Nothing Ventured
Page 1
Table of Contents
Cover
A Selection of Recent Titles by Anne Douglas
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-One
Chapter Seventy-Two
Chapter Seventy-Three
Chapter Seventy-Four
Chapter Seventy-Five
A Selection of Recent Titles by Anne Douglas
CATHERINE’S LAND
AS THE YEARS GO BY
BRIDGE OF HOPE
THE BUTTERFLY GIRLS
GINGER STREET
A HIGHLAND ENGAGEMENT
THE ROAD TO THE SANDS
THE EDINBURGH BRIDE
THE GIRL FROM WISH LANE *
A SONG IN THE AIR *
THE KILT MAKER *
STARLIGHT *
THE MELODY GIRLS *
THE WARDEN’S DAUGHTERS *
PRIMROSE SQUARE *
THE HANDKERCHIEF TREE *
TENEMENT GIRL *
DREAMS TO SELL*
A SILVER LINING *
NOTHING VENTURED *
* available from Severn House
NOTHING VENTURED
Anne Douglas
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
This first world hardcover edition published 2015
in Great Britain and the USA by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.
Trade paperback edition first published 2016
in Great Britain and the USA by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.
eBook edition first published in 2015 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited
Copyright © 2015 by Anne Douglas.
The right of Anne Douglas to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Douglas, Anne, 1930- author.
Nothing ventured.
1. Nurses–Scotland–Fiction. 2. Brothers and sisters–
Fiction. 3. Love stories.
I. Title
823.9’14-dc23
ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8537-1 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-640-4 (trade paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-706-6 (e-book)
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.
This ebook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk,
Stirlingshire, Scotland.
One
Isla Scott was going home. Only for a weekend, from Friday at five to Sunday evening, when it would be back to Edinburgh Southern Hospital, ready for Monday. Not a break that came round very often, but nice when it did – seeing her parents in Edgemuir and her brother, Boyd, if he could get time off from the hydro where he worked.
Here she was, then, lucky enough to get a seat in this train so full of people going home from work on that early January evening, and lying back with her eyes shut, glad of the rest after the rush of getting ready.
Rush, rush, rush. That was hospital nursing anyway, which was not to say she didn’t enjoy it. She did and, at twenty-three, could see herself doing well in the future, maybe doing different things, gaining different experiences. Meanwhile, she had her weekend to think about.
Help! Time had passed and she sat up with a start. Must have dropped off, and as this train trip took no more than half an hour, she might have missed her station. Sitting up straight, now fully alert, she tried to peer through the windows to see if she could recognize where they were. Of course, it was too dark and she had to settle back into her seat again, returning the smiles of the passengers opposite with an uncertain smile of her own.
‘Just coming into Edgemuir now,’ a middle-aged man told her, rising, his eyes very attentive as she straightened her hat over her dark red hair, newly bobbed in 1925 fashion, and buttoned up her coat. ‘Like me to get your case down for you?’
‘Oh, thanks, that’d be kind.’
A pretty girl, with wide-apart grey eyes and a turned-up nose, Isla was used to attentions and always fielded them well, except perhaps in the hospital. Some of the male patients, when they began to feel better – oh, watch out! Thank goodness, she worked in Women’s General.
With her small weekend case, handbag, umbrella, and carrier containing chocolates for her mother, tobacco for her father and a car magazine for Boyd, she thanked the man who’d helped her before moving to the corridor packed with standing passengers.
‘Edgemuir!’ a hoarse voice shouted. ‘Edgemuir now!’
Someone was opening the door, letting in a rush of cold air and showing a view of a dimly lit platform where people were queueing to show their tickets.
‘Manage all right?’ asked the middle-aged man at her side, but she was already on her way, only
turning back once to smile, before waving to the familiar face she’d spotted in the small waiting crowd.
‘Boyd, you came to meet me!’ she cried, hugging him as soon as she was through the ticket barrier, ‘Oh, that’s grand – I never expected it.’
‘I usually close the gym at seven,’ he told her, ‘but I got Larry to take over early so I could meet your train. You remember – he’s the one who helps out for me if he’s not busy with the saunas? Didn’t take me ten minutes to walk down from the hydro.’
‘Never takes more than ten minutes to walk anywhere in Edgemuir,’ Isla laughed, pausing on the slippery pavement to gaze up at her brother.
Tall and broad-shouldered in a tweed coat, he looked the ideal man to run a gymnasium, which was his responsibility at Lorne’s Hydro, but as he bent to kiss her cheek and take her case, Isla marvelled, as she often did, at his classic good looks. Even in the poor street lighting outside the station, his wonderfully straight nose could not be missed, nor his fine brow, his high cheekbones, and the tendrils of his fair hair escaping from his cap.
She knew where he got his looks from, of course, and that was their still handsome father, Will Scott, a foreman at the woollen mill in the town, while Isla was like their mother, who had the same sort of red hair and turned-up nose. If they didn’t have the striking good looks of the menfolk, they were attractive – yes, Isla wouldn’t deny it – but that didn’t stop her wanting to smooth down her nose from time to time, even though it never did any good.
Moving away a little, she looked up to the end of the street where Lorne’s Hydro, the long, elegant building that dominated the town, sparkled ‘like Christmas’, as the locals put it, with every window lit, though behind, in the winter darkness, not much could be seen of its fine backdrop of hills. This was the place known throughout Scotland – and in England, too – as one of the centres for the famous water treatments that had been fashionable for some years, attracting people – mostly rich, Isla guessed – to Edgemuir, which was, of course, useful to the town.
‘Better watch your step,’ Boyd told her, as they turned into a road that would take them to the woollen mill, their father’s workplace, and his terraced house nearby. ‘There’s a bit of black ice around and we don’t want you breaking a leg or something.’
‘And ending up in Women’s General?’ Isla laughed again. ‘That’d teach me a thing or two – being nursed myself!’
‘Here, give me that bag and take my arm,’ Boyd offered, but Isla said she’d be all right; she knew as much as he did about walking on black ice, having experienced the same winter weather when growing up, and there was plenty of ice in Edinburgh, anyway. All she wanted was to get home, see her parents and find out what Ma had been making for their tea, as she was starving.
As she’d said, it didn’t take long to walk anywhere in Edgemuir, and even moving at a cautious pace, they were soon in sight of Meredith’s Woollen Mill, a two-storey building now burning only a few security lights, the workforce having gone home.
‘There it is,’ said Boyd, with a grin. ‘Dad’s pride and joy, the woollen mill. Remember when he wanted me to work there?’
‘That was before—’ Isla began, then stopped. She’d been going to say ‘the war’, but it did not do to speak to Boyd of the 1914–18 war in which he’d served. He never spoke of it himself and would not discuss it, which meant that now she could only say hastily that he was much better where he was now. ‘I mean you did that course for it and now you’re getting the experience.’
‘Too right. I was lucky Doctor Lorne gave me my chance, and I’m very happy where I am. Why would I want to spend my life messing about with sheep’s wool?’
Boyd was beginning to walk faster. ‘Come on, it’s better here; let’s get to Meredith Street for the grand welcoming ceremony!’
Passing by the mill, they came to the first of the three terraces built years before for mill workers of all types, and toiled along to its last house, number forty-six, the one reserved for the foreman. No change there in the house they knew, where Boyd spent his nights, if not his days, and Isla returned to from time to time, always feeling glad to see it again.
Being the foreman’s house, forty-six had a couple of extras to make it special – the huge bonus of a bathroom and a handsome front door with a brass knocker, always lovingly polished by Ma. There was no doubt that Will Scott’s wife, Nan, took her duties as foreman’s wife very seriously, so that her curtains were the prettiest, her front step was the cleanest, and, in a pot by the front door, her collection of flowers in spring and summer was something no one else had thought of. It was a shame she had no garden – no one in the terraces had that – but there was a yard at the back of the house and a drying green to share with others. Everything you could want, really.
Not that Isla herself would have wanted it, but then she was young, as Boyd was young. They had their way to make and a big question mark over their future. That was what was exciting, eh? About being young? You never knew what might lie ahead.
All that lay ahead at the moment was being home again, and as Boyd opened the door with his key and motioned her into the narrow hall, Isla was already calling, ‘Ma! Dad! Are you there? I’m home!’
Two
Of course they were there, hurrying down the hallway, Nan flushed from her stove, Will in shirtsleeves just back from work, both ready to hug and kiss and draw Isla into the kitchen, while Boyd, grinning at the welcome he’d known there would be, took her case upstairs.
‘Oh, my, it’s grand to see you, then!’ cried Nan, holding Isla at arm’s length while Will took her coat and hat. ‘But you’ve lost weight, eh, since we saw you? Mind, that was long enough ago, I’ll have to say, though I’m not complaining—’
‘It’s not that long, Ma,’ Isla protested, loosening herself from her mother’s hands. ‘I do try to come on my days off, but I can’t come every time.’
‘But you didn’t even make Hogmanay, did you? We’d to see the New Year in on our own, seeing as Boyd was on duty.’
‘She was here for Christmas, Nan,’ Will put in mildly. ‘And she’s here now, so don’t keep going on.’
‘Now, who’s going on? I’m only saying it seems a long time since Isla was here!’
‘Ah, well, “seems” doesn’t always match up with what’s right.’
‘How about a cup of tea, Ma, before you dish up that steak and kidney I can smell?’ asked Boyd, coming into the kitchen. ‘And Isla, what’s in the carrier, then?’
‘A magazine for you,’ Isla told him, grateful for the change of subject, ‘with chocs for you, Ma, and tobacco for you, Dad.’
There were soon smiles all round, as her family exclaimed over Isla’s gifts – oh, you shouldn’t have – then drank their tea until it was time for Isla to run upstairs to have a quick wash while Nan finished off her cooking.
As usual, when the meal was ready, they took their places at the kitchen table, for the kitchen was a welcoming place, warm and comfortable, with a large range, solid chairs, a dresser filled with china, and thick curtains at the windows to block out the January night. Afterwards, though, Nan said they must all go into the parlour where Will had lit a fire, so they could sit and talk and sample the chocolates Isla had brought.
‘Doubt if I’ll want a chocolate after that grand steak-and-kidney pie,’ Boyd remarked, leaning back. ‘One of your best, Ma. But what’s all this “parlour” stuff? We call it the front room, eh?’
‘I always think “parlour” sounds nicer, that’s all – I’m not meaning “grander”.’
‘No, no,’ Boyd agreed, rising, but when his eyes met Isla’s, grey like his – their only likeness – each quietly smiled. Nan just liked to think that what she had was superior to what others had, a harmless enough fault and she never made too much of it.
‘Ma has a kind heart,’ Isla always maintained earnestly, and Boyd never disagreed. They both felt they were lucky in their parents.
‘Now you laddies go next doo
r and see to the fire,’ Nan ordered, beginning to bustle about with dishes, ‘and Isla and I will do the washing-up.’
‘But Isla’s tired, I bet she’s been on the go all day,’ said Will. ‘Maybe Boyd and I could give you a hand, Nan.’
‘As though I’d ever expect you to do that!’ she cried smartly, but Isla was already at the sink.
‘Nae bother, Dad. I’ll help Ma and we’ll have a nice chat before we come in next door.’
‘And then I’d like a chat myself,’ said Boyd, lingering for a moment. ‘I’ve got some news that might interest you, Isla.’
‘Interest me? I can’t wait!’
‘See you next door, then – don’t worry, we won’t eat all Ma’s chocolates.’
Three
The room Nan called her parlour always seemed to Isla to look like some sort of small museum. Everything so neat and polished and unlived in, which was not surprising, of course, seeing that it was so little used and Nan cleaned it every week as though it had never been cleaned before. Even though she had a part-time job in a tweed shop, she never missed out on her housework, keeping a sharp eye on how soon other women got their washing out on Mondays, or if their brass was cleaned on Fridays.