by Jane Arbor
To Tessa each evilly chosen word had the threat of an uncoiling whip. But hard upon the impulse of a retort which would have destroyed their relationship for ever, she remembered that Lady Catterick, badly overwrought and needing to spread the impact of her own shock, would probably have lashed out as unthinkingly at anyone whom she had happened to find at the mercy of her tongue just then.
So, controlling herself with a supreme effort, Tessa managed: “Dr. Callender is certainly not in love with me. And do try to understand, Godmother, that in what has happened I’m not important at all. The only thing I should like you to know is that I did beg Rex not to ask Camille to marry him unless he was quite sure first that he loved her. And somehow I believe that he still had enough regard for me to have tried to do what I asked.”
She saw that her meaning had driven home. Lady Catterick said doubtfully, but with more hope: “You think that perhaps it could be just a love match and that he isn’t just an adventurer after all? Oh, I hope so. I do hope so. You can’t know, Tessa, how much my baby needs to be loved!”
Tessa prompted: “Then it will help if they are really in love?”
“Yes, it must, though when I think of all the wonderful chances Camille has had since she was in her teens, if that young man has any ideas of fortune-hunting he is going to be disappointed—very!”
Lady Catterick’s lips thinned in an ugly way as she spoke and Tessa thought it wise to turn the subject to ask: “You haven’t said, Godmother, what news of them you have had?”
“No details at all. So cruel! Simply a telegram, planned to arrive too late for us to do anything, to say that they were married in London at ten this morning. No address. Nothing.”
“But when did she leave home?”
“Two days ago—to stay with a French friend in London and to do some shopping, she said. But of course her friend knows nothing of any proposed visit, and Rex Girling, Bartram has found out, took special leave from St. Faith’s at the same time.”
“And Sir Bartram?”
“He has gone up to London on the only clue we have—that as the Splendide is the only hotel Camille has ever stayed at with me, they may have news of her there. Challis took Bartram to the airport before going into the city for you. Oh, and I forgot! I was supposed to tell that Dr. Callender of yours not to wait. But I didn’t, and when he marched out he said he was going to, didn’t he? That means facing him again to explain he should never have been shown in in the first place, and I really don’t feel equal to it. No, I can not!”
“He may be waiting in his car,” Tessa suggested. “Couldn’t you send a maid to tell him you’ve no idea when Sir Bartram will be back?”
“I could, yes. Or—would you go, Tessa? One does owe him an explanation, for all his rudeness. But the staff is too much agog as it is, and if you went you could tell him too that I am trying to bear no ill-will about his interference.”
“I’m sure,” put in Tessa quickly, “that it would be better to say no more about that, Godmother.”
“Yes, well—please yourself. But go—” Lady Catterick waved a hand in vague dismissal—“and then come back to me, won’t you? I oughtn’t to be left alone at such a time. Bartram may have no news for hours yet, and who else is there for me to turn to but you?” As her eyes misted over again Tessa left her, realising that such veering insincerities of mood cancelled each other out and that for her own peace of mind she must not be too hurt or too reassured by either.
Neil was not in his car, drawn up at the side of the house, but was standing at the foot of the garden terraces, watching a moorhen with her brood on the lake.
At her tentative: “Dr. Callender?” he swung round sharply and she had a momentary impression of having surprised in his face some emotion he would rather have guarded from her. But his expressive—“Well?” was merely an invitation to put him into whatever picture had taken shape since he had left the house.
She told him as much more as she had learnt about the elopement, and gave him the message from Sir Bartram. Then in a small tight voice she said: “I have to thank you too for coming to my defence as you did. It was—more than kind.”
“Kind!” His tone belittled the word. “At first I only wanted to enable you to get your bearings for your own defence.”
“But I had none, except to tell the truth and, as you heard, my godmother wasn’t disposed to listen to that. It was only when you intervened that I suppose she had to believe the two of us.”
“Not a bit of it. If you recall, she returned to the attack with considerable spirit and with at least one observation which she calculated should embarrass us both—”
His pause seemed to invite some reply by Tessa. But having expected he would ignore Lady Catterick’s clumsy gibe, she had found nothing to say before he turned to walk back to his car and went on: “After that, desperate ills seemed to call for desperate remedies. Hence my rather groundless threat of a slander action which, however, achieved our result. And I’d hazard a guess that, since, she has gone into steady reverse from trying to make a scrape-goat of you?”
Tessa smiled faintly and nodded. “From scapegoat to sheet-anchor,” she said. “Until Sir Bartram returns with or without news, I am not to leave her, as I am the only comfort she has!”
“And you should be equipped to discount the value of that!” He got into his driving seat. “After this morning’s turncoat exhibition you’ve probably realised that muddled thinkers like Lady Catterick hardly expect you to believe anything their tongues commit them to—”
“Or even,” said Tessa steadily, helping him over the awkward place, “to suppose that they can believe it themselves as soon as it has been said.”
“No,” he agreed. And again: “No. But the worst of it is—the sheer mischief they can manage to wreak.”
He drove away then, and Tessa, watching him go, guessed that he was probably gratified at having extricated himself from a difficult situation without lack of chivalry and with some tact.
Sir Bartram returned that evening, having failed to trace the runaways. But he assured his wife that Rex must make some sign before his leave from St. Faith’s ran out, and actually it was through hospital gossip, passed on by Hilary, that Tessa herself learnt the sequel.
Hilary said that Rex, jauntily self-confident as ever, had reported for duty on time, the only difference being that he was no longer to be attached to Sir Bartram’s personal staff. But in the medical common-rooms he made no secret of the fact that after the first “sticky patch” he had been accepted at Usherwood and had even been allotted a suite there for himself and Camille. From Usherwood directly Tessa heard nothing until, a few days later, Rex rang her up.
“Well, my pet,” he greeted her, “I gather that you bore the brunt and held the fort and generally rallied round here after Camille and I had skipped off on the nuptial trip?”
“Yes, I was at Usherwood with Godmother,” she told him. “Need you really have put her and Sir Bartram to all that worry for days on end, Rex?”
“There was no other way. D’you suppose we’d have got their blessing until we presented them with the accomplished fact? And it was Camille’s idea that we should have a honeymoon without worrying about the wrath to come. Actually though, there hasn’t been all that wrath. I think Camille can keep Mamma-in-law sweet until the Old Man comes across more handsomely than he has done to date. Had you heard that I’ve been booted off his staff?”
“Hilary told me. But Rex—you’d told me that you had ‘lost the clue’ to wanting special favours through Camille? I thought you had almost promised me that you wouldn’t marry her unless you really loved her for herself.”
“So I do, at that,” he conceded. “But isn’t she going to share in whatever bounty I can get out of Papa? Anyway, I suppose a suite over here has got something over furnished rooms for a start Come to that, how did you happen to be here when the balloon went up?”
“Godmother had sent for me. She thought I must have been in your c
onfidence over your plans.”
“Poor Tessa—that’s a laugh! Not, though, that you were quite blameless, you know—”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you rather put me through the hoop, didn’t you? I mean, it was only after our showdown coming back from Stratford that I decided I’d better marry Camille—” He broke off there, giving Tessa the impression that he had covered the mouthpiece, and she heard him say: “All right, honey,” before he explained: “That was Camille, needing her new husband. I’d better go. But when shall I see something of you, Tessa? Couldn’t we make a date?”
Tessa said carefully: “In the circumstances, I don’t think that’s a very good idea, do you?”
“Why not? You’re not scared, are you, of the effect we might still have on each other?” Rex challenged.
From his tone she guessed that his vanity would be flattered if she said “Yes.” But without the merest quickened pulse-beat she said: “Not scared in the least. Just reluctant—understandably, I should think—to meet Camille just yet.”
“But you needn’t meet her.”
“Then,” Tessa said, “it isn’t merely a poor idea. It’s a suggestion that wasn’t worth making at all.” At the time she could hardly believe that she had made a final dismissal of anything that Rex had done or could do to her life.
With the passing of the June days there was a noticeable difference in the kind of cases she and Nurse Hatfield were called to attend. As Nurse Hatfield said drily: “Babies? They’re always with us!” But the old people who had seemed to be fighting a losing battle with a long, stark winter took new life from the strengthening sun and needed less care at about the same time as the children of the district staged continuous emergencies from sunstrokes, outdoor mishaps and surfeits of ice-cream. But on the whole the demands upon both nurses were lighter and they actually found themselves with time on their hands.
Tessa joined the tennis club at one of the factory sports grounds and allowed herself to be enlisted as a helper in a youth club. And once a week there was Civil Defence, which both she and Nurse Hatfield had taken up enthusiastically—Nurse Hatfield as an ambulance driver, Tessa as a warden, in which role, despite Neil Callender’s advice, she felt her nursing experience would be more valuable.
She and Hilary continued to spend most of their coinciding off-duty time together. On pleasant days, both being passionately fond of swimming, they would visit the city’s most modern pool and spend long hours in the sun; when the weather was not so good Tessa would call for Hilary at St. Faith’s and they would go to the nearby cinema.
On one such afternoon Tessa alighted from the bus at the foot of the hill dominated by the spread of the hospital buildings to find that the high wind which had been raging all day had brought on a vicious scurry of rain. Head down she plunged into it for the ten-minute walk, but had gone only a few yards when a car she recognised drew in to the kerb beside her.
Neil Callender leaned across to open the near-side door for her. “Get in,” he commanded, and when she had accepted gratefully, asked where he could drop her.
When she told him, he said that he also was on his way up to St. Faith’s to see a surgeon who had newly joined the staff but who had been a colleague of his own when he had worked at the Brevit Clinic under Sir Bartram Catterick.
As they neared the hospital he had already taken the direction of the main entrance before it evidently occurred to him that Tessa, on her way to the staff quarters, might not use that way in.
“Sorry,” he said, slowing up. “Is this right for you?”
“Not really, but I can walk round.”
“In this weather?” He turned the car and took instead the private road signposted “Medical and Nursing Staff.” It had stopped raining when they reached the door in the boundary wall to which Tessa directed him, and as she alighted he nodded with interest towards the mess of demolition and builders’ scaffolding to be seen above the wall. “What’s going on here?” he asked.
Tessa followed his glance and laughed. “It’s alleged to be the North Wing Renovation,” she told him.
“Why ‘alleged?’ What’s so funny about it?”
“Only that it has become rather a hospital butt. For ages now the wards that used to be housed in the North Wing have been camping out in hutments or sharing other wards. And though something—pickaxing or bricklaying or mortar-mixing—always seems to be going busily on, it doesn’t seem to get much nearer to achieving a whole roof or walls or floors.”
“But something must have been done?”
“Oh, yes, of course a lot has, really. But you can imagine the merciless teasing the workmen have to stand, and though Matron claims to believe that it will be finished one day, everyone else enjoys making dark prophecies that it never will.”
Neil nodded: “Oh, I see—the sort of cosy domestic joke that gathers wit with time and works itself into the very archives? I don’t suppose there’s a family—even one as big as St. Faith’s must be—that hasn’t got something of the sort, do you?”
Agreeing, Tessa thanked him for the lift and watched as he began to reverse the car in the narrow cul-de-sac before she turned to the door, which was opened for her by a man who was about to pass though.
She noticed amusedly that the courtyard inside seemed to be deeper in debris and general confusion than ever, and being forced to shield her eyes from the scurries of mortar dust picked up by the mischievous wind, she bumped hard into a girl hurrying the other way.
They gasped “Sorry!” in unison, then stood back laughing breathlessly.
Tessa said: “I ought to know you. Wait a minute—”
But the pretty girl facing her prompted: “Jessie Cutlow. In my Student year when you were in your lofty Third—”
“Oh yes! I remember that someone pointed you out to me because they thought we were a bit alike.”
“Only wish we were! There’s a likeness perhaps, but you’re taller, and I’ve still got too much puppy fat.” Jessie Cutlow’s glance frankly admired Tessa’s slim height. “You’ve got a District somewhere in the city, haven’t you?”
“Yes, The Chase. What about you?”
“Oh—battling towards my Finals. I hope I qualify, but whether or no, I’m getting married afterwards. I’m engaged to Harry Pilley. Do you remember him?”
“Dr. Pilley? Yes, of course. He had a great reputation for scrounging illicit coffee in the ward kitchens practically under Sister’s eye!”
Jessie laughed. “That’s Harry. I’m going out with him now, but I don’t know whether he is in front or behind. You haven’t seen him, have you?”
“A man went out as I came in,” Tessa told her. “But it wasn’t Dr. Pilley. I didn’t know this one.”
“No, he’s new. I saw him ahead of me. Where are you bound for yourself? Oh—and have you heard the latest about this?” Jessie’s thumb jerked in the direction of the skeleton North Wing, “It’s being said that one of the apprentices who was still doing his time when the work started is due to take his pension next week!”
“Oh, really!” laughed Tessa. She looked about the empty courtyard. “What has happened now, though? Have they lost heart and given up altogether?”
“No, they were blasting this morning. Such a row you never heard! But its Saturday. Half-day,” Jessie reminded her.
“Of course. I forgot.” But Tessa broke off at Jessie’s little yelp of dismay and vain leap towards her hat as a gust of wind whisked if from her head.
“It’s my best!” wailed Jessie. She ran to catch the errant hat as it bowled towards an angle of one of the roofless walls, and Tessa joined her in the lee of the wall to offer to hold her handbag while she replaced it.
“Have you got a mirror?” panted Jessie. “If so, hold it for me, there’s a dear.”
“Only in my compact, I’m afraid,” said Tessa, producing it and tilting the tiny mirror to Jessie’s needs.
“Angel.” Jessie cocked her head, peered and fixed the hat
to her satisfaction. “Where is that wretched fiancé of mine, I wonder? He knew he was to meet me—Goodness, what’s the matter with you?”
For Tessa, frozen at the insistence of a sound she could not define, had caught Jessie’s arm.
“Listen—what was that?” she muttered. “That sort of—creaking noise?”
But already from a creaking it had become a very crescendo of tearing, of cleavage, and in the roofless wall above them a widening V gaped towards the sky. On either side of it bricks shuddered, beetled outward and fell in showers of crumbled mortar, and as the fissure jagged crookedly groundward the whole area of masonry swayed with a kind of sickening hesitancy before it broke up in thunder.
Too late Tessa choked her warning: “Look out!” and wrenched at Jessie’s arm in a vain effort to pull her clear. They were both struck and thrown flat by hailing bricks before they were buried beneath a piled cairn of debris which, to Tessa’s fading consciousness, seemed to be smoking its own suffocating poisons into her lungs.
She came to, probably only minutes later, to notice with detached, dreamy wonder that she could breathe again, that she could see the sky, that a man kneeling at her side was whispering agonised endearments.
“My dear one, my dear one—thank God you’re alive!” he muttered, and then on a rising note of appeal something which sounded like: “Jess?”
That explained itself even to her clouded senses. She was her rescuer’s “dear one” because he was Dr. Pilley and he did not realise she was the wrong girl. After all, how could the poor man know, when he had expected only Jessie to be there? Her head ached intolerably and her right arm was a shooting fire of pain. But somehow she must summon a smile for him and tell him how wrong he was—