Home is Goodbye (12 page)

S
he nodded gratefully and grasped her medical bag under her arm. She had never really met Mrs. Halifax and she wanted to make a good impression. It was true that she had seen her that once on the train, but she didn’t flatter herself that the older woman would remember her.

When Mrs. Halifax came hurrying out of the shed, though, she wasn’t sure that this was the same woman at all. On the train she had remembered her as tall and good-looking, but now she seemed a good deal less frightening. Her hair was all anyhow and the lines that Sara had noticed around her eyes were lines of humour and lines from peering into a sunbaked horizon, but not the lines of temper that she had somehow expected.

‘Hullo, my dear!’ Mrs. Halifax greeted her, her eyes twinkling in a way that was very reminiscent of her son. ‘What a dreadful experience for you!’ Her glance darted up and down the slim girl before her and she nodded with apparent satisfaction. ‘My child, you look quite awful!’ she said frankly. ‘We’d better call in at the hospital on the way to your aunt’s — not that I really like to leave you there, because it’s no good expecting her to do anything in the way of nursing you, and Felicity hasn’t yet got her feet back on the ground!’

She paused dramatically for breath and at the same moment John came over to say good-bye. Sara had the interesting moment watching Mrs. Halifax change into a cool, competent business woman as she discussed the things that Matt needed to bring the Auster back to base, and then a moment later she had changed back again. This metamorphosis completed, she gave Sara a mischievous smile and hurried her along to the waiting Jaguar.

‘You must tell me all that happened to you. Well, no,’ she corrected herself, ‘perhaps not quite all!’ She watched with calm good nature as Sara blushed and looked pleased with herself. ‘We’ve had a terrible time here too,’ she confided. ‘James has finally dug in his heels and says that he’s catching the next boat home to England and, worse, that he’s taking Felicity with him!’

‘Worse?’ Sara asked weakly.

‘Definitely worse! Your aunt will go off the deep end! But we must worry about you now, not them! Tell me why you’re looking so dreadfully ill, my dear.’

Sara’s lips twitched with amusement. It was evident that Mrs. Halifax had a great feeling for effect! Her timing was too good not to be the outcome of years of accomplished practice. Why should it be so dreadful for James and Felicity to go off to England together? And why should her aunt object? Surely that was what she wanted, to make some lasting connection between herself and the Halifaxes. It had been the same when she had telephoned the house, Sara remembered; with James begging her not to mention the fact that Felicity was with him to her aunt. It was all very mysterious, but she had no intention of displaying her curiosity to Matt’s mother if she could help it.

‘I think I had a mild go of malaria. It was too stupid at such a time, but Matt was wonderfully practical about it all and I’m really none the worse.’

‘Matt can be useful,’ his mother agreed humorously. She hadn’t missed that quirk of amusement on Sara’s lips and she knew that she was beaten, not resenting it in the slightest, but rather glad that Sara should be worthy of her mettle.

The two women smiled at one another and then laughed.

‘Don’t you want to hear about James and Felicity?’ Mrs. Halifax asked.

‘Don’t you want to tell me?’ Sara teased her.

‘Well, of course I do! Julia is not a very comfortable person to gossip with, I find, and I’m feminine enough to really enjoy a good natter every now and then. Are you sure you wouldn’t like to come back to the house with me and stay with us for a few days?’

It could very well be that Mrs. Halifax was starved for feminine society, Sara thought, and she was seriously tempted to go with her. It would be so wonderful to have her look after her and to fuss her in a way that her aunt would never dream of doing. But of course, it was quite impossible. Her aunt would be terribly hurt if she were to do any such thing.

‘I’d have loved it,’ she said warmly, ‘but I think I ought to show my face at home Aunt Laura will have been very worried about me.’

‘Of course, dear,’ Mrs. Halifax said, looking for all the world as though she thoroughly agreed with this polite fiction. ‘I suppose it would be more civil.’ She put out a hand and squeezed both of Sara’s on her knee. ‘You’re not at all what I expected,’ she said frankly. ‘I’m usually frantically shy with people, but I should imagine that was very difficult with you! You must have a nice family at home.’

Sara felt a sudden gush of warmth towards her and smiled rather emotionally.

‘Why, thank you,’ she said. ‘T-tell me about Felicity and James.’

‘Ah yes!’ Mrs. Halifax’s eyes gleamed with anticipation. ‘They want to get married! Mind you, I’m not at all against it. Felicity is such a young thing that James would be obliged to grow up to look after her. And then it would be a good thing for her to have a rest from her mother. She would be able to see her so much more in proportion if she was away from her for a little while.
I
think it would be an excellent thing, but of course Mrs. Wayne won’t hear of it!’

‘Have they told her yet?’ Sara asked.

‘I shouldn’t think so. When they do, we’ll hear the explosion right up at the house! Laura Wayne was the most devoted wife that a man could ever hope to have!’

‘
What’s that got to do with it?’ Sara was still genuinely mystified by her aunt’s expected reactions.

‘Do you mean to say that you don’t know?’ Mrs. Halifax exclaimed rather than asked.

‘No, should I?’

Mrs. Halifax looked at the road ahead of her with thoughtful eyes.

‘
Yes, I think you should,’ she said. ‘Quite apart from the fact that your role will be pacifier-in-chief, I think you ought to know. It’s so easy to put one’s foot in it, without the least intention of being tactless, and James is so terribly sensitive!’

She paused while she changed gears, and the car went on in its stately progress.

‘It was James who was with Noel when he was killed. He might have been able to save him, but he panicked. James has never been able to forgive himself, though I think everyone except Laura understood. He probably wouldn’t have been able to do anything anyway, but he should have checked the ropes before they went climbing!’

It was said so simply that for a minute Sara found it difficult to believe that she was speaking about her own son.

‘I’m terribly sorry,’ she said inadequately.

‘It was tragic for everyone,’ Mrs. Halifax went on. ‘Especially for James, because he’s never been able to trust himself since. He’s talked about going to England before
—
and blamed Matt when he couldn’t summon sufficient courage to actually go!’ She sighed. ‘I shall miss him, though.’

‘But you think he’ll be happier in England?’ Sara asked.

Mrs. Halifax nodded.

‘Yes. He’s a good writer, and he’ll never be a fanner or a mechanic. He hates it and he’s careless, and that makes him worse, if you see what I mean?’

Sara thought of Matt’s reaction when the Auster had failed and silently agreed that it would be much better for James to be doing what he wanted to do, and something that he was good at. Nothing would have induced her to say anything about that moment to anyone, but she couldn’t help wondering whether in some way James had been responsible for the engine not functioning properly.

‘Tell me about the accident, Mrs. Halifax
—
if you don’t mind, that is, You see, we heard at home that my uncle had been killed in an accident, but that was all we knew. None of us had ever met Aunt Laura and—’

‘And she certainly wouldn’t say anything she didn’t have to to his family! She always was possessive about him, but she made him very happy, so she must have a lot of good qualities that I know nothing about, because I make no secret of the fact that I can’t stand the woman!’

Mrs. Halifax drove the Jaguar up to the hospital doors and switched off the engine.

‘I don’t kn
o
w if I’m doing right keeping you out here talking, but here goes! Noel was an ardent rock climber, and he taught both the boys when they were young, though only James ever really took to the sport. They went out together that afternoon on a rather difficult climb and Noel insisted that they should take ropes. James said it was all nonsense and that they wouldn’t need them, but he promised to check them over. Well, the long and the short of it was that he didn’t trouble. When they found that they did need the ropes, one of them was a bit frayed and Noel took that one. At the critical moment it gave and he fell some thirty feet on to a ledge. Some people thought that there might have been some chance of James going down with the other rope and getting him out, but he came straight down to the house for help. When they got Dr. Cengupta up there to him, he was dead. There was a tremendous amount of fuss and James took it all rather badly. Laura was prostrated and refused to see him or have anything to do with him, and so far as I know she has never spoken to him again. So you can see why she won’t exactly be encouraging Felicity to marry him!’

‘I certainly can,’ Sara said soberly.
‘
What an awful thing to have happened. I’ll do anything I can to make things easier, but I’m afraid it won’t be very much. My aunt hardly knows me at all.’

‘That’s nice of you, my dear,’ Mrs. Halifax said gratefully. ‘But you mustn’t let my son’s affairs upset your life with your aunt.’

Sara reflected that one of her sons had already upset the even tenure of her life quite sufficien
tl
y for her to be glad of a diversion in the direction of someone else’s affairs. Aunt Laura would be so preoccupied with Felicity and James that she would hardly notice her niece’s adventure with the elder brother!

Sara thanked her for the lift to the hospital and slid out of the car on to the hospital steps.

‘Matt will be all right, won’t he?’ she asked, almost nonchalantly.

‘He’ll be down to see you in the morning!’ Mrs. Halifax assured her cheerfully. She watched Sara make her way into the hospital, returning her last wave of farewell. Then, with a very satisfied smile, she started out on the few miles back to her home.

It was a peculiar feeling to enter the hospital. It seemed just as if nothing had happened there since she had left it yesterday. Everything was exactly the same as though it had been waiting for her to come back before it resumed any of its activities. Then, walking past the ward, she saw the ebony head of the appendectomy who had been brought in and felt more normal again.

She knocked on Dr. Cengup
t
a’s door with some trepidation. Doctors, she knew, expected their nurses to be
perennially
healthy and usually showed marked displeasure if any of them fell by the wayside.

‘Come in!’

She opened the door, bitterly conscious of the sight she must present and wished that she had taken the time to tidy herself in her own room first. But it was too late for such regrets, so she stood in the doorway as ill at ease as if she had been a first-year student reporting to Matron for some misdemeanour.

Dr. Cengupta looked up. ‘My dear Nurse Wayne,’ he said in his softest, most Eastern tones, ‘what have they been doing to you?’

She watched his attitude slowly change from being a colleague to being a doctor with herself as the patient and was suddenly aware exactly how ill she was feeling.

‘It’s my head!’ she said a little pathetically. ‘It aches so! Matt says it’s malaria, and he strapped me to a shield and walked me miles and made me take pills, but I feel so ill!’ Her voice rose to a slightly hysterical note at the end, and
the
doctor automatically came forward and took her pulse.

‘Bed for you,’ he said firmly. ‘I’ll call Nurse Lucy and she can help you undress. You’ll feel much better in the morning and we can see about you going home then.’

Sara had no ambition to argue with such a prescription. She allowed herself to be led away by the soft, surprisingly pink hands of Nurse Lucy and revelled in the luxury of being helped into a properly made bed that gave in all the right places, supporting her aching body as it drifted off on a cloud that was very near to unconsciousness.

‘
You sure are in a bad way,’ Nurse Lucy told her, clucking her tongue against her teeth. ‘We was told you’d crashed, but that nasty bad mosquito, he had his bite long time ago!’

So Matt had been right as usual, she reflected. She had malaria. She turned over, pulled the sheet up under her chin and went to sleep.

‘So, Nurse Wayne, you are more the thing this morning, I think. I’ve told Miss Felicity that she may collect you before lunch and run you home. You gave us quite a fright!’ Dr. Cengupta shook his head admonishingly at her. Sara sat up cautiously, but her headache had completely gone and she felt very much better.

‘I gave myself rather a fright too,’ she said wryly. ‘I was all right until I saw you—’

‘I’m flattered!’ he smiled at her. ‘But seriously it is surprising that you kept on your feet so long. You will be keeping very quiet for a few days. Lying doggo!’

She gave him rather a wintry smile.