Air Ambulance (12 page)

Immediately she felt that it didn’t belong on the island. Ruched satin and looped nylon draperies and a hundred and one foolish little knick-knacks seemed to have no real place on Heimra, and somehow Margot herself looked curiously inadequate and pitiable lying there between the rose-pink sheets with her fair head resting against a pile of nylon-covered pillows.

“Come and sit beside me,” she commanded. “I’m having one of my bad days.”

“I ought not to have come.”

“I wanted you to come.” Margot tugged at her pillows. “Perhaps I just wanted to torment myself, seeing you free to walk away when it suited you.”

Alison’s discomfort deepened. What could she really say to such a statement? Margot continued to watch her as the seconds ticked away.

“How long does Fergus mean to keep you here?” she asked at last.

“I don’t know.” The question was one which Alison had hardly expected. “I suppose—till he thinks that I’m able to travel back to the mainland.”

“Have you no family? Someone who might be anxious about your return?
”

“Both my parents are dead,” Alison said, feeling that she was being subjected to a very thorough inquisition. “And my only brother is abroad, living in Kenya.”

“I see. So you are practically alone and unattached,” Margot reflected. “Has Fergus asked you to help with the children yet?”

“No. I’ve only been here two days,” Alison reminded her.

“He is always on the lookout for a nurse.” Margot closed her eyes, sinking more deeply among her pillows. “People are so terribly unreliable these days, and Heimra is so remote,” she complained. “So far off the beaten track. There’s no life here for anyone like yourself,” she pointed out. “It’s deadly.”

“The work at Garrisdale would become an absorbing interest,” Alison remarked before she had time to realize that she had been given a warning.

Margot’s eyes opened a fraction of an inch.

“A man and his life’s work are indivisible,” she said slowly. “Most of the nurses who have come here have found it difficult to retain an interest in one without developing a passion for the other.”

“I didn’t come to Heimra to find a job, Mrs. Blair,” she pointed out. “It was a complete accident.”

“Of course!” Margot let her blue-veined lids drop over her eyes again.

“What happened to the other people on the plane?” Margot asked. “The pilot and the navigator, or whatever he was?”

“Ginger, the First Officer, went back to the mainland.” Alison felt as if something had suddenly gripped her by the throat. “He escaped with no more than a scratch or two. That sort of thing often happens.”

“And the pilot?” Margot persisted. “He was badly injured, wasn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“What’s the matter?” The violet-blue eyes were sharp. “Were you in love with him?”

“I—know him very well.”

“Is he going to die?” She shivered a little.

“No!” The cry came straight from Alison’s heart.

“How long will he be here?”

“I don’t know. Mr. Blair won’t have him moved for a week or two at least.”

“I see. And you are to stay with him?”

“I don’t think so. It hasn’t been suggested, anyway.”

“But if it was? If it
was
suggested?” Margot repeated carefully. “You would accept like a shot?”

“I’m still employed by the hospital,” was all that Alison could think of to say. “I couldn’t remain here indefinitely.”

“But
he
could—taking up much too much of Fergus’ time,” Margot suggested.

Suddenly all the selfishness that lay behind the words was revealed in the blinding light of insight, and Alison saw Margot’s seeming concern for her brother-in-law’s work for what it was. Margot was not prepared to share Fergus’ attention and devoted service with anybody, even with someone as desperately injured as the pilot of the stranded Heron.

And when she knew, eventually, who that pilot was, would her reaction be any different?

“Heimra isn’t a casualty clearing station,” she continued in the same even tone. “If people can be taken off the other islands and flown back to Glasgow to hospital, I can’t see any reason why the same thing shouldn’t apply to him. By the way,” she added with the first suggestion of curiosity in her voice, “what’s his name?”

Alison got to her feet and crossed to the window. She could not look at Margot in that moment.

“Captain Gowrie,” she said. “Ronald Gowrie. He really belongs on Heimra, you know.”

The silence in the big, over-furnished room was tense. Alison felt her fingernails biting into the soft flesh of her palms as she stood with her hands clenched, waiting for Margot to speak. When she did, it was to emit a small, quivering sigh.

“I wonder if he knew I was here?” she mused.

Alison could have struck her.

“Of course he didn’t know!” she declared, turning to confront the girl on the bed with undisguised scorn in her eyes. “Do you think he crashed a plane deliberately to be near you?”

Margot smiled.

“I see you
are
in love with him!” she said.

“That’s nonsense, and I had no right to shout at you,” Alison apologized. “But—but I do know that people who have been in love—desperately in love—don’t come back deliberately for the pleasure of being hurt again once they believe that they have got over it.”

“You’re quite sure, then, that Ron Gowrie has ‘got over’ me?” she queried.

“If he hasn’t and you’re thinking that you might win him back again just to amuse yourself,” Alison began, but stopped when she saw Margot’s cruel little smile.

Suddenly Alison remembered the chair on the terrace and the fact that the girl she had been accusing couldn’t walk.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized again. “I don’t know why I should be speaking to you like this. I must have been more upset by the crash than I realized.”

“Or more in love than you thought?” Margot suggested. “All sorts of things are possible to a person in love—and to a desperate person,” she added slowly.

Alison gazed at her, not entirely understanding.

“Several months ago,” Margot said deliberately, “it was finally confirmed that my chances of walking freely again were less than one in a thousand. The outside chance was an operation, which I refused to undergo. I could quite easily have died under the anaesthetic, you see. Even Fergus made no bones about that. He knew that it was useless to pretend to me. Perhaps you may want to ask him for the details now, because you are a nurse and are interested, shall we say? They don’t really interest me. All I know is that the risk wasn’t worth taking. I’m safe enough here. I have some sort of life, and I also have Fergus.”

Alison could not have heard properly. That anyone should refuse an operation for such a selfish reason seemed incredible. A thousandth chance to live normally was worth taking.
Surely
it was worth taking! But Margot had refused that chance because she was “safe enough” at Monkdyke and because she could be sure of Fergus Blair’s continuing care.

Was she also sure of his love? Oh, yes, Margot had already hinted at that a dozen times!

Something crumpled in Alison’s heart as she accepted the fact, and her pity flowed out to Fergus and Margot alike. Caught up in such a tragic web of unhappiness and frustration, their lives would go on being incomplete until the end. They could not marry, or if they did the future would be no better than the present, but nothing would induce Fergus Blair to abandon his responsibility. And he had said himself that he held himself responsible.

“I must go,” Alison said when she had finished her second cup of tea. “I mustn’t tire you by staying too long, Mrs. Blair.”

“If you do mean to stay on Heimra,” Margot said as she moved towards the door, “we’ll probably meet again. And perhaps it might be amusing to meet Ron Gowrie, too!”

“He will be too ill to come to see you for some considerable time,” she pointed out. “And after that it will depend on Mr. Blair’s decision about sending him back to the mainland.”

She closed the door between her and Monkdyke’s lovely invalid, feeling the turmoil within her like a great sea whose breaking waves dashed ceaselessly against her aching heart.

A sigh or a small, choked sob rose to her
li
ps as she ran half blindly down the stairs and across the sudden coldness of the darkened hall towards the front door.

The door was a solid, heavy affair and she had to tug at it to open it. When she did Fergus Blair was facing her on the other side.

The shock of meeting him like that made pretence ridiculous, she thought. He could not fail to see how disturbed she was, although he could not possibly guess the reason.

“This is running absolutely contrary to every order I’ve issued,” he told her firmly as he took her by the elbow and led her back across the hall. “I don’t know what you feel you have to gain by rushing around as if every minute counted!”

Or running away, Alison thought desperately. Even if I run away from love that won’t help me now.

“I thought I had waited rather long,” she tried to explain. “I thought I might upset Mrs. Blair.”

His mouth tightened as he threw open a door at the far end of the hall, ushering her into a sunny room. It was one of the rooms leading on to the terrace, and all the sunshine of the day before seemed to come flooding in to meet them.

“She’s in bed, I understand,” he said without expression as he went towards the sideboard which dominated the wall opposite to the huge open fireplace. “East winds are Margot’s invariable excuse for a mood, and I’m afraid poor old Hannah panders to her.”

Remembering how unkind Margot had been to Hannah, Alison did not know what to say, and his own rather harsh criticism of the invalid surprised and shocked her.

“She has so much to bear,” she said pityingly. “We would all fall down on the job at times, Fergus, if we saw so dark a future ahead.”

He turned to look at her with the glass he had taken from the sideboard in his hand.

“Would we?” he asked surprisingly. “Or would we try to make something better of what we saw?”

“You can’t possibly be criticising her!” she gasped.

“No,” he said slowly, “I don’t think I’m doing that. Margot has had a rough deal from life these past six years and I’m sorry for her.” He turned away to pour something into the tumbler he held, and all she could see was his broad, purposeful back and the nape of his neck as he bent his dark head to the task. “She accepted defeat rather easily, I thought.”

“But there was so slim a chance!” she found herself protesting. “It was almost a matter of life or death.”

He turned to look at her, his eyes suddenly clear and steady on her own.

“What would you have chosen?” he asked.

“I would have had the operation.” She had spoken without hesitation, but almost instantly she drew back. “Oh, but how do I know
what
I would do?” she amended. “One can’t know till it comes to the bit—till it becomes a matter of personal choice.”

“I think you do know, all the same,” he said, holding out the tumbler. “Will you drink this? I think you need it.”

He watched her drain the contents of the tumbler to its bitter dregs.

“I think Mrs. Blair is waiting for you to go up and have some tea,” she said. “I can see myself out. I feel much better now.” Foolish, conventional words which she felt he expected of her while all the while her heart wanted to cry, “I love you! I love you!”

“If you can wait a minute,” he suggested, “I’ll walk back with you. After what you’ve just swallowed, you may need my help if you start to rush around again!”

How could she wait while he went to Margot? Up to that over-heated, over-furnished room to drop a light kiss on the golden hair or to hold Margot’s small, crushed body despairingly against his own!

“Mrs. Blair expects you to stay,” she said with amazing steadiness. “I can easily go alone.”

“All the same,” he said with the sudden tightening of his mouth which she had come to expect in moments of determination, “I would like you to wait.”

She sat down rather heavily in the chair he drew forward for her, unable to relax completely until he had closed the
door leading to the hall behind him. Then, when she was alone, she let her head sink back against the deep cushioning and closed her eyes.

The warmth of the sun streaming in through the long windows and the peats in the wide grate stole over her as the sedative Blair had mixed in the glass began to do its healing work. Tension slackened and the tears began to flow until it seemed that they had washed away everything but the love that lay buried in her heart.

An hour later she was still sitting there. Fergus had not come for her. Probably he knew that she would be asleep.

Slowly she rose, crossing to the window to look out over the deserted terrace to the white-sanded bay and the empty blue expanse of sea beyond. Life could be like that for her, she thought, her throat tightening, and then she remembered what Fergus had said little more than an hour ago. She must try to make something better of what she saw.

The emptiness, the heartache and sometimes the despair would always be there, but she would have her work, the work that would always remind her of her love and the fact that they could have shared so much!

When the door opened behind her she did not hear it, and Fergus was at her side before she turned.

“You love the sea,” he said, looking over her shoulder to the fringe of surf breaking against the distant rocks. “You could be content here.”

She nodded because she could not trust herself to speak, and for a while they stood in silence watching the streamers of red and yellow seaweed lifting in the draught of the tide.

How quiet, how peaceful it all was, Alison mused, yet she knew that this was only Heimra in one of her many moods. The lovely, bird-haunted isle could resound to the boom of angry waves dashing themselves against her sheer cliffs on the Atlantic seaboard, and boiling green seas could come frothing into the deep gullies between the rocks where the kittiwakes and the guillemots and the terns nested in the crevices. Gloomy caves could ruble to the dirge of a slow swell, and regiments of white horses could come galloping in across the peaceful bays.

She could almost hear the eldrich screech of a rising wind and the sonorous drum-beat of heavy seas pounding in from the empty ocean which lay between the Islands and the distant Americas.

Yet all these things were part of the Heimra she already knew, the island that had captured her heart.

Heavily she turned away from the window, remembering Margot in the room upstairs.

“I’m sure Mrs. Cameron must be wondering what has happened to me,” she said. “I didn’t mean to stay so long.”

Fergus opened the terrace window, letting in the little wind from the sea.

“We’ll go out this way,” Fergus suggested. “It will save our disturbing Hannah.”