Nurse Saxon's Patient

by Marjorie Norrell

  I wonder what he would tell me to do now? she asked herself, not wanting to return to the quiet of Woodlands and Mrs. Andy’s clear, all-seeing eyes with Garth in this mood and no definite plan between them. She cleared her throat and began tentatively:

  ‘I think Ian knows,’ she said in a low voice. ‘That ... about how we feel about each other.’

  ‘Then why in the name of thunder did he let Tansy go on with this ridiculous pretence?’ Garth snapped. ‘He must have realized I’d remember one day what had happened.’

  ‘No one could be certain,’ Julie said. ‘I think Ian rather felt it was better to pity Tansy at the time...’

  ‘And hope that part of my memory would remain a blank,’ Garth put in quickly, before she could continue. ‘Because he hoped to marry you himself,’ he ended bitterly. ‘Had he ever proposed to you before ... before you took on my case?’ he demanded with a jealous and possessive note which Julie felt ashamed to rejoice over in her heart, but rejoice she did, just the same.

  ‘Several times,’ she said demurely. ‘Before you and I even met.’

  ‘Then why hadn’t you married him?’ Garth asked next. ‘Don’t tell me,’ he hurried on. ‘It was because you didn’t—couldn’t—love him, that was it, wasn’t it? And he wouldn’t take no as an answer.’

  ‘Partly that.’ Julie was perfectly honest with him. It was the only way. ‘Partly because of Roger...’

  ‘Rubbish!’ Garth grinned suddenly, looking at her like a mischievous schoolboy. ‘That doesn’t give you a leg to stand on and you know it. Roger was only an excuse, an excuse to offer to Ian, poor chap. The truth of the matter is that you don’t love him, you never have and you never could. Now,’ he demanded, half laughing, half serious, ‘if I asked you right now—if I had the right to ask you, which I haven’t while Tansy wears my ring—would you turn round and tell me you couldn’t marry me because Roger needed you? You know you wouldn’t.’

  ‘But he doesn’t need me so much now,’ Julie protested.

  ‘Yet you made him the excuse for telling Tansy you wouldn’t come with us to the States, if I went,’ Garth pointed out. ‘You see, darling, I know you so well. I’ve been with you so much these past months, come to know you even better than you know yourself, and I realize now that looking after Roger was all very well until Mr. Right—me—came along. If you’d loved Ian, which I’m very thankful you do not, nothing, no one, not even your precious Roger, would have come between you. You wouldn’t have wanted them to, wouldn’t have allowed it. Would you let anyone come between us, when once Tansy’s out of the way, made to see how unfair this is, will you let Roger come between us then?’ he asked quickly.

  Julie felt the warm colour rush into her cheeks and she knew he was right. Neither Roger nor anyone else could come between them, only Tansy could do that, because she had a certain right to do so while she wore Garth’s ring on her finger.

  ‘Well, would you?’ he persisted gently as she did not answer.

  Julie shook her head. This was not good for her driving and her concentration, but the country road was clear. She took her glance from the way ahead long enough to look directly at him.

  ‘You know that I wouldn’t,’ she said, so sincerely that he understood the depth of her feeling for him and knew it matched his for her, and the smile which lit up his ruggedly handsome features was reward enough for Julie at that moment.

  ‘It’s up to me,’ Garth was saying as she turned the small car in through the big gates of Woodlands. ‘I feel a rotter, especially after what you said—that she might love me, think she loves me—but it has to be done.’

  ‘You thought you loved her too,’ Julie reminded him gently, braking to a halt before the house. ‘Don’t be too brutal.’

  ‘I was in love with love, or glamour, I don’t know which,’ Garth observed, getting out of the car with some difficulty in negotiating his arm but obviously determined to manage by himself. ‘And I found out—we both found out—that night that it would never work out. That’s why I strongly suspect some ulterior motive behind Tansy’s insisting on this engagement that had ended. It isn’t like her ... or perhaps it is,’ he ended musingly as Mrs. Andy came out to greet them. ‘After all, I didn’t really know her very well. Not half so well as I know you,’ he ended with a warm glance which brought the colour back to her cheeks again.

  Thus it was that Mrs. Andy watched them enter the house, the man proud and suddenly more self-confident, more independent since that dreadful night when they had telephoned her and told her he had been taken to hospital. And the nurse, she thought, eyeing Julie. That warm colour beginning to fade now was something which could only have been occasioned by something he had said, something which had made the girl feel she mattered to him, that she was someone of importance in his life, and by that Mrs. Andy was not thinking in terms of a devoted nurse patient relationship.

  I’m glad, she breathed to herself as they all walked into the house together. I’m glad he’s found out before it’s too late. If only that blank space in his memory could be cleared up as well he’d feel able to cope with anything, even poor Tansy!

  ‘Aunt Lavinia,’ Garth paused at the door of the drawing-room, smiling in the way she remembered so well but which had been missing for so long that she felt the tears sting her eyes as she watched him now. ‘Something wonderful has happened down there at the development site. Something happened—just a small thing, I’ll tell you all about it one day—and that blank space in my memory was filled as though it had never been.’ Instinctively his arms went about the older woman as she moved impetuously towards him. ‘I want to talk to Julie,’ he was beginning, but Julie shook her head. She felt she could not face much more discussion of the matter at the moment. Garth was, technically, still engaged to Tansy, and the honourable thing was for that engagement to be ended before there was any further discussion about their own plans.

  ‘I think we should telephone Mr. Greensmith,’ she said primly. ‘Not that this is his particular department, nor is it anything to do with the surgery and treatment he has been giving you and prescribed for you, but I think you should inform him of this latest development.’

  ‘Whatever it is, his department or yours or someone else’s,’ Garth said, half laughing, ‘there’s no denying it’s been one of the most important factors in making a cure. I feel fine,’ he said exultantly. ‘I’ve never felt better. The sooner he comes and takes this dratted thing off my right hand the better. That’s all I’m waiting for now. When that’s off I can—’

  ‘Mr. Saxon is here, madam.’

  Garth broke off as Edna led the way for a tall, broad shouldered young man whose face was the colour of lightly polished bronze and whose darkly gold hair sprang back off a broad, high forehead.

  ‘Roger!’ Julie was across the room and hugging the stranger, words of greeting and welcome pouring from her lips, intermingled with laughter and a hint of tears. Garth stood by for a moment, looking on indulgently, but there was a hint of jealousy in his look which was not lost upon Mrs. Andy.

  ‘Steady, Julie, steady!’ Laughing at the warm, tempestuous welcome, Roger gently put his sister from him, looking down affectionately on her head, somewhere in the region of his chest.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs. Crossman, sorry, Garth,’ Julie apologized, ‘I don’t know what came over me,’ and in a rather quick, hurried voice she began to make the introductions.

  Mrs. Andy led the way into the drawing-room and asked Julie to pour drinks.

  ‘Dinner will be in about half an hour’s time,’ she observed. ‘Edna will take you to your room when you’ve made yourself feel at home.’

  It was not as difficult to put Roger at his ease as it was with Tansy. One tactful, opening question from his hostess and Roger was talking with the ease of his profession, exchanging ideas with Mrs. Andy, comments with Garth, as though he had known them all his life. Watching him, Julie realized anew how much she had missed him, but deep in her heart she knew too that Garth
had been right and that should matters work out for herself and Garth no one, not even Roger, as Garth had said, would come between them.

  Roger wouldn’t want to, Julie realized. He only wants me to be happy. That’s what he’s always said. I wonder if he has found anyone he could love ... out in Mexico?

  She was content to listen to him chatting with their hostess and with Garth, and when, a few moments later, Mrs. Andy was called away she listened to Roger describing to Garth and herself a typical day on the film set.

  ‘Garth!’ Mrs. Andy’s voice readied them from the hallway. ‘Could you spare just a moment, dear, please?’

  Garth rose, murmured his excuses and left them, first telling Roger to ring for Edna when he was ready to go up to his room.

  ‘Julie will tell you,’ he said, smiling at the girl, ‘there are two gongs, one five minutes after the other, and if you want to keep in Aunt Lavinia’s good graces you’ll be down shortly after the first gong!’

  ‘I’ll remember that,’ Roger promised. ‘Thanks!’

  When Garth had left them Roger crossed over to where his sister sat alone on the wide divan, facing him. He had been watching her covertly all the time he had been talking to Mrs. Andy and her nephew, and he knew there was something seriously wrong in Julie’s little world at that moment. That something, whatever it was, was responsible for the wild, tempestuous welcome he had received. That had not been the welcome of the disciplined, trained girl whom he had cared for so long. He sat beside her and slid an affectionate arm about her shoulders, drawing her closer to him in a brotherly and friendly gesture.

  ‘What’s wrong, pet?’ he demanded. ‘Whatever it is we’ll cope with it together. You’re not on your own just now, you know. We must get together and you can tell me all about it...’

  There was no time before dinner for brother and sister to talk further together. Roger had been given a guest suite a little further along the corridor from Julie and Garth, but when she tapped on his door to find out if he were ready to go down, there was no answer. She found him in the drawing-room, talking to Mrs. Andy about the new book he was writing and the gypsy tribe with whom he had spent several weeks and who figured largely in the new volume.

  ‘It sounds very fascinating,’ the old lady said as Julie entered the room and the second gong boomed through the house. ‘You must tell me more about it later, but after dinner I want you to have your sister to yourself for a little while. You must each of you have lots to talk about, and I’m going to offer to go through Garth’s hand exercises with him. I’ve watched Julie so often, and Garth can manage so much by himself now, that I’m sure it will be all right.’

  There was no reason why it should not be all right, Julie reflected, and no one knew how much she was longing to confide in Roger that at last, as he had predicted she would, she had found a man she could really love—did really love—with her whole heart. It did not even occur to her to wonder how Roger would manage without her, should the miracle happen and Garth become free of Tansy and able to ask Julie to marry him. There was no other obstacle, so far as she could see, but this phoney engagement of his, and Garth’s own feelings which, Julie knew, would not allow him to hurt anyone unless it could not possibly be avoided.

  I wish I hadn’t said that about Tansy must love him or she wouldn’t want to hang on to him, she thought, watching both men from her side of the table. Garth’s sure to feel a cad, unless Tansy releases him, and I don’t see her doing that. Not now.

  But Roger was here, and somehow everything always seemed much better when he was around. They had shared all their troubles and trials since their parents had died, discussed everything, from the selling of their old home to Roger’s gamble with fame and fortune when he had taken his first year in Mexico, but always she had left the final decision on any matter to Roger. That was what she really wanted to do now, subconsciously. She could not make up her mind whether it would be running away to ask Matron to take her off the case, at least until Garth had regained his freedom, or whether she should stay, fighting her own longing for him, striving to be as aloof and as impersonal as she should be in her capacity as his nurse, when everything he said or did mattered more to her than anything else in the world.

  When they finally rose to take coffee in the other room Mrs. Andy smiled at Julie.

  ‘Now,’ she said briskly, ‘you and Roger take yours into Mr. Crossman’s study. You’ll be quite undisturbed there, and you can have a long, cosy chat together, as I’m sure you’re dying to do and can’t possibly have when one or the other of us is monopolizing Roger all the time. Make the most of it,’ she ended mischievously. ‘I have thousands of questions still I want to ask him!’

  Julie thanked her gratefully. Not for the first time she marvelled at this elderly lady who seemed to understand the needs of others, both physical and mental, almost better than they understood them themselves.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly. ‘If you need me, if you forget any of the movements or anything, please call me,’ and on being assured that Mrs. Andy would not hesitate to do so she led her brother into the snug little room where Andrew Crossman attended to the business of the estate.

  Comfortably settled, Roger drew out his pipe and lit up. He could see Andrew’s pipe racks and ashtrays about the room so there was no necessity to ask if it would be permitted, and he always felt so much more capable of dealing with problems with his pipe going well.

  ‘Now, pet,’ he began as Julie did not speak, ‘let’s have it. I can tell there’s something amiss, and I’m sure the old lady has guessed, but she seems sort of pleased about it as well. All very mysterious, if you ask me. Let’s do as it says in Alice, begin at the beginning and go on to the end.’

  ‘The beginning,’ Julie said soberly, ‘was last New Year’s Eve at the Hospital Ball. Do you remember I told you about the young man I’d met who was wild with enthusiasm about designing homes and not houses? The young man who was entering for the Development Site competition...’

  ‘Who asked you to go out with him and you refused, because of your exams, and then spent every waking moment when you weren’t working on those same exams wishing you knew who he was and where he lived and all the rest of it?’ Roger’s eyes twinkled. ‘The young man Ian Greensmith was glowering at all evening, or so I heard?’

  ‘Yes,’ Julie smiled. ‘I must have been a bore about him at the time,’ she recalled. ‘Sorry!’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Roger said magnanimously. ‘I was glad to see you interested in someone ... really interested, I mean, not just flattered because you’d attracted the attention of an admirer,’ he ended teasingly. ‘Go on, love. What about this young man?’

  ‘It was Garth,’ Julie said simply. ‘The night you went to Mexico he was injured—but I’ve told you all about that, all about why I’m here, because he’s Mrs. Andy’s godson and nephew, and that he’d won the competition.’

  ‘You’ve told me everything about him and about the case, I think,’ Roger drew slowly on his pipe, ‘except that he was the man you met at New Year and that you love him.’

  ‘I...’ The colour rushed into Julie’s cheeks, but there was no point in denying the truth to Roger. He knew her too well.

  ‘I could read between the lines of your letters, love,’ he said next. ‘They didn’t put it in so many words. You told me he had a blank spot in his memory, that he couldn’t remember his fiancée, but the way in which you wrote about him told me the rest. What’s happened?’ he demanded. ‘Has his memory returned and he longs to enfold his fiancée to his bosom, have an early wedding and all the rest of it?’ His tone was light and the words teasing, but he was watching her keenly.’

  ‘He has regained the blank spot,’ Julie said slowly. ‘It cleared up today, but I’ve known all the time—so has Ian—what had caused it. They—Garth and Tansy, the girl who is his fiancée—had quarrelled. She’d flung his engagement ring into the glove compartment after she’d offered it back to him and he’d told
her to sell it and buy herself a fur coat. When the accident happened they were not really engaged any more. They’d quarrelled a great deal, known for some time they were unsuited, but Tansy asked Ian to get the ring back for her and she’s gone on pretending everything was all right between them, letting Garth think so, even after she realized he felt there was something wrong. She wanted them to be married and Garth to accompany her on a tour of the States as a sort of holiday-recuperation period-cum-honeymoon, but he won’t do it.’

  ‘Does she know he’s recovered his memory?’ Roger asked quietly. ‘Or has she yet to be given the news?’

  ‘She doesn’t know,’ Julie worried aloud, ‘and I don’t think Garth will feel he can—jilt her, without a quarrel or anything now, and Tansy’s taking great care not to provoke him in any way.’

  ‘Why does she hang on to him?’ was Roger’s next question. ‘Surely it’s a question of her own pride? Is she ... not pretty? Unlikely to attract anyone else? Is that it?’

  ‘She’s lovely,’ Julie said sincerely. ‘I know she’s had several boy-friends, but most of them were either musicians, singers, song-writers or people of that sort. I think,’ she said on a sudden decision, ‘she wants to sort of have her cake and eat it. She wants the glamour of her own kind of life, but a background of something more stable, more secure, in case she ever falls out of favour with the public or something. That’s the only reason I can think of for her insisting on an engagement that’s really a fake.’