by Susan Barrie
Charlotte rose at once to the situation. She smiled at Dr. Mackay as if she was only faintly amused by his rather appealing transparency, and agreed that there was little more they could do for their patient that night. But he would be the first to disapprove of them leaving him alone in the house, and she suggested that Hannah took advantage of the opportunity to stretch her legs… despite the fact that it had been Hannah who was the strong advocate of taking the weight off their feet.
“It’s wonderful in the garden at this hour,” she said. “But if you feel like going further… say a visit to the Three Sailors, I shan’t mind,” she assured them.
Hannah fairly beamed at her.
“You really mean that?” she asked.
“Of course. And don’t forget, there is a man in the house… even if he isn’t quite clear about who he is at the moment! ”
While Hannah rushed off to change and make herself look as attractive as possible for the unexpected treat ahead of her, Dr. Mackay accepted a drink from Charlotte, and sat on the end of a settee while he drank it.
“I am off duty to-night,” he admitted, “and if the alcohol content of this glass of sherry upsets the balance of my blood Hannah can take over the wheel of the car and drive us to the village.”
“I’m afraid it’s not very good sherry,” Charlotte apologised. She started to wander up and down over the pearl-grey carpets. “Dr. Mackay! ” she said suddenly.
;Yes?” He smiled at her, secretly agreeing with her about the quality of the sherry but far too naturally polite to make comments on it aloud. “Anything I can do for you?” he wanted to know.
“Not me, precisely.” She seemed to hesitate. “Dr. Mackay…”
“I’m at your service if you want anything, you know,” he told her affably. “Even if it’s free advice. But as you look extremely healthy and charming to me, I’m sure it’s not that.”
“No, I – ” She picked up a porcelain ginger jar, and then put it back again. “It’s about Mr. Tremarth! He seems to be making quite a good recovery, but I’m a little puzzled about – about his amnesia. He remembers some things, but not others. He doesn’t even remember that he became engaged to be married shortly before he met with his accident! ”
The doctor smiled humorously.
“Perhaps he regretted becoming engaged as soon as he’d committed himself, and now he’s particularly vague on that point because he’d get out of it if he could – and he hadn’t all the right gentlemanly instincts!
“But the young woman in question is quite lovely_”
“Yes. I saw her in the village about ten o’clock this morning.”
“And you – you do agree that she’s – extremely attractive?”
Dr. Mackay smiled suddenly and more broadly. He set down his glass on a little occasional table, and then rose and walked across to her and patted her on the shoulder.
“As attractive as they come. And I admit it’s hard on her if she can’t get him to fix a day for the wedding, but I shall strongly advise him to turn his back on the delights of matrimony for a while yet. For one thing it would be far from satisfactory from his point of view if he married a young woman – though wholly desirable – without being perfectly clear who she is; and from her point of view it could even be disastrous. I shall do something I’ve never done before and issue a certificate that he isn’t fit to marry if he desires it – and she is rather too persuasive. If he doesn’t desire it I shall have a good talk to him, and we’ll see what effect that has.”
Charlotte appeared imperceptibly to brighten.
“He can be very obstinate,” she remarked.
“So can I,” and his square chin told her that he was not exaggerating. “I – I don’t mind how long he stays here… I mean,” as he regarded her somewhat quizzically, “we did once talk – Hannah and I
– of running a nursing-home, and turning this place into one, and naturally we – we don’t want to lose our first patient too soon.” “Naturally,” and he sounded almost soothing.
“We’d like Mr. Tremarth to be really fit before he leaves.” “Naturally,” the doctor said again.
Hannah appeared, and she was looking so glamorous that Charlotte could hardly believe the evidence of her eyes. Lately Hannah had taken to using more make-up, and it suited her amazingly. She had also taken up the hem of her one really smart dinner-dress, and the combined effect of a slim shift-like dress that displayed her naturally pretty knees and about two discreet inches of her attractive thighs, rather heavily darkened eyelashes and a warm pink lipstick undoubtedly caused Dr. Mackay to lose his medical poise for a moment. He stared at her, and his eyes started to glow – and his excellently cared for teeth flashed in an approving smile.
“All this for the Three Sailors?” he said. “The landlord ought to stand us free drinks! ”
Charlotte watched them go, and she watched the tail light of their car as it disappeared down the drive. Once it had vanished she stepped out on to the lawn and felt the coolness of the night breeze as it fanned her cheeks and her bare arms, and she inhaled the perfume of the roses somewhat excitingly mixed with the tangy odour of the sea.
All around her the gardens of Tremarth spread in summer beauty under the stars, and it was the far-away brilliance of the stars as she lifted her eyes to them that made her feel suddenly and quite extraordinarily lonely. It was a loneliness of the spirit – an acute loneliness, because the two who had just left her were very obviously drawn to one another, and in a matter of weeks or months they might have cemented their present friendship by becoming engaged – or married! Doctors needed wives, and Hannah would make a wonderful doctor’s wife… and Charlotte was reasonably certain that if Dr. Mackay asked her to become his wife she would say ‘yes’!
Looked at in a very dispassionate light she would be very silly if she did not.
Then, with or without a medical certificate from Mackay, Richard Tremarth would almost certainly be marrying the lovely golden-headed Claire Brown in a very short space of time from now. He might have memories of a small redheaded sprite of a girl who had plagued him once, but he would marry the young woman who had hastened all the way from London to sit at his bedside as soon as she learned that he had been involved in an accident.
Charlotte began to shiver in the middle of the lawn, and she turned to retrace her steps towards the house. As always, when she was confronted with it – even under cover of soft and silken darkness – she lifted her eyes to it. She supposed she had loved it always, right from those early days when she had stayed in it with her aunt… And now more than ever she felt an almost passionate attachment to it.
If Richard asked her again to sell it she would refuse. She would go on refusing and refusing!
As she stepped through the lighted French window of the drawing-room she recoiled for a moment in alarm, for instead of being empty, as she had left it, a man was reclining at full length on one of the brocade-covered settees… the one in front of the television set, in fact.
Richard Tremarth was wearing his dressing- gown, and a silk scarf with polka-dots tucked in at the neck. His hair was beautifully brushed and gleaming, he had shaved very well that morning, and his chin was still smooth. He wore red morocco slippers, pale violet pyjamas, and a solid gold wrist-watch which he was consulting as she walked into the room.
“It’s too late for you to be wandering about alone out of doors in this remote spot,” he told her severely. “Not only are your shoes too thin and the grass almost certain to be heavy with dew, and therefore you’re risking a chill by getting your feet wet, but I don’t like the idea of you wandering about out there alone.”
“Was that why you got up and decided to come down here and keep me company?” she asked.
“It was one of my reasons,” he admitted. “Fortunately that box over there is switched off, and we can talk. And I have several things I want to say to you.”
“Yes?” she said, sitting down opposite him. “Nurse Cootes and the doc w
on’t be back yet… very likely not for some considerable while. That is if they’re sensible, and follow their inclinations. And that gives us quite a lot of time to make some plans.”
“Plans?”
“Yes; plans.” And he smiled at her as if he realised that for the moment he must humour her, as if he was humouring a child.
CHAPTER VIII
A WEEK went by and Richard Tremarth, in the old home of the Tremarth family, recovered his strength and regained most of his old vigour, without apparently managing at the same time to recover his memory. He seemed almost to luxuriate in this particular phase of his convalescence, delighting, apparently, in doing nothing, and finding the amenities – or lack of amenities at Tremarth – by no means a hindrance to his increasing well-being.
And the one thing that quite obviously did not trouble him was his failure to remember who he was. He accepted it that he was Richard Tremarth, that the old house of Tremarth had once belonged to his relatives, and as a house he admired it enormously. But he did not repeat his offer to purchase it from his present hostess, who was not a Tremarth but seemed to fit into the house and background very well.
He entered with a kind of amiable quiescence into Claire Brown’s plans to marry him. He was obviously in no hurry to marry, but he seemed quite willing to listen when she discussed the various arrangements she was making with him. It was very obvious, also, that he admired her… Sometimes Charlotte, who seemed to watch him very carefully these days, thought he admired her very much indeed. And in all honesty, and without attempting to undervalue Miss Brown in any way, she could not think of any reason why he should not admire her. Feel, indeed, a great urge to become her husband.
She was so enchantingly pretty, was never seen with a hair out of place, or a shine on her nose, or lips that required an application of lipstick. And her clothes must have cost her a great deal of money, for they were always beautifully made and charmingly designed, and were undoubtedly ‘couture’ clothes. And if she had been a top model she would have made a fortune for herself.
Charlotte sometimes suspected, from the way she moved, and her air of somewhat consciously desiring people to admire her, that there had been a time in her life when she had modelled clothes. She found it quite impossible to imagine her undertaking secretarial duties… and wondered why she still stuck to the pretence that she had once acted as Richard’s own private secretary.
He had a secretary in London who contacted them sometimes, but Richard was not allowed to enter into any business conversations with her. For one thing, he was not yet in a fit condition to enter into business transactions, and he appeared to have not the smallest desire to do anything of the kind. He was quite content to laze away the days at Tremarth, sitting on the terrace or one of the green swathes of lawn and watching the sea as if he could never tire of its endless, restless movement, or walking slowly about the gardens, admiring the flower borders and the wonderful Tremarth roses. He took to detaching rose buds from their stems and attaching them to the front of his jacket, and inhaling their perfume with a quiet air of appreciation and satisfaction. Sometimes he stood for long periods in front of Aunt Jane’s portrait above the fireplace in the hall, and on one occasion Charlotte caught him addressing Aunt Jane.
“I wish I could remember you,” he said to her. “You must have been a most excellent and worthy woman.”
He bent to inhale the perfume of the rose in his lapel, and then he looked up at her again.
“And you have a somewhat unusual niece,” he added.
Charlotte went away thoughtfully to the kitchen, and she remained thoughtful as she prepared the vegetables for lunch. That afternoon Claire arrived with a list of guests she intended inviting for the wedding, and she asked Richard whether there was anyone whose name he wished added to the list. Richard gave the matter his attention in the obliging way that was rather significant of his attitude to life these days, and then confessed that there was no one he could think of at the moment. Claire regarded him somewhat uncertainly, and whether or not it suddenly struck her that she was doing a strange thing arranging to marry at no very distant date a man who seemed quite unable to recollect that he ever had friends and acquaintances, and was quite unable to remember the name of one of them who might enjoy being invited to throw rice at him when he exchanged his state of bachelorhood for the married state.
She even began to look worried and reflective after a time – when the peculiarity of her position had time to sink in; and a short while later, while they were strolling on the terrace, she slipped a hand inside his arm and asked him whether he was really beginning to feel much more like himself.
“Oh, yes.” He gazed down at her with an unrevealing expression on his face, and then stared out across the sun-bathed lawn at the line of blue sea. “I’m feeling quite fit.”
“But you still don’t know who you are,… Or do you?” lifting harebell blue eyes to his face and trying to conceal the suspicion of doubt in her eyes, and the rather more alert, probing look.
“Do I – what?”
The bland blankness in the depths of his grey eyes baffled her. She began to feel vaguely frustrated.
“Know who you are? I mean, of course, you know who you are, because we’ve been able to offer you proof that you’re Richard Tremarth, with a flat in London and quite a comfortable income, and – and all the rest. You’ve business interests, too, but at the moment everything is being taken care of for you, and you don’t have to bother your head about that. I was having a word with your partner the other day, and he’s coming down to see you before the wedding, and of course he will be at the wedding. Your bank manager, too… As a matter of fact he’s also my bank manager. There are certain papers you’ll have to sign in the course of the next week, but there’s nothing complicated there, and your signature is all that is required.”
“Splendid,” Richard murmured lazily and contentedly. “You’re almost as useful as a business manager yourself, my sweet, and I consider myself fortunate to be marrying such a capable young woman. I hope it occurred to you, during the course of your conversations with the guardians of my material attributes, that some sort of a marriage settlement, or dowry, is important if you have your own interests at heart.”
She coloured delightedly.
“Well, as a matter of fact I would prefer it if I had some sort of independence once we were married… apart from my own tiny income, I mean. But I hardly liked to put it to you in so many words.”
“Oh, come.” His voice was dry. “I’m sure you could have found the right words with very little difficulty.”
“That’s what Tom said. As a matter of fact-”
“Tom?”
He’s your partner – Tom Armitage. As soon as you see him of course you’ll recollect who he is immediately.”
“Then why hasn’t he come down here to see me?”
“I think he’s busy… looking after your joint interests, of course. But you’ll almost certainly be hearing from him in the course of the next few days.”
“That’s what you said before. He’s sending me papers to sign… remember?”
“Yes.” If he had been looking more keenly at her it might have struck him that she was struggling with embarrassment, for her colour was slightly higher, and rather like the rosy afterglow left by a clear mountain sunset. “But you can have absolute confidence in him. He really has got your interests at heart, and mine since I’m going to marry you.”
“And you don’t think there’s the slightest need to hesitate before appending my signature to these papers?”
“Oh, no, none whatsoever.”
“Well, that’s fortunate, because handicapped as I am by an almost complete loss of memory I could very easily be taken advantage of. You, with your obviously shrewd business brain, will realise that. And no doubt that’s why you’ve taken the trouble to go into things with Tom.” She glanced at him for a moment almost uncertainly.
“Er – yes – yes, it is,”
she agreed. And then more earnestly: “It has struck me from the first that at the moment you’re terribly vulnerable. You could be taken for a ride by anyone if they were sufficiently unscrupulous. You don’t even remember what your business interests are, and how can you know that you’re doing the right thing by signing documents that could mean you were damaging your own interests? Unless I tell you that it’s perfectly safe for you to do so! ”
“I suppose I have a solicitor somewhere,” Tremarth murmured thoughtfully. “But of course he could be as shady as the rest unless you vet him for me, couldn’t he?”
“Don’t be silly, darling.” She squeezed his arm with her slender fingers, but she sounded suddenly just a little vexed at the same time. “No one is shady… least of all your solicitor, who happens, however, to be abroad at the moment. If you’re anxious to see him I suppose we could cable him to fly back and have a few reassuring words with you… but it seems a little hard when he’s on holiday. He’s the junior partner, and apparently you’ve a great deal of confidence in him.”
“And the other members of the firm?” “They’re very elderly and rather dry-as-dust, and I don’t think you’ve ever had much to do with them. Wouldn’t it be better to wait and see your own solicitor when he gets back?”
“And what about inviting him to the wedding?”
“Don’t be silly, darling,” she said again, laughing patiently. “What would be the point of sending him an invitation when he’s at the opposite side of the world?”
Tremarth smiled suddenly, and appeared to relax.
“No good at all, my pet, and I’m simply being rather silly. It seems that I am in your hands-yours and Tom’s-and I might as well accept it that I’m in very safe hands.”
“Of course, darling.” She patted his sleeve affectionately, and her limpid blue eyes made every effort to reassure him-to convince him that he had not the slightest need to worry about anything. “You couldn’t be in safer hands… I give you my word about that! ”