by Isobel Chace
It was a long time since anyone but Sara had done any of her washing and she felt some qualms about turning it over to anyone else, but the thought of clean and beautifully ironed uniforms appearing every day overcame her scruples. She leaned back against her pillows and felt deliciously spoilt.
‘You must tell me what you want me to do in the house,’ she said carefully. ‘I don’t want to take over all your favourite jobs.’
Felicity looked at her in some surprise.
‘The Africans do all that sort of thing,’ she said. ‘And anyway, even if they didn’t, you’d find a day’s nursing in this heat more than enough for you!’ She gave one of her slow, attractive smiles. ‘It was nice of you to offer, though. I expect you were terribly well brought up and think we’re quite frightfully slapdash!’
Sara, who had had her mind’s eye on the sitting-room, coloured a little.
‘Of course not!’ she denied quickly, but Felicity only laughed at her.
‘I’ll take the cups out,’ she said rather abruptly, and disappeared out of the door, slamming it shut with a push from her foot.
Sara smiled to herself. She was going to like Felicity, she thought. It had been kind of the girl to bring her some tea.
Mrs. Wayne announced that she was ready to meet Sara at six o’clock.
‘Bring her in just as she is, dear,’ she told her daughter. ‘I want to see her before she gets herself ready for dinner. I know what you girls are! You can be quite plain during the day, and then on goes the war-paint and you look quite different! I want to see Sara au naturel — after all, that’s how he will be seeing her!’
Felicity didn’t have to ask who ‘he’ was, she thought she could probably guess. She was accustomed to her mother’s endless scheming for her own ends, and, because she had a mild distaste for getting her own way through such means, preferred to keep aloof from her machinations as far as that was possible.
Sara was surprised to find that her aunt was a pretty woman. No longer overcome by pretended slumber, Mrs. Wayne had a subtle, girlish charm that she found herself responding to almost in spite of herself.
‘You’re pretty enough!’ Mrs. Wayne told her. ‘I like the way you do your hair too. Do you bleach it?’
Sara shook her head.
‘I inherited it, I think,’ she said. She began to think that everyone in Tanzania was given to making these personal remarks.
Mrs. Wayne looked a little like a satisfied cat. There was something rather feline about all her movements in spite of her plumpness.
‘That’s good. He doesn’t go for the synthetic at all, you know,’ she giggled childishly, ‘especially not synthetic ropes! But then that’s understandable, isn’t it?’
Sara wondered whether she was referring to Matt.
‘I don’t suppose he’ll have time to notice me,’ she said, and hoped that the remark didn’t sound falsely modest.
‘Oh, he’ll notice you!’ Mrs. Wayne assured her. ‘As soon as I found that old photograph of you and saw how fair you were I thought of him!’
Somehow Sara didn’t think her aunt was as naive as she sounded. She looked at her rather doubtfully.
‘I don’t quite know what you’re planning, Aunt Laura,’ she said, ‘but I’ve come out to work, not for any other reason.’
‘Of course not, dear! Nobody thought that you had! And please don’t call me aunt, it makes me feel so old. And I’m not your aunt really, I just happened to marry your uncle. Call me Laura. Everybody does!’
That was another kittenish little untruth. Both Matt and his mother had referred to her strictly as Mrs. Wayne.
‘Pour Sara out a sherry, Felicity,’ Laura Wayne said suddenly.
Felicity did so, her hands shaking slightly. She spilt it slightly as she carried it over to Sara and apologized.
‘I think I heard a car, Mother,’ she said.
Mrs. Wayne sat up straight and peered out of the window. She too looked a little nervous.
‘It’s Matt, I think,’ she said.
There was a silence as the car came up the long drive.
‘I — I think I’ll go and change,’ Felicity said hurriedly. She looked quickly round the room, half-smiled at Sara and vanished.
‘She’s always been terribly shy!’ Mrs. Wayne said automatically. Sara had the feeling that she had always said that about Felicity. But Felicity hadn’t seemed at all shy with her. Still, it could be different where Matt was concerned. Girls often behaved quite differently with the opposite sex.
The car vanished round the side of the house and they could hear footsteps on the verandah.
‘Just called in to tell you I would be sleeping down here, Mrs. Wayne,’ a voice began in the doorway. It was Matt all right. He stood stock still in the doorway and stared at Sara.
‘Who are you?’ he asked.
Sara found herself staring back. Surely, she thought, he must know who I am!
‘This is my niece, Sara,’ she heard Mrs. Wayne saying in the background.
‘How do you do?’ she said automatically.
She watched him go slowly white with temper and in spite of herself began to feel afraid.
‘Did you say your niece?’ he asked Mrs. Wayne.
‘Yes,’ Mrs. Wayne agreed, her eyes, always a little cold, looking a little dangerous as well. ‘She travelled up in the same train as you did.’
‘She did what?’ Matt asked quietly.
Sara looked anxiously from one to the other of them.
‘I told your mother she was coming while you were away,’ Mrs. Wayne continued. ‘She’s going to act as the other nurse that you needed. Mrs. Halifax was kind enough to suggest it, and it does give us all a little more reason for staying on here in this house, doesn’t it?’
Matt turned his back on her, quite deliberately. It was a snub that Mrs. Wayne wouldn’t forget in a hurry, Sara thought. She met Matt’s eyes as calmly as she could, and was astonished to see that they were as blue as her own in spite of his dark colouring.
‘It seems that you have been exceptionally badly treated, Miss Wayne,’ he said quietly. ‘Had I known that you were coming, I should have made arrangements for someone to meet you at Dar-es-Salaam. Women do not customarily travel on our trains alone! It’s true that Mrs. Wayne mentioned you to my mother as a nurse, but naturally she thought that all arrangements for your passage would have to be made, and that can be rather difficult at this time of year. We had no idea that you were on the point of arrival!’
There was an agitated little silence.
‘I — I thought it had all been agreed!’ Sara whispered. ‘There was no one at Dar-es-Salaam, it’s true, but I thought perhaps that was usual. I sent a telegram saying what train I was catching.’
‘It is not at all “usual”, Miss Wayne!’ For a moment she thought she saw a glimmer of humour in his eyes. He looked her up and down as though she was something that he was buying. ‘I suppose you are a nurse?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’ she said. She wondered almost desperately why she didn’t tell him all about her qualifications, but somehow she could not.
‘Well, that’s one thing we can soon find out! You can start a month’s trial at the hospital tomorrow, but you must understand that if you’re not up to our standards here, no consideration for your uncle’s family will make me keep you on!’
Sara’s head went up. ‘Our standards’ indeed!
‘I shouldn’t want to be kept on under those circumstances,’ she said proudly.
He nodded curtly.
‘Good! I’ll see about your work permit.’
He walked calmly out of the room without bothering to glance at her aunt. Sara looked at her a little nervously. She still wasn’t sure exactly what had gone wrong. Her aunt looked more pleased with herself than ever.
‘I knew he wouldn’t be really angry once he’d seen you!’ she said.
CHAPTER TWO
‘Are you still frightfully angry?’ Felicity asked across the breakfast table.<
br />
Sara smiled at her over the blue and white striped crockery.
‘Not angry exactly, but it does put me in rather a false position, doesn’t it? You see, I have the feeling that the job is being made for me, and much as I want to stay in Tanzania, I prefer to work for my livings really work!’
Felicity blinked at her.
‘Oh, you will!’ she assured her. ‘Matt should have been born somewhere in the Southern States of America. I can just see him flicking his whip and watching all the slaves jump to it! Besides, he really did need another nurse. Of course, he might have got away with paying a local nurse less, but I don’t suppose he’ll really quibble so long as you’re efficient.’ She poured Sara out another cup of tea, her lips twitching with amusement. ‘Any other girl,’ she remarked, ‘would have been as mad as a hatter at being left to travel up by train, but you don’t seem to care about that part of it at all!’
‘Well, why should I?’ Sara demanded. ‘Back at home we still use them, so naturally I thought you would out here too!’
‘We do sometimes, but only if we have to. Would you like me to run you over to the hospital? I collected the jeep for you yesterday.’
Sara’s heart sank a little.
‘A jeep?’ she repeated.
‘Yes. The genuine article, left-hand drive, the lot! It went right through the desert campaign in the war, and just occasionally shows her age, but when she is going, she goes like a bomb!’ Felicity pushed back her chair and stood up stretching. ‘By the way,’ she drawled, ‘did anyone tell you that you look very fetching in that uniform of yours?’
Rather to her annoyance, Sara found herself blushing. There was a dry undertone to all Felicity’s remarks, as though she found the whole thing rather amusing. Sara wondered whether she really was as cynical as she made out, or whether it was just a pose she had found useful to adopt.
They hurried out to the waiting jeep, which looked quite monstrous to Sara, sitting in the middle of the drive with its battered hood all cock-eyed.
‘Am I really expected to drive that?’ she asked a little hollowly.
‘Sure. Why not? You might have to go anywhere on the estate at a moment’s notice. An ordinary car would stick in the dust or get bogged down or something, but this little wonder ploughs its way over anything. You can have four-wheeled drive if the going gets really bad!’
Sara glanced down at the heavy pedals and the solid-looking accelerator. She wished earnestly that she had paid more attention to the medical student who had taken her out so often in his M.G. sports model. She couldn’t remember that it had looked anything like this!
‘Do you want to drive?’ Felicity asked.
Sara shook her head.
‘Not this morning,’ she said firmly. This afternoon, she vowed to herself, she would really go into the whole business of getting the thing to move, but not now! Now, she had to admit, she was scared stiff of it.
She sat down timidly on the passenger seat and held on to anything that she could lay her hands on while Felicity charged down the drive at full speed. Less than three shaken minutes later, they had arrived at the hospital.
In spite of the mode of her arrival, Sara cast a quick professional eye over the building, and was pleased with what she could see. It was low-built and shaded by trees. True, the roofing was corrugated iron, which could be terribly hot, but it was newly painted and obviously well kept. Sara sighed with relief. At least her job was not looked on as an unimportant etcetera to the workings of the estate, for someone had taken a great deal of trouble over the siting of the hospital. It was convenient for almost any part of the great sprawling miles of sisal.
As if by some prearranged signal, Matt strode out of the hospital at the very moment of their arrival. Felicity greeted him with a gay wave of the hand, but Sara was overcome by sudden embarrassment, remembering all too vividly her harassed feelings of the evening before when he had said, ‘I suppose you are a nurse?’
The Matt of this morning was no less difficult in his approach. He took in her neat uniform and polished shoes with a grunt which might have meant anything, and then turned to Felicity.
‘The fact that Nurse Wayne is your cousin doesn’t mean that you can delay her on her way to work,’ he said coldly, causing Sara to take a quick glance down at her watch. She was relieved to see that there was still one minute to go to half past eight. This then was not a scold but a warning.
‘Oh, don’t be stuffy, Matt,’ Felicity said carelessly. ‘Sara didn’t altogether like the look of the jeep, so I drove her down.’
‘Haven’t you ever driven before with a left-hand drive?’ he asked, and this time his lips definitely twitched with amusement.
‘No,’ Sara admitted.
‘Well, drive her round to the dispensary door now,’ he commanded. ‘You can’t come to much harm in those few yards.’
Sara swallowed hard. Not for anything would she have admitted that she had never driven a car in her life before. Driving might very well prove to be a major part of her work. Surely, she thought, it couldn’t be so very difficult to make the thing go.
Anxiously she climbed into the driver’s seat, and pressed the self-starter with her right toe. To her relief the engine sprang into life. That was something anyway. She pressed her left foot down on to the clutch and pushed the gear lever wildly into the first gear she could find. There was a grinding sound and the engine stalled.
‘Have you ever driven before, Nurse?’ Matt asked almost gently.
Sara flushed.
‘N-no, Mr. Halifax,’ she admitted. ‘But I’ll learn! It can’t be so very difficult, and I’ve driven in cars a lot which should help, and—’
Now, she thought, she had handed it to him on a plate. There was no earthly reason why he should employ her when she couldn’t carry out her full duties properly until she had mastered that hateful jeep! Why couldn’t it have gone for her, just that once?
He gave her a grave look that brought the colour racing up into her cheeks again.
‘It would certainly be better if you learned something of the art before you mash those gears around any more,’ he said. ‘Leave it there, Nurse, and I’ll take you in and introduce you to the rest of the staff.’
So she hadn’t been sacked — yet! She exchanged glances with Felicity, who gave her one of her sudden, slow smiles, and hastily followed her employer into the building.
Inside, the hospital was everything that Sara could have desired. The cream-coloured walls were clean without seeming too clinical, and the equipment was almost lavish for the size of the wards. Sara’s heart gave a little skip of excitement as she noted the careful planning. Two wards, with the linen cupboard between them; a small operating theatre for emergencies; a room for the outpatients leading off the dispensary; and three small offices, one for each member of the staff.
‘It’s marvellous!’ Sara exclaimed. ‘I had no idea that it would be anything like this!’
Matt gave her a rather reluctant smile.
‘We like our staff to be comfortable,’ he said. ‘It can be very difficult working in heat like we have here, and I find that plenty of room and privacy helps a great deal.’
Sara didn’t doubt it for a moment, but she couldn’t help wishing that some of the nurses who had shared her life in the large London hospital where she had done her training could have seen her now!
Matt knocked on the first of the three doors of the offices and walked in. ‘Morning, Cengupta,’ he said in more friendly tones than any Sara had yet heard from him. ‘I’ve brought you your new nurse. Mrs. Wayne got her out here early to surprise us, so, for the time being at least, you’ll have to make the best of her.’
Sara found herself face to face with an Indian, whose soft brown eyes met hers with a faint smile of welcome. He joined his hands together and bowed slightly and then shook her warmly by the hand.
‘Dr. Cengupta, Nurse Wayne,’ Matt introduced them.
‘How do you do, sir,’ Sara gre
eted him. She caught the sardonic smile on Matt’s face and was suddenly amused. So he had thought that she might baulk at working under an Indian! Well, she didn’t mind in the least! In fact she rather liked his elegant courtesy and his flashing smile.
But Matt still had one more hurdle for her to jump.
‘Is Nurse Lucy here yet?’ he asked.
Dr. Cengupta nodded.
‘Nurse!’ he called out.
‘Yessir,’ came back the answer. ‘You want me?’
She came shyly to the door of the doctor’s office and smiled at everyone in turn, her black face contrasting vividly with her wonderfully even teeth.
‘Nurse Lucy Mgweri,’ Matt said slyly.
Sara found herself returning Nurse Lucy’s generous smile. She went over to the doorway and shook hands with her. Her palms, she noticed, were almost as pale as Sara’s own, in spite of the darkness of the rest of her skin.
‘You is the new nurse?’ Lucy asked.
Sara nodded.
‘Well, you sure is nice to look at! Dr. Cengupta, sir, he say we need new face round here—’ she broke off and smiled again — ‘but we have only one patient. He get pretty good nursing, yes?’
Sara joined in the general laughter, though secretly she was wondering whether Lucy meant that she really was nice to look at, or whether it was just that she was pleased to see another nurse on the estate.
Matt gave her a cursory glance as though he were wondering very much the same thing and then turned to the doctor.
‘Nurse Wayne must have a driver if she’s called out anywhere,’ he said curtly, ‘until she learns how to drive. Gabriel is probably the safest and he’s working near at hand for the next day or so. Is there anything else?’
Dr. Cengupta shook his handsome head and escorted Matt to the doorway.
‘It will be a great pleasure to work with Nurse Wayne,’ he said courteously. ‘I must thank you for finding us a nurse so quickly.’
Matt grinned.
‘You don’t want to thank me,’ he said dryly, ‘you want to thank Mrs. Wayne!’