Nurse in Waiting

by Jane Arbor

  Beyond Ballyboy the road ran on levelly towards Monaghan, the next town ahead. But they were destined not to reach it...

  On each side of the road were broad verges of stiff, reedy grass upon which errant donkeys, seemingly far from home, were to be seen grazing rather hopelessly. And it was upon one such stretch that they came upon the parked Lincoln.

  Michael, uttering an exclamation at which Joanna thought fleetingly she should have been shocked and wasn’t, brought their own car with a shudder of brakes to a halt behind it. René already had the door open on his side. He got out. Joanna followed. But for whatever “rescue” of Shuan they had planned they were too late. Shuan was already in the act of rescuing herself.

  As they reached the other car she stumbled out of the near door, panting and half-sobbing. She seemed bewildered, and at sight of Joanna she stared unbelievingly.

  Then she looked at René. With a gesture that was as simple and as unaffected as that of a father welcoming a tired child home he opened his arms to her.

  She ran to him and he held her close, cradling her head upon his shoulder. And Joanna had scarcely time to wonder or to question the utter naturalness of it all before she heard Shuan murmuring brokenly: “René—I’m so terribly, terribly sorry! How did you know? How did you know?”

  “Later, chérie—later!” he whispered. “First, we must take you home!”

  But by now Justin McKiley had alighted and was leaning against the hood of the Lincoln with an unpleasant smile upon his face.

  He bowed elaborately in René’s direction. “An extremely touching piece of knight-errantry!” he sneered. “Though believe it or not, you are very welcome to my late victim. I was just on the point of throwing her out—”

  Shuan’s head came up sharply as she twisted about in René’s hold.

  “That’s a lie!” she declared. “I made you stop the car. I—I threatened to jump if you didn’t!”

  Justin shrugged his shoulders insolently. “A quibble, I think! Shall we agree that we are each glad to be free of the other’s company? You’ll excuse me, perhaps?”

  This time his bow was for Joanna. But it was René who sprang forward to take him roughly by the shoulder.

  “Cochon!” he said. “I have waited for this!” His right fist came up in a blow directed at the other man’s jaw, but he twisted adroitly at the right moment and stepped backward.

  “You will not fight?” demanded René incredulously.

  “I don’t fight—schoolboys!”

  “Ah-h!” René’s furious lunge promised to be dangerous. But Shuan ran forward to catch him by the arm. “René—don’t! It was as much my fault as his. Let him go. I’ll explain everything!”

  The interruption was all that Justin needed in order to extricate himself from the situation. He turned towards his car, but as he made to get into it Joanna took an impulsive step forward. “Don’t go on—!” she said urgently.

  He was seated now, one hand upon the wheel, the other upon the switch.

  “Don’t go on—where?” he asked.

  “To—to Musveen—or wherever you were going!”

  He raised his eyebrows. “So you knew that? But, of course, you had to, or you would not have organized the rescue-party! And you could have known it from only one source. Well, well, I must say that my sweet Magda throws a pretty revenge—!”

  “She has done more than that—listen—!”

  But the urgency in Joanna’s voice was drowned beneath the throbbing hum of the Lincoln’s engine as Justin switched on. She was forced to step aside quickly as the car rocked across the reedy stubble, accelerated amazingly, and was gone.

  She turned back to the others, making a gesture that was eloquent of helplessness as she did so.

  “We should have made him listen!” she declared.

  But René said: “Let him go. It is a reward that he has asked for. There is nothing we can do.”

  Joanna doubted that, but it was after all, Shuan, not Justin, whom they had come all this way to protect; Shuan for whom lay in front the inevitability of questions, the ordeal of judgment...

  René was holding her by both hands now. Their eyes were looking deeply into each other’s. René asked softly: “It was good then that I came?”

  And Shuan replied: “René—I wanted you so much!”

  They moved over towards the car, holding hands childishly. Joanna’s heart ached for René, who, she believed, could be reaping only Shuan’s incidental gratitude. In just such a rapture, Joanna felt, the girl would have welcomed any friendly face, any uncritical gesture. She was glad when they got into the back of the car together. She did not want to talk to Shuan just now.

  Soberly the car took the road along which they had come. Michael was driving more steadily now. He and Joanna made a few perfunctory remarks to each other, but it seemed that all were occupied with their own thoughts. Until suddenly Shuan said urgently: “I—I don’t want to go home yet—until I’ve explained. Can’t we stop somewhere? I—want to talk!”

  It was with a sort of innate delicacy that Michael took the hint that she meant she wanted to talk to René and Joanna alone. He growled: “I have an uncle lives two or three miles ahead. Maybe I could be let t’ go t’ see me uncle, the way ye’d be givin’ Miss Shuan a drop t’ warm her at the hotel?”

  The “hotel” in question proved to be the general shop-cum-public-house-cum-post office which covers under one roof all the legitimate needs of many a small Irish village.

  In a bar-parlor that was chilly with leatherette and oilcloth, Joanna, Shuan, and René faced each other across the gentle slope of the round table which had for decoration a celery glass full of plaited reeds tortured into fantastic shapes.

  Joanna was glad to accept a cigarette from René, but Shuan put both hands round her glass and stared ahead of her as she talked.

  She said: “I see now that it was beastly of me. But when it began I was sort of fascinated with the idea. And when I did begin to find something out about Justin I made up my mind I must go on, because that would help Roger as well as—being a kind of revenge for his selling Deirdre. I hated him for that—”

  “You could have appealed to Mr. Carnehill over Deirdre,” Joanna pointed out.

  “But I told you—I wouldn’t have done that for anything.”

  “All right. Go on—”

  “Well—it seemed easy, because Justin never bothered to make much secret of the fact that he was doing better out of something than he did out of his salary as agent for Roger, and that he could afford to pay Magda well to. I don’t know why he wasn’t afraid I should tell Roger what he had hinted at. But I didn’t. I thought if I let him go on I should find out enough myself.”

  “You could have told me!” put in René gently.

  Shuan answered, “I didn’t want to bring you into it. I wanted to do it all myself. I began to go about with Justin because I hoped he would tell me more, especially when—when he was in one of those beastly boastful moods, when he didn’t care much what he said—”

  Joanna shivered involuntarily. How could Shuan have believed she could afford to play with fire to this extent?

  The girl went on: “He took me to Dublin with him. That was when I met Magda and the two men we were going to meet at Musveen today. Magda was supposed to go with him, but I think they must have quarrelled or something last night, and Justin said she had refused flatly to go. He asked me instead. And I said I would.”

  “But why, Shuan? You must have known that Justin was far more clever than you, and that he would never have given you enough to prove anything against him. It would always have been your word against his—against his and Magda’s!”

  Shuan’s full red mouth set stubbornly. “I hoped all along that he would do or say something which I could take straight to Roger as proof. It—it was only this afternoon that I suddenly saw how beastly sordid the whole thing was, and I began to hate myself for getting mixed up in it. We stopped for lunch at Ballyboy, and I was wo
ndering then how I could get away and get back to Carrieghmere. But I hadn’t any money, and I hadn’t decided anything before I found myself getting back into the car again.

  “And then I couldn’t bear it any longer”—she put her hands over her face, so that they had difficulty in hearing her—“Justin began to boast again, and to talk as if we were in a sort of partnership together—it was horrible. Then I told him I wasn’t going on—to Musveen or anywhere else. And I threatened that if he didn’t stop the car I would jump. So he stopped it. And—and then you came along!”

  Gently René drew her hands down and held them closely between his.

  “Haven’t you wondered why we came, chérie? How we knew where you had gone? Do you realize that Magda told us? That she told us something else too?”

  “Magda told you—?”

  “Yes. She had already told the police of the rendezvous at Musveen. They would have been there waiting for you. That was why we had to follow you!”

  “Oh—!” The girl’s realization of what she had escaped was poignant to see. She said slowly: “You let Justin go on?”

  “I tried to warn him. But he wouldn’t listen,” Joanna told her. “There doesn’t seem to be anything we can do about him until Mr. Carnehill knows all about it.”

  Shuan shivered. “Roger! He’ll have to know! How he’ll despise me!”

  “He can’t despise you. However mistakenly, you did what you did—for him,” said Joanna.

  And René said: “He can’t despise you. For no one shall dare to despise the woman whom I ask to be my wife!”

  There was a moment of charged silence. Joanna’s heart seemed to turn over in pity for René, who could court so boldly the reply which Shuan, loving Roger, must give him...

  But Shuan’s eyes were shining. Her hands were still clasped between his, and it was as if her surrender of them were eloquent of all else that she had to give him. For she said: “You—you’re asking me to marry you?”

  “Yes, Shuan—”

  “Oh, I will. I will! René, darling—I love you so!”

  Joanna stood up, a hand at her throat. She felt that she could almost hate Shuan for what she did—to René, who loved her and who did not understand...

  René stood up too. The smile he gave Joanna came from the depth of his happiness as he said deprecatingly: “It is almost unique—yes?—that a proposal of marriage is made before a third person! But you are so good a friend, Mademoiselle Joanna, that we do not care. That is so, Shuan? We do not care?”

  “No—”

  “But I care!” Joanna’s voice was taut and throbbing. “Shuan—you can’t—you dare not—marry René if it is Roger that you love!”

  She knew that René’s face had whitened as he looked quickly at Shuan and back at her. But Shuan said wonderingly: “Roger? But I don’t love Roger!”

  René’s tension relaxed, but Joanna’s held. As if it were a stranger speaking, she heard herself say: “Once—I asked you. And you said that you cared for Roger—terribly!”

  It was Shuan’s voice now which seemed to come from a long way off. Shuan said: “So I do. I suppose I’ve loved Roger for almost as long as I can remember. But not as I love René—not like that!”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  For a long time afterwards, whenever she re-lived that moment, Joanna could recall the whole incongruous scene. The unnatural sheen of the oilcloth upon the sloping table-top, the dusty grey-brown of the dry reed-heads, Shuan staring at her, and René muttering something about “going to find Michael”—as if he sensed that there was something here in which he had no part.

  Joanna said slowly as if expressing it for herself would help her to believe it: “You mean—you have never loved Roger as—as a woman does love a man?”

  Shuan blushed a lovely color. “No—never like that. When I told you I cared terribly about him I didn’t know you could possibly think that!”

  “Are you sure”—it was an unworthy suspicion which spoke—“that you didn’t want me to think it?”

  But Shuan’s frank stare was utterly disarming. “No. Why should I?”

  “I’m sorry, Shuan. Of course there wasn’t any reason. But you were jealous of me, weren’t you? You were jealous of the things I could do for him and you could not. And I thought that perhaps you said what you did in order to—to establish your own rights—the right of your love for him.”

  “Well, I was jealous,” admitted Shuan. “You see, up till the time you came I’d been able to—to—” She paused, frowning. “I can’t think of the word which means that you try to do all you can to make up for something you have done earlier—something wicked or horrible, perhaps?”

  Joanna was puzzled. “I don’t know. ‘Compensate’? ‘Expiate’?—that would be too strong—”

  “No it wouldn’t. ‘Expiate’ is what I wanted. I’d been able to expiate the horrible part I had played in his accident by doing absolutely everything I could for him—giving up my own time to him, trying never to grumble when he was beastly and bad-tempered, because all the time I had to be telling myself that it was my fault!”

  “But—I don’t understand?” queried Joanna.

  Shuan’s eyes widened. “D’you mean—no one has told you? Didn’t Roger tell you?”

  “About his accident? I knew that you were out riding together when his horse shied and threw him.”

  “You didn’t know that it happened because I was playing the fool on my mare? That Roger had asked me to ride quietly because his horse was tetchy and frisky, and that he was having difficulty in holding him in? I laughed and teased him about his being able to manage anything under a rein, and I deliberately tried to egg him on to join in some fancy stuff. His mount wouldn’t stand for it, and almost the next thing I knew was that Roger was thrown, and that it was my fault! D’you mean that Roger never told you?”

  “No. He didn’t tell me.” If Shuan’s story were true, Joanna felt utterly humble before Roger’s loyalty of silence.

  “I thought you knew, and that you were judging me as I felt everyone—Mums and everybody—was doing. Sometimes I felt I hated people for it—But it helped to set my teeth and to determine that, to make up for what I’d done. I’d give—and give—and give—to Roger until no one would dare to judge me, because I should have—expiated what I’d done in the first place. Then you came—”

  “—And you began to feel hurt and unwanted and in the way,” asked Joanna gently.

  “Yes. And then I began to feel that I must get away at any cost. That was when I talked to you ... I thought that then Roger might miss me, might want me back. I thought you knew all about the accident by then, and perhaps I did say that about caring for him because I wanted you to realize how much you had usurped my place with him. But I didn’t mean I loved him. I couldn’t. He’s always been like my brother—”

  “Poor Shuan! You do live intensely, don’t you?” Joanna’s voice was tender and full of understanding.

  “What do you mean?”

  Joanna hesitated, wondering how to express, without hurting the girl’s feelings, all that exaggeration of emotion, of self-dramatization which she seemed to bring to her every act. She said slowly: “Well you cared about the accident more than anyone need; and you tried to serve Roger perhaps even beyond your own powers. Then there was all this about Justin—am I right in thinking that you wouldn’t even appeal to Roger about the sale of Deirdre the mare, because of some sort of guilt you still felt over the accident?”

  Shuan nodded. “Yes. I—do seem to make trouble for myself and—everyone, don’t I?” Her lip quivered. “Am I like that, Joanna? Shan’t I ever be able to help it?”

  “I don’t know. But I think that people like you, who live so deeply and care so much, may bring as much happiness as they’re likely to bring trouble to those they love. You’ve made René very happy, Shuan. Won’t you tell me about that? How long have you known that you were in love with him?”

  “I think I knew soon after we began to t
rain Lady of Belmont for the Show. Before that, I had been flattered by his wanting to be with me, to do things for me. Then, when he began to help me with Lady of Belmont, we began to talk ... He told me about Belgium and I told him about when I was a little girl ... and he knew what I felt about Roger. And then, one morning, he kissed me—” Joanna, watching could see that Shuan was wrapped about in the radiance of that memory. “And I told him not to be silly. And—he didn’t do it again. It was after that that I knew I wanted him to—and that I wanted everything we were doing together then to go on all through our lives. I knew I couldn’t bear it if it didn’t. I dreaded the thought that he should stop wanting me. But when I began to go about with Justin he made no sign. So I had that to put up with too, as well as what all the rest of you were thinking about me! And it wasn’t until today that I knew he had never stopped loving me, and that I had never stopped loving him!”

  Shuan’s voice sank to silence. Then, half shyly, she glanced at Joanna. “That’s what it was like for me. Joanna, when—when you go back to London, I hope it’ll be like that for you too.”

  “When I go back to London?”

  “Yes. When you marry that man you’re engaged to.”

  “But I’m not engaged to anyone!”

  “Well—sort of. I mean that man you went to see in Dublin—the one who came out to Carrieghmere.”

  “But I’m not engaged to him. I never was. And I expect by this time he is married to somebody else—”

  “Oh, Joanna, I’m sorry! I didn’t know—truly I didn’t. Do—do you mind terribly?”

  A half smile played about Joanna’s lips. “No. You see, though we had always been good friends, it wasn’t ‘like that’ for us. It never had been, and we were fortunate enough to find out in time.”