The Flying Nurse (1960s Medical Romance Book 3)

by Sheila Burns

  The moment the doctor heard that this was what she sought, he closed like a clam. He pointed out that this often happened to people, and she knew by the tone that he used that he had no intention of helping her. It was almost as though he knew of something against her, something which prevented him from recommending her. In horror she wondered if the news of Cam’s career had stretched about and for this very reason he would not give her the aid she needed so much.

  He said that Malta was a delightfully healthy island and few people were ill here, which she knew was not true. In fact he knew of no one at the moment. When Mandy urged her difficulty, explaining that she was more or less stranded and in urgent need of money, he became very dictatorial. Then he rang off.

  She stared helplessly about the room. The soft curtains did not flutter at all and the air was hot, almost breathless. In the patio beyond the verandah there were the drooping flowers and the curling greenery, for this was the hour of the day when the heat was at its worst.

  The telephone rang again, and she heard Luis’s voice at the other end. ‘Thank God I have got you, that you are still here, for I was terrified that already you might have gone.’

  ‘I’m stranded,’ she confessed, ‘for Mother has gone, she must be taking off about now, and Marina took my place. I am here alone.’

  He did not seem to be unduly upset. ‘I’m afraid that you will think that I have neglected you, but quite a lot of things have been happening in the island, and I have been in something of demand. You are really alone?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ and her voice was a little bitter, for she was so scared. ‘I’ve tried to get a nursing job here so that I could have part-time work on which I could live, yet get something of a holiday for myself. I need a holiday so badly. But Dr Mallea was not very helpful.’

  ‘No, he wouldn’t be just now.’

  ‘Why just now? I’ve done nothing. He knows that I am a good nurse and nursing is what I seek to do.’

  He said, ‘Don’t worry about that, because it’s going to be all right. The best thing that I can do is to come straight over and have a talk with you. Don’t blame old Mallea too much; there has been a lot of trouble which I can explain.’

  When he rang off, Mandy felt herself going quiet, almost as if all her strength was used up and exhausted and she no longer had a free hand. She changed her frock. In this heat everything seemed to get puckered within an hour of wearing and drove one mad; she so hated looking untidy. She returned to the sitting-room again and still there was the scared feeling inside her, something that she could not conquer. The first sign of the dying day had come at last, for in the patio a tiny breeze stirred with a whisper, and instantly the flowers availed themselves of it. She took a long draught of the fresher air, and felt that it was like wine. Living in England one never realized what life was like in a Mediterranean island. Nobody understood it.

  Twenty minutes later she heard the door bell ring, and the slurred sound of Carmina’s plimsolls as she went to open it. She brought Luis in. He looked to be dead tired, and his suit was creased, which was most unusual for him and showed Mandy that he might have been up half the night. But in his hand he carried an enormous bunch of pale pink roses and starry marguerites, and these he laid on the table for her.

  ‘For you,’ he said.

  ‘How kind you are!’ But it wasn’t beautiful flowers that she wanted. She needed a job with a salary which would feed her, something she could save on for a week or so, before she could slip back to England. Back to St Jeremy’s as a staff nurse, she had decided. Maybe it would be nice to have the security of the place. Maybe she needed this.

  ‘I neglected you and I apologize,’ he said.

  ‘You look tired out, as if you had been up all night long. Sit down and I’ll get you a drink,’ and she went over to the cocktail cabinet standing in the corner.

  ‘Don’t worry about me or the drink. You are the one who matters, and I am so worried for you.’

  The sympathy with which he said it broke down any barrier that she might have felt still stood between them. She had to speak the truth and turned to him, her voice breaking. ‘I’m utterly desperate. Stupidly, I wouldn’t go home with Mother. I felt that I could not stand another moment with her and sent Marina instead. Too late I realized that the doctor would not help me. Now I’m stuck here.’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry. We’ll put that right for you even if I have to fly you home myself, and maybe you think I couldn’t do that, but I could …’ and he laughed. His voice was radiant. It was excited. She knew that it was going to be all right.

  As one in a dream she opened the cocktail cabinet and got him out a drink.

  Chapter Twelve

  When she had recovered a little from the terrible feeling of being scared to death, Mandy told him details of what had happened. The end had come very suddenly for Cam, no one could have thought that it would be quite so quick. He had been getting better, and quite often she had noticed this in patients; they appeared to be so much better, and then, too late, one knew it had only led up to the last attack. He had died as the men who came for him were actually taking him out of the house. It should never have happened, she told Luis. Maybe for months now Cam had ridden a fast horse which was life, to the edge of the precipice which was death; then suddenly the horse had plunged down.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ he said.

  She asked: ‘What is it that Cam has actually done? He told me first that he was in the Secret Service. I believe that Mother thought that too, but in the end I got the idea that it must have been something which was entirely different.’

  ‘Yes, it was.’

  ‘I do want to know,’ she said.

  ‘It’s a little difficult to tell you,’ and he sat down on the sofa, the drink in his hand. ‘For some time now there has been a group of people who have been bringing dangerous drugs into the island and selling them here at very great profits. We had suspicions, but could never trace it down. We knew that they must be directed by someone who was really important. In this game you catch the small mice, hoping that they will squeak, and in the end you get the leading lights.’

  ‘Lucinda?’ she asked.

  It was almost as though he had not heard her, and he went on. ‘Lucinda has had a bad record; she left the States with that record, and could not have gone back there. I doubt if her husband ever knew what she did, and whilst he was alive there was some rein on her; when he died she got going in a big way. Certain men were marked down, men who were constant visitors here, and Cam was one of them. Whenever he visited the island the sales shot up. It meant that they had more of the product to sell, and naturally he was suspect.’

  ‘Did he know it was running close to him?’

  ‘I should imagine that he had a good idea, because what always happens in these cases ‒ the men he trusted to help him ratted on him. Until now Giuseppe had been useful, but this time when he became ill Giuseppe’s patience ran out. Once he had worked with Max Jefferies; then they had the most terrific quarrel. Blood was drawn. That split the group a bit, each on the principle that “I-won’t-go-down-but-the-other-chap-will!” ’

  ‘And you came to England because of this?’

  He paused and then he said, ‘If you want the truth, I came to England to pick you up. We knew that you were coming out to the island on the excuse of nursing your stepfather; it was to be you or your mother, and the story went round that you would bring in with you a good stock of heroin. For your stepfather, of course. That was the idea.’

  ‘You never thought that of me?’ Mandy was appalled.

  ‘Never after I first saw you in the airport. Rather frightened, much more frightened in the plane and quite obviously with no secret mission in the bag.’

  ‘You are sure about that?’

  ‘Absolutely sure. A man believes in the woman whom he loves anyway, and I knew from the second that we met that I did love you.’

  She had the feeling of someone coming through the darkness of t
he night to meet the dawn. Delight seemed within her; she could feel herself relaxing from the strain. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

  ‘We were getting fairly close with Cam, then when Max Jefferies was arrested he was actually caught in the act of passing on heroin to an agent, and he gave Cam away. That is the worst of these chaps, and it is something that they always do.’

  ‘To help themselves?’

  ‘They believe that it will help them, but by the time that they are arrested, it is of course already too late.’ He paused. ‘I suppose that Cam has been one of the most difficult suspects that we have ever had, and quite the most elusive. That man was born cunning.’

  She nodded. ‘And, had he lived, I suppose that he would have received a long sentence?’

  ‘Yes, he would! There could have been no escaping this one; it would most certainly have been a stiff term, and it would have broken him.’

  ‘I’m sure it would. His health would not have stood it and he would have had another thrombosis fairly soon.’

  Luis nodded.

  ‘Maybe what happened was for the best. Life is sometimes kind that way, and I do so hope that your mother was not too much upset.’

  ‘Mother will get over it. She was in a fury when she set off for home, but I suspect that she will get over that, too! Now my worry is myself. You see, I’ve got to earn to pay my way.’

  ‘Don’t worry. You are coming back to stay at my casa, as I promised you.’

  She looked at him and with some apprehension, for now the worry had returned. ‘It would never do, Luis. It could never do, can’t you see that? You have no need for a nurse, and what I am looking for is work as a part-time nurse.’

  He looked at her, and the very dark eyes were becoming darker than ever. When he spoke his voice was a little far away and distant, but very determined. ‘In my casa I have a little son. He also is not long for this life; he does not even know me, I am to him just a voice, and you could be a voice, too. I know that yours would be a kind one! You could help him so much, I know that, and it ‒ it would not be for long.’

  She said, ‘Don’t say that,’ almost bitterly, for it seemed to her to be so dreadful.

  He rose and came closer. ‘I want you to stay with me for ever,’ he said. ‘Maybe all that I can offer today is a world of sadness, until the boy goes. One loves him very much, but at times he suffers. I want someone with him who could influence and control that suffering.’

  For a moment she said nothing, for she had no voice left. Was she wrong in wondering if all he sought was a nurse for the boy, and then when the child died, and this would not be very long ‒ the father admitted it ‒ she would be again cast out into the harshness of the world. Maybe he was a thought-reader; maybe he read what she felt, for suddenly he held out his lightly tanned hand, slight as a woman’s, and he took hold of her wrists.

  ‘You’ve got me wrong, darling. Not just as a nurse. Until I met you that day in the airport I had determined never to marry again. Too much had happened and it had hurt me too terribly. Then in the plane itself when I knew that you were frightened, I cared for you. I fell in love with you. I think we both knew it, but you, new to my island, did not realize that it was for ever. I tried to make you see this, especially that day at the old temples. That day when I gave you wild thyme, which lasts eternally, and always retains that fragrance.’

  ‘I ‒ I didn’t understand …’ she said.

  ‘I’ll make you understand so much,’ he promised and kissed her. Beyond the windows the breeze of the fresh new night had begun, and the bells were ringing merrily. The sun would be sinking over the Citta Veccian range, dipping down behind the hulk of Imtarfa barracks. Suddenly she knew that this was the great beginning of an emotion which would last for all her life.

  She would never return to St Jeremy’s, and she would never be a flying nurse, for she would be here with Luis for ever. It was her island.

  THE END

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