The Waiting Room

by Bess Norton

  THE WAITING ROOM

  Bess Norton

  Lanna goes to work as a receptionist and housekeeper for her deceased cousins husband Dr. Puller—she finds herself drawn to him and his partner.

  CHAPTER ONE

  It is more than a year now since that night when Simon telephoned me. It was my last weekend as Junior Night Sister, before I took over a ward. I could not have foreseen, then, any of what has happened since—but even if I could, I think I would have done exactly the same, except that maybe I would have made fewer mistakes.

  It was almost midnight according to the wall clock in the central duty office when he rang. His voice came very clearly across the wires, and every word was like the snap of an icicle. He might have been speaking from the next room instead of from 100 miles away. But I still strained to hear.

  “What did you say, Simon?” I asked.

  “What did you say?” I closed my eyes and pressed the cold receiver closer to my ear.

  “She died this morning,” he repeated. Then he paused and added, “Lanna—can you come?”

  Cousin Midge ... Midge dead. I couldn’t take it in. “But what happened? How did it—”

  “A bug,” he explained briefly. “Some virus. I don’t know. They’re doing a...” As he went on talking, a small cold knot of shock formed in the middle of my chest, making it hard for me to breathe. Midge dead. Midge and I had never been all that close, emotionally. We had been poles apart, in fact. But we had done a good many things together, ever since we’d been so high, simply because we were cousins. She’d been a grade ahead of me at school, but because I saw her as a challenge I’d caught up in our last year. Hospital ... I had followed her to Allanby General in her second month there. Since then we had run very much along parallel grooves. Not because we wanted to, but because we were bracketed in people’s minds, and it came to be expected of us. If she applied for a late pass, I got one too; it was taken for granted that we wanted our annual leave together. I don’t think anyone, even Home Sister, realized how we chafed against the assumption that we were bound to be bosom friends. We even began to dislike one another because of it.

  Midge always did everything a little better than I did, no matter how hard I tried. She always had more finesse. While I scraped through my Final State she walked away with the Gold Medal and the Governor’s Award. When we tied for the anatomy prize they gave it to her, because her work was neater. And when I, adoring Simon from a discreet distance—for after all, medical registrars are a little godlike in their way—consoled myself by running around with fifth-year students, she managed to become engaged to him while I was on night duty. Later, when I went into my first Sister’s blues, she married him; and he abandoned whatever dreams of fame he may have had and settled into general practice 12 miles from Birmingham.

  Looking back on it, it seemed a lifetime of hard slogging since they’d gone. But it was only five years, I reflected. And now Midge was dead; we should never compare notes again.

  “Can you come?” Simon repeated insistently. And then I heard the low purr of the night bell behind him, and I could picture him using the extension, sitting on the edge of the bed in the square white room overlooking the wildlife reserve at Retby. “Damn!” he said tightly. “I have to go, Lanna. Phone me in the morning, will you?”

  Nobody had ever called me Lanna, until he began to. “Eileen doesn’t suit you,” he’d said, the first time he’d come to my ward, when I was doing my first senior nights. “I shall call you Alanna.” The name had slurred into Lanna after a while; and then everyone who didn’t call me “Dair” or “Nurse” had caught the habit from him and Midge.

  In the morning Matron brooded at me with uncooperative gloom written all over her gray papery face. “Surely Dr. Pullar doesn’t expect you to go right away, Sister?” She fiddled about with the pile of passes on her big desk, and chewed her long upper lip. “I do know how you feel, and I’m genuinely sorry. But it isn’t a very good time to ask, is it?”

  I felt like making the point that these things never do happen when it’s convenient, and that she had been in nursing long enough to know it. But I didn’t. Nobody ever said what they thought to Matron. She was infinitely forbidding. She must have missed a good deal through being so unapproachable—or maybe she was unapproachable because she had missed a good deal. I don’t know.”

  She resigned herself irritably, moving her shoulders about in a way that said I was being selfish and thoughtless. “Very well, Sister. As you say, you have two weeks’ vacation Wednesday. Will that do?”

  Wednesday. Four days to go. And Simon had sounded so alone. “Thank you, Matron,” I said. “I shall be grateful.” But he couldn’t be alone. At least he had an assistant and a daily housekeeper. Somehow he would have to cope.

  When I phoned him back and said all the things there had been no time to say on Saturday night, I added, “You’re not alone, are you?”

  “No.” He laughed shortly. “No, it only feels that way. I’ll manage. But you’ll come, won’t you?”

  “I can’t be there in time for the ... in time,” I said. “I can’t come until I’m relieved. But I hope to make it on Wednesday. I’ve just been given Ward Six, you see. I’ve waited a long time for it.”

  Home Sister was waiting outside the telephone booth when I shut the door behind me. I could see, just looking at her, that the news had reached her already. She’d mothered the pair of us, Midge and me, ever since we’d been lambs.

  “My dear,” she murmured, “I’m so sorry! There isn’t anything I can do, is there?”

  I shook my head. “No, not a thing. Unless you can make sure Matron does relieve me next week.” I tried to smile. “I don’t think she’s wildly enthusiastic.”

  “No, I don’t suppose she is, having just installed you in Six. But there—Mary Bartlett will be back from her vacation on Tuesday. She could take over, perhaps. I know Matron planned to send her down to O.P.—but she’d be extra there for at least a month, until Conway leaves.” She patted my shoulder. “I’ll pull what wires I can,”

  I hoped she would. If Simon needed me at last ... then nothing, nothing, must stand in my way. I had known that as soon as I heard his voice on the telephone. As far as I was concerned, nothing had changed. Not that he had ever known, or ever would, if I could help it.

  Simon met my train at Snow Hill Station. He had his dark blue sedan parked in the station yard. “I managed to snatch half an hour,” he said. “Then I have to get back to my rounds.”

  He looked tired, and there were lines around his mouth that hadn’t been there at Christmas.

  “Busy?” I asked him.

  “So-so. No epidemics at the moment, thank heaven. A month ago it was terrible. Midge and I ... Midge and I both had flu, too.”

  Midge. All the way from London I had kept the thought of her pigeonholed in my mind, waiting until I could take it out and look at it quietly, by myself. I didn’t want to think about her now with Simon sitting there listening to my brain ticking. He had always been able to do that. That was why I had never understood why—I turned to him sharply. “Simon, what did they say? The postmortem, I mean.” It shot out before I could prevent it. It was the last thing I wanted to talk about.

  “Every indication of a virus invasion. Nothing much, they said. One of those things.” He kept his eyes on the traffic as we swung into Aston Road and headed for Retby. “Don’t let’s—”

  “All right.” I put my hand on his arm; it was stiff and his knuckles were white on the wheel. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to ask, really.”

  All the way back, he didn’t say any more; but his face looked exhausted in a grim, controlled kind of way. And when we reached the house he still didn’t relax. He didn’t even get out of th
e car. “Mrs. Cox is there,” he told me. “She probably has the kettle on, if I know her. I’ll be in around five or so.” Then, for the first time, he managed a smile. His eyes shone as blue as ever. “It’s good you’re here, Lanna.” Then he let in the clutch and ripped straight out of the drive, and I heard him accelerating along Retby Lane.

  The housekeeper opened the door before I reached the top step. “Heard the car,” she explained. “Here, give me your bag, Miss.” I followed her into the sitting room, and when she had dumped my suitcase at the bottom of the stairs, she said bluntly, “What do you think about it, Miss?”

  “Think?” I said stupidly. “I—I haven’t taken it in, yet, Mrs. Cox.”

  “Nor have I.” She trotted into the kitchen and came back with the tea-tray. “Nor have I. Friday she was as right as you or me, and Saturday she was gone.” She shook her head over the tea as she poured, and her wispy front hair fluttered above her narrow, freckled forehead. “And her only 25. Don’t seem right, does it?”

  I began to drink the tea, wondering what she was waiting for. “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll be all right, if you want to get on with something. I suppose I’m in the blue room again?”

  “Yes, that’s right, Miss.” She leaned closer. “Mind, something had to happen.”

  I looked up. I was startled by the tone of her voice. “What do you mean, Mrs. Cox?”

  “No. Least said, soonest mended, Miss.” She went to the door. “I’ll be going, if you can manage. The phone book’s by the telephone. And tea’s ready on a tray and the supper’s in the fridge. There’s just the telephone to answer, if you don’t mind.”

  She scuttled down the drive a few moments later, with her plastic shopping bag.

  Something had to happen. I knew I ought to have made her tell me what she meant. Maybe Simon would explain. Not that I could ask him. There were a great many things I could have said to Simon—but that wasn’t one of them.

  It began to rain heavily while I was unpacking, and I ran around the upstairs rooms closing the windows. The assistant’s room was as tidy as the rest, and it was only as I moved a chair, holding an unfamiliar tweed jacket, away from the window, that I remembered I had not met the current man. Bill Corey had left shortly after Christmas, and I didn’t even know the name of his successor. I flipped open one of his books: Alan Murray, U.C.H., told me little enough. I pushed it back into the stack on the mantelpiece. No, doubt I would meet him at tea time.

  The telephone rang, and I ran across to the master bedroom to answer from the extension. But the extension wasn’t there any more, only a dangling wire where it should have been beside the double bed. And the bed wasn’t made up. I ran down to take the call in the hall and managed to sort out the fact that Alfie Bridger had a rash and would the doctor please call. “Yes," I said, “the doctor will call. What address is it?” But the incoherent woman had hung up. I wrote on the pad: “Alfie Bridger—rash—please call,” and went back upstairs to finish the windows. There was only one room I hadn’t visited—the small room at the end of the corridor, looking onto the garden.

  So that was where the extension had been transferred. I stood at the door and looked curiously around the little room. Not only the telephone extension, but an additional night bell had been fitted there. And the wardrobe was full of Simon’s clothes. He seemed to have made a good many changes in the four days since Midge’s death. There was something that didn’t quite ring true ... but I couldn’t place it.

  Alan Murray’s door was open as I passed on my way downstairs. “Mrs. Cox,” said a deep voice, “I wish to high heaven you’d leave my things where I put them! What’ve you been up to? Just because that wretched girl’s coming, you—” Something told him I was there, and he swung around to face me. “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I thought you were Mrs. Cox.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m Lanna Dair. Midge’s cousin, you know. You’re Dr. Murray?”

  Blushing, he put out a big hand that crushed mine. “Call me Alan,” he suggested. “People do.”

  He had a square, rugged face, and rough dark hair, and I liked him at once. Besides, he had one of those voices that are so deep that they reverberate like a church organ, and extremely nice teeth biting on an empty pipe. He removed the pipe and thrust it awkwardly into his jacket pocket, then stood there looking at me.

  To ease the silence I said, “I see Simon’s moved into the gray room. I wonder whether—”

  “Moved?” He closed the door behind us, and together we walked along the landing. “You mean the end room? Oh, he hasn’t moved. He’s always slept there.” Then he turned to look at me. “Or hasn’t he?”

  I shook my head. “Of course not. At Christmas he—” I stopped. It wasn’t his business, or mine. He didn’t say any more either, and he rattled down behind me into the hall whistling softly to himself in an embarrassed kind of way.

  The telephone rang again. “Will you?” he asked me. “Otherwise I may get entangled in a long conversation—”

  I picked up the receiver. “Yes,” I said. “Yes, there’s surgery at six. Yes.” He was still there when I replaced the receiver. “Only somebody asking if there was surgery tonight,” I told him. “Somebody named Mrs. Tarsh.”

  He grimaced. “Ma Tarsh? Good job you did answer. She only calls and asks questions like that in the hope of waylaying me for a nice cosy chat. I’m too polite to put the thing down on her. Simon’s much more ruthless—he just says ‘yes, yes’ and slams it down again. She’s a menace.”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Boredom, mostly. Too much money and not enough to do. That’s the difference here, from hospital work, I find. Such a lot of people you can’t tie neat diagnostic labels on. People who are never really ill—and never in top form either. You can call it ‘debility,’ but half the time it’s boredom and frustration. I reckon all G.P.’s ought to be trained psychiatrists. They need to be!”

  He left, and I stood at the door and watched him pour himself into his small sports car at the gate. It looked dreadful and sounded worse, but it went. He was hardly out of the shell of studentship, I decided. In a year or two he would settle for a sober dark sedan and take to smoking cigarettes between calls instead of a pipe. He would tidy his hair and lose most of his youthful charm. It seemed a pity.

  Before Simon came in again, at half past five, I had six more telephone calls. “I feel like a junior again,” I told him. “I’ve done nothing but answer the phone.”

  “Anything important?” He took the cup I offered him and sank into the corner of the settee. “Any urgent calls?”

  “No. Mostly people asking what surgery hours were, and two wanting you to leave out prescriptions for them to pick up. They’re on the pad. And Alfie Bridger has a rash.”

  “I’m not surprised. Both his brothers have measles! Didn’t they tell you that?”

  “Not a word. His mother made it sound like some quite unexpected visitation!”

  Simon smiled faintly. He still looked terribly tired. And in the light from the table lamp I’d lit against the bleak dusk I saw something else: the almost black hair at his temples had new metallic streaks.

  I said carefully, “Simon, haven’t you been sleeping well lately?”

  “Not terribly well, no. Why?”

  “I noticed you’d changed rooms. I was looking for the extension to answer the phone, and—”

  He put his cup down in its saucer with a sudden little clatter and turned to face me. But then Alan Murray came in, and he bit back what he had been going to say.

  I said to Simon, “We’ve met already. Alan thought I was Mrs. Cox.”

  “And I’ve put her wise about Ma Tarsh,” Alan mentioned. “That woman’s been on the phone again already. Only caught me this morning, after surgery, too.” He sat down and reached for his tea. “Must be my fatal charm. She thinks I’m like Richard Greene or something.”

  Simon managed to raise a thin smile. “Wait till she sees Lanna. She’ll be talking in
terms of Monroe and Bardot.”

  “Not my type,” I protested. “Yvonne Mitchell’s nearer the mark. Mature gamine, that’s me. It was—” I stopped. There was no need to remind Simon that Midge had had twice my looks. Even when we were children she had captured attention with her doll-like coloring, whereas I had been awkward and swarthy and had suffered abominably from freckles until I was at least 20.

  “Yvonne Mitchell is quite my favorite woman,” Alan was saying. “I prefer my women intelligent, I must say. Which makes Ma Tarsh the woman least likely to succeed with me.” He looked across at Simon. “I’ll take surgery if you like. Expect you’ve lots of talking to do. You can swop with me on Friday, in return.”

  “I was wondering if I dare suggest it! Thanks, Alan. And I’ll run down to Bridger’s later.”

  Simon stood up and helped me collect the crockery onto the tray. “That’s a nice guy,” he said. “Trouble is, he’s not staying.”

  “Oh?” I carried the tray through to the kitchen, Simon on my heels. “How’s that?”

  “He’s just marking time with me—there’s a job waiting for him with Murray planes.”

  I frowned. “The airlines people, you mean. Oh! I see—Murray planes! Is that—?”

  “His father.” Simon nodded. “Nice little airport job. Lots of money, and regular office hours. Very nice.”

  “Don’t give me that!” I told him. “You wouldn’t swop.”

  “I certainly wouldn’t! I like to have time to get to know the patients. That’s where hospital work falls down for me. They come, they go, and you never hear half the story ... I like to see it shaping under my hands, if you know what I mean.” He took my elbow. “Lanna—don’t begin the dishes yet. Come and sit down. I want to talk to you.”

  But when we got back to the settee he didn’t seem to know where to begin. I tried to help him out. “I can only stay a few days,” I warned him. “What do you want me to do while I’m here?”