by Bess Norton
“They’re not alone in that. But the time comes when we all wake up to the fact that all the wealthy female patients are reserved for ear, nose, and throat surgeons. I wonder why?”
At a loss, I shrugged. “I can’t imagine. Only that ‘once an ear, nose, and throat patient, always an ear, nose, and throat patient.’ So anyone who wanted to pursue an E.N.T. man seriously would have to have plenty of money to do it, I suppose. Is that a good theory?”
“Could be. Or that high living plays hell with the sinuses.” He frowned. “In view of—I mean, how do you feel about untold wealth and all that? Do you think it’s a good thing to have? Or are you all for the simple joys, as it were?”
I thought about that. “Simple joys, in theory. But I suppose a little ready cash does make them rather more enjoyable. I could manage on a shoestring if I had to, let’s say, only I’d rather not. All the same, it wouldn’t appeal to me much to be loaded.” I looked at him curiously because he sounded more serious than he had begun to be. “Why?”
“I just wondered ... There’s the phone again.” He got up to answer it himself.
I heard him say, “Oh? Oh dear. Was she? All right, I’ll come along right away.” He grimaced at me when he clattered back. “Ma Tarsh. Johnson says he’s been out shopping, and when he came back she was flat out on the carpet, beside the—” He stopped. “Oh, lord!”
“I know,” I said. I felt dreadful. “Beside the phone? I feel bad enough. Don’t say another word.”
“You’re right. Tell Simon where I am, will you, if he comes in.” It seemed hours before Alan returned. Actually it couldn’t have been much more than 29 minutes, because the teapot was still hot. “All right,” he nodded. “She’ll do. One of her spasms. We expect them.” He pushed me down to the settee again. “She gets a Stokes-Adams sort of thing now and again. Even if she had got through, it wouldn’t have made any difference.”
“Of course it would! She must have been afraid...”
“Well, maybe you can salve your conscience by calling on her tomorrow. But don’t, for Pete’s sake, develop a thing about the patients, or you’ll spend all your time visiting them. I’ve asked Nurse Green to go in and tuck her up night and morning.”
“But she doesn’t like her! Alan, I’d have gone.”
“Yes, well, you won’t. You’ll stay here and minister to the boss when he gets in, instead. Or to me.” He put one arm out and pulled me close to him. “I shall have to repeat my treatment,” he said shakily, “if you don’t stop looking like that.”
I guess I didn’t stop looking like that, because he did repeat the treatment. It was very comforting, but it meant nothing otherwise. His firm, warm lips on mine had no effect whatever, compared with Simon’s light tentative touch. “You’re wasting your time,” I told him. “I don’t know why you bother.” I borrowed his handkerchief again and blew my nose, hard. “There are plenty of nice—”
“Plenty of nice girls, yes. Only they don’t happen to be needing my services at the moment.” He smoothed back my hair from my face. “It may sound a little odd, but one of the reasons I took up medicine in the first place was that I rather enjoy the feeling that I’m doing somebody good...” He kissed me again, very gently. “Am I?”
“Not really.” I pushed him farther away. “But it was sweet of you to try—if your motives were altruistic.”
He went over to the fireplace to tap out his pipe. “Not entirely. Despite all the blood-donoring I’ve done, I do still have a little blood in my veins.”
Simon was very quiet when he came in.
“On your feet, Lanna,” Alan told me. “Nothing like fresh tea for reviving the spirit.”
As I went out to the kitchen I heard him say, “So Bartleby didn’t hold out a lot of hope?”
“No,” Simon said. “Not a lot. Oh well, I’m not going to let it make any difference. I haven’t said anything—” The door clicked shut, and I didn’t hear any more.
On Monday morning Nurse Green called in. “You’re staying, I hear?” she said.
“Well, I’ve written to Allanby to see if they’ll release me. Maybe I’ll have to work out three months’ notice.”
“Oh, I don’t suppose they’ll insist. I didn’t give so much as a week’s notice when I walked out of my old hospital.”
“How come?”
“Well, I had one of those sudden brainstorms, you know. Never seemed to get my cuffs or do a thing for the patients. I was turning into a glorified clerk, one way and another—diet sheets, inventory returns and all the rest of it. So I cut out. The idiotic thing was that only a month afterward they installed ward secretaries everywhere.”
“I suppose you wished you’d waited?”
“No.” She leaned back. “I’ve never regretted it. I like the district. By the way, Ma Tarsh is a holy terror this morning.”
“How is she?”
“Oh, middling. But it seems she’s planned to go off to the Leamington Spa tomorrow. She always ‘takes the waters’ in the spring, you know. And I’ve told her she’s not fit.”
I smiled. “Who’ll win?”
“She will, of course. She always does. She’ll go! One of these days she’ll go too far.”
“Who will?” Simon stood at the door, wearing his overcoat. “I’m off now, Lanna.”
“Mrs. Tarsh is proposing to go to Leamington tomorrow,” I said. “Can’t you stop her?”
“Can I stop a tank! Let her go—after all, if her moment comes, it doesn’t really much matter where, does it? She may just as well enjoy herself. She knows how she feels better than I do. I’ve long ago given up trying to control her.”
Green got to her feet. “There speaks a sensible man. You can’t push these old folks around beyond a certain limit. I must go.” She bustled out.
Simon lingered for a moment. “Has Alan been in for his coffee yet?”
“No. He went to the hospital first. Did you want him?”
“He has some news for you. I don’t know if you’ll like it. He’ll tell you.” He went out quickly and Mrs. Cox came in.
“There’s still some coffee left,” I told her. “If you want some.”
“No, Miss. I’m off it. Gives me a headache. I’ll make myself a cup of tea, if you don’t mind.” She looked after Simon. “The doctor doesn’t look well, does he? Was he out in the night?”
“I don’t know. I can’t hear the night bell from my room. He may have been.” I followed my own train of thought. “I wish he’d go back into the big master bedroom—I’m sure he’d be more comfortable. It’s a lovely room.”
She looked back over her shoulder from the stove. “Talking about having it fixed up, isn’t he, Miss?”
“Is he?”
“Well, he had Jack Cassidy in surgery this morning, and when he let him out of the consulting room I heard him say something about ‘come up and look at that bedroom.’ It wouldn’t be the blue room, nor the gray room. And he wouldn’t shift Dr. Murray out of his to have it done. So he must’ve meant the big room, mustn’t he? I mean, they’ve never used the attics.” She sniffed. “All fitted up as nurseries, everything there. But of course, she had no intention...” She warmed the pot and tipped tea into it. “Blimey, I wonder what my old man’d say if I—”
“You’d better stop, Mrs. Cox,” I said dangerously. “You’d better stop before you say something you shouldn’t.”
She goggled at me. “There! I keep forgetting. I’m sorry, Miss. But—well, it isn’t natural, is it, never sharing a bedroom?”
“Mrs. Cox!”
I wanted to scream. I didn’t want to know. And I didn’t know how to shut my ears. Swinging out of the doorway, I cannoned into Alan.
“Oh—Alan, I’m sorry. I was just wild.” I looked up at him. “Simon says you have news. What is it?”
“Yes. I greet it with very mixed feelings, I’m afraid. The job’s cropped up.”
“The job? Oh, at the airport?”
“That’s the one. I wanted it, you k
now. I really did. But now it’s lost its charm for me. I don’t want to go one bit.”
“Oh, Alan, I shall miss you! When must you go?”
“March tenth, I fear. If Simon can get a replacement.”
I blinked. “But that’s—that’s this week!”
“Sad, but true. This Thursday. We must throw a party before I go.”
Drearily, I gave him his coffee. I hadn’t realized how much I was going to miss him, and I was surprised at myself. “You won’t be so far away. You’ll come and see us, won’t you?”
“What do you think?”
I glanced over my shoulder. Mrs. Cox had gone away again. “There’s one thing you might do before you go. That is—if you have any influence whatever with Coxy.”
“Sure. I can wind her around my little finger.”
“Well, she will keep trying to give me all the details of Midge and Simon’s private life. I wish you’d make it clear to her that she mustn’t do that. I know I ought to tell her off myself, but she just won’t listen.”
“Will do.” He put down his cup and hesitated. “But you may as well realize that it’s pretty common knowledge. I did try to tell you before. It was no sort of marriage. That was the way she wanted it. Right from the start. Better I should tell you than have you hear it somewhere else.” He put his hands out to steady me. “I’m sorry. But that’s how it is. I think Simon went through hell.”
I sat down quickly on the chair behind me. “I didn’t know,” I said stupidly. “I never had any idea.” My poor Simon, I thought. And when he had tried to tell me I had cut him short. “I hadn’t any idea, Alan.”
“No ... well, why should you?” He shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other. “Sorry it had to be me, but—”
“I’m glad it was. I’m grateful to you, Alan. I understand now. Poor Simon!”
CHAPTER FOUR
We arranged Alan’s party for Tuesday evening. Simon asked, “Who shall we invite?”
“I don’t know anyone,” I told him. “Unless you ask Nurse Green. I suppose we could—”
“Don’t worry—she’ll come. If her mums will let her. Anyone else you’ve a fancy for?”
I shook my head. “It’s your party, Simon. Yours and Alan’s. Who does he want?”
“Oh—let’s stop trying to make a list. Just the four of us, eh?”
Mrs. Cox was relieved when we told her. “Four’s enough,” she declared. “Putting their glasses all over the piano and cigarette ends on the mantelpiece. Some people have no idea. Makes you wonder what sort of homes they come from, some of ‘em.”
We managed to usher the last patient out of the waiting room by a quarter past seven, and Green arrived at half past, in an emerald jersey dress under her uniform coat. Simon fished out sherry and beer from somewhere, and I had made some canapés during the afternoon. We gathered around the big fire Alan had built. But it was a vain hope—the first call came at a quarter to eight, and Simon vanished to attend a patient six miles away.
“Thank heaven she booked a private nurse,” Green said. “That lets me out. I was offended at the time—but not now.” She held out her glass to be refilled. “If one of mine dares to start anything tonight, I’ll slay her. I gave ‘em all fair warning to relax and think beautiful thoughts if they felt in the least queasy.”
Alan grimaced. “I wish I had your faith. Be nice if we could declare a moratorium on road accidents, the same way. I always seem to get the motorbike maniacs. Cross your fingers, Lanna!”
I crossed them, and so did Green. But it didn’t help. By half past eight Alan had gone, too. Only not to a road accident. This time Mrs. Bridger’s Norman had “something happen to his back, falling down the stairs.”
“Those Bridgers!” Green said. “Never a dull moment. If it isn’t Alfie with a rash or Jesse with his carbuncles, it’s the old man’s bronchitis or Gran’s arthritis.”
“Marvelous how nothing ever happens to Mum,” I remarked.
Green laughed. “Have you seen her? It’s all happened already. Poor little soul. She’s had 14 kids in 13 years—and she looks it.”
“Your job must rather put you off getting married yourself, doesn’t it?”
“Not a bit. Lord, I’m hardly likely to marry a specimen like Norman Bridger, I hope. Scarcely my type.”
The sherry must have made me reckless. I said, “Who is your type? Tony Brandon?”
Her face changed at once. “I suppose someone told you? Well, you know why that fell through, by now.” She stubbed out her cigarette and lit another straightaway. “Or don’t you?”
“Not really. But you don’t have to tell me.”
“Just how fond were you of Midge? I mean, we’re alone here together, so let’s just cut out the conventional politeness for once. Were you very close?”
I shrugged and looked at my glass. “Not really. We didn’t see eye to eye all that often. Not after she—”
“Helped herself to your boyfriend? Then you know how I felt. She never felt the message unless the fellow was tied up with someone else. Then she wanted him, of course. I wonder just what would have happened if anyone had tried to take her man away!”
It was hard to get the words out, but I had to. “And did anyone?”
“Oddly enough, no. Simon isn’t the type. If he had been he might have been able to shake some sense into her with a spot of tit for tat. But he never did. And of course it was so blatant with poor Bill Corey that Bill ran out on her. He couldn’t take it He was a nice lad.” She looked at me steadily. “Am I saying too much?”
“Much too much,” I told her. “But it doesn’t matter. There isn’t any more, is there? I mean, if there’s anything worse, and I ought to know, you’d better say it now.”
“There isn’t. Simon might elaborate. But he’s been so darned noble for so long that it’s a habit, I dare say.”
I had to know. “Green, you were with her. What did she say, about me?” I implored her with my eyes. “To Simon, I mean.”
She shook her head at me. “You cast that fly before, remember? I don’t rise!”
“You may as well, now you’ve said so much. After all, if I knew...”
“Quite!” Green went over to poke the fire and knelt there with her back to me. “If you knew—and doubtless you’re not meant to—you might do all kinds of things. No. You have to follow your own line.”
Neither of us knew that Simon was in the house until we heard him on the telephone in the hall.
When he came through to us he smiled quickly at me and then turned to Nurse Green. “Wish you’d been booked! The other nurse wasn’t there either!”
“All right?”
“Oh, yes. The mum was scared, but she’d read all the right books, and the husband was very sensible. The babe was ready to be bathed by the time I arrived.”
Nurse Green smiled back at him. “Isn’t that nice? You see? I always said they got oft with it if you left them to it. All this fuss about going into hospital—home’s the logical place for babes to arrive.”
“So you’ve often said ... Alan out, Lanna?”
‘Bridger’s,” I said. “Wouldn’t you know? If it isn’t Mrs. Tarsh, it’s Bridger’s. And that reminds me—” I scrambled to my feet. “I—want to ring up Leamington and see how she is.”
‘All right. You ring, then. But you’ll find she’s perfectly all right.”
She was, too. Johnson said, “She took the journey better than I expected her to, Miss. She’s sleeping like a baby.”
From my experience of babies that wasn’t very reassuring, but I say, “Good. Tell her I asked about her, won’t you?”
“I will, Miss.” He coughed nervously. “Er—Miss...”
“Yes?”
“The mistress was asking—is your name spelled D-a-r-e or D-a-i-r?”
I told him. “Why, Johnson? Is she writing to me?”
“I think so, Miss.”
Mrs. Tarsh must be very lonely, I reflected. When I went upstairs, I decided
, I would drop a note to her, too.
I opened the sitting-room door quickly. Green was saying, “Well—it’s up to you, Simon. But I think you ought to—”
I looked at Simon’s attentive face. “Ought to what?” I butted in.
He turned around. “Be a nicer person,” he said. “I’m sending Nurse Green out to my case.”
“That’s it. Finish off the job for him,” she agreed. She was putting her coat on. “What they’ll say, seeing me out of uniform, I don’t know. But I think there’s an overall in the car. It’s amazing—you don’t have the teeniest bit of authority once they see you in mufti.”
I wished she wouldn’t go. I didn’t want my sherry-stimulated tongue and me to be left alone with Simon. I was apt to say the wrong thing at any moment.
As soon as she had gone I hovered about the room. “I must go and write some letters,” I said. “There’s Mrs. Tarsh and Home Sister and—”
“And this is supposed to be Alan’s party! Oh, Lanna—there’s no need to rush off, is there?” He came closer and took me by the shoulders. “Is there?”
I sat down again.
“Have you heard yet,” I began, making conversation, “who you’re getting? Instead of Alan?”
Then I wished I had left it. Simon nodded. “I was just telling Nurse Green. It—” He played with his glass, and looked up at me awkwardly. “It seemed best to ask for a woman.”
“Oh?” I felt cold. It would be hateful if she turned out abominably attractive or brilliantly clever—and most women doctors seemed to be one or the other. The plain, dull ones never seemed to make the grade.
He turned toward me and took both my hands in his. “You are sure you’ll be happy here, aren’t you? It’s not too late, if you want to change your mind.”
“I’m sure,” I told him steadily. “Or if I’m not, I wouldn’t be any happier anywhere else.”
I was swimming in the deep blue of his eyes, and I knew my hands were trembling. It seemed inevitable when he leaned toward me, looking down at my lips. For one mad moment I sat there waiting for it... and then I drew back. “Don’t!” I said sharply, as much to myself as to him. “Don’t, Simon.”