by Bess Norton
He released my hands at once and sat back. “I’m sorry," he said quietly. Suddenly I wanted to slap him for being so acquiescent. “I was carried away.” He laughed shortly. “You’ll have to take to wearing a mask, Lanna, if I’m to remember to be formal with you.”
His face was so utterly unhappy, then, that nothing else mattered. The thought of Midge and all the common decencies of the situation went overboard. I put one hand on the nape of his neck and began to stroke his hair. “Simon, it isn’t that I don’t—” I didn’t have the chance to say any more.
Being kissed by Simon was an experience I could never have described at the time. It was music and pain, an unbearable excitement that rose to a white-hot peak before I had the sense to tear my mouth away from his and push away his questing hands. “I asked for that,” I said shakily. “Oh, Simon!”
“Go away,” he told me. “Quickly!”
I didn’t stay to argue. I went.
I overslept, and nobody disturbed me. Surgery was already under way when I hurried down, and Mrs. Cox was washing up the breakfast things. “You should have called me!” I told her. “Why didn’t you?”
She shook her head. “Doctor said not to, Miss. He said you’d had a tiring day yesterday. I’ve kept you some breakfast hot”
“I’ll just have coffee, thanks,” I told her. I sat there drinking it alone and feeling a complete failure.
Half of me wished I had never agreed to stay. The other half was determined that nothing—not even the most attractive female assistant—was going to prevent me from doing so.
When Simon and Alan came in for their break before they set off on their major rounds they had something else to think about. “Not again?” Simon was saying to Alan. “How many’s that? Fifteen, isn’t it?”
“Fifteen it is.” Alan grinned at me. “Guess who?”
I thought for a moment. “Mrs. Bridger?” I guessed.
“Down in one,” Alan nodded. “She told me while I was fixing up her old man last night. He has a slipped disc, by the way. When she heard he’d have to go to the hospital all she said was, ‘Oh, what a shame! He’ll miss the new baby.’ You’d think the novelty would have worn off a bit by now!”
Simon shook his head. “That’s the crazy part of it. It doesn’t. They’re just as starry-eyed with every one that arrives. Heavens—I’ve talked to them; Green’s talked to them; and I’m darn sure the Family Planning people have done their best. But we’re wasting our time. They like having a lot of kids. I’ve come to the conclusion that maybe they’re right and I’m wrong.” He looked at me. “Am I, Lanna?”
I turned away. “I don’t know. There’s a limit beyond which you can’t play God with other people. Speaking for myself, I wouldn’t want 15 children; but then I’m not Mrs. Bridger.” I spooned more sugar into Alan’s cup.
Mrs. Cox Came through from the hall and looked at Simon accusingly. “There’s a young woman to see you, Doctor. Not a patient. She says she’s the new assistant. If I’m to get a room ready for her today, I shall have to—”
“Today?” Simon put down his cup and frowned. “But she isn’t due until tomorrow!”
“That’s what I told her, Doctor. But she says she’s come all the way from Manchester, and she isn’t going back.”
Alan grinned. “She’s welcome to share—”
“Quiet!” I told him. “She’d better have my room, Simon. I can easily camp out on the settee.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort.” He went into the hall and we heard him talking out there. I fetched another cup—anything not to have to meet the new woman right away.
They were a long time messing about in the consulting room before he brought her in. Alan said, “For heaven’s sake, Lanna, take that horrible expression off your face—you’ll frighten the woman!”
I took it off just in time.
When she did come, I wanted to laugh out loud. She looked so ridiculously like Midge that it was simply unbelievable. The same blossom skin, the same golden doll’s wig, and the same oh-so-innocent blue eyes. Incredible.
Only she didn’t have Midge’s little-girl voice. She had a deep contralto drawl that clung to every word like golden syrup. And she wasn’t English.
“Dr. Teare is from Toronto,” Simon explained. “She wants to see how we do things over here, and the Executive thought this was the average sort of practice she’d be interested in.” He looked down at her five-foot-two and smiled. “This is my late wife’s cousin, Lanna Dair,” he told her. “She’s a State Registered Nurse, and she’s staying here to help us all. And this is my present assistant. Alan—Dr. Teare.”
“Call me Dallas,” she said. “I’m only half Canadian. My father came from Grapevine, Texas.”
Alan said it for me. “Where everything is bigger and better?” He grinned at her.
“So they tell me. I’ve never yet been back to Dallas county to find out!” She slid me a pale blue glance. “I hear I wasn’t expected today.” Her expression dared me to mind.
I nodded. “Don’t worry. We shall fix you up.”
“Mrs. Cox can get the master bedroom ready,” Simon said quickly, his eyes on mine. “Or would you rather go in there, Lanna?”
Nothing would have induced me to go in the big room, even for one night. “Dr. Teare—Dallas—can have it,” I told him. “After all, it’s only for one night, isn’t it? Tomorrow we’ll clear Alan’s out.”
Alan was laughing. “You make it sound exactly like the rubbish heap it is! Look. I can easily clear it out today if you like. I could go to the George and—”
“You won’t.” I glared at him. I didn’t intend him to leave me with Simon and Dallas Teare a moment sooner than he had to. Already I could read the future like a book. I knew exactly the effect she was going to have on our lives. And no doubt she, too, had her plans.
Mrs. Cox had already made up the big bed when I got upstairs at last. All the windows were open and the white muslin curtains flew in the breeze like a bride’s veil.
“It’s a lovely room,” I said. “I’ve always loved it.”
“Then why didn’t you come in here, Miss? You could have!”
“No.” I shook my head. “I’d feel—I’d feel I had no right in here.”
Mrs. Cox snorted. “More right than her,” she grumbled. “The very idea, coming today! Still, I suppose it’ll give the doctor time to show her around the practice. Gone out with Dr. Murray, I suppose?”
“No,” I said. “No—she’s gone with Dr. Pullar.” It hadn’t made sense to me, either. I could only suppose that it was Simon’s idea of being an efficient host.
“But it’s Dr. Murray’s work she’s taking over, isn’t it, Miss? Well, then!”
“Yes. But I expect he wants to talk to her, tell her about the practice and so forth. She’s Canadian, you know.”
She slapped down the bedside lamp. “Then let’s hope she isn’t like the ones I had billeted on me during the war, Miss. They were so noisy, you wouldn’t believe.”
“Oh, well. Soldiers ... Dr. Teare looks quiet enough. Did you notice—” I stopped, but it was too late.
“That she was like Mrs. Pullar? Yes, Miss, I did. Might be her twin sister. ‘Course, maybe that’s why the doctor chose her?”
“No,” I said. “He didn’t choose her. The Executive sent her, as a matter of fact. Is there anything you want me to do in here?”
“No, Miss. But I’ll get you to go to the shops, if you don’t mind. I suppose she’ll be here for lunch?”
I nodded. “I suppose so. By the way I don’t know yet if the little car’s back from the garage. It needed the door fixed.”
“Haven’t you seen it, Miss? Oh, it looks a treat.” She nodded. “Much better, that color. Never did like that pink and white myself—but there, Mrs. Pullar would have it.”
“You mean it’s been repainted?” It was the first I had heard of it. I hurried to put on my coat and take the car out of the garage. When I opened the double doors I stood
and stared for a moment. The Metropolitan had been entirely resprayed: instead of the ultra-feminine pink and white it was spring green with a daffodil-colored roof.
Overwhelmed, I got into the driving seat. There was a note from Simon on the dash, and it said, “Hope you like this better.” What was more, he’d left a new pack of cigarettes and a box of marzipan on the passenger seat. He had even remembered that I didn’t like chocolates.
I was touched. With all his own work and worries he had taken time put to give me pleasure. The car no longer seemed to me an extension of Midge, and it was the nearest I had ever come to owning one. The nearest, probably, that I should ever come.
But when I drove it around to the front door, Alan was coming down the steps. He raised his eyebrows and said, “By gum—the old boy’s going it a bit, isn’t he?”
I nodded. “Had it resprayed. Isn’t it beautiful now?”
“Resprayed?” He looked at me pityingly. “Wake up—that’s not been resprayed; it’s a new car. Different number, for, a start!”
I climbed out and looked again. He was perfectly right. If the car wasn’t new it was nearly so. And the registration number was different—Midge’s hadn’t been AOM, or anything close to that.
“But why?” I said. “If there’s some money trouble, he oughtn’t—”
“Simon’s a law unto himself,” Alan remarked. “I don’t doubt he meant to please you. Don’t, for God’s sake, throw the thing in his teeth.”
“As if I would!”
I watched him go and then looked at the little car again. It was no use—whatever it had cost Simon in money or in heartache, I loved it. It was practically my own, and I was enormously grateful to him. All the same, Alan had made me feel guilty about it.
Simon didn’t come back for lunch. Mrs. Cox said he had telephoned to say he would take Dr. Teare out somewhere to save trouble.
“I know,” I said. “I guessed that. His car was outside the George when I drove past. But Dr. Murray will be in, won’t he?”
“Trust him!” she agreed. “Never known him miss a meal when he didn’t have to.”
All the same, I was halfway through mine before Alan finally arrived. He looked around the table. “What, no Dallas? No Simon?”
“No. They’re lunching out.”
“Indeed?”
He sat down and I uncovered his plate. “Never mind—you’ve got Simon’s steak as well as your own.”
Alan looked at me speculatively. “I wonder how it’s going to work out? How do you feel?”
“Give me time! I confess I haven’t taken to Dallas, but who knows? We may end up as buddies, for all that.”
“That’s what you think, is it? I don’t share your optimism.”
I watched Alan attacking his steak for a minute or two before I asked, “Why not?”
“She’s too much like Midge.”
“So?”
“So there are bound to be unpredictable effects on Simon. One way or, the other. He’ll either fall flat on his face for her—or he’ll hate her guts. It’s certain he won’t be neutral.”
I think I had known that, but I hadn’t let it sink in until now. When Simon finally brought Dallas in for tea I had time to look her over more thoroughly. She sat deep in Simon’s favorite armchair with her tight black skirt riding up a little. Her legs were pretty well perfect, like her skin. It was only when she stretched her lips in her atrociously arrogant drawl that she spoiled herself. Not that Simon seemed to notice it; it clearly didn’t grate on him as it did me.
“Simon,” I said. “The car—it’s heaven. You shouldn’t have done that for me!”
He looked at me vaguely. “Oh, the car, yes. I’m glad you like it. Green is your color, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “That lovely larch green, yes. You’re very good to me. I don’t know what to say.”
Neither did he, apparently. I went on trying to impress him with my presence. “I had a card from Mrs. Tarsh,” I told him. “With a picture of the Pump Room, and what not. Talk about copperplate handwriting—it puts mine to shame.”
“Yes?” He smiled, not really listening. And then he said, “By the way—have you heard from Matron?”
I said I hadn’t,, but that the wheels ground slowly at Allanby, and no doubt I would hear shortly.
While Simon was in surgery, Alan and I attacked his room together. “Look, I can cope,” he told me. “You go and relax, Lanna. It’s cold up here.”
“Not as cold as it is downstairs,” I said. “The temperature in the sitting room is below zero, if you know what I mean. Alan—I can’t talk to her. I’d rather help you.”
He smiled. “Suits me. But what’s to happen when I’m not here?”
“I don’t know. I keep pretending she’s a difficult patient; it’s the only way. She just makes my hackles rise.”
We went on stacking books into a chest for a while, and then Alan mentioned, “The airport isn’t all that far away. Maybe you could drive out there some time?”
It hadn’t occurred to me. “I’m so unused to having a car,” I told him, “that I forgot how close it brings places. I’d love to, one day. If I can find it.”
He rammed the last textbook into the chest and sat on the lid. “We can soon remedy your geographical failings. Suppose we go out there tonight? We can have supper there, if you like. Yes?”
I weighed the offer against the prospect of spending the evening as a buffer state and nodded. “I know I shouldn’t. I ought to stay here and entertain her. But I don’t feel very entertaining. Do you think she’s capable of feeding Simon if I tell her where things are?”
“If she isn’t she won’t last long here! Want me to tell her?”
I decided not. “No, I’ll go down and break the glad news myself. I’ll tell Simon too, if I can grab him between patients. What time do you want to go out?”
He looked around the bare room and dusted off his hands. “Just as soon as you can be ready. Half an hour?”
Yes, I said. That would be fine. I ran down to the sitting room to tell Dallas. She was stretched full-length on the settee, looking like a poor man’s Madame Recamier, smoking Simon’s cigarettes, with the radio turned up full on some jazz program. I walked over to the set and turned the knob right down. “We keep it low during surgery hours,” I told her. “The waiting room’s next door.” She just watched me and didn’t say anything.
“If you wouldn’t mind helping yourself and Simon to supper,” I said, “I want to go out. There’s food in the fridge, and the cutlery tray and so on is on the kitchen table.”
“I see. I can cope. Something on a tray will do, I suppose?”
“No, not something on a tray. Simon likes to sit down and eat properly at suppertime. It’s often the only full meal he gets. He tried having dinner at seven-thirty, but he found he was too churned up, right after surgery, so he likes it later. All right?” I slid out before she could argue.
I’d always been childishly scared of air travel, and it was the first time I’d been to the airport. I had expected to see airplanes, at least. It was odd to find it a mixture of hotel foyer and railway station, with no planes in view at all. Alan grinned at me when we were settled at our table in the dining room. “Well? Like it?”
“I don’t know. It all seems so impermanent, doesn’t it? All these birds of passage. Everyone going somewhere—except us.”
“Not quite. As a matter of fact, lots of people come here just to eat out. The food’s good, and it isn’t too expensive. And some people like the transient atmosphere.” He called the wine waiter.
I looked around again while he was ordering. The only interesting person for me was a black man in a magnificent rainbow of a robe, a quaint little turban topping it off. I said, “I wonder who he is.”
“He’s a big-shot trade representative from Ghana,” Alan told me. “If you read the papers properly you’d have seen his photograph in the Mail. Impressive, isn’t he?”
I nodded. “I was just thinki
ng what a gorgeous dress I could have made from that silk. Not that I’d ever dare to wear it.”
“You’re not as tough as you look, are you?” Alan hesitated. “I mean, I get the impression that there are a good many things you don’t dare to do. To tell you the truth I didn’t think you’d walk out as you did this evening. I’m glad you did, but it shook me.”
“Did it? It was a good deal easier than staying in.”
“Aren’t you worried about leaving Simon there with her?” He was laughing at me. “She’s a bit of a vampire!’
I sighed. “Simon isn’t my property. He’s my employer, even if he is a cousin by marriage. And I imagine I’m entitled to an evening off.”
“Had it occurred to you that maybe he didn’t want to be alone with her?”
“No. He seemed quite besotted at teatime. Anyhow, what Simon does isn’t my affair. He can spend the evening making frantic love to her for all I care.”
“Good!” Alan brightened. “That’s the spirit.”
After that we laughed a good deal. We took our coffee out into the general lounge and invented backgrounds and errands for the people around us.
Alan pointed out a weedy little man in sloppy tweeds, smoking an enormous briar. “Your turn.”
“He’s an international chess player,” I said. “On his way to Russia to play for the world championship. He has five grown children and a very large wife who sings contralto, and he’s a vegetarian who spends his holidays climbing the easier faces of Snowdon.”
“Wrong.” Alan chuckled. “In point of fact he’s an extremely efficient ophthalmic surgeon; he isn’t married, and his idea of a holiday is two weeks at Butlin’s Hotel, with everything laid on.”
“I don’t believe you!” I said.