Nurse in Love (5 page)

“What do I think of Kathryn Clare?” Adam repeated it after her, taking time to consider it before he answered slowly. “I found her not at all what I expected.”

“Not?” Thelma’s echo was sharp, more dismayed than she intended. Lest he should guess it mattered to her what he thought of Kathryn, she added silkily: “Perhaps I gave you a wrong impression. When I told you what she had done to Steven I may have been too angry with her for his sake. But you know,” she added obliquely, “there’s no rule that a woman of her sort should run true to an utterly impossible type.”

“Whatever impression you gave me, I shouldn’t have counted her looks as important either way,”
shrugged Adam. “What I meant was that I had not expected to find her a most efficient ward Sister,
whose work I can’t fault.”

“Oh
!”
Thelma sounded relieved.

“Also possessing a certain strength of character which it might have been good for Steven, particularly, to share,” went on Adam smoothly.

Thelma wrinkled her nose in distaste. “ ‘Efficiency’. ‘Strength of character’! Do you know, Adam, I’d hate to think that they were the only qualities a man could ascribe to me? But I daresay she has been at pains to conceal the particular one which enabled her to lead Steven on and then to let him down quite, quite callously. And after all, you only meet on the ward, don’t you, where efficiency is probably her easiest card to play?”

“Not only on the ward. Once, too, at a mutual friend’s,” corrected Adam.

“Where?” Thelma’s curiosity was too much for her good manners.

“At Mr
.
and Mrs
.
Thorley’s. Steven would remember Victor Thorley. He was a junior master at Repstow when we were there. When I looked up Victor, Kathryn Clare was there too.”

“Yes, I remember now. The Thorleys are looking after the young sister of a
protégée
of hers, one of the student nurses.” Thelma made a mental note of Adam’s and Kathryn’s connection with the Thorleys, but dismissed it for the moment as something else rankled more. She said accusingly: “If you say Steven needs another person’s strength, does that imply that you consider he—he’s a weakling?”

Adam’s grey eyes, straight and uncompromising, met hers. “He has always depended a great deal upon you,
hasn’t he, Thelma?”

“If you mean that he usually considers me before himself—yes.”

“More than that, I think. I should judge that he looks to you for guidance in any action, great or small.”

“What of it? Doesn’t that show an unusual consideration of me?”

Adam smiled. “It’s no cause for apology, certainly. It’s only that such a degree of power over another person confers a heavy responsibility. Some people would be uncomfortable under the weight of it. Which reminds me—what about Steven’s letter which you spoke of?”

It was a veering off the subject which suited Thelma She took the letter from her bag and handed it across the table, watching Adam as he read it in silence. When he passed it back he commented: “It bears out what I was saying—he won’t take the step he mentions unless you approve it. What are you going to advise him to do?”

Thelma’s slim fingers creased and re-creased the folds of the letter. Her eyes were lifted appealingly to Adam’s as she said: “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.”

“My dear Thelma
!
” The impulsive violence
of Adam’s protest was cut short as he saw the appeal in her eyes, and he added more quietly: “I’m sorry, but I mustn’t presume to advise Steven on whether to continue in Nigeria if his appointment is confirmed or to return to England, and even to the Wardrop.”

“Why not? You’re his best friend.”

“Even so, with his whole career at stake, I’d go no further than to put to him some arguments on both
sides which he might otherwise overlook. Even for you, Thelma, to do more than that I should consider a misuse of your influence with him. This is something that he
must
decide for himself.”

“He’s asked my advice.” There was a stubborn note in Thelma’s voice.

“I still don’t think you should give it so forcibly as to sway him. And that because, for you as for me, I should judge it to be too difficult to keep your personal feelings out of the argument.”

“What do you mean?”

“Only that, as you and Steven are greatly attached to each other, your natural inclination is surely to ask him to return. But it’s an argument you would have no right to use.”

“And what personal feelings would
you
be at pains to keep out?”

Adam looked surprised at the question, almost as if it were an impertinence. But he said slowly: “For me there’d be nothing I’d like better than to have Steven as a colleague here.”

“Oh! Now I wondered whether you meant something quite the opposite. Whether you might have discovered suddenly that, for extremely personal reasons, you would prefer that Steven didn’t return? I mean when I came up to the ward this evening, you
did
appear to be holding hands with Kathryn Clare
—
”

Thelma broke off sharply, aghast at the mounting chagrin which had betrayed her into such an indiscretion to Adam, whom she was so anxious to cultivate and impress. She laughed quickly and archly, hoping to turn what she had said into the merest raillery which she was inviting him to share.

But she was to be disappointed, for Adam’s tone was
cold and withdrawn as he said: “You were mistaken, I think. I don’t ‘hold hands’ as an approach to my professional colleagues, one of whom Sister Clare happens to be. And if that’s a sample of the level on which you mean to influence Steven, you’d be well advised to reconsider it.”

She had made a bad mistake in her handling of him, and she did not know how to regain the ground she had lost. But she said humbly: “I meant nothing—you know that. In my set that’s the sort of badinage we toss about unthinkingly. Nobody minds—for none of it is ever true, as this wasn’t. As for Steven, of course you are right. I mustn’t use as an argument any of my own wish to have him back.”

She guessed that Adam was responding to the sincerity she was trying hard to convey. Encouraged, she went on: “Neither, I suppose, ought I to try to find out what it would mean to him to return here, when Kathryn Clare did her best to destroy his happiness
—
” She stopped, completely unprepared for the
crisp violence of Adam’s exclamation.

Frowning, he said: “Isn’t it time that Kathryn Clare’s name was left out of any discussion of Steven’s future? He is a professional man with a career to make. He can’t see-saw for ever on the plea of a woman’s rejection of him, however unscrupulously it was done. I admit that I couldn’t forgive it myself, but Steven
must
pull out for his own sake.”

“He may still be in love with her, you know,” insinuated Thelma gently.

Adam’s cold stare, his raised brows, told nothing of what he was thinking. But into the finality of his: “That would be unfortunate—but by now, I hope, somewhat unlikely,” Thelma read triumph for herself.

At first she had believed that he was attracted to Kathryn, then that he wanted to defend her. But his praise had only been of her work: he had still called her unscrupulous, and thought it unlikely that even Steven could have remained in love with her. The evening, for Thelma, had not been wasted, after all
—

It was a week or two later that Kathryn, looking through the list of patients to be discharged, saw Roger Horrick’s name among them. She had not heard the result of Adam Brand’s interest in his mother’s future, and she made a point of seeing her when she came to take her little boy home.

But when she came into the office she stood disconsolately near the door, her restless fingers rolling the hem of her scarf. And before Kathryn had time to ask if she was pleased with the progress Roger had made, she asked rather pitifully: “Sister, they can’t force me, can they? I know I’m a widow without a man to stand up for me, but I don’t have to take orders, do I?”

Puzzled, Kathryn said gently: “I’m afraid I don’t understand,
Mrs.
Horrick. All I know is that Dr
.
Brand was going to ask you if you would like to work for him instead of your going on with your present night-work, and that he meant to ask the Social Worker to get in touch with you. What has happened, then?”

“Well, it wasn’t the Social Worker, Sister. It was a Miss Carter, a particular friend of the Doctor’s, she said, and she was asking me for him. Only she didn’t ask, you understand. She said that I’d
got
to go to work for the Doctor, and she wouldn’t take No for an answer, nor give me time to think it over or anything.
I mean, I can’t afford to earn less than I do now, so that’s why I’m asking you.”

Thelma!—acting for Adam Brand as a ‘particular friend’ of his. Of course, she helped in the Social Worker’s office, but she must have taken on this mission directly from Adam—and ho
w
unspeakably badly she had done it! Kathryn felt that if she could not persuade the perplexed woman that Adam had issued no ‘orders’, and had acted only for Roger’s sake, the child’s future was in danger.

She stooped to plug in the electric kettle and took tea-things from her private cupboard. “I was just going to have some tea, Mrs
.
Horrick,” she said. “You’ll stay and have some too, won’t you?” And over their second cups she began to apply her healing argument.

“You know, Mrs
.
Horrick, Dr
.
Brand couldn’t possibly have wanted to give you orders about such a matter. But I do know that he was deeply concerned that you should be forced to leave Roger alone at night. And when he suggested to me that you might like to go to him instead, I though
t
it was a grand idea. I did hope that you would agree—for Roger’s sake.”

“I might have—if she—Miss Carter—had put it as you put it, Sister.”

Kathryn
smiled. “Well, I happen to know that she and the Doctor are—very close friends so he probably left it to her to choose what to say to you. She wasn’t very tactful, I can see, but you really can’t blame Dr
.
Brand for that. I
know
he suggested it for Roger and to make things easier for you.”

“Well, they would be, if the place suited me. And you make it sound so different, as if the Doctor really
did mean to ask me, not order me
—
”

“Then will you try it,
please
? I’m sure you can
trust the Doctor to be generous, so will you tell him that you’ll try it? I’m expecting him on the ward at any minute, so you can see him in here before you take Roger home, if you like.”

Kathryn herself made a point of being out on the ward when Adam arrived, and when she returned to her office Mrs
.
Horrick had gone. Adam joined her there after his round, and she was not surprised when he said casually: “By the way, your ‘happy ending’ has been achieved.
Mrs.
Horrick has agreed to come to me.
”

“I’m glad. I hoped she would.”

“Yes. I
by
-passed the
official
channels
and p
u
t
Thelma Carter to act as my ambassador, and it’s all settled.”

Kathryn bit her lip. “I’m glad,” she repeated.

“But you know that it wasn’t settled through Thelma’s doing?” he challenged swiftly.

“I—”

“I think you do,” he assured her drily. “You seem to have managed a difficult situation with a good deal of tact. For the boy’s sake—thank you.”

He went on to detail the treatments he wanted given and charted before his next visit. But afterwards he turned back from the door to say with slow emphasis: “Did you know, incidentally, that Steven Carter is returning to England to renew his appointment here at the Wardrop?”

At the news surprise flashed across Kathryn’s face
—
a surprise so complete that it could have been read as dismay. When she said nothing Adam queried smoothly: “You don’t care for the prospect?”

She said slowly: “I am surprised, and I don’t think it is a very wise decision.”

“Why should you disapprove?”

“Because he had made a clean break when he went out to Africa—
”

“A clean break from—what?”

She scorned to tell him that she had been thinking of Thelma’s influence over Steven. She went on: “I think he should have stood by that decision, instead of seeking to retrace his steps and to—re-live experiences that he had already gone beyond.”

Adam’s grey eyes hardened. “You are unwilling to be confronted with your past conquest. I wonder why?”

She felt the very detachment with which he spoke to be the cruellest injustice he had done her, but she forced herself to think only of Steven as she accused in reply: “If you advised Steven to return to England, I consider you did him a disservice.”