Nurse Lang (9 page)

She was alone in the Priory again and she felt a freedom out of all proportion flooding over her like warming sunshine after the bleak chill of rain. All these weeks when Grant had been away in South Africa attending to Philip she had had the place to herself, to wander about at will and give her own orders to the servants, and now it could be like that again. It
would
be like that if Grant did not marry.

Moira sat in the ambulance beside Philip, with Grant riding in the cab in front. She was still in her old uniform of starched head-square and white coat because her responsibility for Philip was not quite at an end, and she knew that it would not end even when she had handed him over to Matron and put on the severe blue hospital dress and frilled cap which would be waiting for her at the end of her journey. There was still the promise she had made to Philip to see this thing through to the end.

“Well, here we are! This is something new for both of us, Phil. Wish me luck!”

“You won’t need it for very long,” he assured her. “Once I’m on my feet again our luck will be mutual!”

Grant came round to open the doors for them and walked beside the trolley as the attendant wheeled Philip to the lift.

“Your room’s on the first floor,” he explained, “where you can see the Priory windows through the trees.”

He had arranged all that, Moira realized, sensing Philip’s deep attachment to his home and the raw, grating newness which being a patient in the hospital he knew so well would bring, and she thanked him inwardly for his thoughtfulness.

Philip demanded that she should stay with him until he was settled into his new quarters.

“Whatever orders Grant likes to issue afterwards, you’re still my nurse,” he said, “until someone comes along to take your place.” Matron came in and Grant stood aside, watching his brother’s reaction to his first experience of real authority, but Philip could be charming when he liked.

“You’re not going to find me an easy patient,” he warned. "My one idea is to get out of here as quickly as possible!”

Honor Cavendish gave him a warm, friendly smile.

“We can’t afford to keep you much longer than a month,” she said. “We need the bed.”

Moira took her leave of Philip as soon as the ward sister came in. “You will be reporting for duty, Nurse,” Matron said, following her from the room. “If you’ll come this way I’ll introduce you to the sister in charge of the physiotherapy section. They have quite a session over there this afternoon I believe, and they’ll be glad of your help. Doctor Hillier is in charge.”

The sister in charge was a tall, angular woman in her mid-forties, sallow-skinned and acid-looking, and she surveyed her new recruit with no great show of enthusiasm.

“Have you done this sort of work before?” she asked.

“No, but I’ve always thought it would be most interesting. I have of course, seen it in action in the wards.”

“We have a very big out-patients’ department here,” the older woman observed speculatively. “I think you’d better go down there to start with. Miss Jackson, the technician will show you your way about and I’ll come and see how you are getting on later.”

Moira worked non-stop for the next three hours, realizing that ward routine was one thing and out-patients quite a different proposition altogether. When the last sufferer had been ushered through the swing doors and the last car had driven away from the car-park there was still the paraphernalia of their treatments to clear away and she took her orders from Sister with a feeling of weariness which she had almost forgotten about during these past few leisurely months at sea.

She was cleaning out the last sluice when Elizabeth put her neat head in at the door.

“How goes it?” she asked cheerfully. “Has your first day left you all in one piece?”

“I’m not quite sure yet!” Moira smiled. She had seen Elizabeth from time to time during the day, glimpses of her as a patient was shown in or out of her surgery, but there had been no opportunity for a word in conversation until now. “My feet have reached a stage where I don’t know whether they are at the end of my legs at all!”

“They’re still there, I can assure you,” Elizabeth said. “I’ve got some forms to fill up before I go,” she added, “but if you’d like to wait I can run you home.”

For the first time Moira faced the thought of her return to the Priory and the memory of Serena made her heart turn over. She could not imagine what Serena’s attitude would be now that her presence was no longer essential at the Priory as Philip’s nurse and she felt that Grant would only be irritated by any suggestion of friction between them.

“I don’t know what to do,” she found herself confiding. “There’s no reason why I should consider the Priory a comfortable lodging now that Philip has gone. It wasn’t exactly in my contract.”

“What exactly was in your contract?” she asked.

“I—promised to nurse Philip until he was strong enough to undergo this operation.” Moira bent over the sluice, scrubbing industriously. “Grant thought I could help and he was so—anxious about Philip at that time because Phil wasn’t co-operating at all well.”

“I see.” Elizabeth’s tone was almost dry. “Well, he owes you that, at any rate.”

Moira looked up, surprised.

“Grant, I mean,” Elizabeth said with slow deliberation. “This operation means a great deal to him and we simply must get results.”

Moira’s heart began to beat in slow, sledge-hammer blows.

“Will it be—on Monday?” she asked.

“I expect so. Grant will be able to tell you when you see him.” Elizabeth stood irresolute for a moment. “Look,” she said, “why not come over to my flat for a meal? You can phone the Priory and tell Serena you won’t be in till round about eleven and that will give you time to come back here and say good night to Phil into the bargain. He won’t be allowed any other visitors this evening.”

Moira grasped at the invitation.

When they both came off duty at seven o’clock she got into Elizabeth’s car and drove with her to the other side of the town. Serena’s reaction to her telephone call had been instantaneous and half-expected. Serena was frankly relieved. She was having company to dinner, she informed Moira stiffly.

Elizabeth’s flat was as gay and cheerful as her consulting-room, with flowers everywhere and deep, comfortable chairs drawn around the fire, and Elizabeth put a match under the logs as soon as they went in.

She whirled into the kitchen and out again, a charming dynamic creature in her own home who could shed her professional veneer and become a housewife in an instant of revealing transformation which put her guest immediately at her ease.

“Can I do anything to help?” Moira asked.

“It’s all ready,” Elizabeth called from the direction of the bathroom. “I have a most efficient daily who knows everything there is to know about slow cooking. Everything will be in the oven and ready to serve by eight o’clock! If you’re interested in old snapshots, by the way,” she added, “there’s an album full of them under the radiogram. Help yourself!”

She turned on the taps and a low-pitched, tuneless humming drifted into the room as she made an unsuccessful attempt to capture the latest popular tune. Moira crossed to the radiogram, hesitating between Elizabeth’s offer of the snapshot album and the current variety show, and in the end she picked up the album and went back with it to the fire.

The book had been started with enthusiasm many years ago and the snaps had been stuck into the first dozen or so pages and neatly captioned, not without humour. She found herself laughing at Elizabeth’s first efforts on skis against a Swiss Alpine background of snow and sun, and Elizabeth on horseback and obviously out of her element, but before she had gone very far she realized how much the story of Elizabeth was the story of the hospital and Grant. There were groups of nurses and groups of students, and Grant in white flannels and an open-necked shirt playing tennis in the hospital grounds. There was Grant again in the South of France, sunning himself on a palm-fringed beach, and the atmosphere of sunshine and warmth and swaying palm trees smote across her heart in painful memory. She closed the book with a tiny, determined snap and found that her eyes were blurred by tears.
Gran Canaria
could be nothing but a forgotten incident in Grant’s busy life. He had travelled so far and done so much that it could be no more than a snapshot put away with a smile to lie hidden like those in Elizabeth’s album.

She rose to put the album back in its place, and as she did so the loose snapshots which Elizabeth had never quite got round to sticking in fell with a small flop onto the carpet.

She bent to pick them up, gathering them into a pile until suddenly she found herself staring down at one of them. It had been enlarged to postcard size and it showed four people on a picnic—Grant and Philip and Elizabeth and the most beautiful girl Moira had ever seen. The four were seated in a row on a sandy strip of beach with dark rocks behind them and they were all looking directly at the camera except the unknown girl. Her full, dark eyes were turned revealingly on Grant, her lips parted to show small, neat teeth like pearls, and her whole body gave the impression of straining towards him.

Kerry!

The name jumped out at Moira without any prompting and she knew that she could not be mistaken. This was Kerry, and her heart recoiled before the conviction that no other woman could ever look like that in Grant’s eyes. Kerry was exquisite from the crown of her ash-blonde head to her delicately proportioned little feet which she had dug, naked, into the fine sand, and there was an aura about her of conquest. Why had Serena said that Kerry was not beautiful? Was this not beauty in one of its most breath-taking forms?

A hand came over her shoulder and Elizabeth’s voice sounded above her head.

“I thought I had torn that up long ago.”

“I’ve—never seen anyone quite so wonderful,” she said at last into the lengthening silence.

“Beauty was Kerry’s stock-in-trade,” Elizabeth said flatly. “Surface beauty. She had nothing else.”

Yet, a man like Grant could fall in love with her, Moira thought.

She watched numbly while Elizabeth tore the snapshot up and dropped the pieces into the fire, but it didn’t seem as if she had really destroyed anything by her deliberate action. Kerry’s power still remained. Moira could feel it in the room now between them, as it had stood between Grant and herself a dozen times, and even when they moved through to the kitchen to set out their meal on a gay red and white cloth on the table in the dining-alcove she still felt it there, although Elizabeth gave the impression of having put the incident completely behind her.

They washed up the dishes afterwards, carrying their coffee back to the lounge to drink it before the fire, and Moira saw Elizabeth glance at the clock.

“It’s almost ten,” she said as if she were disappointed. “Grant sometimes comes in for a coffee when he has done his rounds.”

“He may be with Philip,” Moira suggested, conscious of her own quickened heartbeats, but Elizabeth shook her head.

“I don’t think Grant wants Phil to feel that he’s keeping on top of him all the time,” she said. “He may have been delayed by something else. I can’t think that he will have gone to Serena’s party.”

Almost instantly the door bell rang and Moira’s heart pounded more quickly in answer. This must be Grant coming here to Elizabeth to find the relaxation which was not always possible at the Priory.

He came in behind Elizabeth, the long, purposeful stride which always had the power to disturb her carrying him to the hearthrug in a couple of paces and she saw him smiling down at her as if from a great distance. The day had been long, and the heat of the fire had bemused her tired brain so that she even imagined there was concern for her in his grey eyes.

“How did the first day go?” he asked. “I looked in on you about four o’clock, but you were up to your elbows in a wax bath!”

She smiled faintly.

“Was that the young man who was so sensitive about his feet?”

“I expect so. I thought you managed him very well.”

“Moira has a way with her!” Elizabeth was brewing more coffee for him and spoke over her shoulder. “Taken all in all, she’s the perfect nurse!”

“Perfection?” Moira, mused. “What is it really? Perfect workmanship, perfect beauty—?”

She knew that she was thinking about Kerry and she saw Grant’s dark brows draw together in a quick frown, although he had no knowledge of the snapshot or the fact that she had ever seen Kerry.

“There’s no such thing,” he said abruptly. “Your perfect beauty would be something quite out of this world if it went with complete perfection in everything else. Presumably it would be too much for an ordinary human being to grapple with,” he added dryly.

“Well, don’t dare to tell me that I make perfect coffee after all that!” Elizabeth laughed, as if to bridge some gap which had grown between them. “I shall begin to expect that I have failed you elsewhere if you do!”

Grant looked at her reflectively.

“I don’t think you could ever do that, Liz,” he said affectionately. “You and I know each other too well.”

Moira saw Elizabeth’s small, rueful smile.

“Is Sir Archibald expected on Monday?” she asked, changing the subject.

Grant nodded.

“At ten o’clock. Philip should go into the theatre about eleven and we’ll work through.”

“You will be giving the anaesthetic?”

Again he nodded.

“Philip was emphatic about that. Strangely enough, it’s often the part that people are most nervous about, this losing of their consciousness, yet it happens night after night in sleep and they never give it a thought.”

“That’s because it’s entirely natural,” Elizabeth pointed out. “We’ll all be keeping our fingers crossed for you, Grant.”

“And for Philip.” Moira’s voice was husky, and she clasped her hands tightly before her. “It’s going to be dreadful—just waiting.” There was a short silence in which Elizabeth filled up Grant’s cup. "You’ll be in the hospital and within call,” he said, looking across the hearth at Moira’s strained, white face. "Philip expects that, but it will be best if you stay on duty—best for you.”