by Bess Norton
I raised my eyebrows. “What a pity! It was my fault. I forgot to tell her.”
“Yes, that was the way I figured it out. You don’t want me to have that room, do you? You want it yourself, don’t you? But after all, I’m an assistant in the practice, and you are—”
“This is Nurse Green,” I interrupted. “Our local midwife and district nurse. Green, this is Dr. Teare.”
“Ah, yes. I’ve been wanting to see you, Nurse.” Dallas walked across and helped herself to Simon’s sherry. “About Mrs. Bridger...”
“I have been wanting to see you about Mrs. Bridger, Doctor,” Green began dangerously. “You seem to have upset her pretty thoroughly. Not a good idea, when she is already in a toxic state—”
I slipped out of the room. Green was quite capable of fighting her own battles. Besides, I wanted to mail my letter to Mrs. Tarsh.
When I came back Green was alone. “Talk about leaving the sinking ship,” she reproached me. “Why didn’t you stay and see fair play?”
“Was there fair play? I only went to the mailbox.”
“I don’t know whether it sank in or not. We had quite a heated argument, but she obviously thinks she’s won. Says she’s going to send Mrs. B. to a psychiatrist!”
“That’s all right,” I said reasonably. “Mrs. B. won’t go. So that disposes of that.”
“I’m not so sure. When that one makes up her mind, she makes it up. Even I can see that. I’m sorry for Simon if she tries to organize him.”
I grimaced. “I’m not so much afraid of her organizing him,” I confessed. “I’m just afraid of her dazzling him with her more obvious assets. He’s only a man, after all.”
“That’s up to you, isn’t it?”
“Why me?”
“You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”
My face burned. “No. I don’t know. Well, maybe ... only it’s gone on for so long now that it’s purely a habit. A conditioned reflex. It—”
“Tripe!” Green exclaimed. “I wish you didn’t have to preserve the decencies. I wish he’d propose to you and get it over with. The sooner the better.” She gave me one of her cigarettes, and when she had lit it for me she went on, “Everyone would understand. You could bring him to the point if you wanted to. The only thing is... well, he’s rather hamstrung, right now.” She blew a smoke ring very efficiently. “He hasn’t much choice.”
I didn’t dare to ask her what she meant. “Bring him to the point?” I said. “How optimistic can you be? I’ve never thought of marriage in connection with Simon.”
“No? Then it’s about time you did think. And hard.” Green nodded. “Simon is a very attractive man, and there are a good many women around who would be only too delighted to marry him. Including me.”
“You?”
“Yes, me. Why not? I don’t say it would be a love match—but I don’t expect another of, those.” Her mouth tightened. “I can think of many far worse fates than marrying a man I liked and respected as much as Simon.” Then she smiled. “But don’t worry. I’ve no intention of horning in. I’m not his type.”
I never really thought that Simon and I would eventually get out together on Friday. I was convinced that somehow or other Dallas would cook up some reason for keeping him at home. She would say she wasn’t ready to look after the practice on her own; or some pet patient would need him; or maybe he would think he ought to offer to stay on call. But none of these things actually happened, and by three o’clock we were actually out together in his car.
“You look so nice,” he told me. “Green suits you.”
I looked down at my two-year-old tweeds and glowed. “Thank you. I didn’t know where we’d be going, or what to wear. If I’m not afternoonish enough, I can always go back and change.”
“You’re just the way I like you,” he assured me. “As for where we’re going, I’d thought of showing you a pet haunt of mine.”
“Some exotic place?”
He laughed. “In one sense, but not the one you mean. You’re fond of animals, aren’t you?”
“Of course. Why?”
“I discovered a baby zoo, not long ago.”
“How d’you mean—a baby zoo?”
“Well, it is. It’s no bigger than my front garden. I was trundling peacefully along a little lane at Hints the other week and I discovered it. Tucked away in the hills where you don’t expect to see anything wilder than guinea-fowl in anyone’s yard. And there are monkeys and things galore.”
“Bush-babies?”
“I can’t remember—why, do you like them?”
I nodded. “I’ve always thought I’d like one as a pet. They’re so cuddleable.”
“If you really mean that I’ll try to get one for you.” He looked at me quickly and then back at the road. “If you’ll keep it out of the dispensary!”
“No,” I said. “You’ve done too much for me already.”
“You haven’t worn your coat yet.”
He sounded a little plaintive. “No. The weather turned warmer and—It isn’t that I don’t love it, Simon. But frankly, I’m scared stiff of spoiling it. I’ve never had anything as good as that, you see.”
“It’s meant to be worn, my dear. They’re hardier than they look, I imagine. Midge always said that—” He stopped.
“Where is this zoo?” I said hurriedly. “Hints, did you say?”
He nodded. “We turn left here, and then it’s on our right at the top of the hill.”
The big car surged forward, and a few moments later he turned it into a little parking lot among some trees beside a cottage. “There you are,” he said. “Across the lane.”
I stared at the incongruous sight. There, in the middle of nowhere, was a charming bungalow, set in pine trees. And all around the edge of its grounds were cages and enclosures, even a pool full of penguins.
“You wouldn’t think it would pay, would you?” I said. “Way out here.”
He smiled. “I don’t imagine the women who keep it care so much about that as they do about the animals. Matter of fact, it probably does. They’ve a few performing chimps who do television shows and so on. And quite a lot of people come out here by car at weekends, just to see it.”
He nodded to a young woman in jodhpurs who was crossing the lawn, and she smiled at us. “Come before the Easter rush, have you?”
Simon turned to me. “Patient of mine,” he explained. “Chucked up a secretarial job to come and help up here. She loves it. Hence the free admission.” He waved to her. “I don’t blame her—it’s a lovely spot. I’m sure you can see about five counties from up here. It’s pretty high.”
There was nothing to see for miles around that was manmade, except a distant television mast, and the countryside glittered with sunlight. Even the sky didn’t look like March. I breathed in the clear air gratefully. “It’s heavenly. Did you say there were bush-babies?” I was eager to look around.
By the time we had worked our way past the monkey houses to the last one, where a forlorn rhesus female sat howling like a siren, we still hadn’t found a bush-baby. But it didn’t matter. I had enjoyed every moment. Simon looked at the lonely screamer. “I can sympathize,” he said. “No fun, having your mate miles away.”
“Or having no mate at all,” I said rashly.
“Quite.” He turned to me suddenly. “Lanna—we must talk. Let’s get out of here, shall we?”
I wanted to put it off. I begged for just one more look at the capybara; just one more cuddle with the baby badger the zoo’s mother-cat had reared; just one more chance to laugh at the chimps’ antics. But I couldn’t spin it out forever. What was more, Simon was wise to me. He looked at his watch and said he would give me exactly one more minute. And he meant what he said.
Then we were driving along the road again. “We’ll go down through Wall,” he said. “Or should I call it Letocetum?”
“Roman?”
“That’s right. I won’t inflict the remains on you today. But we might get so
me tea there. I have a patient who serves teas in a cottage with a cellar that’s entirely Roman brick.”
“We don’t eat in the cellar, I take it?”
He laughed. He looked younger than he had for a long time, and it moved me unbearably. “No. In her parlor.”
But when we reached the little black and white village his patient was not at home. “Too bad,” he said. “Must be too early in the season. Never mind—we’ll go into Lichfield, all right?”
We ate hot buttered crumpets in a dark old room full of leather and black oak and talked in hushed voices. “Where you are sitting now,” Simon said solemnly, “is probably where Dr. Johnson sat, doing the same thing.”
“Truly?”
He nodded. “If you’re not a Johnson fan you’d better conceal the fact. They think a lot of him around these parts. He spent a lot of his life here.”
“You’re educating me,” I said. “Zoos, Roman remains, and now Dr. Johnson. I’m beginning to feel awfully cultured.”
“Quite inadvertent,” Simon told me. “My only aim, really, was to be alone with you somewhere so we could talk. Because we have to—don’t we?”
I faced it at last.
“Yes, I suppose we do.”
He put out one hand that trapped mine on the table. “Lanna, I’m so damned lonely that I don’t think I can go on any longer like this. While I had to, I did. It was a long time. But now that I don’t have to, waiting is killing me.”
“How do you mean—while you had to?” I was only playing for time. “You mean—Midge...”
He swallowed and held on tight to my hand. “I never wanted to tell you this. I never meant to tell anyone. But I must, to make you understand why I’m being so abominably precipitate about all this. So you won’t think it’s in bad taste ... When I knew that you hadn’t any time for me—”
“What?”
“When Midge explained that you hadn’t any time for me I was pretty hard hit, at first. I’d thought that ... well, I’d hoped that—”
“Midge said I had no time for you?” I suppose it was what I had always known, deep down; but even now I couldn’t take it in. “It wasn’t true. God knows it wasn’t true, Simon!”
He was white around the mouth. “Oh, no!” He took his hand away and put it over his eyes. “Then...”
I got up to sit beside him on the old leather settle. Putting my arm through his, I said, “Tell me what happened. Don’t worry about whether you should or not. You must. You’ve kept it back too long.” Simon, Simon, I thought. Is that what she did to you? And to me? Poor, poor us.
“Well, I was hard hit. And Midge was very sweet to me. And after a time it seemed the obvious thing to do—to settle for second best. You ... you never spoke to me, Lanna, for weeks!”
I shook my head. “I was too hurt. I couldn’t believe it had happened.” There was nobody else in the dim little room, and I leaned nearer and put my cheek against his.
“Go on.”
He didn’t find it easy. “She was determined to marry me. She gave me every reason to think she cared for me. Every reason. But we had been married approximately two hours when she—” He broke off. “I have to tell you this so that you’ll understand, Lanna. If you hate it, I’ll stop.”
“I don’t hate it for myself,” I said. “Only for you. Go on.”
“Right after the wedding breakfast she told me that she had no intention of living with me as a wife ... It seemed to me that the last sane thing I had seen was your face as you waved goodbye. I’ve thought that ever since.”
“But why? Why, Simon?”
He shrugged. “I never did know. For one thing she was determined not to have any children. They’d be a nuisance, she said. She wanted fun, a good time. And there was another reason. She made it quite clear ... I simply didn’t appeal to her in that way.”
“She said that—after being so determined to marry you that she didn’t care who else got hurt in the process?”
“She did just that.” After a moment he looked straight into my eyes, and I wanted to die sooner than hurt him when I saw his bewilderment. “Am I so repulsive?”
I swallowed and fought the stupid tears back. “That isn’t quite the right word,” I told him. “You’re—you’re—Can’t you see? I love you!”
There, it was said. I didn’t dare meet his eyes.
“Oh, Lanna...” He had both my hands in his. “Is it too late?”
I was still trying to tell him when a family party came chattering into the still room and broke the spell.
We were both a little dazed, I think, as we emerged into the fading light; an unbearable burning excitement was mounting in me when we got back into the car. I didn’t know how to wait until he took me in his arms again.
Neither of us spoke. There wasn’t any need. He bedded my right hand under his left knee and turned the headlights to the high beam as we pulled out toward the wooded Staffordshire road. All my life I shall remember how I felt at that moment.
CHAPTER SIX
It might have been easier to bear if it had been more spectacular. At least there would have been something to show for all the heartache. If Simon and I had crashed magnificently—if there had been a solid reason for what happened, the long weeks from March to July would have been more bearable.
But when it happened it was so small and simple. We were humming smoothly up the hill toward Abbots Bromley. A sudden blaze of white headlights came suddenly from a side junction, and Simon hit the brakes hard. That was all. It wasn’t even an incident. He braked and let the other car go through. There was no more to it than that—except that because I was leaning loosely at his elbow when it happened, my head flopped toward his. And because his head was forward, peering at the road, our temples collided sharply.
It was all over in a couple of seconds. And then we drove on, normally enough. But in that couple of seconds everything was altered.
I didn’t even realize that anything was wrong until Simon drew up at a signpost and turned around in the road to head back toward Lichfield. I was surprised, but I didn’t say anything. And then, a few hundred yards along the wide main road, he drew onto the shoulder and switched off the engine. He put his face in his hands for a moment.
“Eyes tired?” I said.
He lifted his head to stare at me, then tubbed the left side of his face with his hand. “I must have had a blackout or something,” he said, in a queer, puzzled voice. “It may sound dotty—but I can’t think what we’re doing here.”
Driving in the dark is confusing, I told myself. The lights had muddled him. I waited for him to pull himself together, and then I said, “I don’t know where we were meant to be heading. You didn’t say when we left Lichfield.”
“Lichfield?” He frowned. “You mean Hints.”
I felt a sudden chill. But I still told myself that the thing was merely momentary. Our heads had bumped, hadn’t they? He was dazed. “You remember,” I told him. “After we left Hints we went into Lichfield—to see the Dr. Johnson place. You... you were telling me about Midge.”
His face was completely blank.
I was really worried then. “Look,” I said. “You move over. Let me drive, Simon, while you sort yourself out.”
He moved across obediently while I went around and climbed into the driver’s seat. The gears were the same as the Metropolitan’s—if I went steadily I could manage. I drove for Retby as fast as I dared, and all the way Simon sat silently beside me, staring at the dark windshield. And when I drew up in the front drive he turned to me and shook his head. “Lanna, I can’t remember. I promised you something. What was it?”
“A bush-baby,” I told him.
His face cleared. “Yes, I remember, I said I’d get you a bush-baby. And then—” He was frowning again. “I’m not crazy, am I? I just don’t know how we went from Hints to—Where were we?”
“On the Abbots Bromley road,” I told him quietly. “It doesn’t matter, Simon. It’ll come back in a moment. Our h
eads bumped at a crossing—it must have affected you more than me. Look, you stay here a moment, will you?”
“What for?” He began to get out.
“I want to—Oh, well. Come in, then. But you’re to lie down on the settee right away.”
I left him stretched out on the settee and ran through the house looking for Dallas. She wasn’t there. At last I found the note on the telephone pad to say that she had been called out and that the calls were being put through to Dr. Fraser.
I rang the airport right away. I was lucky. Dr. Murray was still there, the girl said. “Put him on quickly,” I told her. “This is urgent.”
“Lanna!” he said delightedly. “How nice!”
“No, not nice,” I told him. “Alan, it’s Simon. Could you possibly come out here?”
“Can do. What’s the trouble?”
“He seems to have a slight concussion,” I explained. “Just a light bump on the head, but he’s amnesic. I think he ought to be checked over. Dallas isn’t here.”
“I’ll come right away. He’ll probably be fine by the time I get there, so don’t fret. You know what concussions are like. See you shortly.”
He hung up, and I went back to Simon, hoping to see his eyes alive and interested again. But they weren’t. He was fast asleep. I felt his pulse—it seemed normal enough, and there wasn’t a mark in his temple where our heads had met. If there had been a wound, something I could have dealt with, I would have felt better. There was nothing. There was just his quiet breathing, and his hands lying flaccidly in mine.
He woke when Alan came in half an hour later. Blinking up at him, he asked, “What brings you?”
Alan sat down gently beside him. “I hear you’re feeling a spot confused. Head aching?”
Sitting up, Simon rubbed his forehead slowly. “Yes, a bit. But I’m all right, Alan. Just missed out on part of the evening. I can’t think what happened. Must be tired or something.”