horses than I shall ever know. I cannot hope to make her believe anything if she does not know it for herself. But I will help her—mais, sans doute!”

  Joanna returned to her own work, wondering vaguely as she did so at the fact that Mrs. Carnehill had made no reference in her hearing to the sale of the mare. Most things were discussed across the kitchen or the dining-tables of Carrieghmere sooner or later. Yet though she must know how Shuan felt about it she had said nothing. True, she had been over to England for a few days when the mare was taken away. But it was not possible that she did not know of the sale.

  But then came a day when she and Shuan discussed the training of the girl’s ‘second string’, Lady of Belmont. And Joanna realized that Mrs. Carnehill must have been agreeable to the sale of the other mare.

  Every morning very early Shuan, accompanied faithfully by René, had Lady of Belmont out for exercise upon the springy turf of the bog land. Shuan declared she was pleased with the way the mare was shaping, and one day, shyly and diffidently, she came to Joanna to ask if she would temporarily take back the coveted duty of taking Roger’s morning tea to him.

  “I can get out with René earlier, so,” she explained.

  Joanna, smiling agreement, said: “With René?”

  Shuan flushed. “Well, with Lady of Belmont of course! But René always comes, and he has to be back at work at half-eight. It isn’t that I don’t want to take Roger’s tea. Or that I want longer in bed, if that’s what you’re thinking!”

  “It isn’t,” replied Joanna quietly. “Besides—you’re not as worried about Mr. Carnehill as you were, are you? You are quite happy about him now?”

  A look of alarm flashed into the girl’s eyes. She gulped as she said quickly: “Yes. Yes, of course. Why—aren’t you? He is getting better, isn’t he? There’s nothing going wrong now?”

  “Nothing at all, I hope,” Joanna assured her. But the memory of that look of fear in Shuan’s eyes remained with her for a long time.

  Meanwhile she was surprised and rather ashamed of the ease with which the memory of Dale Woodward had slipped from her consciousness. True, since that last meeting with him she had been almost too busy to think of personal things. And he had not attempted to write to her again, nor she to him.

  All memory of him was fading. Not only the memory of the ugly things about him—his jealousy, his unreasonable possessiveness over something—herself—which he had never found it necessary to claim as his own, but all the other, pleasanter things about their friendship, their easy acceptance of each other and the casual, desultory conversation which had been frequently all they had found necessary.

  Now Joanna found herself wondering what they had talked about. And knew that, until the end, when they had both been restive and hurt, they had scarcely ever spoken of personal things at all. It had been as if they had been two ships, travelling the same way, which had converged by night upon a common ocean lane. They had exchanged signals and gone along, mere outlines to each other, until the dawn. Then their pace had altered; they had lost sight of each other over their particular horizons. Ultimately, without regret, they would reach different ports...

  That Dale must feel the same was proved by a letter she received, a couple of months after his visit to Eire, from a friend of hers at the Marrone Nursing Home.

  After a page or two of satisfying gossip and ‘shop’. Sister Allitsen wrote:

  “By the way, what did you do to Dale Woodward on his visit to Eire? Before that, he would sometimes waylay one or other of us to ask what news we had of you. But since then—silence of the most profound!

  “And now Carrick—her brother works in the same laboratory as Dale, you know—says he is engaged to a new girl assistant they have in the lab. Did you know about this? Even if you didn’t I don’t feel terribly ‘puss puss’ about telling you, because you know, Joanna dear, that I always doubted that you and Dale were suited to each other. Actually, I can’t help but be a little glad ... Don’t be angry with me. I only know that I felt in my bones that there wasn’t the ‘real’ thing between you. And I knew—for you’d told me—that he had never given you the chance to be real. He had never asked you to be his wife.

  “Now, it seems, he has asked this other girl. Don’t be too hurt about it, Joanna. And one day, tell me as much about it as you feel you’d like me to know.”

  Joanna folded the letter, feeling grateful for Joan Allitsen’s disinterested friendship. She remembered Dale’s own reference to his new assistant—“easy on the eyes but dumb”—that was how he had described her to Joanna. Perhaps, even then, he had been guilty of the thing of which he had accused her—of being over-casual on purpose in her references to Justin McKiley. But she dismissed the thought as unworthy. Dale, in his fashion, had at least been sincere. Now, in this other girl, he had found consolation and his own “reality”. His answer to the eternal question between men and women was not, and now would never be—“Joanna”.

  One thing puzzled her slightly. Since she had left him to go to meet Dale in Dublin on the day when his paralysis had broken, Roger Carnehill had made no mention of, no further teasing reference to, her “hydrogen-bomb specialist”. On that same night he had been far too ill to talk. But he had known Dale had come out to Carrieghmere. For M
rs. Carnehill had mentioned that he had asked for her while she was off duty and she had told him about Dale.

  Once or twice his name had almost arisen. But the subject had always been changed in time. Joanna did not particularly want to discuss him and Roger seemed to have lost interest. They tacitly left the matter there.

  And so the day came when Roger was to leave his room for the first time.

  The day was fine, and after luncheon the wide french windows of his room were opened on to the stone terrace beyond them.

  Everyone was there. Dr. Beltane, beaming and rubbing his hands, Mrs. Carnehill, her blue eyes unnaturally bright and her high color paler than usual, Shuan, hovering nervously, and in the background Roseen and Cook, clutching each other by the arms and spasmodically giggling.

  Joanna bent to tuck a corner of the rug about Roger’s legs as he sat in the wheel-chair which she was about to push out on to the terrace.

  “You know. I’ve got the most depressing sense of anti-climax!” he said in a low voice.

  “You mean—you’ve waited so long for this, now it doesn’t seem to mean very much after all?” she smiled up at him.

  “Yes—that, perhaps. And perhaps”—he glanced about the room which had been his prison for more than two years—“I realize that I’m leaving a kingdom where I’ve ruled, for a strange country where maybe I no longer signify!”

  Joanna shook her head. “I think,” she said quietly, “that you’ll find you ‘signify’ again very soon!” Then she wheeled the chair out on to the terrace where the others were waiting.

  Beyond the corner of the house lay a view of the surrounding park which Roger had not been able to command from his bed. He heaved himself up in the chair in order to see it better. And with his eyes fixed upon the sharply outlined shadows of the grass he breathed quietly: “Bless it. It goes on—and on.”