by Jane Arbor
Adam stood looking at his friend for a long time. Then: “I do believe you,” he said quietly. “Thelma could have been wrong. But you’ve still got to make up your mind to go forward now, instead of looking back over your shoulder at a love-affair that was finished before you went to Africa—”
“It isn’t finished yet! It can’t be! And sooner or later Kathryn will know it too. I can’t fail with her—I daren’t! To-night I made a mistake—I appealed to her pity, not to her love. But that won’t happen again. And this time, if you don’t mind, for you and Thelma it will be ‘Hands Off’! When I’ve accepted defeat I’ll tell you. Otherwise you can take it that I mean to succeed.”
“All right.” Adam flicked ash into an ashtray on the window-sill. His back was to the other man as Steven asked: “You do see, then, that I’ve got to convince her how much I love her?”
“I see that you believe you’ve got to—which probably amounts to the same thing. Anyway from now on you can count out the chance of any interference from me. I suppose I owe you an apology.”
“That’s all right,” said Steven awkwardly. “You probably thought you were acting in my interests. You could have been, if Kathryn weren’t all that I know her to be.” He stood up a little irresolutely. “I think I’ll go and find her now.”
“She said she was leaving,” Adam pointed out.
“Lord, so she did. And I’ve got to get through the rest of the evening playing host to that crowd!”
“Take a turn off,” suggested Adam. “Cut in for this rubber in my place.”
“All right, if you don’t want to play.”
“I did, but I’ve changed my mind. If they want a second rubber I’ll come back later and release you.” Adam pulled aside the curtain and went through, pausing to take a drink from a tray as he passed the buffet table. He stood alone for a while looking about him. Not far away Thelma was talking to two men, but he did not join them. Instead he looked at her, his eyes appraising her poise and her animation, the arched curve of her throat, the sculptured line of her hair. He noticed for the first time the embroidered stole that she wore. Another woman, unaccustomed to the fashion, might have clutched it about her like a shawl. But Thelma wore it nonchalantly, with an air, as if she were as used to it as her handbag...
“Worshipping from afar, eh? Now I should have expected to find you at the lady’s side!” With a deep chuckle Sir Paul Denver confronted him.
“Hullo, sir.” Adam indicated his sherry with a smile. “Perhaps I was enjoying her Tio Pepe too much to be willing to mix my pleasures!”
“M’m. Good party, wouldn’t you say? As these absurd affairs go, I mean. This one, I understand, was laid on for Steven, though Thelma would appear to be the star attraction. But I daresay that’s how any woman would want it.”
“I suppose so.”
“I’ve been wanting to get a word with you, Adam,” Sir Paul Denver went on. “Just a scheme of mine that’s still very much in the air—”
“Yes, sir?”
“Well, briefly, though I’m far from finished yet and won’t call off work until I’m carried out, I’ve been feeling the need to get some permanent sunshine into my bones, and I’ve been turning over the idea of a clinic in South Africa, where I have some interests. It would be privately run, and staffed by first-class men and women. Mine would be the controlling hand, but apart from that I should leave the work to specialists in their line. I may say I’m putting this to you before sounding anyone else.”
“Do I understand, sir, that you’re asking me to join the team you would get together?”
“What else? I shall need a good paediatric man, and I don’t know where better to look.”
“Thank you. But I ought to warn you that I’ve only recently joined the Wardrop. My contract is renewable yearly, but—”
“I realise that, and in any case I shouldn’t want your definite answer for another six months or so, by which time you’ll have had about a year at the Wardrop and should know where you want to stand for the future. May I take it that you’ll consider it?”
“I’m honoured that you should ask me, and I’ll certainly consider it,” promised Adam.
“There’s another reason why I’m glad to be able to give you six months,” went on Sir Paul. “You know I’ve always had your interests at heart, my boy, and it had occurred to me that you might be considering marriage in the meanwhile. If you decided to pull up all your other roots, a wife would be the best compensation you could have.”
“Yes, I daresay.” Adam’s tone was non-committal.
“No business of mine, eh? All right. Point taken! Meanwhile there’s just one other thing—if you decided to come out to S.A., could you bring along a trained woman—one with whom you would have every confidence in starting work on your allotted ward without delay?”
Adam’s brows went up slightly. “The description applies to the Children’s Ward Sister at the Wardrop,” he said.
“Does it? A thoroughly capable woman, would you say?”
“I consider so. And you may have some ideas on the subject yourself. I saw you talking to her a while back.”
“I? Oh no,” Sir Paul disclaimed. “I’ve avoided anyone likely to talk shop to me. No, I haven’t met your Ward Sister, Adam.”
“She was in something dark—stiff silk, I think, with some frilly nonsense at the collar and cuffs. And she wears her hair—so.” Adam sketched a half-circle about his own head.
Sir Paul stared. “That girl? In the Fauntleroy lace?”
Adam nodded. “The same.”
“You astound me. I found her intelligent and charming, but she is so young!”
“She is fully trained and C.M.B., and is more capable than any Ward Sister I’ve yet worked with.”
“I can see she has your confidence. Well, give me time to get used to the idea of adding seeming teenagers to my staff, and then perhaps you’d like to put the proposition to her?”
“Not yet.”
“No, and of course not until you’ve decided one way or the other yourself. I’d like the two of you to make a professional team of it, if you could.”
Adam said carefully: “Naturally I know very little of her circumstances or her future plans.”
“Naturally,” Sir Paul agreed blandly. But he shot an acutely enquiring glance at Adam as he added: “And yet, you know, I’m surprised that with a girl like that you haven’t examined for yourself the possibilities of a different kind of harness from a professional one!”
Adam smiled politely at the quip but did not reply. And with a chuckle and a: “Sorry, Adam. Below the belt, eh?” Sir Paul patted his shoulder and moved off.
All night, between fitful, frustrated dreams, Kathryn had been blaming herself for not realising the danger of allowing Steven to draw her away from the crowds; for letting her pity for him betray her into the gentleness of that gesture which both he and the other man who had witnessed it could have read as an expression of love.
It was sheer cruel chance that had brought Adam to the recess at that moment, but she would not let even that excuse her. For a quirk of memory reminded her that at almost their first meeting, when he had blamed her so bitterly on Steven’s behalf, she had recognised and admired the strength of the friendship which had driven him on. To him, then, Steven’s welfare had mattered more than anything. And at Barbara Thorley’s he had revealed to her how much it still mattered. Believing that she could serve Steven best by keeping away from him, Adam had been upon the point of asking her help in that, and he had checked in his purpose only upon her own hot, resentful retort.
He had not known that as soon as she had made it she had resolved to keep faith with him in what he asked. She had been thrown into Steven’s company that day and she had known that they would have to meet again often. But she had resolved that she wouldn’t encourage him.
And yet—and yet—at his first appeal to her pity she had yielded. So that, even if Adam had not been there to see that gesture of ten
derness, she would still feel that she had broken an unspoken promise to him. And she had not even helped Steven. Panic-stricken, she had run away, leaving him to guess at her feeling for him, perhaps betraying him to Adam’s scorn for even thinking of approaching her again.
Passingly she wondered why they all—she and Adam Brand and Thelma—should be so concerned to fend for Steven. Was it the primitive instinct of the strong to gather about the weak? Or, less creditably, was it that each of them derived a personal satisfaction when Steven turned particularly to him or her? In which case mightn’t it be better if he learned to stand upon his own feet, getting neither pity nor protection from any of them? But her mind was too fogged to follow that reasoning through.
Once only during the night she asked herself what that scene might have told Adam about herself. She knew that it was the very last thing she wanted him to believe—that she was in love with Steven, or that she would marry him if he should ask her again. But did it matter what he believed about her, so long as he came to understand that her gesture towards Steven had been the merest impulse, and that friendship alone had betrayed her into an intimacy from which he had wanted to guard his friend?
Yes, that was important. Hazily her mind pinned upon it—the only important thing. To explain to Adam Brand at the first chance she had. To tell him that she had realised that she should have trusted to his judgment as to what was best for Steven; that her feeling about Steven was unchanged and she had had no intention of encouraging him to think otherwise. She meant to keep him at a distance in future...
Upon that resolve she allowed herself to fall deeply asleep at last. Strangely, there was no question in her mind but that she owed that explanation to Adam Brand.
She knew that she would not bring herself to broach so personal a matter while they were both on duty on the ward. Adam Brand might do it with impunity, but she could not—she must await a more suitable opportunity. What she did not foresee was that, though she was to have the opportunity the next day, the explanation would go unspoken.
She had the morning off duty, and planned to walk down into the town, where, among other errands, she was to take a message for Matron to one of the local supply contractors to the hospital.
The morning was crisp and sunny, and the walk down the long hill would be invigorating. Moreover, she was glad that she was to be out. Steven knew that she was to be off duty; he might telephone, and she wanted time in which to think out what she was to say to him.
On the way down she noticed that the roadway was being hacked up for the second time within a few months. It was strange, she reflected, how the authorities who buried pipes and cables underground rarely seemed to agree on when they should be dug up and looked at. But this time it was the surface itself that was under repair. Already portions of it were far below the kerbs, and here and there men were propping notices on the pavements—“Warning. Deep drop.”
The far side of the road, however, was still open to vehicles.
As no one wished to step down into the road, the pavements were unusually crowded, and at a point where it was impossible for an old lady’s bath-chair to pass unless someone gave away, Kathryn stepped aside unguardedly. Her foot came down upon rough clinkers, and though for a moment she believed she had sprained it, she found to her relief that the heel of her shoe had taken the strain. It had been partly wrenched from the sole, and though she was disconcerted, at least she was not hurt.
She stood for a moment, pressing gingerly downward, wondering if she could get as far as the next shoe-maker’s and, if not, what she was to do. She did not hear the sharp slam of a car door on the far side of the rope-barriers, and she didn’t look up until Adam Brand was at her side and his fingers were pressing deeply into her arm.
“You’re not hurt?” he demanded, his tone crisp with something that she read as reproach for her carelessness. (Once she had heard a similar note in Victor Thorley’s voice when Barbara had stepped backwards from a ladder. But Victor loved Barbara. That was different.)
Her smile was rueful. “No, not at all. Only rather disconcerted by—this.” She indicated the partially dislodged heel.
“Well, I can help you with that.” Adam nodded meaningly at his car. “Shall I take you back to hospital, or would you rather go on? I was on my way into the town, but could easily take you back.”
“I’d rather go on,” said Kathryn quickly. “I am doing a message for Matron, and this can be remedied at the first shoe-shop we come to, if you would drop me.”
“Can you get over to the car?”
“Oh yes—” But as, aided by his hand beneath her elbow, she hobbled beside him, she felt incredibly foolish. Why had it to be Adam who had come upon her in such a plight? She wished it could have been anyone else—anyone else at all.
They drove in silence until she saw the hanging sign of a shoe-shop ahead.
“You can put me down here if you will.”
She thanked him and alighted, not looking back as she crossed the pavement. But though the repair took several minutes, to her surprise the car was still waiting when she left the shop.
She flushed with embarrassment as Adam leaned across to open the nearside door for her. “You shouldn’t have waited,” she protested.
“I told you I was going all the way. Where next?”
“Wherever you usually park. Or on Ship Market”—mentioning the town’s main thoroughfare.
“There’s no parking in Ship Market. I park at the Ulverstone, as I sometimes lunch there. Will that do?”
“Perfectly, thanks.”
“When are you on duty again?” Adam asked.
“At two.”
“And you are going back to lunch in hospital beforehand?”
“Yes.”
Adam was negotiating the drive-in to the hotel’s courtyard, and said no more until he had pulled up and was reaching for his gloves. Then: “In that case”—his tone was casually polite—“perhaps, when you’ve done what you have to do, you would lunch here with me? We could make it as early as you like, so that I could get you back in time for duty.”
For a moment Kathryn felt as if she had been trapped into the admission that she had nothing but a morning’s shopping and a routine hospital meal before her. Now, however reluctant she was to accept his invitation, she could not possibly refuse it. But in the next instant she realised that if her last night’s resolve had been anything more than the mere stuff of a false courage, here probably, was her chance to offer the explanation she had planned. Across a luncheon table they would achieve a brief intimacy that would have nothing of permanence behind it, of course, but which should give her an opportunity to bring in Steven’s name and to refer without too much embarrassment to last night’s occurrence, at which she still blushed.
They parted, agreeing to meet in the lounge of the Ulverstone at twelve-thirty. Kathryn, meanwhile, went about her errands in a kind of daze, and in the end was a little late for the appointment, owing to some delay over Matron’s business.
Adam chose the luncheon with a flattering concern for her preferences, and if only she had not had the shadow of that explanation hanging over her, Kathryn could have given herself up to the sheer, rare pleasure of being with him in such circumstances.
She had not realised, however, how difficult it would prove to bring Steven’s name into their talk of their young patients on the ward and of some research, involving many hours of his time, which Adam declared he wanted to do. At each brief silence she was tempted to try to switch on to personal matters, but Adam would always have begun to speak again before she had plucked up courage and words for it. And in the end it was he who surprised her utterly.
They were having their coffee in the lounge, and as he took the cup she handed him he said: “I’m glad you were able to lunch. Otherwise I should have had to make some other opportunity to tell you that I owe you a very deep apology. Last night—”
Because her fingers were trembling so, Kathryn set down her own cu
p. She began desperately: “Last night was—”
But Adam went on: “Mine was an unpardonable intrusion, I know. But it was entirely accidental, I assure you.” He paused for so long that Kathryn raised her eyes questioningly to his. And his glance held hers unerringly as he went on: “I mentioned last night because it is since then that I’ve wondered just why at our first meeting, you did not deny the outrageous accusation I made against you?”
“I tried to deny it—”
“No. You denied the possible effect upon Steven. You didn’t attempt to deny what I accused you of—a wanton, heartless rejection of him that any man would despise you for—if it were true. It wasn’t. And yet you let me go on believing it!” Across the small table between them two of his fingers came to rap its surface imperiously. “Why did you do that?” he asked.
(Because you were intolerant and unjust. Because later, when I learned that you had accused me on Thelma’s evidence alone, pride would not let me. Because even now you are judging me by your own standards—not mine at all.) But she could not say any of that, and was silent.
“Why did you?” repeated Adam. His tone was more gentle, but still demanding.
At last, with a false diffidence, she managed: “I knew the truth. Steven knew it too. And as the whole thing was over, it hadn’t much significance, had it?” She was baffled and shaken by the instant of rebuffed pain in Adam’s eyes. But he said coolly enough: “For you, I see that it never had. But it would have been tactful of you to enlighten me, don’t you think? As it was, anxiety for Steven led me to accuse you again—this time to him. And you should know that a man in love—as Steven still is with you—doesn’t brook that sort of thing, even from his best friend. Any more,” Adam added distastefully, “than I take kindly to being forced to eat my own words. But I daresay you consider I deserved that.”