For Ever and Ever (16 page)

“I—I don’t know what to say,” stammered Claire. “It’s all so sudden. There’s no time to think—”

“That’s the way to have an operation,” Mr. Pembridge told her with a smile. “No one wants to think over an operation beforehand. Much better to think of it in retrospect. Try not to be frightened”—he ruffled her fair hair as though she were a child—”your friends will look after you, remember.”

Then he turned to Leonie and said,

“I’ll send the orderlies to fetch her. Get ready, will you?”

“Yes, sir. Of course.”

Leonie came with him into the sitting-room of the suite, even though it meant leaving Claire alone for a moment.

“Is it
so
urgent?” she asked softly. “Oughtn’t we to cable for her father’s consent or something?”

“There isn’t time.” Mr. Pembridge was not smiling nor specially reassuring any more. In fact, he looked bleak. “There’s a strong probability of perforation in a few hours if I don’t operate tonight. One lesson on the danger of delay in a case like this is enough.”

“Oh!—of course.” She remembered suddenly that this was how he had lost the girl he loved. “I’m so sorry! Does it—does it make you—nervous to operate in an identical case?”

She knew it was a silly, unprofessional question, the moment it was out. The Senior Surgeon smiled faintly and drily.

“No, I’m not nervous,” he said. “And you must not be either.” For a moment he put his hand on her arm, lightly but firmly, so that she felt the distinct, friendly pressure of his strong, clever fingers. “Your friend is going to need all our skill and devotion tonight.”

Then he went away, and Leonie dressed rapidly in her makeshift uniform, coming in every few moments to speak to Claire and reassure her.

Except for moments of acute pain, Claire was unexpectedly philosophical, and Leonie was struck, not for the first time, by the toughness and resolution in her, which had survived all the spoiling and indulging of an over-devoted father.

“It’s much more than I bargained for on this trip,” she said, “but if I’ve got to have my appendix yanked out, I’d as soon have Mr. Pembridge do it as anyone. He does give one a feeling of confidence.”

“He always did,” Leonie explained with a touch of professional pride. “Everyone who came to St. Catherine’s was aware of it.”

“You and your St. Catherine’s!” mocked Claire, not unkindly. “I believe you sometimes wish you were back there, Leonie, caps and long hours and Mr. Pembridge all complete.”

“Well, they were good days.” Leonie smiled, seeing it now through rosy spectacles which somehow ignored long hours and aching feet and dull routine. “But I’ve an affection for the ship’s hospital, too, and I’ll see you’re looked after like a queen.”

“I’m glad you are going to nurse me,” said Claire, as a knock on the door announced that the hospital orderlies had come to fetch her. And though her tone was almost casual and she did not actually look at Leonie as she spoke, Leonie was touched to realize that this was her way of saying that they were friends again, in spite of anything that had happened in between.

“I’m glad, too, Claire dear.”

Leonie carefully kept her tone matter-of-fact though friendly, for she knew this was not a moment to indulge in any emotional exchange of sentiments. But she smiled at Claire, as though to say that she understood her.

Then the two cheerful hospital orderlies came in, and Claire was expertly wrapped up and transferred to a stretcher, and, with Leonie walking close beside her, she was taken down to the ship’s hospital. As they passed the big clock on the centre stairway, Leonie glanced up, and saw that it was almost three o’clock.

She tried very hard to maintain a cool and professional outlook on the coming operation. But nothing would make Claire just a case to her. She was a friend— in some sense, a special charge—and the recent estrangement between them seemed to make her all the more personally Leonie’s concern.

Not until they reached the hospital did Leonie cast a thought on Kingsley Stour’s interest in the case. But when she saw him—pale and strained, and obviously fully informed of the gravity of the situation by Mr. Pembridge—she almost found it in her heart to be sorry for him. For, however mercenary his designs might have been, it was not possible that he had come to know Claire so well without becoming fond of her personally.

Then Leonie remembered that he had been willing to sacrifice everything—including Claire herself—for what he had believed to be a better matrimonial proposition, and she decided not to waste any sympathy on him, after all.

He spoke to Claire in an affectionate and reassuring way, but she seemed to have almost nothing to say to him in reply. Probably, however, she did not feel much like saying anything to anyone by now, Leonie reflected. Though she could not help noticing that even Claire’s glance sought herself rather than the Assistant Surgeon.

It was, of course, Leonie’s first experience of an operation at sea, and it was Nurse Meech who took over nursing control.

“Can you feel how we’re slackening speed?” she said to Leonie, as they “scrubbed up” in the smaller surgery. “The Captain has been told, of course, and soon he’ll bring us as near to a standstill as can be managed. Don’t worry about your friend. She’ll have the best attention possible.”

“I know,” Leonie replied gratefully. But she also knew how bleak Mr. Pembridge had looked, after he had examined Claire.

But as soon as she was in the larger surgery—which had been miraculously transformed into a small operating theatre—her professional instincts took over, and she might have been back in St. Catherine’s, instead of on the ocean, somewhere between Colombo and Fremantle.

The fact that Mr. Pembridge was doing the operation added to the reassuring sense of familiarity. And, so long as she did not glance at Claire’s now unconscious face, she could almost pretend to herself that they were all engaged on a routine operating session in hospital.

She was unspeakably grateful for the almost graceful rapidity of Mr. Pembridge’s work, which left so little time for lingering anxiety. She remembered it so well, now that she experienced it again—the feeling of astonishment, almost exhilaration, which his sheer skill imparted. And, when she saw for herself how urgent the necessity for the operation had been, she knew that nothing could have reassured her more than to have Mr. Pembridge perform it in front of her.

Familiar, too, was the curious feeling that time stood still. This was because of the intense concentration on what was happening in the operating theatre. One was not aware of anything outside, and therefore one had nothing by which to compare the passage of time.

Only when the job was completed—as only Mr. Pembridge could complete it, Leonie firmly believed— and the last quick, exquisitely neat stitches had been put in, did Leonie relax from what she realized now must have been acute tension.

But, even then, relaxation could only be permitted in a very partial sense. Leonie knew all too well that much would depend on the care and nursing in the next forty-eight hours.

No one disputed her claim to remain by Claire’s bunk-bed in the bright little hospital ward. So that it was she who first saw Claire open her eyes again, as dawn was breaking over the ocean in long, lovely streaks of rose and gold.

For a moment Claire looked distressed and puzzled. Then she smiled faintly at Leonie and whispered, Everything O.K.?”

“Completely so,” Leonie assured her with a smile.

“Your Mr. Pembridge is a marvel,” Claire said, still speaking in a husky whisper. Then she closed her eyes again, leaving Leonie to reflect on the phrase “Your Mr. Pembridge”, and to wonder why it gave her a mixture of pleasure and pain to hear the Senior Surgeon referred to thus.

All day she stayed in close attendance on Claire, Nurse Meech generously taking the surgeries, and Nurse Donley—now completely restored to health except for a still useless hand—making the round of the other wards and keeping an eye on the few, not seriously ill patients.

“I could easily keep a watch on Miss Elstone for you, if you like,” she told Leonie. “You must be dropping with sleep. And if she needed anything I could summon Meech in a minute.”

But Leonie preferred to do her own watching, and for the whole of that day she stayed by Claire’s side. By evening, however—when Mr. Pembridge came in for the third time that day to see her—it was evident that she was rallying extremely well.

“Nurse Donley will take over now,” Mr. Pembridge said. “It’s time you got some sleep.”

“But if she needs me—”

“She won’t need you. At least, not for anything that Nurse Donley can’t give her just as easily. All she needs is competent professional attention now. She’s got past needing the moral support of a friend.”

“If you’re sure—” Leonie got up, stiffly and reluctantly.

“Quite sure. Go and get something to eat, and then go to bed. That’s an order.”

“Very well, sir.” Leonie smiled, faintly and relievedly, at him, and went to the dining-room, where a steward served her with soup and sandwiches.

At first he lingered sympathetically, to inquire about the emergency operation, with the proprietorial air of one who took some part in everything which happened on his ship. But presently he left her to eat her meal alone—for which she was glad, as she was almost too tired to talk.

It was while she was sitting there, however, that it suddenly came to her that she had not yet let Sir James know anything of what had happened to his daughter. And, tired though she was, she took out pencil and paper, and started to work out a cable which would convey the news as unalarmingly as possible.

In view of Mr. Collier’s assurance of Sir James’ improved health, it seemed to Leonie that there was no question of her not letting Sir James know what had happened. If the danger to Claire was not entirely over, at least she could conscientiously report that the operation was successful. And this he had every right to know.

It was extraordinarily difficult, however, to find just the right words which would prevent an initial shock, and Leonie was wondering if she had not better address the cable to Mr. Collier, when Kingsley Stour came into the deserted dining-room and, without hesitation, crossed to the table where she was sitting.

“May I join you?” He sat down without waiting for her permission. “I want to have a word with you about Claire.”

“She’s getting on very well.” Leonie looked surprised. “But Mr. Pembridge can tell you her exact state better than I can.”

“It’s not that. I know she’s getting on well. I wanted to speak about something else. What were you doing, Leonie, when I came in?” He nodded suddenly towards the paper and pencil in her hand.

Astonished at being addressed by her name again, instead of the usual “Nurse”, she did not catch his meaning for a moment. Then suddenly she, too, glanced at the paper in her hand, and crumpled it up quickly, as though to hide its contents.

“Nothing to do with you,” she said curtly. “Why do you ask?”

“Because I think it has something to do with me. It wasn’t a letter, was it?”

“No.”

“Then it was a draft cable.”

Not for the first time, she was surprised at his powers of quick deduction. And she decided that there was no point in making a mystery of her actions.

“Very well, then. I was trying to decide how to cable the news to Sir James without giving him too much of a shock. But you’re wrong in thinking it has anything to do with you.”

“Of course it has. What do you suppose is the next thing he will do?”

“I don’t know.”

“He will probably fly out to join the ship at one of the Australian ports.”

Leonie considered that, and then said coolly, “I suppose you’re right. And very much relieved I shall be, for more reasons than one.”

He did not answer that immediately, and in some strange way, as the silence measured itself out to unusual length, Leonie felt a sort of chill apprehension growing upon her.

“I wish you wouldn’t send that cable, Leonie,” he said at last, but in a curiously mild tone. “Claire herself won’t thank you for it, you know.”

“I can’t help that.” Leonie spoke with resolution, though the thought of being at variance with Claire again dismayed her almost to the point of tears in her present exhausted condition. “You don’t seriously suppose I could leave her father in ignorance of what has happened?”

“She is virtually out of danger now. Is there any reason to put groundless fears into his mind? Especially when he isn’t supposed to have any sort of shock.”

“He is much better now. Mr. Collier wrote to say so,” Leonie countered quickly. “And, anyway, I could not possibly take sole responsibility, with Claire seriously ill.”

“You could share it with someone nearer and more suitable.”

“Whom do you mean?”

“Why don’t you cable to the relations she is going to visit? They will be able to make special arrangements to receive her then. They might even meet her at one of the ports before Sydney.”

Leonie hesitated, astonished to find that, even now, his persuasive arguments had some power to affect her capacity for judgment. Not to the extent of making her want to do what he suggested. But certainly to the extent of making her doubt the wisdom of her own decision.

“Why,” she asked, looking at him as calmly as she could, “are you so anxious to influence me in this?”

“For the very obvious reason that neither Claire nor I would welcome Sir James’ presence at this point.”

“You mean you plan—”

“We have no plans, Leonie,” he interrupted firmly. “Until we land in Australia and see how things are likely to work out there, Claire will make no decision, and I shall not try to force one on her. But if Sir James panicked and flew out to join us at Perth, say—”

He paused, perhaps to let Leonie savor the full impact of the scene which would then ensue.

Leonie was silent, but she passed her hand wearily over her eyes and wished her head had not begun to ache. It made it difficult to think clearly, or assess the situation accurately.

Of course Kingsley Stour was thinking of it only from his own point of view. But, since he presented the position in those terms, Leonie was bound to reflect that an angry, suspicious Sir James might, at that point, do more harm than good.