Why hadn’t she turned then, Ann wondered, and walked out of Fountains, out of Beverley Derhart’s life ... out of Iain Sherrarde’s? The break might have been bitter, but at least she would have been spared all the humiliation that had been piled on her since.
The real answer to that question, Ann supposed, was that Beverley, having worked herself up into a passion, had then collapsed in a storm of weeping and nervous hysteria which left her a wreck for the rest of the morning.
When Doctor Butler called, she was rude to him and refused to consider his suggestion that she should get up and go for a drive by the sea, in the sunshine. Robert Leedon arrived while he was still there, and Beverley immediately turned on her face, buried her head in the pillows and refused to speak to either of them.
But when, after lunch, Iain appeared and asked her if she would like a run to the sea, she was immediately all smiles and eager compliance.
Ann was ashamed of the unworthiness of her own feelings. Beverley was still an invalid, and the drive in the fresh air would do her a world of good. It was small-minded of her to feel so miserably jealous. She could have borne it better if Iain had been pleasant to her. But he had coupled his icy “Good afternoon” with one glance equally freezing and had not looked at her again.
In the hall, Mrs. Woods, also dressed for going out, was just taking a last glance at herself in a long mirror. Ann was determined now to speak about Gateworth. Mrs. Woods listened with ill-disguised impatience.
“A boy friend of Anne’s? Ridiculous! I don’t believe a word of it. She has never had the slightest intention of coming down here, so why should she persuade this man to get a post nearby? Gateworth has obviously heard rumors about your loss of memory and used them to make your acquaintance. You should have frozen him off immediately. But perhaps you didn’t want to do that!”
Ann swallowed her annoyance. “But I think—” she began.
Mrs. Woods swept her remark aside. “Don’t think I mind your getting acquainted. Naturally at your age you want a boy friend, and to have a good time. Why not?”
The girl’s face went very cold. Mrs. Woods’ patronizing little sneer seemed to put her on a level with Ralph Gateworth and separate her by a long, long distance from Iain Sherrarde.
Mrs. Woods went on. “Just a word of warning, Ann. Don’t go around upsetting people as you have been doing.”
Ann’s eyes grew wide. Whom had she upset? Marchdale? Beverley, Mrs. Woods herself, Iain?
“I don’t understand,” she said directly.
Mrs. Woods gave her a peculiar look. “Don’t you? Well, perhaps you do and perhaps you don’t. Now let’s drop the matter.”
On an afternoon a day or two later, Nurse Elliott cycled over to see her former patient and Ann walked through the woodland path to meet her at the gate. Beverley had gone out that afternoon with Robert Leedon and Miss Pollard had taken the children for their riding lesson.
Megan almost fell off her cycle in excitement when she saw Ann walking down the road to meet her. “Darling Ann, I have missed you!” she exclaimed. “You were by far our nicest patient. Do you remember anything yet?”
Ann shook her head. “You know, I’m living so much in the present that I haven’t time to think of the past.”
“Well, come to that,” Megan admitted candidly, “it’s the present that counts. But, darling, what’s this I hear about a boy friend?”
“Oh!” Ann’s lips opened slightly and a faint color crept under her clear skin. The fact that she was so much attracted to Iain Sherrarde was always so near the surface of her mind that she thought of no one else when Megan made her sly remark, and added, “Don’t become too serious, though. After all, when your memory comes back, you...”
Ann’s reply was spontaneous. “The return of my memory won’t make any difference. This is more important to me than anything that has ever happened before.”
Megan stared at her incredulously. “Ann! But ...” The other girl took a grip on herself. She must be going mad, she thought, aghast. She began to laugh. “Tell me all about the private wing, Megan. How is Sister? I met your Doctor Whitely, by the way, at a party my ... er ... Beverley gave.”
Megan took the hint to change the subject, though she still looked rather shaken. “Yes, Frank told me. Whatever made you and your mother allow it? I mean such a big party, with all the excitement?”
“Allow it!” Ann gave a laugh. “It took place only the day after I left hospital. And if you knew Beverley ... Oh, never mind.”
Megan respected her reticence on that subject too. She knew a good deal more about Beverley and her doings than she would reveal to Ann. For Frank Whitely and the rest of the medical staff, Mrs. Derhart provided endless scope for gossip and speculation.
“You’ll be coming to hospital soon, for a check-up, won’t you?” she asked. “When is your appointment?”
“Next Wednesday.” Ann’s face was thoughtful. “I don’t know what Doctor Lievers will say. I haven’t remembered a single thing. There just hasn’t been time to think...”
Except about the present ... except about the future ... But she did not say that to Megan.
All too soon, it seemed, her friend was glancing at her watch. “Sorry, Ann, I shan’t be able to stay to tea. Frank is getting away early and we’re going dancing.”
As they came out of Fountains into the spring sunshine, she looked around. “It’s nice, if you don’t mind being buried in the depths of the country. Personally, I find Sunbury too quiet, especially when the season is over. When I’ve finished my training...”
“When you’ve finished your training, or even before that, you’ll be getting married...” Ann finished for her.
Megan looked thoughtful. “I’m not so sure. Doctors and nurses often get on well together during their training and then when marriage seems in sight, something happens...”
A quick prick of memory came and went through Ann’s brain. It had gone, before she could capture it. But it had been like that with someone she knew, she felt sure.
Having followed the woodland path, they now began to stroll down the main road. As they approached the entrance to Dainty’s End, Megan stared at it curiously.
“I hear Doctor Lyntrope is living there now. She has a job in the Health Department. At first she was in lodgings in Sunbury.”
“Oh, so that’s what she does. I wondered.”
Perhaps Megan heard something guarded in Ann’s voice, for her eyes began to dance. “So you don’t like her either!”
“I didn’t say so. Do you know her?”
The other shook her head. “I know she has auburn hair and is a man-chaser. Sometimes Frank tries to make me jealous, but as I tell him, he doesn’t stand an earthly with the Director in competition. Oh, there he is.”
They had almost reached the big main gates of the Institute. Frank Whitely was standing talking to a tall man, whose back was turned to them. Megan waved to the young man, who in turn raised his hand. The tall man swung round.
Ann stopped abruptly. “I’ll say goodbye now, Megan. Look out for me next week when I come to hospital.”
“Don’t rush off without having a word with Frank,” Megan protested. “That’s Mr. Sherrarde talking to him.”
“So it is,” murmured Ann in a voice that was elaborately casual.
Sherrarde had seen them, but he now turned back to the junior doctor, and after a few more words, went into the Institute building without looking again at the two girls.
Ann managed to talk normally to Frank Whitely, answering his enquiries about her own health and Beverley’s, but as quickly as she could, she disengaged herself and began to walk back slowly.
It was stupid to feel like this every time she received a snub from him — as if the end of the world had come. He probably hadn’t even meant to snub her. He might not have noticed who was approaching, even though he seemed to turn round to look. He might have had an appointment, or urgent work that needed his immediate attention. There cou
ld be many reasons why he had not waited to greet anyone of as little importance to him as herself. What she had got to realize, she told herself, as she had done so many times before, was that she had been entirely mistaken about their first meeting. For her, it had been momentous, but for him it had been just ... an incident ... a rather unimportant incident.
CHAPTER TEN
ONCE again Ann was walking through the woodland path, this time to take the bus into Sunbury. Mrs. Woods was using one car, and though both she and Beverley knew that it was the day when Ann was going to the hospital, neither had suggested that Burrows should drive her there in the other car.
It wasn’t a very pleasant day. There was a hint of rain and a keen east wind that tore at Ann’s rather thin coat. What had happened to the remainder of her clothes? she wondered. Well, she might get to know soon, for she had come to a decision that when she saw the doctor this afternoon, she would tell him that there seemed to be no progress so far as the return of her memory was concerned, and that accordingly she would like him to arrange for her to go back to Queen Frida’s. Even if there was something serious that she must face there it would be preferable to going on living at Fountains.
She turned her slender shoulder to the wind, wishing the bus would come. She didn’t like standing so near to the Institute entrance which was where the bus stop was. Anyone might come out. Iain Sherrarde ... Ralph Gateworth. She shivered. Gateworth had written to her two or three times, and rung her up as often, trying to make dates with her, but she had actually seen nothing of him, for on the one occasion he had called at Fountains, she had been in her room and refused to go down.
How cold it was! She wished the bus would come. She was sure it was already overdue and she began to wonder nervously whether it was one which, once again, ran on Saturdays only.
She did not turn when she heard a car, but when it stopped beside her she glanced round.
Iain Sherrarde said, from a thin mouth, set in a pale, furious face, “Get in the car, please.”
Afterwards, Ann was to ask herself angrily why she had obeyed so meekly. But at the time she just didn’t think at all. Her heart was beating furiously, and excitement at seeing him colored her face like a rose.
As she sat down he leaned forward, closed the door and drove on. Ann took one look at his face and then stared ahead of her, her eyes troubled. Of course, she did see him quite often, for he came to visit Beverley and the children at Fountains, and called for them when he took them out in his car, but it was seldom that he exchanged more than a brief cool greeting with her. It just seemed as if he hadn’t any time for her at all since that night he had taken her, soaked almost to the skin, back to Fountains.
She was thinking of that occasion — wondering whether he had found out that she had been with Gateworth, wondering how she could make him understand. But how could she talk to a man who had an expression so cold and implacable?
The fact that he thought she was Anne Woods didn’t help matters either— Anne Woods who...
Miserably she recalled that yesterday Averil Pollard, who had been out with Beverley and the children in the afternoon in Mr. Sherrarde’s car, had said facetiously when she returned,
“Your sister was giving Mr. Sherrarde the gen on your matrimonial intentions. I couldn’t help overhearing. She has such a penetrating voice.”
“My matrimonial intentions!” Ann’s voice had faltered.
“Yes, the fact that you had chosen nursing simply with the idea of meeting a rich patient — the more elderly the better — and marrying him.”
Was he too remembering that revelation as he sat glowering ahead of him? From his grim expression it was obvious that his thoughts were not very pleasant.
Even so, she was taken completely by surprise when he said, through almost clenched teeth, “Have you no pride at all — no sense of fitness? Hanging about outside the Institute, waiting for that fellow?”
As he spoke, he drew in at the side of the road. Ann stared back at him with a look of outrage. Did he deliberately try to put the worst construction on her every action?
Was there no end to the ways he chose of misunderstanding whatever she did? Just one small, courteous question would have elicited from her the information that she was going to a hospital appointment, but he hadn’t thought fit to ask it. He preferred to think of her as cheap, scheming and man-chasing.
In the next few minutes, Iain Sherrarde delivered himself of a good deal that had evidently been simmering in his mind for some time. Burrows came into it, and Gateworth, and the despicable reason that had lain at the back of her choice of nursing as a career.
Ann’s face was ashen and there was something cold and dead inside her where her heart should have been. Anne Woods might be all the things he had said, but if he had had one spark of understanding, one spark of feeling for her herself, he would have known that these things couldn’t be true of her. She fumbled blindly with the catch of the door.
“I’ll walk to the next bus stop, Mr. Sherrarde.”
He jerked her hand away from the door. “I refuse to allow you to go back to wait for that fellow,” he said with a dark, bitter look. “Have you no pride?”
Ann’s lavender grey eyes 'were very wide. “And how are you going to prevent my doing so?” she challenged, the pride of which he had accused her of lacking flaming on her face and edging every word she spoke.
He pulled the starter. “Like this,” he said briefly, and stepped on the accelerator.
Ann sat father limply in her corner, her face all at once small and pinched. It was as if a cold wind had blown upon some delicate blossom, blighting it before it could come to flower.
As they came into Sunbury, he said, “Where may I drop you?”
“Somewhere near the hospital.”
“The hospital!” His face changed and his voice sharpened. “Why, Ann ... are you ill? Worse, I mean?” Her expression kept him at a fair distance.
“I have an appointment to see Doctor Lievers. It was made before I left the hospital.”
Sherrarde’s car swung towards the front of the main block, but Ann made to stop him. “Will you please put me down here and I’ll go in at this side entrance,” she said. “Nurse Elliott brought me a message from Sister to say that I’m not to wait in the out-patients’ department. Doctor Lievers is going to see me in the private wing.”
He stopped the car and opened the door for her to get out. “How are you getting back to Fountains?”
Ann raised her small chin. She was about to tell him the truth — that she would be going back by bus. And then something primitive in her that she had not known was there made her lips curve.
“I expect I shall go back on the pillion of Ralph’s motorcycle,” she smiled. “He will guess that I thumbed a lift in to Sunbury and he will be waiting for me when I’ve finished at the hospital.”
An iceberg could not have looked colder than Iain Sherrarde did then. He slammed the door of the car and drove off without a word of farewell.
Ann watched him go, wondering how she was going to present a bright, unworried face in the private wing. No one must guess how miserable she felt, how shaken and how humiliated. On her way up, she went into a cloakroom and put more color on her lips. Sister might be so occupied in disapproving of her too heavily painted mouth that she would not make any remarks about her wan face or notice that her eyes were so heavy.
She would never forgive Iain Sherrarde for all that he had said to her this afternoon. She wouldn’t stay at Fountains a day longer than she need. If Doctor Lievers suggested that she stay in hospital this afternoon, she would do so.
She found Megan in the kitchen at the end of the corridor. “Why, Ann darling,” the young nurse said brightly. “How are you keeping?” She cast a quick glance at her friend. “You look fine.”
“I am fine,” replied Ann stoutly, and told herself that the pain in her heart was purely imaginary. It couldn’t possibly be a real one. Hearts didn’t break into pieces
in the way hers felt as if it was doing.
“Sister is in her room. You’d better see her right away, pet. I don’t know whether Lievers is up here yet. He’s going to see you in Sister’s room in his tea break. That’s the sort of V.I.P. treatment you’re getting!”
“Then I’d better not keep him waiting,” Ann replied, and then forcing herself into sociability, she asked, “Did you have a good time on Tuesday?”
“Marvellous,” Megan replied smilingly. “Been doing anything much yourself?”
“Not much.”
“But of course, he’s been away, hasn’t he?” Megan was watching the milk she was heating on the stove very fixedly. After all, it was practically on the boil.
Ann stood very still. She had forgotten that Megan had guessed her pathetic little secret.
“Oh, they all come and go,” she said airily.
Megan raised a face that was all at once bright. “I’m glad to hear you say that, pet! Frank and I were terribly afraid that you might get yourself seriously involved just because you were bored and lonely.”
Ann’s smile was puzzled. “Really? But, Megan, I must go.”
She hurried away, swallowing quickly and trying to keep composed.
She knocked at the door and at the same time heard two voices. So Doctor Lievers was already here. Probably she would now be spared any of Sister’s remarks.
The doctor rose as she entered, smiled at her and told her she was looking very well. After they were seated, he began to chat, at the same time studying the file which Sister had passed over to him.
He seemed pleased when Ann told him that life was so full she never had time to ponder on the past. “That’s all to the good,” he assured her. “I rather think now that the memory of your past life will come back to you quite gradually — odd facts here and there till you’ll find that everything has suddenly grown quite clear.”
Nurse Ann Wood Page 13